18 May Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea
Introduction by Steve Witkowski (Film & Media Studies, UCSB)
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 / 3:00 PM
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB
Once known as the “California Riviera,” the Salton Sea is called one of America’s worst ecological disasters: a fetid, stagnant, salty lake, coughing up dead fish and birds by the thousands.Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Seacovers the historical, economic, political, and environmental issues that face the sea, and it offers up an offbeat portrait of the eccentric and individualistic people who populate its shores. It is an epic western tale of fantastic real estate ventures and failed boomtowns, inner-city gangs fleeing to white small-town America, and the subjective notion of success and failure amidst the ruins of the past. Hair-raising and hilarious, part history lesson, part cautionary tale and part portrait of one of the strangest communities you’ve ever seen, this is the American Dream gone as stinky as a dead carp.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Oil+Water Series and the Community Environmental Council.