Los Angeles Adult Entertainment: Bombay Beach and the allure of the ghost town
Ghost towns are the eyesores in our midst, socio-economic roadkill; either imperfectly bulldozed or left to rot in the sun. The dictionary defines them as “deserted settlements, especially in the western US”, which may explain their curious, symbiotic relationship with the American film industry. The birth of Hollywood, after all, coincided with the dying days of the wild west. It was a time in which Wyatt Earp worked as a studio script consultant and a collection of rusting former boom towns provided backdrops for anyone wanting to shoot a cowboy picture.
In the decades before it was thrown a lifeline by the tourist trade, the town of Lone Pine, California served as the base for over 250 westerns, including High Sierra and the peerless Bad Day at Black Rock, in which a one-armed Spencer Tracy confronts the locals of a misbegotten desert hamlet. Guadalupe, meanwhile, was a regular Hollywood destination until the 1940s, after which it became a hotbed of gambling, drugs and prostitution. And yet – lik …
See the full article from “The Guardian”