Palm Springs, California.
When you’re a big, proper, grown-up travel journalist with the world at your feet and air miles coming out of your ears (that’s actually an anagram), the one thing everyone wants to know is ‘What’s your favourite place?’
A far-flung spa in the middle of the jungle? A bustling metropolis with all the right shops and clubs and bars? An exclusive tropical island with deserted beaches and no coconut ever served without a straw in it?
They’re nice, of course, but the answer, when all things are considered, and of course this is a personal opinion, might just be a funny little town two hours outside of Los Angeles and not much further outside San Diego built in the middle of a desert on the San Andreas fault. Yep, when the chips are down, Palm Springs might just be it.
Walking down the main street, with its Hollywood-style stars of the celebrities that have called Palm Springs home (everyone from Frank Sinatra through Elvis and Marilyn to Leonardo di Caprio), you try to put your finger on what it is. The heat is nice. Desert heat. It can go to well over 100 degrees but it never gets mu¡y. And the fact that you can see the desert mountains that spring up out of nowhere, like a backdrop in an opera. Yeah, the drama of those red desert mountains, tickled by palm trees and that desert valley planted with four thousand huge turbines that power the whole place, that all makes a great setting. But it’s the town that’s the real star (sorry Marilyn).
Back in Hollywood superstar days, those superstars had to sign in their contracts that they would never be further than two hours away from work in downtown Hollywood. Palm Springs, built on a huge natural spring that means they can spray water all over their gardens and not worry about it, is that place. It’s even closer if you get a plane. And where Hollywood movie stars come to play, money is not far behind.
Which brings us to the other reason Palm Springs is such a star: the architecture. Especially now when everyone everywhere is copying what’s known as mid-century modern, a particularly Palm Springs style that includes boxy modern architecture with plate glass windows, often with a palm tree to throw the symmetry out a little, and pastel-coloured, simple and gorgeous furniture and graphics maybe with a pop of citrus. It’s so now, that look, you can’t believe it’s not now.
Villa Royale, for instance, is an old-school hotel around a pool that looks so contemporary in its studied retro way while it’s actually pretty much an historical monument. And seemingly very popular with lesbians, going on our stay, who come to Palm Springs for the Dinah Shore Weekend. Or for Coachella, which is just over there somewhere. Or just the Pride celebrations in November.
And when you go to Palm Springs during Modernism Week, you actually get to peek into some of those sleek boxy houses, have a snoop around. We went to the Cul-de-Sac Experience and were able to walk in and out of real people’s real houses (with protective booties on, of course!)
designed by one clever William Krisler and it felt like being in a movie, something with Audrey Hepburn in. It’s like what they thought the future would be back in the 60s... certainly a more aesthetic future than the one that actually happened.
But that doesn’t mean they’re living in the past in Palm Springs, even if they do like a nod to the vintage and even if it’s quite famous as a retirement location for older, richer, more fabulous gay men, everyone from Liberace to Barry Manilow. Hotels like the Ace and the newly done Kimpton Rowan Hotel, with a rooftop bar that is THE place right now, keep everything moving onwards as do the influxes for Coachella and the infamous White Party, a gay circuit job under the desert sky. Or you can nab your own mid-century modern home from Acme House Company (acmehouseco.com). We ba¡ed a three-bed with pool and outside kitchen, all done perfectly mid-century modern, of course.
And when it comes to the LGBTQ goings-on, it really is the place to be, with the entire local council dominated by the community. Which might explain the vibrancy of the scene that is thriving, way more than the scenes of towns ten times as big. Down on one little strip off the main street, you can go and have a sing-a-long to video compilations of movie musicals at Quads then go next door to Chill Bar for big clever cocktails and boys dancing on the bar, then across the road to Hunters for a proper dancefloor.
There’s even a cheeky sexy bar, Tool Shed, that gets rammed on the weekend. And if you really know where to look, you can get yourself invited to the parties that go on – and go off! – all over town when the sparkly gays from LA come in on a weekend. And the place is famous for its men-only resorts, like Santiago (santiagoresort.com).
Yes, it’s a little kitsch. Yes, it’s a little on the older side. And yes, it’s most definitely a small town, no Paris or New York or even San Francisco. But the climate is incredible, the architecture world-beating and the sense of community – especially LGBTQ community that seems to have fingers in all the right pies – is what makes a place feel like you want to be there. Oh, and did we mention the architecture?