Palm Springs: our place in the sun.

There is a brief, lovely moment every evening when the white-hot desert sky turns a breathtaking purple-rose. When this happens and a musky cool envelops Palm Springs, we wish--at least for a while--that we would never be anywhere else.

Once upon a time, visitors traveled to Palm Springs to escape the glare of Hollywood, 114 miles away. Frank Sinatra, the Gabor sisters, and the late resident emeritus Bob Hope made the formerly sleepy desert community their personal playground; today gay men and the same.

On warm fall weekends, there's Hardly an empty room in Palm Springs's 43 gay-owned hotels (at last count), most of which are in the Warm Sands neighborhood. But this place is not all about sin and sun: A heady social scene rules the bars and filters into the private homes of the city's gay elite. Residents are duly proud of their pristine, midcentury modernist homes. And Palm Springs has started to attract Young Hollywood types, including uber-hip designer Trina Turk; who has a namesake shop here, along with stars like Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Matt Damon.

City'S formerly forlorn dining has spiced up in a hot way. Restaurants like Pomme Frite, the Chop House, and El Mirasol (a dazzlingly authentic Mexican eatery frequented by bosom buddies Barry Manilow and Suzanne Somers) are prime destinations in town.

In the years between the demise of the Rat Pack and the rise of the gay movement, Palm Springs's glitter had dulled. By restoring forgotten neighborhoods like the North End, the Movie Colony, and Las Palmas, revitalizing the social shopping, and eating scenes, and taking pride in our political power, gay people have recast Palm Springs as a destination of international allure. So we've earned the right to call this desert diva our place in the sun.