Sedona - Old Age sets in to New Age...

[David Kilpatrick]

Well, I have nowhere else to write this, so Photoclubalpha must suffer my ramblings. Today is/was Shirley's 58th birthday and we are in Sedona, Arizona. Shirley first came to Sedona 20 years ago with her San Diego penpal Ann on a road-trip to visit Ann's folks in Phoenix. It's detour, but Ann thought it worth the gas. Then Shirley and I came here in 1997, for our 25th wedding anniversary.

We loved it. We stayed in the Orchard Inn, right off the main uptown strip. We ate some great food, and enjoyed the late night atmosphere (this was Setpember) walking between two or three bars and sitting outside to have drinks after dinner. There was live music, one memorable night we caught a duo called Jerry and Annette who were well into retirement age but had a great act in a small patio bar - Jerry could play his Strat behind his neck, Hendrix-style. I bought myself a McSpadden mountain dulcimer at the Sedona Sunset store, which combined expensive tailoring with selling these instruments.

Sedona Sunset is still there, no longer selling suits just gifts, but still stocking dulcimers. But that's about all that is still there. Sedona now mainly closes at 8pm; most restaurants, even, shut their doors then. Just a few stick it out for 9pm and one or two (owned by the same man) to 10pm. After that, there's not a single bar open in uptown Sedona (the old village). At the place we ate, our cowboy host said 'since the hotels came, it's all in West Sedona, you'll have to go there...'

Well, the joke is we are staying in West Sedona. It is 5 miles of highway, with huge (unwalkable) distances between sporadic diners and bars. Two or three do stay open past 10pm and at least one claims to have live music every night, but did not when we visited (since we were the only customers, maybe just as well!). We have had to drive every night to eat, so no beer or wine for me with dinner; our 'resort' (Diamond Resorts) has no bar, restaurant or any facilities at all and is at the extreme of the 5-mile run. They look at us as if we are mad to suggest they maybe need to have something on-site, and that the location is far from wonderful.

So, we booked one night in the same hotel we stayed in back in 1997, the Orchard Inn. Our money did buy an unbeatable sundown with red rocks, and a great photo with the illuminated pool below our suite, and afterglow on the hills beyond. It also bought a decent sized bed (Diamond Resorts provide something rather smaller than we have at home) and a bathroom with a bath, not just a shower (I don't care either way, but Shirley hates having to stuff her hair into a showercap). This one night of the week, at least I could enjoy a beer with dinner, and we could walk round uptown, maybe catch some muaic, meet a few folk, enjoy a drink or two and turn in round midnight as we normally would.

And then we got told that everything in Sedona has wound down. There is no more life in the uptown centre; everyone says 'Sedona goes to bed at 10pm'. Well, they don't get up at 5am, which I would be doing if I went to bed at 10pm! It is still a lovely place, but it has aged too much. It claims to be New Age, but it seems to be more Old Age; subsumed by its own vortexes, meditating away and accidentally falling asleep.

I never expected to be a week here and hear no music except the vapid meanderings of the New Age soundtracks played in the shops, or the neatly faked Indian flute - I've bought one, a moderately good cedar A minor. But I know that despite the kokopelli figure, 18th-20th century native Americans did not actually have a flute tradition and it's been re-invented in the last few decades. They re-invented the instrument, but could not reconstruct music, with the result that most of it is improvised and decidedly modern. Even so, we'd have been happy to sit and listen to someone playing random patterns from a pentatonic scale. Or chanting a mantra. Or even reading poetry.

Instead we are sitting on our own outside our room with a couple of cans of Coors watching a nearly full moon rise ever higher over the profile of the red rocks. The tripod beckons...

Give me the Mediterranean lifestyle any day - and we thought Sedona almost had that. No more.

Cheers!

David

[KevinBarrett]

Wow, DK, I feel like you're in my back yard. I grew up taking family vacations out west (from Texas) and experienced, well, at least a child's view of some of the same culture. In modern times, though, I just head straight for the natural attractions.

[David Kilpatrick]

We've been heading for the natural attractions all week during the day, but two nights ago for example we were still on the rosd back home as 8.00pm passed - and an hour of driving left to go. So Rod's Steakhouse in Williams got our custom, as we knew no restaurant worth going to would be open in Sedona after 9pm (that we had not already been to once).

On Wednesday we were in Prestcott for a couple of hours, and that was a lively place - open mics and jams on Whiskey Row, a country music festival I am missing today (not allowed to!) and their big rodeo while we are flying home.

Jerome has been affected much like Sedona. I met a songwriting shop owner, Jerry Zeigler, who was just about to fly to Dublin to spent a couple of weeks getting inspiration for new album of songs. I guess 'home ground' is never inspirational! The town used to have more old stuff (like real antiques), now it's artists cooperatives and galleries. Same in Sedona, art sales (or souvenir-decor art sales) seem to be the economic engine. Photography included, some exceptional, most predictable if good.

David

[pakodominguez]

Mediterranean lifestyle!
That's why I live in NYC...

[David Kilpatrick]

Talked to a few shopkeepers today - bought a whole box of Hohner harmonicas for $45 and decided against a Canon G11, cameras too expensive. They all agree it's changed, and they blame the timeshare resorts. Like the one we are staying in. The timeshare pitch salesmen are a real nuisance, every second booth/shop on Main Street seems to have one there, you get talking about something else (like the history of movie making in the Movie Museum) and then the friendly guy asks where you are staying, two minutes later he has a folder out showing you the latest Platinum resort and offering $300 off your next maintenance fee if you attend a 90-minute presentation...

Even the resort we are AT tried to get us to do this (it's almost banned in Europe now, unless you accept a free stay in return for agreeing to attend the hard sell). Then the jeep tour and helicopter ride companies try to give you the trip free if you agree to attend... I hate this! We have just told them all we would rather pay our maintenance fees in full, and NOT be offered some certificate worth $300 which no doubt carries clever redemption conditions and twists to ensure it's worth nothing to 98% of recipients. And, in the process, not lose one half-day in the USA being force-fed guff about a resort we do not want to buy into.

But the Main St Sedona traders agree, it's these big timeshare resorts which have brought 4 million visitors a year to the city, and provide all their customers. They have also destroyed the traditional hotel, b&b, uptown scene to a degree. What's been lost is the bit we liked best, the atmosphere. Instead in this resort we have people shouting at each other (US families, I think?) using f*ck you and bitch and stuff like that loudly in casual exchanges. I can get that or worse in Glasgow, I don't need to go to Sedona to hear foulmouthed folk in high spirits.

David