Blame this entire expedition on my discovering that the Fair Trade Café has a courtyard.

I was taking my novel-planning for a walk, as writing is arguably the most dull and sedentary task possible, short of slumping against a wall, picking one’s toes (and frankly, the cat makes that look interesting). The Fair Trade has the merits of being on the light rail line and not usually being terribly crowded… but that courtyard distracted me, and I decided to do one of my neighborhood tours, only on foot.

In doing so, I wandered into Phoenix’s fantasy neighborhood of gracious urban living. Since Daytrotter is the mandatory accompaniment for these jaunts, let’s start with cheery Los Angeles pop trio Haim (official site), whose bouncy pop-on-AM-radio-gets-stripped-down sound mirrors the bounce in the step of a person who hasn’t yet realized that 95-and-humid is not walking weather. Think hard of iced coffee, and let’s slip through that doorway beyond the palm tree to explore. Read the rest of this entry »

You are looking at the source of the best Mexican food in Arizona.

This is the Rio Mirage Café y Cantina (official site) in El Mirage. I found it by accident, having impulsively headed out U.S. Highway 60 in the general direction of Wickenburg (map), figuring I’d decide what to do about the mountain range when I got to it.

What I decided was that the U.S. 60 corridor has enough thrift stores to keep me within the Valley. So this is the tour of El Mirage, Sun City, and environs — the land where there’s simultaneously too much history and not enough.

While I usually accompany these jaunts with Daytrotter selections, this time we’re going for Beatles-A-Rama (this really exists), as my adored local indie alt-rock station runs the Pat Matthews Beatles-A-Rama show every Sunday morning, and since it serves radio’s fundamental purpose of being mildly stimulating yet innocuous, I usually don’t change the station. This is how I got a dose of the Fab Four at their most aggressively boy-bandish, during the early 1960s when nobody was the walrus. Read the rest of this entry »

There is foliage on my pizza.

There’s also a surprising amount of foliage in the surrounding neighborhood, as opposed to the more common Phoenix landscaping practice of expecting pedestrians to skitter from the skinny shade of one palm tree to the next.

The pizza is at Cave & Ives (official site), of which, more below. The neighborhood is an area called Arcadia Lite, due to its proximity to the darker and heavier… well, no, actually to the wealthier and ritzier Arcadia neighborhood. Both word on the web and architectural evidence suggests that Arcadia Lite is in the midst of a transformation from “middle-class with a side of discount stores” to “ardent gentrification with lashings of hipness.”

As always, the plan is to accompany the tour with selections from Daytrotter, so let’s start with trippy hip-hop troop Shabazz Palaces (official site), because this is exactly the sort of earnest hipster rap that probably has an audience in Arcadia Lite. Read the rest of this entry »

A rolled taco is a happy taco.

There are two possible responses to Phoenix’s extreme summer heat, after one eliminates the option of staying indoors with fruit-infused mixed drinks poured over copious quantities of ice. Seek shade or seek the underbelly of Phoenix civilization. The latter won’t actually be any cooler, but it doesn’t require wasting a shower or a fancy outfit on the experience of being choked by heat and dust.

So I headed south, in the manner of a migratory bird with a faulty datebook, to see what lay between the Salt River and South Mountain. The intersection of barrio, suburbia, farmland, and the mountain fortifications of the wealthy seems to belong to another world.

The current temperature makes it a no-brainer to start the Daytrotter accompaniment with Canadian dance-punk band Hot Hot Heat (official site). The band started as hardcore, but, y’know, stuff happens. And that applies to development south of the Salt River, too. Buckle up and come along.
Read the rest of this entry »

Shrimp, glorious shrimp!

Since I was meeting a gal-pal for lunch at divey Chinese restaurant Wahsun, it seemed like a good moment to take a closer look at the surrounding neighborhood. Although I’ve been to the Bookmans over there many times, it’s never occurred to me to look around: there’s presumably a dimensional rift that transports a person directly from Christown Spectrum Mall to the Bookmans plaza.

It turns out there’s a haunted strip mall.

These excursions require a little Daytrotter, so let’s start with Minnesota’s One for the Team (official site), a sort of jazzy pre-grunge-ish, maybe-a-little-folk, let’s-bang-on-things group that writes about love gone the ways love goes. Extremes of ups and downs turn out to be apt for this neighborhood tour. Hop in the car with me, and let’s go. Read the rest of this entry »

Is this burger habit-forming, or is it just a Habit Burger?

@BuildingPHX tweeted about the new Habit Burger at McDowell and Seventh Avenue just as I was trying to find something adventurous to do today. Adventures in Phoenix are harder to come by in June than in March, as in summer our outdoors becomes so hot it is possible to get burns from touching metal door handles. (Protip: Don’t even think about sitting on the tram-stop benches unless you have a kink for the grilled-flesh look.)

So I decided to try something new: not just a new burger, but a new approach of exploring a neighborhood in detail to see what interesting places I might have missed. This process has two utterly arbitrary ground rules: (1) I must try a food or drink; and (2) I must go in one new store, art gallery, or other public place where activities happen.

Also, since I was listening to new-to-me bands on Daytrotter while working on this, I’m going to tout a few bands, albeit without much detail. Is that enough excitement to join me in checking out this little slice of the Phoenix urban landscape? Read the rest of this entry »