For three years I lived part-time in Slab City, a squatters’ community located on a desolate swath of southern California desert wedged between the Salton Sea and an active bombing range. Since shortly after World War II, the slabs have been a refuge for drifters, dropouts, and other cultural dissidents who live in vehicles and makeshift camps on the crumbling concrete foundations of an abandoned military base. A collection of fiercely independent, utterly original individuals, they come here seeking freedom from rules, rent, and the assaults of a society often unsympathetic to the underclass.
