Devour the Desert
A Palm Springs Food & Culture Journal
The Local Flavors |Palm Springs Tiki, Part Two: The Man Who Invented Donn Beach aka “Don The Beachcomber”
Donn Beach liked to tell a good story.
This was fortunate, because he had a lot of them.
One of his favorites concerned a choice his father supposedly offered him: money for college, or money to travel around the world. Donn chose the world, naturally, and embarked on what became an unusually long trip. He wandered through the Caribbean and elsewhere, picking up stories, recipes, bits of folklore and, apparently, whatever else he thought might come in handy later.
It is a wonderful story.
It is also a Donn Beach story, which means we should probably enjoy it without insisting too strongly on the paperwork. The problem with Donn's biography is that Donn himself was one of its principal authors.
The Local Design | You're Just My Type: Palm Springs Fonts
There are few places where a house number can make you smile.
Palm Springs is one of them.
Because in Palm Springs even the house numbers were designed.
That sounds like a minor thing until you start noticing it — the tall, geometric address numerals on a Krisel home, the crisp lettering on a vintage motel marquee, the careful typography on a mid-century storefront.
These weren't afterthoughts.
The Local Landscape | The Fault Isn’t in the Stars. It’s Under our Feet
How colliding continents created the Coachella Valley, our famous springs—and the earthquake we're all politely pretending isn't coming.
Some cities were built beside rivers.
Some grew around natural harbors.