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Get Your PHX: Paisley Town
The goal of Get Your PHX is to show up, en masse, to support those who pioneer new restaurants, stores, bars and event spaces. We want to provide them a boost as they put their sweat, tears and wealth on the line to make life great downtown. Plus, we want to provide a chance for you to meet others like you, who want to get the most out of Phoenix.
June's Get Your PHX was the largest yet. Thanks to Ellen Foley and Carol Skolnik for hosting. Thanks again to John and Eleanor Clements of Fresh Gourmet to Go for providing a great spread. I'm very excited to tell you about the July Get Your PHX. We are going to celebrate Paisley Town. Those of you who have been around for a while know that the Paisley Violin is not new; however, what they've done is new: a unique shaded courtyard of six shops and galleries that anchor all of the growth on Grand Avenue. This is going to be the new launching point for every First Friday on Grand Avenue, much like monOrchid was on Roosevelt eight years ago. But, that is only half of the story. Three years ago owners Derrick and Gina Suarez got a hold of six little cabins that were part of the Japanese internment camps during World War II. Not many people know that famous developer Del Web got his start as a home developer with government contracts to build these very cabins. But from this sad history, Derrick and Gina built an incredible space that is both lively and comfortable. Now the cabins are refurbished, painted and elevated with a walkway and courtyard. The six shops include two art galleries (Sue Morse Gallery and Urban Floral Art), a vintage clothing store called Butter Toast Boutique, a yoga and natural products store called Wicked Wear, "be.headed" hair studio and a photo studio called Dopestone Design Concepts. All of the owners of these establishments will be there to meet you. Plus Derrick and Gina will be there to tell us all about their vision and the history of their work. There will be food, drinks (yes, they have a license now) and live music by the Hi Lo Trio. July Get Your PHXThursday, July 16th from 5:30 to closePaisley Town1028 NW Grand AvePhoenix, 85007(No donation required for this one, folks.)Please RSVP to me via email or through Facebook so I can get an accurate count.
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Downtown Venue Review
 Sapna Cafe
1301 NW Grand Avenue
I remember walking along Grand Ave. years ago when I saw the corner property that is now Sapna Cafe. It was an oddly shaped space, just a cake slice of a building. I figured it would be perfect for a little coffee bar or restaurant.
I have not heard much talk on the street about Sapna, although it's been open for three months. After trying it, I really want to give it a better review than I can (at least for right now).
I went three. Once just to test out the coffee and Wifi and the twice to grab a sandwich. The Wifi did not work. The shape and orientation of the building with it's tall windowed sides meant that the only time the sun was not over-heating the restaurant was the three hours it was directly overhead.
They couldn't do much to cool the place, despite extra fans.
The staff were all pleasant and conversational. But from what I had on my first visit, the food was not what I expected. Sapna was given its name from a nickname that owner Ana Borrajo was given while traveling overseas.
I had a chicken panini and a salad. The salad dressing was quite unique, but the panini was nothing to write home about.
However, the second visit -for lunch- helped me see the light. I had the pasta with ratatouille. It was unique and flavorful.
I also want to encourage you to support a little restaurant that is taking a chance on Grand Ave., despite the unfortunate solar heating features.
The Good: Aesthetically a really cool place to eat. Go for the non-traditional items over the sandwiches. The Bad: It's bloody hot outside! The Ugly: East and west-facing windows in a little space make for a warm experience!  Baiz Market523 N. 20th St I'm going to let you in on one of my top secrets. This place is not new, but it might as well be for many. Baiz Market is a Middle Eastern market with everything you could ever want -freshly made baklava, obscure ingredients from Jordan and even four foot tall houkas. However, if you are one to typically look for those things, you've probably already found Baiz. I go there to pick up specialty items, like Turish Delight. But I mostly go there to experience the beauty of knowing that this is place is so obscure, that I can get a little alone time. Oh, and I can get some incredible shawarma. There is a little grill right there in the market. Somebody sculpted and painted the counter and railing in the restaurant to look like wood. Well, it looks like a Flinstones-esque representation of wood, anyway. Kitschy and wonderfully tacky! The Good: Cheap and exotic! The Bad: It is easy to miss. The Ugly: None
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The Downtown Rebound and You
...Part Three
This is part three of my series on the near future of downtown. Last month I covered the debate about building major projects vs. organic community growth. In May, I covered what major projects closed and stalled during the recession. This month, I'll cover what you can expect to see happen as we come out of the recession.
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From all of my discussions, it is clear that central and downtown Phoenix will be the first areas to rebound as we come out of the recession later this year.
According to Bill Scheel at Mayor Gordon's office, "Taxable sales downtown in the 4th quarter of 2008 were down 3.5% compared to 4th quarter of 2007. This does not sound like downtown is booming, but citywide we're down 18.4% in the same period, so comparatively, downtown is doing very well."
If you accept the Richard Florida view of the world (see last month's issue), this strength comes from density. The more dense an area, the more people interact. The more they interact, the more likely they are in our creativity-based service economy to find work or build new businesses.
Is that density happening? Will that inter-active space develop? According to the folks I've spoken with recently, yes and maybe.
Kimber Lanning, Executive Director of Local First, AZ says that central and downtown Phoenix will be lead out of the recession by local businesses and adaptive re-use.
She believes that the city has done a much better job than it has in the past of supporting the smaller business uses. The big anchor project model of development has not gone away. "But," she says, "that was (former mayor) Skip Rimza's deal. We have realized the creative people won't stay downtown just because we have a convention center."
Lanning says that the city has adopted a much better attitude toward smaller businesses and adaptive re-use. She credits Development Services Director Mark Leonard, the mayor and new city councilmen for much of that.
However, she says, the city is hampered by two dynamics.
First, the Development Services Department has cut its staff from 580 to 100 people. As we come out of the recession, how will the city be able to handle all of the new project proposals? The smaller and more complex adaptive re-use projects that will come on line first simply take more staff time.
Second, that department has a "cost recovery" model, meaning it must bring in development fees to survive. That system, she says, favors big projects over smaller ones, which bring in more dollars for the staff time. It creates a disincentive for in-fill and adaptive re-use projects.
Dan Klocke, the Director of Downtown Phoenix Partnership, disagrees. "Sure," he says, "Development Services has been decimated, but there are no major commercial or residential projects on line for at least the next six months."
The biggest problem he sees is the loss of institutional memory of the staff that have moved on. However, he says, we will have plenty of time to re-staff as we are not going to climb out of the recession in just one or two months.
Lanning thinks that we all need to do a better job of getting the message about what is happening downtown beyond Central Phoenix. Specifically, she tells the story of meeting with moneyed society leaders in Scottsdale who were all skeptical of downtown Phoenix and density, in particular.
She got them all loosened up talking about their last vacations to Europe and what they all loved most --the culture, the arts and the "vibe." Then she reminded them that all of the places they loved the best were dense urban cores. "So why," she asks, "do you love Europe for its density, but you don't want the benefits of that here?" (Snap!)
Dustin Curtis thinks the word is getting out better than we think. HIs daughter at ASU and high school kids from his north Phoenix neighborhood make the monthly light rail trek down to First Friday. He says that the idea that young people would actually make it a priority to come downtown speaks volumes about the future.
He should know.
 Curtis is the principle of Curtis Architecture, which has been operating in Phoenix since 1993. He recalls coming downtown in high school in the 1970s, only to be harassed by drug dealers.
His firm is doing the interior design and architecture on the famous art deco Luhrs tower and Luhrs building. These buildings will become part of a complex of offices and shopping, backed up with a massive new hotel.
His firm also designed 215 E. McKinley, where Moira Sushi is now. He thinks it is a notable indicator that this very building, which sat empty for 18 months because nobody would buy-in to it as a condo development, filled up within six weeks as a rental property.
"People want to be down here," he says.
He predicts that there won't be any major projects for 2-3 years. Especially in the Evans-Churchill area around ASU downtown, property owners are going to have to build smaller, more conservative projects. The land prices will also have to come down a little before much else happens. He predicts that some of the speculators are going to have to give up.
But in that time, he predicts the last major projects such as the Convention Center, the Sheraton and the soon-to-be Cityscape, will carry us through.
Dan Klocke agrees. He says the big projects are going to carry us through the recession, but the small shops will give the convention and hotel patrons something to do.
Typically, says Klocke, retail follows residential. Build a development and Home Depot plops a store down. But the opposite is true here. People are coming because of the unique little restaurants, the lifestyle and what we could be. They see a chance to fix up a historic home, or be the first in a new condo concept.
They are coming because of how cool it is.
Klocke says 27 net new restaurants have opened up downtown since 2007. 24 have survived.
Is there a danger that we will "over-restaurant?"
Dan thinks no. He thinks we are an attraction because of the cool concepts and the new cuisine.
All of this leaves me with hope that for the first time --and after decades of failed attempts, we see a real
symbiotic relationship between the major projects and the small
businesses.
The big, controversial projects are going to support us through the recession. However,, they would not be doing so well were it not for the buzz created by local ownership, First Friday and now even Third Friday.
There is a certain irony in all of this, of course. Kimber Lanning is right to point out the need to support local ownership. But the local owners need those non-local companies such as Sheraton right now to deliver clients. Of course, those non-local companies would not be doing so well were it not for the fact that local businesses have made it so damn cool to be in central Phoenix.
Maybe we are entering a golden age of growth and cooperation among businesses of all sizes.
Ultimately, that is why Phoenix is doing a better job weathering the recession than Scottsdale, where all the "money" is.
It is best said by a t-shirt I saw on CenPho.tv co-host Dave Brookhouser. In big bold letters, it said simply:
Sorry, Scottsdale
-Phoenix
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Can You Give Me an "Amen"!?
I meet the coolest people at Get Your PHX every month.
Meet Amen Iseghohi. If you were at Get Your PHX last month, you know he was the bloke who runs the intense training and exercise program at The Duce. The program includes common tried and true fitness favorites, such as banging tractor tires with sledge hammers and running around an empty warehouse with sand bags.
Doesn't sound familiar? Well, it's all too familiar to me now. Amen invited me the week after Get Your PHX to try out his special brand of urban fitness/torture.
I've included a couple embarrassing photos of me getting my ass kicked by Amen's workout. See more photos on Facebook. Hey. I'm not proud. I had a blast and I'm still feeling the burn.
 Amen is a true coach in the best sense. He was yelling at me to work harder, while still being encouraging. I thought I was in pretty good shape. But running long distance is not the same as re-stacking cinder blocks as fast as you can.
I gave up three quarters in to the hour-long workout, while the three ladies in the class just continued on, lifting small aircraft, or whatever they were doing. I can't remember because my head was spinning too hard.
 Amen was born in Antwerp, Belgium to parents from Benin, in West Africa. The family moved to London when he was young, but not before his father shipped him off to a little town in Benin to work on a farm for two years.
This is the west African way of saying, "Son, I had to walk two hours, up hill both ways to school."
But it was not all bad. He returned to England to finish high school at one of those exclusive prep schools. Think Harry Potter without the magic, wizards or co-ed cafeteria.
He later got his degree in business marketing at London's Guildhall University and moved to the states where he helped a national flooring company open up operations in Arizona.
The whole time he was thinking "I really want to see overly-comfortable yuppies jumping in and out of tractor tires. How can I do that?" He got his chance last year when he met the owners of The Duce and started developing his classes.
 Actually, there was a little more philosophy behind it than that. Amen was a rugby player in high school and college. He was even in the rugby equivalent of the minor leagues. While living in (gulp) Scottsdale, Amen grew tired of the mega fitness centers with the expensive machines and dance club atmospheres.
Says Amen, "It is just so incredibly boring and repetitive to work on these machines. It really just takes the drive right out of you." He was looking for something a little more "primal."
I mean, really primal. In fact, ask him about his workout techniques and he'll use the word "primal" about 20 times. I'm happy to report that Amen recognizes his addiction to this word, and he promises to get a thesaurus soon.
However, you can't blame him for over-using the word. It fits perfectly. As I was carrying a massive sandbag around this empty warehouse with my lungs busting wide open, Amen reminded me that most people in the world do this kind of work 8 hours a day.
"Why," he asks, "do we need all this expensive equipment? Every exercise you need, you can do with what's around you."
In preparation for his classes, for instance, Amen put together a list of 40 exercises that you can do with one tractor tire; inspired by his experience on the farm and as a rugby player. In just the few months he has been training he has developed a solid core of clients, which includes a couple professional athletes.
But it does not stop here. Amen also trains kids every Saturday morning. He is passionate about childhood obesity -a term that he uses only slightly less often than "primal."
This is very serious stuff for Amen. What is most attractive about what he is doing is the message to kids. He is saying "you don't need to pay a dime to get out and get fit. And here is how."
He wants to take this message and replicate it all over the country. With the majority of people living in suburbs and cities in America, this message makes a lot of sense.
Amen has the means to inspire them to get up, put down the X-Box and move their bodies.
And his philosophy fits right in central Phoenix. We are, after all, the people that make First Friday out of what is around us.
Sometimes we Americans get trapped up in our stuff. We let our stuff make us too comfortable. Then, when we want to get a little exercise, we can't do it unless we have lots of expensive stuff around to make us do it. Just how many unused Stairmasters are sitting in American living rooms right now?
Well, maybe the answer is not an expensive membership or another machine. Maybe the answer to get a little primal.
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My Little Printer Pet Peeve
Call me Andy Rooney, but why do printer companies have to make printers knowing that they will not make parts to repair them? It is bad enough that we have to sell plasma to afford the constant supply of ink.
I found out the hard way that Hewlett Packard has a company policy of filling up our landfills as quickly as possible with printers that are typically only a year old.
In other words, they don't make replacement parts for most of their printers because they want you to throw them out after about a year.
I won't go in to details. But I learned a few interesting things from Charyle Calvert at PrinterFixer.net. She was the only person I could find within 40 miles willing to fix my HP All-in-one printer/money pit, so I would not have to suffer the liberal guilt of throwing the thing in a landfill.
I learned the important things:
1) Printer companies are in a technology race to make certain that there is no way around buying their over-priced cartridges.
2) Many of the cartridges you buy at Staples are only ever filled half way.
3) There are only a few printers for which the companies make replacement parts.
If you want to avoid leaching all kinds of poisons to the aquifer through the landfills, stick to models that can actually be repaired!
Contact Charyle for more information.
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YouTube Giggles
If you have not seen these videos yet, congratulations. You are probably making the most of your work day.
But they are hilarious.
Literal translations of 80's pop videos.
Unnecessary Censorship
There are many more where that came from. I suggest watching these when you NOT are on deadline, like me...right now!
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Got any good downtown tips? Send 'em my way!
And, as always, I respect your right not to be bothered with annoying spam email. If you would like to be removed from my email list, just let me know. Thanks!
Sincerely,
Ken Clark
  
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