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People of the Sea: High Country News covers the people side of the Salton Sea

Posted by: Maven on February 29, 2008 at 3:26 pm

From High Country News:

The village of Bombay Beach, Calif., is quiet, save for the occasional screams of gulls on the nearby Salton Sea. It’s 10:30 a.m. on a winter morning. Gusts of wind flecked with sand and salt whip for-sale signs in front of broken-down mobile homes and boarded-up bungalows. Front yards and empty lots are strewn with the relics of lost hope – an abandoned green motorboat tagged with graffiti, lifeless sedans, rotting camper shells, piles of used clothing, filthy couches, broken bottles, plastic garbage bags.

Eight years ago, census takers counted 366 residents in Bombay Beach; it’s unclear how many live here now. Bombay Beach does not attract many newcomers. The current townies tend to stick to themselves, gathering for entertainment at the town’s popular bar, the Ski Inn, where Mayor Wacko holds court.

On this particular morning, Wacko sits on a barstool, sipping a pink drink. His real name is Wayne Graham, but he prefers his nickname, which someone gave him years ago for reasons he can’t remember. He is not really the mayor, either; his bar friends gave him the title and it stuck. He is 70, thick-set, with a gray walrus moustache and sad blue eyes. He struggles to compete with a TV tuned to a World War II movie with lots of explosions and a woman at the end of the bar who’s bellowing that she’s thinner than most of the old cows in Bombay Beach.

Wacko has been enchanted with the Salton Sea for 35 years, ever since he worked for the telephone company in Long Beach. He remembers the waning heyday of the Sea, back in the 1970s, when it was still known as California’s Riviera. Cars lined up for miles to get a beachside camping spot. Tourists came to fish for orange-mouthed corvina, to race speedboats and water-ski, to spot celebs like Sonny Bono and Frank Sinatra. They came to escape the frenzy of Los Angeles, just 180 miles or so to the west.

Read the full text of this story from the High Country News by clicking here.

February 29, 2008 · Filed Under Salton Sea

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