Talk:Palm Springs, California

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Please use bibliographic sources. The person who plugged in all the census and "Other ethnicities" data did not use any sources, none of which can be confirmed as a result. I have removed all ethnic/census data relating to the Coachella Valley -- this entry is about Palm Springs, not the Coachella Valley.

--Kimchifan 13:24, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree, Kim. Informative, but unsourced and would be difficult to prove. I find similar demographic data on other Coachella Valley articles. It does relate to the area, not necessarily Palm Springs. Btw, I checked out the Walter Annenberg article and was one of Tamarisk club's members. He is indeed an American Jew, but the issue is we all must improve articles' standards to make wikipedia look organized and appropriate. Of course, my community (Palm Springs area, but I live in Indio) has a racially diverse population and a large percentage of retirees are from European countries, Canada and Australia. Did you examine the US census data on the number of persons per nationality? I could spend time on the census information for the Palm Springs area, and to contact the Coachella Valley Historic Museum in Indio with historical exhibits on the area's ethnic groups.+ Mike D 26 04:54, 28 October 2006 (UTC) 00:31, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds great -- keep in mind that this entry is about the City of Palm Springs, not the Palm Springs region.

I would love to see Walter Annenberg appear in the Jewish section -- thanks for checking this out and sourcing it with citations. Although, let's only include him if he was relevant to the City of Palm Springs specifically. Thanks!

--Kimchifan 00:56, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

All I know on the claims on Palm Springs was an established colony called Palm Valley, by two sun-seeking transplants: Judge John Guthrie McCallum, an American of Scottish descent, and Welwood Murray, a Scottish immigrant came over from the US East coast. The two men sold land allotments to Americans, Canadians, and British nationals. It may explain the high percentage of Scots, Irishmen and New Englanders were in Palm Springs during the early 1900's. I can name a very useful source to clarify the city's history and demographic patterns: Facts and legends: The Village of Palm Springs by Sally Presley, copyright 2002-fourth printing. It had little detail on the ethnic background, but the book definitely mentioned McCallum and Murray as co-founders of Palm Springs as a winter-residence agrarian community.+ Mike D 26 05:07, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The history of McCallum's land absconding and Murray's hotel are well documented in many sources. However, I haven't seen any sources that name the ethnicity of the men who purchased land from McCallum's land syndicate during the great land sale of the 1880s. I would be surprised if this data exists.

One should also keep in mind that most of the purchasers of land during the great land sale did so for agricultural pursuits, and that all of these efforts failed. So I don't believe there is relevance between the ethnicity of the land purchasers and the eventual ethnic makeup of Palm Springs, which began as a result of a completely different industry: tourism. In other words, all the land purchases never stuck around, so their ethnicity is a moot point. --Kimchifan 23:33, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The land demolition project on section 14 was unfortunate, kim. how come you disagree on the deleted edits on racism played a big role? of course it did, so was the section's poor families and elderly on fixed incomes. Back then, the city of Palm Springs was an eyesore and the council pick a wrong way to improve the city's tourism economy. Section 14 was on an indian reservation, the Agua caliente confirmed the rights of that parcel of land. I want to make clear most of the removed residents are indians, not blacks (i know many blacks lived in the section), and the edit on Latino history in P.S. had no reason for deletion. kim, you own the article? I think you're up to something, I know race isn't an easy subject to bring straight forward. I'm hispanic/Latino from coachella, but I been to Palm springs a million times I lost count. I believe class and income are major factors to people can't buy a home or pay the rent. This is an issue to address in palm springs and down valley. The ethnicity edits dont look biased, but let loose on issues we live with every day, no matter where you live. - ernesto

the deleted edit i talked about --

<<<In a less glamorous light, the mid-century period was also marked by a two significant events which exposed elements of the City's underlying problems with corruption, racism, and poverty. Palm Springs' multi-generational Latino or Mexican-American community shared the same levels of neglect alike the numerous African Americans on the city's eastern and central sections. Palm Springs' hotels and restaurants, other business facilities, public schools and churches are segregated or barred entrance to blacks and sometimes to Latinos and Asians. The United Jewish Citizens of the Desert fought diligently against discrimination against local Jewish residents, many are celebrities and businessmen made Palm Springs their home. The city government was at the time, "arch-conservative" or held as reactionary bigots to the needs and concerns of blacks, Latinos and others, a contradiction to Palm Springs' popular image as a haven of tolerance and diversity we know of today. [citation needed] In a less glamorous light, the mid-century period was also marked by a two significant events which exposed elements of the City's underlying problems with corruption, racism, and poverty. Palm Springs' multi-generational Latino (Chicano or Mexican-American) community shared the same levels of neglect alike the numerous African Americans on the city's eastern and central sections. Palm Springs' hotels and restaurants, other business facilities, public schools and churches are segregated or barred entrance to blacks and sometimes to Jews, Latinos and Asians. City government was at the time, arch-conservative or held as reactionary bigots to the needs and concerns of blacks, Latinos and others, a contradiction to Palm Springs' popular image as a haven of tolerance and diversity we know of today. The local Agua Caliente Cahuilla were marginalized on their lands, despite thousands of acres sold to non-Indians, that legally belonged to tribal jurisdiction. In 1959, landmark legislation by the Secretary of the Interior equalized allotted Indian lands, thereby setting the stage for development of Indian lands within the City of Palm Springs. This same legislation, however, recognizing the potential value of Indian lands within the boundaries of a world famous resort, also called for the appointment of conservators and guardians to "protect" Indians and their estates from "artful and designing persons"5 who might otherwise cheat them out of their properties, which could now be legally sold by the individual tribal members who owned them. By declaring Indians as "incompetent," court appointed conservators and guardians took control of a majority of Indian estates. A major oversight of the program was the appointment of judges, lawyers, and business people as Indian conservators and guardians -- the very people the program sought to protect Indians and their estates from. The program was administered by the Indio Superior Court's Judge Hilton McCabe, subject of the Ed Ainsworth's Golden Checkerboard. Bolstered by the ability to control valuable Indian estates, the conservatorship program fostered corruption among those conservators and administrators with their own economic agendas. A series of Pulitzer Prize winning Press Enterprise articles authored by journalist George Ringwald exposed such instances of excessive fees, fee-splitting, and other types of questionable conduct.6 The conservatorship program was officially ended in 1968 after the Secretary of the Interior's Palm Springs Task Force likewise exposed it as fraudulent and corrupt.7 >>>

kim and mike, please adress the reason for deletion or overedits. the entry is on palm springs, not on the area. he hadn't took time to find a web iste for the united jewish citizens of the desert. is he anti-semitic, homophobe or got a problem of rich white people? oh no i want to adress it on his talk page (warnings first, blocks second). I dont know it's the same mike on other desert cities articles. his edits seem to tell me he played the 'race card'. Mike, check back on the rules (can't you tell edits on sensitive subjects are fast deleted?) and post your request for new edits on kim's talk page. he claims to live in indio, his edits in the indio article don't walk the line on standards. his edits to coachella I think is unsourced...they are from the local media (gangs, drugs, school dropouts, etc). Mike defends his edits and stated he wanted to discuss local culture, but you can't assume hispanics are in charge of coachella. its true over 90 percent of residents in east valley (what ive heard in the vine) is Latino. the thing is kim, you had the right to delete much of his race-card edits on blacks, asians, etc. i dont think jews or gays are a race. but they lived in enclaves or safe havens. i mention areas of choice exist in today's america. does he want shock value in a high credit encyclopedia? not me, not you. the second half was deleted every day, someone keeps redoing the african american community edit to make it hard to undestand. they need to stop and i told Mike to be careful on edits relate to subjects that can lead to problems. - ernesto

No pictures!? Surely someone must have been at Palm Springs and taken photos of it. Ever since I read Generation X I've been wanting to see what it looks like.

abelson 13:59, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

I have a few waiting to be uploaded. It looks like a standard California all-suburb-no-urb city, hard to get a distinctive image for it. Stan 16:43, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ah, why didn't you say so? I work in Palm Springs. Downtown is quite unique as is the rather commanding view of Mount San Jacinto. Drop me a line with photo requests. - Lucky 6.9 7 July 2005 06:21 (UTC)

The original inhabitants of Palm Springs were the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. The Indians named the area "la palma de la mano de Dios", which means the palm of God's Hand.

This looks like Spanish. According to the Cahuilla article, there are only a few Cahuillan speakers so I'm pretty sure they have their own language. Can some check this Kimun 05:08, 12 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Right you are. I've rewritten the Founding section to be a bit more historically accurate. Details on the Agua Caliente band came from their casino weboage, http://www.aguacaliente.org/index.php?PID=CULTURAL .

The page you reference above was composed by ACBCI, who are a business entity. (The cultural arm of the tribe is the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, who are the best source for accurate historical data.) As a result, the ACBCI page unfortunately contains a lot of inaccurate data. I have updated the Early History and Mid-Century sections with footnotes to substantiate all the data presented.

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://www.thedeserthunter.com/
  • In Palm Springs, California on Sun Jul 16 21:24:57 2006, Socket Error: (-2, 'Name or service not known')
  • In Palm Springs, California on Mon Jul 17 17:26:26 2006, Socket Error: (-2, 'Name or service not known')
  • In Palm Springs, California on Thu Jul 27 01:13:26 2006, Socket Error: (-2, 'Name or service not known')

maru (talk) contribs 05:13, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some comments and suggestions for the author of the section on Local Slang:

Desert rat. I wonder about both the meaning and the etymology given for the term "desert rat." It seems to me the term means simply a person who lives in the desert (in this case Palm Springs) and that it's more likely to have derived from the local kangaroo rat [1] than from the 1960s Rat Pack [[2]]. It seems neither derogatory nor flattering. I'd also question that it's used by more than one or two people, if that, to describe a badly dressed, overweight, unwashed man. Given the scarcity of sustenance in the desert, it seems unlikely that being overweight would be one of the desert rat's salient characteristics. --Rensselaerswick1637 16:08, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response from author. Agreed this term is quite often used in a neutral sense, but just as often it is used in a negative light, locally at least. But agreed the fat-man example can be stripped out of the definition. It was more tongue-in-cheek than anything. But regarding "lack of sustenance" in the desert... are you kidding me? This is a metropolitan area, not Death Valley. --Kimchifan 00:15, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're right; I expressed myself badly in the "sustenance" comment. What I meant was that the kangaroo rat or desert rat -- the animal, not the person -- wouldn't be likely to be overweight since there's little to eat in the desert. I still think it's the animal rather than the Rat Pack that's the more likely source of the term used for people who live in the desert. Also, if "desert rat" means a full-time resident of the desert, as the Wikipedia entry says, then who is it who's using it negatively? Visitors to describe the locals? Or locals to (negatively) describe themselves? --Rensselaerswick1637 16:08, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, locals use it negatively to describe other locals. There is a certain type of local here which is largely ambivalent about Palm Springs culture. They want nothing to do with mid-century fun-in-the-sun. They were simply born here, are sun tanned beyond recognition, and spend their days where they can get feee air conditioning.

I'm not convinced about the "real" rat connection to the term. I've always had it explained to me in "rat pack" terms. But I don't find any print sources backing up this assertion, outside of materials which deal with the Rat Pack's activities in Palm Springs. --Kimchifan 18:14, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Snowbird. Is there really anything particularly Palm Springs-local about the term "snowbird"? Isn't it used all over North America to refer to people who go south for the winter? While some full-time residents may dislike snowbirds or speak pejoratively of them, the term itself seems neutral, and the sentence about how it can be used, whether neutrally or negatively, seems unnecessary. --Rensselaerswick1637 16:08, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response from author. True enough. This can be stripped out. --Kimchifan 00:15, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scalping. While scalping certainly throws dust into the air temporarily, and probably aggravates some people's allergies, and may be disliked by some residents (mainly those who don't have lawns or don't play golf?), it seems a stretch to call it "controversial." --Rensselaerswick1637 16:08, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response from author. It seems me you may not be a local. This is a big issue and the letters-to-the-editor on this subject are countless. It is not a strech by any means, nor is dust pollution or blow-sand. --Kimchifan 00:15, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK. --Rensselaerswick1637 16:08, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

--Rensselaerswick1637 17:09, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians has added an exciting vibrancy to downtown with the luxurious Spa Resort Hotel and Casino, offering gambling opportunities, restaurants, and spa facilities. The spa facilities draw their thermal waters from the original hot springs which gave rise the names "Palm Springs" and "Agua Caliente."

This mention of a commercial enterprise (a hotel and gambling casino) in a list of museums and points of interest seems inappropriate. With its link to the casino's web site and its mention of "exciting vibrancy," "gambling opportunities," and the "luxurious" hotel, this seems more an advertisement than an encyclopedia-worthy fact. Why shouldn't the town's other hotels -- as well as its fast-food restaurants, gas stations, and grocery stores -- list their exciting sleeping, eating, fueling, and shopping opportunities here too?

--Rensselaerswick1637 18:03, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Would "Grande Luxe" be okay? (kidding.) starkt 10:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Although I did not write this myself, it is not so cut and dry as you describe. ACBCI is particularly significant locally because they are the aboriginal inhabitants of the region. The Palm Springs Spa was also the towns first large-scale commercial enterprise; likewise the casino is a major feature of the downtown area. When you are a small town, it is arguably less relevant to draw such a clear line between commercial and non-commercial features.

The hot springs are likewise historically important to the town as they were the original draw for health-seekers and tourists. They also gave the town its name.

I do agree however that the use of "luxurious" is not appropriate here, and the first line should be reconstructed to sound less commercial.

--Kimchifan 00:21, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]