Great feature in the New York Times this morning about Slab City, a lawless, rentless, taxless community of 3,000 who bring their RVs and trailers to an abandoned military base in the Mojave Desert:
Slab City is not so sinister as it is a strange, forlorn quarter of America. It is a town that is not really a town, a former training grounds with nothing left but the concrete slabs where the barracks stood. Gen. George S. Patton trained troops here. Pilots of the Enola Gay practiced their atomic mission, dropping dummy bombs into the sea.
The land belongs to the state, but the state, like the law, does not bother, and so the Slabs have become a place to park free. More than 3,000 elderly people settle in for the winter, in a pattern that dates back at least 20 years.
A site has been created to work on Slab City's trash problem:
Some residents of Slab City talk bad about this website, and our growing group of trash haters. Take a good look at the photo on the right, and keep in mind that the same people who stuff trash into any empty bus, are the same ones who are against our efforts to clean up the area.
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