“You know, Lady Gaga just stayed here,” a fellow wedding ceremony visitor whispers to me as we nostril across the Gene Autry House, a 2,200-square-foot two-bedroom bungalow tucked between the adults-only pool and a pétanque court docket on the luxurious grounds of the Parker Palm Springs hotel. In 1961 Autry, a.ok.a. Hollywood’s Singing Cowboy and the star of greater than 70 Westerns, bought what was then California’s first Holiday Inn and christened it Melody Ranch. He claimed this bungalow as his personal residence. Later Merv Griffin, sport present host and media mogul extraordinaire, took over the property for a number of years earlier than hotelier Jack Parker purchased it in 2003. He renamed it and, to reimagine the design, tapped bon vivant house 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 entrance of one of many bungalow’s partitions that is been lined in African wooden masks. “The Parker is a gateway drug for falling in love with Palm Springs,” my new good friend notes as we stare into numerous pairs of eyes. “Wait, no,” he amends. “The Parker is more like Palm Springs’ Ellis Island: Everyone lands here first.”
That’s true for me. It was the lodge I stayed at after I first visited the town 20 years in the past—the identical goes for Ryan and Jared, the grooms I’m right here to have fun. It’s the final night time of their four-day black-tie wedding ceremony extravaganza that is unfold throughout the 13 acres of the Parker, the town’s solely true resort and one as dazzling, costly, and camp as Elton John’s sun shades. But tonight the newlyweds are usually not toasting their love. Framed by a waterfall of fuchsia bougainvillea and the cinematic glow of the personal pool, we elevate 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 all the time been a spot to dream. A desert playground created out of pure craving, out of a deep must calm down and heal—or to overdo it. It’s a spot to stay out loud and hold secrets and techniques, a spot for experimenting and creating. The first to reach had been the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, who found the world’s restorative waters, settled across the springs and have lived right here for 1000’s of years. The first non-Native settlers got here within the late nineteenth century, banking on claims that the desert air would remedy any respiratory ailment. Soon after, starting within the Twenties, because of Palm Springs’ proximity to Hollywood and its cash (and to trendy irrigation), the grass right here was made greener. And it has stayed that method for over a century: somewhat desert city constructed on huge guarantees and 350 days of sunshine a 12 months.