LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Las Vegas is a place of natural beauty, a place that speaks of mankind’s limitations. Raucous as it is, this city is an outpost of civilization, set in a lonely valley against elegant mountains of bleached, red rock. Drive fifty miles in any direction and you will find yourself in the… [Read more…]
October 3, 2009
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WONDER VALLEY, Calif. — Down a dirt lane south of Amboy Road, squatters and thieves have made the desert a dump. Torn mattresses, beer bottles, foam, pieces of old fencing, scraps of plastic and a trash barrel sprawl in a junk pile 10 meters long. Punished by the wind, bleached by the sun. It is… [Read more…]
October 2, 2009
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“You live in the middle of nowhere,” my friend Andrew said when he visited me in the Inland Empire. Yes. Sort of. When I brought Zak to visit our office in San Bernardino, there was a straw-colored tumbleweed in the parking lot, perfectly round, about two feet tall. My knowledge of Riverside and San Bernardino… [Read more…]
October 2, 2009
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SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — At 4 a.m., the dogs begin to bark. Like them, I can’t sleep. In Los Angeles, 10 miles from the beach, the Santa Anas whistled in the evening. On days when they were strong, they howled, hanging over the neon lights of Sunset Boulevard, dancing across the glossed black surface of… [Read more…]
October 2, 2009
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SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — The first time I drove up Interstate 215 was on a dark night, the shadows of palm trees rising beside the freeway, a vacuum-packed mattress in the back seat, the rest of my life in the trunk. I turned left off the exit, rolled past some railroad tracks and wondered where… [Read more…]
October 3, 2009
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