Nearly Mexico
I'm in Arizona, a new state for me. After a few hours, here are my first impressions:
1. Tucson seems pleasant enough, but humanity has tricked itself into living in the desert.
2. Golf courses are a worse idea in the desert than a million people.
3. Sprawl is sprawl, and I'm always surprised to find the same shopping options in every suburb from sea to shining sea.
4. Tex-Mex has transcended, and Moe's is just fine.
1. Tucson seems pleasant enough, but humanity has tricked itself into living in the desert.
2. Golf courses are a worse idea in the desert than a million people.
3. Sprawl is sprawl, and I'm always surprised to find the same shopping options in every suburb from sea to shining sea.
4. Tex-Mex has transcended, and Moe's is just fine.
posted by JRB at 9:53 PM
2 Comments:
Few things piss me off more than driving through Phoenix and seeing verdent green lawns and oak trees. The water that is wasted is staggering.
I appreciate my in-laws decision to forgo a lawn and instead fill their front yard with desert plants and rocks. It's actually quite pretty.
The golf courses are terrible ideas but they're probably not as bad as you think. They almost all are required to use recycled waste water for their grass. But what really hurts is when they build a golf course they inevitably build 500 homes surrounding the course.
The desert is incredibly beautiful. Yet for some reason we feel the best way to appreciate it is to pave it over and build a 6000 sq. ft. McMansion for two retirees.
You are so right about the lawns and golf courses and mansions. To my relief, the Tucson folks, even in the McMansion are eschewing lawns and appreciating the desert asthetic. I drove out into the countryside this afternoon, off on a dirt road into the desert, and it has been my favorite time of the trip, away from the sprawl. I was able to watch gentle rain showers coming across the valley among these four or five little mountain ranges. It was breathtaking, but the sprawl is depressing.
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