The REAL Schitt’s Creek: Las Vegas strip show Spiegelworld buys desert town in California for $2.5M

A bawdy Las Vegas circus bought an entire town in the Mojave Desert with the goal of turning it into a ‘circus town’.

Spiegelworld, which puts on performances that blur the lines between acrobatic and burlesque performances, bought the small town of Nipton, California, for $2.5 million in cash in 2022.

Like the Schitt’s Creek show, in which a formerly wealthy family tried to sell a town they once bought as a joke, the unincorporated town of Nipton was up for sale for years after it was first bought on a whim in the 1980s for a couple for as low as $200,000.

The parallels are not lost on Spiegelworld founder Ross Mollison, who said The Wall Street Journal “Imagine it’s ‘Schitt’s Creek’ but it’s owned by a circus.” Mollison and his team have already begun redeveloping the unincorporated city and working with its 25 or so residents to prepare it for the big top.

Acrobats perform at a Spiegelworld performance. The company recently bought a town that it hopes to turn into a complete circus.

Spiegelworld bills itself as a ‘raunchy’ show and an ‘adult immersive playground’

Spiegelworld hosts a number of themed shows, including one billed as an “immersive adult playground” that is “unapologetically raunchy and undeniably hilarious” and “holds a mirror to the longings and desires that lurk deep within your soul.”

The show hopes to take that experience, which consists of scantily clad men and women performing stunts, dancing, singing and telling raunchy stories and jokes, and spread it throughout the city of Nipton.

‘What would happen if a daring circus troupe bought a small town in the middle of the Mojave desert?’ The Spiegelworld website says. ‘A living city where artists and artisans can retire 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?

Mollison plans to fill the city with performance spaces, a large outdoor art park, visitor accommodation in an underground bunker, and a restaurant hidden among the many eucalyptus trees dotted across the city’s desert landscape.

‘I don’t want to build a resort. This is a very high end circus. At the same time, it is full of character and personality.’ Mollison told The Wall Street Journal. “There could be a permanent Burning Man element,” she added. The city already has a number of sculptures that were used in previous Burning Man festivals.

The desert landscape surrounding the city of Nipton, California

One of the few stores in the small desert town of Nipton, California

Old cars painted as sculptures in the desert town of Nipton, California

The Spiegelworld team has gone to work preparing the city for its eventual opening and has removed at least 250 tons of rubbish since the project began.

The company has been forced to deal with damaged infrastructure in the city, including old out-of-control electrical systems, clogged septic tanks, a barn full of decaying old mattresses, discarded appliances, and even an old medium-tank train car. buried that needs to be removed.

“There were a lot of Band-Aids that we really had to fix,” said Frank Stebel, who along with his partner Alex has already moved to Nipton to spearhead the revival project.

“It felt so quaint and community oriented,” Alex said. “We could definitely see that he needed a lot of work.”

A Spiegelworld acrobat performs on a large sculpture previously used at a Burning Man festival

An old Burning Man sculpture that came to Nipton, California

Tipi frame stand in the desert outside of Nipton, California

Nipton sits just on the northeast edge of the brutally hot Mojave Desert Reservation, a place that once stood at the crossroads of two wagon tracks. The town was founded in 1905, after first being settled as a simple mining camp by gold prospectors passing through the region.

A few shops and a small one-story hotel were erected over the years, and little has changed since then. The city was bought in the 1980s by Californian Jerry Freeman, who picked it up on a whim to surprise his wife Roxanne Lang.

They owned the town together until Jerry died in 2016, and a year later Roxanne sold it to the cannabis company American Green Inc., whose goal was to turn Nipton into an oasis for social media influencers who smoke. dope.

Spiegelworld artists enter Nipton in a promotional video announcing the company’s purchase of Nipton.

Three Spiegelworld artists made a human tower in a raunchy performance

A roller skating performance at a Spiegelworld show

An acrobat performs at a Spiegelworld show in Las Vegas in 2020. The company intends to turn Nipton into a circus town.

But the company stopped paying Roxanne, and she repossessed them and took back the city. She returned to the market in 2021 and met with interested buyers from religious cults, tech investors and “some people from Brazil, one of whom was a dentist,” she told the Wall Street Journal.

Spiegelworld’s purchase of Nipton came with some caveats, including the rest of Jim Eslinger, who has lived in the city for 14 years and long served as de facto mayor.

“I’ve met quite a few stuntmen,” Eslinger said. “They’re amazing people and what I’ve heard is that they have some really good shows.”