It’s a spot that’s got “weird” in spades: nestled at the foot of the Chocolate Mountains Gunnery Range (which are not, in fact, made of chocolate, we checked), just east of The Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge, less than ten miles from both the skanky shores of the Salton Sea and the sumptuous cells of Calipatria State Prison, and within biking distance of the Superstition Hills United States Bombing Area (we couldn’t make this up), Slab City—which isn’t a city at all but still appears on virtually every map—is one of the many crown jewels in the Imperial Valley’s epicenter of strange.

We had heard the Slab City folklore for years; a squatter’s paradise on a former military base in southeastern SoCal, where an ad-hoc community of bikers, drop-outs, survivalists, “snowbirds,” individuals of questionable political persuasion, ex-cons (and possibly those who have not yet been caught), disenfranchised Vietnam vets, the all-round down-and-out, and whomever else might want to encamp in the wasteland five miles south of a live bombing range atop a series of concrete slabs (hence the name) which once served as the foundation for the marine barracks of Fort Dunlap. Sounded like a day-trip travel adventure!

And it was. Slab City is an honest-to-goodness California shanty town with a whole lotta style (we say “shanty town” in a good way); easily the Golden State’s finest, much nicer than Santa Monica. It’s a place where real estate prices will never crash and The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf will never franchise, with an established gateway to the city, a street grid, a community bulletin board, and a tented café, all sprawling over a piece of U.S. Government property scattered with abandoned trailers, rusted auto bodies, rain-warped plywood, and sundry post-consumer debris. The number of weather-worn hand painted signs marking the community is a folk art collector’s goldmine for those unethical enough to pinch from the almost-homeless, and purveyors of “found art” may get weak in the knees as they mosey down the eerie streets in the City of Slab (but that stuff was found by someone else first so keep that in mind).

While touring Slab City on a lazy January afternoon, we couldn’t help thinking about how much this place kinda looks like Burning Man. In fact, Slab City feels sort of like Burning Man’s crusty old deadbeat dad, and the similarities don’t begin and end with non-refrigerated foods and poorly constructed shelter occupied by the drug-addled and the unwashed. There’s the Slab City practice of individual liberty, which mostly shapes up at Burning Man by way of public nudity, glittery fairy wings, half-hearted cross dressing, outsized metal art installations, and a full week of anonymous sex with smelly, body-painted strangers, while romping around in inappropriate footwear through acidic soil that will burn your skin, and braving the occasional sandstorm that could fuck you up bad if you’ve left your goggles in the port-a-potty or neglected to zip your tent. All for the ticket price of $300.00, and, if your plan on an art installation or a theme camp, some degree of bureaucracy or a deadline-sensitive registration process. Burning Man—much like Slab City—is an environment of complete freedom (as long as you comply with the “community standards” of Pershing County, Nevada, and abide by Burning Man’s 1,600+ word list of “Participant Responsibilities,” document, which prohibits—among many things—the use of feather boas and the display of public sex, but not necessarily in that combination). But Slab City doesn’t climb all over your back like that. Slab City is older, wiser, weaker, and more comfortable with itself. We’re pretty sure no one’s getting in heated discussions at Slab City about community standards or feather boas.

As our afternoon in this desolate and considerably dusty utopia came to a close, we had decided that Slab City just might trump Burning Man with respect to personal freedom—you certainly won’t find any police officers keeping your behavior in check here or tell you that you can’t shit in the dirt—and could furthermore serve as its “sister event” right here in our own backyard. And Slab City has a lot of advantages over Burning Man too: no ticket price, year-round convenience, you can wear all the feather boas you want—fuck, you can wear real boas wearing feather boas—and while the strangers at Slab City may not be body-painted or costumed with day-glo wigs, fairy wings, kooky sunglasses, or hot pink tutus, they are indeed smelly, and undoubtedly willing to engage in anonymous sex (perhaps even in public if you ask nicely). Nature has taken back a lot of the trailers and many of the gas-powered vehicles for which Slab City was clearly the last stop on a one-way trip, but take a look and tell us that these inadvertent installations don’t rival the art hauled to the The Playa of Black Rock City? And it’s all just a stone’s throw from Salvation Mountain, which certainly rivals any art car or bicycle covered with plastic flowers. Burning Man may trump Slab City when it comes to hypocrisy, but does it boast the amenities of Slab City’s Oasis Club? A Mexican fiesta dinner for $3.00? A public library? A Christian Center? Its inspired use of hubcaps?

You’re sure to find life at Slab City considerably more pragmatic than the elitist hedonism found among the temporary community of Nevada burners. There is no annual “theme,” as the theme here generally tends to be “survival.” And Slab City residents don’t use lumber to build giant wooden structures and then burn them down for shits and giggles: they tend to burn things because there is no garbage pick up. There isn’t any greeting committee to meet you at the front gate and spank you if you’re a first timer either, but we’re pretty sure you’d manage to find someone at Slab City willing to hit you if you looked hard enough. And if you should experience alcohol poisoning or dive into a K-hole too deep to climb your way out of, there will be no medical tent to serve as your safety net. But if you don’t know how to dose your own feline tranquilizers, don’t come crying to us.

Best yet, Slab City knows that human beings are incapable of going anywhere and “leaving no trace.” Slab City doesn’t seem to be too concerned about what kind of “trace” you leave. In fact, leave your whole damn car. Flip it, torch it, and just see who wags a finger.