Zip from sagebrush to snow on the PALM SPRINGS AERIAL TRAMWAY Look up at the PANTAGES
What a ridiculous idea! Build an aerial tram that climbs 6,000 feet from a desert canyon to a snowy mountain? How could that possibly work?
Yet it does. Because back in 1935, a man named Francis Crocker proposed connecting the Coachella Valley to the upper slopes of Mt. San Jacinto. And somehow it all lined up. Twenty-eight years later, the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway opened and here we are. After parking ($12), you step into Valley Station (elevation 2,643 feet), pay $29.95 per adult ($17.95 per child ages 3-10) and board the gondola, knowing that this year, well into summer, there likely will be plenty of snow up top. (But still, you should check.)
Then you begin the climb up Chino Canyon in a slowly rotating gondola (opening windows, capacity of 80 passengers). It’s a 2.5-mile trip to Mountain Station (elevation 8,516 feet), where it’s typically 30 to 40 degrees cooler than at Valley Station. The last tram up leaves at 8 p.m., so there’s time to catch sunset or dusk.
BONUS TIP: There are a couple of restaurants at the top: Peaks is fancy, Pines is a cafeteria, and both are open for lunch and dinner. The Lookout Lounge, also up top, serves beer, wine and cocktails until 5 p.m. Alas, the Winter Adventure Center near the top of the tramway, which once rented out snowshoes and crosscountry skis, is closed indefinitely. While the snow lasts, bring your own snowshoes, cross-country skis and plastic sleds (but no inflatable or metal ones).
For a bracing dose of live theater and old Hollywood, step into the Art Deco splendor of the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, opened in 1930. Its lobby and ceiling alone deliver more drama than some touring musicals can muster. But plenty of good acting, singing and dancing happens on its stage too. “Hamilton” played the Pantages for ages. Starting in June: “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical.” In July, “Beetlejuice” (the musical). In August, “Les Miserables.” In December, “MJ: The Musical.”
If you can, begin the night with dinner a few blocks away in the atmospheric Musso & Frank Grill (founded 1919, featured in too many movies and TV shows to count). After your show, pause to admire perhaps the coolest piece of neon in the city: the sign of the Frolic Room dive bar, right next door to the Pantages. Inside, along with the smell of spilled beer, is a vintage celebrity-studded mural by caricaturist extraordinaire Al Hirschfeld, celebrating the showbiz types who once bellied up to the very same bar.
BONUS TIP: You can’t beat the vinyl and CD browsing (new and used) at Amoeba Hollywood, half a block east of the Pantages. And just across the boulevard from Musso & Frank, you have Larry Edmunds Bookshop, which bulges with books, posters, scripts, photos and Hollywood ephemera.