Calinente Tropics Revisited

Looking through the "A" frame of the Caliente Tropics Hotel in Palm Springs.

This isn't the first time I've written about this mid-century modern Tiki masterpiece. In early 2007, I photographed the Caliente Tropics just before Anna Nicole Smith died, she partied here while filming her reality show. The episode had her judging a male beauty contest.

Prior to that, I wrote an article for the Desert Sun about the hotel's reopening in 2002. At the time, the new owners who came from San Francisco bought the property, putting millions of dollars into it.

Built in the mid-1960s, the Caliente Tropics was the brainchild of Ken Kimes, husband of the notorious murderess Sante. The troubled Sante took in homeless people and tortured them, not to mention burning houses for the sake of watching the embers flicker.

The Caliente Tropics, part of a chain with the Tropics name, has a sister hotel, The Topics in Indio.