Surviving ‘Our Araby’ in Summer

Palm Springs out of season lacks many of its familiar attractions. There are no celebrities to spot, no golf tournaments to attend, no throngs to ogle. With the mercury stuck at 108, the movie people have packed off to Malibu, the Canadian snowbirds have flown back to Canada, and what’s left is a skeletal rear guard of heat freaks, bargain hunters and local hardies.

Palm Springs out of season always has been this way. In “Our Araby,” a handsome Palm Springs guidebook written in 1920, author J. Smeaton Chase observed: In winter or spring, when the ‘Standing Room Only’ sign hangs out, there may be a total of two hundred or more residents and visitors (the latter much the more numerous.) In the hot months, the residents may number a dozen or two, and visitors there are none.

The “village,” of course, has grown since Chase’s time. The population of Palm Springs and surrounding communities stands at about 350,000. That’s in winter and spring. As for “the hot months,” based on a visit last week, I’d say Chase’s count is still about right.

The people left to survive the summer can seem grouchy about it. “The Canadians are wimps,” snarled Bob Boggess, a cabbie who has lived here all his 40 years. This was Thursday. Outside, it was 105 and climbing. Inside, the air conditioner in his cab strained mightily to produce a warm breeze.

“It’s murder,” he said, sweat trickling down his face. “I hate heat. I hate humidity. On my day off, I stay inside, turn the air down to 55, put on a jacket and stare at a wall.”

Beyond vacant streets and stores, and triple-digit temperatures, there are subtler signs summer is on. The August issue of Palm Springs Life, the town’s tony magazine, offers advice on how to prevent a malady known as “leatherfoot.” The display window at Gucci’s sports leather cases for water bottles ($145). And restaurants along Palm Canyon Drive irrigate patio customers at regular intervals with mist sprayed from overhead pipes.

For politicians, the annual exodus can present opportunity. A Desert Sun editorial chided officials for waiting until August to take up a controversial general plan revision. The timing, the newspaper suggested, left City Hall open to criticism it “is trying to pull a fast one on the public. In the desert, hot weather and hot issues just don’t mix.”

Air conditioning becomes an obsession. Over a late-night beer, a guy from the new respirator plant explained his strategies for combatting different kinds of heat. If it’s dry and hot, he stations himself under the swamp cooler. If it is humid and hot, he moves to a central air vent. If the central air unit kicks out, as it did last summer, he rushes his family to a hotel, where they stay until it’s repaired.

Driving can be difficult. Climbing into a car that’s been parked outdoors is not unlike jumping into a lit Weber barbecue, I suspect. People gingerly hold paper napkins to the wheel as they steer, or grimace in pain as they perch on the edge of a blistering seat. The luckless few without air conditioning are easy to spot. They race through traffic with all windows down, employing what in Fresno we used to call 260 Air--two windows down, at 60 m.p.h.

At night, when it cools to the low 90s, people gather in dark bars to compare heat rashes and argue whether they feel a breeze. Outside, the only sound is chirping sprinkler heads. The Rainbirds go all night, keeping the golf courses green for the few golfers loony enough to play.

“I can take it,” a broker from San Diego told me as he prepared to tee off, alone, for an afternoon round of golf. “I’ll just lose a little weight.” Bravado aside, his face was grim and he made sure to fill his water bottle. Finally, he stood over the ball, waggled impressively and whacked a slice into the adjacent fairway. I shook my head in pity. He was in for a long, hot round.

Palm Springs out of season does present advantages. Hotels slash rates, golf courses cut green fees, clothing stores offer huge sales and otherwise snooty restaurants treat all customers like personal friends of the Annenbergs. There are no lines. Anywhere.

The principal draw here remains the desert itself, and in a way searing heat only enhances the strange allure of its brutal nothingness. This was Chase’s point: “The desert,” he wrote, “is Nature in her simplest expression. . . . Solitude can be magnificent: loneliness need not scare us as if we were lost kittens.”

It does help, though, to have air conditioning.

With that, it’s my turn to go on vacation for a few weeks. Don’t get me wrong, Palm Springs in August was terrific, but . . . can someone please point me to Canada?