Jul

27

A con is intentional deception to cause a person to give up property or some lawful right. Con games are crimes of persuasion and deception. The victim always trusts the swindler in some way. 

The stealing is accomplished by false pretense, false promise, tricks, scheming - and that’s where the Slabber cons enter.

The Slabs are a con artist’s playground. Each slab is a concrete classroom where you may learn from experience in the same way a clinical psychologist enters an insane asylum.  

The three distinct types of con artists you’ll bump into on the slabs, in ascending order, are:

The essential elements of all of their scams are two people: the con and victim, though other parties may get involved. The mark is the target of a con man. The word comes from the carnival world – people who fell for rigged games were marked with a piece of chalk by slapping them on the back, so other game operators could pick a sucker out of the crowd. I had this done to me in Laws, CA with invisible paint and a sniper in the bush. In the Slabs the same thing happens, only a sucker is marked by texts circulating faster than chalk. 

I love cons, as every red blooded American should, and studied them primarily for self-defense, like martial arts. My mastery is extensive from having built the Confidence Shelf in the ‘grandest library in New England’, and more significantly, after that, in having been conned hundreds of times in over one hundred countries around the world. 

Con games can be broken down into two general types: scams that target individuals, and ones that aim at institutions and businesses. Individual cons are interesting and educational. Institution cons, such as engaged by 95% of the Slab population in bilking the government for welfare and SSI benefits, are boring and dropped now. We are a nation of individuals, which is why it makes sense to study them.

There are two types of individual cons: the short and the long. By far the most prevalent in Slabs are the shorts because the longs require groups and no one can trust anyone else for long here. The short con is a ‘hit-and-run’ requiring a small number of meetings with the mark to set up the swindle. The meetings are like five a five-step that you will recognize on your next stroll through town: the motivation, the come-on, the shill, the stress, and the block. It’s all so simple and fast that only the last needs explanation. The block at the end of the sting is meant to dissuade a mark from going to the police.  

In Slabs, when one Slabber stings another, it’s almost certain the police will not be notified because nearly every citizen is wanted or has no ID. This makes it a con town by logic. A short con occurs in Slabs every five minutes around the clock, and one in a hundred gets reported to the cops. As I am writing the rough of this, a police scanner report blurt that a ‘live YouTube broadcast of a man being beaten by one stick by many individuals in Slab City is taking place’, and the sirens wailed by. A fellow had hit a dog with a stick, and the owner rallied her friends to take the stick, con him that they were beating him to death, while being livestreamed, with the dog barking revengefully, and the owner screaming to turn himself in to the cops because he had a warrant.

The opposite of a short con is the big store. These are long con games that can take days, weeks, even months to set up, but for all the work the payoff is astronomical. The only long cons I know of in the history of Slab City are the police and snitches, the military arms for drugs exchange next door, and the battle for Salvation Mountain.

The pros of cons are simple. Collectively, con artists amass billions of dollars every year in the USA, compared to a paltry few million dollars stolen annually by bank robbers. In the same thinking, the estimated 90% con artists in Slabs is so greater than the national average as to be laughable. The sky is the limit for a Slab con artist. A lone wolf can be wildly successful with a profit margin as large as his imagination. He’s not a criminal; he’s simply playing smart. It’s a game that is his livelihood, like a sports pro rather than a nine-to-fiver. Con artists commit crimes because it pays and is more exciting than working for a living. There’s no real effort and he doesn’t pay taxes. 

Do you want to know what the average con artist looks like? Take a look in the mirror. You can tell a con by his looks – average. But certain psychological factors set con men apart. The profile of a Slab conman is composed of a few murky traits that add to form a clear picture. The traits are:

There are certain muscles especially of the face that can make you attractive to a con artist. I learned this in veterinary phrenology. The first is the ‘good deal’ set. The jaw is thrust, the eyes stationary but irises circling a dream, and the nose lengthened over time in sniffing cheap goals. That’s not the only mindset that causes muscular sets that con artists find attractive. If you are a wild dreamer, it will be defined by a certain look. A gambler? Slightly greedy? Somewhat desperate? Take a short course in Animal Husbandry to learn the physical features that reflect a mindset, or got to the bar without drinking for 3,600 straight nights, as I did, and just watch under your developing Cro-Magnon brows.  

Con men are as American as apple pie. Keep that in mind as you look in their faces. If you look at any successful professional – a salesperson, marketer, trader, real estate agent – they all have the same qualities as the con man. The only difference is that one side uses the talents and collects sales tax, and the con man is taking the easy way out. 

Con artists are everywhere, and in particular they pop out of the concrete cracks at Slabs. Don’t think you can be conned? Congratulations, you just became the perfect Slab mark. The trick, therefore, is to avoid putting yourself in the position of the victim. Every con artist uses one simple tool – the victim’s confidence in the con artist. When you trust the con artist, it’s all over. In Slabs, he’ll be able to take what he wants, when he wants, and as often as he wants until you’re squeezed dry.

How do you avoid becoming a mark and having it spread around Slabs that you are a sucker? The answer is skepticism. I’m talking about a healthy skepticism of everyone and everything, without becoming jaded to all the good things in life. The philosophical skepticism that I prefer questions the possibility of certainty in knowledge until the last shred of evidence is evaluated, and then take action. Skeptic philosophers adopt fresh principles in stagnate atmospheres, and are catalysts to change. So, when you suspect something is a scam, look at it from every angle, come to a conclusion, and in Slab City the assumption must default to a scam. This doesn’t mean that you, the skeptic, should walk away from it, but quite the opposite. You are fleeced every time you get on a Disneyland ride or enter a movie theater, and this is the attitude to take on entering the town limits.

Where to go if you’ve been scammed? Most people in more civilized places think local, state, federal. In Slabs, you only think local, and this dodges the sheriffs who stepped out the silver screens of silent movies as keystone cops. Few Slabbers have ID’s while many have warrants which preempt admission as a citizen to the police theater. 

Instead, when someone is appallingly conned, it strikes the social media, the cell grapevine hums, and a punitive con is leveled at the instigator. It is a con of the con, following the desert creed of 2:1 consequence for cause. I believe there should be a watchdog group for pending cons, and a welcome group to warn newcomers of the pitfalls in the first week’s baptism by swindle. I know of no permanent resident who has not been conned, and let the months pass to laugh it off. 

The thing that separates con artists from their criminal brethren is they almost never use violence. This is particularly warming in Slab City, and is credited to the town demography of higher IQ, individuality, and ability to take care of oneself. Slabbers are great with their brains and mouths. Slab criminals are in the top ten percentile of the nation’s criminal masterminds, and the lower bracket ten percent come here for further education, and to matriculate to teaching for a cut of the profits. 

Willie Sutton said he robs banks because that’s where the money is, and for the same geographic reason you should come to Slabs because that’s where the cons are. You can do much worse in life than to get an education. Come enjoy some of history's most notorious con artists. 

Like a stage magician, the con artist misdirects suspicion. While everyone’s watching for him to pull a rabbit out of the hat, he is actually sawing a Slabber’s mind in half. You think he’s doing one trick when actually he’s doing another. You think I’m dying, but I’m laughing at you. 


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1 Comment so far

  1. Pete M on July 30, 2018 5:02 am

    Entertaining as always Bo, I really hope this is all going to go into a book.

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