To Win a "Very Helpful" on This, I'd Have to be Very Brief
Written: Mar 03 '01 (Updated Mar 25 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Friendly, relaxed, sociable, and botanically lush ...
Cons: Not a "luxury hotel", except for the bed ...
The Bottom Line: For the gay male traveler, a relaxing yet social environment, where you can fill those gaps in your tan ...
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| Urbanist's Full Review: Vista Grande |
Well, I can no longer complain that Epinions isn't thorough in its listings. If I call up a list of Palm Springs "luxury hotels", I get all the general resorts of the Hilton-Marriott variety mixed up with a very different group of resorts. Palm Springs, you see, is crawling with gay men, and several of the "luxury resorts" on the Epinions list are exclusively gay male haunts.
Vista Grande, dear Reader, is one of them. Now, for the 95+% of you who are neither gay men nor cultural anthropologists, you may now know all you need to know. You must admit, though, that I've been "Very Helpful" in helping you to make a decision about this "product."
Should you feel somehow stinted, somehow unwilling to just stop reading, scroll down, and click the "Very Helpful" button, I hereby offer bonus info, off topic but not far off, to help you choose your Palm Springs Luxury Hotel: The Epinions list actually includes at least three other gay male resorts, viz. Santiago, INNdulge, and Inn Exile. So there, you 95%! If you're poking around Palm Springs resorts from a heterosexual and/or female point of view, you can't deny this is Very Helpful info ...
Now one of my purposes here, obviously, is to flush out that other 5%. Why? Well, frankly (and this is more on-topic than it may sound at first) Epinions has been an appalling failure for me on the matchmaking front. Through lively comments, not to mention side-correspondence, I've traded near-orgiastic praise with any number of wonderful women, along with a few admirable straight men. But the fairly intellectual travel-and-books corner where I natter about just doesn't contain many gay men. (And yes, Middle America, we are looking for each other, not for your children ...)
All this is on-topic because the Palm Springs gay resort world is largely about matchmaking, both short- and long-term. Like gay-oriented venues in every major city, the Palm Springs gay resorts thrive for the simple reason that gay folk need environments where they can assume that everyone else is gay. We can't assume, as straight folk tend to do, that if we meet an attractive, interesting, and ringless person because our dogs rub noses in the park, we can follow up our lively conversation with an invitation to dinner, and bring flowers, and so on ... Many of us need the occasional sojourn in a gay-centered environment so that we can tilt the odds in our favor.
Yes, those last two paragraphs were still written with the straight reader in mind, because frankly, I suspect many are still reading. Now, however, Dear Gay Reader, I finally turn fully to you, and address your special need for detail on the Vista Grande, as opposed to all those other gay resorts in Palm Springs.
Vista Grande, located across from Inn Exile in the Warm Sands enclave of gay resorts, is large, diverse, relaxed, funky, and extremely friendly. It is also, in its own market, as acquisitive as Time-Warner. Over the years, its owners have consolidated four resorts, three of them contiguous and one across the street, to create a range of spaces with pools, jacuzzis, and landscaping to almost every taste.
Vista Grande cannot really be called a "luxury hotel." Or more precisely, luxury is one of the respects in which the Vista Grande "celebrates diversity," to quote the bumper sticker. Each room offers a whole spectrum of luxury.
At the lower end of the spectrum, we have the bathroom, which usually looks like that of a very cheap motel, though it's as clean as it's possible to be given What Goes On Inside Old Grout. A step up from there is the variable "kitchen", which may be anything from a full kitchen to a refrigerator, but which could politely be called functional. A step up from there is that great American shrine, the television, which is large, central, VCR-equipped, and usually connected to the stereo.
Finally, at the pinnacle of luxury, we have the bed. Clearly, an army of decorators, all bred in secret laboratories with the sole goal of maximizing the alleged gay decorating gene, have selected the bedding throughout the resort. From quilt to pillowcase, the linens are so magnificently designed, coordinated, calibrated, and maintained that the bed seems to float a little way off the floor. In a way, the bed is the ultimate shrine, though intended, of course, for amorous defilement.
What goes on in the bed, dear Reader, is your own business. What goes on in the common spaces of the resort is mostly what goes on in resorts anywhere. There are beautiful people lounging in inaccessible and usually vapid bliss, all pretending not to know how beautiful they are. There's friendly chatter about the weather, sports, politics, and fashion. There's the comparing of notes about where y'all are from, and those bonding, small world moments of "ah, yes, my ex's sister's husband's high-school football coach's mistress is from near there ..."
The only difference is that everyone is gay and male (except for the Fed Ex lady, who looks forward to this stop all day) and some of them may not be wearing clothes. And, yes, if sexual activity breaks out in a common area of the resort, no arrests will be made. But such events are hardly routine, because the average gay person has the same instincts about privacy that prevail in the culture. After all, we all grew up Out There.
Ah yes, I'm talking to the 95% again. I can't shake the suspicion that some of them are still reading.
But, dear Gay Reader, the real pleasure of Vista Grande is the landscape. Not just the upward view of Mount San Jacinto, which everyone in Palm Springs can offer, but the tropical, misted intensity of plantlife everywhere. Only one small corner of the resort is lawn, and oddly enough, this is one of the more socially dead spots. Every other unpaved area is a riot of plants. Like many of the guests, the plants usually reveal their own reproductive organs, but to a more reliably luxuriant effect.
If you wish a higher standard of luxury, by all means go across the street to Inn Exile. Vista Grande's neighbor and competitor is more consistently luxurious but far less luxuriant, since its shared outdoor spaces are mostly low-maintenance concrete pierced by the occasional spiky specimen-plant. If concrete and sharp objects strike you as romantic (and I make no judgment there) then Inn Exile is for you. But if you'd rather chase your beloved through bowers of jasmine than impale him on spikes of agave, the greater Vista Grande is the place ...
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Urbanist
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Location: San Francisco
Reviews written: 78
Trusted by: 72 members
About Me:
Streetwise, academically credentialed gay renaissance man. For real bio, click "more" in profile.
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