Slab City Baby

GoldenMotor.com

biknut

Well-Known Member
Sep 28, 2010
6,632
411
83
Dallas
Looks like life after the crash might be our kind of place. This is where our country is headed anyway. Shouldn't be long now, get used to it. A guy with a motor bicycle will be considered a rich man.

 

chainmaker

Well-Known Member
Jan 19, 2010
2,634
69
48
Ma USA
I was just reading about slab city the other day..kind of like modern day old west meets 70s hippie community. Wouldnt mind checking it out if I was in the neighborhood.
 

bairdco

a guy who makes cool bikes
Aug 18, 2009
6,537
264
63
living the dream in southern california
it's right next to the Salton Sea, between palm springs and el centro (kinda.) i've been there a few times. some jesus freak built a crazy mountain out of cement, hay bales, tires, and a few hundred gallons of paint.

its pretty crazy. it got it's name from all the slabs left behind from military housing when everyone bailed out of that dying community.

it stinks. literally. the salton sea is dying, and the fish that live in it die off all the time. combine that with 100+ temps, and it's pretty disgusting.
 

thegnu

New Member
Sep 15, 2011
982
1
0
freedom pa
I just read about this on yahoo , preety curious that a community like this could pop up in our age , but after considering it I am not so surprised .
 

rustycase

Gutter Rider
May 26, 2011
2,746
5
0
Left coast
Well, my crystal ball is just whacked.
It's never been wrong, but timing has always been off.

It's got more dark clouds than rosey scenes, though.

I've considered a MH and travelling lifestyle, like the snowbirds.
But that was mostly when I was younger, and tougher, and actually did all that outdoor stuff all the time. Now, I kinda need to be warm in the winter, and want relief from the heat in the summer.

It's probably a good way for a lot of folks on a minimal, fixed income, though.
I'd just be paranoid about having all my eggs in one basket.
The banditos could hit you real hard, real quick.

Use of my MAB does help quite a bit, holding down the growing expense of the numerous short trips around town. But the tax collector ain't gettin' his cut and they are doing their best to get involved, as we can see from the threads on that topic.
I'm sure they will hit all those slab city folks soon.

Here, on the left coast, minimum charge for an un-developed campground site, in a non-descript location, is now $18 a night. And they do have someone checking!

Most cities here on the coast won't allow someone to sleep overnight while parked on a city street.

BLM will soon be after all those slabcity people, if not already.

First thing that comes to my attention at slabcity.org website, (after the magnificent Class A), is their dedication to clean-up and preservation. That usually means some sort of enforcement is on the way... IME

Best
rc
 

rustycase

Gutter Rider
May 26, 2011
2,746
5
0
Left coast
I gotta back-step once and a while...
sometimes, more often than that.

I just found this quote at the slabcity site

"The State of California is currently considering closing Slab City to the public permanently. Over the years, people have desecrated the desert, and left their trash and human waste behind. "

Then I looked at google images.

It's a mess.

Party's gonna be over soon, if not already.
rc
 

Fulltimer

New Member
Aug 13, 2010
1,321
3
0
77
Saint Augustine, FL
My wife and I lived in our 38' motor home for 6 years after selling our house in Pennsylvania. We drove our Jeep over to slab city once. Just to check it out. It was a mess back then, about 7 years ago. At one point it was a good place to spend some time or winter over. There was some support business that sprouted up. They was a guy that would bring drinking out for a fee. There was another guy with a honey wagon that would pump out holding tanks.

Like most things though, people will eventually run it into the ground. I'm not sure CA can do anything about it. It is, or at least was, federal land.

Terry
 

bairdco

a guy who makes cool bikes
Aug 18, 2009
6,537
264
63
living the dream in southern california
i've worked in all the little towns around the salton sea, maintaining/upgrading verizon cell towers. there's a tower in just about all of them, Bombay Beach, Niland, Plaster City, Salton City, Westmoreland, and other places i've forgotten or are too small to have a name.

they're pretty interesting places, but they're all poverty stricken, and the remaining people are barely hanging on, lots of drug problems (meth, mostly,) unemployment, etc.

not everyone is a mess, but you gotta wonder about the sanity of someone who lives near a toxic, dying, alkali lake, that even the fish are dying to get out of...

funny thing about the sea. it was formed accidentally while trying to divert the colorado river, and was fed mostly by irrigation run-off from mexico.

now, the water is being reclaimed by mexico, so the sea will dry up. the late Sonny Bono, mayor of palm springs, realized the implications of this "dead sea" but unfortunately, died in a skiing accident before he could do anything.

no one else is trying to save it.

what this means, is when the salton sea finally dries up, the dust storms will blow all this salty, alkali dust over those beautiful golf courses palm springs wastes so much water on.

all those rich retirees will be trying to escape an apocalyptic wasteland, that used to be a nice place to vacation, turning it into another dead town.

cycle of (human)life.

there's your lesson for the day. now back to the bikes...:)