Ski-Inn Diner | |
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| Location | 9596 Avenue A, Niland, CA 92257 |
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| Type | Bar/Restaurant |
Ski Inn is a bar and restaurant in Bombay Beach, California. The Ski Inn purports to be the "lowest bar in the western hemisphere" at 223 feet or 68 meters below sea level. [1] [2] The name refers to water skiing and not snow skiing. [3]
Originally, there were five bars in Bombay Beach. [4] However, it is now one of two bars in town, the other being the local American Legion. [5] [6] [7] [1] [4] The bar has been under the same ownership for more than a quarter of a century. [8] The band Heat Hell and Winter played 1950s cover songs there. [9] At one point, the Ski Inn had a video poker machine. [6] It is popular among local residents. [10]
A visitor to the Inn in early 2019 filed this description: [11]
The Ski Inn has lasted this long thanks mainly to snowbirds; retired folks in RVs seeking a mild winter at mineral bath resorts a few miles uphill. Groups will show up at the Ski Inn to chat over beers, and keep up a habit that started in the 1950s, when vacationers would write their names on dollar bills and stick them to the walls. Decades on, uncounted thousands of dollar bills plaster the place like wallpaper, covering every wall, door, ceiling, and even ceiling fan blade."
Desert Magazine said the Ski Inn was one of the "only alive places I notice in this ghost town" and "worth a stop: Have a beer and hear some stories of the sea’s days gone by." [8] LA Weekly 's Hayley Fox called it a "charismatic dive" and recommended having "a beer and a burger." [12] Palm Springs Life's Karen Graninger implored that "the cheeseburger and potato salad will fill you up nicely." [13] KCET 's Sandi Hemmerlein liked it for the "patty melt and exploring the remains of the town that have been consumed by floods and sand." [16]
Vice 's Jamie Lee Curtis Taete reviewed their meal with "The grilled cheese tasted exactly like the fries, which tasted exactly like the salad. Literally every dish on my plate tasted exactly like accidentally swallowing bath water." [7] The Independent 's Tim Walker remarked "It boasts a passable $5 burger and a handful of friendly, elderly regulars: the men and women who stayed when the world went away." [1] Time Out Los Angeles's Kate Wertheimer suggested to "stop by for a drink or a greasy bite and decorate a dollar bill to hang on the wall or ceiling." [15]
The Ski Inn has been featured in media by Anthony Bourdain and John Waters. [2] Bourdain lunched there in a fourth season episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations . [13] It was used as a filming location in an episode of The Mentalist where it was renamed "Borrego Gap Diner." [17]
A pub is an establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term public house first appeared in the late 17th century, and was used to differentiate private houses from those which were, quite literally, open to the public as 'alehouses', 'taverns' and 'inns'. By Georgian times it had become common parlance, although taverns, as a distinct establishment, had largely ceased to exist by the beginning of the 19th century. Today, pubs have no strict definition, but CAMRA states a pub has four characteristics:
Salvatore Phillip "Sonny" Bono was an American singer-songwriter, producer, actor, and politician who came to fame in partnership with his second wife Cher as the popular singing duo Sonny & Cher. He was mayor of Palm Springs, California, from 1988 to 1992, and the Republican congressman for California's 44th district, elected during the Republican Revolution and serving from 1995 until his death in 1998.
Imperial County is a county in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 174,528, making it the least populous county in Southern California. The county seat is El Centro. Established in 1907 from a division of San Diego County, it was the last county to be formed in California.
Bombay Beach is a census-designated place (CDP) in Imperial County, California, United States. It is located on the Salton Sea, 4 miles (6.4 km) west-southwest of Frink and is the lowest community in the United States, located 223 feet (68 m) below sea level. The population was 295 at the 2010 census, down from 366 in 2000. The population estimate for 2020 was 415. It is part of the El Centro, California, metropolitan statistical area.
Salton City is a census-designated place (CDP) in Imperial County, California. It is the largest Imperial County development on the Salton Sea coast. It is part of the El Centro, California Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 3,763 at the 2010 census, up from 978 in 2000. The population estimate for 2020 was 5,611.
Mecca is an unincorporated community located in Riverside County, California, United States. The desert community lies on the North shore of the Salton Sea in the eastern Coachella Valley and is surrounded by agricultural land.
Salton Sea Beach is a census-designated place (CDP) in Imperial County, California, located 2.5 miles (4 km) southeast of Desert Shores. The population was 422 at the 2010 census, up from 392 at the 2000 census. It is part of the El Centro, California Metropolitan Statistical Area. It was the location of the Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea.
KCET, virtual and UHF digital channel 28, is a secondary Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television station licensed to Los Angeles, California, United States. Owned by the Public Media Group of Southern California, it is sister to Huntington Beach-licensed primary PBS member KOCE-TV. The two stations share studios at The Pointe in Burbank; KCET's transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains.
The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, highly-saline body of water in Riverside and Imperial counties at the southern end of the U.S. state of California. It lies on the San Andreas Fault within the Salton Trough that stretches to the Gulf of California in Mexico. Over millions of years, the Colorado River has flowed into the Imperial Valley and deposited alluvium (soil), creating fertile farmland, building up the terrain, and constantly moving its main course and river delta. For thousands of years, the river has alternately flowed into the valley, or diverted around it, creating either a saline lake called Lake Cahuilla, or a dry desert basin, respectively. When the Colorado River flows into the valley, the lake level depends on river flows and the balance between inflow and evaporative loss. When the river diverts around the valley, the lake dries completely, as it did around 1580. Hundreds of archaeological sites have been found, indicating possibly long-term Native American villages and temporary camps.
The Imperial Valley lies in the California counties of Imperial and Riverside in southeastern Southern California with an urban area centered on the city of El Centro. The Valley is bordered by the Colorado River to the east and, in part, the Salton Sea to the west. Farther west lies the San Diego and Imperial County border. To the north is the Coachella Valley region of Riverside County, which together with Imperial Valley form the Salton Trough, or the Cahuilla Basin, also the county line of Imperial and Riverside counties, and to the south the international boundary with the U.S. state of California and Baja California.
Anthony Michael Bourdain was an American celebrity chef, author, and travel documentarian, who starred in programs focusing on the exploration of international culture, cuisine, and the human condition. Bourdain was a 1978 graduate of The Culinary Institute of America and a veteran of a number of professional kitchens during his career, which included many years spent as an executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in Manhattan. He first became known for his bestselling book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000).
Busch Gardens is the name of two amusement parks in the United States, owned and operated by SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment. The original park is in Tampa, Florida, and the second park is in Williamsburg, Virginia. There were also previously Busch Gardens parks in Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California (1964–1979) and Houston, Texas (1971–1973). The "Busch Gardens" name was earlier used to refer to the gardens developed by Adolphus Busch near his home in Pasadena, California, which were open to the public from 1906 to 1937.
The Salton Sink is the low point of an endorheic basin, a closed drainage system with no outflows to other bodies of water, in the Colorado Desert sub region of the Sonoran Desert. The sink falls within the larger Salton Trough and separates the Coachella Valley from the Imperial Valley, which are also segments of the Salton Trough. The lowest point of the sink is 269 ft (82 m) below sea level, and since 1906 the 343 square miles (890 km2) Salton Sea has filled the lowest portion of the sink to a water depth of up to 43 ft (13 m).
Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea is a documentary film by Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer, with narration by John Waters and music by Friends of Dean Martinez.
Kim Stringfellow is an American artist, educator, and photographer based out of Joshua Tree, California. She is an associate professor at the San Diego State School of Art, Design, and Art History and received her MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Stringfellow is notable as an artist for her transmedia documentaries of landscape and the economic effects of environmental issues on humans and habitat. Stringfellow's photographic and multimedia projects engage human/landscape interactions and explore the interrelation of the global and the local.
Bombay Beach is a 2011 documentary film directed and produced by Israeli filmmaker Alma Har'el. The film was nominated for an Independent Spirit "Truer than Fiction" Award, won "Best Feature Documentary" at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, and has been taught in several universities including Duke University and Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab and Film Center as a genre redefining work. Taking place in the Salton Sea, a rusting relic of a failed 1950s development boom, Bombay Beach is a dreamlike poem that sets three personal stories to a stylized melding of observational documentary and choreographed dance to music specially composed for the film by Zach Condon of the band Beirut, and songs by Bob Dylan.
The Hawaiian Inn was an inn located in St. Petersburg Beach, Florida.
The Bombay Beach Biennale is an annual art festival held in Bombay Beach, California on the Salton Sea in the lowest community in the United States. It was co-founded by Tao Ruspoli, Stefan Ashkenazy, and Lily Johnson White in 2016. The festival features both temporary pieces and permanent installations such as the Hermitage Museum, Bombay Beach Opera House, and a drive-in theater.
Coordinates: 33°21′13″N115°44′01″W / 33.353632°N 115.73356899999999°W
