Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

Tequila tubbing

Tequila and hot tub dim the memory of calamitous 2016

Brooklyn gave the gift of tequila and hot tub for my birthday.
Brooklyn gave the gift of tequila and hot tub for my birthday.

if you paid any attention to the reductive echo chamber of social media last year, you’d know that 2016 was without a doubt the most merciless hope-strangler in all recorded history. For one thing, just about every musician, actor/tress, third-world politician, and peripheral celebrity worth 140 characters of sentimental Twitter babble managed to kick the bucket. Then there was Orange Hitler blitzkrieging the nation with an unanticipated presidential election, Aleppo, Hurricane Matthew, the Chicano Park tragedy, Pulse, the Brussels bombing, Bastille Day in Nice, Ghost Ship, and too many more. If only to twist the knife, the inventor of the red Solo cup succumbed to stroke complications in late December, underscoring the year’s unofficial slogan: “Party’s Over 2016” (or, according to around 94,000 Facebook posts, “#fuckyou2016”).

A secluded hot tub and view for $70 a night. Not bad.

Loath to admit that the #blessed times really are a distant memory and the only good news is fake news, my girlfriend Brooklyn and I fled civilization in mid-December to celebrate my 32nd birthday in relative solitude. Brooklyn found an Airbnb Jacuzzi and cottage rental outside of Joshua Tree, so we passed most of the weekend sipping tequila in the bubbles as sheets of sand and rain swept across the valley.

Sponsored
Sponsored
An omen fills the sky above Desert Christ Park.

But apocalypse was hot on our hoodie strings as we wandered into Desert Christ Park on the edge of town. The five-acre garden of 40 ash-white statues was built by artist/engineer Frank Antone Martin and dedicated on Easter Sunday 1951 by the Reverend Eddie Garver. At the time of its inauguration, the park was home to just one piece: Martin’s ten-foot-tall, five-ton Unwanted Christ. Conceived as a symbol for world peace, Martin’s sculpture was denied its intended perch on the rim of the Grand Canyon due to separation of church and state issues and ended up on Garver’s hillside plot overlooking main drag Yucca Valley. Since then, the park has fallen into eerie disrepair. A 1992 earthquake shook loose many a sculpted head, foot, face, and hand, exposing wiry, rusted rebar bones beneath. Martin’s jilted vision of peace, concrete as it may have been, is crumbling in time. We huddled in the wind snapping photos and, as if it were an omen from Unwanted Christ himself, a rainbow appeared above the dilapidated figures. The world is shattered shit, it seemed to say, but there’s hope over them hills.

Actor Pat Buttram was one of many Wild West stars to film at Pioneertown in its heyday.

Or maybe not. Maybe we’re all doomed. It didn’t matter much as we tequila-tubbed through sunset. World be damned, we were content to marvel at the fact that Uber works in the middle of nowhere and by the time we arrived at the movie-set cantina of Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, the global calamity of 2016 felt like something from another lifetime. So, for that matter, did the bar. Built in the ’40s as part of a live-in Wild West film set, Pappy & Harriet’s opened its doors to the public in 1982 as a Tex-Mex restaurant and music venue. These days, the bar is one of California’s most renowned off-the-beaten-path stops for indie and mainstream acts alike. The interior suggests you’ve stumbled into a carnival shooting gallery where, at any minute, a crotchety miner will pop up by a taxidermied moose head squealing, “Easy does it, pilgrim!”

Mariachi El Bronx ended the year on a high note at Pappy & Harriet’s.

Instead, Mariachi El Bronx answered the age-old inquiry: what happens when an L.A. hardcore punk band trades in their black tees and jeans for charro suits? Pure magic, as it turns out. Ecstatic trumpets and thumping guitarrón left the crowd howling for an encore, and they got it. Forget what you heard, 2017. The party is just getting started.

The latest copy of the Reader

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Reader writer Chris Ahrens tells the story of Windansea

The shack is a landmark declaring, “The best break in the area is out there.”
Next Article

At Comedor Nishi a world of cuisines meet for brunch

A Mexican eatery with Japanese and French influences
Brooklyn gave the gift of tequila and hot tub for my birthday.
Brooklyn gave the gift of tequila and hot tub for my birthday.

if you paid any attention to the reductive echo chamber of social media last year, you’d know that 2016 was without a doubt the most merciless hope-strangler in all recorded history. For one thing, just about every musician, actor/tress, third-world politician, and peripheral celebrity worth 140 characters of sentimental Twitter babble managed to kick the bucket. Then there was Orange Hitler blitzkrieging the nation with an unanticipated presidential election, Aleppo, Hurricane Matthew, the Chicano Park tragedy, Pulse, the Brussels bombing, Bastille Day in Nice, Ghost Ship, and too many more. If only to twist the knife, the inventor of the red Solo cup succumbed to stroke complications in late December, underscoring the year’s unofficial slogan: “Party’s Over 2016” (or, according to around 94,000 Facebook posts, “#fuckyou2016”).

A secluded hot tub and view for $70 a night. Not bad.

Loath to admit that the #blessed times really are a distant memory and the only good news is fake news, my girlfriend Brooklyn and I fled civilization in mid-December to celebrate my 32nd birthday in relative solitude. Brooklyn found an Airbnb Jacuzzi and cottage rental outside of Joshua Tree, so we passed most of the weekend sipping tequila in the bubbles as sheets of sand and rain swept across the valley.

Sponsored
Sponsored
An omen fills the sky above Desert Christ Park.

But apocalypse was hot on our hoodie strings as we wandered into Desert Christ Park on the edge of town. The five-acre garden of 40 ash-white statues was built by artist/engineer Frank Antone Martin and dedicated on Easter Sunday 1951 by the Reverend Eddie Garver. At the time of its inauguration, the park was home to just one piece: Martin’s ten-foot-tall, five-ton Unwanted Christ. Conceived as a symbol for world peace, Martin’s sculpture was denied its intended perch on the rim of the Grand Canyon due to separation of church and state issues and ended up on Garver’s hillside plot overlooking main drag Yucca Valley. Since then, the park has fallen into eerie disrepair. A 1992 earthquake shook loose many a sculpted head, foot, face, and hand, exposing wiry, rusted rebar bones beneath. Martin’s jilted vision of peace, concrete as it may have been, is crumbling in time. We huddled in the wind snapping photos and, as if it were an omen from Unwanted Christ himself, a rainbow appeared above the dilapidated figures. The world is shattered shit, it seemed to say, but there’s hope over them hills.

Actor Pat Buttram was one of many Wild West stars to film at Pioneertown in its heyday.

Or maybe not. Maybe we’re all doomed. It didn’t matter much as we tequila-tubbed through sunset. World be damned, we were content to marvel at the fact that Uber works in the middle of nowhere and by the time we arrived at the movie-set cantina of Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, the global calamity of 2016 felt like something from another lifetime. So, for that matter, did the bar. Built in the ’40s as part of a live-in Wild West film set, Pappy & Harriet’s opened its doors to the public in 1982 as a Tex-Mex restaurant and music venue. These days, the bar is one of California’s most renowned off-the-beaten-path stops for indie and mainstream acts alike. The interior suggests you’ve stumbled into a carnival shooting gallery where, at any minute, a crotchety miner will pop up by a taxidermied moose head squealing, “Easy does it, pilgrim!”

Mariachi El Bronx ended the year on a high note at Pappy & Harriet’s.

Instead, Mariachi El Bronx answered the age-old inquiry: what happens when an L.A. hardcore punk band trades in their black tees and jeans for charro suits? Pure magic, as it turns out. Ecstatic trumpets and thumping guitarrón left the crowd howling for an encore, and they got it. Forget what you heard, 2017. The party is just getting started.

Comments
Sponsored

The latest copy of the Reader

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

San Diego beaches not that nice to dogs

Bacteria and seawater itself not that great
Next Article

Rapper Wax wishes his name looked like an email password

“You gotta be search-engine optimized these days”
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

This Week’s Reader This Week’s Reader