Several couples pair up for their tango lesson at Step by Step Dance Studio in Palm Springs. A 10-year-old proffers his hand to a grandmother; two Marines from Twentynine Palms stand at attention, ready for maneuvers at the order of instructor Isa Lapaj. The native Albanian, who has called the Coachella Valley home since 1980, has an abiding grace, a
CAMEO As a kid, Salvador Camarena would sit on the toilet lid in his Indio home while his mother primped in the bathroom mirror before a night on the town with his father. The young boy liked to watch her construct a look that was singularly hers, choosing an outfit, applying her makeup, styling her hair. He studied how she
Musical giants have settled into the Coachella Valley this month to perform at Desert Trip last weekend and again this weekend. Today, major announcements about two of them were made, and we are knocking on heaven’s door with excitement. The global news, of course, is that today, poet/singer/troubadour Bob Dylan, who will appear at the Empire Polo Club in Indio
NATURE A forest is primeval. A forest is lush. A forest is enchanted. A forest is not desert. But on a half-acre lot in a quiet residential neighborhood in Rancho Mirage, a forest has taken root and is starting to thrive. It’s not a woodland wilderness filled with tall, creaking trees filtering angled sunlight through densely sprouted arms with nymphs
Recently, biologists including Bighorn Institute Associate Director Aimee Byard (pictured at right) began visiting local schoolrooms and interacting more frequently with the public in the hope of cultivating citizen scientists. They stage periodic scoping sessions on the overlook behind Rancho Mirage City Hall, invite outdoorspeople to use the interactive iNaturalist app to log incidental sheep sightings, and conduct small group
NATURE Six hikers shade their eyes and squint toward rocky folds and craggy outcroppings a few hundred feet away along the steep southern face of Oswit Canyon. A couple of them peer through binoculars, scanning the hot, dry, inhospitable hillside. Although it seems just desolate desert, this neighborhood is deceptively vibrant. It’s home to a complicated ecosystem that includes lifeforms
FOOD One summer when I was in high school, I worked at a Tastee Freez where the soft-serve ice cream was a stream of goo pumped into a cone as a platform for the chemically enhanced dipping chocolate that solidified around it in a flash. It looked — and tasted —like plastic. I ate some practically every shift. My youthful
A trip across the Coachella Valley brought four new foodie favorites to add to your list.
The newest staff member of Winged Solutions, a pest control company, is a winsome, delicate creature.. But looks can be deceiving. Ariel kills for a living.
Today I’m sad. Sad because the male default remains so reflexively rooted in the human condition that it’s nothing less than primal.