Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/01/welcome-to-slab-city-the-la.html
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The HEAT is free too, especially in the Summer.
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2020: Trump Administration appropriates the entire camp for use as temporary shelter for children rescued from their illegal parents, now numbering in tens of thousands. White House spokesman Scott Baio explains there are no children.
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I’ve driven through there before, it’s pretty wild, man.
We went through Slab City and Salvation Mountain and around the Salton Sea including Bombay Beach.
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Thanks for posting those photos!
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Yea, I mean where that is will go days and weeks sometimes with triple digit temps up to 120 or more and not getting under a 100 even at night…
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120 degree days isn’t so bad, but when the night doesn’t cool down that’s a huge problem. Normally deserts get pretty chilly at night which allows you to tank the heat during the day and cool it off at night, but if the night is hot you have a health hazard. This is why a place like New Orleans can be deadly when the highs barely get over 100 while people can survive outside Phoenix without air conditioning even in 120 degree days.
Nighttime temp drops are usually pretty decent - but I’ve been to PHX in the late summer when it doesn’t get below 90 or so. It’s brutal. I have to go there a fair amount for work and I can’t get used to that kind of heat. My in-laws live there as well, but we don’t visit them other than Fall though Spring…
They come out and see us in the summer sometimes.
I learned about Slab City when I read G is for Gumshoe with one of my ESL tutees.
(Tutee. Tee hee.)
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Nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’, but it’s free.
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I listened to a podcast where someone went and stayed at a rental trailer just outside Slab City (yes it’s on Airbnb). I’ve also read a small bit about this place and it seems quite interesting, the wannabe hippy inside me would love to experience a place like this but it does seem like a pretty hard life to do year-round.
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Lived in Vegas and its the same there, and it being a valley the heat gets trapped over the city at night and usually there’s not much wind there so its common for nights to be over 90F. I got used to it living there but it definitely sucks and i can’t imagine what it’d be like living in that heat cycle without AC. I’d probably build a hobbit style home and put as much dirt and stone between me and the outside.
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My in-laws live in a retirement community where people own their own homes.
But a lot of them are single and I’ve often wondered about safety issues with regards to like broken AC. I could see that being an issue for elderly folks that live alone - as well as their pets.
I know that “cool zones” exist, but if someone is relatively house-bound, someone would have to help them.
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Thank you, no.
It’s a very cool place (not literally). Been there a couple times. East Jesus is one of the most impressive art installations I’ve ever seen. But then, I have a fondness for bohemians.
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Where I live, in the rural midwest, whenever there is a heat advisory, the people on the news always say you should check on your elderly friends and neighbors. It is good, because the closest red cross cooling center is 30 miles away, which might as well be a thousand miles if you can’t drive.
I don’t know if it was less humid before they flooded the valleys to make lakes for hydroelectic power, or if old people just enjoy complaining about how it’s so much more humid now, and how the young people are weak.
I wonder how free that “free” really is.
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It costs a buck o-five
Or if people just used to die in droves during the summer and if you didn’t like it well tough, that’s life.
Places like New Orleans were only barely habitable before air conditioning, and every summer involved a surprisingly large chunk of the population dying off, be it from heat or disease. Didn’t help that a lot of those people were slaves.
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