First Days in Black Rock City

August 23, 2008

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So, I had finally reached Black Rock City: the location of the Burning Man festival. What was the big deal? Wasn’t this just supposed to be camping in the desert? It’s really so much more than that!

There’s not really any central theme to the festival. It’s so big and there are so many things going on that you it’s hard to pin anything specific down as a central theme. From what I had been told, read, or observed for myself while I was there, the festival’s approximate themes were as such (their website may list different things, but I’m putting down MY observations):

1. Celebration of Creativity: From the huge art installations, to the custom designed art-vehicles... from the costumes people wear, to the silly activities they do everyday, the Burning Man festival is a place where all forms of creativity are actively encouraged and celebrated. This is the aspect of Burning Man that I enjoyed the most.

2. Radical Inclusion: No matter who you are, you have a place in Burning Man, and you are welcome here.

3. Generosity: Black Rock City runs on a “gift economy”. There are few rules here, but one of the main ones is that very little may be bought or sold with money, or even barter. You gives gifts to people: drinks, food, souvenirs, shelter, hugs, whatever. You don’t need to expect anything in return, other than the sense of well being you get for being a generous person.

4. Survivalism: Living in open desert for more than a week is an exercise in logistics and endurance. Sure, you could rely on the generosity of others and live on handouts of food and sleep around (and I’m sure some people do), it’s wise to bring enough food and water and shelter for the whole time you are there.

5. Revelry: Life is short. Enjoy! There’s always a party, happy hour, rave, circus, parade, game, cruise, SOMETHING going on SOMEWHERE. On top of that, there’s more of everything than you could possibly take in. So get out there and have fun!

6. Environment: The desert may look empty, but it’s still a sensitive ecosystem. Although there is a fully functioning city with tens of thousands of inhabitants during the week of the event, within one month of the end of festivities, EVERYTHING has been cleaned up: every scrap of paper, sequin from a costume, or empty beer bottle. Everyone is encouraged to clean up their camp of all “MOOP” (“Matter Out Of Place”) frequently to keep litter from blowing away across the desert. This philosophy is summed up in the often-repeated mantra, “Leave No Trace.”

Let’s get some terminology out of the way, too. The name of the festival is “Burning Man”. It’s location is the temporary “Black Rock City” located on a playa in the permanent “Black Rock Desert”. A person in attendance of the festival is called a “burner”.

A “playa” is a dried flat lake bed. The playa that Black Rock City is built on is 100 miles long and super flat. It will be submerged with water about one winter out of three or four. Otherwise it will be super dry and dusty. Sometimes the dust is very hard-packed and provides a fantastic surface for biking or driving. This year, however, the dust was not so hard. It was piled up and fluffy in many places, making for bumpy roads or places where you could easily wipe out when biking.

So as the three of us pulled up to the Greeter’s Gate in our 16-foot Budget rental truck it was quickly realized that, as a “Virgin Burner” (i.e.: this was my first time at Burning Man), I should undergo the initiation ceremony. Since you’re going to be in the desert for more than a week and taking a bath is difficult and there’s going to be dust storms, it’s expected that you’re going to get very dusty. You might as well get it out of the way and embrace the dust! The typical initiation is to get down flat on the ground and make “playa angels” (like snow angels, just in the dust). No one is going to MAKE you do it, but it’s fun.

After getting dusty and some chit chat we drove out to our campsite. We set up camp a little bit before heading out. Brent and Wendy were part of an art group called the Flaming Lotus Girls (yes, boys are still allowed in the group!) and needed to go and help their fellow artists work on their massive art work, called Mutopia.

Technically, the official opening date for Burning Man was Monday August 25. If you wanted to arrive before that, you had to be associated with one of the art projects or special theme camps and had to get an early entry pass. Brent and Wendy had secured these passes, so it was important to get out there and be arty!

We worked for a few hours, mostly cleaning up around their site. I wasn’t qualified to do any welding, after all! We got back late and exhausted. We set up the bare minimum of our camp and went to bed in our tents.

Sunday August 24, 2008

It was windy in the morning. Brent and Wendy went off to the port-o-potties. While they were gone, a fierce gust nearly took away our partly-secured tents . I had to chase some of them down and get help from some of our neighbours to hold them down. It was unfortunate that we didn’t finish the job of setting up our camp last night, and we were immediately reminded that the desert is not forgiving of mistakes!

We did get more or our camp set up today, though. Brent’s plan for the camp was pretty good. It was his third burn (i.e.: it was the third time he had attended the Burning Man festival), so he had some experience. He bought a couple big carports from CostCo. A carport is like a tent big enough for a car. One car port was designated to cover our tents (it could contain three tents). The other car port had the top and only two sides put on to provide a communal shaded area. Putting the tents inside a carport was smart since it shaded the tents and helped keep the dust off of them. Protection from the harsh desert sun was important.

We went to help out the Flaming Lotus Girls construct Mutopia a bit more during the day. At night, we met some of our neighbours. I visited one neighbour (“Martini Village”) for some happy hour cocktails. After that, we took a ride on another neighbour’s art car.

Driving mundane cars, vans, or trucks around Black Rock City is very discouraged. Yes, you can drive your boring rented truck to your camp site. After it gets there, though, you should leave it there. However, many people decorate or modify their vehicles in artistic ways to create art cars (or “mutant vehicles”). Some of these constructions could get very elaborate. These you could drive as much as you like, as long as you observed the 5 MPH speed limit. The speed limit was set so low so that dust would not be kicked up and cover up other people’s camps.

Cruising in art cars was FUN. It was a moving party. Since they cruised so slowly, it was easy to run up to one and hop a ride, assuming they weren’t full (which, sadly, happened too often). There was rarely a set destination... people would just cruise for fun... usually with lots of drinks.



Monday August 25, 2008

It was the official opening day. Since midnight, people had been streaming in and populating the playa all around us. After being awake for a short time though, a really fierce dust storm kicked up out of the playa and engulfed the playa.

Observe the carnage wreaked on our camp!

Some of our stuff was blown over and pushed around, but the carports held this time. They were posted into the ground with three-foot pieces of steel rebars and bungee cords. It would take a LOT of wind to blow those away.

But it was still unpleasant. You needed a dust mask and goggles before you could survive outside. We spent most of the day bunkered down in the back of our truck, though we did go for a short bike ride in the dust to check out centre camp.

The dust storm blew all afternoon, punctuated by many periods of whiteouts.

It only faded out shortly before sunset. We felt bad for all the people who arrived that day during the crazy storm and tried to set up camp. We were happy we got it done the day before. SO LUCKY!

That night we went out to party. We looked for places to dance and people to party with. We didn’t dance much. Brent and Wendy always seemed indecisive about where to go, since there were always so many choices, which got somewhat frustrating for me since I preferred doing something to aimless wandering. Eventually we randomly found people to hang out with that served us very special liquor that made me feel very weird, if you know what I mean. One girl there told me I had a “very safe aura” which seemed very confusing to me. I wasn’t thinking very clearly at the time.

Tuesday August 26, 2008

I felt very bad this morning. The special liquor I had the night before did wonky things to me. To be honest, I don’t even remember getting home. Yeah, let’s be more careful before experimenting with special liquors next time, mmmkay?

It took me a long time to get started. I think I spent most of the day wandering around my neighbourhood of Black Rock City. There are so many random happenings occurring around you at all time that you can just ramble around and get “driven by distraction”. You can intend to go to a certain event at a certain time, but never make it since you get distracted all the time by random things you see. I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing. It’s a wonderful thing that really thrives on in special places in the world like Black Rock City (or maybe Akihabara).

I did take myself to the steam bath that afternoon. Such luxury!! Some people had constructed a small dome with a hot steam generator. About ten people (naked, of course) could fit inside the dome at once and enjoy the steam. There was a small spray gun that you could use to squirt a bit of water on yourself. There wasn’t enough water to get properly clean, but it felt really nice. I went to the steam bath two or three times while I was in Black Rock City since it was such a luxury. There often seemed to be a long line to get in there, but I often managed to show up when the line was short. It helped that the steam bath was located very close to my camp and I could poll the length of its line easily.

I think I went cruising in our neighbour’s art car again that night without any of my campmates. I wasn’t up to partying like they were and was content just to sit in there for a few hours and chat with whomever hopped on for a ride. You get to talk to a lot of interesting people that way.

Wednesday August 27, 2008

Did a lot of wandering today. I went to a nearby cafe that served coffee and pastries. Delightful! Old habits die hard of course. I had really learned how to enjoy just “hanging out at the cafe” while I was gone and hoped that I would be successful integrating regular cafe visits until my busy busy normal life when I started living a normal life again.

I randomly went by the Kostume Kamp, went to one of the girls who was working there and said, “Dress me any way you want.” She picked out a tiny miniskirt, big round sunglasses, an open-front biker vest, and a matching swami hat. The pieces certainly matched themselves, but were certainly not very flattering, so there are no pictures of the whole outfit that I’m posting on here, suckers. I learned that day that biking without underwear while wearing a miniskirt is a very ventilating experience. Of course, since Black Rock City is a clothing-optional location populated with a lot of hippies, many people wore much less than that!

I also saw a camp with a big sign out front that said “BACON WITHOUT BORDERS” and had a flying pig windmill, which was amusing enough on its own. I noticed a lot of people inside a neighbouring tent so I wandered inside to see what the fuss was about. Inside I found a group of people crowded around a bar cluttered with assorted bottles. One guy behind the bar was reading a letter that was written to him by a friend in England. What made the letter interesting was that it was addressed to his camp in Black Rock City, not his real address in the real world (although Black Rock City has a functioning post office, it barely qualifies as the real world). The letter said something to the effect of “I’ll be impressed if this letter arrives to you in time to be delivered to you at Burning Man, and if it does, you all need to have a Toblerone Vodka shot for me!” Indeed, one of the bottles on the bar was filled with Vodka that had Toblerone chocolates dissolved in it. I had showed up at the right time for a shot of something yummy! Yay me! Some of the other vodkas did not seem so good. I did not enjoy the Cheetos Vodka. I did not want to try the “Pastrami on Rye Vodka”. Urp.

Many people at Burning Man seem to have obtained “Burner Names” -- nicknames that they only use when in Black Rock City. Wendy’s was “Haven”. Brent’s was “Fantastic”. Like all good nicknames, you generally don’t get to choose your own and you must wait until one is assigned to you. While I was in that Bacon Without Borders tent digesting my nasty shot of Cheetos Vodka I was talking was these two topless girls. Since I didn’t have a burner name yet, they took it upon themselves to assign me one. They looked deep into my eyes, whispered to each other and finally announced that I would be “Sultan Sphinx” (or just “Sphinx”) for short. I assume they chose that name partly because I was wearing a swami hat! I didn’t think it was a great name, and no one really used it very much, except for my two new campmates Erikas and Catie. More about them later. They’re fun!