Del Webb's Hiway House at 3130 E. Van Buren was an exceptional property back in the day (next to Celebrity Theater). Even had their own miniature railway! Keep up the great reporting!

Wow, Brad! Those were some mighty fine pictures, partner! I wonder where that Phoenix went. Thanks to the city having zero aesthetic requirements for architecture and landscaping, wages that lagged far behind prices, and probably no small amount of corruption and looking the other way, and no restrictions on leaf blowers, much of Phoenix is now a dump or a mass of non-descript corporate mid-rises, slums, and brown-sugar-cube homes on small gravel lots. But hey! We've got lightrail! The little choo-choo train that couldn't. And now, just beyond Phoenix in the great city of Glendale, a lovely empty hockey arena conveniently located near an alien spaceship of a stadium for those who can afford to enter it. I miss the old days, Brad! I came out in 1974, when there was one Peter Piper and one Organ Stop Pizza, lively shopping malls, Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor, Hobo Joe's, bookstores, waitresses that called you "hun," ten-cent candy bars, deep-blue skies, summer storms, and locally owned under-lit supermarkets that managed to have what you needed.

@BradHall

2 ай бұрын

Hi Tim - I'm so sorry that I missed it - and yeah, like I say, by the time I got to Phoenix it was really getting to be a mess. Things have brightened up considerably in the 21st Century, and Phoenix even has more freeways and, and you say, even light rail. And yes, I'm inclined to agree with you that without much architecture or aesthetic guidance, things just got ugly. I've seen a renaissance of downtown so much so that I figure that people wouldn't believe what I saw in the '70s and '80s. The future is bright!

@timward3116

2 ай бұрын

@@BradHall You're far more positive than I am, Brad! I might even go downtown if they would just get rid of the one-way streets and parking was easy to find. Frankly, I try to stay away from it. And I can't afford ballgames or concerts, anyway. I'm a pedestrian sidewalk shopper kind of guy. But the old Phoenix of the 1930s to the 1960's has been flattened and replaced with just bland buildings. It just doesn't look like we try very hard. Having grown up in Chicago, though, my architectural expectations are probably too unrealistic. And having studied in Montreal, my transportation expectations are probably too unrealistic. All of that said, I love the area of the city I'm in now, though. Older, sprawling brick homes, huge grassy lots, rose bushes, etc. (I don't own such a place, but it is nice to walk by them.) Too each his own, I guess.