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.