Off Highway 111--Palm Desert and Beyond
Collectors Corner
71280 Hwy 111
Rancho Mirage, CA 92270
Highway 111 is dotted with little consignment and vintage stores between Palm Desert and Palm Springs. The stores are for the most part run by pleasant (sometimes sassy) and definitely stylist older women. The clothes range from typical desert attire to brands like Talbots, St. John (if you're lucky), Chicos...I think you get me. Collectors Corner my favorite out of them all. Perhaps the only store that closes at 4:15 sharp, this store has a antiques as well as an extensive clothing and shoe section. Go early and be patient because there are some amazing treasures in there. The "boutique" part of the store has racks arranged by brand... "Chicos", "St. John", "Talbotss" "Da Rue", "Ralph Lauren", "Escadrille", to name a few.
Castelli's
73098 Highway 111, Palm Desert, 92260
Perhaps run by retired Italian mafia, Castelli's is quite the scene. Always packed and open late (relative to other Palm Desert restaurants), Castelli's is great place to have a stiff (and I mean stiff) martini, listen to the live entertainment starring Joe Jaggi, a one man band that sings rat pack era songs and plays a keyboard with a backtrack, and soak in the local retiree's scene.
Clementine
44250 Town Center Way # C3, Palm Desert, 92260
This new Italian and French patisserie located in a shopping center off hwy has great fresh pastries, bread, coffee, sandwiches and salads etc. You can also buy cookbooks, olive oils etc. etc. There is also a great fresh fish market next door if you are in the area.
The Pastry Swan Bakery
(Also a new bar)
73-580 El Paseo, Palm Desert, 92260
I can't comment on the bakery because I have only been here to have a glass of wine and appetizer at the newly opened outdoor/indoor bar. Their open aired bar is located on El Paseo and you can either chose to sit on the outdoor heated side of the bar or inside looking out onto El Paseo. It's perfect concept for the desert and I highly recommend it for having a before or after dinner drink.
Camera West
70-177 Highway 111, Suite #100, Rancho Mirage, 92270
This is one of the best new/used camera stores I've been to. I stumbled upon it for the first time recently and was very happy I did as stores like this are few and far between these days. They sell both digital and analog products and they have an amazing selection of used items, including professional large and medium format collectable cameras, 35 mm film cameras lenses, and digital products. If you have a nikon camera, their used lens collection is endless. They even have a whole room for Leika (new and used) products.
Cabot's Pueblo Museum
67-616 E. Desert View Ave., Desert Hot Springs, 92240
I recently visited this quirky and off-the-beaten path museum in Desert Hot Springs. The museum is a large pueblo style home that was built over 30 years by Cabot Yerxa, an artist, entroperuner, spiritualist, adventurer, architect and overall renaissance man. You can only take a guided tour of the home and I definitely suggest doing that as there is not much else on the property. The tour is inside Cabot's home and although small, is very interesting.
Cabot was born in the late 1800s and homestead the land in 1913. He was apparently the first to discover hot and cold water within 60 meters of each other on his property, apparently because the property sits right on the San Andreas fault (Note to all tour guides: don't begin a tour by telling your audience that they are standing on the San Andreas Fault, a fault line that is long overdue for an earthquake...). Anyways, the home was built over a 30 year period was built entirely by hand and by Cabot himself. He used reclaimed items he found all over the coachella valley. He would make beams of of old telephone poles or found driftwood in the Salton Sea, and made his own bricks by hand as well as paint. His personal life story is also fascinating. He was raised on an Indian reservation and lived in Cuba and Mexico I believe before he was 16. He moved to Alaska at the age of 16 during the Alaskan gold rush and started a successful little business. He also lived with a native Inuit tribe in Alaska one summer. There are pictures of his travels in the first room of the tour. He also studied art at the Academie Julian during the 20s in Paris and hosted many artists at this desert property during the mid 1900s. Besides the history, the actual tour of this dirt floor, stone wall house is extremely interesting. He even built a private upstairs quarter for his second wife. What a gentleman....
Oh and there is also the "Waokiya, a giant wooden statue of a Sioux indian that was built by Peter Toth, a Hungarian that escaped the revolution in 1956. He apparently saw parallels between violent soviet oppressed magyars and native americans.
