'My favorite corner'

By COREY SCHUBERT
With JONATHAN J. COOPER, TESSA MUGGERIDGE and MEGAN THOMAS

PHOENIX – The “dead center” of this city is anything but dead.

Electricity hums through traffic lights and metro rails at the intersection of North Central Avenue and East Adams Street, dictating the frenetic stop-and-go pace of hundreds of people by the hour.

Amid this bustling intersection in urban Phoenix, two unique characters stand on adjacent corners nearly every afternoon like fixed points on a compass — human anchors with a magnetic nature that pulls people in different directions. Both have entirely different goals, but tackle the same mercurial moods of an overheated crowd.

Ben Benton, 56, strums his guitar to classic-rock tunes and makes the sidewalk his stage to bring music to an audience that often pretends not to hear him. Robert Eckroate, 51, chants and proselytizes to passersby who sometimes fear to make eye contact as he thumps his Bible on the concrete pulpit.

To many of the business commuters, students and tourists, Benton and Eckroate are just tiny blips on the map of America’s fifth-largest city. But to several others who travel through this area every day, the two men have become just as much a part of the intersection as the popular coffee shop and restaurants that flank its corners.

Chuck Padilla, 44, said he appreciates the passion Benton and Eckroate have for what they do.

“I’ve gotten to know Ben, and he plays a lot of music that brings back memories from when I was a kid,” said Padilla. “With [Eckroate], we get people who might not know who he is. He sounds like he’s mad half the time, and they wonder why the cops haven’t come and arrested him. When he’s not preaching, he’s a very cool, collected kind of guy.”

On rare days when Benton or Eckroate fails to appear, it’s not uncommon to hear people discussing whether something bad might have happened to them. That might be tough for either man to believe, since they struggle daily to make an impact in their own ways.

“The only thing we have in common are those opposing corners, and the fact that we both get ignored,” Benton said, adding that he wishes Phoenicians were more appreciative of music. “Sometimes I feel like I’m a tree; I’m ignored like I’m not even here.”

Eckroate recently shouted to a group of passersby: “You pretend that you don't see me, but I know you can hear me. And God can hear you too. And if you don't repent to God, you will never be saved when the rapture comes.”

Nevertheless, they choose to return to these corners of Central and Adams — the heart of the city — day after day with an energy that adds to the city’s pulse. “I call this intersection ‘ground zero,’ because if you had to pick the most central part of Phoenix — latitudinally and longitudinally — this is the zero point,” said Benton. “Central Ave. divides the city from east to west... and I’ve played other places here, but this has always been my favorite corner.”