• 
• 
• 

You don't come to see things. You come to chill out

Related Articles

• If you go ...

It was not really until I was naked in the hot tub with the minister and his wife that I began to appreciate the character of the desert. The reverend put it nicely. Lolling in the steaming water, where his buttocks appeared like two pale islands, he said, "All sorts of quirky stuff happens here. The desert is a tolerant place."

At first glance, the Sonoran Desert in California's outback looks a severe sort of place with its bleak hallucinogenic landscapes and its cactus spikes the size of kitchen knives. But the point of deserts is that feeling of remoteness from the rest of the world. The desert is the destination of escapists, eccentrics and hedonists. The desert is the place where anything goes.

Palm Springs has been dealing with anything going for almost a century. In the early years of Hollywood, location scouts arrived looking for backdrops of palm trees, desert dunes, and the kind of canyons that cowboys liked to gallop through. The Sheikh was shot here with the smouldering Rudolph Valentino. Theda Bara, the original screen vamp, minced up and down the Nile in Palm Springs.

Having come to work, many stars stayed to play. In the days when actors were under contract, their employers stipulated that they were not allowed to travel more than two hours from the studios. Two hours brought them to Palm Springs, which had the added benefit of a perfect climate 10 months of the year. The desert was their escape from the goldfish bowl of Hollywood.

Palm Springs' walk of fame, where the names of resident stars are embedded in the pavements, runs from Mary Pickford to Chevy Chase and includes Lucille Ball, William Holden, Cary Grant, Bob Hope, Clark Gable, Steve McQueen, Doris Day, Catherine Deneuve and Marlene Dietrich. Greta Garbo came here to be alone. Marilyn Monroe was allegedly discovered at the Racquet Club, where Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn conducted their discreet affair. Bogart and Bacall were fans. Elvis and Priscilla had their honeymoon here. Robert Downey Jr was busted here. Brad and Angelina holiday here. Frank Sinatra did it his way in the valley for almost 50 years, with a succession of wives and not a few of his Rat Pack buddies, and is buried in the valley not far from his former home.

Wedged between the seared flanks of the San Jacinto, the Santa Rosa, and the San Bernadino mountains, the Coachella Valley is a string of exclusive towns that merge seamlessly into one another - Rancho Mirage, Cathedral City, Palm Desert, Palm Springs. The latter has managed to give its name to the whole oasis.

Had you dropped in by parachute you could be forgiven for not getting the desert thing. Palm Springs is a resort town, where everyone gets to be the pampered celebrity. There are things to see. The Joshua Tree National Park, one of America's most spectacular landscapes, is a half-hour drive away. But you don't come to see things. You come to chill out, to lie round the pool, to have mud masks, to take in a leisurely round of golf.

In such a place, it is all about the accommodation. The resorts come with high walls, sprinkler-fed lawns, cabanas with cooling mist sprays, and spas with Botox injections and breast implants on the treatment menu. This is holidaying in the upmarket suburbs - a sort of Beverly Hills in the desert - manicured, neat, orderly, and completely stress-free.

But if that sounds like a monoculture, it is not. Everyone wants in on the desert thing, and Palm Springs has emerged in the new millennium with more identities than Madonna. Celebrity playground is only the beginning. It runs the gamut from retirement retreat to nudist colony.

We'll get to the nudity later. Let's give a moment first to the senior citizens. They are old people but not as we know them. Had they retired in Florida, perhaps, they might have settled down to slow decline. But out here the old folks come over slightly strange. Hormone-replaced and Viagra-fuelled, face-lifted and tummy-tucked, yoga-powered and loaded with a lifetime's loot, they seem to think that retirement is freedom and now is the time to party. They cruise about town in sporty convertibles or on Harley Davidsons. They wear T-shirts that say things like Stand Back, I'm Spending the Kids' Inheritance.

The old folks even have a show to celebrate their lifestyle. The Palm Springs Follies is an evening of rollicking vaudeville in which the dance troupe are the stars. All are professionals who have worked on Broadway, in films and on TV. The youngest showgirl is 58, the oldest is 84. In feathers and sequins and leotards, they looked fabulous, though it probably helped that I was 10 rows back. It probably also helped that Palm Springs is the cosmetic surgery capital of the universe, the place where LA matrons come to lounge round poolside bungalows until the bandages come off.

But the surprise of Palm Springs is not the vitamin-assisted old people. It is everybody else. The OAPs were having such a ball that now all sorts of people are getting in on the act. Golfers come for some of the best courses in America. Serious shoppers come for the designer boutiques. Spa hounds come for the mud packs, the celestial showers, the deep-tissue massages. Hikers come to trek in some of the most exhilarating landscapes this side of the Grand Canyon.

At spring break, boys in surfer shorts and girls in thongs take over the town to drink beer and swap saliva. In January, at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, the celebrity count soars. In early May, music heads arrive for the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, one of the hottest gigs of its kind in California. In April the gay community comes out in droves for the White Festival.

Nothing says more about Palm Springs' status than the influx of gay visitors. In the gay world, where antennae are so acutely tuned to what is hip and what is not, Palm Springs is a few notches above Barbara Streisand, and almost up there with Kylie Minogue, as cultural icon. There are now over 40 "gay-friendly" resorts and hotels in the valley.

Perhaps it was the gay guys who started the clothing optional thing. Palm Springs has an active sideline in hotels where the guests are able to strip off. I checked into one with my toothbrush. A part of me was dreading it. I didn't mind getting naked but I wasn't sure I needed to see a lot of other people naked.

There seems to be a golden rule about naturist resorts: the people you would like to see naked are never there; the people you don't want to see naked are there in droves.

In the end, it was midweek and there was almost no one there, except the minister and his wife. In the hot tub, they put me right. It is all about body acceptance, the reverend explained. We don't judge, we accept. He gave nudity a vaguely spiritual air. It is not about seeing the body, he said, but about ignoring it and seeing the person.

I was busy ignoring his wife's free-floating breasts. But I realised he was right. The desert is about acceptance. From the early shenanigans at the Racquet Club to the latest Spring Break weekends, Palm Springs has always turned an indulgent eye on its visitors.