I’ve always been fascinated by abandoned places and ancient ruins. They’re similar in some ways. They’re like the skeletons of stories strewn about and left over for you to wonder through and get a sense of what happened there and how it felt. I can’t get enough of them, which is why I went to the lengths of even going to places like Chernobyl (a year or two before that amazing TV series, which made me question my decision in some ways, to be honest) in search of this experience.
My first time in the Salton Sea was to shoot and act in a little post-apocalyptic short film called, FRONTIER by renowned comic book writer and film director, Daniel Freedman. (I’ve posted it below for shits and giggles.) It was just a creative experiment for fun. No sound. Just a few people. Intimate and guerilla. I loved it. It was hot… real hot, and it smelled like rotting fish and sulphur. It reeked like Satan’s ass. There were dried fish skeletons everywhere and swarms of flies to go with them. The Salton Sea used to be a rat pack era resort. I don’t want to get into the history of it too much. There are plenty of articles and documentaries on it that you can easily look up right now, but despite the wreckage that time and vandalism wrought on the whole area, you can still get a taste of that Route 66 feeling and old soul of America that you wish was still around if it was ever even really real). There’s something about that old school Americana… that short period during the 50’s and 60’s and into the 70’s that so many of us search for and want to recapture somehow. I feel like we’re a lost country in search of a soul. The searching itself is part of our mythology, I think. This feels like part of it.
There are still pockets of locals, solitude-seeking desert rats and eccentrics that largely don’t want to be bothered, but one thing still stands… The Ski Inn – an old original dive bar for locals to meet and play pool and have a cold beer. This is where I came the second time with photographer Mickey Strider. I was still hosting the Triumph & Disaster Podcast at the time (You can still listen to our episode on Spotify. There is a link to the podcast in the Menu on the main page of this blog if you’re curious.) and we drove out here to fuck around with our cameras and have a beer and record our conversation there. He was the one who took the photos of me playing pool and in the bar. (All others here on on this blog are always taken by me unless I point out otherwise.) It turns out that Anthony Bourdain came here for his show and had a few beers. I feel like that says good things about it. (May he rest in peace.)
I hope to come back to have a few beers again sometime… even if it’s all by myself. Enjoy.