Entrance to Wasteland City. | Photo: Tyler Stallings
More Artbound
Community Culture Embraced in the Antelope Valley
Antelope Valley Art Outpost: Building Community in the High Desert
Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve Ready to Bloom
1 of 12
next
Much of Southern California has been built on real estate speculation. California City, or Cal City, 60 miles north of Los Angeles, was one such dream by Nat Mendelsohn during post-World War II's economic exuberance. Touted as a city that would rival Los Angeles itself, Mendelsohn assumed that expansion into the desert would continue when he laid out plans for the community. It was located in proximity to Edwards Air Force Base, Palmdale, and Lancaster after all - cities where aerospace marvels such as the Space Shuttle were to be built later. Mendelsohn graded the desert for streets and created pipeline infrastructure. Some plots did sell, but the dream did not catch on. Defined by geography, it is California's third largest city, yet it has only 14,000 residents. Consequently, Cal City is often nicknamed the city of streets to nowhere.
As if drawing on this bottled energy and the tinge of an environmental apocalypse that wafts across the town on hot winds, Wasteland Weekend is a Mad Max -inspired festival that has occurred since 2010 on Cal City's fringes. Today, co-owned and directed by Jared Butler and Adam Chilson, it is a temporary tent-city situated in the desert about a 30-minute drive northeast of Cal City. Wasteland Weekend is intended as an immersive experience that blurs the boundaries of being on a movie set and preparing for survival in a world where gasoline and oil have become gold, myrrh, and frankincense. They fuel the leftover machines of a pre-apocalyptic world that once took gas-guzzling for granted.
Satellite view of California City. | Image: Courtesy of Google Maps
Seen via satellite imagery, the graded desert roads suggest a complicated geometry of incisions, perhaps imparting secret knowledge only attained when viewed aerially, like Peru's Nazca Lines. Or, alternatively, the landscape appears to be scraped of buildings, as if an apocalypse did occur, devastating the desert town in the vein of a B-movie, sci-fi thriller.
Human-built towns absent of humans are real, though. The Ukrainian town of Pripyat is a still life of a post-nuclear disaster ghost town: the result of the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant meltdown. But, in Cal City, the only day or reckoning that befell it was the flop of a real estate developer's blueprint for a master planned community. However, the town feels less in decline and in limbo instead, as there is a sense of pent up energy from decades of hope and belief in the possibilities of what can be done with so much land at hand.
A dust cloud signals that Wasteland is just ahead. | Photo: Tyler Stallings
--
--
On a map, Wasteland is at the intersection of Rice Avenue and Tulane Street, and would appear to be surrounded by a dense community based on the other numerous, named streets. However, once outside the populated center of Cal City, the street names are nearly meaningless, as you are driving through a barely demarcated desert in reality. My two companions, Naida and Archer, and I have directions but the only markers along the way are low-lying wooden stakes with optimistically planned street names inscribed on them. We know when we are getting close because of the sand clouds kicked up by the other Wasters descending on the temp-tent city too.
Upon entering through the campsite's main gate, and then driving along The Road, it is evident that Wasteland is divided into tribes, such as The Rain Dogs, Blood Ravens, and The Rust Bunnies, and is where, as stated on the website all factions, gangs, and fractured remnants of society come together on neutral ground to trade, barter, party, and make new alliances. Like medieval times, most of the tribes are stationed outside the walls of the official Wasteland City. The names of the makeshift streets that create tribal quadrants reference the latest Mad Max: Fury Road film, such as Valhalla Highway.
The author in his post-apocalyptic Dickies, along with Naida Osline and Archer Altstaetter. | Photo: Courtesy of Naida Osline
The three of us wear our best attempts at post-apocalypse costumes, which are required of everyone, even if from the media, in order to maintain an immersive experience. I am wearing an altered navy-blue, Dickies coverall suit, on which I spray-painted a stenciled motif of a hand all over, topped off with a spray-painted blue dot at the center of each palm. My hope is to suggest that I am a member of a mysterious, post-apocalyptic cult. The Dickies are ripped in a manner that suggests numerous struggles through years of self-reliance and acts of violence that I would rather not have to recount. I did have a hard time manipulating the durable Dickies fabric. Despite my fantasies, I bear resemblance, more than likely, to an auto repair mechanic than a near-future, cultish, survivalist. Nonetheless, my friends and I aim to fit into this future. In order to maintain a collective fantasy, the Wasteland Weekend website has a strongly worded FAQ on costume guidelines:
We hope we're not destroying any fantasies here, but zombies and mutants are not real. Therefore, zombie and mutant costumes are not welcome at the event. However, radiation burns and radiation sickness ARE real, so you certainly could lean toward that type of look if you're so inclined Nearly any franchise that would be recognizable as something outside of the post-apocalyptic genre needs to be avoided. Star Wars, Batman, Disney, etc.
Two weeks after Burning Man, northerly located in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, the mid-September timing of Wasteland Weekend is also just one month before Cal City's
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Entrance to Wasteland City. | Photo: Tyler Stallings 
