# @downinnadesert on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DdC76GfD-Wy
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/70300019-downinnadesert-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/ebcb5e83b7.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-09-09T00:07:05.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Down In The Desert🌵 (@downinnadesert) — https://gondola.cc/downinnadesert

## Caption

Everybody knows Emma Stone is from Scottsdale and Alice Cooper grew up in Phoenix. Here are five you probably didn’t know.

FAZE ADAPT. Real name Alex Prynkiewicz, born in Phoenix and a Pinnacle High School kid. He started uploading Call of Duty trickshot clips as a teenager and turned it into one of the biggest gaming channels on YouTube, spending more than a decade as one of the most recognizable members of FaZe Clan before going independent. Millions of subscribers, and he came up right here.

TED DANSON. Born in San Diego, but raised in Flagstaff, where his father was an archaeologist who directed the Museum of Northern Arizona. He played Sam Malone on Cheers and Michael on The Good Place, and has been on television for forty-plus years.

JOAN GANZ COONEY. Born in Phoenix. She co-created Sesame Street and founded the Children’s Television Workshop. Big Bird, Oscar, the whole thing traces back to a woman from this city.

STAN JONES. Born in Douglas in 1914. He worked as a cowboy and a park ranger before writing “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” which has since been recorded by Johnny Cash, Bing Crosby, Debbie Harry and dozens of others. One of the most covered songs in American music.

DAVID SPADE. Raised in Scottsdale. Saguaro High School, then ASU, and he was doing standup around Phoenix long before he got near New York. Then SNL, Tommy Boy, Joe Dirt and Just Shoot Me.

Honorable mention to Kerri Strug of Tucson, who stuck that vault on one ankle in 1996 and somehow doesn’t make enough of these lists.

Who else? Drop the ones people always get wrong.

Via: Public records and published profiles

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#Phoenix #Arizona #Flagstaff #ArizonaNews #DownInnaDesert

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## Tags

flagstaff, arizonanews, arizona, phoenix, downinnadesert

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