Getaways
Getaway Guide: Palm Springs - continued
By Rebecca Philps published Oct 9, 2012
There’s more to this town than retiree golfing and outlet shopping. A newly found youthful energy, low airfare, and attractive real estate are the real draws for West Coasters
Weeklong Escape
Settle in for a longer stay (airfares out of Bellingham are significantly cheaper if you fly midweek) and take in what makes Palm Springs an utterly original retreat.
Joshua Tree Park & The Integratron
Embrace your inner hippie. Drive 50 minutes northeast of Palm Springs, past fields of wind turbines and dusty, cracked, forgotten towns and you’ll arrive at the Integratron, a “tabernacle and energy machine” built in the 1950s and sited on a geomagnetic vortex in the middle of the Mohave Desert. The deal is you lie on a yoga mat and a healer plays “singing bowls” by rubbing quartz crystal vessels to produce resonant noise. Because of the dome’s perfect acoustics, sound fills the building to the point where you can’t tell if the hum is coming from inside or outside of your head. Then: enlightenment. Too kooky? Joshua Tree National Park offers an equally out-of-this-world experience without the Roswell-esque vibe.
Modernism Week
A sexy 11-day celebration of design, architecture, and culture (Feb. 14-24, 2013. Modernismweek.com) includes architectural tours, films, lectures, and parties in glorious, midcentury-modern structures. These residences were often second homes, filled with brave, giddy furniture choices, and many of these collections are being redistributed today, at bargain prices, in a dozen vintage shops in the uptown district. Design your own modernist tour and
be sure to visit:
Frey House II Small and brilliant, Albert Frey’s cliffside home features boulders literally breaking through into the house’s interior. You won’t easily beat the view of town from the intimate pool deck.
Kaufmann House This paradigmatic International Style residence is a Richard Neutra masterpiece, a five-bedroom beauty with sliding glass walls that sits perfectly in its desert landscape.
Steel Houses The great Donald Wexler’s prefab steel houses are gems of modernist design. Rising steel prices, though, meant that only seven were ever built. Try to spot which one belongs to the editor of GQ.
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