Tag: Phoenix

City profile: Phoenix

My first assignment for the AZ Department of Tourism focused on what to do in my longtime hometown.

I moved to Arizona to work at a start-up weekly entertainment magazine that focused on events in the greater Phoenix metro area, and over the next several years I crisscrossed the Valley of the Sun to profile and preview everything from baseball stadiums and dive bars to ballet performances and boutiques. Even after switching careers, I keep checking out new restaurants, shops and experiences — now just for fun, instead of a byline.

So I was delighted to accept the assignment when the Arizona Department of Tourism asked me to recap some of the city’s top destinations.

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City profile: Phoenix’s Melrose District

A look at Phoenix’s most diverse and inclusive neighborhood
(and my introduction to Arizona’s “Hip Historian,” Marshall Shore)

When Visit Phoenix offered me the opportunity to interview Marshall Shore as part of a feature that would profile the city’s Melrose District, I couldn’t agree fast enough. Although I was familiar with Shore as Arizona’s “Hip Historian”—a role in which he hosts everything from walking ghost tours downtown to virtual happy hours with some of the state’s most interesting people—I’d never met him in person.

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