With New Year’s Eve on the horizon, many Arizonans are stocking their liquor cabinets and planning their bar hopping destinations. Yet how often are we likely to party year round?
ASU and UA alum shouldn’t be super surprised to discover that Phoenix and Tucson made the list of America’s Top 40 Drunkest Cities, according to The Daily Beast. However, we didn’t come in as high as you may have thought.
For nearly a decade, an image of actress Marilyn Monroe has been catching the eyes of those who pass the northeast corner of 20th Street and Indian School Road in Phoenix. The mural-sized rendition of the late sex symbol languishes for more than 30 feet on a black background on the west side of a building currently occupied by Truckmasters, and although many are familiar with it, nobody seems to know why it’s there or who put it there.
Q: Why, when you drive into Phoenix SkyHarbor International Airport, is there a sign that says there are three terminals: 2, 3 and 4? Where I come from, we started counting at “one.”
A: That sign just nags at you every time you see it, doesn’t it? It’s like a picture that isn’t quite straight or like sitting across from someone with a loose thread on their cuff: You just have to fix it.
There is a perfectly good reason for the terminal-numbering system. Actually, it isn’t perfectly good, but it will have to do. And if you think it’s silly now, there is a possibility that in the far distant future, we will only have two terminals — 4 and 5.
First, some history. Time was, children, when we actually had a Terminal 1. It stood a bit west of Terminal 2. It opened in 1952 and was a big deal at the time. Its restaurant, which for a time barred Blacks, was described as “a symphony in chrome, leather and soft-toned wood.”
Territorial citizens took great delight applying social acupuncture to local politicos. It’s been said with dubious pride that Arizona had some of the finest legislators money could buy. Old timers around Jerome used to say that every time the subject of a bullion tax would come up before the legislature Henry Allen, superintendent of the United Verde Mine, would go over to the local bank, make a sizable withdrawal and announce to everyone within earshot that he was “off to Phoenix to buy some mules and jackasses.” A few days later, he would return, without livestock but by some coincidence the bill for the bullion tax would die quietly in some committee soon after.
Q: Why does Phoenix seem to have two downtowns — one “downtown” and then another grouping of high-rises farther north along Central Avenue?
A: Because many years ago, the city fathers and mothers thought big.
Unfortunately, they also thought wrong, or at least incorrectly.
The result is today we have a downtown downtown and downtown uptown, although we know of people who think of anything south of Northern Avenue as being practically the inner city.
According to Dave Reichert, head of the Phoenix Planning Department, back in the 1960s, when we only had one downtown and it was downtown, the city’s leaders had dreams of grandeur.
