Desert visit leaves odd impression
Here’s what I knew about Joshua Tree: 1) Gram Parsons overdosed at a motel; 2) the area’s national park is popular with hikers, rock climbers and ‘shroom users; and 3) it might be the only town in San Bernardino County that a certain breed of L.A. hipster would deign to visit (or overdose at).
None of the above had enticed me to go. But last week, curiosity finally got the best of me.
With a birthday having just passed, and with more optimism than COVID-19 in the air, I felt like a short road trip, but to nowhere too populated. Why not finally see Joshua Tree? Since
I’m now covering the whole Inland Empire, I might as well head deeper into it.
So I set off by car last Wednesday afternoon: east on the 10 nearly to Palm Springs, then northeast through Morongo Valley on the 62, two lanes in each direction, with occasional stoplights. After Yucca Valley, and a short barren
stretch, came the Joshua Tree city limits and my down-market motel.
I checked in, investigated places to eat and found a good Mexican restaurant in Yucca Valley, where a plate of chile verde, rice and beans hit the spot and diners were spaced appropriately in the dining room.
Every business of note is along 62, also known as 29 Palms Highway, and has a five-digit-long address. Joshua Tree proper is only a few blocks long, but as I learned, it’s a fascinating few blocks.
There’s a bookstore and gift shop, The Mincing Mockingbird, with a “Hate Free Zone” sticker in the window and such multicultural books as Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste” and Roy Choi’s “L.A. Son” on display.
Next door is a bakery, Boo’s Organic Oven, run by a former finance industry employee from Detroit who makes sugary but also vegan-friendly items behind a storefront with an Elijah McClain mural in the window.
I patronized Crossroads Cafe for three straight breakfasts and got a healthy picnic lunch from The Dez, both of them the type of places that care deeply about your dietary restrictions.
Across the street is Joshua Tree Coffee, a business so hip it’s almost invisible from the street, accessed via a walkway between two storefronts that opens onto a courtyard at the rear.
Various small art galleries and vintage and specialty shops also dot the strip. Many were still closed due to pandemic concerns, including a bookstore I’d hoped to visit, Space Cowboy. So my three-night stay wasn’t a full Joshua Tree experience.
At that, even the names, exteriors and window displays hint at some businesses’ funkiness, like a gallery named Beatnik Lounge.
Barstow this ain’t.
I don’t know what hardcore locals think of all this, but it’s obvious there’s some level of tension.
A restaurant customer’s T-shirt had the slogan “Go Back to L.A.” and a Joshua Tree silhouette. Gear with that slogan is sold from a website — go back to LA. com, comically enough — to Joshua Tree’s more traditional denizens. “You either get it or you’re not a local,” the site explains.
The target audience is evidently irritated by the influx of new residents and disrespectful tourists — which I hope I wasn’t.
Joshua Tree has always had an allure for hippies, artists and outsiders. That’s why Parsons, the country-rock musician, gravitated there 50 years ago. One shop owner in Yucca Valley told me some of the tension is generational. She said the area used to be made up largely of retirees but now draws young people, and lots of them.
Joshua Tree National Park is exploding in popularity. A lot of fit young people were on bikes or in backpacks along that commercial strip, eating well sourced food and thinking sustainable thoughts, either before or after heading into the park.
The park is one reason I was there. That’ll be the subject of another column.
Other highlights for me were the bookstores, four of them across three small towns. Another was the open-air museum devoted to the late assemblage artist Noah Purifoy, who left Watts in 1989 for a remote spread in Joshua Tree. I’d seen his work at LACMA and was delighted to find 10 acres of it in the desert.
As a visitor during the pandemic, I was pleased and reassured to see such a high percentage of people masked up and distanced, including a pair of middle-aged men talking by a pickup truck one evening. So much for the image of desert dwellers being backward or defiant.
And with a few Black Lives Matter signs on prominent view too, Joshua Tree gave the impression of a place that cares for its residents and welcomes everyone — perhaps even people from L.A.
While my expectations had been modest, I’m happy to report that Joshua Tree is actually fantastic, and under two hours away for me. I should’ve visited years ago.
I can see how L.A. visitors, and L.A. transplants, could get on locals’ nerves, though. On my last morning I walked past a long line of young people waiting for seating outside Natural Sisters Cafe, and by the cafe’s sandwich board sign touting its vegan cheesecake, toward the Mincing Mockingbird.
As I browsed for books and greeting cards, one young woman asked her friend enthusiastically, “Should we get vegan cheesecake before we go back to our Airbnb?”
Finally, I thought, I’ve witnessed the perfect encapsulation of the hipster out-of-towner. Within moments, it got better. The two stopped at the door and one inquired of a clerk in eager tones, “Do you know where we could buy some plants?”
She did.