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Show FROM FLAGSTAFF to MALLSTAFF From ‘positively pastoral’ to “Wal-Marts & slash and burn-built condos...’ By Mary Sojourner It seems that no visitor ever quite forgets the first encounter with Flagstaff: as you come up from the desert the San Francisco Peaks gradually rise up to fill the horizon and there there is the cool rush of pine fragrance as you reach the town..” ---Bruce Babbitt, Introduction to Platt Cline's Mountain Town (1994) No more. The San Francisco Peaks still seem to hover over Flagstaff, until driving up I-17 from Hellonearth, Arizona, you hit the southwest edge of Mallstaff. The beige bulk of the Hampton Inn blocks what view you might have had of those Sacred Mountains. Olive Garden and Red Lobster beckon blandly to tourons, and what you smell is the New West stench of exhaust, greed and corpo-grilled meat. Had you driven up from Se-dough-now (the town that t-shirts made) on 89A, you would have passed the ever-so-Western “natural rock” sign announcing Forest Highlands, Flagstaff's first gated development and “premier” (gag me with a Republican) golf course, and, not a hundred feet later, the barely beauty-belt hidden road into their second “project”, Forest Highlands The Meadows, an identi-kit Photo credit: Joha Grahame Positively pastorale. Until the day I drove into town and noticed the Ponderosa pine hills and washes west of the road were gone. Gone. Cut, razed and levelled in less time than it took for the City Council to make a bad mistake. Wal-mart came in, assured us that they would be the only business on what was no longer forest, assured us they would plant heavily, restore the beauty they had killed. They put in a bunch of eastern pines, which had the wisdom to immediately wither and die. Today, 10+ years later, I drive by Wal-mart and Basha's supermarket and CellularOne and Staples and Fazoli's and the most recent rape ‘n' clear-cut for Home Depot....to say nothing of slash and burn-built condos and Danny Harkins’ (of the Phoenix Harkins Theater empire) Vegas space-ship Mafia living-room Cineplex, glowing luridly in what had been...you know...forest. Note: When Harkins brough his bauble to Flagstaff, he published a 4-page advertising insert, disguised as news, in the local paper, in which he devoted a half page to all his charitable activities and told us he'd decided to move his "quality" of theater to Flagstaff when he was up for a family weekend, took his darling princess to The “The horror...the HORROR‘ Terminator of an intermittent riparian area, wildlife meadow and century-old Ponderosa forest, complete with Tom Dumkopf custom-designed golf course, whose construction completely changed the lay of the land. Sport futility vehicles, driven by she-sure-keepsherself-up-well aging trophy wives, lumber in and out of the fortress,past the nice young Security guard...though, most of the year, traffic is sparse, since roughly 80% of the second and third-home mansions stand empty throughout late fall and winter. I leap ahead of myself. In the June, 1982 Arizona Highways, devoted to Flagstaff and surrounding glory, Mayor Paul Babbitt said, “Flagstaff was originally laid out to be onemile square...now it runs nine miles along Route 66, and we can't have this kind of development continue forever. All of us realize that growth is important, but it has to be planned growth.” And, until the early ‘90's, Paul Babbitt's words went unheeded. I moved to Flagstaff in January, 1985, lured by that “cool rush of pine fragrance”, Macy's coffee house, whose Wiener Melange coffee was dark as good sin...and the fact that all the women I saw on the streets seemed to be sturdy peasant stock dressed in jeans and faded flannel shirts. I had found my people. I lived in a little stone house in the heart of town for a few months, then moved to a cabin whose location needs to remain secret due to the number of developers/Chamber of Commerce tepid-shots who regard me as (I am not making this up) “an eco-Nazi tree-hugger bitch.” I was writing a novel about 12th C. Hopi in Northern Arizona. The fact that the cabin had no running water, a woodstove and all the pine fragranceI could breathe seemed perfect for the book. I learned fast. Dish water becomes gray water becomes sunflowers whose seeds become more sunflowers. Little Mermaid and couldn't find a theater with Surroundsound. Oh no. There goes the neighborhood. But, wait...I'm describing Salt Lake City, Hurricane, your town 2001. You know all this, the Land Rovers, Range Rovers, quick-trip-to-City-Market-from-Dewey-Bridge-cedar-cabinwith-red-roof Rovers (ah, the lure of the wild). You work in one of the new restaurants and you know that the Sassanachs whine, don't tip and think an antler chandelier is the height of country chic. 1. You want to hear something new. I wish I could grant your wish. The hard truth is that Flagstaff, like your town, is on its way to being Anywhere, Southwest, U.S.A. Bogus end-point for a town with, according to various sources, two beginnings: 1. Arizona Highways, June 1982 notes that in 1876 a band of pioneers (sans Rovers, cell phones and GPS) cut and trimmed a tall, straight pine (some things never change) and “ran up Old Glory to unfurl in the cool mountain breeze. The pole remained. The immigrants didn't. And thus, Flagstaff as ancestor of today's boom and bust, touron, golf course/second home and yuppie-commute-by-internet economies. 2. Platt Cline, in Mountain Town, writes that the McMillans, hard-working sheep ranchers, pre-dated those early tourists by a few months. Five years later, Atlantic & Pacific Railroad engineers staked out the tracks and hundreds poured into Flagstaff, needing shelter, food, booze and broads. “Among those early settlers,” Cline writes, “were laborers and mechanics, lumberjacks and _tie-cutters, cowboys and herders, home-steaders, a sprinkling of those ubiquitous prospectors...and some who had come because they had found it prudent to leave some place else.” |