Thread: Stop whatever you're doing and read the @WhiteHouse plan for complete reorganization of...

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

47. Palm Springs was conservative when I signed up with DU (hence my member name) but

as the elderly population died off a large number of gays and lesbians discovered and inhabited P.S., mostly due to the annual White Party. It is definitely more liberal now -- our last mayor was a lesbian. It's a small thing, but it wouldn't have happened 20 years ago when I moved here.

Where downtown was once the home of T-shirt shops, it's full of art galleries, antique and vintage clothing boutiques, and a variety of upscale restaurants, which have replaced the local Hamburger Hamlet. There are several film festivals each year, including the Palm Springs International Film Festival that Sonny Bono started when he was mayor. If it didn't get to 115+ degrees on a regular basis throughout the summer, it would be a perfect place to live.

Actually, I now live in Yucca Valley, 30 miles north, 4,000 feet above, and 20 degrees cooler than Palm Springs. It's the land of meth labs (we will hear one explode occasionally), the Marine Corps Combat Training Center (we hear a lot more explosions from there), and of wall-to-wall tattoo parlors. If you are over 18 and under 70 there's a 75% chance you have a tattoo somewhere on your body. Last month I had a 60-year-old woman show me her tramp stamp -- and a good portion of her butt crack -- at the student store at the local community college. Being of the older generation, my wife and I are tattoo virgins.

We can see Joshua Tree National Park from our kitchen window. When I first lived here, the Park was still designated as a Monument, and got about 400,000 visitors a year. You could go wander around it for hours and not see another person. Since it became a National Park, however, annual attendance has skyrocketed to 4 million visitors. You may as well be in Disney World.

Overall, however, it's pleasant here. We live away from the city so we have coyotes, quail, jackrabbits and bunnies wandering around our property continually, and one afternoon we opened the back door to find a bobcat laying up against our screen door, snoozing. While it's no longer designated as a Dark Sky City due to L.A.'s smog creeping in, you can still see the Milky Way once your eyes acclimate. It's a far change from when I lived in L.A.