Dateline Palm Springs – The most beautiful drive in Southern California on a Sunday morning:
Tooling down the sun-drenched, breezy, open 10 Freeway in early spring, bound for The Spa, as my old boss, Bud Furillo, used to call Palm Springs.
I spent part of yesterday in this generously buttered slice of heaven on business.
Throughout the 1960s, Mr. Furillo, the late sports editor of the late Herald-Examiner, accompanied the Angels to spring training in The Spa.
Mr. Furillo made The Spa sound like the funnest, the most glamourous oasis in Southern California.
With his colorful, accessible rhetorical terpsichore, he made you, he forced you, to want to go to Palm Springs.
I am glad he did. Fifty years along, The Spa is even more magically irresistible than it was when The Steamer, as Mr. Furillo was self-tagged, was in his prime.
He died 10 years ago this summer at age 80, and the betting at the nearby Morongo Casino is that Palm Springs exotically will endure at least until the month following the Messiah’s arrival.
Anyone shopping for a definition of “tourist” should drive down Palm Canyon mid-Sunday morning.
The definition scout would come away believing long pants have been outlawed for all men above age 3, that tourists and residents must be mostly conservative because sidewalks on both sides are thronged with couples, that scattered clothing stores were strategically inserted every few blocks to break up the monotony of 10,000 consecutive eateries – and that unlike Hollywood, Palm Springs is – does not just feel – glamourous.
You are somewhere.
If you don’t pause long enough to go inside and drink from the sui generis environment of The Spa, consider yourself cheated.
I will be back, and you should, too.
