I like a little variety every now and then.

After a week in the slabs, we were starting to fall victim to the ennui that sometimes permeates that place. So we packed up and headed further into the desert, along the edge of a bombing range.

These are the signs warning you that if you continue, you very well may be blown to little bits. Helpful, yes?

We lived for a few days in the wilderness before traveling on through the desert and eventually meeting up with I-10. Here, a very important decision was made. If we turned left, we would go back to LA. If we went right, we could go to Las Vegas.  

I don't have any pictures of Vegas. Suffice to say, it was one of the most beautiful and puerile places I've ever been, and I adore it. I want to roll around in it, get it all over me, and fall asleep snuggled up in it, inhaling its scent. Ah, Las Vegas, you have ruined me.

Then it was back to the desert, Death Valley this time. We wandered all over the valley floor and backpacked in the Funeral Mountains. And I am not even a little dead. Take that, menacingly named places!

Earlier this day, I had reacted with dismissive derision to a comment of Hunter's. Something about how everything has a spirit, even rocks. Here, he sings a long, dramatic and heartfelt song about rocks while studiously ignoring me.

We hiked up a rocky canyon to the ruins of Hungry Bill's Ranch. There are old stone walls and 100 year old fruit trees up there. Also, once we began getting up into the mountains, there are springs and even snow on the ground. Not how you would imagine death Valley at all.









But this was a little more like it:

After we got back to Los Angeles, we were still shaking sand out of our clothes and hair for days.

The City of Slabs

How to begin to describe Slab City? It is a collection of folk who live in RVs or tents or improvised structures out in the desert on the foundations of an old military base. Most are there only for the cold months, but there are a fair number who live there year round.

There is a music venue called The Range which hosts an open mic every Saturday night. This is where we first arrived at the Slabs in the dark on New Years Eve. It didn't take more than 20 minutes for Hunter to find a band to play drums with.  We then met up with Mikey, Claire and Alex from the bay area, and followed them over to where the SPAZ camp was. (the SemiPermanent Autonomous Zone, a group of art-y music-y cacophony-y type kids) They had a bus with huge speakers and a light show etc. They apparently have this party every year by the water tower, which is a kind of suburb of the Slabs.

The SPAZ tower. There is actually a guy named Moth who lives inside of it.

When the San Fransisco kids left a few days later, Hunter and I moved into the city proper. Like any city, there are neighborhoods. Some better than others. We were told that we didn't want to move in west of the Oasis Cafe, because it was all tweekers over there.  In the time I was there, I saw a good bit of alcoholism, mental illness, drug addictions and the like.  I met rainbow family people who are weird as hell and have too many kids and dogs.  One of our neighbors, an older woman named Pixie, informed us that she was a paranoid delusional schizophrenic with multiple personalities. 

On the other hand, there were some very interesting things going on. There was one public library, and a few libraries that were part of the various social clubs and cafes. There was a massage studio and masseuse.  There was free wireless internet at the Freedom Cafe and free food.

I did the Polar Bear Plunge into the canal on New Years Day. It was cold as hell. But then the air was warm enough to hang out and sunbathe naked afterward.

 We were told that Slab City had once been great, but that it's heyday was 10 or 20 years ago and it was now in a slow decline.  I was told by others that it was so much better now that it had become smaller and that the best was yet to come.

Whatever it is, I'm glad to know it exists.

On the virtue of asking for things.

We didn't end up sleeping at Hellarity. Instead, Mikey called up a friend of his and asked if she would let us crash. She agreed, although we had never met this girl and we were showing up around 2:30 AM. She even had a futon laid out for us, with blankets and pillows and everything.

The next day, after hours and hours of tromping around San Fransisco in the pouring rain, we ended up back at Alex's house where the energy quickly died. After a while I had grown bored of the half-hearted Yelping and discussions of what we wanted to do. I pulled on my boots and headed out, announcing that my mission was to wander until I found a glass of wine and a creme brulee or until I drowned (which seemed like a distinct possibility considering the weather).  There had been one particular french restaurant I had in mind, which had phenomenal reviews. But it was already around 11PM on a Tuesday night so I had no real expectations of actually satisfying my craving for the finer things in life. Indeed, they were closing when we walked by and we ended up at an English pub next door.

As we were leaving the pub to walk back to Alex's place, we passed the french restaurant again. I noticed that a man that looked very much like a chef was standing outside. He smiled and nodded to us as we passed, so I stopped and asked him, "Would you by chance like to gift a creme brulee on a poor traveling stranger?". His English was not perfect (he was actually French!) and I had to repeat my request before he understood me. At that moment, his face lit up with a grin, and he ushered us into the restaurant and to the bar, calling for a cook to bring three creme brulees. And I got a glass of very nice red wine. All for free. Because I asked if I could.

If you are ever in San Fransisco, in the inner Richmond neighborhood, go to Chapeau Bistro. http://www.yelp.com/biz/chapeau-san-francisco. You won't regret it.

I didn't take any photos in San Fran, so here's one of Santa Monica, which is where we went next:

Apparently there was some sort of football game in LA around New Years? All I know is there were a bunch of people in red yelling about the Wisconsin lemurs or something.

But the trip does get better...

Hunter was a puddle of despair after the smooshing of his bike, but nonetheless we soldiered on and arrived in the bay area on 12/27/11. Hellarity House is a punk art collective/squat/commune type thing where we met up with our friends Mikey and Claire from the Holy!Holy!Holy! tour.

 Mikey, in his natural habitat

This is Hot Dice. Hot Dice is Serious Business.

I marvel at Hellarity. Every square inch of it, inside and out, is covered in murals, graffiti, writing of various sorts, and it is not so much inhabited as occupied or infested. It it maze-like, a warren of chaotic and fluid living. I felt like a tourist, not a guest, and I wanted to take pictures of everything. The first thing, when you come in the door, is a chalkboard with the pronouncement, "Fancy House has head lice." (Fancy House is another squat in Oakland). 

Hunter had been there a few months previously, with the band. He had described as a dirty crazy punk house. Which it is, of course, but I am often struck by the differences in the way the he and I react to various situations. In the past few months we have stayed at places like Hellarity, toured with an anarchist gypsy punk band, lived on a bus, eaten in soup kitchens, and listened to the anarchists expound on the virtues of cop killing. Hunter appears to take this all in stride. I, however, have kept up a constant internal monologue of "Holy shit! I'm living on a bus with anarchoprimitivists!" or "Holy shit! Do you see how they built bunk beds all over this room that used to be a vestibule so that now it houses like six people and how the walls are all covered with graffiti and that there are people's bags and little bikes and toys and things hanging from the ceiling and people just live here like it's the most natural thing in the world?"

I feel guilty for this in some ways, like I am a tourist in other people's lives. On the other hand, I am maintaining a constant state of wonder and taking nothing for granted, so that can't be a bad thing, right?

Also: Just 'cause they're anarchists doesn't mean they don't have rules.

This is not a blog post.

It's more like a long form status update, with more pictures. So please no expectations that this will be well-written or regularly updated or anything of the sort. I've done an astounding amount of living in the few weeks since I've left Portland, and I am hopelessly behind in writing things down and putting up pictures.


If I believed in such things, I would say that the trip got off to an inauspicious start. After leaving Portland late in the afternoon the day after Christmas, we drove 5 hours or so to Grants Pass. By then it was late and we were looking for a place to spend the night. We were in high spirits, playing music and chatting after a successful departure and first day and the road. I was still reeling a bit from the suddenness of our exodus, but also stupidly excited for the life we are embarking on. There were two bikes and a surfboard and top of the car, and the back is loaded with all our worldly possessions, snacks and supplies. 

We saw a cheap motel up the road and decided to pull up to the office and see how much a room was. As we did so, a sudden and horrific crunch could be heard from outside the car. Hunter hit the brakes and there was a second or two that I sat there, looking about uncomprehendingly. He realized it first and jumped out of the car. Then I realized what had happened. I got out of the car into the freezing cold to survey the scene: the motel had a very low carport and we had our bikes upright on the roof rack. I saw my bike first. It was knocked back and askew, handlebars at a strange angle and the seat had been ripped right off, but no major damage had been done. But Hunter's bike, which was much taller and more brittle, had not fared well. It was a shiny red rubble of painful looking bent and broken tubes. It was bike carnage.

It had been such a pretty bike, too.