![]() ![]() (It needs some TLC - a barbecue fork points to a sad-face “caution” note on a broken sitting bench, the bathroom door won’t shut and the shower curtain is frayed.) From here everything dissolves into a Lucy and Desi comedy.Īll night, fierce winds screamingly howl and shake the trailer so violently we can’t sleep. ![]() Turns out blob-motif “Hot Lava” is still bewitched - there’s a water leak - so we’re switched to the “North to Alaska” trailer. As the sun dips, the sky blazes orange over the supernatural vista of gnarled Joshua trees and spiky cholla cactuses. The closest trace of civilization, about 100 yards away, is a neighbor’s charred, boarded-up house and exploded trailer. And with no other campers, we’re strangely alone (the off-site caretaker is reachable by phone). We’ve always wanted to stay in an Airstream. I peek into the groovy “Hairstream” trailer (“Kate’s fantasy dressing room”) plastered with B-52’s posters, the “Tiki” trailer painted with masks and “Planet Air” wallpapered with aluminum foil. We booked “Hot Lava.” Pierson writes online that she bought the silver bullet “from a coven of beautiful transgendered witches.” Purifoy was also a social activist - in one crumbling art piece, a regular drinking fountain stands underneath a “White” sign next to it, a stained toilet bowl outfitted with a drinking faucet is below the sign “Colored.”Ī half-hour from Joshua Tree National Park, up a sandy, tire-sinking backroad, bouffant-fond B-52’s rocker Kate Pierson has plopped six dated, funkily decorated Airstreams in barren middle-of-nowhere Landers. The creator was Noah Purifoy, a renowned African-American “junk artist” who co-founded the Watts Towers Art Center in Los Angeles in 1964 and later spent 15 years here recycling rubbish into this open-air oddity. It’s actually an acclaimed art installation of 50-plus “assemblage sculptures” sprawling over 10 desolate acres in Joshua Tree. Think of sci-fi meets hoarders meets Western ghost town. Bowling balls dangle from a rickety rod, metal fold-out chairs sit atop a battered cart with flat tires, a roller coaster-like structure is made of 65 aluminum lunch trays, and 1960s TV sets and rusty kitchen appliances are strewn in a heap. On one of his YouTube talk shows, though, he told Buddy the crochet dog that he’s a healer and licensed Watsu massage therapist.Īnd now for a desert dystopia. I also find inner peace with Bunny, the frock-clad crochet alligator who is “curator” of this cozy knitter nirvana. Yarn mushrooms, I discover, are very calming. On her website, Elf urges, “Let the crochet goodness surround you, soothe you, make you feel whole again.” Wow, “world famous!” Behind the Beauty Bubble, a neon-green former Fotomat booth is stuffed with hundreds of cuddly crochet critters - Big Bird, poodles, bears, mice, chickens - handmade by “mostly old ladies.” The museum’s owner, artist Shari Elf (seriously, her name) isn’t here this day, but the door is always open. A torturous octopus-tentacle perm machine was donated by screen legend Veronica Lake’s hairdresser, who truly had a brush with fame. Among the beauty booty: a 1940s Pin-Whiz “pin curl pinner,” a Growing Hair Cher doll, Hollywood starlet Lustre-Creme ads and 1960s mirrored C Bak glasses that enabled women to shape their beehives with both hands. So now his working salon doubles as a Smithsonian for scalps. You’d get a new hairdryer and throw the old one out.” “I thought this is fascinating history and it didn’t seem anyone was preserving it. ![]() His hair-raising collection started 25 years ago when Hafler was given a blue antique hairdryer. “I’m America’s hairstorian,” says bubbly Jeff Hafler, as he snips a client’s locks for a “flippy do.” Roadside on Joshua Tree’s highway, the retro-rad pink-walled Beauty Bubble bursts with 3,000 cosmetology artifacts, including an 1883 kerosene-heated curling iron, vintage helmet dryer chairs and Elvis Presley “Love Me Tender” shampoo. “Basically the main premise of what I do is a ‘why not world’ in a ‘why world.’ I’m always thinking, ‘Why not?’” Around Christmas, Robolights glows with 9 million bulbs, the largest residential light display in the country. Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom, now a converted Muslim wearing a traditional Islamic tunic, skullcap and long beard and excitedly pointing out Santa’s Barbecue Dragon Sleigh. He’s an unusual sight, this grandson of the late L.A. ![]() That’s the greatest pleasure, to see how happy people are to experience it.” Irwin, 42, is gracious, laughs often and clearly enjoys having strangers regularly traipse through his found-object otherworld just a block from Frank Sinatra’s former pad. ![]()
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