PHX Muni is a nice park. I enjoy going there and I'm not an A's fan per se even though I got married and had two kids within 6 BART stops from the Coliseum. My point is simply that Muni is a great facility that should not be idle. The location and quality of the venue are so great that its a crime for it to go to waste.

Rogue, Thanks again. Another great historical piece. Central and downtown are gaining a little momentum. From the the railroad tracks to Camelback on Central things look so much better than they did in 2004 when I got here. Cheers.

Downtown is almost there. CityScape and the new "Legends" entertainment lighting make for a place that I can show visitors "Downtown PHX". Before I'd focus on Mill Ave or drive them from The Biltmore Area thru South Scottsdale. Every big city must have an ice skating rink downtown during Christmas. :) Done!

The Big Sort is exactly what is at work here. I had two coworkers recently move from California and was shocked that they were more brainwashed than native Arizonans. Austerity, guns and low taxes for the rich are a given with these folks. Don't get me wrong... I love a great idea to make money. However, feel free to charge me 20% on my income to fix bridges, fund rail and the Washington State ferry system. Heck regulate commerce for the common good with that 20% or a bit more. No one or no corp ought to be getting away with free regularly like GE. I'd vote for that crazy liberal Goldwater anytime... PS: You guys hear about the vandalism at Hula's on Central? That place causes no trouble for anyone yet some genius feels the need to splash pink paint around the artfully decorated Men's can. Just to be mean?

Denver Airport is the best looking. Except for the extraordinary waste of time and fuel to get there from downtown. Some cabbies call it Nebraska International.

Rogue pointing this out previously has me reading... I used to enjoy reading but got out of the habit. I'm pushing myself back into it now that I see I'm part of the problem. Eclectic... I try to get my software working without reading the manual. Its a macho thing. In the end I'm reading the manual to automate our nasty two tier WPF app. I'm used to automating well behaved webapps...

Aberdeen, on the coast had like 3 days of Summer. Seattle is like Palm Springs in comparison. Port Townsend is the place to work remote from. Great weather, proximity to Seattle and a short commute to steelhead streams. Not looking to return to the PNW yet though. My frosh daughter clearly loves Xavier.

Critical mass is there for downtown now. The Suns and D-Backs are the two franchises most needed downtown due to their many home games. Heck the successful AZ Rattlers even help bring 15k downtown a few times on Spring Saturdays. Glendale is so hosed with their 8 games a year Cards. Light rail here is nicer than riding BART. Much cleaner.

Regarding starving conservative districts of resources... I noticed very little Federal response to the forest fires in Eastern AZ recently. Is that me thinking Obama was practicing small government on a conservative group of people? Or was that the usual firefighting contingent deployed in such a situation?

Really great posts folks. Soleri's post about how Clinton got similar treatment I really agree with. Its mostly the Liberal tag that disgusts the Tea Party folks and not race. After all, many Tea Party folks have kids that have intermarried. They had to make nice if they want to see their mixed grandchildren... and they do! phxSUNs thought about Tea Party folks and sex is interesting as well. I'm pretty sure they hate knowing other folks are less inhibited and less frustrated.

My family is always telling me to look for the silver lining. Make lemons out of lemonade and the like. WTF? 1. Two ten year wars. 2. No viable ALT candidates to vote for. Wall St. crooks on both the GOP and Demos team. 20 mil require better or just any work. College costs out of control. Hundreds of millions of gullible Americans... I'm living well, but its a hollow feeling in that the collective pain is obvious. We can do better as a country and we aren't really trying.

I'm blown away that the bridge is being built in China. So depressing. Seriously, as the US exports less and less and empty shipping containers are repositioned on ships bound for Asia to be reloaded we become poorer as a nation. I loaded thousands of empties as a stowage coordinator onto containerships in the Port of LA in 1986 and its been accelerating ever since. There is no balance in trade at all. This is terrifying to me.

Once a week is great. Love to hear more about Boeing as they are in PHX, SEA and LAX. Your links are great as posted here and the ones you Tweet. I'm very happy at your success and have learned much from your PHX history writing. Your blog has really got me considering the future which I spent little time wondering about before. Cheers!

I won't even bother to see my beloved Seahawks in Glendale because the location is idiotic. Downtown stadiums are a 25 min ride on the 72N then a short light rail hop from Rural to Chase\US Air. The 72N gets me to Wells Fargo Arena and Sun Devil Stadium too. No parking hassle. A little walking. They do the driving.

I don't see Sarah Palin getting much of the Catholic female vote. The gun talk alone would turn off the ladies.

Americans won't rebel. Just like formerly prosperous Cuba, we'll slowly, quietly become poor. People will complain and little else. This military and police state I certainly am not going to take on. I'll vote and bitch about things, but Jeffersonian revolution? Not so much.

phxSuns...It was my turn to be team captain Sr. year against your old HS. Much bigger Oly shelled us 33-6 in our CCC built, Depression era barn, Stewart Field. Ugly. My cousin goes to Stadium and loves it after transferring from Bellermine. Probably the nicest older school in WA. Anyway, Go Suns.

Kurt was from Aberdeen of all places. Hard to believe. I never saw him in HS. I knew Novoselic... Cobain's Dad drove log truck for my grandfather. Hell, I thought every HS had 3-4 decent bands back then. So when Teen Spirit went huge no one was more surprised than I was. I left Seattle for Cali just as Seattle got cool. I didn't see how Microsoft would get bigger than it was in 1986 and how it would transform the sleepy, rural Eastside. Certainly didn't see how the Seattle sound would take off either and produce the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and STP. What HS did you attend?

After 16 years in coastal Aberdeen, near Grayland, I'm finally dried out. It only took 26 years of living in Cali and Arizona to do that. Seattle is my favorite place to visit because of downtown and the many people I'm connected with there. However I always enjoy landing in PHX where the weather is better and a short 15 mins drive home from the airport. SeaTac was always a 1.5 hour drive from Cobain's & my hometown.

I was already a huge Rogue fan. Now that he's quoting Bum Phillips, Mr. Talton has now taken the throne of best blogger ever.

While disappointed at the 10 year wait for this... I am going to enjoy the rest of this evening watching the celebration at Ground Zero.

No one knowledgeable tells new folks where to live when they get transferred to PHX. Part of the problem with all the new people (7 years) like me is that we ditched our 1964 built 3x2s in Cali. We were tiring of having to look at our botched do-it-yourself home improvements there. Its wonderful to live in an up-to-code dwelling in AZ! That is how we end up in newer suburbs like Chandler and Peoria. Now, my kid just got into a school in the Central District. I've got a 25 mile drive for at least two years, till she can drive herself. Trading houses to a place within in a mile of the school would be fantastic. I'd be within walking distance of lightrail and that ModernTiki lounge on Central. :-) I think I'll go to Zillow.com and see what's available.