January 14 2025, 1:50PM

Today is a day of endless laundry in a jet-lagged haze. Yesterday we returned from a trip back to Phoenix. As we exited the cab in front of our building, before we had crossed the street, we heard somebody saying “¡Buenas!” and turned to see our friend who runs the market downstairs sitting at a sidewalk table of our tapas place with a small group of people. Later we dropped in the tapas place for dinner, and Rosa, who runs it with her husband Jose, mentioned she wondered if we were on a trip because she had not seen us walking by with our “perrito”.

This effortless kind of community feeling is something we never felt living in Phoenix. Yes, we had plenty of friends, but being a car-first culture, it took planning and effort to see those friends. Here, there is no friction, a simple shopping errand is all it takes to see friendly familiar faces. After spending some time back in Phoenix, I am not sure “car-first” covers the situation there: perhaps “anti-pedestrian” is more accurate. Driving around the city, we were appalled by just how anti-pedestrian it is. Probably, after living away from that environment for well over a year now, we just notice it more. There are areas where you will see asphalt roadway, with a thin, maybe five-foot strip of concrete sidewalk lacking any plants or shade, with more asphalt paved right over the entire parcel of land. The weather was not bad, maybe just a bit chilly, but there were nearly zero pedestrians out, simply because it is so pedestrian hostile.

Every morning, we would have breakfast in the hotel, and every morning, we would overhear a parade of people asking the front desk where they can get a coffee, where a grocery store is, where they can get some medication…. every single answer started with driving directions. It was a basic assumption that nobody was walking. Because driving was the only option.

Yet, many Americans actively prefer this. They will tell you their car gives them “freedom”. I suppose if that is really what Americans want, then by all means, keep building cities this way.

One surprise was the absence of pickup trucks festooned with branded flags for the incoming president. This was a common sight in Phoenix in the years before we left, these vehicles, usually pickup trucks, with multiple flags trumpeting blind support for that man and his associated right-wing talking points du jour. This visit, we did not see a single flag, and only a couple bumper stickers. That was honestly a surprise: have the people of Phoenix finally stopped spending outrageous sums of money on overpriced, under-quality, Orange Man branded knickknacks? At this point, all those low-quality flags and hood decals have probably faded and shredded, and do people really want to be overcharged for replacements? Looks like the answer is no.

Another notable absence was the lifted trucks: for those readers outside the States, this may not be a familiar sight. “Lifted truck” refers to a pickup truck that has been modified to have oversized tires, requiring the entire vehicle to be lifted to create room for the cartoonishly large tires. As with all these things, it became a dick-swinging contest, one truck having to be raised higher than the last, with biggest-er and big-ly tires, outdoing the other guy. It is the vehicular equivalent of those guys who pump themselves full of steroids, focusing their lifting on their upper body, so they have oddly large pectorals, paired with disproportionally twig-like legs. Like David Byrne in Stop Making Sense, but not so much entertaining as ridiculous.

As you can imagine, these “lift kits” are pricey. My only assumption can be that like the tacky ass-kissy pro-fascist merchandise, the ongoing maintenance cost of those lift kits finally exhausted their owners, who have given up on the cost of keeping those things in running condition, and have had to sadly return to just a regular old factory stock truck. Of course, the average pickup truck in the States is huge to begin with. Not only is the pattern of development anti-pedestrian, but the vehicles are too.