Inside Twentynine Palms’ star economy: A desert town bets its weekend on the Perseids
TWENTNINE PALMS, Calif. (KESQ) Ask anyone in Twentynine Palms if they've ever seen a meteor, and you'll get a different answer in every shop.
"Absolutely. Pretty much every night," said Jimmy Brower, vice president of the downtown business association Rediscover 29. "That's one of the biggest benefits of living in the high desert."
This weekend, that sky is the whole business plan.
All week, stargazers packed the high desert to catch the Perseid meteor shower under a moonless sky, one of the best viewing windows in years. In Twentynine Palms, those falling stars keep the lights on.
Wonder pays the bills
Visitors to Joshua Tree National Park spent $179 million in gateway towns like Twentynine Palms last year, according to the National Park Service.
"Our night sky in 29 Palms is one of the best things for our economy," Mayor Pro Tem Octavious Scott said. "People come from all over the world because of our night sky."
Some of that sky is already sitting on a table downtown. Inside Mojave Moon Apothecary, owner Heather Basile runs Planet Zelatron, a blacklight room where UV-reactive minerals glow in the dark next to rocks older than the Earth itself.
"These are actual meteorites," Basile said, holding a Campo del Cielo specimen. "These are 4.5 billion years old. They were formed when our solar system was formed."
A kitchen and a glowing pickle
Some of this weekend's visitors will find their way to Angie Flournoy's Wing-N-It, a soul food kitchen on Twentynine Palms Highway serving 20 flavors of wings, fried chicken Fridays, southern sides and a backyard barbecue feel.
And the reddest thing in the desert - Kool-Aid pickles, a Mississippi Delta tradition, glowing like they fell out of the sky.
The Sunday menu rotates, too. "You never know what you're going to get," one team member said. "You might get oxtail, you might get smothered chicken, smothered pork chops. You just got to keep up with us."
Area 29 runs through Sunday
Downtown, the party is called Area 29: Galactic Gathering, a UFO- and space-themed festival now in its third year, put on by Rediscover 29 with support from Visit 29 Palms. After Thursday's ticketed UFO Pool Party at Luckie Park, everything left on the schedule is free:
- Friday night: Otherworldly Evening at Corner 62, 73552 Twentynine Palms Highway, with sci-fi readings, a lecture on the smell of space, a theremin performance and a late-night "Alien Autopsy" screening.
- Saturday: Alien Probe, a performance-art concert with space-themed comedy, at 6501 Barranca St.
- Sunday: Space Jam, a blacklight glow dance party at the Twentynine Palms Historic Plaza, 5671 The Plaza
Free matters this summer. Business owners across downtown say international tourism has dropped off, and the off-season runs hot and slow.
"People have asked me how I'm doing, and I always say I'm surviving the dream," said Sara Lyons, board president of Rediscover 29, who runs the candy shop Scorpion Lollipop and the whole festival. "It is really fun, but it is really difficult."
Lyons grew up under the observatory skies of Flagstaff, Arizona. She says a meteor never gets old. It puts you in mind of your place in the universe.
Some people wish on a star. In Twentynine Palms this weekend, they'll bite into one.
