THE SLAB CITY A-LIST

We packed the trunk with beer, a shovel, and gallons of water just in case we got stuck in the mud. Twenty minutes later we were digging out our tires. After we finally pried our wheels loose we spent the next two hours offroading in the pitch-black desert night just to get to our destination, a surreal stretch of badlands visibly littered with unexploded ordnance. With adrenaline pumping, I went with Alan on a hunt for salvageable metal. We mostly found piles of old computer parts and random gun casings but it was worth it for the rush.

Survivalist, drifters, and folks convinced the world is going to kick off any day now add to the DNA of Slab City. One of my favourite people that we met (and who you’ll get to meet tomorrow on Art Talk!) is Leonard Knight. Leonard broke down in a hot-air balloon near the slabs 24 years ago and hasn’t left since. He built Salvation Mountain, a towering religious art-mound he made out of adobe, paint, and random desert finds like car doors and tires. He works on it every day from morning until the tourists come, painting flowers all over and inside the mountain. When you arrive, he comes out from one of the Mountain’s cavernous rooms and gives you a Salvation Mountain puzzle before starting the tour. Leonard is a little senile and has a bit of a one-track mind, but that track is pretty outstanding. During our tour he kept giving us the thumbs up while occasionally passing gas and repeating his gospel, “Keep it simple, God is love.” He also showed us his house, an ancient fire truck covered in his art. “The kids on the internet are helping me spread the word universal,” he told us.

On our last day we met a rattlesnake charmer whose name I can no longer remember. He had a facial tic and a pot belly and lived near the slabs in a town called Niland, which is populated by less than 1,500 people and made up of stucco houses, trailers, and dry-land vegetable fields.

We had to make it past his dogs in order to get into his tiny beat up old trailer tagged “Wowo-boy.” When we finally got in he told us how he had survived being bitten by rattlesnakes and was now protecting his neighbors by using his “talent” to catch them and eat them. Peter and I couldn’t help but be a little freaked out by his near-constant cackling, scattered assortment of loaded guns, live rattlesnakes that he was fond of kissing, and an insane, excellent wallpaper made out of pictures of naked ladies, small children, tarantulas, news clippings about killers, and an enormous photo of a rotting finger.

By the way, if you haven’t seen them already, do us all a huge favor and check out Peter Sutherland’s big gallery of pictures from Slab City and the surrounding Imperial Valley in last month’s issue of Vice.