Y ou’re cruising Central, headed south. Be- cause you’ve lived in Phoenix longer than you care to remember, you’re seeing not just the buildings on either side of this wide ex- panse of road, but what used to stand in their places as well. You’ve been here so long, you remember when driving up and down this street, looking to hook up, was a weekend activity of every baby boomer in town. Here on your right is Park Central Mall. Its recent facelift gives Phoenix’s first outdoor shopping mall a Midcentury Mod- ern feel, but you’re not fooled. You recall when there were ac- tual department stores there, where today there’s a collection of business offices, a handful of chain restaurants, and — huz- zah! — a Starbucks. One thing they got right was returning the Walter Emory Sun Worshipper statue, a long-ago Park Central mainstay, to the property. Even if it is on the wrong side of the mall. Up here on the left is Durant’s, where you’ve consumed many a Caesar salad, and then the Heard Museum, founded in 1929. You’ve never eaten a salad there, but you’ve enjoyed its unmatched collection of Native American art. Someone asked you once if Phoenix Towers, Ralph Harris’s 13-story Modern Movement residential high-rise, has always been pink. Before you can remember how you replied, you’re distracted by the BMO Tower, originally built by cosmetics company Dial Corpo- ration to resemble a well-worn bar of Dial soap (yet known far and wide as “the cockroach” because it so closely resembles a giant insect jammed into the earth). There’s a quick tug at your heartstrings when you glance at the cultural supermall on your left, because that’s where your favorite library used to be. It’s gone now, eaten up by the expanded and improved Phoenix Art Museum and Phoenix Theatre Company venues. Your melancholy only lasts a minute, because just past the light at McDowell you’re greeted by the gorgeous, copper-clad five-story Burton Barr Library, a Will Bruder masterpiece you always think of as “the new library” even though it was built in 1995 — 100 years after many of the mansions that used to line this stretch of Central, known then as Millionaires’ Row, had all been torn down. Well, all but the Ellis-Shackelford House, a gor- geous Prairie Style two-story built in 1917 and now home to Ari- zona Humanities Council, a nonprofit that encourages Arizonans to explore history and culture. Over a bridge, past the park and the castle-like Irish Cultural Center, and suddenly you’re on First Avenue, somehow. That’s Central Avenue for you, sneaking off and becoming another street the farther south you take it. You won’t be fooled by Cen- tral’s whims, though, and a quick left at Fillmore gives you a peek at that big, elegant Spanish Colonial Revival post office built in 1932 as you take another left back onto Central. Headed back home, you catch a glimpse in your rearview mirror of the radio-tower-antennaed Westward Ho, once the tallest building in the state, its 16 stories a hotel until 1980 and now a home for the elderly and disabled. Like the post office and so many other old buildings down here, a big chunk of the Ho’s lower level is occupied by various departments of ASU. And suddenly, here’s Circles Records, or what you’ll always think of as Circles Records, anyhow, even though that venera- ble music shop has been closed for more than a decade now. Before it was the best place in town to buy LPs and 8-tracks, Circles was the Stewart Motor Company, a Studebaker dealer- ship where passersby could watch a giant automobile slowly spinning on a turntable in the rotunda right on Central. The ro- tunda is still there, from which a breakfast place called Snooze sells habanero pork belly eggs Benedict and orange juice. You think about stopping for a bloody mary, and then de- cide to keep going, up and down Central, reliving your own past and the downtown heyday of the city you love. endless bullshit flowing out of the so-called Arizona election audit and its supporters. He’s taking a political risk by publicly de- nouncing the audit, which is popular with the GOP base, as an absurd conspiracy the- ory-laden farce. It could very well hurt his reelection chances in 2024. But with so many cowardly Republican politicians re- fusing to push back against the nonsense coming out of the Trump-till-the-very-end wing of the Republican Party, it’s im- mensely refreshing to see at least one GOP politician show some backbone and stand up for the truth. Kudos. ✥✥✥✥✥ Reginald Bolding Reginald Bolding, who represents District 27 in south Phoenix in the Arizona House of Representatives and serves as the Dem- ocratic minority leader, has been kicking ass this year. Whether it’s his passionate floor speeches on protecting voting access or working across the aisle on legislation mandating outside investigations into po- lice shootings, Bolding has been front-and- center on a variety of important issues that state lawmakers grappled with during this past legislative session. He was also a part of House Democrats’ vigorous opposition — they staged a walkout — to a Republican- backed budget that included a massive tax cut for the wealthy. Now, he’s running for Arizona Secretary of State. He could just be getting started. ✥✥✥✥✥ Jessica Fontinos Vaccine Distribution at State Farm Stadium 36 We were excited to get the vaccine, of course. We were less excited about driving from central Phoenix to Glendale, in the middle of the night, to wait in line for somebody to jam a needle into our arm. So we were surprised to find ourselves moved almost to the point of tears upon arrival at State Farm Stadium, which since the be- ginning of January had been transformed into a 24/7 vaccination factory, the largest such site in the state and one of the largest in the country. (President Biden called the effort a “national model” after it cranked out more than 100,000 shots in less than three weeks.) A well-coordinated team of mostly volunteers greeted us, directed hundreds of cars, checked us in with iPads, helped the medical staff administer the shots. Like a lot of the previous year, the experience felt like something out of a sci- fi movie. The only difference was that, this time, under the bright-white parking lot lights, surrounded by all these smiling peo- ple saving lives, we had finally made it to the happy ending. ✥✥✥✥✥ Stephen Richer Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer is a rare breed of Republican who, at least recently, hasn’t been afraid to call out the Many government spokespeople are unre- sponsive, unhelpful, and bad at their job of communicating information. Some of them are downright rude. Jessica Fontinos, General Counsel and Public Information Officer for the Clerk of the Superior Court for Maricopa County, is not one of those people. When reporters are on deadline and need answers to basic questions re- garding the status of a recently filed law- suit or how to listen to court proceedings online, Fontinos has got them covered. She promptly responds to inquiries with more information than you asked for or quickly points you in the right direction. More of this from other government flacks in the Valley, please. BEST OF PHOENIX 2021 | WWW.BESTOFPHOENIX2021.C0M | SEPTEMBER 30, 2021 Central Avenue me g al o p olit an lif e D OLITICIA OCR B E STA N TIC EM P B E ORM S T P INF OF UBLIC A TI FIC O N ER B E PS OLITICIA EP UBLIC T R A N N B ES T T EAM E FFO R T
