At home where we don’t belong

Jill and I are not cool enough for the Ace Hotel & Swim Club, and it would be deceitful to pretend otherwise. But we keep coming back anyway.

We were naïve enough to think we “discovered” the Ace last spring during a weekend visit to Palm Springs. Jill got a tip about the place from a Los Angeles-based model she photographed during a fashion shoot. That should have been our first clue we were about to wander too deep into the hip end of the pool, but we were blinded by the promise of $89 rates.

Unlike the Hotel Congress, the subject of an earlier post, the Ace’s coolness is not the product of historical preservation. Rather, it’s the result of a Weird Science-style experiment in hotel design by a group of impossibly young and stylish entrepreneurs from Seattle. The principal visionary behind Ace Hotels, Alex Calderwood, used to throw warehouse parties in that city during the grungy heyday of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nirvana, et al. Seattle is also the site of the flagship Ace Hotel, which occupies a former halfway house and features shared bathrooms.

The Ace in Palm Springs used to be a Howard Johnson back in the ’60s, and the hotel’s accompanying restaurant, King’s Highway, was formerly a Denny’s. But the only legacy the Ace preserves from its predecessors is negative space; beyond rooflines and room volumes, the hotel is a wholly new creation.

A stuffed coyote wearing a pearl necklace stalks you at reception. A snow-cone stand sits beside the swimming pool. A record player and stacks of vintage vinyl await you in your room. If W is the Pussycat Doll of hotel brands, Ace is the André 3000.

There are indeed $89 rooms to be had at the Ace, but only nine of them, and none allows pets. The hotel’s dog-friendly rooms are located on the lower level and have enclosed patios with gas fireplaces and L-shaped couches. These rooms, however, are considerably more expensive, especially during Palm Springs’ spring tourist season. And a $350 hotel room is not in our budget.

But one lesson of road travel is that Lady Luck often will smile on you if you simply introduce yourself and exchange a few pleasant words. This is what happened to Jill and me on the night of the Academy Awards, when our heads rested inside a tent at Joshua Tree National Park but our hearts longed to watch the Oscar telecast. With a dark, cold evening ahead of us, we decided to make the half-hour drive to Palm Springs in search of a TV. We thought we might find one at the Ace’s bar. We were right.

That bar, called the Amigo Room, sits atop the desert floor, but it feels like the underground lair of a Mexican outlaw. The brick walls are painted greasy black, and every tabletop is inlaid with old Pesos. The barkeep said the flat-screen TV mounted at the end of the dark room was installed in anticipation of Oscar-night patronage.

During a couple of commercial breaks I went out to the car to rouse our sleeping dogs, and each time I made small talk with the hotel’s friendly front office manager, Sean. Tipped off by our outdoorsy duds and loaded-down vehicle, Sean deduced that we were camping. I told him about our trip and how earlier in the day we saw snow at Joshua Tree. “It’s supposed to get down in the 20s tonight,” I said.

“You guys should stay here,” Sean replied.

“Well, we’d love to. If only those lousy dogs didn’t keep us out of the cheap rooms. The last time we were here, back when y’all first opened, we loved it.”

I wasn’t fishing for a discount, not at all, but Sean lobbed one at me anyway. “We like to take care of our repeat guests. I could probably go 99 dollars for you on one of our patio rooms.”

A $99 hotel room is not in our budget, either, and our sleeping bags were already awaiting us us back at Joshua Tree. But after three days of camping in an icy wind, a gas fireplace and hot shower sounded awfully good. I asked Sean if his offer would stand the following night, and he said it would. Jill, who had been a study in rosy cheeks and clenched shoulders since the Colorado Plateau, was thrilled.

The irony of us taking a hiatus from campgrounds to stay at the Ace is that campground-style living inspired the Ace’s design. “There are elements of camping, elements of communal living, elements of nature,” Roman Alonso of the design firm Commune, which created the Ace’s aesthetic, said of the hotel in an Los Angeles Times article.

The patios certainly reflect that back-to-nature vibe, but the rooms’ décor seems to answer the call of the sea. You can stare at the walls all you want, but you won’t see any; that’s because they’re covered by canvas sailcloth and louvered panels. You don’t feel like you’re staying in a retrofitted Howard Johnson as much you feel you’ve ventured below beck on the yacht of a flamboyant record executive — maybe David Geffen — in the year 1979. Only the faux animal skins on the floor and the Willie Nelson album next to the turntable reel you back into Far West reality.

Jill and I might not be cool enough for the Ace, but we sure dig it. We especially enjoyed sitting in the hot tub and sunbathing next to the pool less than 24 hours after shivering amid snow-dusted Joshua trees. (An aside: The pool towels at the Ace Swim Club are like soft-spun crack. I might pay 99 bucks just to curl up in a warm pile of them.)

The only real complaint I have about the place concerns the restaurant’s breakfast menu. Ricotta hotcakes? Irish porridge? Coconut-bread French toast? Organic or not, such foo-foo fare makes me want to hurl all over David Geffen’s sailcloth. Give me a Denny’s Grand Slam any day.

But, heck, push-button fireplaces on the patio and L.A. models on the pool deck more than offset posh porridge and $8 French toast. All you Phoenix folks out there should definitely deal yourself an Ace weekend sometime. It’s a short drive, and you can stop at Joshua Tree on the way. You’ll know you’ve arrived when you spot a coyote accessorized like Barbara Bush.

If Sean is behind the front desk, tell him the guy from Tennessee who warmed his pizza in the patio fireplace sent you. A poser like me can use all the Ace points he can get.

—Scott

May 5, 2010 | Scott | Tags: , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Getting attached to trailer life

Two months into our trip and a scant 200 miles from our home in Phoenix, I feared it was all over. Jill was studying for-sale flyers in front of houses and surveying plots in the community garden. The dogs were smiling and running loose on gravel roads. I found myself gazing toward the mountains of Mexico and imaging a life less transitory.

We were in Patagonia, Ariz., and we were in love.

Patagonia takes its name from the Patagonia mountain range south of town, which in turn takes its name from the Patagonia Mine that was discovered inside the mountains in the mid 1800s. How the mine got its name neither locals nor the Interweb seems to know. Patagonia’s historical tale features the usual Southwestern players (American Indians, Spanish missionaries, homesteaders, prospectors, cowboys) and props (open space, ore, cattle, train rails), and during its heyday the town was a supply hub for nearby mining camps and ranches. Nowadays, about 800 people live in Patagonia. The mining camps are ghost towns, and the old train depot is a city park.

Jill and I never planned to visit Patagonia, except maybe for a meal. Our intended destination was Patagonia Lake State Park, about 7 miles southwest of town. But when rain started smacking the windshield as we drove along Highway 82, we reached for our iPhones and began exploring other accommodation options. The option we settled on was a 50-foot trailer parked next to the Patagonia Public Library.

Listed on the Patagonia Area Business Association’s website as a “vacation home,” our room for the night was actually a 1958 Spartan Imperial Villa Travelcoach. The owners of this vintage trailer have christened it “Dos Palmas” in honor of the two palm trees that tower above its patio. When Jill and I arrived, these palms swayed in unison as raindrops pelted the trailer’s silvery hull. We looked at each other and laughed. Then we released the hounds and made a break for the front door.

This particular travel trailer might no longer roll across America’s byways, but it is still transportive. To step inside is to step backwards through five decades. Floral carpet and bataan furniture adorn the living room. Fiestaware and Formica fill the kitchen. A vintage chenille bedspread with a needle-tufted peacock covers the bed. The principle design motif hails straight from “I Love Lucy.”

(In the interest of preserving my dudehood, it is necessary to point out that I heretofore had no clue about Fiestaware, chenille fabric or needle-tufting. Jill provided those details. I swear.)

Vintage ’50s décor typically doesn’t do much for me, but I have to say that Dos Palmas provided us especially cozy shelter from the storm. I felt like a raggedy tent camper waiting out the rain inside the neighboring trailer of some old lady — except the only old lady on hand was mine. And she’s super hot.

Here’s the thing about my old lady, though: When a place makes her happy, she starts dreaming and scheming. She starts envisioning a new future woven from the wispy pleasures of the immediate present. She starts settling in.

“We could totally live in something like this,” Jill said. I followed her voice to the back of the trailer. I found her lounging across the needle-tufted peacock, her own tail feathers figuratively fanned out in a display of self-assurance. We had barely unloaded the car.

“Are you serious? I would kill you.”

And I would. As I enumerated in an earlier post, The Universe of Jill, like the Soviet Union under Stalin, has a tendency to push its borders outward with startling speed and carelessness. This doesn’t jive with trailer life, where the mere act of not cleaning the kitchen after a meal can make you feel like a hoarder worthy of cable TV. No trailer, even a 50-foot one, is suited to Jill’s ever-expanding menagerie of cords and hairpins and panties.

But a funny thing happened as we lingered in Patagonia and Dos Palmas for another night, and then another, and then two more: I came around to Jill’s point of view.

For one, the Spartan’s narrow confines and clever hidey-holes induced Jill to keep her things in fastidious order, which kept me off the precipice of claustrophobia and brought me great joy. More importantly, this long trailer in little Patagonia jelled with our new worldview.

If this trip has done anything for us, it’s increased our love for simple things and our desire to live more simply when we get back home. Dos Palmas had everything we needed and nothing we didn’t. A simple place to sleep. A simple place to cook. A simple place to bathe. Outside, there was a gas grill, a fenced yard for the mutts, and a shed with a washer and dryer. Next door was a magical public library where neighborhood dogs roamed the aisles and Gandalf-bearded old men checked their e-mail. (On my third visit to the library, a little boy in the children’s section belted out the entire lyrics to “Black Betty” by Ram Jam. If that’s not a selling point for Patagonia, I don’t know what is.)

Once the rain gave way to the Southern Arizona sunshine, Jill and I didn’t spend much time inside the trailer; but the time we did spend there — reading by the little windows, lunching at the little kitchen table, watching nightly movies on the little TV — was extraordinarily peaceful. Maybe there’s a theory to be posited here: that the simpler your home, the less time you will spend inside it — but the more rewarding that time will be. Big houses with lots of stuff in them only tie you down, make you soft, hinder you from meeting new people and seeing new scenes. Maybe the world needs more trailers.

Getting outside in Patagonia is a no-brainer. There’s a nature preserve, a national forest and a terminus for the Arizona Trail. And when the day’s done, places like the Velvet Elvis Pizza Company and Wagon Wheel Saloon conspire to keep you away from the trailer just a little longer.

Patagonia fit us. And neither pounding rain, nor a mountain-bike wreck, nor tales of Mexican drug-gang violence could dissuade Jill from pricing property near the Dos Palmas’ lot. It’s pretty cheap by Phoenix standards, even post housing bust. If I turned to Jill tomorrow and said, “Darlin’, let’s sell the house, buy a lot in Patagonia, and go live in a trailer,” I’m pretty she would do it. In fact, I know she would.

But I’m keeping my mouth shut. At least for another eight months.

—Scott

April 29, 2010 | Scott | Tags: , , , , , | 4 Comments »

The powers of Congress, raw and unchecked

Hotel Congress has occupied the same corner in downtown Tucson for 91 years. But it sure feels like it’s been around the block a few times.

Look closely and you’ll find flecked paint and cracked tile and water-stained plaster. If you arrive in the morning, you might get a whiff of stale beer from one of the five bars (yes, five) that adjoin the lobby. Arrive at midday, and your olfactory glands might be overwhelmed by the cleaning staff’s liberal swabbings of ammonia.

The iron-framed beds are small, the mattresses a little lumpy. But checking into Hotel Congress with sleep on your mind is folly anyway. Long past midnight bottles clank, kick drums thump, locomotives rattle ancient windows.

The bathrooms? Tiny. A man of average stature can rest his forehead on the wall while he sits on the toilet (which I suppose is helpful if you’ve spent too much time at one or more of the bars downstairs). The showers are about the size of refrigerator boxes, and the temperature of the water trickling out of them is as fickle as Joe Lieberman.

Hotel Congress has its flaws, yes. But love is being able to overlook flaws. And true love is when flaws cease to be flaws at all, but rather contextual definers of unique beauty and your relationship to it — like tiny flecks of rust on your ’69 Mustang or laugh lines around your father’s eyes.

Having said that, let me declare this: I truly love Hotel Congress.

I’m not the only one, of course. Since 1919, Hotel Congress has seduced travelers of every ilk. First it was rail passengers, Easterners mostly, disembarking from Southern Pacific trains that squealed to a stop at a station across the street. Later, in 1934, John Dillinger and his gang decided the hotel’s third floor would be a lovely place to lay low from federal agents. And beginning in 1985, when a club opened downstairs, aficionados of live music, unpretentious booze and cigarette-fogged conversation made “the Congress” their favorite hangout.

Hotel Congress comes by its agedness honestly. This place isn’t Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button makeup; it’s John Hurt after a bender. It doesn’t so much live and breathe as it creaks and convulses and bellows.

Hotel Congress’ saving grace lies in the details. It gets them right at every turn. The blood-red Mexican tile in the lobby is burnished to a shine that catches every glint of natural light. The bare, mustard-hued bulbs that droop in arcs above the outside patio cast a perfectly dull glow on the tables below. The ornate yet worn carpet in the hallways whispers the stories of a thousand soles, including those that wobbled past the night before.

Hotel Congress’ décor isn’t merely aesthetically pleasing — it’s transportive. Depending which direction you swivel your head, you might feel like you’re in a Spanish hacienda, a Parisian café or a Victorian bordello. It’s the kind of hotel you want to take up residence in for a week rather than a weekend. It’s a place for whiling away writer’s block or having a fling with a European girl on holiday.

With its stylish surfaces and antiquated guts, Hotel Congress reminds me of the old muscle cars my friends and I drove in high school. The exteriors of those cars were studies in the visceral allure of paint and chrome and vinyl, but under the hood were globs of grease and burnt oil. The hidden grime didn’t matter: The engines rumbled like a Zeppelin song, and your date had oblivious fun riding to the dance.

Like John Dillinger — who, with his gang, was flushed from the hotel by a basement blaze and later arrested on a tip from a fireman — my personal history has been shaped in no small way by Hotel Congress. It is where Jill and I hatched the idea for this trip, and it’s also where I audaciously asked Jill’s favorite musician if he would perform at our wedding … at a campground … in rural Tennessee.

That’s a pretty good story, and many of you know it. For those who don’t, here’s the short version:

On Dec. 27, 2008, in Chattanooga, Tenn., during a concert by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, after Isbell sang the lyric “Don’t worry about losing your accent/A Southern man tells better jokes,” Jill took a long drag on her cigarette, then turned to me and asked, “When are you going to make an honest woman of me?” Later that night, after stealing a ring and dropping to a knee next to the Tennessee River, I did just that.

This is the story I recounted to Jason Isbell himself three months later as we stood outside Hotel Congress, next to his band’s van, bathed in neon. It was 3 a.m. He exhaled smoke from a Marlboro red into the night air; I nervously shifted from foot to foot, my hands stuffed into the pockets of my jeans.

“Listen,” I said. “I don’t want to offend you, but is there any chance — any at all — that you would consider playing at our wedding?”

To make a shortened story shorter, six months later Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit — a band lauded by SPIN and Esquire and Rolling Stone — graced a rec-center stage at Fall Creek Falls State Park. My 86-year-old grandfather was in the audience. Jill cried. Jason and the band hung out with us after the show, passing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s around the campfire.

And it all started at Hotel Congress.

The place doesn’t have air conditioning. It doesn’t have TVs. It’s loud. The plumbing sucks. But it’s where stories begin. Or end. Or just gestate at the bar. Or, in the case of this post, get rapped out on a keyboard as haggard dogs sleep on shiny Mexican tile.

I would happily stay here for months if I didn’t have so many other places to go.

—Scott

March 2, 2010 | Scott | Tags: , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

The worst dog in the world

It’s time for a confession. A couple of them.

Since Jill and I are traveling around the country in the company of our mutts, you might fairly assume that we are doting, softhearted “dog people.” But that’s not exactly the case.

I don’t want to speak too candidly on behalf of Jill, whose heart is much bigger and softer that mine, but I think it’s fair to state that our dog love is governed by common sense and a Darwinist view of the animal kingdom. Sure, we are susceptible to bouts fawning and anthropomorphic silliness with Isabel and Jack; but, as a rule, we do not treat dogs like children or extensions of our personalities, and people who do tend to either amuse or annoy us.

Jack

Where I grew up, in the country ’burbs north of Chattanooga, Tenn., dogs lived almost exclusively outdoors and roamed freely, sometimes in packs. They pissed and shat where they pleased, they chased cars, they swam in the lake, they ate chickens, they rolled joyously in manure, and, on occasion, they bit a UPS deliveryman or pesky, barefooted, Slurpee-stained toddler.

If you were tackled in a pile of dog shit during a backyard football game, you hosed off and played on; if your dog turned the neighbor kid’s bunny into a pile of blood and fluff, you rang their doorbell and apologized (and the kid’s parents invariably filled future Easter baskets less animate edibles); if your dog followed you to school, you scolded him in the presence of your disapproving teachers then scratched him behind the ear once you were around the corner.

This world shaped my affection for, and tolerance of, dogkind. And I guess it’s why, despite my and Jill’s residence (until recently) in downtown Phoenix, I prefer that our city dogs retain a streak of country wildness.

Without a doubt, Isabel and Jack are the best-trained dogs I’ve ever owned. They sit, they stay, they heel. They come when called (in Spanish and English) and immediately cease unacceptable behavior at not only the word “no” but angry stares that communicate the same. They do not chew what they’re not supposed to, they do not pee or shit where they’re not supposed to, and they travel with uncanny ease and gusto. I’ve never seen dogs more comfortable in a car, campground or motel room.

Isabel

Still, I cannot bring myself to train the “dog” out our dogs. I don’t mind that they jump on me when I come home from work. I don’t mind that they bark at the mail carrier and pizza guy. And I downright enjoy watching them chase squirrels and rabbits and lizards, zigzagging through a field or across the desert, cornering hard and bounding over obstacles, only to return panting, smiling and bountyless.

Which brings me to my second confession: Isabel doesn’t always return bountyless.

My friend Kreg found this out the hard way. Kreg graciously served as Isabel and Jack’s dog-sitter while Jill and I attended Sundance, and for three days he included them on nightly walks of his own dog, Sadie. Kreg and his family live in a quiet neighborhood where many nearby houses sit on big lots, some with barns and burros. One house on Kreg’s dog-walking route is home to two chunky, friendly Chocolate Labs that roam free.

Kreg’s Utah neighborhood is a lot like my old Tennessee neighborhood, which is why he’s comfortable letting Sadie walk off leash in the snow-shrouded, star-canopied solitude of night. I gave him explicit consent to walk Isabel and Jack off their leashes, too.

For me, this decision was a no-brainer. For Jill, it was grudging compromise.

For the mortified owners of a cat named Elmo, however, it was an unexplainable mistake.

It is not clear which of our dogs sniffed out Elmo, but Isabel’s scratched nose and bloody ear suggest it was she who snared him. In the chaos that followed, poor Kreg was subjected to the wails of terrified children, epithets from their screaming parents and three citations from an officer of the Davis County Animal Control Department.

Unlike two feral felines in the alley behind our Phoenix house, Elmo survived his tangle with Isabel — but not without surgery to repair a ruptured stomach and a lingering stay at the animal hospital. Kreg rightly promised Elmo’s owners that he would cover the cat’s vet bills, but Jill and I balked at that; our mutt did the damage, so we would pay the piper.

The only problem is, Elmo’s vet bill grew bigger each day he remained hospitalized. The crisis threatened to shatter our fragile budget just a month into our trip. When we left town, Elmo was still in the vet’s care. Jill gave the animal hospital our credit card number, and we crossed our fingers.

The “Elmo Situation” dominated our conversation as we drove south, following U.S. 89 past sugary hillsides stubbled with juniper trees and piñon pines. I looked in the rearview mirror to see Isabel sitting upright, her ridiculous pink tongue halfway unfurled.

“You know,” I said, craning my neck to meet her dark-rimmed eyes in the mirror, “things would be a lot simpler if you’d just finished that cat off.”

Jill gets my sense of humor, but she punched me anyway. “Shut your mouth,” she said.

We rode in silence for more than an hour. Then, about five miles north of Kanab, we passed a big sign on the left side of the road. It read: “Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.” And below that: “Tours.”

We know Best Friends Animal Sanctuary by reputation. One of our friends adopted a dog from the sanctuary a few years ago, and another friend is a fervent supporter of its mission. For animal lovers, Best Friends is hallowed ground, a place where unwanted or abused critters — dogs, cats, horses, birds, pigs — peacefully await adoption or live out their lives in a bucolic, high-desert canyon. Its tenants include 22 pit bulls rescued from Michael Vick’s dog-fighting operation.

“Turn around,” Jill said.

“Good idea,” I said, not bothering to slow down. “We can dump Isabel and run.”

“I’m serious. Let’s take the tour.”

And so we did.

The tour of Best Friends Animal Sanctuary is free and guided. It takes about an hour and a half, and pets are welcome to come along. Isabel and Jack sat with us in a small theater as we watched a film about the Best Friends Society, then they rode in the backseat of an Econoline van as we explored the backbone of the sanctuary’s 3,800-acre operation.

We learned the sanctuary was founded by a group of friends from Prescott, Ariz., who shared the belief that homeless pets should never be euthanized. So in the early 1980s they pooled their money and purchased a ranch in Kanab Canyon — a locale you might recognize if you’ve ever seen The Outlaw Josey Wales or The Apple Dumpling Gang. These “best friends” renamed their canyon “Angel Canyon” and turned it into a haven for cast-off dogs and cats, and the no-kill shelter grew to be the largest of its kind in the country. These days it is home to about 1,700 animals.

Our guide mentioned that each year 8,000 people visit the sanctuary to volunteer as animal caretakers. This prompted Jill to slap my thigh, hard, which is what she often does when an idea strikes her.

“You should totally volunteer here,” she said.

“What?”

“You should volunteer. With the cats.”

“Cats?”

“Yes. As penance for all Isabel’s sins against them. It would be good karma.”

I love that my wife, with her polyreligious tendencies, can so casually mix Western and Eastern theology. But I wasn’t so sure I liked her idea.

“Karma would be Isabel getting mauled by a mountain lion,” I said. “What do I know about cats?”

“Exactly. You might learn something. Maybe you’d learn to respect them and keep your dog on a leash.”

Jill leaned forward so the guide could hear her over the road rattle. “How do you go about volunteering?” she asked. The guide said it was a simple matter of signing up at the welcome center or placing a phone call.

Jill sat back in her seat and smiled at me. It was her big, toothy, manipulative smile, the one that’s accompanied by theatrically arched eyebrows and a stuck-out tongue. Resistance was futile.

I turned to face Isabel, who was staring out the window with an upturned nose — blithe, arrogant, evil. “I hate you,” I murmured, careful to attract her attention but not the guide’s. “You are the worst dog in the world.”

—Scott

February 16, 2010 | Scott | Tags: , , , , | 10 Comments »

Three nights in the ‘Honeymoon Suite’

When you don’t have anywhere to be, it’s the perfect time to just stop and be. And we decided to be in Kenab, UT for a few days. During that time we called Quail Park Lodge our home. It’s a classic motor lodge, along Highway 89, that has recently seen some tender loving care. Colorful outdoor rocking chairs, vintage-looking light fixtures, and decor as cute and trendy as an Ikea showroom has replaced fake wood paneling and stodgy furnishings.

The lodge’s neon sign beckoned us off the highway, but its $50 a night rate and open-door policy toward dogs made it a keeper.

Just outside our room was a small patio where Scott cooked us a campground-style lunch and got in some twilight reading.

And as if we didn’t love the place enough, the on-site managers, Jim and Sherri, brought us a bottle of sparkling wine, a pair of plastic flute glasses and battery-powered candles in honor of our honeymoon.

—Jill

February 13, 2010 | Jill | Tags: , , | 8 Comments »
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