Palm Springs is still hot and sometimes I'm on the news...
PALM SPRINGS -- It has been almost a year since I wrote about my first visit to Palm Springs.
I had only been to the Coachella Valley once about five years beforehand - for Coachella, naturally. But last year, my trip was all business. Business in Palm Springs? Yes. Because Palm Springs is full of hotels, and someone has to build them. I have always had an interest in learning more about the hospitality industry to bolster my lifestyle brand, so when the opportunity came up to invest in the coming-very-soon Arrive Hotel, I jumped... and then jumped right on a plane.
One of the hotel partners is an old co-worker from Facebook, which made touring the city hotel scene for a day seem much more like play than work. At the end of the day we gathered for poolside drinks at the Sparrows Lodge, (the rustic-fab boutique where they had put me up), and while enjoying my first desert sunset, I posted a picture to Instagram with the caption "I think I live here now." I wasn't really serious. I travel a lot and I say that every once in a while when I am really taken by a place (last year it was Bondi Beach, but I never actually moved). But a year, and many life-changing events later, it's funny to think how much of a self-fulfilling prophecy that was...
Since then, I have invested in a few more businesses including Ernest Coffee and Bootlegger Tiki, with a few more in development. I have a house (albeit one I planned to use as a vacation rental property not live in full-time as I have been), friends that oftentimes feel like family, and most recently a boyfriend (after not dating in New York for about three years). Even though my mail still gets delivered to Brooklyn, I feel more settled in Palm Springs every day.
A couple of weeks ago, I did an interview with the CBS 2 Local News about the entrepreneurial renaissance in the Coachella Valley. When we spoke before the interview, Anchorwoman Bianca Rae asked if I knew about the New York Time's article "Desert in Demand," and I couldn’t help but laugh because that article came out the same weekend of my first visit to Palm Springs. The ink had not yet dried on my investment paperwork when one of the partners forwarded the article citing a major boom in business in Palm Springs and noting that our hotel project got a significant shout-out in the story. The article, with its perfect timing, was the best affirmation that I was headed in the right direction with my own move to the desert.
When I spoke with Bianca, it was to give her a quote or two, but after chatting for a while, she decided to make me the center of her news story.
Sometimes I forget that so many people spend their lives dreaming of moving to New York City, so maybe I do stick out like a sore thumb doing the reverse and leaving an established life in Brooklyn for adventure and entrepreneurship in the desert. But like the hashtag says (and yes, I made it up) #PalmSpringsIsBetter.