Bombey Beach in the Joshua Tree desert has become a gathering place for the art crowd
As part of my life plan to “do something unusual,” today we are spending the night in the desert in Joshua Tree, where we barely made it after the micro Burning Man in the ghost town of Bombay Beach. In the 80s, wealthy owners of steamship factories warmed their bones here, but Lake Salton began to dry out and salinity increased, killing the eco-system. Everyone left.
The tiny town became abandoned until 2018. Suddenly it was flooded with an art crowd of artists, designers, musicians and their admirers - this is how the Bombay Beach Biennale was born. This is not all about high art, but rather about everyday humor. At the bottom of the lake, RVs are chaotically parked mixed with overturned boats and art structures - a “free love” phone booth with a slipper with a mushroom chocolate hanging inside, a toilet with a sprouted cactus, a bar with sand walls and a rave disguised as a subway entrance. Across the road from the beach is the town itself, with abandoned buildings, each of which has been converted into something very unusual. There are installations, DJs, paintings and crowds in glowing fur coats everywhere. I fell in love with the psychedelic yurt Cafe Bosha, where a bearded DJ makes coffee and they play along with him on unknown instruments. And these are sounds that cannot be described. It was impossible to leave the impromptu jazz club - I had never heard such a trumpet player even in the best jazz club in LA.
Author: Yunia Pugacheva
