by Pa Rock
Social Commentator
In a blog post on December 14, 2008 entitled Where Have All the Good Films Gone? Gone to Scottsdale Every One! I was bitching about the fact that all of the critically acclaimed movies of that time (Slumdog Millionaire, Milk, and Doubt) were noticeably absent from the West Valley where the common folk live. Seeing those movies, at that time, required a forty-five minute drive over to yuppie hell, Scottsdale!
While penning that piece I digressed (don't I always!) to tell the tale of a car that had sped around me a few weeks prior. This is what I had to say on that:
A couple of weekends ago I was driving through Goodyear or Avondale one evening when a young man (high school young) passed me in a small red car. Printed across his back window in six-inch tall Old English Script was this bit of personal vitriol: "Fuck Scottsdale." It wasn't overly eloquent, but Shakespeare probably wasn't either when he was this lad's age. I assumed the boy had probably lost his lady love to some yuppie spawn in the East Valley who was born with a silver spoon up his nose.
Today I realized that I didn't do my homework before writing about the kid who disrespected Scottsdale. I assumed he was just a maverick spreading his personal vengeance against that proud, old Arizona city. Wrong!
Today as I was marching to Pretoria on the evil treadmill at the gym, a young mother (aged thirty or less) and her twelve-year-old (give or take) son parked themselves on the treadmills in front of me. My gym (Lifetime Fitness) is fairly hip, but even so, I was surprised by the woman's attire - at least her shirt. It was a nice gym shirt, something like a "wife beater" that the young Marlon Brando favored, and it was black. Across the bottom back of the shirt, in three-inch Old English Script, was the same sentiment that the young man had been expressing all those many months ago: Fuck Scottsdale.
So tonight I did some basic research on the internets. It turns out that there is some resentment of the yuppies inhabiting Scottsdale, a feeling that the community is trying to be another Tempe (Allah forbid!), and anger that it has drawn in a bunch of rich non-Arizonans. There are apparently also speed cameras on every corner in Scottsdale, a fact that flies in the face of Arizona's teabagger spirit.
There are, it seems, many items manufactured right here in Arizona that bear the Fuck Scottsdale logo. This may be an idea whose time has come - I mean, surely everybody resents someplace. Crank up the presses and let's make some money! Entrepreneurs rock!
1 comment:
Yah. I never cared much for Scottsdale when I lived in PHX. I'd buy the shirt (if I didn't have kids). My only reason to go there was if there was a good band playing there. But for clubbing & bars it's impossible to go there as a female & not feel like you are in a fashion contest with every other girl you see. I read a statistic on Scottsdale years back that said something like 1 in 5 drivers there is drunk. Lotta random police checkpoints there on the weekends. And yes, when the traffic control cameras first started going up they went up in Scottsdale. Got my first (and only) photo ticket in the mail from that lovely city. So awesome to get a speeding ticket in the mail along with a picture of yourself driving. Ug. Scottsdale is home to Mike Tyson & other stars. Jennifer Aniston & Vince Vaughn used to hang out there a lot when they were dating. I met Leif Garret at a bar there once. It's a little LA basically.
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