Exploring Flagstaff, Arizona: A Retirement Haven with Nancy Sullivan

Welcome to the Where Do Gays Retire? Podcast where we help you in the LGBTQ community find a safe and affordable retirement place. Join Mark Goldstein as he interviews others who live in gay friendly places around the globe. Learn about the climate, cost of living, health care, crime and safety, and more. Now here's your host, Mark Goldstein. Have you ever wondered what it's like living in Flagstaff, Arizona today? We'll find out.

We have our special guest, Nancy Sullivan and I'll tell you a little bit about Nancy. Nancy is a teaching professor of music and has been teaching French horn and chamber music at Northern Arizona University since 1994.

She performs as principal horn with the Flagstaff Symphony, is a member of the Kokopelli and Eldon Brass Faculty Quintets, the NAU Faculty Chamber Players, substitute horn with the Phoenix and Tucson Symphonies, co principal horn with the San Juan Symphony in Durango, Colorado, member of the Flagstaff Festival Orchestra, and has performed in the Arizona Operas Orchestra's production of both Wagner's Ring Cycles.

Nancy has also always been very involved with animal advocacy and is the past Flagstaff coordinator for the Arizona PUG Rescue and Adoption Network while also being a foster parent to many homeless pugs. Oh, I love pugs. They're so cute. She is also an active volunteer and member of Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. Other favorite activities include trail riding her three ponies, hiking, camping, running, biking. I'm out of breath already.

Enjoying her two kids and generally exploring and enjoying Northern Arizona's outdoor beauty on her small ranch outside Flagstaff with her wife, Claire. Welcome, Nancy. Thank you so much for coming and joining us at the podcast. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Mark. You're welcome. So we'll start off. Nancy, can you tell us? Well, I told the audience a little bit about you, but why did you choose Flagstaff, Arizona as your place to live? So I was living in Seattle.

When I chose to come to Flagstaff. It was mostly a connection to nau, a performing musician in Seattle. And there was a job opening here at NAU in the music department and I auditioned for it. And when I came for the audition, it just spoke to me. The beauty here, the outdoors. I always was a very outdoorsy person and this just felt like the perfect niche spot for me and just absolutely gorgeous.

So when I got offered the job at nau, I took it immediately because I was so excited to live in the beauty of Flagstaff and the climate here. What would you tell somebody considering Flagstaff as a retirement destination? What comes to mind? The very first thing that comes to mind for Me is always just outdoorsy stuff. Nature. It is gorgeous. It's beautiful. Also I'm an animal person. It's a really easy place to live with animals.

It's a very friendly place and welcoming and it's very liberal here, especially for Arizona. But for anywhere that I've lived, it just, it, it feels very welcoming and it has been very welcoming. So the climate is wonderful. Changing a little bit. But when I first came, very inviting. You like the colder weather? I do. As opposed to Phoenix? Yes. Gotcha. How would you describe Flagstaff's climate?

I know it's cold and crisp, not what it was years ago, but what's it like to live at 7,000ft elevation? So it's high desert here, it's dry, but it's mountainous. You know, it's cool. It tends to be cool. Although the summers have really started heating up, as have the winters. Things are changing. Certainly when I first came there was easily 100 inches of snow on average a year, every year. We counted on it.

I love snow, I love cross country ski and so you know, a winter type a more a colder climate. And I've moved to the east side of town now and it's a little bit more deserty out there. It's warmer. We have a longer growing season now, so it's definitely warmed up here. But living at 7,000ft keeps things cooler, especially for the state of Arizona. Lots of people like to come and visit Flagstaff for that reason. Our temperatures in the summer don't tend to get above the.

We used to say the 80s, now we say the 90s. Though we did have our very first hundred degree temperatures last summer. I think so. Especially on the east side of town where I live. So the climate, it, you know, it suits me because I like cold weather. But it's definitely getting warmer. Yeah. And it's Phoenix getaway place in the summer that we can just go two hours and go to Flagstaffing, get some cooler refreshing temperatures compared to Phoenix. Do you think the altitude affects retirees?

You know, as far as higher elevations, is it. Do you have to get used to it like catching your breath? Some people do. You definitely have to climatize for the elevation, especially for people who are even going up on snowball and higher in the summer. My elderly parents used to do fine here and didn't struggle with that. It takes them a couple days just to get used to it. But some people really struggle.

Some people, especially if you've got heart or breathing issues, it's definitely a thing here. Some People have to supplement their oxygen levels. So if those are issues that affect you, I'm not sure Flagstaff is an easy place for you, though. I've certainly known people who live here and bring their oxygen tanks with them and stuff, but, yeah, that. That can be an issue for people. It's also very dry here, as is most of Arizona.

But something about the being high elevation and dry, I think can get to people. I've had to just get used to it all these years. I, being a performing musician, I really have to be careful about. I can't have chapped lips, etc. So I have to be hydrated. Yeah. So you mentioned it's getting warmer.

Let's talk a little bit about climate change and how it has impacted Flagstaff in recent years. What noticeable changes in temperature? You said it did reach 100 last year. Yeah, last year. How about precipitation and wildfires as well? So I know climate is a huge issue everywhere. It's a huge issue here, and I feel like we're seeing it right in front of our eyes right now. Mostly, I would say the first thing that comes to mind is heat.

We've had an increase in heat both in the summer and the winter. So we do not have the snowpack in the winter that we need for our water reserves. So there's a drought issue that results from that. But we also have had this just much more heat in the summer. Not only higher, like 100 degree temperatures, but sustained heat. So, you know, maybe we would start getting hot in June and it would last, you know, until the monsoons.

Well, now, since we barely seem to have monsoons anymore, we have this heat that starts in almost May now and goes till whether we get monsoons or not. It may be through August, and that's really changed things. Granted, I live outside of town on the east side, and it's, you know, a little lower in elevation, so our growing season is longer. That's the only thing I can think of that's good about it. If you're in direct sun, it's very hot, and the sun is a real issue.

And then in the winter, we don't have the snowpack that we need for our water. And of course, the things that impacts are many. But wildfire has been a very serious problem here. I've lived here for 30 years. I've been evacuated five times now for fire and once for flooding. So we get the wildfire danger. The Forest Service seems reluctant to close the forests when the winds and the heat are bad and there's lightning and or people are using the forests for camping and making campfires.

And fires have gotten out of control and burned properties. Millions of acres of ponderosa pine forest, which affects the climate as well. It affects your view, all the things. And being evacuated is a very scary thing. So wildfire has become a much bigger element in my life than it used to be. I've always been a person who's tried to live in that kind of urban wildland interface area, and that's what I loved about the place here. So I wanted to live close to the woods.

Well, it's very dangerous now. And on top of that, with wildfire, it's hard to get your home insured in the places that I want to live. I tried to live in an off grid place a couple years ago. I tried to buy a new place, and it's basically on a forest service road. Couldn't find anyone who would insure that space. And the people just ended up not selling.

So also there are certain zip codes where insurance companies are dropping people, you know, because of the terrible fires we had three years ago and four years ago and five years ago. So wildfire is a real problem. The forest service is trying to do prescribed burns and get rid of a lot of fuel litter on the bottom of the forest floor, but all the years of fire suppression have really affected it. Of course, we love our.

All of our really heavily packed trees, but clearing those out has become really necessary. And then if you go out on the east side of Flagstaff, where I live, timberline area, Donee park area, you'll look up and it's just. That side of the mountain is just pretty much burned. So those people, their views and their home values have gone down because of the view is of a burned mountain. So that's a real problem. It's a real. It's a real scary thing here.

And when we get these spring and early summer winds, the winds can really activate these fires and make them very scary. Owning three horses is also a scary thing when you have to. The last time I had to evacuate, I was here at work and I had to get home. There was kind of a traffic jam trying to get home to get my horses out. And when everything's blowing around and you've got a big fire plume in the sky and your horses are, you know, all the. Everything's elevated and it's.

Sometimes they don't want to go in the trailer. So it's a very exciting, not in a good way event. So, yeah, that's been a real issue for Flagstaff in the last few years, and it's scary. Besides the controlled burns, is the city doing anything to mitigate climate change, whether it be flooding or wildfires? Yes, the city's pretty active in this. We're trying to be carbon neutral by 2030. And the city runs mountain lion buses that are run on natural gas now switching to electric.

So they make efforts. We've got a community in town called Friends of Flagstaff's Future. It's very environmentally focused. And what else did I note about that? We're building heat resilience in town. There's quite a lot of cooperative extension agents who are giving seminars on growing food, because that's actually the one pro to this is that's increasing. We have a longer growing season. Our growing season has always been so short because we've been so cold.

So that's really the only good thing I see about it, is being able to grow more food. But in terms of fire, prescribed burns, and those sorts of things, that's more Forest Service. It's more a national organization. I mean, the city does consult with the Forest Service. I've been to several community events organized by the city to talk to forest agents about what's happening with fire and evacuation procedures.

The city has a. An emergency system that we're all on that we get notified of any kind of wildfire. In fact, I just got one this morning, which seems crazy because it was raining and snowing here, but I was glad for that system of notification. And having been evacuated so many times, I feel like the Forest Service really has their act together with that. So that's mostly handled by the Forest Service. The forest is all around us here in Flagstaff. We're surrounded by it.

So that national organization plays a big role here. And flooding could be just as worse or even worse because there's no place for the water to go. What is the city doing, if anything, for flooding? Yes. So the city and the county are doing a lot for flooding. I got flooded very badly two years ago, three years ago, and I actually had to get out of my house because of flooding with my animals as well. They were standing up to their knees in water.

I did not get the kind of flooding that was a raging river. I got what's called ponding. So my property became a lake. It was very unpleasant. I got water in my garage. I had 3,000 sandbags. The county came out with a mitigation plan that was very good. But they started out with, I do not live in a floodplain. But what was Burned. The tanks that were burned up so high in the inner basin were burned so badly that the water just ran down like a river.

So the area that's called Timberline was hit very badly with, like, raging flooding. And the county has built infrastructure to have that water flow come down, but of course, it can't contain all of it. And so that water definitely impacted people's homes. But the county has applied for federal funds and got a lot of federal funds for that issue and did a great job. I think they helped us with sandbags.

They started out saying that I needed a thousand sandbags, which I thought was really overkill. By the time I was all done with that whole process, I had over 3,000 sandbags at my house. And luckily for me, I did that work because I would have had water in my house had I not put those sandbags out. So my property value went down in a day. It's coming back now. It looked a little bit like Death Valley for a day or so or for a year or so, just, you know, silt and. Yeah, it took everything away.

So kind of got that handled now. And the county has done a great job of handling. Handling flood mitigation. They have built retention ponds. They have supplied sandbags. They have put up concrete barriers. I had eight concrete barriers around my house for a year, which was not fun, but saved my home for sure. And I was glad for that. The county provided those, and then I requested through a lot of forms to get them taken away. So they're gone now, and I'm glad for that, too.

I have regraded the road in front of my house, which is a dirt road, privately maintained, and put some ditches on either sides, and that has really helped. So we all have done a lot of work around flooding for if this happens again. The county has done so much work that we're hoping and thinking we won't have nearly the problem we had two years ago across the east side of Flagstaff. It was bad. And in town, they had some flooding as well on the west side of town.

And the city really got on that quickly and built a new retention pond on the west side of town that is. Seemed to handle things very well. So the city and county both did a great job with the flooding. The fire, I think the city and county have much less say in it. And so it's. We're up to the Forest Service to call it. And I don't have quite as much confidence in that after all these years. Right. Looks like you're very involved in Climate change yourself.

I am kind of a climate information geek aficionado and it scares me some too. It's actually why I know your podcast a little bit, because after being evacuated for the fourth or fifth time, I can't remember, I started looking at, gosh, where am I going to go? I don't know that I can do this anymore. In the meantime, I think it's strengthened my love of the community here. So it's a double edged sword that. That topic.

I see things changing and I love my community and my community is very strong and resilient. And I'm one of those people who prob wants to really dig my heels in here and see what I can do for Flagstaff to save us for the future instead of running away. But I'm not sure I would call it running away when you've been evacuated that many times. So now granted, I was living in the kind of homes that you're going to get evacuated because you live near the trees. I didn't live in town, so. Right.

Okay. Now that we took care of that, the ugly things. Sorry. But yes, I love it here. Fine. It's part of what everybody should know. Yes, tell us about outdoor activities and natural attractions that make Flagstaff appealing for retirees.

What. What does Flagstaff have to offer? This is why it's all worth it to live here. There is so much hiking and you don't have to drive to go hiking. You just, I mean, I just go hiking from my house because I live close, but almost everyone lives close. It's, you know, I have friends in Colorado who are always talking about how they have to get in the car to go hike somewhere. And I can ride my bike, I can walk. There's so many hikes here and so hiking is the main one for me. Birding.

I wrote down a huge list because there's so many. Biking. I bike to work a lot as well. Mountain biking, kayaking on our lakes here and rivers. Camping, climbing, cross country skiing, downhill skiing, snowshoeing, you name it. Anything that's outdoorsy. Trail riding. There's so many trail riding folks here. Horse community. So anything outdoorsy is fun here. Even for folks who enjoy like ATVs and stuff like that. We have an ATV area that's separate to do that kind of thing. So I just. Anything.

Being outdoors is wonderful here and so easy to get to. And Sedona is 30 minutes from us, so if it's cold here, you just run down to Sedona and warm up about 15, 20 degrees. That's right. So it's wonderful. And we have the access to Grand Canyon, Waupat Key, Walnut Canyon National Monument, Sunset Crater National Monument, Painted Desert, Sedona. I mean, it's. The north rim is three hours from us. It's beautiful. The outdoor opportunities are really endless here. It's wonderful. It's worth it.

Yeah. Whenever it gets really hot, we're like, oh, should we do the Flagstaff thing? Right. Yeah. So that's great. All right, let's.

Let's get a little bit into cost of living. Yes. What's the median cost of a two bedroom, two bath, single family home in Flagstaff? So I had trouble finding that, but I went to several different sites and what I did was I took Zillow, realtor.com and Redfin, and I added them all up and just averaged them. And I was surprised at the cost. A medium median and they don't give it for a two bedroom. I'm assuming it's a three bedroom, two bath. Okay. But it's seven. $724,000 is the median.

That surprised me quite a lot. That's pretty high. I live outside of town and it's less expensive where I live, but that's pretty high. And that's one of the things about Flagstaff to know is the housing costs here are high. It's. They just keep rising every year. We never seem to stop, stay the same, or go down. So as a homeowner, I feel lucky in that regard, unless I'm moving to another home in Flagstaff. Right.

Yeah. But owning here, I've owned here for 30 years, so I. That's been a huge investment. There's really low inventory here for housing because we are surrounded by national forests on almost every side. So, you know, finding an open lot to build a house on is very difficult and there's a high demand. So housing is our highest thing here for sure. We are 385 square foot is our average. That's high, and that's 45% higher than the national average. These are all things I'm just learning.

I knew it was high, but I didn't realize that we've gone up 13.6% housing costs from last year. So it's great for somebody who wants to sell their home. Yeah, you want to sell and move from Flagstaff, you make a lot of money. It's a good place to invest in a home because you definitely make it back. But it's, it's, you know, it's a deterrent to living here if that's an issue for you with owning a home. Now, there are places that aren't in Flagstaff that are close to town that are less expensive.

Like the area community I live in is called Doney park on the east side of town, Timberline. There's some places out on the west side of town that are a little bit less. And the south side of town there are a little bit less as well. But saving grace to that is also Arizona has a low property tax. We do. Yes. So compared to other states, like if you were to compare California and Arizona, it's really. There's a big difference there.

Yeah. Even in spite of all the fire and flood, I think our property tax is stay pretty low. Yeah, that's good. Yes, it is. Okay. You learn something new every day. That's right. Same. How about renting? Do you know what an average rent would be for a home? Yes, rentals are high here. I looked those up. And a two bedroom, two bath averages between 750 and 2,000amonth in town. Less outside of town, but in town that's in it.

And I haven't rented in a very long time, but that seems pretty high to me. Of course we have a huge, you know, NAU has 30,000 students, so we have a lot of rentals near the university and I think they can just charge that kind of rent. Compared to Phoenix, it's low. It's low. Oh, okay. Wow. Okay. I don't think you can get a two bedroom, two bath in Phoenix for less than, than I'm going to think 2500. Okay. Okay. Well, it has exploded in Phoenix as well.

Yeah. Well, for a house out in my neighborhood now, granted I have two and a half acres. I have horses, I have a beautiful view. My house is not fancy. It's about 1500 square feet. But I could rent my house for 2,500, $3,000 a month. But it's a three bedroom, two bath with some acreage, so that's a little higher, but. Okay. That's interesting to know. Yeah. Okay. So what can retirees expect to pay for utilities? Electric, water, heating.

Yeah, you know, I struggled looking that one up a little bit too. It's so variable here. Some people heat their homes with a wood stove. There's a lot of that here. Kind of certainly us hippies who like to do this sort of thing or whatever. So that's a different kind of cost. But I did come up with some numbers where that is here. So electricity was around 114amonth. Mine is significantly less than That I have air conditioning, but I rarely use it because I have built some shade.

I built a porch on the back of my house that really keeps my house a lot cooler. So my electricity bill is much lower than that. I have natural gas, and that's in the $100 a month range as well. Maybe averages out over the year. And that's for heating, right? That's for heating and maybe a little bit of cooling. Electricity. I have some electricity in my barn across my property, too. Water is about fifty dollar range. And I have a pretty big garden.

I do rainwater collecting, so I use that in Arizona. I think you got to do whatever you can, right? Yeah. It's not illegal here to collect gray water, so a lot of us do that who have gardens. And I collect water for my horses as well, so. So that one was a little bit harder for me to. To, you know, I tried to look it up online and I couldn't find anything definitive. So I would say it's probably. I didn't find anything. That said it's way more expensive to live here.

I would say you're paying more for heating costs than you are for cooling costs here. Oh, yeah. A lot of people don't have air conditioners here a lot. Now, where I live on the east side of town, where it's less expensive, it's hotter. So we're maybe 66,700ft as opposed to 7,000ft. And that little bit of difference, plus being on the other side of the mountain makes it warmer and sunnier, and so it's not quite as cold. So. Yeah. And compared to Phoenix, your cooling cost is low.

Wait. Yeah, we don't have a lot of cooling. Summer. We are in the 2000s in the summer. Yeah. I would say most of the people I know here in Flagstaff do not have air conditioning. If people are building more recent homes as things are heating up, people are putting in more air conditioning. Now you see that on a Facebook post every summer, people starting to say where. Who are the people to look for to put in air conditioning? Air conditioning? Yeah, that's a new thing here.

So people don't have those costs as much as more heating. And then a lot of people here use either pellet stoves, wood stoves, some passive heating sources. Yeah. Solar panels. Yeah, we should have more of those. Big environmental community here. That's good. That's good to know. How about groceries? Are you online with the US Average, you think, or are you a little bit more. I think we're more. I'm Pretty sure we're more.

I looked it up but didn't find anything definitive and I just asked friends and everyone thinks we're more. Part of it is shipping it up the hill from, you know, Phoenix area or wherever the products are coming from. We are at the intersection of I40 and I17 so that makes it easy. But coming from anywhere it's going to be a trek on a truck or something. So our prices are higher. We don't have a lot of Costco's, we don't have any Costco here. We don't have that type of store.

We have one Sam's Club, we have a Super Walmart and then we have a Big Fry's grocery store and that's definitely. Those are the least expensive places to buy groceries. We have community co ops and the Flagstaff Farmers Market for farm fresh type locally sourced produce. And then we have the typical Safeway and Bashes supermarkets which are more significantly more expensive than fries or we don't have a Costco. We don't have a Trader Joe's yet. We want one very much. We have Sprouts.

I love shopping at Sprouts. It's expensive. We have natural grocers and we have a Whole Foods. So. So you have a. Have pretty much what we have except for the Costco, right? Yeah. So okay. And yeah, it's funny how a Safeway or a Fries could have different prices in different places. Safeway, it is different here in California than it is back home in Phoenix. It's a little bit more here. Oh yeah. And gas over there. Wow. That's another thing. How about gas? That's an average gas.

Yeah, gas here is higher than the average for sure. My, my wife lives part time in South Carolina and their costs are like in the. She'll say oh, gas has gotten up to 250 and I'm like oh well it's four dollars here a gallon. We're in the I think three dollar a gallon now. Right now. So it's pretty low here but we tend to be on the higher end because gas has to be trucked up here.

I when I'll travel to Phoenix to go to the airport sometimes or whatever and I'll get a little bit here and then I'll have a big four wheel drive truck. So I'll tank up down there for sure. And yeah. All right. So a little bit more than the national average or Phoenix area. Yes, but that's kind of expected if they have to make the truck up. Right.

So okay, how about transportation? Do you have any transportation other than your own vehicle? Yes, we have some really good options here. We have the Mountain Lion Lion. Mountain lion bus system. Originally was really forward thinking. They were powering them with natural gas and now they're switching over to electric. And we have lots of routes here in town. It's very affordable. I think a one time thirty day pass is around the thirty dollar range. A one way ticket is $1.25 each way.

So people, a lot of people use the bus. It goes all over town, all the way out towards my side of town, past the mall. NAU students have free public transportation on campus. There are buses, NAU buses on campus. So a lot of students use that. A lot of students come here without cars. They use their one wheels or their scooters. And a lot of biking here. We have very good dedicated bike lanes all through town and people are respectful of that here.

I have tried to be a bike commuter in other towns, very unsuccessfully. Especially when I moved back to Atlanta for a little while, it was like, this is dangerous here. I ride my bike as much as I can. I, now that I'm getting older, have an electric bike. E bike. That's what I'm getting. Yes. Wonderful. Because my commute is 15 miles one way. So I used to ride my regular bike, but now I'm. Yeah. And it has bigger tires for the snow. But we have the mountain lion bus.

I think it's really quite good. They're changing to electric. I'm very glad for that. And it's a pretty walkable city if you're in town. When I lived in town, I used to ride my bike or walk pretty much everywhere. And working here at nau, I would just ride my bike here and then walk from there. So between the buses and walking and biking, I think it's quite easy to get around in Flagstaff now. If you live out of town like me, it's more of an effort, but.

And sometimes even I'll put my bike on the rack, take it to where the bike lane starts near the mall and just ride from there. And that's a great kind of alternative. So the buses are convenient, they're clean, they work well. The routes seem to go very smoothly, so I have lots of friends who ride it. So if you're in the city of Flagstaff, can you walk like everywhere? Pretty much. Pretty much, yeah. And how convenient is the airports? Okay, so the airport, we have one here in town.

It's a small airport, regional airport. And lots of my friends who have jobs, they have to travel for use that airport. Many of the rest of us don't so much because it adds quite a lot of cost. My older family members definitely want to fly into Flagstaff, though. It's much more convenient for obvious reasons. It's right here in town. It's on the south side of town. So that airport, they. We had free parking until very recently. Free long term parking. You could park there forever.

So just now they started charging. So people are kind of upset about that. We didn't even have charges for downtown parking until last five or ten years. I don't know, recent. So people are all upset about that. But, but the airport that, you know, our flights get canceled some because of weather, mostly in the winter. And it, you know, it takes virtually no time to fly from Flagstaff to Phoenix, but it adds quite a bit in. It depends on the trip you're taking and how far in advance you book it.

We only have American Airlines here now. In the past, we've had United, we've had different airlines in combinations, but right now it's just American. So many of us make the trek to sky harbor in Phoenix, which is about two hours, two and a half, two to two and a half hours depending on traffic to get down there and parking and all of that. But there's also a shuttle that runs from Flagstaff to the sky harbor airport. It's very convenient.

My wife is coming tomorrow and she's riding the shuttle. And it saves us, you know, the drive back and forth. It costs less actually, and it's very convenient. It's, you know, it's just very convenient. You can sleep on that shuttle and. It let somebody else do the. It's not door to door, but it's close. So the shuttle works well. But the, the airport here is. It's a good thing to have, but it's expensive. Yeah, I would assume.

Okay, now let's get into some talk about arts, culture and lifestyle, which is also one of your things, I'm sure. How would you describe Flagstaff's arts and culture scene that theaters, galleries, music venues, retirees might enjoy? So I know a lot about NAU because I've worked here for 30 years and I'm in the School of Music, so we have a very active performance series. The faculty here at the School of Music is always doing concerts.

Very, you know, we have a very active schedule during the school year. In the summers, it's less active here on campus, but there's still things going on in town. In town we have Flagstaff Symphony, which I Play in. Very active. We have a concert tonight, Valentine's Day concert. And the orchestra stays really busy. Across Northern Arizona, we do less run outs than we used to do. We used to go up on the Navajo Nation, we used to go to Sedona.

We stick closer to town, but we still do serve our regional community here. We also have an orchestra, Northern Arizona, which is a community orchestra that performs. We have the Flagstaff Community Band, performs all over the place. Very active with them. Lots of music here. Downtown Coconino center for the Arts, the Orpheum Theater has. I saw Brandy Carlisle there, wonderful intimate venue. And Indigo Girls, I saw them there.

We also had the Pepsi Amphitheater, which is our outdoor amphitheater in the summer and wonderful space to perform. I've performed there many times and then watch people perform. It's a beautiful space. And so there's lots of music going on downtown at private, not private venues, but restaurants and smaller venues as well. Lots of live music going on. And for art galleries, we have quite a few on campus that are active. I have one right upstairs from me, from my office.

And in town we have the first Friday art walk every month. That's a lot of fun. A lot of times they'll have music going at those events. Everybody walks around to the different galleries, looking at things and enjoying that scene here. It's not quite the scene that you get in a similar place like Santa Fe, but it's. There's definitely an art scene here. Yes. And we have a lot of participation from our native community here, so that's really interesting as well.

So theater, we have Flag Shakespeare Company that has collaborated with the symphony. We have dance groups, we have modern dance groups. Human Nature Dance Company. I have gone and seen some really interesting things way out in the woods, way out in the desert that have been put on by these very interesting performance art companies and or dance companies. So a lot going on here for the arts and culture in such a small town. There's a lot of intersection with nature here.

Try to get outside and play. I've played at the Observatory many times. Played out in the woods before and had lots of people come. So, yeah, that's kind of a neat thing that we do here. It's in the realm of performance art, I guess, but it just feels like celebrating nature. So it's pretty fun. And then we have some festivals related to the arts and culture here. You've probably heard about our Picking in the Pines. It's the bluegrass festival that happens every fall.

I always miss it because it's the first week that NAU starts back. We have a big county fair. We have a huge county here in Coffee, Coconino County. And the fair is wonderful. Lots to look at there and see lots of animal stuff and art stuff, food stuff, all kinds of things. We have our folk festival that happens every year.

We have a wool and fiber festival, which often there's music at that folks come off the nation and they bring their sheep, and there's all kinds of shearing demonstrations that go on. There's often music and different cultural things happening at that event as well. It's a really neat event. We have had classical music festivals in the past. We don't have one this year yet. I think that's being reformatted.

There's a Horizon series in the summer that happens, that brings in national artists from all genres, not just classical. And then, you know, things spring up here and there that happen. In fact, we had a lot of outdoors activities here, including running events. And at the running events, we had a Beethoven 5K. So, you know, some of us went and played for that. Played. And I ran at the. Oh, I'm trying to think of what it's called, the Prayer Run on one of the observatory trails here.

And they had Hopi artists out playing their instruments out on the trails while we were doing the run. And that was really great. Well, no wonder why you're there for. You're living there for 30 years. That's right. Hopefully I live a long time because of this. Yes, it's true. Yeah, you will. It's great. That is wonderful. So how about the dining scene? Flagstaff has some good restaurants. We really do. And I wrote some things down, so I'm going to turn to that.

We are kind of known for our Mexican food, and there's lots of really good places. We have a lot of craft beer here. Several, you know, several breweries. I mean, really good beers that have won a lot of international and national awards. We have gourmet burger places here. We have local food places here. So I guess I'll just name off some of the places that I asked my friends about when I was preparing for this. So the Tinderbox is wonderful. It's a wonderful place to eat.

Shift is another one downtown. These are so far. These are all going to be downtown. So Soba is a ramen place. Martin's is a very famous Mexican place. We have a vegan place called Red Curry. Josephine's is a wonderful, more fine dining place. It's a really quaint house. It's an old historic home and it has all these little nooks and crannies of places to eat. It's wonderful. We have the Himalayan Cafe, which is Himalayan food.

There's a place called the Tourist Home, which is very good on the south side of town. And then the Beaver Street Brewery and Lumberyard Brewery, both wonderful. There's many other breweries. Mother Road is another one to mention. My favorite pizza place is called Pizzicletta. It's connected to Mother Road Brewing. There's another restaurant called Proper, which is very good, locally sourced meats. Satchmo's is a New Orleans style restaurant place.

Wow. We have a very historic place called Macy's Coffee House, which is wonderful. It's a European style coffee house. I always take. Anyone who comes to town, I take to Macy's. It's wonderful. We have Salsa. Bravo. Which is a kind of a famous Mexican place. It was featured on that. The show about divey restaurants. I forget exactly what it's called. It was featured on there. That's it. That's it. It was featured on there. It is good. And it's not very expensive.

And then we have the Gourmet Diablo Burger. It's a gourmet burger kind of a place. We have some sort of finer restaurants. The Atria is one of them. We have all different things. And then a lot of people from here, if they really want to go have something really historic and fine dining, we'll head up to the El Tovar restaurant at Grand Canyon and have a nice lunch up there with a view of the Grand Canyon. It's wonderful. It sounds great. Yeah. Sounds like.

Yeah. There's no shortage of restaurants. There's such great restaurants for such a small town. Yeah, it sounds wonderful. Awesome.

Okay, so let's get into the LGBTQ community. How welcoming is Flagstaff now? I know. I believe on the HRC Municipal Equality Index, they scored 100 if I'm not mistaken. So does the city have a reputation for inclusivity? Absolutely. I feel the most safe living here of anywhere I've ever lived. I lived in Madison, Wisconsin. I lived in Boston. Now, granted, that was more than 30 years ago, but Seattle, very inclusive community. Some of that might be due to the fact that I work at nau.

It's a very safe space here on campus. Even now in our kind of challenging times, we have a lot of support here. And so we have an LGBTQ commission here on campus. And we talk about community issues all over Flagstaff, but especially related to nau. So I feel very safe Here in this town, I always have. I raised my two children here with my ex wife and never had a spot of a problem with our kids. Our kids never had issues.

When we would go home to visit relatives in the Atlanta area, something would always come up when we were there. Now, granted, we were visiting there too, so maybe people just got cut to the chase and asked us questions or ask the kids questions. But there were issues when we went there, and my kids would always be like, wow, we didn't realize. So here. I feel like it's extremely inclusive. The city of Flagstaff makes a real effort with our Pride festival here.

You know, I know it's not allowed anymore to fly trans or LGBTQIA plus flags, but definitely the city of Flagstaff always flew those flags, and it felt just extraordinarily welcoming. Lots of city officials and police involved in our Pride Festival. And the Friends of Flagstaff future takes those issues into account with our community resilience. So I think it feels very safe to me here, for sure. Is there an LGBTQ community center? There is not. We have struggled with that for a long time.

A lot of us were trying to kind of get something going in town, and it seems to be really focused on the NAU campus, and that's where it seems to be. You know, we have an inclusive. What do they call it, the IMQ center here on campus, and I guess we just sort of gravitate to that, but there isn't one here in town. Okay, how about a senior center? Is there a senior center? There is a senior center. I have never been to it. Not quite there yet. Maybe not quite yet.

I feel like when sometimes, yeah, there's a senior center. I don't know too much about that, actually. I have. Do have friends who take part in the activities there. So we have a community recreation center that has senior things that happen there as well, our aquaplex. And I know friends who go and do things there. So, yeah, as far as the LGBTQ center, it doesn't surprise me at all. Especially a small town. Usually it's center around the. The college and the university. So that's great.

All right. Is there. So Flagstaff is the size where there wouldn't be any type of gayborhood, so to speak. Correct. We really don't have a gayborhood. Everything is integrated. Yeah, I. I think there's a lot. I know a lot of women who live outside of town more rurally. Maybe it goes along with the culture. More of my gay male friends live in town and they have their Community. It isn't like it's separate, but it's. What do you think that is? I'm always curious.

My lesbian friends always prefer to live in the rural area. Right. And the gay guys want to live in the city. That's right. They have nice. They have nicer interior barriers than we have in their homes. I'm like, what's up with that? Right. It does seem to be that way here, for sure. It just seems to be a stereotype about us. That's true. So, yeah, we're kind of crunchy. I don't know. I know lots of women who live out in town. Out of town and live in the country.

Of course, I know plenty of folks who live in town too. So there's no gayborhood. Really, though. But it's all friendly here, as far as I know. In fact, I live in a rural community outside of town. Been more challenging for me with kind of. I mean, honestly, kind of rednecky people and. But people have been accepting of me, and I've been. I don't hide. But it's harder for me out in this rural community that I live in than when I lived on the west side of Flagstaff rurally.

And it was more inclusive there, for sure. Okay. All right. Is there any this. So there's no kind of gay bars? There aren't. But almost every bar downtown is gay friendly. We definitely go through different stages of bars. We had a gay bar here a few years ago. It closed very suddenly. It was very packed all the time. Every time I ever went there. Drag shows, everything. It was so much fun. Really well done. I don't know what happened. It was a cafe and a gay bar, and it was just great.

And then it just closed all of a sudden, so we loved that. There's quite a few places downtown where you go in. It's just no big deal. And it's very celebrated, so. But nothing specifically dedicated. We do have drag shows at the Orpheum. We have drag shows related to NAU events. We have dance parties, LGBTQBTQIA dance parties. We have all kinds of events that are. Some of them more sober events and some that are at bars and clubs downtown. How do you get invited to or how do you get.

How do you know what gay events or LGBTQ events are going on in town? So for me, it's usually through friends, but there's also Facebook. Quite a bit of traffic on Facebook groups. There's some new folks who are doing some things. There's a new event called Stitch and Bitch at Bookman's. And it's just a place like some people do cross stitching or they do some kind of craft, and they invite everybody to come to Bookman's. And you just hang out in the evening on a Tuesday night or something.

And it's supposed to be a wonderful event. I really want to go to it. I haven't been yet. You can do a puzzle. You can just sit and talk to people and have a cup of coffee. They have a cafe there, so that's great. And I found out about that through wondering if it's called Queers of Northern Arizona, something along those lines on Facebook. For sure. There is a meetup group here. I'm not involved with that, but I know of it and I find out things through our LGBTQ group here on campus.

They send out, you know, event announcements, so it's mostly online. I'll hear about it. I'm in the Flagstaff front runners as well, which is a running. A queer running group. I know you guys have that in Phoenix, too. Yeah, I've been pretty involved in that. I hurt my back very badly and then couldn't go. But sometimes I would just show up and walk with my dogs. And in the summers, you know, there can be 15, 20 people there. So for Flagstaff, that's a big group.

And we do different trails, and it's great. And their allies show up as well. It's really. That's been kind of my social. Biggest social group I've done in the last few years. But there's more things that involve just going out at night. And for younger folks, for sure. Sounds good.

How about let's get into crime and safety? Okay. So I'm assuming Flagstaff is a very safe place. It's a very safe place. And I looked up. I'm going to turn back on my page here to look up where I found the crime statistics. So we have quite a bit less crime than a lot of folks across the country. We are at 59 per 1000 residents is our number for crime, so that's a very low number. We do have some issues with homelessness, which I'm not necessarily saying is related to crime, but they.

In the crime report, they include that. So I guess I'm including it here. Our city and county have done really great job dealing with the homeless issue here by housing people. They've been renovating hotels on Route 66, on old Route 66, these old retro hotels that they're just fixing up and housing people in there. And it's Wonderful. Because, you know, too, people can freeze out of weather here for sure, living out in the forest or start fires. Yeah, it's the same as.

I don't know how they do it here in Phoenix in the summer. I'll tell you. I've seen people just laying on the streets and sure, I've given them water and a little baggie of goodies. Right. Just so they could survive. Yeah. The heat related deaths are going up. So, yeah, we have a, an organization called Flagstaff Shelter Services and they're really been spearheading this issue with renovating old sort of rundown hotels and really fixing them up and having people. And I think it's just been.

That's wonderful for community. Yeah. So we've had a lot of assistance in that regard. And so our crime is really quite low. We have a little bit of gang activity in an area called Sunnyside. It's kind of on the east side of town. It's kind of central to that area. I've never seen anything related to that. I haven't seen a lot of graffiti here. None of that sort of thing. I don't. I would assume there's very little violent crime as opposed to, you know, like. Very little violent crime here.

I'm terrible. Nobody knows where I live. That's good. Half of us don't lock our doors and I didn't lock my car door till in the last five years. I mean, literally here on campus. I mean, that's terrible. That was dumb of me. Nothing ever happened. But in Flagstaff, there's so many people who are just like, oh, yeah, we just do the Flagstaff thing. We just. And people never used to lock their bikes. I mean, just. I do now, but, you know. Yeah, we don't. We just. It isn't.

It just especially rurally, it isn't really like that. You worry about like maybe a baby bear coming through your doggy door or something like that, but I worry about coyotes in my yard. No, there isn't a lot of violent crime at all here. In fact, you probably heard about our, the situation last summer where a fellow killed his wife and it was national news. It was a big deal in Arizona and nobody could believe it happened here. So, yeah, we don't have a lot of that. Yeah, that's good.

That's good. Everybody loves to retire to a safe place. Yes. Do you know the crime rate as in comparison to the national average? Oh, you did mention the statistics. It was 59 per 1,000 per thousand. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, that is pretty low. Yep. Are there any other specific safety concerns retirees should consider? Consider when moving? I guess, just make sure you don't get attacked by a bear. Right. I would say fire is the biggest thing, really.

And that's not even in the just having a plan, knowing how you're going to deal with that issue as a safety concern. Otherwise, it's an extremely safe place to live. I hike by myself all the time. I mean, my mother worries about me, but I have had some wild animal encounters and I've loved them all, but they haven't felt really dangerous, so. So they're usually afraid of us, including the mountain lion that I ran into. So lucky. That's great. Mountain lion, right. I'm a city boy.

I'm like, the most I see is squirrels. Right. Okay, very good. So some final thoughts.

If somebody is considering retiring to Flagstaff, what would you say are the biggest pros and the biggest cons? I would say that by far the biggest pro is nature here, outdoors, staying active, being active, being around a lot of active people. As an example, when I was still able to run, I did a lot of like semi competitive running here. And there's always a group for 70 and then 80 year olds. Like you'd have 80 year olds out running the race and doing pretty well. They've lifted a whole lot.

I mean, just staying really active. You know, when I was in the Atlanta area, the, you know, we'd have an over 50 and that would be it. But in Flagstaff, you get a lot of really active older people. So if you enjoy that kind of thing, you're going to fit in here. Just nature and being able to be in proximity to outdoors. So many different kinds of outdoor spaces. So I would say that's the biggest pro to here. And the climate, even though it's changing, is very pleasant.

It's been very pleasant in the summers, for sure. In Arizona, I would say it's the place to be. Be to be summer. Yeah. We always try to get away, you know, and everybody says in Phoenix, oh, you want to go to Flagstaff. That's right. It's so much cooler. It could be 30 degrees cooler. That's right, yeah. And I would say the negative would be the cost of housing. It's just the main thing here.

While it's a big investment, if you plan to buy and then sell and maybe go somewhere a little less expensive, it's a great. Real estate is a great investment here, but it's expensive to get in. So, you know, and if you want to rent it Sounds like it's not that bad, is what you were saying. I had heard from people it was expensive, so I would say just the cost of living here and the cost of housing, but, you know, what we get for it makes up for it in my right. You get what you pay for.

Yeah, you do. What's the one thing that would surprise people the most about Flagstaff after they moved? You know, it surprised me when I moved here that how much I go other places when I'm tired of the weather. So say I'm tired of the cold. I go down to Phoenix for a day and. Or I just go to Sedona. I mean, Sedona is 30 to 45 minutes away, depending on where you live in flag. And it's 15 to 20 degrees cooler, and it can be fairly miserable here. And you go have a pretty nice day down there.

So that was surprising to me. And all the cool things around Arizona there are to do that are within a short drive. Phoenix is two hours, you know, north of Phoenix, Cave Creek, that whole area. I know that pretty well. Yeah. That's less than two hours for me to get to. And I run down there, and then I come back in the same day. So it's. And all the camping I do here, I've gone so many cool places that are just completely different.

So in the winter, you have all these places you can go when it's cold and snowy up here. And in the summer, up here is great. And then there's the White Mountains. You can go enjoy cool weather out that way, and it's not crowded at all, and so it's wonderful. I love that about Arizona. I never. I didn't know that about that before I came here. So, yeah, it is surprising that there's so much to do and there's so many different places and microclimates.

So if you can give one piece of advice to our LGBTQ retirees thinking about moving to Flagstaff, what would it be? If you like being out in a beautiful climate with a beautiful view, almost everywhere you are here is a beautiful view. It's the largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest in the country. You'll love it here. And it's a college town, so you have. Your culture is very liberal. There's lots of queer people here. And I, you know, when I thought about.

I got on your podcast and started looking around and seeing how much cost of living was less other places. The community here is just. It wins out for me. And it's just the people and the way the people fit into the landscape. It's sounds like you found your forever home. Yeah, it's pretty great. Yeah. So. Well, thank you, Nancy. And thank you so much for joining us and coming to the podcast. It's really been educational. I love speaking to you.

I think we kind of hit it off and I, I look forward to speaking to you sometime very soon. Same. I hope you'll come visit. I will. Call me up. Okay, I will. Thank you. Take care. Okay. You too. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to the Where Do Gays Retire? Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe to our podcast and consider making a donation by clicking the coffee cup on any page at www.wheredogaysretire.com.

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