Palm Springs has still got it

“You know, Lady Gaga just stayed here,” a fellow wedding guest whispers to me as we nose around the Gene Autry House, a 2,200-square-foot two-bedroom bungalow tucked between the adults-only pool and a pétanque court on the lush grounds of the Parker Palm Springs hotel. In 1961 Autry, a.k.a. Hollywood's Singing Cowboy and the star of more than 70 Westerns, purchased what was then California's first Holiday Inn and christened it Melody Ranch. He claimed this bungalow as his private residence. Later Merv Griffin, game show host and media mogul extraordinaire, took over the property for a few years before hotelier Jack Parker bought it in 2003. He renamed it and, to reimagine the design, tapped bon vivant home decorator Jonathan Adler, who swathed it in orange lacquer and added bronze sconces, jingly-jangly Moroccan blankets, and refrigerator-size lamps.

We're now standing in front of one of the bungalow's walls that's been covered in African wood masks. “The Parker is a gateway drug for falling in love with Palm Springs,” my new friend notes as we stare into countless pairs of eyes. “Wait, no,” he amends. “The Parker is more like Palm Springs' Ellis Island: Everyone lands here first.”

The Korakia Pensione

La Luna IV by Betty Gold at the Palm Springs Art Museum

That's true for me. It was the hotel I stayed at when I first visited the city 20 years ago—the same goes for Ryan and Jared, the grooms I'm here to celebrate. It's the last night of their four-day black-tie wedding extravaganza that's spread across the 13 acres of the Parker, the city's only true resort and one as dazzling, expensive, and camp as Elton John's sunglasses. But tonight the newlyweds are not toasting their love. Framed by a waterfall of fuchsia bougainvillea and the cinematic glow of the private pool, we raise our glasses to Palm Springs. “This is where we come to dream,” Ryan says. We all cheer in unison, “To Palm Springs!”

Palm Springs has always been a place to dream. A desert playground created out of pure yearning, out of a deep need to relax and heal—or to overdo it. It's a place to live out loud and keep secrets, a place for experimenting and creating. The first to arrive were the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, who discovered the area's restorative waters, settled around the springs and have lived here for thousands of years. The first non-Native settlers came in the late 19th century, banking on claims that the desert air would cure any respiratory ailment. Soon after, beginning in the 1920s, thanks to Palm Springs' proximity to Hollywood and its money (and to modern irrigation), the grass here was made greener. And it has stayed that way for over a century: a little desert town built on big promises and 350 days of sunshine a year.

But today it's raining. This is both utterly confounding and sublimely beautiful. It's a few weeks after the summer wedding, and the temperature, normally around 105 degrees, has dropped to a chilly 85. I'm waiting in the driveway of my vacation rental home in Vista Las Palmas, a prestigious neighborhood in the middle of town known for its museum-worthy midcentury-modern architecture and A-list celebrity homes. Then: Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin, Kirk Douglas. Now: Leonardo DiCaprio, Barry Manilow, Anna Camp. And some seriously deep green, long-blade paspalum grass, stared at longingly by my dog.

Indian Canyon Drive, a major thoroughfare

Seward Johnson's Forever Marilyn sculpture

As I listen to the pitter-patter of rain on my car roof, I feel my weekend vibes shift, less Play It as It Lays and more Bret Easton Ellis. My home for the weekend is called the Morse House, and like a lot of homes in this part of town, it's as pedigreed and blue-ribbon as a Westminster poodle—and just as righteous. I study the house's sharp intersection of rugged rock and brick latticework set against the backdrop of the San Jacinto Mountains, currently the color of a Ralph Lauren suede jacket. Fringed palm fronds flutter in the breeze.

Doug, the agent from the rental company Natural Retreats, arrives with the keys, and I follow him inside. My wet shoes squeak across the marble as I walk from room to room, the house revealing itself like a matryoshka doll. The decor (ottomans, sofas, swiveling velvet chairs, and avian statues) is Tom Ford Gucci–era louche. White terrazzo marble floors with cracks that are certainly well earned by the likes of dancing stilettos, dropped Champagne bottles, and jade macaws thrown in rage. Behind a hidden wood door, there's what seems to be a white tufted leather powder room–cum–sanitarium, with a 1960s black-and-white photo of a lithe Speedo-ed youth climbing out of a healing soak at the historic Agua Caliente spa (now The Spa at Séc-he).

Inside the Morse House, a Class 1 Historic Site and fabulous rental

Smart design is the rule in Palm Springs. It's actually written into the postwar planning codes. The home—“masterpiece,” Doug corrects—was built in 1961 by pioneering modern architects Dan Palmer and William Krisel. Together they doubled the size of Palm Springs, literally, and built the nearby Elvis Presley Honeymoon Hideaway. But, more so, what they and their designer peers did was establish the town as a canvas, a laboratory, a haven for creators.

“You can swim right up to your own bar,” Doug tells me. I follow the living room steps down and walk toward the trapezoidal pool on the other side of the glass, now at chest height. “The last time we had a party here, for Modernism Week,” he says, “there were hot mermen swimming all around like muscly goldfish.” I look down at my little mutt. His crooked tail raises into a question mark.

“Which Palm Springs are you?” the salesperson asks me. It's now August, and I am trying on an obscenely expensive Rick Owens suit at The Webster, a clothing store on North Palm Canyon Drive. On the mannequin it was pretty fabulous, as if a sea anemone played bass for Wham! But on me it had the flaccid quality of a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade float on Black Friday. “You know, are you midcentury modern? Hollywood regency? Golf, gays, grays, witchy lesbian, festival girls….” He puts items back on hangers. “Here to relax or play? Tacky bachelorette party or A-list wedding? Drugs, no drugs. Old Hollywood, New Hollywood. Part-time, year-round.” He tsk-tsks through his teeth. “Year-round desert people, they are….” He never completes the sentence.

A happy yellow sitting area at The Webster, a boutique in downtown Palm Springs

It's a good question. Perhaps I need a Harry Potter sorting hat instead of a suit. I find a Celine short-sleeve shirt with watercolor palm trees on it. On the nose, sure, but it's on sale. “It's a ‘fun’ shirt,” the salesperson says, with air quotes. He tells me it's perfect to wear and sit at the bar at the Tropicale restaurant before hitting the gayborhood. “The Tropicale is Palm Springs,” he adds. “That's where the daddies are, and they know everything that's going on, but be there by six or you won't get a seat.”

Later that day I parallel park and walk across the street to the Tropicale restaurant. I slither through a trio of women all in bridal veils taking a selfie while vaguely Cuban oontz-oontz beats spill down the stairs. At 6:05 I get the last bar stool at the Coral Seas Lounge, the Tropicale's bar. I peer through the low and flatteringly indirect light; it's like looking through an iPhone lens smeared with Vaseline. Every other bar stool is occupied by a man who, I assume, sees an age-management doctor. Faces in their 60s, bodies in their 40s. It is like having margaritas with centaurs. Indeed, each has chosen a “fun” short-sleeve button-front shirt.

Over comfort food I talk to Derek, a retired talent agent on the stool next to me. He is among a growing group of people who are living here year-round. “Almost,” he corrects, revealing a wide set of veneers. “Once the heat radiating from the parking lot at the grocery store is too much to bear, I have to leave.” Regardless of his residential status, he has watched as the creative community here has grown. He points in the direction of the nearby Bar Cecil restaurant and the new bar Beatons, and RTH, a high-end label with Western designs by Ralph Lauren alum René Holguin. “And have you been to Market Market yet? You have to go!” he exclaims about the highly curated vintage spot that's located in the old Stein Mart department store.

A mood board at RTH store

The next morning I'm walking through Market Market holding a 35-pound plaster head. Like all great vintage finds, I have no idea what I'll do with him (Terry, I've decided to call him). After passing by oil paintings, housewares, $200 Guns N' Roses tees, surfboards, objects, objets, and 47 Ken dolls repurposed as art, I find the owner, James Morelos, sitting at a glossy pink bar in the middle of the whole thing. He moved here full-time six years ago after launching a record label in Seattle and a hair salon in Brooklyn, and starting pop-up flea markets in upstate New York and San Francisco. “Yes, during the pandemic,” he says with a shrug, stroking his full beard. “And look, Palm Springs has really changed in those six years. It's always been fabulous. But what's changed is the scale. And the level.” He means that the offerings have become better in quality. “It's true, across the board,” he adds. “The Thompson Palm Springs opened. The film festival here is now the official start of awards season, and they all come for it. And come to my store! And when they walk in—Nicole Kidman, Gary Oldman—their jaws hit the floor because it's so good. I live for that.” He pauses. “It's actually helping the locals. Kids are staying rather than fleeing to the big cities. They see you can do cool stuff right here.”

Goods for sale at vintage emporium Market Market

Matthew Reader, an employee of Market Market, at work

Jack Wrather, who produced Lone Ranger and Lassie, used the profits from those beloved TV shows to purchase a four-acre estate designed by architect William F. Cody, a master of desert modernism. About 10 years ago LA-based designer Steve Hermann took Wrather's property, which had eventually become the Horizon hotel, and zhuzhed it into L'Horizon Resort & Spa, with 25 post-and-beam-ceilinged bungalows. Recently Hermann added the Hermann Bungalows, a sort of V-VIP resort within a resort that added an additional 24 even-swankier bungalows behind a high row of hedges.

Peering out at the pool from one of the Hermann Bungalows

It's Labor Day, and I'm in a lounge chair that's permanently submerged exactly 11 inches in the water—genius for maximum cooling while taking in the scene—when the very famous drag queen Trixie Mattel calls me on my cell. Mattel, who recently opened the very pink Trixie Motel across town, describes Palm Springs eloquently. “The town begs the visitor to ask themselves, ‘If you were somewhere where your most core self was accepted, what would you be like? Who would you hang out with, what would you dress up like?’” she says. “The entire town welcomes originals.”

A view from the Museum Trail above Palm Springs

Here at Wrather's old estate, I can't help but reflect on the fact that it was Old Hollywood that made this place so inclusive. Starting in the 1920s, stars came as much for sun, fun, golf, and tennis as for privacy. And because of two studio contract addenda. First, the two-hour rule, which meant actors had to be available for reshoots as needed, so they couldn't be farther away than a two-hour car ride. And second, some thing darker: morality clauses. The studio system exerted tight control over actors' personal lives, including their public image and relationships. Needless to say, homosexuality was forbidden. But in Palm Springs—cue the high hedges—there was a sense of safety that didn't exist in LA.

“Actors have been escaping Los Angeles for decades,” Anna Camp tells me later that afternoon. The Scream 7, Pitch Perfect, and You star now calls Palm Springs home. Like a lot of people, she gets wowed by the lore. “I love the classic Old Hollywood feel of going into hotel bars that Frank Sinatra and Marylin Monroe visited. And they shot Don't Worry Darling in my neighborhood!” Camp, who identifies as LGBTQ+, loves talking about her gay Hollywood forebears—despite the fact that fear laid the foundation for what Palm Springs is today: the most rainbow city (per capita) in the US. But what she really wants to tell me is to go to Bar Cecil.

The entry to Bar Cecil

A martini is poured at Bar Cecil.

It's an intimate genie's bottle of a restaurant that pays homage to the interdisciplinary genius of Cecil Beaton, with walls lined with Hirsts, Warhols, and Calder gouaches from the personal collection of two of its three owners, Richard Crisman and Jeff Brock. It opened five years ago, and quickly became Palm Springs' hardest table to score and its most New York– or LA-like restaurant (indeed, it's the baby of The Tower Bar and Restaurant and The Polo Bar in cuisine, crowd, and fully booked-ness). The menu is best described as midcentury country club: steaks, pork chops, fries, chocolate chip cookies, and a Fifty Dollar Martini served with a deviled egg, caviar, and a house pickled onion. (If you drink 10 of these souped-up cocktails at some point, you get your name on the wall; Camp is up there along with The Office's Mark Proksch.) There's also the Aniston Pavlova for dessert.

A few days later I have a drink with the third owner of Bar Cecil, John Janulis. We're at the team's newly opened cocktail bar, Beaton's, right next door to Bar Cecil. It's not even 5 p.m., and there's already a sign that says they are fully committed for the evening. “It's not that the old Palm Springs is back,” says Janulis, who also developed the Villa Royale hotel nearby and its Spanish Mediterranean restaurant lined with Gucci wallpaper, Del Rey. Tall and tanned, the Portland native moved to Palm Springs, yes, during the pandemic. He looks like a tatted Josh Lucas and takes up an endearing amount of space in the cozy velvet booth, like a golden retriever unaware of its size. “It's not that we're in some new era of Palm Springs either.” He pauses, as if truly pondering which Palm Springs in the metaverse we are in. He snaps his fingers with an aha as he decides how to best define this time and this place. “Look, this town has always served desire. It always will.”

Casa Cody's striped bathrobes

One of Casa Cody's two pools

Stay

Thompson Palm Springs: The city's newest property has 168 rooms, two excellent restaurants, two pools, one wine bar, and no shortage of DJs. From $269

Casa Cody: The oldest continually operating hotel in town, this intimate series of 30 rooms and bungalows in the Historic Tennis Club neighborhood is where Chaplin liked to stay. Plus, the original owner, Harriet Cody, was Buffalo Bill's cousin. From $109

Villa Royale: The clubby 1940s property is as cool as the oil painting of Debbie Harry in the lobby. There's craft cocktails by the pool, tapas at the Del Rey restaurant, and complimentary cookies and milk laid out every night at eight. From $190

Korakia Pensione: At this Morocco-meets-the-Med oasis, you'll find gauzy linen curtains, citrus trees, sun-baked adobe walls, and softly thumping music that's getting a party going or winding one down. From $490

Inside Bar Issi, the Italian restaurant within Thompson Palm Springs

The heaping Reuben from Sherman's Deli & Bakery

Eat and drink

Bar Issi: Tucked into the Thompson, this vibrantly wallpapered Italian spot brings a nightly scene to downtown's main drag. Start with the house-made bread and trio of butters, and end with the pistachio soft-serve.

Melvyn's: It's all bow-tied waiters and white tablecloths, but this Rat Pack fave isn't stuffy. The menu is classic Palm Springs fare; get the steak Diane and a martini. Frank did. Table 13 was his.

Birba: Lit by the glow of hanging lights, this garden patio pizza spot has a fun bar vibe and very good, very thin pizzas that pair surprisingly well with a habanero-infused Heated Snake margarita.

Chef Tanya's Kitchen: Tanya Petrovna (who opened the city's first vegetarian restaurant in 1990) started making this spot's tofu banh mi and seitan Cubanos in 2017; she's now rightly a cult figure in town.

Shop

RTH: A little hippie, a bit Western, a touch preppy. This downtown store with genderless clothing, jewelry, ceramics, bags, and hats is the manifestation of René Holguin, a Ralph Lauren alum.

A La Mod: Don't call it midcentury, because that's short-sighted. This must-see showroom and store does offer museum-worthy Jacobsens, Pontis, and Eameses, but also rare finds and pieces influenced by the Memphis Group from beloved Palm Springs interior legend Steve Chase.