Tag Archives: off the grid

Desert Coffee

In California’s poorest desert region, a colourful group of regulars and their dogs gather at Rob’s cafe for coffee in ‘the last free place in America’. 

Slab City is a squatter community in the Sonoran Desert, Southern California. The inhabitants, Slabbers, live in broken trailers or old school buses. Their closest neighbors are the United States Navy and Marine Corps, who practice aerial bombing in the area. Despite living off-grid in extreme weather conditions with no running water, electricity, sewage system or trash pickup, the residents enthusiastically embrace their freedom in the beautiful badlands of the desert. 

Rob hates coffee but as soon as dawn breaks he meticulously brews ‘the best coffee in the county’ for the customers of his makeshift cafe. Desert Coffee sketches an intimate, warm portrait of Rob and his friends – an unforgettable bunch of troubled characters and left-behinds.

The Garden: How a TikTok Cult Went Viral

We dive into the world of “Culttok” – Tiktok’s obsession with cults. After more than a decade of operating as a small off-the-grid farm, The Garden decided to try to attract more people to their commune by using Tiktok and they went viral. A few days later, Tiktok is filled with amateur detectives dedicated to exposing The Garden as a dangerous cult.

But was The Garden a cult? Or was it just an online witch hunt? We take a close look behind the hysteria.