Slab City
Visiting the last lawless place in mainland America.
Widely regarded as the last truly free place in America, because it operates completely void of a local government, official law enforcement, or public utilities, is Slab City California.
It is about 100-150 miles northeast of San Diego and about 50 miles to the North of the Mexican border. Last summer, we flew to LA and drove out into the desert to check it out, on the way to stay the night in an old abandoned train car, but that is unrelated to us visiting Slab City.
We knew it was a risk going to visit but had done some research and they said for the most part if you go during the day and are respectful that it was pretty safe. So I just turned off my location sharing for my Dad like I do before I go somewhere that I know I probably should have no business being, and tell my sister to be oncall in case she doesn’t hear back from me. As someone who was pulled out of a couple high school parties because their dad tracked them down in the night, I do not put it passed him to see I am in somewhere stupid like Slab City, and fly to California to drag me home, before I am any the wiser.
We drove for a while and we stopped when we saw East Jesus, the art installation that originally made me want to go and check it out. It was huge, I climbed it and stood atop it and looked out into the dessert. Miles of nothing surrounding me. A bunch of untrustworthy strangers that are looking at me the exact same way I am looking at them and trying to make sure I am not a threat because I am even here in the first place just like I am them.
The community there is divided into many camps and art installations, this is why I wanted to visit. I did not see much desert growing up so I love to see it and long stretches of land that you can see for miles. In Canada there are a lot of trees and it is pretty flat in Ontario so it always is fun for me to see the hills and the red/orange atmosphere. I also really like art so I was drawn to the large paintings they have done in the middle of the nowhere, called Salvation Mountain.
Salvation mountain: a HUGE 3 story Technicolor hill made of adobe, straw, and thousands of gallons of paint. It was built by Leonard Knight to spread the message that ‘God is love’. I sat here for about 15 minutes in the hot sun and sketched it quickly. I watercoloured the picture when I got home and actually just sold it in Pier 39s waterfront gallery this month :). It is super beautiful and so fun to see in the middle of the desert at this point, just this super tall colourful rainbow mountain with tons of people climbing it and taking photos.
East Jesus: an art garden and sustainable commune. It has sculptures entirely made from recycled trash and materials.
The Range: an open air nightclub and stage built from scrap wood and old couches. It is famous for its Saturday night talent show ran by a man named Whitehorse. I originally thought that I wanted to see this but upon arriving in East Jesus there were two men sitting on one of the couches talking to themselves, very high, playing with a shotgun, and behind them read a sign that said ‘days since last murder’ and underneath had a 2 written in chalk. They weren’t bothering us at all but we decided to exit that situation pretty fast.
House of Dots: there is a woman that lives there named Dot that opened her own gallery in old mobile homes that she has filled with various items. When we got there Dot was there and welcomed us in, she wore this dotted dress and the entire side of her house was filled with dots. One of the mobile homes we went inside and there was a table set up inside like a tea party, everything else in the mobile was bones or beaks or heads in jars. We opened the fridge and inside there were more bones stacked.
I freaked out (probably way less than I should have) and left the mobile. Dot was really friendly, but wanted us to explore all of the areas and after a couple we got spooked and wanted to go a little faster.
We were worried about nightfall coming while we were still in town. Not that we thought it was instantly going to become chaos like in the Purge as soon as it got dark (or it does in San Francisco, but that is a topic for another day) but if there was going to be somewhere that that would happen, we were in a pretty promising place for that.
Outside this mobile we saw a sign that said warning, no touching, monkeypox risk. That was enough for us, and we knew we should start heading back. For we are up to explore, but as someone who often suffers from insane Victorian era plagues, we were prime candidates to contract a mystery illness.
Most of the people living there are people who got in a hard situation at some point and are economically disadvantaged, also a lot of alternative lifestyles who include but aren’t limited to anarchists, survivalists, off gridders, artists, eccentrics, outcasts, vulnerable people who suffer with drug and alcohol addiction as well as former convicts and individuals who would otherwise be homeless in urban areas. While less common, some of the people living there are ex-bankers and lawyers who left traditional life for a more nomadic lifestyle.
As we pulled back onto the highway and drove towards the Salton sea to check it out I turned my location back on for my parents and we headed back to the real lawful California, hopefully, leaving the monkeypox behind.
Although I do think much like how every building in California says it causes cancer, it would be nice to have a sign in each location that says how long it has been since someone has got murdered there. Maybe I would still go to visit as evident by this article, but at least I would know I made that choice with all of the available information.
While a dumb place to go if you highly value your safety, super fascinating if you like art and want to see talent shows and shotguns and fridges full of bones and a lot of sand and leaded paint.
Would I go back? Probably not, I mean unless I become a huge angry banker or lawyer and need to escape my real life and move out into the desert as far from civilization as I can of course. God only knows. Or you if you have one of those little balls that you shake that tell you the future, then maybe you know too, can you tell me if I ever go back there if so, comment below?
honestly hell yeah. ps CONGRATS ON YOUR WATERCOLOR!!! that is so effing cool. loved this fr