Burning Man Wrap-Up

All the photos are in and I've washed away about 80% of the dust I brought home. I poured a cup or two of the dust that had accumulated in one of my storage containers onto the bark chips in my garden yesterday, gave it a few shots with the hose so it wouldn't just blow around, and then forgot it. Hours later I gave it a poke and was really surprised to see that it had concretized itself! It's like the robot parts in The Iron Giant, each little bit of the playa tries to re-assemble itself into the Black Rock Desert playa.

A few things struck me soon after arriving on the playa at Black Rock Desert. Generally, when I go to visit a place that has been heavily photographed and reported on, I find that it looks different than all those photos showed it, and I find interesting things to photograph there that I've never seen in photos before. Not so at Burning Man. Much to my surprise, it looks just like it does in the photos. I guess that's a credit to all the photographers there.

Eh, a couple of exceptions to that: first and most important is that the Man is a lot, LOT smaller than I had seen him portrayed. All those iconic photos you've seen of the Man are taken through a telephoto lens from a position as close as you can get. I mean, it's way bigger than anything I could build in my backyard, but it isn't a 200-foot high giant, visible from all corners of Black Rock City. No way.

And a minor exception, but surprising to me, is that Black Rock City is in full view from the paved state highway that gets us there. I imagine county deputies patrol the road at night to be sure gawkers aren't blocking traffic, but as far as I know there would be no law preventing anyone from parking out there and watching the Man burn on Saturday night. True, he'd be 10 miles (or so) away and you couldn't smell the smoke or hear the noise very well, but it is a damn huge light show in the middle of an otherwise empty, black desert.

The other thing that really struck me is how very huge Black Rock City is. We had set up camp out at 9 O'Clock and Kelp Forest (radial streets bear time names and come every half hour, while circumferential streets are in alphabetical order from A to L this year, except for Esplanade which is the inner ring) so we were far out from the center. Not long after I got things mostly in order I walked up 9 O'Clock towards the center, thinking that when I got there I would see the Man. It seemed a long walk, but that was probably because of the sensory overload. There was SO much to see along the way — or so I though then. It was only Monday, less than half the attendees had arrived, and everybody was just setting up. I eventually got myself to Esplanade, and was the Man there? Hardly! I wasn't even halfway to the Man. He was WAY the fuck out there in the middle of a vast expanse, and way, way (WAY) over there past him was the other side of Black Rock City, going from Esplanade back out to L (Landfill) again.

That central circle, occupied by the Man, some art installations and lighted lanes from 9, 6 and 3 O'Clock was large enough to contain ALL of the campsite where the GNI Gathering is held (to cite something that a lot of my readers should be familiar with) with room left over for rattling around.

Beyond that, the area from 10 O'Clock to 2 O'Clock (going through noon) was set aside just for larger art installations. Then around the outskirts of Black Rock City, from Landfill on out to the perimeter was wide, mostly open space. One part of that was for walk-in camping only (i.e., leave your motor vehicle somewhere else), and another part was the landing strip. All of that, plus big wide avenues, and even with 45,000 (some say 47,000) people, it's not crowded - unless you seek out one of the many places that are crowded.

Regarding that landing stip, there were almost always small airplanes circling Black Rock City. On Saturday they flew in formation, but it wasn't anything so tight as Navy pilots would do. Once I saw a helicopter flying over the city at an elevation LOWER than the numerous kites and balloons that were floating around. No disaster ensued. It's probably just a matter of paying close attention. A couple of times the sounds of ooh-ing and ahh-ing, coupled with the view of many craned necks alerted me to the fact that a paraglider team was doing some fantastical formation high overhead. They would do this shortly before the sun dropped below the mountains, so the lighting was very favorable.

Objectively, my GPS told me that traveling along the 9 O'Clock-3 O'Clock axis, from Landfill to Landfill is only 1.8 miles. Still, you want a bike. Either a very reliable old rugged bicycle, like my Hungarian Schwinn one-speed cruiser that I've had for years, or a bike you don't care about.

I found myself wondering if Samuel Delany ever comes to Burning Man. What I saw in Black Rock City often reminded me of his novel Dhalgren, only a bit nicer and safer.

Nudity
Basically, nobody fucking much cares one way or another about nudity at Burning Man, which is tremendously liberating. The great majority of people wear clothes - of a sort. If you'd like to see straight boys walking around in clothing from Undergear and girls walking around in similarly erotic stuff from wherever it comes from, Burning Man is the place! Shocking were the dozen or so people I saw traveling around the Black Rock City in office casual attire.

Women are frequently topless, but almost never bottomless. When I commented on this to Jorge, our 17-year veteran neighbor, he said it seems to vary from year to year, that a couple of years ago they were mostly bottomless, but never topless. Probably my favorite costume on a woman was worn by a very good looking young woman from across the road. She wore only a thong that consisted of nothing more than fishing line and a tiny hunter's orange triangle in front. I thought it was hilarious!

Men mostly wore pants of some sort, but that includes briefs and swimwear too. I thought I saw only a couple of dozen fully naked men, but Ed from Oakland (whose photos we are still waiting on!) said he photographed at least a hundred completely naked guys. Most of the guys who were NOT naked, seemed to have no problem with getting naked for brief periods, like to chase the water truck down the street. As we were waiting in that 2-hour traffic to get out of BRC and head home, the guy ahead of me stepped out of his vehicle and stripped naked to change into something more comfortable. There was no reaction from the rest of the traffic. One of the camps behind us was mostly male, and they always kept their pants on, until Sunday. I was surprised to see that they had all stripped naked to take down their shower tent. Why, I have no idea, but once they had it down, their shorts went back on.

And I've almost forgotten to say, the crowd at Burning Man is not the same demographic you might see at a clothing optional beach or a nude gathering. No sir. The average citizen of Black Rock City is young, fit and good-looking. It's a terribly sexist thing to say, I'm sure, but all of the gay men I met there quietly acknowledged to each other that the percentage of "eye candy" was tremendously high at Burning Man. I'm sure it's the same for women.

If you're into it, I found it very easy to go 100% naked; i.e., no footwear even. The playa is comfortable to walk on, and people are good about picking up litter. I walked several miles barefoot, and was surprised NOT to have a flare-up of plantar fasciitis.

Getting There
It's a 625-mile drive for me (one way, I mean) to Burning Man. Most of that is on 395. That's a beautiful route, and I'd never been north of Mono Lake. Turns out that's the best part of 395. But it all gets a bit overshadowed by Burning Man itself. I spent a night at Diana's in Minden, Nevada (she's an ex-half-sister-in-law) who allowed me to come late and leave early. I hooked up with the Gang d'Chalet in Carson City on Monday morning and then drove to Black Rock Desert. I had seen a few other Burners on my way up 395. With a little practice they became easy to pick out: large, overloaded vehicle with multiple bicycles. Sometimes brilliant colors would be the clue, while others made it easy by simply adding some BM graffiti to their vehicle. (Heading home is even easier, as all vehicles are playa-colored). But when we turned off I-80 at Wadsworth to begin the 75-mile, 2-lane approach to Black Rock City, THAT'S when I really began to see my fellow burners. Despite a 70 MPH speed limit, we traveled at about 50 as we would inevitably bunch behind an old (or insecure) RV that couldn't go faster. People passed, which I thought was nutty, since we knew that there were more slow RVs ahead. The sides of the road were occasionally littered by broken down Burner vehicles. One sight that confused me was the aftermath, I think, of an accident where someone had been towing a Subaru, using it as a trailer to carry gear. It looked like they lost control of the trailer and it had rolled or flipped, as part of the roof of the Subaru was missing and camping gear was sprayed over a large area.

We were warned - many times - of law enforcement on that narrow route. We passed through four settlements where the speed limit dropped to 25 MPH. We saw Burners getting tickets in the first two towns, Wadsworth and Nixon. Coming home, when traffic is even heavier, I saw a lot of illegal passing (which is fairly common in California). One hot shot ignored two vehicles sitting off of the left side of the road, facing us with their headlights on. He passed illegally going up hill, and when he got to the top discovered that those vehicles were law enforcement who only needed to point at him and order him off the road to nab him.

BRC Media
There were a few daily, one-page newsletters circulated in camp. Each morning, someone would come along in a golf cart handing them out to whoever wanted. That was how we found out about the suicide at Comfort & Joy. But much nicer were the FM radio stations. There were several, but BMIR at 94.5 was the official one. They all broadcast music most of the time, and it was really good music. It was like FM radio in the 1970s, very diverse, very enjoyable, with announcers who lean in close to the microphone to speak intimately, sounding as if they are stoned.

I heard one very good interview on BMIR with the head BLM ranger for Black Rock Desert. It's an area larger than the state of Delaware (a comparison we will permit in this case, since that's bigger than Rhode Island). The fee for the permit alone - just the permit, none of the extras - is over $1 million. He said that in the past the fee was $4 per person per night, which would run about $800,000. But that's the rate for non-profits. This year, he said, he switched over to their commercial fee structure, which is a flat amount, plus a percentage of the gross. I gotta wonder how that makes the Black Rock Desert rank in relation to other BLM sites.

Black Rock City is patrolled by deputies from both Washoe and Pershing counties, plus BLM rangers. They're there to enforce all applicable laws, which includes the laws against marijuana. Once or twice a day I'd smell some dope smoke, but I never saw it being smoked openly. I never saw or was offered any drugs, which is certainly not to say they weren't there. This crowd just knows how to be discreet, I think. I saw two or three ambulances rushing through camp, but I never saw any gross intoxication. Once (really, only once) did I encounter a guy coming down our street with the glassy-eyed determination of the very drunk to make it home without vomiting or falling over in front of everybody. Laws against lewd behavior may be enforced too, which just means you can't fuck right out in the open because there are kids in Black Rock City. Lots of kids, down to the age of barely toddling. Bearing that in mind, I saw people fucking right out in the open only once, very late at night, out on one of the tables at "The Deep End," but it was so dark I couldn't tell if it was two men or a man and a woman.

In addition to real law enforcement, there are the Black Rock Rangers who are volunteer Burners who act in a role like rent-a-cops, except they're really intelligent, nice and genuinely helpful. Best example of this was the day after the arson attack on the Man. I was biking around out there, and rode up toward the Man. There was a loose ring of orange traffic cones around the Man, but no yellow tape, and I saw people inside the ring, so I thought the ring was just to keep motor vehicles out. I began to cross it on my bike when a Black Rock Ranger stopped me with these words, "Oh hey guy, sorry to harsh your mellow, but you can't come in here." Pretty hard to feel resentment over that!

Passing Time
I never wore a watch while at Burning Man, judging time from the location of the sun and stars. I was surprised to see Orion so high in the sky in August. Now that I'm home I realize that when I thought it was, say, 11 PM and Orion surprisingly high, it was more like 3 AM. I don't know where the time went. But it caught up to me on Friday night. I don't know why then, but I was just exhausted so I cast my nighttime plans aside and headed for my tent. I have a radio that displays time using a 24-hour clock. It was 21- something. I was too tired to do the math, and thought it was after 11. Not until morning did I realize I'd gone to bed between 9 and 10 PM and slept right through the whole night - except for some propane explosions, whose vibrations propagate through the playa really well. I got into the habit of sleeping in until the tent became too hot (10 AM, maybe?). Daily highs were certainly above 100°(F), but humidity was zero, which was a nice relief after the few weeks of humidity we'd been having in Coachella Valley.

If you've ever thought about going to Burning Man, you must go. It's not like any other experience I've had. It's like moving through a 3-dimensional, physical dream world.

The Last Night
Ed, Gardner and Pete left early Sunday morning. I spent the rest of Sunday, as did almost everyone else, gradually taking down and packing up my camp. Just as the sun neared the western mountains I dropped the parachute shade and rolled it up. I'd already packed my tent. My plan was to just sleep under the stars (and half moon) for that last night. It's never windy or dusty at night. As in Desert Hot Springs, the winds are a problem only the afternoon.

I visited with Jorge and his friends for a bit, and they gave me ice cream! That was only thing I actually craved. But most of the time I just sat in my camp, enjoying the increasing amounts of space around me. Suddenly, footballs and soccer balls appeared, as guys began to take advantage of the new space. The five shirtless young men camped next to began to kick a soccer ball around right in front of me, and they were way better at it than American kids should be. Later, I saw that they were stuck trying to pull rebar out of the ground (rebar is recommended over regular tent stakes at Burning Man). They were actually using a nail to try to dig a hole around the rebar! They had not read the second half of the instructions about rebar: you need Vise-Grips to pull rebar out of the playa. So I grabbed my pair of Vise-Grips and offered them to the young digging man, who tried to use them like a pair of standard pliers. I intervened, clamped on, and pulled that rebar right out of the ground (wisdom over youth every time). He thanked me with an accent from somewhere in the British Commonwealth (but not Canada), and I handed the Vise-Grips back to him and said he could get the others now. I watched him fiddle with them a bit, and realized he'd never seen Vise-Grips in his life. What strange part of the world could he be from, I wondered.

[BTW, I saw a similar scenario in another nearby camp, but it was a couple of women wearing one-piece swim suits, and I'm just enough of a pig that while I'm eager to help out five young men, I didn't feel much like going to help out these girls, who eventually recruited some guys from another nearby camp. These guys came up with some creative attempts to get the rebar out. One was to dig a hole around it and fill it with water, leaving it to soak in. Another was to wrap a rope around the rebar several times, then use a sledge hammer striking upwards against the rope! Didn't work, but very creative. Finally, after they all got tired of it and had wandered away, I just walked over and, using my Vise-Grips, pulled it up for them and slunk anonymously away.]

Now, I had never had a conversation with these five young guys all week, but we were always friendly enough to say hi to each other as we passed. I didn't think they were gay, but I did see that they slept awfully close together in their one tent. They looked similar enough to each other I thought they might all be brothers or cousins. On that last day, after they got their tent down, 3 or 4 of them at a time would simply sit in their little Toyota, doors open, apparently doing nothing, or maybe strumming on a guitar. Once they offered me some of their excess water, and I think they offered me an alcoholic beverage when returning the Vise-Grips.

When it was dark, I saw them assembling to bicycle off to the burning of the temple. They had only 4 glow sticks among the five of them, and I still had quite an excess, so I grabbed up my necklaces and went over to offer them some. They were surprisingly eager to have the necklaces, and rather than simply accepting them with thanks and riding away, they wanted to stay and chat, which was totally fine by me. But it was more than a chat, as they began to bubble over with friendly excitement. They weren't that drunk, and it wasn't nearly as intense as some other drugs, so I could only attribute it to genuine friendliness. I found out they were not related, but were all from either Ireland or Scotland. They'd been on one of those summer work visas, which allowed them to work at Sea World in San Diego. They'd finished (or quit) their jobs a couple of weeks earlier, rented that little Toyota, and drove to see the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. Then, having heard of this Burning Man thing, they decided to check it out.

Obviously, they had planned their trip a bit more than that. They knew to stop and buy a tent and sleeping bags and rebar, but that's all they had room for, so after arriving in BRC, two of them drove back to Empire to pick up water and food for the week. (There's a $20 charge to go out and come back like that).

They seemed to have good hearing and had been paying attention all week, as they already knew my name, and a few other facts about us. So we just stood there and talked about all sorts of stuff for quite awhile, getting all their names, shaking hands, talking this & that. Until finally, they had to head off or miss the temple burn. I myself, headed in shortly after they did.

After the temple burn, I got back to my camp and put my sleeping bag on the playa near my truck. I threw a few glow sticks on the ground around me for protection. As camps had been packing up and leaving, a lot of people no longer bothered to drive on the roads, and I hoped not to look like just a shadown in the road. Even so, one truck did drive just a very few feet from my sleeping bag, thinking that my camp was the 9 O'Clock road.

I woke up a bit when the neighbor boys returned, one of them looked over and spotting me called out "Ron, is that you Ron, lying there?" I admitted it was me, and this one came over (still shirtless) and kneeling next to me said they had had a grand time meeting me, and wished they had talked to me earlier in the week, and he just wanted to give me a hug before they headed out (the next leg of their journey was to take to them to San Francisco for two days before they flew home). Well, this boy certainly knew I was naked in my sleeping bag, since they hadn't seen me in any other mode of dress all week, so I just rose right up and satisfied his need for a big hug. I admonished him to drive safely, and fell back half asleep. About ten minutes passed and I realized I hadn't heard them drive away yet, so I got up to look over and see what was what. Four of them were in their car, while one was still fussing with some packing. I walked over and they all suddenly tumbled out of their car, excited to see me (very much like puppies) wanting to shake my hand and hug me some more. Really, I'm attributing this fully to friendly European attitudes, plus a bit of alcohol. E is much more powerful, isn't it? Eventually, they got back into the car, with its trunk wide open, all of their belongings tied into a huge bundle inside their tent, roped onto the back. One small box was sitting on the playa, atop which was a big vodka bottle half full. I asked what they planned to do with that, and they said they thought they would just carry it on their laps in the back seat. I advised them that this would be a very foolish thing to do, and they admitted it probably was. I got them to leave the vodka (and some trash) with me, as I would have more room to carry it away. After they left, I just poured the vodka out on the playa - against the rules, I know, but I didn't think I ought to drink it just so I could legitimately piss it into a porta-potty.