Blog: Small talk about a small town

Three years ago tonight, a couple hundred people jammed into a tiny neighborhood bar in West Sedona to say goodbye to nearly 40 years of tradition and culture.

The Laughing Coyote bar, which had maintained its culture under several names and owners, closed its doors for the last time at 2 a.m. on Feb. 4, 2005. People came who hadn’t been there for years. There were tears, laughter, dancing, arguments, hugs, phone-number exchanges and even a notebook that was passed around like a yearbook to capture people’s feelings about the place. Locals still get teary-eyed over the loss; The Coyote was more than just a bar – it was a family and an icon to an eroding small-town spirit.

Last weekend, I spent the day with a group of people who spent 15 hours trying to figure out how to define that spirit, how to preserve it and how to make it grow – the Sedona Verde Valley Forum. I am not reporting publicly on that meeting because I worked as a recorder – therefore I had a hand in what went into the final report. I’m posting this more as a blog piece for the publishers who visit Sedona Stringer.
Sedona may physically be a small town.

About 100 north of Phoenix., it’s made up of about 19 square miles, 49 percent of which belong to the Coconino National Forest. The population is less than 12,000 including about 900 part-time residents, according to city statistics. The city is about 80-percent built out, which means it will still grow some but most has already been done. Surrounded by forest land and breathtaking red cliffs, there’s not much chance for sprawl within the city limits.

But Sedona is no typical small town.

Our population is largely composed of transplants from other parts of the country. The city only incorporated in 1988 and it inherited dysfunctional zoning, architecture, roads and public utilities from Coconino and Yavapai Counties.

Our community is larger than the defined city boundaries. It’s better defined by the areas covered by the Sedona Fire District and the Sedona Oak Creek Unified School District. In other words, the greater community includes the Village of Oak Creek, the Loop Road area and residents in Oak Creek Canyon – the latter two of which were not invited to participate in the Forum. No one said why.

All of these communities have “Sedona” zip codes because that’s just the way it was set up by the post office before incorporation.

Anyway, we’re not a typical small town. Until last year – at least for the 8-plus years I’ve lived here – there was only one community party – the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Most community events price out lower wager earners, like Jazz on the Rocks, the Sedona International Film Festival & Workshops, and various charitable events.

But the parade was the only event that tried to bring all segments of the community together for a celebration. Last year, we had our first Memorial Day celebration, which didn’t draw much of a crowd because it was pretty windy and cold that day. We also had our first Western Americana Day. More folks showed for that celebration, but the mood was literally dampened by the monsoon. Both events show promise for the future. There are other events, like the annual arts show and the Walk for Life, but they don’t seem to capture the interest of the community as a whole.

Sedona has no “town square” or other main gathering place, which has been a topic of discussion for some time.

Old-timers talk about the good old days when community events were held at Posse Grounds Park. There were rodeos, public picnics, musical events and other festivals. Yavapai College used to be there, as well as the Sedona Humane Society. I’d have to dig deeper for the details, but my understanding is that certain political issues moved those entities out of the park. Soon after, the park was pretty much abandoned as far as community events go.

Today, the park has baseball and basketball courts, the Sedona Teen Center, a skate park and a new dog park. A partially-built and soon-to-be-finished pavilion will bring music back to the park. Will it become the gathering place it once was? Who knows? Neighbors are probably going to complain about the noise from the pavilion. They already complain about the presence of children. There’s not a lot of parking available for larger events. There’s no shade to speak of.

Speaking of children, here’s another example of why Sedona is no typical small town. I haven’t reported on this, but I’m told there was quite a fight involved in getting Sedona Red Rock High School built about 10 years ago. I get the impression that a significant segment of the older residents resent children and do as little as they can to provide a quality of life for them. Sure, we have the Teen Center and the skate park. Look at the history, though. The motivation behind the skate park was because one man’s son wanted a state-of-the-art facility. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but there were a lot of politics behind the center and the skate park that had little to do with providing for the kids.

I was shocked in 2005 when I attended a public hearing about an ordinance to ban motorized scooters. Proponents openly talked about how they just didn’t want to see the kids in their neighborhoods. The police department found that noise from these scooters was less than a motorcycle, a lawn mower and the average leaf blower. Both the police and the fire district said they could not find a single case of a scooter-versus vehicle accident.

“We’d be remiss if we waited for someone to get hurt?” several attendees said. (Funny, they don’t feel the same responsibility to make Hwy. 89A safer for pedestrians in West Sedona, even though five people have died in the last seven years and many more have been injured crossing five lanes of 40-mph traffic because the crosswalks are a half mile apart.)

There’s no public transportation for these children, some of whom live in the Uptown area which is about three miles from the Teen Center, including the steep 1.2-mile Cook’s Hill on Hwy. 89A that is the only road into West Sedona. Under the ordinance, these kids can’t ride their scooters up the hill on the sidewalks or on the street.

Sedona has little industry that offers its youth an opportunity or incentive to stay in their hometown. So, as the older generations pass away, and more transplants move in, Sedona will probably never have a sense of roots that are typical of “small town.”

This is what gets me about the community’s apathy towards affordable housing. The Sedona Housing Commission can’t sell the community on affordable housing without wordsmithing the message with terms like “workforce housing” and “essential employees.” They concentrate on a 30-percent minority of the workforce – like teachers, police and firefighters – because that’s easier to sell to people who think a dishwasher or waitress would be a worse neighbor.

Politicos have smugly told me over the years that just because someone wants to live here doesn’t mean they get to. If “small town” is the value, I say just because you can maximize every dollar of profit from your development or business doesn’t mean you ought to. Give up some of that profit voluntarily to pay better wages and provide affordable homes to the people doing your grunt work.

If it weren’t for those undesirables, those smug elitists would be paying property tax. People live where they work in a typical small town. Almost 70 percent of our workforce is in the service industry and commutes from nearby towns. Sedona survives because of its tourist industry. City officials are scrambling to find new revenue sources for the future because once the city is built out – and we’re about 80 percent there – tourism revenue will be capped by the tangible and intangible boundaries we’ve set today.

Certainly, we need teachers, police and firefighters to live in the community. It’s ridiculous that most – if not all – of our detectives live 30 minutes away from any given investigation in Sedona. It’s ridiculous that, as one Forum participant put it – Sedona’s teachers tend to be single or couples with no children because they can’t afford a family-sized home. It’s ridiculous that employers by choice or necessity offer “market” wages that don’t match the local cost of living.

It’s also ridiculous to talk of preserving some idealistic “small town” character when that talk focuses on physical aesthetics more than the people.

The Sedona Chamber of Commerce, city officials and business leaders talk about attracting “the right kind of visitor.” They mean those visitors who are affluent enough to spend more than two nights and about $300 per day in retail and restaurant purchases.

Similarly, those who regularly engage in city politics want the “right kind of resident.” Places like the Laughing Coyote and the people who went there did not fit the desired mold. They were mostly poor (although they had regular benefits that paid for medical bills, utilities and rent for some of their own); not always pretty or well-dressed (although you’d often bump elbows with millionaires and celebrities who went there for its neighborhood flavor); sometimes alcoholics and drug addicts (the kind you get on the street – not from the doctor); and not very cultured (unless you consider retired rock musicians, visual artists and the guy who built your custom staircase cultured).

Early in my journalism career I met Susan Solomon, a woman I have high regard for who was on the city council and served as vice mayor and mayor. When I told her I lived in a trailer behind the Laughing Coyote she was shocked. “Isn’t that a pretty rough place?” she asked.

“You mean you’ve never been there? Don’t you represent them, too?” I chided.

I talked Susan into spending a few minutes there with me that night. I introduced her as a friend, not a public official. My friends didn’t bat an eye that Susan was dressed to the nines and obviously from a different social circle. They didn’t care. They never cared. They were interested in who she was as a person – not where she came from or how much money she made. Susan stayed for almost two hours and went back with me three times; including the night the bar closed its doors for the last time.

Susan and I stood in a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd that bounced and bopped to the rock-n-roll. “Hey! I know that guy,” Susan said, amazed to see someone who didn’t fit her idea of a Laughing Coyote patron. She knew a lot of people there who seem to have a foot in both worlds; people from diverse backgrounds who were part of something much bigger than just a neighborhood bar – they were part of a community..

“This is ‘small town,’” I told her. I stood on the stage after sitting in with the band for “Mustang Sally” and spoke my piece to the crowd:

“Just remember that the Laughing Coyote did not make us who we are. We made the Laughing Coyote what it is. Take that spirit with you, wherever you end up. Don’t forget who we are.”

Sadly, most of the regulars have moved away, unable to afford to live in Sedona and lacking a venue like the Coyote to bring them together.

During last weekend’s Forum, I thought about those people and that place; and a broken promise in the Sedona Community Plan’s mission statement to “preserve existing lifestyles.” If we were honest, we’d have written, “preserve existing lifestyles that suit us.”

Maybe the Forum should have shot for defining “the right kind of small town.” We’re losing what’s left of our typical small-town character. Sedona is not typical and will certainly define a character that suits its ego.

I’m not sure I want to know what that’s going to look like.