On our way to Mad Max – from the latimes.com:
Penny Puckett came to Slab City and fell in love.
After four years of “bumming around and hopping freight trains,” the 25-year-old from Kansas City arrived at this hardscrabble section of the Imperial Valley desert and immediately embraced its sense of liberation from society’s rules and norms.
What others might view as desolation and deprivation, Puckett saw as a way to reduce life to its essence: water, food and shelter (plus Internet and cellular phone service).
“Slab City people have a great need to live with just the bare necessities and are happy about it,” she said. Puckett also met and married the man of her dreams: a T-shirt design artist who lives in an art colony-style portion of Slab City known as East Jesus. A videotape was made of the couple’s Halloween nuptials and shipped to Puckett’s family.
The couple have yet to devise a long-term plan. But for the time being Slab City suits them just fine.
There are no municipal services, no streetlights and no water or sewage services. But nobody charges rent or collects fees or tries to impose homeowner covenants.
Several hundred people — ranging from the free-spirited young, retired “snowbirds” from colder climes and the tight-money crowd of all ages — live in a ramshackle collection of tents, trailers, aging mobile homes and other ad hoc dwellings. But this unlikely community appears to be growing, perhaps because of the troubled economy.
“It has a post-apocalyptic look and we like it that way,” said Don Case, 41, who worked as a chef in Colorado and is planning to move to Alaska — someday. “It’s peaceful here, people have it together.”
Case has put together a small kitchen and cooks for several neighbors. His specialty: quail fajitas, made from the tiny birds that are prevalent in Slab City.
The community is spread over about 600 acres of rutted roads and bushes. To the west is Niland (population 1,100) and the Salton Sea. To the east is the Coachella Canal (ripe with catfish) and the Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range used by the Navy.
During World War II, the Slab City site was Camp Dunlap, a Marine artillery training base. But ownership of the acreage passed to the state in the 1950s.
Even when it had money, the state government never showed much interest in Slab City. A plan to sell the site to a San Diego developer in the 1990s fell through; so did an idea by Imperial County to turn it into an RV camping ground. Now that the state is broke, Slab City is out of sight and out of mind, just the way its residents like it.
“This is the last truly free place in America,” said Jim Merton, 54, who spends the winter at Slab City and the summer in Washington. “I can smoke some weed, drink some beer, be loud and rowdy, skinny-dip in the canal, and there’s nobody to tell me I can’t have fun.”
Imperial County Sheriff’s Lt. Charles Lucas said Slab City residents do not pose a major law enforcement challenge. “They’re just trying to live out there,” he said. “They’re a mirror of what goes on in other places.”
For some, Slab City has long been a way of life. Others are refugees from the national recession.
“A lot of us just have nowhere else to go,” said Tracy Moss, 73, who came to Slab City with her husband, Ray, 55, an itinerant preacher, when they lost their home in Queen City, Texas.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-slab-city-20111218,0,986525,full.story
Interesting but this place has existed for nearly fifty years. I don’t know why the author chose to paint this place as a result of the current recession and the one family held up as a “foreclosure victim” has some possible issues with their version of events. Don’t 99% of those stories end up having a glossed over back story?
The oddity in the story is that there were zero quotes by the family featured in the photo spread and the video which I found to be odd but I wonder if the story was edited because of a couple of comments I ran across for the article.
Ahem:
makena at 3:52 PM December 17, 2011
Just found out the family with the 7 kids is a bunch of b.s. Look up Raphael Luciano on facebook. He works at Hollywood Pictures. Mom’s facebook is Maileina Minter-Luciano…lots of photos from various family vacations and says they live in Tarzana. Oldest daughter’s page is Smiley Kamaile, photos of trips to beach and horses in November.
Dad’s page has a link to another page he made on facebook, Global Green Bus….”jump on the the bus with us as we travel the world on the adventure of a life time we welcome your support and appreciate your love thank you”
Another accurate reporting job from the LA Times.
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makena at 4:13 PM December 17, 2011
The oldest daughter, Smile Kamaile, has photos on facebook from Malibu, California dated September 23…looks like a private house. She is shown with the director, Oliver Stone in one photo. Other photos have her posing with the actors Emile Hirsch and Aaron Johnson.
The album of photos posted in March of their house is even better. Pool, Hot tub, grand (and I mean grand) double staircase in the entryway. The pics are of a mansion, not the house of the average family.
I am so smelling a con job by the author, photographer and LA Times.
I don’t know their current circumstances and without a FB account all I can do is verify that the pages she said existed, do exist and the profile photos show that they are the same family. Other commenters at LAT have supported the contention that there are recent photos showing them in a residential setting and the daughter Kamaile is a fan of Portola Middle School in Orange, Ca.
Time to start OSC “Occupy Slab City” and get the 1%’ers out of there!
“In their spare time, they also pretend to be poor.”
What an adventurous life!
actually, the story was for real, they were just squatting at the mansion, and everywhere else along the road due to the lifestyle that Mr. Luciano has tried to bestow on his poor family, instead of getting a real job……he’s wanted in five states, including Hawaii…..currently, he is incarcerated, awaiting trial on Feb 6th in San Diego….hope they put him away for a long time….maybe she will be able to get on with her life without him and his dominating ways…..and the beautiful children will get to grow up as they should…..not on the road all of the time, and ending up at slab city….!!
no such business as hollywood pictures….global green bus is his dodge van……farce…..
some nerve u have dale. you dont even know my children in fact the last time i spoke with you you called them little f@#%ing a@$holes! Raphael is not wanted in five states by the way you dont know crap about me my life and u are not much to speak of yourself! hope someone puts you away, you insensative jerk!! all you do is talk…talk…talk!! its not like u ever offered to help or reach out to me or my family in away! its no wonder i chose not to speak of you or to you in 5 years. and ya and those charges have been dismissed.. so keep your rudeass comments in your piehole!! have a nice life.
Wow…… And now hes on the run again …..hope they shoot him…. Crazy lil man with a complex….. So much for what I said then….
It still stands!