Black Balloon

Chapter 2

I'd never been to the Slabs before and it wasn't what I was expecting. I'd always imagined them as a hippie commune in the desert; flower-children twirling in white sundresses and old longhairs named Sparrow sitting cross-legged, putting beads on yarn. But the reality wasn't quite that. The community wasn't bustling, at least not in June. Its population ballooned November through March when the transients and snowbirds headed south to spend their winters somewhere warm. In June, July, and August the Slabs were unbearably hot, leaving only the most hardcore, or perhaps crazy, or perhaps desperate residents remaining.

We drove in past Salvation Mountain, a fifty-foot-tall garbage heap/work of art made of dirt, old appliances, and about a million gallons of latex paint. A sign read "God Never Fails" in sloppy hand-painted letters. Past the mountain, the road continued between rows of shanty camps and road side stores selling homemade jewelry or giving away pamphlets on the evils of capitalism and the sins of wealth. Everywhere in this place was permeated by a mutant Franken-philosophy melding Christian fundamentalism with socialist ideologies with anarchy and Eastern religions. The roadsides were lined with piles of garbage, broken fences, dilapidated campers, and shanties. Everywhere you looked was the ambiguous boundary between garbage and art, beauty and chaos, the hardships of homelessness and the freedom of being "unhoused", of the punk lifestyle and of a country that doesn't properly care for its elderly and mentally ill. It was all a blurry gray area that somehow managed to capture the real America despite being so far removed from the mainstream consciousness of our country.

Many permanent installations in Slab City consisted of a "yard" of sorts: filthy carpets arranged on the ground, discarded furniture placed randomly about; salvaged sofas, wooden cable spools, cinderblock shelves. There was a wall made of glass bottles mortared together like bricks. A sign on two tall posts listed various establishments of the community: "Slab City Library", "Slab City Skate Park", "Slab City Hostel". The "town", if you could call it that, was divided into neighborhoods, each having its own subculture and values and each with its own leader, often the only person that remained during the hottest months of the year, making him or her de facto governor of their territory.

We turned right at The Darkside Church and onto Low Road where I suddenly became very aware of just how much Jonah's shiny Jeep Wrangler stood out against the surroundings. It's like taking off your old pair of dirty sneakers and putting on brand-new ones. You suddenly notice how shitty the old ones looked. The sparkling forty-thousand-dollar vehicle had no place among this Eden of rusty metal and broken wood. We were quite obviously tourists here and I wondered how the locals would take to us.

Many of the slabs were empty or had conspicuous bald spots where a camper might go had their tenants not packed up and headed North to 'Frisco or Portland, leaving lonely swaths of cracked concrete to pass the hot summer vacant. We circled the grid of roads traversing the town's perimeter through areas with names like "East Jesus" or "West Satan". When I was a kid my dad would say "East Jesus" to mean the middle-of-nowhere, B.F.E., Bumfuckburg, and so the name was apt.

Locals peered awkwardly out of their trailer windows as we drove by. They knew our type I'm sure, privileged kids after some cool Facebook photos. I made a point not to take my phone out of my pocket. These people weren't destitute. They didn't need our help or anyone else's. They were just living life on a different wavelength. "Existing in the hallways of always" maannn..."

At the end of Sidewinder Street there was a camp called "The Ranch at the End of the World." The name was written in large letters atop a handmade sign. The encampment was surrounded by a tall fence cobbled together from old pallets and corrugated sheet metal. The main entrance was a ten-foot arch made of assembled driftwood and wrapped in Christmas lights. An impossibly-tanned woman leaned against the arches with her arms folded across her ample chest.