Items

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  2020-11-12

  A snarky mask reminder

  Slab City California is a very unique place. I would describe it loosely as being part squatter and snowbird encampment, part artists’ colony, part homesteading community. The one description that is agreed upon, at least by its residents, is that it is the “last free place on earth”. Given this fact, I was a bit nervous to visit, but I was also really excited to check it out and figured that if nobody was wearing masks or social distancing and I wasn’t comfortable, I could just leave. I was very pleasantly surprised therefore when I arrived and found that residents were all taking the pandemic seriously. I stayed away from people as much as possible, as I did everywhere I went and was able to safely enjoy the art. I snapped this picture in East Jesus, an outdoor art museum/sculpture garden, and felt it was a good representation of the general attitude in the area. I think this item illustrates an interesting part of people’s response to covid which is that while there are many people who refuse to take the pandemic seriously, there are also a lot of people who are doing the right thing because they genuinely care about others. Slab City is an unincorporated community with no government and nobody to enforce state mandates. People might get fined if they threw a big party and word got out to someone who could do something about it, but it’s unlikely that there would be consequences. And yet, people were being responsible, Which to me says something significant about the fact that I would say that most people who are wearing masks and social distancing it are doing it not because they are required to, but because it is the right thing to do.