Darlene and I went for a drink to the Valley Ho last night and we got lost circling because I was trying to avoid valet parking.

Until about 18 months ago the Valley Ho was a leftover from Scottsdale history, a sort-of-cool Ramada Inn in unfortunate condition at Indian School and 68th Street (not to be confused with the Westward Ho, the downtown landmark as seen in Psycho, and not to be confused with any other Ho you might know). It's on the east side of Scottsdale, very close to downtown.

The Ramada Valley Ho was bought and held down and scrubbed with a stiff wire brush for over a year, expanded to include condo tower$ that aren't quite open yet, reincarnated as a clean-lined mid-Century crowd-pleasing Palm-Beach modern resort haunted by the Rat Pack where Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Anniston might show up. They're promising us a Trader Vic's. Darlene and I did finally get parked in the last available spot in a Construction Zone at the rear of the property and made our way to the bar. My Mojito was actually very good; her flat Moscow Mule could have used a shot of ginger ale, and the resurrection of the Valley Ho is architecturally pitch-perfect. Not relaxing, but lavish and spare at the same time. Somebody has a good eye and has done his or her homework, sure. The world is a better place with a renovated Valley Ho.

I hope it's not too cynical to say that getting lost beforehand was more rewarding. More authentic.

We got lost immediately south of the Valley Ho, where there are about 12 apartment buildings still standing as genuine relics of mid-Century modern in varying condition, let's say it that way.

The Parc Scottsdale is the closest to the Valley Ho property, immediately to the south, and the building most dominated by that crane and the faint strains of Sinatra pumped out of the Valley Ho like sleepy gas, and therefore, I reckon, the most likely to be renovated and repainted and repackaged and resold. It looks mostly abandoned but there's evidence of a couple of retirees still patiently gardening their place in the sun as they have, probably, for long years. Roofers were working the day I took these pictures, and those rust smudges on the exterior tells me I arrived too late for whatever was there. Maybe gigantic Spanish colonial El Cid emblems. Don't know.

Typical of all of these properties:

The Americana sign stands propped up above a curved CMU brise-soeil with patterns of X'es as if this were a piece of Americana set up just for sarcastic cynical photographers. It's distracting, isn't it? Wool over your eyes, the name gets in the way. Makes you think of this place as 'Americana', or as the residents might think of it, ANACIREMA, instead of seeing through to the place itself. Big hat, no cattle. All identity, no reality.

The Granada to its credit is totally up-front about its CMU origins. (Concrete Masonry Unit. 'CMU' sounds more techincal than 'cinder block' but yes it's the same thing.). That's mid-Century modern, right? Spare design and functionalism and honest about materials?

The Granada has an irresistible curved ramp which leads, not to the game room, not to the sauna, not to a room full of skeletons playing cards, only to the second story corridor and provides an excellent view of the heartbreakingly motel-like balcony ("Honey, let's just move to Scottsdale and live in a motel every day! How about that!") and the lovely sparkling pool, where a senior was lurking to the very left of frame, and an excellent view of the lumpy white roof of the poolhouse. Note the power of blue paint.

The Granada is impeccably well-maintained and used to be blessed with a water feature, a cascade down multiple rock pools beside the ramp, now dry. This suggests other lost amenities and former glories. Maybe this was a singles' thing.

The Capri is pinker and smaller and slightly better built than its neighbors and the proudest of its curvy golden name. It is cute like a poodle. These apartments are more airy, have more light and sun and air with those sliding-glass doors. They look part of the original construction. There's another variation on the long curved concrete-block sunscreen. And those particular umbrellas are popular around here.

In a neighborhood heaving with transition the Park Paradise Condominimum property looks to have been pre-gentrified. It's in great shape, feels authentic, and the Playboy's Scottsdale good life, in the form of a BWM parked out front, is alive here.

At the Park Paradise the identity and the pool umbrellas and pink steel and the concrete sunscreen (in the form of an IBM punch card this time, a topical joke) are all intact. The trees are more shady in this stretch, which plays with your whole sense of space and relative protection and social class.

May 2006 Correction

"I was forwarded your website through my sister and our Dad regarding your review of Park Paradise Condominiums. My sister owns a unit there and I was visiting when you got a picture of my car. I wanted to inform you that the vehicle pictured on your website is in fact not a BMW or a BWM, but a Mazda MX-5 or more commonly known as a Miata. And not just any Miata, but a Shinsen version, number 1,123 of 1,451 ever produced."

I have no excuse for refering to any automobile as a 'BWM'. Thanks for telling me about your car.

Not sure why the Shalimar Sands is my favorite, but it is. The lettering has something to do with it, sure, but it's also the fact that you can rent by the week (I wonder what that's like), and something friendly about its scale layout that's impossible to photograph and hard to describe. Notice the exact same exterior flights as the Park Paradise, in a different color. For some reason I feel that it's more vulnerable to Sinatra-poison-gas and that huge white crane than some of the others. One single apartment shows signs of habitation. Shalimar Underdog.

Defending my new favorite, I'd remind you these properties are about forty years old. So don't be mean to them. They have the vibe and physical structure of motels, and the average motel of this era was built (for tax reasons) with a useful life of seven, nine years. ...Not that surviving for 40 years in this eerie sun-drenched desert stillness is that big an accomplishment, not really. The Shalimar Sands, baked to perfection.

Big finish!

It's not only that Dr. Suess lives here and produces a ton of shade for the entry, not only that this flourish is worthy of Morris Lapidus, but that the (what would Morris have called them......) cheeseholes and woggles penetrated by palms, hey there's something Freudian going on here, they co-exist with repeated buffalos and wagon trains. The entry is spatially unforgettable and I can't think of a single building that expresses the spirit of Scottsdale so well.