La Quinta

Why the sudden leadership change? Welcome to our podcast where we focus on radio, TV, and other local media.

I'm Jackson Dell Weaver in La Quinta, just east of Palm Springs, California, and my co-host coming to us from the still verdant hills of Southern California, the hills of Hollywood, is Mr. Keith Samuels.

Keith, good morning.

Good morning, Jackson.

She loved going to Palm Springs.

She went to La Quinta in the desert.

And in fact, one of my questions for one of her editors who I was able to interview, her name was Marva Shearer.

I said, why did Gordon love California so much? And she said, kind of in her very gruff

Of course, we got our Lights Out Performance of the week.

We'll hear from, uh, Coach Flores over there at La Quinta at 8:30.

Got some s- stuff going on over there with, uh, La Quinta with the chance to win, uh, the million-dollar prize thanks to T-Mobile.

We'll chat about that and everything else La Quinta.

Shadow Hills won last night I woke up to, which is ridiculous.

Like, what happened? Coach 40's gonna be so pissed off this morning.

They don't make the call.

We could do it.

...

he was from La Quinta, California, and they have a La Quinta there.

Oh, really?

That is the home of La Quinta.

Oh my gosh.

Um, the cookies are great in DoubleTree, Massachusetts.

Well, Keith, uh, I've, uh, survived Head Trip.

Uh, uh, as, as anybody else does not know, there's a big EDM concert in the, uh, Polo Fields, which are just a mile or two down from our house here in, in La Quinta, and it was an EDM concert called Head Trip.

And we've had this unbelievable stretch of, like, four months of no rain, nothing but sun, triple-digit figures, and the weekend that we have the Head Trip event, it rains, and it rains like crazy, and it's windy, and, uh, they had to cancel Saturday night's show.

And, well, I can't even say I was disappointed.

We focus on radio, TV, and other local media.

We're a couple of old guys.

I'm Jackson Dell Weaver in La Quinta, just east of Palm Springs.

Keith Samuels is my co-host.

I feel like these last couple days I've been here, um, a lot of people have asked us how we know each other, and I was like, "I think triathlon?" But I was like, I don't remember, like, the first time we met.

Yeah, I think it was Indian Wells at the time, now known as La Quinta, in 2021.

That's where we met in person.

Or '19.

I am way more confident about it than I was when I had signed up.

Okay.

And I also signed up for La Quinta, uh, in December, so the… And it, it feels good to not start out with, like, an Ironman branded race.

It feels good to do a more mom-and-pop kind of race to start out, just so I don't put too much pressure on myself, because it is, e- Like, my first race of the year is always pretty rough, and you forget how much it hurts.

That's blasphemous in Southern California.

As the luxury retail base continued its migration east to Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, and La Quinta, the mall entered a death spiral.

Silverwoods closed in 1991.

I. Magnin shuttered in 1992.

No gas station, no standing next to a pump watching an advertisement for beef jerky, no wondering why the person ahead of you has apparently decided to purchase 47 lottery tickets.

For everyday driving around Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Rancho Barrage, Palm Desert, and La Quinta, range generally isn't something you're constantly thinking about.

Most modern EVs have enough range that driving around the valley doesn't exactly qualify as an expedition.

Palm Springs to Palm Desert? Please, that's not range anxiety.

And it was at that time, serendipitously, I met a young man by the name of Charlie Kirk.

I had seen him in 2018 at a Council for National Policy that Bob McEwen had put on in La Quinta, California.

And I saw him debate Lila Rose.

And I thought, this is a pretty remarkable guy.

Uh, before I let you go, though, I have to ask you, because it's such a enormous thing, but you were one of the founders of Indian Wells, what it is now known as Indian Wells.

Like La Quinta, there was a tennis tournament that you helped start, and now it's the fifth major.

It's literally the biggest thing not known as a Grand Slam in all of tennis.

What was the process like? What was, what was the vision like for starting a tournament in the desert, in the Palm Springs area, and did you ever imagine it could be as big as it is now?

[laughs]

Crash course.

And I did it at La Quinta, and we did it at La Quinta, and we ran it there from, from two, two, uh, 1981 through 1986, and, and I knew I needed a bigger stadium, so the next step was to build a stadium and bought a piece of property with some friends and bought a, to b- and to finance a tennis stadium, I needed to put a hotel next to it.

Mm.