Bom-Bae

My ex-girlfriend always disliked being called Bae or Babe, which was unfortunate since I always liked the nickname for my girlfriends before, but it turned out fine; I found new nick names.

I broke up with her not long ago, and with a broken heart, I had to find something to do, so I did a 3.5 hour drive to Bombay Beach, a ghost town located in the Salton Sea.

I was here last year with my Mamiya RB67 and my Fujifilm X-Pro 1. Unfortunately, the X-Pro was out of battery, and I did not care to notice until I was there, so I had this huge medium format camera to carry around with only two rolls of 10 exposures each. Bombay Beach was unlike anything I had seen before. I photograph ghost towns quite often, but never one that gave off a vibe of actual death incarnate. It smelled, the whole beach did, and the sand was not sand but sludge instead, made up of fish bones and other decaying matter. It got all over my shoes, inside my car, and it made my clothes smell for a few days. Most photos came out decent, but only one that I was really proud of, which is often the case when I shoot. So out of the whole trip, I had one good photo to show and the rest to keep in my hard drive forever. The thought lingered however, I only took twenty photos, and the one that came out became one of my favorites ever, so I knew I had to come back, better prepared.

So I did. The breakup was the perfect excuse to escape and create.

I find a weird comfort in places where I am not welcome, in places that could be considered “scary” by many. And Bombay Beach is all sorts of scary, weird, unusual, but with a lot of character.

I left Los Angeles pretty late to begin with, and honestly, I reached a point where it was so late I didn’t even want to go anymore. It’s too late, I thought, what’s the point? So I left around noon, and traffic continued to get nothing but worse. And once in traffic, it was too late to run back; I had already been stuck there for thirty minutes, so I decided to make the rest of my three-hour drive. The thought of immediately stopping at the bar for my first beer and a nice meal enters my mind and begins to fuel my drive. It’s how I like to travel, find an incentive in the very first thing you will do when you get there. So I got there after a long uneventful drive and immediately stopped at the one and only bar in town, the Ski Inn, which right off the bat I noticed was a lot more packed than the last time I was there.

There is truly nothing like your first time experiencing sex, drugs, or the Ski Inn. It doesn’t look like much on the outside, with a loose bike in front, a sketchy door, and the weird feeling that it could be someone’s personal home. When I walked in, the people inside were even weirder than the outside: a bunch of hippies. And I don’t use the word hippies lightly, because many of my family members have called me a hippie in the past, but these guys are the real deal, the way they dress, they smell, and they’re all white, of course. I eventually came to find that they were all the proud owners of all the RVs raiding the beach. I wanted to sit at the bar to hopefully spark a conversation, and the only available seat was at the very edge, almost an uncomfortable spot, between two groups of people who were already having a conversation. I asked if the seat was taken, and one went, “No, go ahead maaaan,” if you catch my drift.

So I sat down and immediately recognized the bartender, but he obviously didn’t recognize me. We chatted last time, a year ago, and he was busy this time. I ordered a Kona Big Wave and their famous patty melt. I then noticed to the right of me a picture of Anthony Bourdain eating a patty melt, and it kind of reignited me, I was excited to be there again. Excited and happy that I’m taking pictures in such a weird place and about to have a beer, what else could a guy ask for? I got my beer before the food and sat, nearly pounded it (thirsty), and the whole time I was just entirely entertained by eavesdropping on the hippies next to me. The guy was clearly trying to get with the girl, and the girl was clearly not from around. This other guy approached them and started talking about some holes he had been digging in his property for people to live in, and I did not understand at all what he was talking about, but everyone else seemed to like his idea, and someone said, “Yeah, man, build a community.” “If you guys want to stay, I’m right there down [redacted].” The conversation was long, and I was busy eating my Anthony Bourdain patty melt, so I couldn’t care to listen to all of it.

“How do you feel about the moon landing?” the original hippie asked the out-of-town girl, who were now alone again. My attention was quickly drawn back to them as I am interested in such topics, not so much the topics, but more so how people may feel about them. “Well, y’know, I’ve done my research, but I’m still not to that point, you know,” she replied. And so they vaguely discussed the moon landing as well as flat earth and a few other things, ending it with, “Whether they’re real or not, it doesn’t really affect my life, you know.”

After two beers, I was a little tipsy, and quite honestly, tired and in need of a nap. I looked outside and recalled reading that today would be the hottest day in California since practically last summer. It looked unbearable out there, but I thought to myself, the show must go on. As soon as I set foot outside, I realized it was indeed hot as hell and could not recall the last time I experienced heat like that. Was it in Arizona? As I walked on the side of the road, I began to sweat profusely and began to doubt myself, doubt my hobby. This? Picture-taking in an ugly ass ghost town that smells, is hot, and is overall unpleasant to be in. I couldn’t believe that this was what I picked as a hobby. But this was only my thought at the moment, and now that I am clear of mind, I think I was being quite dramatic.

I walked around the beach, snagging pictures here and there, went over the hill and into the beach, where the smell was all the more noticeable and pungent. At that point, I was liking my pictures, which were all shot on the X-Pro 1, kind of using it as a guide as to what pictures would look best on the Mamiya when the light got better. The whole time that I was there, it was like a buildup, the anticipation of the sun setting and being able to pull out the big guns, just getting a sense of the place in general. Here I got roped into a conversation with an old man smoking a joint and drinking a forty on the back of his pickup truck. His name was Rogelio, and we began to discuss immigration issues, and he told me his son’s boat got lost in a really bad storm, and it had to be out there somewhere in the Salton Sea. The son, who is sitting inside the truck, yells, “Dad, it didn’t get lost, it was stolen!” and they got into a senseless disagreement about it, which Rogelio ended by completely switching topics. “It’s beautiful out here after sunset, everyone comes out to have a drink, play some music, and set off a few fireworks. You should stick around.” With the absurd amount of RVs I could spot out of my peripheral vision, I didn’t doubt it was quite a party. He told me where he lived and told me to stop by to find him if I did stay after hours.

After talking to a few more of the locals and a few of the non-locals, I was back at the bar for just one more inspiration beer, where I met Scoot, the most “normal” person in this story. He was an old white man who liked to travel in his RV with his wife. And we chatted about our passions and drives, and he claimed to be inspired by me, which I doubted because I view myself as a bit of a bum. Told me to never give up on my dream (it’s unclear to me what my dream is). He bought me my last beer.

Finally, right before sunset, I opened my car trunk and brought out the big guns, the Mamiya RB67, which I loaded up with a roll of Cinestill 400D, the most expensive roll of film I had ever bought. I practically ran to the beach, as I thought it was getting a little too late and I was entirely missing the sunset, but the blue hour light reminded me that I was in exactly the right place at the right time. I was mostly shooting the RVs, and one of the hippies spotted me shooting his RV, so he turned on the indoor lights for me. Some simple LEDs that I thought would look incredible with the blue hour sky in the back. At that point, the light was so low that I had to get down on one knee and use my leg as some sort of support for the camera. I was shooting at a 30th of a second, totally scared that the pictures would not come out sharp at all, but what else can you do but hope with film?

When I finished the roll, I sat at a dock and watched the rest of the sunlight disappear. The hippies and the locals and all the good people of Bombay Beach indeed did come out, and they began to play their music and set off some fireworks. Some guy, not too far off with his friends, pointed at me and said, “That right there is what it’s all about. Guys, look at him and tell me that’s not what it’s all about. Just a guy and his camera watching the sunset.”

As it continued to become darker, I felt anxious, disjointed, and smelly. My brain scattered. The pictures were finished, and all that was left was to go home and develop them, edit them, but my mind kept on racing, thinking of a million things at once. Mostly the things that I have done and the things that I have not. That’s what I thought of at the dock, but once in my car driving back home, I felt wildly fulfilled. Pulled over at a truck stop for a quick Popeyes and a Monster energy drink.

I got a call two days later to let me know that not a single picture from the Mamiya came out; they said the roll looked “brand new”.