thoughts on Phoenix

Things you might not know about Phoenix, Arizona: James's observations

By the way, whereas some of this may sound sarcastic, I'm just pointing out things that are "different" (aren't all things?), and I'm actually starting to like most of this stuff. It's funny to think that one day these aspects of life here may merge with what I think of as familiar and being "like home."

1. Tap water isn't cold. It doesn't get cold. It's warm at the coolest. If you're at a retail store or restaurant and go to the bathroom, when you wash your hands, the cold and hot are both warm. Why? Because it's over 100° F outside, day and night.
2. 104° at night actually feels nice and cool. I was driving with my windows down, enjoying the drop from about 108° when the sun was up an hour before, and the radio man said the current temp. "What!??! This is 104° degrees!??!?!" I'm starting to buy into this whole "It's a dry heat thing," but people neglect to mention there's a huge difference in feeling between having the sun on you and being in the shade.
3. Everyone weighs, on average, probably 50 lbs. less than Georgians. Could be the heat (you'll feel a little queasy if you think about eating fried stuff when you feel like you're frying), could be the food (water is always more enticing than food here), and it could be the sidewalks on every street.
4. It's apparently cool to ride a bike here. As cool as skateboarding. There will be kids skateboarding, and they will have a few kids with them on bikes. Not BMX, just regular bikes. Looks like you're especially cool if you have high, "chopper" style handlebars. 
5. People wear jeans if it's under 115°. Wearing jeans when it's over 115° would be rediculous because to Phoenicians that's too hot to wear jeans... I think 75° is too hot to wear jeans.
6. It's cool to dress like an archaeologist if you are really into being earthy or think it looks cool. I've seen a good bit of adults (40's-60's) wearing wool socks, hiking boots, an earth-tone shirt that you might wear on a safari, maybe a brown t-shirt instead, dark brown denim or khaki shorts pulled up really high, leather belt, shirt tucked in, and a wide-brim hat that has the chin-strap-cord-thing that hangs down like a necklace. There was a man working out at the gym a few hours ago dressed like this. He took off his hat, though.
7. Most thermostats (at schools, offices, etc.) are kept at around 70-80°, but the room tends to stay about 75-83°. This would be torturous to some people in the Southeast, as that's about as hot as most of our warmer days, but here that's over 20 degrees cooler than outside.
8. Tank-tops are common. With jeans.
9. Scorpions, when young, have worse stings, just like Harrison Ford said, the now senior citizen Indiana Jones, to his apparently illegitimate child he never knew about. These little things can send you to the hospital. Not non-shocking plot twists, scorpions. And they might be hiding next to your backpack at school, as was the situation with one of my friends here. Again, I'm talking about the scorpions.
10. Every parking lot has some form of covered parking or shaded area. Giant palm trees provide some shade, but most smaller places like banks have concrete awning-like things that are about 10 car widths long and one car length deep, covering about 10 spaces. 
11. There are access roads next to a lot of main roads. Houses' driveways do not touch the main road. They connect to the side road, which parallels the main road, about 10 feet to the side, and every thousand feet or so, the side road connects to the main road. Never saw that before. 
12. Almost all the roads are perfectly straight. You can see forever. The alleys and canals are, too, and you can see maybe a mile if there isn't a small hill. And by hill, I mean bump, because it's flatter here than the top of the desk where your computer sits as you read this.
13. Phoenix is encircled by mountains. If you aren't around buildings, or if you're on an overpass, you can see mountains on all sides of the valley. It's a bowl, quite literally, with over 4 million people inside. Or, well, it's a Wok on a grill, with over 4 million people inside.
14. We've had a big fire just west of where I'm teaching for 3 days now. It was probably started by lightning, which arrived midway through last week (about Wednesday) as part of the monsoon weather pattern that happens every summer here. It did not rain, but there was a huge lightning show for a night, and now we can see where the fire's burning... anywhere in the city, you just turn in a circle, until you see a column of smoke that looks like a GIANT tornado. It usually goes straight up and merges with the clouds. Judging by the look of the smoke, it's being put out, as it's thinner today, but it was 2,400 arcres burning the other day. And I'm serious about being able to see it from everywhere. It even blocked out the sun for our area for about an hour yesterday, and the sun coming through a quite literal cloud of smoke looks neon pink. Very strange. OK, just one more descriptor... it looks like a volcano is erupting in the West Valley with the way the smoke goes straight up and then spreads into a cloud. It's actually really cool. And hot.