Sonoran Resorts is running a Travel Writer contest with first prize being 2 weeks at the Sonoran Sky Resort plus $50 per day spending cash.
No experience necessary and open to everyone, just write 1000 words or less about an experience or general information/perspective/feeling that you have or have had about Rocky Point (positive only). The contest is getting a slow start so your chance of winning are still pretty good.
For more information, go to: www.whyiloverockypoint.com Contest ends October 10th with winners announced on October 15th.
Bump to the top -- as the deadline for entries approaches Oct. 10.
Looks like there are a fair number of entries. I wish I could read more than the summaries, but I'm imagining they'll be open to read after judging on Oct. 15??
Yes, after the winners are determined, we will have them open on our website to read the whole stories. I'll add them to my newsletter over the next few months as well. Winners will be chosen by a panel of 10 judges ranking each story on a scale of 1 to 10. The highest total number will win.
Sorry Jim, I can't help you. The best I'd be able to manage is a Thompsonian (Hunter) rant about the soul-deadening sterility of industrial tourism plants like Sonoran Sky, Mayan Palace, Tessoro and similar monuments to the irrational exuberance of greedheads who were old enough to know better. They built the wrong things in the wrong place, and way too much of it. I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate a piece like that, and it wouldn't win.
I could easily write an essay on why I did love Rocky Point, and why I keep trying to love it despite what's happened there in the past decade. Granted, there are still vestiges of local color and charm: the ocean and sunsets, La Pinta estuary with the panga fishermen putting their boats in every morning, Hotel La Roca downtown, the boats in the harbor and the dusty residential streets and small markets. But rather than compliment the existing environment with compatible "boutique" bed-and-breakfasts and family-owned restaurants like La Curva, tourism entreprenurs opted for grand high-rises as if those weren't already available in abundance all over the world. In so doing, they've nearly destroyed what should have been a thriving, though not booming, niche market. Rocky Point was meant to play small ball. It was never equipped to compete with Cabo, Aculpulco or Cancun.
I've never stayed at Sonoran Sky, and at $400 a night for a one-bedroom it's unlikely I ever will, especially considering I can rent a 3-bedroom house on the beach at Las Conchas for about the same money and take 2 other couples along (assuming they'll come - but that's another story.) But I've visited Mayan Palace and expect they're all pretty much the same lonely crowd scenario - strangers lounging around the pool trying hard not to get to know each other. Obviously there's a market for this type of vacation because similar places take in millions of tourists each year, but I'll never know why. No doubt you could sit by the pool and read Steinbeck's Log of the Sea of Cortez or some of the histories of the early explorations of the northwest Sonoran coast, but you might as well be reading it in Cleveland. Resorts do their best to insulate guests from nature with all its uncertainties.
I just looked at the skyview pictures of Sandy Beach with all its concreate monoliths. If it weren't the human suffering that would accompany such an event, I'd be asking myself where's an earthquake when you need one.
Hey, I wasn't bashing Cleveland. Never even been there. I was just randomly picking a place that's far removed from the atmosphere and flavor of the northwester Sonoran coast.
But since you brought it up, how did Cleveland of all places get the rock and roll hall of fame? Why not Memphis? What'd I miss?
Look up the name Alan Freed. He coined the name Rock & Roll and was also famous for PAYOLA.
He invented it and congress perfected it.
I thought you did the jump and Jive JACK!
By the early 1940s, the term "rock and roll" was also being used in record reviews by Billboard journalist and columnist Maurie Orodenker. In the May 30, 1942, issue, for instance, he described Sister Rosetta Tharpe's vocals, on a re-recording of "Rock Me" with Lucky Millinder's band, as "rock-and-roll spiritual singing",[sup][30] and on October 3, 1942, he described Count Basie's "It's Sand, Man!" as "an instrumental screamer.. [which].. displays its rock and roll capacities when tackling the righteous rhythms."[sup][31] In the April 25, 1945 edition, Orodenker described Erskine Hawkins' version of "Caldonia" as "right rhythmic rock and roll music", a phrase precisely repeated in his 1946 review of "Sugar Lump" by Joe Liggins.[sup][32][sup][33]
A double, ironic, meaning came to popular awareness in 1947 in blues artist Roy Brown's song "Good Rocking Tonight", covered in 1948 by Wynonie Harris in a wilder version, in which "rocking" was ostensibly about dancing but was in fact a thinly-veiled allusion to sex. Such double-entendres were well established in blues music but were new to the radio airwaves. After the success of "Good Rocking Tonight" many other R&B artists used similar titles through the late 1940s. At least two different songs with the title "Rock and Roll" were recorded in the late 1940s: by Paul Bascomb in 1947, and Wild Bill Moore in 1948.[sup][34] In May 1948, Savoy Records advertised "Robbie-Dobey Boogie" by Brownie McGhee with the tagline "It jumps, it's made, it rocks, it rolls."[sup][35] Another record where the phrase was repeated throughout the song was "Rock and Roll Blues", recorded in 1949 by Erline "Rock and Roll" Harris.[sup][36]
Thanks for lettingus read all the various stories (over time). I smiled when reading through the summaries and it will be nice to seeeveryone’s thoughts about why they really connect with Rocky Point.