Premature evacuation, part twenty-two.
3,149 miles.
We drove east through much desert and eventually along the Salton Sea, which not only happened to be the largest lake in California, but was also saltier than seawater, making it uninhabitable to most fish life, eradicating up to 97% of the fish in just the past decade. It was fed by three rivers, but also by the toxic runoffs of pollution produced by animal agriculture and raw sewage, aiding in its inhospitable conditions. Before the '60s, it saw use by the military, and then by numerous resorts, but the increasing salinity and noxious odor of the Sea slowly pushed residents and tourists away, leaving behind a lot of abandoned structures and vast, desolate, largely unoccupied land. We walked out to the shore and stared out at its expansive, stagnant beauty. The sand was very dry, and dark green algal blooms made even dipping our feet in unappealing. When we got back to the car, it was completely covered in water boatmen bugs, which were aquatic herbivorous insects that fed on the algae there. They piled all over the front windshield of the car and flopped around like idiots with propeller-like appendages that only really worked in bodies of water.
One of the abandoned resort areas for rich vacationers along the east shore of the Salton Sea was Bombay Beach, existing at the lowest elevation in the country. It died off in the '80s due to the erratic water levels, increasing salinity, dead populations of marine life washing up on shore, and the noxious odor of it all. It was hard to believe, but it was at one point drawing in half a million visitors a year, including celebrities, for its luxury resorts and beach activities. Now with a population of less than 300, it was a post-apocalyptic paradise for explorers, eccentric artists, graffiti writers, and as we saw while there, low-budget filmmakers. The few people who still lived there did so in trailers or shacks, and mostly traveled by golf cart since the nearest gas station was 20 miles away in Niland. The makeup of the small long-term residents was mostly white, mostly male, mostly alone, and mostly in poverty. It was poverty that kept most of the people there; otherwise, people stayed put out of some sort of sentimental stubbornness. It was a surreal landscape to walk around in the Sonoran Desert, where no one should really live.
We parked on a dirt road, grey in solidified mud that cracked like glass, alongside the berm that protected the western side of the town. We didn't spend nearly as much time there as we should have since we were trying to make it to Slab City before sundown, but we did get to see a lot of the abandoned structures, mostly single-family homes and trailers that were obliterated from the inside-out and covered in graffiti. It was almost impossible to distinguish the abandoned structures from the ones still inhabited. Half the town was permanently submerged in salt. We found a beached boat and climbed inside of it. There were several large-scale pieces of art sculpted mostly from the leftover debris encrusted in the sand. It was just as difficult to tell what was art and what was simply the remaining posts and foundations of the homes that didn't make it. The area had become a hot spot for artists of all kinds. We saw a decently choreographed action sequence taking place across the way around a single car with one steadycam and boom mic. They did about three takes, and we were sure it was probably for some corny independent sci-fi feature based on the wardrobe. There was yard art and old vintage billboards that had been altered that fed back into the dystopian atmosphere.
The last town before anyone entered Slab City was Niland, which at around 1,000 people was teetering on being just another ghost town in this desert. Most of it was in ruins, aside from one grocery store, a small restaurant, and a gas station. It had recently been used as a filming location for the movie The Bad Batch. It was otherworldly to walk around because it was so deserted, and unlike Bombay Beach it still had clearly inhabited homes nearby and actual street signs. We walked in and around some of the ruins connected to the convenience store, where it appeared there was once some sort of strip of businesses, including a post office. Here and there, we'd see a scumfuck kid begging for money somewhere so they could have alcohol and tobacco to enjoy back at Slab City where they crashed to the dismay of most of the long-term residents. There was a pack of tiny stray dogs huddled closely together. One started humping another in the shade of an alleyway. It was hot, and in the desert the sky was always bigger than it had ever been before, making it impossible to escape the sun sizzling in the blue skies. We didn't have much sunlight left, so we got going toward Slab City, at the end of a dirt road less than five miles outside of town.
The first thing one sees before officially entering Slab City was what was known as Salvation Mountain--a three-story, 100-foot-wide piece of religious folk art constructed by one eccentric man named Leonard Knight. At first, he wanted to spread his simple "God is love" message via hot air balloon, and spent several years trying to sew together his own that he planned to eventually fly in across the country. After repeated failures, he found himself working a job in Niland. He relocated there and lived in the desert, in his truck, gradually adding to a small monument originally composed of the few raw materials he had on him: junk found at a nearby dump, sand, concrete, and discarded paint. He'd pile the junk together, fill it with sand, and then cover it all with cement and paint. This was his first mountain, started in 1984. After four years and over 50 feet in height, this first mountain collapsed in on itself. Undeterred, he began building again, this time utilizing adobe clay and straw in addition to the many layers of non-toxic paint which helped prevent erosion of the clay by the occasional rain and sometimes strong winds, eventually incorporating other materials like tires and other parts of cars. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of paint had been used on it, most of which had been donated to him over the decades. In the late '90s, he began to add on to it. Inspired by the Navajo's hogans, he built pueblitos in which he intended to eventually live. He gained a lot of fame from this project and numerous music videos had been shot there. It was featured in Into the Wild and documentaries had been made about it. Leonard worked tirelessly on this project for three decades, never straying from his path, and would give tours himself to anyone who visited. He would sleep at the bottom of the mountain in the back of his truck. It wasn't until he sustained an injury in 2011 that he had to stop being so hands-on.
In 2014, he was placed in care in El Cajon, suffering from diabetes and dementia, and died at the age of 82. His mountain had been preserved and maintained by volunteers and a charity in its name ever since. God didn't exist, but it was still an unforgettable piece of unlikely DIY art in the California Desert that was truly a sight to behold. When we got there, the mountain was crawling in tourists walking up to the summit and stopping to take a million selfies. We explored underneath, in the museum he'd added, held up by trees and car parts and including artifacts that each held some sort of significance to him. A framed picture of the real Christopher McCandless sat in a shelf of the cave. We followed the sloppy, yellow trail that brought everyone to the top. The view from its apex was a magical one.
One part of Slab City we were able to thoroughly explore before the sun fully set and it "closed" was East Jesus, an artist commune and living art project constructed entirely out of recycled and repurposed junk. It honestly warranted its own day of exploration. East Jesus was the closest thing to an "officially recognized" entity in Slab City, since it was represented by a 501(c)3 non-profit called The Chasterus Foundation. They were actually trying to eventually purchase the land they sat on for $90,000 with the goal of, "providing a working model of an improbable improvised community at the edge of the world." It originated in 2007 when a man named Charlie Russell left his job in the tech industry in hopes of joining Leonard Knight and his Salvation Mountain project. He packed all his shit in a shipping container and started spreading it around two cars on this plot of land as he gradually fell more in love with Slab City. He passed in 2011 and the project had since been curated and protected by the non-profit dedicated to preserving his vision, which revolved around creative expression and reducing waste through reuse. Its name did not actually denote any religious affiliation, thankfully, and was just named after the colloquialism used to reference somewhere uninhabitable in the middle of nowhere.
A group of drunk weirdos welcomed us enthusiastically, and we explored just about every corner of their sprawling multimedia art piece, which had evolved considerably since the last time I'd visited. There were some pieces I recognized and many more that were new to me. It had continued expanding with every month in this seasonless climate. There was a discarded airplane. Oxidized aluminum cans, glass bottles, empty single-use propane tanks, and half-buried car tires were spread across the ground like they were garden beds that twisted and wrapped around almost the entire space. Several decommissioned vehicles in various degrees of disassembly were decorated in new coats of paint and more trash, mosaics of miscellaneous plastic pieces, stickers from visitors, doll parts, circuit boards, garden tools, leis, and one made to look like a traditional Chinese dragon. A small patch of golf course grass surrounded in clubs and refrigerators. Lawn ornaments, dolls, and mannequin appendages ensured there were body parts strewn about everywhere. There was the sunken house, which you could enter from the opened back side and had the legs of a witch it had obviously crushed. An entire mammoth made out of rubber from tires stood tall. There was an ongoing joke conspiracy about dolphins everywhere we went. The wall of television sets impressed me once again, probably one of its most explicitly politics permanent pieces. A tall tower that I knew was oftentimes lit up at night stood in the back. At the farthest edges, there were mostly spraypainted tires and fake geese. The several pieces there ranged from cute, to whimsical, to unsettling. Several areas were marked off limits due to being the permanent living spaces of some of the participating artists and curators.
Back in Niland, we tried to find something to eat. At the only restaurant there, Buckshot, we were left with fries with chips with salsa, and after browsing the only grocery store in town, we returned with only the bare ingredients to make PB&Js. We chose a random spot to pull over that we felt was comfortably far from encroaching on anyone's territory, and ate our sandwiches in the back. It was pitch black outside at that point besides the billions of stars allowed visibility by the absence of any smog or light pollution whatsoever. The cold air and absolute silence of a desert night was unlike anywhere else.
An uneventful first day of nonstop driving: wind farms, really yummy peanut Crunchers that we had found on a sidewalk weeks before, and another bullshit meal improvised at a Denny's.
The Salton Sea in three pictures.
Bombay Beach!
Quick stop in Niland.
Salvation Mountain!
Welcome to Slab City.
East Jesus!
Looking for food.
The next day, we were able to really walk around and give ourselves the full tour of Slab City. Slab City was known by many as the "last free place in America", which actually wasn't too far off from truth. Set in the brutal conditions of the desert, it was a lawless vacancy of undeveloped land inhabited by snowbirds avoiding winter back at home, squatters, eccentric off-the-grid types, punx, drug addicts, and other various societal dropouts or throwaways, living off of government and/or retirement checks and in RVs, campers, or ramshackle structures built out of the trash dumped there. About 150 lived there year-round, while everyone else were seasonal. There was no official source of electricity or running water, no sewage system, and no trash pickup; police presence or exchange of money were both very rare. Systems of streets and means of producing energy had been improvised by the residents, most of whom worked together to maintain a semblance of community there. Originally known as Camp Dunlap, the land was once owned by the government and used by the military as a training facility during World War II. By 1956, it had been completely decommissioned and cleared out, leaving behind only the slabs where various structures once stood. The government didn't give a shit what was done with it and all money made from it was set to go toward the California State Teachers Retirement System, making it an unimportant, and hence unpatrolled, space eventually taken advantage of by travelers and transients.
Our first stop on their surprisingly long list of amenities was the skate park! Some young dudes were there cleaning it up a bit, and told us about plans of turning it into a live music venue, while their tiny dog foraged through piles of nearby trash. Something that hadn't existed the last time I'd visited was their pet cemetery, which was just as bittersweet and touching as any other pet we'd been to on the road. The library at Slab City was so jam-packed and well-organized. The only downside was a seemingly unhappy and bitter uniform trainhopper-looking woman who "worked" at it, repeatedly talking down to us and needlessly barking rules about not going beyond certain points and not taking pictures of anyone without permission before either of us could even do it. It was actually the least free and welcoming place there because of them. The Range was their fully operated nightclub and concert venue where I once attended their annual 24-hour talent show. Generators helped power things and discarded chairs and couches made comfy seats for the audience underneath bucket lights hanging above. The only thing that closely resembled a bathroom was there, too, which was of course just a constructed outhouse with a toilet seat over a deep hole in the ground. Shows happened there every Saturday night and it was run by a longtime Slab veteran known as Builder Bill with his wife. Slab City even had its own Internet Cafe, equipped with multiple outlets, a TV with a film and show library inside a binder of discs and a flash drive, and a DIY tower that allowed them to snag a reliable WiFi signal. Some dirty youths were sitting around and charging their phones. We were welcomed by a few of them, including a very friendly elderly slabber and a few dogs. I had daydreams of "retiring" to Slab City one day when I'd completely given up on life and was ready to just sit back and patiently await the inevitable apocalypse.
Then it was back on the road for a drive through more scenic desert mounds of sand, all the way to Phoenix, where we didn't much of any exploring and really just stopped to get dinner at a vegan restaurant I liked a lot called Green New American Vegetarian, which had a new location since I'd last eaten there adjoined to an entire separate space for their tSoynami milkshakes and ice cream specialties. We got an order of wings and one of their crab rangoons, both with shockingly meager serving sizes. I got their Big Wac as an entree, and we both enjoyed a tSoynami next door afterwards.
Slab City!
Lots of this.
Green!
To be continued...