Rogue Columnist

When Midtown cooked

Midtown wasn't planned. It simply escaped...any coherent city planning, zoning, or vision. Some say it was Phoenix's attempt at Los Angeles' Wilshire Boulevard, the nearly 16-mile avenue from downtown LA's financial district to Santa Monica. Maybe. But Phoenix never had the economic power or urban assets to support its version of Museum Row on the Miracle Mile, Century City, Koreatown, Beverly Hills, Westwood with UCLA, and subway lines. Wouldn't want to become another LA.

The two are comparable in that both were the sites of a majority of post-1960 skyscrapers. In Phoenix, it began with the building above. A turquoise-skinned International-style box, the Guaranty Bank Building opened in March 1960, designed by architect Charles Polacek and built by contractor David Murdock (who lived a remarkable life). At 252 feet, it dethroned the Hotel Westward Ho as the tallest building in Phoenix and the Southwest. On the top floor the Cloud Club offered a spectacular view.

Over the next thirty or more years, this was the heart of city. For better and for worse.

The Camelback Towers was also complete in the photo (a mile north at Pierson). Park Central Shopping Center had replaced the Central Dairy in the late 1950s. Del Webb's Phoenix Towers at Central and Cypress Street, one of the few co-ops in the city, opened in 1957 (built in two phases). Twin mid-rise office buildings were opened two blocks south of Thomas; they eventually included U-Haul's headquarters. Midtown, still unnamed was coming together haphazardly. The central business district, including most shops and department stores, were still downtown (Fillmore to the railroad tracks, Seventh Avenue to Seventh Street).

Cold Civil War Turns Hot

Remember, remember the Sixth of January! For the first time since the foolish War of 1812, the U.S. Capitol was invaded. In this case, the attackers were not the redcoats but American citizens, whipped up by the president to overturn certifying the Electoral College that he lost.

Rogue readers have made some excellent points on the open thread which I put up this past week. I urge you to read them.

We have a mob president who not only specifically incited the putsch but then declined to respond to lawmakers' desperate pleas for help inside the besieged Capitol. These are not debatable points but objective facts. So is the fact that the FBI warned of a "war" planned to halt certification of the election.

Hitler used a beer hall. Trump used social media.

Arizona played a big role, from the Barbarian King Jake Angeli in his horned cap, as part of the mob to the likes of U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar helping organize the rally that led to insurrection. The event has a body count: Five dead, along with the members of Congress huddled in fear, then evacuated — House members were shut up in a room where some Republicans refuse to wear masks and at least one (a Democrat) getting COVID.

Insurrection open thread

Proud Boys march in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday morning. Soon a rightwing mob, incited by Donald Trump, stormed the U.S. Capitol. (Elvert Barnes photo).

I feel obliged to put up a forum for commenters in the wake of the unprecedented assault on the U.S. Capitol and our experiment in self-government by the extreme right, virtually under orders from President Trump.

A longer take will come next week. In the meantime, a couple of thoughts.

First, I've hardly been alone in warning that this event was coming (beginning with my first column after the 2016 election). This is what Trump is all about. As I wrote on Facebook, the surprising thing is that some people seemed genuinely surprised by the events of January 6th, 2021.

Second, it might not have been a coup. But it's not over yet.

I yield the floor to your comments.

 

 

 

Arizona's pandemic economy

The longest economic expansion in history crashed into recession this spring because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unemployment skyrocketed to Depression-era levels before recovering...some. Industries such as airlines, hotels, tourism, restaurants, and brick-and-mortar retailers were savaged.

I've written about this extensively in my Seattle Times columns. But let's narrow the lens to Arizona and Phoenix with help from the invaluable data collected by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). Click on the chart for a larger view.

Unemployment:

 

Population growth (by numbers and year-over-year percentage change:

Phoenix's historic schools

Once upon a time, schools weren't built to resemble prisons with walls and steel fences, along with no shade and heat-radiating concrete and gravel. Even in early Phoenix, most were built to inspire. In 1873 (above) an adobe school at Central and Monroe was the beginning of better to come. Here are a few — click on the photo for a larger view:

Central School, shown in 1899, replaced the adobe structure. The town's population was about 5,500.

Monroe School at Seventh Street and Monroe, 1914. The building was preserved and is now the Children's Museum of Phoenix, alas without the shade trees and grass.

Adams School, later Grace Court, at Eighth Avenue and Adams, in 1920.

'The homeless'

I use quotation marks because this term encompasses many distinct — sometimes overlapping — conditions. Its continued use makes it difficult to seriously explore this phenomenon, much less propose constructive actions ("solutions" aren't possible). Worse, it makes the situation appear simple: All they need are homes. In fact, it is among the most complex and intractable of social problems.

In the Depression, many people who lost their homes and farms were consigned to shantytowns outside cities ("Hoovervilles") or long trips to uncertain new places, immortalized by Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. They were not welcome many places, including Phoenix, which couldn't even care for its own, much less provide for "gas moochers." But this was a temporary emergency, eased by the New Deal and cured entirely by the demand for jobs in the ramp-up to World War II. Interestingly, crime was very low during the Great Depression.

At the other end of the spectrum were hoboes, vagrants, and bums riding the rails, living off the land and handouts, sometimes settling in the skid rows of cities. In Phoenix, this district was called the Deuce. They had cheap single-room-occupancy (SRO) hotel rooms, cheap grocery stores, cheap bars. This population was almost exclusively male. Vagrancy laws were strictly enforced. They could find temporary work in such places as the Phoenix warehouse district's produce sheds.

Color Arizona

Joe Biden won Arizona. But, as the Duke of Wellington said of the Battle of Waterloo, "it was the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life." Biden prevailed with about 11,000 votes, or 0.3 percentage points, over the most criminal and dangerous president in American history.

Mark Kelly's victory in the Senate race was easier to foresee. Kelly is a former combat pilot and NASA astronaut, as well as husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was the victim of an assassination attempt.

Martha McSally, his opponent, had already lost a Senate race to Kyrsten Sinema and was appointed Senator by Gov. Doug Ducey in a cynical partisan attempt to give her the advantage. Didn't work, Doug. For the first time since 1952, Arizona has two Democratic U.S. Senators. Otherwise, of the nine congressional districts in the state Democratic incumbents won five.

So does Arizona become a "magenta state," as the New York Times put it? Not quite.

Despite heavy Democratic turnout and Latino activism, Republicans maintained control over the Legislature. More about this later.

More Arizona railroad images

In addition to my popular column and gallery on Phoenix Union Station, I've written about the Ghost Railroads of Arizona, the many lines that helped build the state that have mostly disappeared. Another column detailed the difficult enterprise of building railroads to Phoenix, ending its isolation. And most recently photographer Jack Delano's trip across northern Arizona during World War II. Many of these have additional photos, so check them out even if you read the text.

Now, a grab bag of railroad photos from the 1950s to today. A reminder: Phoenix is by far the largest city in North America without intercity passenger trains, mostly a failure of state government.

Click on the photo for a larger image:

The Sunset Limited, premier train of the Southern Pacific, on its way to Phoenix in 1950.

A Santa Fe train hauling a block of refrigerated boxcars ("reefers") near the Colorado River crossing at Topock in 1953. These cars also hauled Salt River Valley produce by the trainload when Phoenix was an agricultural empire.

Santa Fe freight action on the double-track main line near Holbrook in 1962. The lead locomotive is a new U25B, General Electric's first independent entry into the American diesel market. It was nicknamed the U-Boat.