Photo Essay: Silver City, A Ghost Town Made of Pieces of Other Ghost Towns

When I first moved to California, some places just seemed so far away. It was impossible for me to wrap my head around making a day trip to Joshua Tree or Palm Springs—a three-hour drive each way. But over the past 14 years, my home state has continued to feel smaller and smaller, easier and easier to tackle. 

In April 2014, I made a detour from the Eastern Sierra to try to see Silver City Ghost Town in Bodfish, California, located in the Kern River Valley of the Southern Sierra. I'd gotten there too late in the day to catch it before it closed or to even photograph it in daylight. And it just seemed so out-of-the-way that it took me 11 years to try again. 

 

This time, I planned my trip a little better and got an earlier start, as I headed home from the early-morning Burro Run I'd attended in Indian Wells Canyon. 

Photo Essay: Donkeys Hauling Ass at California's Run With the Burros

Ever since I read the memoir Running with Sherman: The Donkey with the Heart of a Hero, I've been interested in witnessing burro racing. That's when runners take to the trail with a donkey for a man-versus-man/animal-versus-animal competition—one that's popular in Arizona, Colorado, and now California.

I had my chance this weekend thanks to the non-profit California Breakfast Burritos, which has been focused on bringing pack burro races back to the Golden State since its founding in 2018. 

 

There's a long tradition of burro racing among 19th-century miners—locally, in Randsburg, Death Valley, and the Eastern Sierra communities. But this version has been around since 1949, when it was used as a marketing gimmick to bring tourism to declining mining communities (and to find a use for those working burros the miners left behind). 

 

A Load Off

It had been hanging over me for too many years—in retrospect, more than I ever thought it would. 

I stopped talking to my parents in January 2007 (I think, I don't remember exactly). At least, that's the last time I ever called them. And they just never called me back. 

But since then, I'd been wondering whether they'd ever try reaching out, try making amends. I thought that on my mother's deathbed, she might find God—truly find God, not that fake cult crap she put us through—and finally apologize. 

I've thought about her death a lot over the years, mostly because I've always known she always wanted to die. She constantly threatened death—either in a passive way, that ol' "Since this may be my last Christmas..." gag, or in an active way, openly fantasizing about drowning herself in the bathtub. 

After all, her physical health was pretty terrible—something I was acutely aware of as far back as third grade. And her mental anguish? Way before that, as far back as I can remember.

So I couldn't help but be curious as to when it would happen, how it would happen, how I would feel, what my dad would do. 

How would I even find out that she had died? And what would happen if my dad died first?

My parents eating cake at their wedding reception, May 4, 1973*

Well, many of those questions have now been answered. My mother died on March 3, 2025. I found out on March 11, when my cousin called me after the funeral service. 

Photo Essay: Wallace Neff's Once-Affordable Bubble House Hits An Inflated Real Estate Market

Los Angeles has been experiencing a housing shortage for decades—with many of the new residential structures being built offering a larger proportion of luxury housing than affordable units. And that shortage has worsened in the wake of the January 2025 wildfires that wiped out nearly the entire communities of Altadena and the Pacific Palisades.

There was a severe need for housing in the U.S. in the 1940s, too—with building materials being rationed for the war effort and then all those soldiers coming home after World War II and starting families with much enthusiasm (launching the "baby boom" generation). 

Back during the war, one answer to that housing shortage was offered by architect Wallace Neff: the Airform house, which could be constructed in just two days.

All it took was to cover a giant balloon (made of rubberized nylon) with chicken wire and spray it with concrete (a.k.a. gunite). Deflate the balloon and boom, you've got a house—or, as it was called, a "Bubble House."

 

Despite their speed and affordability, fewer than 3000 Bubble Houses (or "Balloon Houses") were built in this country. Only one of them remains, built at a cost of $16,000—and it just went on the market for a whopping $1.85 million.