Bombay Beach, a census-designated place not quite big enough to be a town sits on the eastern shore of the Salton Sea in the Sonoran Desert at the lowest elevation in the United States at 223-feet below sea level. The mobile homes and few stores bake in the lowest desert sun, with the dead fish, scum, ruins, salt, and the stench of sulfur and rot.

Bombay Beach wasn’t always such a wasteland. It was once a thriving beach town where people fished, water-skied, and played golf in the 50’s and 60’s. Eventually, the poisonous agricultural run-off that fed the Salton Sea killed all the fish, along with all the recreation and the local economy.

The 300 residents that remain, remain either because they were raised there, feel most at home there, or for some reason or another don’t want to leave their tight community outside the pressures and chaos of a larger metropolis. There is something quite sweet about this community, remaining and maintaining their place of living despite its’ circumstances. The nearest grocery store is 40 miles away. Most residents travel within the community in golf carts to save gas.

Bombay Beach has served as the site of several films and music videos, including a surrealist documentary called Bombay Beach. Bombay Beach follows locals and their day-to-day lives in what is often dismissed as a wasteland void of anything but stench and sun bleached abandon, including a local family arrested in the early 2000s for hording weapons that they liked to explode while playing army.