After decades of sprawl, an intelligent step in the right direction is finally coming to the Valley of the Sun: high-rise condos. The desert is rapidly disappearing as Phoenix and its surrounding communities envelope an area approaching 60 by 60 miles square (97km x 97km sq). This waterfront property near Old Town Scottsdale is built next to a canal that brings drinking water to our community, so we won’t be seeing water taxis any time soon, but the location is definitely a prime choice. The condos start at $1.5 million and there are only 5 left.

This is Phoenix local Don Capp towing his newest handmade custom motorcycle trailer. Don has long been in the business of custom fabrication and with occasional help by his wife Keli Capp runs their own small company called Magic Metals. Working from inspiration with 25 years of experience behind him, Don built this Red, White, & Blue trailer weighing in at about 100 pounds in under three weeks. The custom vinyl work is courtesy of a local company that combined road images with the stars and stripes for this one-of-a-kind wrap, making Don’s creation a true one-of-a-kind motorcycle trailer. You can CLICK HERE

to see Don’s masterpiece from a different angle. I met Don a while back after introducing myself to his dogs who were guarding his open gate and workshop area, I can’t wait to share the custom Christmas trailer with you that he’ll build this year for the annual toy drive he participates in with his wife.

After three days on negative posts, it is time for either positivism or banality, so I’ll opt for the latter. This is a stick. A stick that identifies this area of the desert as future home sites. Nothing real spectacular about that, is there? It is just a stick with letters and numbers surrounded by dirt, little stones, and ridiculously polluted air, soiled by faceless corporate greed-meisters who poison our air for their ballooning sky-high profits used to support the man and keep the rest of us enslaved in our police state managed cage-like existences, ignorant of the true repressed lives we live, so this stick is, in reality, a reminder of the invisible stick of authority that beats us all down. Hehe.

My return to Phoenix, Arizona, is proving difficult. Wanderlust and overfamiliarity with the city push against my creativity of finding images that show Phoenix in a dynamic light. There are no ethnic neighborhoods – although there are areas that are predominantly Hispanic, they are also incredibly poor. The few places where ethnic stores pop up are surrounded by chain stores in the same strip mall layout that defines the streets of Phoenix, Mesa, Peoria, Glendale, Scottsdale, Tempe, and now Gilbert, Surprise, Avondale, Goodyear, and whichever other glom-on-towns that have joined the super-metropolis. Miles and miles of roads laid out grid-style slice across an area larger than Los Angeles. Nearly every major intersection is another boring collection of a fast-food restaurant, drug store, dry cleaner, fingernail shop, video rental service, mailbox shop, a dentist, and a coffee shop punctuating block after block of cookie-cutter cloned homes. Of course, there is golf for those so inclined and sure enough, there are plenty of visitors who show up for that and a couple of malls bring in tourists and residents alike – yawn. Our lonely art museum tries but barely makes the cut, while the Heard Museum for Native American history is definitely a shining star, as is the Desert Botanical Garden. At our zoo, animals wilt in the summer bake-off. It is as though the searing heat of the desert sterilizes the minds and imaginations of the inhabitants of this forbidding land. If you ask, so why do I live here? Because when I venture outside of Phoenix I have an even greater appreciation for the beauty of the rest of the world.