Surfing the Sand Wave

I had just finished remarking upon the lovely, vaguely Mexican landscape of Indio when I detected an oddly sweet smell in the warm, dusty air. As my colleague spun our topless white Land Rover round, I realized that the billowing gray cloud we’d watched thicken and darken during the Palm Desert polo matches at the Empire Club that afternoon was now an inferno towering in the flat distance. As a battalion of firetrucks and ambulances streamed by, an unpleasant realization struck me--that it might be poison gas, or at least some unpleasant chemicals burning beneath the descending sun.

I quickly attempted to keep my imagination in check. The longer I stay in California, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish the truly life-threatening crisis from the merely apocryphal daily occurrences one can’t help but witness. This is a fundamental survival skill. It’s not the rapture; it’s just a patch of unpleasantness. (That burning car in the high-speed lane of the 405 is an anomaly, even though you’ve seen others in the past month. The makeshift temple to a stabbed male model outside your apartment window is an attempt at fostering community, not a grim harbinger of how violent the beautiful life really is. Most of the explosions, crashes and other assorted mishaps associated with Southern California are simply facts of life. To survive in this climate, an individual must avoid paying too much attention to indicators that things might be falling apart.)

So I watched the gray cloud thinking: If this was the end all/be all/be over of California living, then so be it. I knew the risks involved when I began that long exodus here from Rhode Island. Admittedly, an earthquake would be a bit more conducive to simple explanation. My parents have been expecting that resolution to my left coast adventure for years. It’s clearly unstable out here.

I first ventured to the desert a few years ago, when I was still just visiting Los Angeles on occasion. The desert had always held a position in my imagination next to that of the sea. Both defy our mastery, the latter by its immense depth, the former by its impregnable surface. My first impression of the desert was of vast flatness. People were dwarfed. The great expanse of earth made us smaller. It’s essentially barren, a blank canvas of possibility that people see as whatever their desire projects onto it--a real-life cross between Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles” and TV’s “Fantasy Island.” I saw golf course after golf course surrounded by brick walls and fountains. I saw an artificial lake built inside a Marriott hotel. I happened upon a strange fence and gatehouse cryptically labeled “Institute of the Retarded of the Desert.” Was this where Gary Larson received inspiration for his “Far Side” comics?

Not to sound like Marco Polo in Mongolia, but this place was odd. Even star-struck Los Angeles doesn’t name its main boulevards after celebrities who lived on or near them. Who needs star maps when all a tourist needs to do is look for the Frank Sinatra or Dinah Shore or Bob Hope drives. Just as I could never live on Mt. Olympus (well, Mom, from the airport, turn right on Mt. Olympus, right on Oedipus, left on Apollo), how does one say “I live off Gerald Ford” and maintain a sense of self-worth?

Looming above it all is Bob Hope’s flying saucer-style house, designed by John Lautner. The futurist landmark, perched on a rocky hillside, seems misplaced--and appropriately so, for most everything a northern European does in the California desert appears out of sync. Not only does the house look like a spaceship, it offers an impression that an alien society dropped it there.

Now that magazines are declaring, we hope with a tinge of irony, that the California desert around Palm Springs is “hot” again, they’re also going into sunstroke nostalgia for the ‘50s and ‘60s. A society fueled by martinis and show biz. A few months back, I saw a photo of Yul Brynner and Frank Sinatra lounging by the pool in Rancho Mirage. Both were impeccably dressed. Yul was a stand-out in his yellow (J. Crew would call it “lemonade”) cashmere V-neck with black slacks and loafers sans socks. In a word--swank. But don’t race now to the 10 East. He’s dead. So’s Frank, Dinah and . . . . What isn’t dead is the notion that Hollywood needs a playground where the weather is even nicer than it is in, well, Hollywood. This is the future of the artificial. Vacate the sidelines. Embrace the unreality of a place, and by doing so, we may find the only loophole or, for sci-fiers, “portal” back to the real.

The desert seems a perfect spot for this. Las Vegas is expanding at a breakneck pace. While water remains a slight glitch, there is no shortage of space. Of course “movie people”

aren’t the only people surfing the sand wave. The cottage industries that flourish around entertainment also benefit from the dry climate. For instance, the Southern California desert is likely the capital of crystal meth manufacturing, and on any Friday night, downtown Palm Springs is filled with an ornery posse driving customized Hondas into town. Avoid honking your horn at them; a drug-fueled road rage usually doesn’t end well. It’s best to just ignore this small problem and head over to the tidier environs of Palm Desert.

It’s here that one can find the ultimate in desert dining and retail. Tommy Bahama’s restaurant and store actually represent themselves as being Caribbean. The store’s shopping bags carry the slogan “purveyors of fine island lifestyles since 1993,” but this odd juxtaposition of island and desert is exactly what desert living is all about. It’s not the reality, it’s the perception. Tommy Bahama personifies this condition.

When we inquired if Tommy Bahama was in the establishment that evening, we were informed that he was away but there in spirit. Judging from the wall hangings, in spirit means photos of a male model who looks eerily like Edgar Bronfman Jr., cavorting with a Stephanie Seymour-type model on the islands. Lots of hammocks, docks and porches. As if to add a family flair to the place, many of the photos include a native boy and girl sharing tender moments with the very white Mr. and Ms. Bahama. That’s if they’re married. I don’t know if marriage fits into Tommy’s island lifestyle.

Not that Tommy seems to waver on commitment. This is one serious enterprise. The first-floor store provides everything one needs to turn a desert bungalow into a tropical cabana. The makeover need not be limited to the surroundings, as Tommy also has a full line of clothes to turn a city slicker into an island regular. While I probably should have resisted the urge, just as I ignored the distant fire earlier, I looked at the “Made In” labels on the housewares and clothing. While I’m sure there must have been a few items manufactured in the Caribbean, every label I saw listed the Pacific island of Taiwan or the geopolitical virtual island, China. Maybe Tommy Bahama’s should be called Tommy Bamboo’s.

The large restaurant and bar upstairs, complete with vibrating beepers so you can shop while you wait for a table, serve up a menu of Conch Frites and Jerk Chicken along with some anemic steel drum tunes performed by a white guy accompanied by a rhythm machine. The sound might best be described as Caribbean bar mitzvah. Our waitress, Anita, a dental hygiene student at the College of the Desert (known as C.O.D.) cheerfully explained that Tommy wasn’t a real person. The three local businessmen who own the store dreamed him up and created an image campaign.

This truth, while not unexpected, suggested that Tommy Bahama’s represented something more than a calculated ruse to attract tourist dollars. Tommy was the logical extension of the unreality of the desert communities. I’ve heard friends from diverse parts of the world describe their impressions of the desert by comparing it to other resort areas. For example, a Northern Californian mentions that the shops in Palm Springs remind her of Carmel, a New York friend who winters in Florida remarks upon how reminiscent Lake La Quinta is of Ft. Lauderdale. There is a certain insipid violence in that, in the development of a stark natural moonscape into a lush retirement resort. Lake La Quinta, with its boats and swans, may resemble some parts of Florida, but this isn’t the Everglades, it’s a desert.

The towering blaze on the horizon that day turned out to be a relatively minor brush fire that consumed a few hundred acres. The next day, after my return to L.A., I was excited to see my photos of the beautiful fields and ponies juxtaposed with the billowing black cloud. To my surprise, the spectacular polo match was there but the fire was somehow obscured. It was as if my photos had been retouched. I began to wonder what would happen if, as in my photos, you weren’t able to see the disaster looming in the distance. We wouldn’t even know what sort of fire those engines were racing to in the afternoon heat. Before I returned to the pleasant thoughts essential to survival, I allowed myself the question: How do you evacuate a desert?