Adventures in East Jesus Here is a 15-minute video I shot
while I was camping in East Jesus, a "suburb" of Slab City. I was there for
about a month in March 2007.
I
am awakened from sleep by gunfire. Charlie shoots ten rounds from a
.45 into an old laptop for someone’s art project. A fine morning.
Breakfast is prepared and eaten in an audio ambiance of explosions
from the Chocolate Mountain bombing range. It’s starting to heat up
here at the Slabs.
I take a walk between
the piles of rusty cans, car tires, and the bits of old travel
trailers that the scavengers could not use or recycle. I gather old
pipes, small appliances, and other metal junk to make sculptures for
the junk garden next to my camp. The sunset is beautiful.
Today
was supposedly record heat for this date. My thermometer read 101
this afternoon. In the summer I hear that 120 is not unusual. I
spent the afternoon on the couch spraying myself with water. I
decided to create the Slab City Zen Center and Sculpture Garden.
It's Saturday night at the Range - an outdoor nightclub built on a
concrete slab between two old school buses. We sit on old bus and
airline seats.
Someone put together a hand drawn map of Slab City and East Jesus is
off the map – as it should be.
-----------
Salvation Mountain -
March 22, 2007
Leonard
Knight wound up in Slab City over 20 years ago and decided to paint
"God is Love" on the side of a hill. He never left. Now Salvation
Mountain contains over 100,000 gallons of paint with a labyrinthine
cavern of straw bales, tires and tree branches, all covered with
adobe and painted in bright colors. Leonard, at 75, is still at it.
During the cooler rimes of the year he gets over 100 visitors a day
and his mountain, once considered a toxic site that was slated for
destruction, is now internationally famous and is protected as a
National Treasure.
Camp
Dunlap was an active military base during WWII. It was
decommissioned after the war and everything removed except the
concrete slabs and some huge concrete tanks. Now it is home to over
100 full-time residents and lots of temporary residents who camp in
RV's during the winter. There are no utilities or services and no
rent, either. It is considered by some to be the last truly free
place in the country. Slab City has a checkered past and reputation.
Filmmakers and journalists seem to most fascinated with the dark
side of the Slabs - the tweakers, drunks, ne'er-do-wells, and the
trash strewn all over the place. It's a blind to the fact that there
are lots of intelligent, good people here who have opted out of the
mainstream American obsessions.
I
am awakened from sleep by gunfire. Charlie shoots ten rounds from a
.45 into an old laptop for someone’s art project. A fine morning.
Breakfast is prepared and eaten in an audio ambiance of explosions
from the Chocolate Mountain bombing range. It’s starting to heat up
here at the Slabs.
Today
was supposedly record heat for this date. My thermometer read 101
this afternoon. In the summer I hear that 120 is not unusual. I
spent the afternoon on the couch spraying myself with water. I
decided to create the Slab City Zen Center and Sculpture Garden.
Leonard
Knight wound up in Slab City over 20 years ago and decided to paint
"God is Love" on the side of a hill. He never left. Now Salvation
Mountain contains over 100,000 gallons of paint with a labyrinthine
cavern of straw bales, tires and tree branches, all covered with
adobe and painted in bright colors. Leonard, at 75, is still at it.
During the cooler rimes of the year he gets over 100 visitors a day
and his mountain, once considered a toxic site that was slated for
destruction, is now internationally famous and is protected as a
National Treasure.
Camp
Dunlap was an active military base during WWII. It was
decommissioned after the war and everything removed except the
concrete slabs and some huge concrete tanks. Now it is home to over
100 full-time residents and lots of temporary residents who camp in
RV's during the winter. There are no utilities or services and no
rent, either. It is considered by some to be the last truly free
place in the country. Slab City has a checkered past and reputation.
Filmmakers and journalists seem to most fascinated with the dark
side of the Slabs - the tweakers, drunks, ne'er-do-wells, and the
trash strewn all over the place. It's a blind to the fact that there
are lots of intelligent, good people here who have opted out of the
mainstream American obsessions.