East Jesus on a Slab

Look at a map of the Coachella Valley and you’ll find a plethora of wonderful side trips to educate and warp the mind. The Colorado high desert and Joshua Tree are just an hour North. Swing the other way around and you can be in the artist community of Idyllwild in the San Jacinto Mountains. Drop south and things get really interesting with the Salton Sea, Salvation Mountain and ‘The Slabs.’

If you take a right at the Salton Sea, you’ll end up in East Jesus and West Satan. Unlike the posh country clubs and rarified Aire that is of Palm Springs legend, this is a ‘lost world’ replete with fascinating characters, RV vagabonds and a few stragglers who look like human residue scrapped up from the bottom of civilized society. It’s a step back in time and void of any semblance to a world that vacationers have come to expect of Palm Springs.

East Jesus is next to West Satan which is just a stone’s throw away from Salvation Mountain. I passed the Fountain of Youth trailer park on the way into town. I think you get the drift.

The Salton Sea was cloaked in a shroud of mist and smell and dead fish on the day I ventured there. Fortunately, it was cool in the morning so the smell wasn’t overwhelming even if the rotting carcasses of Tilapia was a bit disconcerting to walk on. Further down the road past the trailers of Bombay Beach was the sad remains of Camp Dunlap, a World War Two Marine base lost in the desert. Appropriately named Slab City, the Quonset huts are gone now and only the concrete slabs remain.

Just down the road from Salvation Mountain, two former guard huts announce the entrance to Slab City. It’s estimated that there are about one hundred and fifty permanent residents (squatters) who live in the Slabs all-year round. Some live on government checks, others just want to live ‘off the grid’ and a few come to stretch out their retirement income. The camp has no electricity, no running water, no sewers or toilets and no trash pickup service. Sounds like a dry run for the apocalypse.

Despite the free shoe tree on the way into town and the free library, most of the residents have sectioned off their trailers, tents and sleeping bags with tires, pallets, or barbwire. Free is free unless it comes to their piece of heaven in the desert then even the squatters want their personal space recognized.

The library is an eclectic collection of cast-off books and magazines all free for the taking. The floor was dirt and the ceiling clear blue sky or sheets stretched between sections. The reading lounge was mainly occupied by lizards, tarantulas, and small droppings of a questionable nature. When I was there, the proprietor encouraged me to visit the art gallery at East Jesus which is next to West Satan. A request like that couldn’t be ignored.

East Jesus has been described as an experimental, sustainable, habitable, art installation. I was told that East Jesus is a colloquialism for the middle of nowhere beyond the edge of services. Made from discarded material that has been reused, recycled, or repurposed, East Jesus encourages visitors to imagine a world without waste in which every action is an opportunity for self-expression.

I think West Satan is a simply a suburb of East Jesus. The art gallery there was fascinating and mind-expanding. My wife, ever the one to encompass clear insight into as few words as possible, simply called it ‘bad art.’

Either way it was a fun trip that gave birth to other mind images that are still whirling around in my head. Someday they just might start leaking out my fingertips into future storylines. My visit challenged the notion of ‘what art is’ and dragged us out of our comfort zone for at least one afternoon.

It was at once fascinating, intriguing, sad, mind-expanding, and challenging. It was finding iconic and cultural-pop treasures in the middle of nowhere California…just a stones-throw from Palm Springs and the flip side of reality there.

It was tripping out without the acid and a glimpse into the lives of those who don’t want to be a part of ‘any scene’ here in fantasy land or the rest of the world.

I get it. They got it…and want to keep it that way.