Overheard in the parking lot before last night's Cirque de Soleil show at Glendale Arena: "This is why this whole thing is destined to fail."

The scenario: walking to the arena from the parking area and crossing over some dirt medians caused by the construction at the Westgate project. A resident of the East Valley (apparent from his disdain for having crossed Central Avenue for any reason) was complaining loudly about the admittedly cross-country trek to the arena.

The larger scenario: we were walking just east of Glendale Arena - a few hundred yards north of the new Cardinals Stadium, a few hundred yards south of Loews' new movie theater (a first in the Valley - the Loews portion, not the movie theater, just west of where the residential condos are being added and directly south of a building whose purpose I'm still working out.

Yep, Westgate clearly is a failure. Dork.

If you follow sports you've heard about the supposed East Coast bias in the media. If you don't follow sports, you probably can get the same experience watching presidential returns - we don't really matter much out here (see: Florida, New Mexico, 2000). In the Phoenix area, there's a severe East Valley bias because it was the East Valley that grew long before the West.

Times have changed, though not everyone in the streets (north-south roads on the east side of Central Avenue are Streets, those on the west are Avenues) seems to realize it.

With the Cardinals and the Fiesta Bowl having moved to Glendale, Tempe is left with the Insight Bowl. It's a cute bowl - I was there last year - but it's not the Fiesta Bowl. Gammage remains the primary location for full-scale Broadway productions, but if you drop one step, there's now a Broadway dinner theater in peoria to match the one in Mesa. The Coyotes left downtown for Glendale.

More and more, the places to be are either in downtown or the West Valley.

So, Westgate destined to fail? Um, probably not. For many, the time's come to take off the street-shaded sunglasses and see what has blossomed out west.

(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes