I was 26 when I bought the 44-room poolside property for $800,000, renovated it for $200,000, and had $100,000 in the bank to cover our first year losses. Everyone said it was a fool’s errand. The neighborhood was rough, the property was rundown, and my résumé didn’t exactly scream “future hotelier.” But sometimes success wears the mask of folly. And with grit, grace, and a little naïveté, The Phoenix rose from its ashes again and again. And, it was the first of 52 hotels I created with Joie de Vivre.
Over the years, the hotel taught me a lesson that’s tattooed into my entrepreneurial DNA:
- Resilience—the white-knuckled grip that buys you time when the storm hits.
- Adaptability—the willingness to iterate, to pivot, to shape-shift into what the future needs.
Resilience buys you time. Adaptability buys you a future.
And oh, the stories that filled those decades! I once lent my cufflinks to John F. Kennedy Jr. when he was best man at a poolside wedding. I babysat Sinead O’Connor’s baby during her first U.S. tour. Every New Year’s Eve, Anthony Kiedis, Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain, and Courtney Love would rent the place out for their wild, messy, magical celebrations. Linda Ronstadt made The Phoenix her home base while rehearsing for a mariachi tour, filling the courtyard with music that felt both ancient and brand-new.
Those moments weren’t just celebrity anecdotes—they were proof of what happens when a place becomes more than walls and beds. The Phoenix became a community, a stage, a sanctuary, a playground for dreamers and misfits.
So as the curtain closes on this chapter—lease ending, birthday approaching, ghosts of the past roaming through—I can only bow in gratitude. The Phoenix taught me that endings are rarely just endings. They’re compost for the next beginning.
Halloween is about masks and transformations, after all. What better night to toast a hotel that kept reinventing itself, and to honor the resilience and adaptability that live on in all of us?
Here’s to the ashes. Here’s to the rebirths. And here’s to whatever rises next. Here’s info on my birthday party that night. Hope you can come celebrate.
-Chip