Slab City. Some say it is The Last Free Place in America. A Utopia built on all that is good in humankind. Free of restriction and regulation.

Others say it is Mos Eisley meets Thunder Dome. Nowhere will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Anarchists,  bandits, drug addicts, and all-purpose weirdos.

Here is what both sides agree on: Jugheaded Marines built Camp Dunlop in the godforsaken Sonoran Desert then, when done with it, abandoned it in the 50s. They tore down and hauled away the structures so that all that was left was the concrete foundations. The Slabs.

The Feds issued a quitclaim deed and ceded the land to the state. The state didn’t really have any use for it so they pretty much declared it a “No Man’s Land”.

Some enterprising capitalist paid meager wages to hard-working peasants to harvest creosote leaves that he didn’t really have any claim to. Rather than transport these workers daily to “East Jesus” (a cleaner, albeit more sacrilegious term for “West Bumfuck”) he parked trailers on the concrete slabs to house his serfs.

Soon others came. The winter months see thousands of RVers, hobos, transients, retirees, the disenfranchised, and the fed up. The homeless have made a home in Slab City.

Although there is no electricty, running water, sewage, trash pick up, taxes or rent, and the summer temperature can top 120°F,  The Slabs have about 150 permanent year-round residents.

They have built an amphitheater and a giant, living, evolving piece of concept art out of trash and junk. This mountainous piece is called, appropriately,  “East Jesus”.

Of course, that’s what they tell me, and all I ever know about anything is what I am told. Hell, even my personal experiences are dismissed by “experts” as anecdotal.

Nonetheless, I go see for myself.

I assume that my celly will be out of range. It’s a good thing I have about a thousand pics of Trixie to keep me company.

Tommy goes…off the grid.