The City My Friend Chose

Phoenix in March 2011 was warm and green in a way that still catches you off guard if you grew up in North Carolina. A friend was relocating there and invited me along to look at neighborhoods, and I did what I always do when I land somewhere new. I went looking for the city.

Downtown Phoenix has a particular quality in the late afternoon light, that warm sandstone glow that hits everything differently than it does back east. The Phoenix Convention Center sat behind a wall of magenta bougainvillea. The Hotel San Carlos still wore its vertical neon sign like it had never considered updating it. Saint Mary's Basilica opened its carved stone doorway onto a green courtyard with bronze figures caught mid-movement inside. Nearby, the sculpture called Baseball, a Family Tradition showed a player leaning down toward a boy, a woman and small child just behind them, all of it catching the last of the golden hour.

A cupcake shop had a tray of dog treats on the counter for $2.50 each, which felt like a very Phoenix detail. My friend was trying to figure out where she would land in this city, and I was just trying to see as much of it as I could before we had to leave.