More Scottsdale businesses going bust

Word from my readers is that both Redfish and Krispy Kreme at Scottsdale & FLW have gone under.

It’s amazing what happens when the bogus "housing ATM" shuts down and there’s no more 2nd- and 3rd-mortgage spending money. You see, those fake Scottsdale people who try so hard to look rich are really living in poverty when you take their incomes and subtract all the credit bills each month. Now that there’s no more equity to borrow from their homes, they’re finished. Over and done with. Put a fork in ‘em.

That entire airpark region is a joke. My funniest yet saddest memories of Scottsdale were when I was working in outside sales and had the airpark as my territory. It was day after day of putting up with self-righteous, self-important, snobby asshole "business owners" who demanded to be treated like Donald Trump, then when it came time to buy they either couldn’t pass credit, couldn’t come up with the money, or usually both.

Ahhh, so Scottsdale.

“I got mine. You can’t have yours.”

Has anyone else noticed this attitude from Scottsdale residents?

Ever notice that the most fiercely anti-development zealots are the ones living in big custom homes on big lots in North Scottsdale?

What’s the reason? Why can’t anyone else have a nice house after theirs is built? Is it ego? Vanity? Insecurity? A small penis? All of the above?

Report shows Arizona real estate down 38%

From John Burns Real Estate Consulting:

Arizona real estate sales down 38% over last year

Click Here for the full report

I’d love to get my hands on local numbers from a firm like this. If Arizona is down 38%, and Scottsdale was the most over-inflated and over-leveraged of all Arizona markets, what’s the impact on Scottsdale?  40%? 50%? 60%?

Adios, Scottsdale.

A true western town, after all?

Hey, what speaks "Old West" more than a ghost town? As of now, it looks like Scottsdale is headed in that direction, fast.

Anyone who knows anything about economic history knows that when a city’s economy is tied more than 20-30% to a single industry, and that industry goes bust, the city goes bust with it. Detroit, anyone?

Scottsdale has no real industries outside of real estate. 40% – and that’s a conservative estimate – of Scottsdale residents are in real estate. They’re either real estate agents, or mortgage peddlers, or work in a title or appraisal company, or sell homeowners insurance, or any other of the myriad of middlemen who hose you out of your money when you buy a house. Not that anyone in Scottsdale actually owns a house, that is … it’s the land of over-extended credit with payments that never end. The minute anyone builds any equity, they trade up to a bigger house and are right back to being 100% financed again.

Back to my point … with nearly half (or more) of Scottsdale residents tied to real estate for their income, and with Scottsdale real estate crashing and burning, and thousands of realtors and mortgage peddlers and the like losing their jobs, what’s the future of Scottsdale?

It can’t rely on tourism. The money tourism brings in is a pittance. Barrett-Jackson is gone, and those people were the only real money to set foot on Scottsdale soil. You can’t count the drunks at the FBR Open – $10 beers only add up to so much revenue. Hotels and golf courses don’t employ many people outside of minimum wage unskilled labor. No economic base there.

In fact, the very idea that Scottsdale was ever a big tourist attraction was a joke and a myth perpetuated by the self-important and corrupt Scottsdale city government.

So that leaves … nothing! Real estate was Scottsdale’s lifeblood, and with the end of the real estate boom comes the end of Scottsdale as we know it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what’s next for Scottsdale. The good news in all of this is that the phonies will go bust (because they were mostly realtors anyway, and the bartenders, waiters, and strippers who took the realtors’ money), and without the easy 2nd- and 3rd-mortgage spending money, you won’t see them in their BMWs and Porsches anymore (hello repo man). But the downside is the collapse of whatever was left of an economy in Scottsdale.

I don’t feel sorry for anyone, except the old-timers. Scottsdale has a lot of good, honest, older people who grew up with the town, suffered through watching it turn from a conservative western town to a left-wing wacko freakshow full of weirdos and druggies, and now they have to suffer through this crash. At least maybe they’ll get some satisfaction from watching the BMW-driving phonies go through repo, foreclosure, and bankruptcy. I know I will.

More bad press for Shittsdale

Looks like AZCentral.com ran a story today on DirtyScottsdale.com.

That site is great – who doesn’t love making fun of those fake, debt-ridden losers? However, the site creates some false impressions, like the myth that Scottsdale is full of beautiful women. It’s not. While living there I saw a lot of cute girls, but only saw a true “10″ maybe once a month … compared to almost daily here in Newport Beach. Supposedly “hot” Scottsdale girls would never even get a date here, and would be waiting tables at a Denny’s in the ghetto of Santa Ana somewhere.

It does do a great job of making Scottsdale “men” look like the total idiot losers they are, so nice job on that!

The site also creates the impression that Scottsdale nightlife is really happening, when in reality it’s all but died. That’s why 944 had me do a story on the subject for their May issue. Now that the housing ATM is over, credit is tightening and the free ride has ended, none of the Scottsdale posers have any money left to spend. My friends who still live in AZ even tell me that you can walk into any high-end Scottsdale restaurant on a Saturday night and get seated immediately without a reservation, something I’ve never seen once in seven years of living there.

Scottsdale is over … dead … finished. The end of the housing ATM means no more spending money for the Scottsdale dolts, whose mortgage payments are tripling on loans they couldn’t afford in the first place.

Scottsdale’s only 5-star restaurant has closed its doors. Two restaurants at Desert Ridge have gone bankrupt and closed in the past month. Mastro’s Steakhouse was wisely sold off by its owners.

Scottsdale’s #1 tourist attraction, Barrett-Jackson, is bailing out. All that’s left is the weak FBR Open which is attended by broke frat boys and middle-age alcoholics, neither of whom contribute anything to the scene.

If you’re in Scottsdale and reading this, get out, NOW. Sell your house at a loss, because if you don’t sell now, you’ll really be screwed in 1-2 years when your property value is 40% less than it is today.

And let’s not even get started on the corrupt city government and police department….

Scottsdale apparently in denial of scum town status

I’m baffled as to why the City of Scottsdale is so disturbed by the Fetish Prom, the Lingerie Bowl, and other events coming to town.

Not that there’s anything wrong with these events … but is Scottsdale in denial of the fact that the old town nightlife scene has been scum for at least the past few years now?

Old town bars and clubs have been overrun with druggies, drug dealers, prostitutes, dirtbags in low-riders and wifebeater shirts, and the like, for years now.

Are they not even aware of any of this? Geez, downtown Scottsdale was even named the #1 "rape zone" in the Valley for young women to be aware of.

Sorry Scottsdale, but I think even the Tempe college bar scene is classier than you at this point. Be happy the Fetish Prom and Lingerie Bowl don’t think they’re too good for you.

Scottsdale: Most Immature City?

We used to go to the Scottsdale Culinary Festival every year, and enjoyed it, despite the fact that it was sprinkled with the usual Tommy Bahama midlife-crisis snobs.

We obviously missed it this year since we no longer live in Scottsdale, and after looking at some video clips and photo galleries of this year’s event, I’m glad we didn’t make it. It appears to have turned into yet another scummy college overgrown-frat-boy scene complete with plastic bimbos who actually think they’re hot (I guess they are "hot" by lowly Scottsdale standards).

It truly amazes me that a city that touts itself as "affluent" has really turned, 100%, into a wannabe college town. Now that it’s failed to be a wannabe LA, is that all it has left to aspire to?

The funny part in all this is how much I’d love to see those "hot" Scottsdale girls come here to Newport Beach. It would be a shock to them to go from getting their asses kissed by all those loser Scottsdale guys to relying on a "battery operated boyfriend" for love. Because trust me, they wouldn’t get the time of day from men around here.

What would be even funnier, though, would be seeing those loser Scottsdale guys trying to meet women in Newport. Now that would be DAMN hilarous!!!

Scottsdale spends $1.4M to remove American flag

Commie scumbag America-hating Scottsdale has chosen to spend $1.4 MILLION dollars to paint over the huge American flag on the tent at WestWorld. They are painting it bland, depressing beige to blend in with the surrounding bland, depressing desert and all the bland, depressing, poorly built homes in the area.

It’s bad enough that the corrupt City of Shittsdale wants to remove any and all scenery and force everything to blend into the ugly beige desert. However, it’s far worse that they hate America and everything she stands for so much that they not only declare the Stars & Stripes an "eyesore" – a word only true crybabies ever use – but actually spend $1.4 MILLION in taxpayer money to do it!

I wonder what the taxpayers of Scottsdale have to say about having their hard-earned money spent on removing an American flag, the flag that represents the very freedom that allows people to earn that money in the first place.

THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! And they get away with it thanks to the same lazy, indifferent Scottsdale residents who sit back and allow them to put up photo radar, allow the cops to write bogus tickets all day instead of enforcing real crime, and so on.

When people say "Oh, but photo radar is for our safety" or "smoking bans are for our health," they forget about the slippery slope that these anti-freedom laws create. Now we have the city destroying the flag, the very symbol of freedom itself. And they’re getting away with it because of the brain-dead residents of Scottsdale who couldn’t find their couch in the living room, let alone have enough intelligence and ambition – and balls – to stand up for themselves.

Sorry but Scottsdale is the biggest bunch of docile pussies I’ve ever seen in my life.

I say petition the Federal prosecutors to charge the scum mayor and city council, and the corrupt communist Coalition of Pinnacle Peak with desecration of the flag. Let’s also charge them with crimes related to misappropriation of funds. I don’t know what the name of the crime is, but it can’t be legal to spend taxpayer money on flag desecration.

Better yet, if they hate our country and flag so much – and they clearly do with the way they have implemented a police state – then force them to live with the rest of the traitors up in San Francisco, or better yet, ship ‘em out to Iraq.

Is the Valley the next Detroit?

Meaning 40% of the Valley’s economy is tied to real estate, and real estate is getting wiped out.

When such a huge percentage of a city’s economy is tied to just one industry, and that industry falters, the results are disastrous. It has happened before in history, but as usual, no one learns from history, and instead they let it repeat itself over and over.

Arizona is no exception. Instead of trying to build a diverse economy, it simply hung onto real estate for its life, and now the result is going to be the death of Arizona’s economy.

We can already see it happening. Once-busy restaurants are looking dead on weekends. Retail sales are WAY down. High-end establishments are packing it in … Scottsdale’s only 5-star restaurant is closing, and others like Mastro’s Steakhouse are being sold off. Of course, this is all because Scottsdale’s only disposable income came from the so-called "housing ATM" … people who would refinance and take out home equity lines of credit to get spending money. The housing ATM is now over, and it’s time to repay.

This is the end, people. You can’t hang 40% of your entire state’s economy on one industry and expect to survive when that industry collapses. Even the illegals are leaving and going back across the border because there are no more easy-to-get construction jobs. A sales manager at one of the department stores told me all of their new hires are former realtors who either lost their jobs or gave up. And let’s not even get started on the mortgage industry … those jobs are GONE.

Get out of Arizona while you can. This is going to end very, very badly.

Scottsdale’s only 5-star restaurant is closing

Marquesa at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess resort announced today that it’s closing its doors. Marquesa is the only 5-star restaurant in Scottsdale, and is 1 of only 4 in all of Arizona.

The restaurant’s official reason for closing is that they need to shift their offerings to cater to a younger crowd.

Of course, this is just a politically correct way of saying, "Scottsdale can’t afford us anymore." All the money is gone and all that’s left are the low-lifes who frequent the Pink Taco and such.

Now that the free housing ATM bonanza is over, and all those idiots have to start paying back the massive housing debt they’ve incurred over the past few years, disposable income in Scottsdale has all but disappeared and high-end establishments are really suffering.

Heck, it’s not even the high-end places that are suffering. Myself and just about everyone else I know have noticed a mysterious disappearance of crowds in Scottsdale over the past year, even during the peak winter tourist months.

I’ve used the quote "This is the beginning of the end of Scottsdale" in previous posts, but we’re obviously past the beginning now. The housing and credit implosion of Scottsdale is just beginning.

This is going to end badly, people.

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