Unlike hell, you can return from Phoenix

    Chicagoans, nestled in the bosom of the greatest city on earth, have limited interest in the bland nowheres beyond its borders. Therefore, as a columnist for Chicago’s preeminent daily newspaper, I try not to bore Chicago readers with places that aren’t Chicago and therefore don’t really matter.
     However. With temperatures in Chicago predicted to hit 100 degrees Wednesday, I feel obligated to share my recent experience in a certain sun-blasted city, despite it not being Chicago.
     Specifically, Phoenix.
     If you know one thing about Phoenix — and who doesn’t? — you know it is very, very hot. Surpassing 110 degrees for 31 consecutive days this summer. Fate dictated I fly there last week.
     Going to Phoenix in August must seem mad. In my defense, it was one of those duties parents sometimes find themselves shouldering, in this case delivering a cat to its owner, a young man associated with the federal judiciary there.
     While I did consider simply landing, handing over the beloved pet, then catching the next fight home — it is Phoenix, after all — that seemed a failure of imagination. Besides, there was a single aspect of Phoenician life I was curious about: the temperature. What must that be like? The hottest I’ve endured as a resident of Chicago was 105 on July 13, 1995. I still remember walking one block to the dry cleaners, then returning to our apartment on Pine Grove Avenue and lying down, utterly drained. 

     But 111 degrees is ... not bad, particularly if you are lounging by a pool. Yes, the concrete is too hot to step upon with bare feet, the metal rail leading into the water too hot to touch. But once you are submerged up to your chin, 111 degrees is just fine. It is, as they say, a dry heat.
     Beyond the heat, I couldn’t imagine what else Phoenix might offer. An art museum of some sort, no doubt. But so vastly inferior to the Art Institute that going would just be sad. Third-rate works by familiar names, larded with forgettable local efforts. I never considered going.
     As my host drove me around, showing off the Sandra Day O’Connor United States Courthouse — quite beautiful — Phoenix unfolded, a rather uninspiring hodgepodge of junior colleges and welding supply yards, interspersed with occasional streets of high-rises of the most anodyne architecture imaginable. Occasional silhouettes of mountains in the background, trying to add interest. It was as if someone shuffled together Franklin Park and Central Station and began dealing cards.

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