Send the clowns into Nipton, California

There's never been much to Nipton, California, an erstwhile little mining town with a couple of dozen residents plunk dab in the Mojave Desert:

A five-room adobe hotel was built in the Mexican Territorial style in 1910. The town also has a general store, a trading post, the Whistle Stop Cafe, an RV park, five eco-cabins, and ten sites with teepees on them. There is also a historic schoolhouse and art exhibits connected to the Burning Man event. (Source: Wikipedia)

I'm guessing that eco-cabins means no plumbing and heat.* And Burning Man? That just layers weird onto bleak. 

Not much to commend this tumbleweedy ghost town to this ardent urbanite. 

Over the years, there have been a couple of attempts to turn the town into something or other. One buyer - and, yes, you can buy little unincorporated no service towns like this - had plans to make Nipton a solar energy testing ground. Another hoped to built it into a "weed-themed resort." Too bad marijuana sales weren't allowed there. 

Enter Ross Mollison, an Australian impresario whose company,  Spiegelworld, runs flash shows in Las Vegas - Absinthe at Caesar's Palace (which I take is a raunchy Cirque de Soleil) and the Atomic Saloon (featuring sexy acrobats) at The Venetian. Plus Superfrico, which bills itself as a psychedelic Italian American restaurant. Funny mushroom stuffed raviolis?

I'm exhausted at the idea of these shows. And Superfrico? Mamma Mia! 

Despite the lack of patronage from those of my ilk, I guess Spiegelworld does okay for itself, because last year Mollison went ahead and bought Nipton for $2.5 million. 

His intention? Make Nipton:

...a retreat for circus performers to workshop new acts and a luxury attraction for tourists who could stop there on the way to Las Vegas.

“I’m not approaching it like a developer. I want Nipton to look like it does now, but more beautified, with a globally significant, interesting restaurant that is somewhere between Francis Mallmann and the French Laundry,” [Mollison] said, referencing well-known restaurateurs as he described plans for multiple eateries, a hotel, solar panels and a runway for small planes, all with a big top twist. “Maybe we stick a trapeze in the middle, or a high wire that’s 1,000 feet off the ground. Or is that too P.T. Barnum?”(Source: NY Times)

Mollison intends to plow about $20 million into Nipton to make it look like it does now - keep the stars, the mountains, and the chollas - while also making it not look like it does now (rusty, rundown, dreary, bleak). 

Part of Mollison's reno work involves preserving that Burning Man art, including: 

Perpetual Consumption, a 26-foot-high sculpture by Clayton Blake in which stacked shopping carts form loop-the-loops meant to symbolize American consumerism. 

I'd say there'd have to be some pretty darned perpetual consumerism going on to transform Nipton into a tourist mecca with a French Laundry-style restaurant and luxury hotel, and not just another roadside attraction like the world's largest frying pan, or an alligator farm. 

I guess that's were diversification comes in. I.e., the circus performer retreat. In making Nipton into Circus Town Headquarters, Mollison invites folks to dream along with him, asking:

What if an audacious circus company purchased a small town in the middle of the Mojave Desert? A living town where performers and artisans can retreat to dream and create? A place to tell stories around the campfire? A place to dine under the stars and wake up to a panoramic view of the mountains? (Source: Spiegelworld)

So, on the one hand, there's the globally significant restaurant. On the other hand, a simple campfire-y place where creatives can spin their yarns and get inspired by the stars and the mountain panorama.  

As new caretakers of this circus-oasis in the desert, Spiegelworld will be writing the next chapter of Nipton’s centuries-old story. Will you be in it? We can’t wait to see what happens next. 

I can't wait to see what happens next, too. 

Something that wasn't mentioned in the article is where the water's going to come from. Maybe the circus performers will juggle in jugs-full, magicians will conjure up springs and wells.

But you never know. 

Didn't gangster Bugsy Siegel pretty much imagine Las Vegas into existence less than 100 years ago? And, baby, look at it now.

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*There is cabin heat: via pot-bellied stove.