Have you guys heard about the new shopping center being built across from Walmart? Legacy on Porter promises to bring Maricopa’s second Goodwill, its second Chipotle and its second Jersey Mike’s. Basically, if variety is the spice of life, this plaza is a plain tortilla.
If you’ve spent even a tenth of the time I have doomscrolling our many local Facebook groups, you’ll know what people in this city want: Salad and Go, Chick-fil-A, In-n-Out Burger … or, really, any effort at a diverse commercial landscape. In a place where the houses all look the same, and the businesses seem to self-replicate like amorous desert cottontails, it’s easy to succumb to development déjà vu.
That’s why I love David Iversen’s piece in this edition, Behind rolled doors. It’s a photo essay that reminds us that behind a thin layer of homogeneity are tens of thousands of fascinating, multifaceted complexities — human souls. Our garages are reflections of ourselves. As a childless minimalist and onetime winger, my garage is completely empty, except for a lone hockey bag leaning against my water heater. (I bought my Maricopa home two years ago.)
This is the same reason why I dislike AI-written articles. I got a chuckle in May when one of our readers suspected in an online comment that my deep investigative dive into the murder of a teen boy in the Maricopa Meadows last fall was written with AI because I used the words “vivisection” and “stonyhearted,” too obscure for a human writer, theorized the reader.
Reality: These words are signs of my humanity. Vivisection, for example, which means a scrutinous look at an issue, was The New York Times word of the day Jan. 30. I used to write for The Daily Beast and believe I picked up the word when I worked there; also in January, the newspaper said Demi Moore’s story in The Substance was “a metatextual vivisection of the unwinnable game.” I prefer that to whatever ChatGPT’s review of that movie would be.
Like musicians’ styles are some amalgamations of their influences, so, too, are writers’. For me, maybe my choice of words is a simple rejection of the sameness I see around me.
My takeaway: While many will not appreciate your uniqueness, a life without it is hardly worth the cost of upkeep. I believe this applies to all people. So, let your uniqueness shine like the Arizona summer sun.
Speaking of the sun — it’s getting hot out there. Is our summer worth sticking around for? A snowbird might say no, but what of the first graduating class at Desert Sunrise High School? This summer is the springboard to the rest of their unique, fascinating lives.
ELIAS WEISS
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
[email protected]
