We’re in negotiations to list a house in the Coronado Historic District of Downtown Phoenix. The temperature hit 110 this week, and the seller has determined he would rather live elsewhere.

If you live anywhere but in the Desert Southwest, 100 degrees probably sounds unbearably hot to you. Eight-five degrees is hot. Ninety is a scorcher. Ninety-five is intolerable. One hundred degrees is the stuff of “you don’t know how lucky you kids have got it” family legends.

I have news for you. In Phoenix, we might see a 100 degree day as early as March. Once those temperatures arrive in earnest, we will go for 100 days with 100-degree-plus temperatures. How much plus? The hottest day on record was 122, but 115 and above is not uncommon.

How can we stand it?

Well, for one thing, you get used to it. If you live here for three years, your blood will thin out. Summer will seem much easier to bear than you remember. But Winter will be a bear, particularly if you go back home for the holidays.

But for another, the people who stay here by choice just like the heat. It’s not all that pleasant getting into the car when the interior is 160 and the steering wheel is even hotter than that. But to step outdoors in the late afternoon, when the heat is at its absolute worst, to feel those irrepressible waves of warmth flowing in on the Western breeze, to see forever by the light of an unrelenting sun…

If you hate it, you hate it, and, like our client, you can’t live here for long.

But if you love it…

I rode my bike today. I went out at 10:30 in the morning, so it was only about 93 degrees outside. Shorts, tee-shirt, sneakers and my iPod, all on a mountain bike. We live along the Arizona Canal in North Central Phoenix. The canals are like urban rivers, used to carry fresh water to the treatment plants. Some are developed as parks, but others are just long stretches of linear desert running right through the city, a place to walk, run, ride in silence and solitude while the world whirls on all around you.

Push off with The Caves of Jericho from The Band’s post-Robbie Robertson line-up. That same album had amazing covers of Atlantic City and Blind Willie McTell. The whole thing is freedom, the bike, the sun, the sound. Phoenix gets 87% of all possible sunlight. Seasonal Affective Disorder is just an inexplicable sound that sometimes emanates from the television.

More than halfway through the first lap, I’m No Stranger To The Rain comes up, Keith Whitley at his stoic, tragic best. There are piles of pine needles just off the path, baking in the sun. This is exercise, riding hard to build muscle. It can be fun to take things slower, to take in everything, but today’s goal is to ride as hard and as fast as possible.

About halfway through the second lap, Joe Ely comes around with My Baby Thinks She’s French, a wonderful reflection on the affected urbanity of urban living. Everything is very easy, and the heat is there as a friend, the invited guest of the sunlight.

Roger Miller’s My Uncle Used to Love Me But She Died bumps the tempo at just the right time. It’s a dumb song my father used to sing to me, and I’ve inflicted it upon my own son, but it’s just the right tune for pushing and pushing when things start to get a little warm.

And then there is Johnny Cash covering Depeche Mode with Personal Jesus, a perfect driving rhythm. The ride is fast, fast, fast, but there’s still time to take in everything, still time to see and hear and smell this desert where there should be no desert.

Just when things are starting to get hard we’re hit with the brutality of Barenaked Ladies’ The Old Apartment. It might be hard to imagine riding this hard and still having the energy to punch back at the wife-beater in the song, but that’s the kind of energy you can draw from this sun.

And bearing with her a perfect redemption is Mindy Smith singing Come To Jesus, her voice as clear and blue as the sky itself.

We’re maybe four laps in and the easy part of the ride is over. So it’s a magical kind of random serendipity that brings up Tom Petty with I Won’t Back Down. Art is the stuff that sticks with you when everything else has fled. Petty has hundreds of letters from people who stood firm against unbearable pressure because of that simple little pop song.

And the fifth and sixth laps are the easiest times to quit, the easiest times to rationalize quitting, but Petty comes back again with The Waiting Is The Hardest Part.

And we can’t quit now, because here comes The Boss himself with the original version of Atlantic City. The universe itself is hot and tired, breathing hard, pushing harder. And a breeze has kicked up, pushing back.

But here is Needles and Pins, Sonny Bono’s private lesson on the power of sticking with it.

And then, just when the idea of going home and cooling off seems sweetest, there’s Ray Charles with Baby, What’d I Say. You can pound into what by now feels like a solid wall of heat because the light is right, the air is right and the music is completely right.

Warren Zevon moves things down the road with Accidentally Like a Martyr, a song undemanding enough that it is possible to sing along even with no breath.

At the eighth lap, Mindy Smith comes back, this time with Dolly Parton along, doing a haunting cover of Jolene. Nothing is easy by now, but quitting is not even an option: It’s the same ride home either way.

Even so, Elvis Costello is there to make it easier with an acoustic demo of Green Shirt, a blistering tempo in the blistering heat.

We rode hard for an hour in the heat — it was 97 by the time I got back home. It takes every bit of energy and will to move the bike that hard, that fast, but the mind is free, and the sky and the silence are vast and perfect.

But, brother — it is hot! Your breathing will settle down in 15 or 20 minutes, but the sweat will pour out of you for an hour or more.

If you love this desert, there’s nothing like it. In other places, this kind of recreation is an activity, something to plan for, to buy gear for, to drive to. Here it’s just here, a normal part of everyday life. It’s hotter than anyplace you’ve ever lived. But if you learn to love the heat, you’ll never live happily anywhere else…

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And another perk is getting to meet some wonderful people. Maybe I’ve been just plain lucky, but nearly everyone I’ve worked with since becoming a Realtor — clients, loan officers, escrow officers and other Realtors — have been truly delightful. One of my “new” friends is Jeanne Mohammadian, an agent with DPR Realty, who I met about 18 months ago, when we were taking GRI (Graduate REALTOR Institute) classes together. Like me, Jeanne really enjoys staging houses, but she doesn’t have the same level of interest that I have in electronic tools of our trade. So when her sister decided to sell her home in the Del Norte historic district, Jeanne gave me a gift — she invited me to come take photos. What a privilege!

The house was listed for $940,000, and I didn’t have any clients who would have been prospective buyers. But at the time, Greg and I had already begun to play with the idea of DistinctivePhoenix.com. So I had thought to build a page of photos on this site. I never did get around to it, the house went under contract, and the photos stayed dormant in my electronic scrapbook.

Then, when Greg was putting together “Distinctive Phoenix, The Movie,” I revisited pictures of my favorite houses to help feed the movie. Of course, many of those photos are from this beautiful home. Once you take a look, you’ll know what I mean … I’ve been sitting on this treasure much too long. It’s time for me to take these photos out of their drawer and share them.

Enjoy!

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The Palmcroft Apartments at 15th Avenue and McDowell are shuffling off to the dump at last. They are to be replaced by 87 decidedly upscale townhomes.

From the Arizona Republic:

The 1940s-era Palmcroft Apartments at the corner of 15th avenue and McDowell Road are scheduled to be demolished at 8:30 a.m. Monday. Developer Scott Haskins plans to build Encanto Parkside, a four-story, 87-unit upscale townhouse complex.

The apartments, located in the Encanto-Palmcroft Historic District, were built in the mid-1940s as inexpensive housing for returning GIs.

Some preservationists tried to keep the apartments from being torn down because they are part of Phoenix’s history. But the Haskins, who bought the 2.2-acre property in mid-2006, argued that in recent years, the apartments were a haven for drugs, robbery and prostitution, and some of that crime spilled over into the otherwise idyllic neighborhood to the north.

Construction on the Encanto Parkside development is expected to begin in early 2008, with completion slated for mid-2009. Sales prices are projected to be in the $400,000 to $900,000 range. Local architects Virginia Senior and Kim Kristoff of SRK Architects are designing the development.

Key quote from developer Scott Haskins:

“The Encanto-Palmcroft neighborhood is a treasure in the heart of Phoenix. With imagination and creativity, we are replacing tired, worn-out apartment buildings that had minimal historic value and destabilized the neighborhood with first-class, modern residences. I want this development to rejuvenate McDowell Road as a gateway to downtown, while enhancing property values of the surrounding neighborhood.”

Putting 87 townhouses on 2.2 acres sounds like a tight fit, but this project will be a better introduction to the splendor that is Encanto-Palmcroft than the crummy little slum buildings that were standing on that parcel until today.

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I showed a house today in one of the historic districts we farm. A copy of the neighborhood newsletter was laid out the mantle, along with the fliers and business cards. I took a quick peek to see our ad, the only print advertising we’re doing right now.

Here’s what I saw:

A piece of our ad had been cut out. There was nothing significant behind it, so it was clearly our ad that had been excused. This is what that ad should look like:

You can click on the image to see a PDF version, if you like.

What was cut? The highlighted copy in this picture:

The only thing I can figure is that the lister didn’t want the seller to see that part of our ad. Nice to know someone is paying attention…

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