Burning Man 2006

I've been meaning to put up a post about my Burning Man experience for 2 months now. Well, here goes...

Now that I've been twice, I feel that Burning Man is an event with diminishing returns. That may sound like a criticism, but it's not. There's nothing in the world like the first time you set foot on the playa and turn slowly in a circle while letting your senses absorb as best they can the rich palate of the human creative spirit on display stretching in every direction for as far as you can see. But you only have one cherry--and once it's been popped, it's popped. Oh sure, you can pretend subsequent experiences are just as good as the first time, but you're just deluding yourself. It doesn't mean they're necessarily worse--just different. Like any good, solid, mutually-respectful relationship, Burning Man takes creativity and maintenance to keep it interesting. If you do not put forth the effort, you are left with diminishing returns.

I keep in regular touch with exactly two people from my high school days. Steve is one of them. Coincidently, after about 12 years of being out of touch, he turned up 2 hours down the road in Santa Cruz. I was pleased to learn that one of my best friends in high school, and roommate for 2 years after, was living so close. He owns and operates a tire shop. Every year in August, he is innundated with vehicles getting ready for the pilgrimage to the Black Rock Desert. Although he had never been, the experience of helping outfit vehicles for Burning Man made him both familiar with and curious about the event. Not long after my wife and I found out she was pregnant with our first child in June, we decided that 5 days in the desert doing everything that people do out there was probably not the best environment for a mother-to-be. So all of the sudden I had an extra ticket, and Steve said he'd take it before I even finished asking him. As luck would have it, he and a friend had just bought a circa 1970 lime green 20ft long motorhome specifically for tailgating and events such as Burning Man. A plan was coming together.

We had about 12 people in our camp this year, half of which were playa-virgins. I drove up with two of them, all the while dazzling them with stories of what they were getting themselves into. But there's really no way to paint an accurate picture. We arrived at 3am and found our camp pretty quickly; most of our crew had arrived 2 days prior. There's not a bad time to arrive at Black Rock City; this city truly never sleeps. I hurriedly set up my tent and got out to the playa in time to watch the early dawn turn into a glorious sunrise from under the Belgian Wafflehouse.

That morning I got my first taste of what turned out to be my favorite saloon in all of BRC: Tikila Sunrise. Set up in the middle of nowhere, with walls made of the horizon and the sky as a ceiling, this saloon featured a bar and furniture you'd expect to see at at any kitschy Hawaiian bar, a giant tiki statue and 2 swinging saloon doors. We quickly learned that simply wandering up to the bar from the netherlands resulted in a) much ballyhooing from the other patrons, and b) not being served at the bar. However, entering through the saloon doors resulted in a greeting similiar to the one Norm received at Cheers. The hours of operation were 4a to 9a--nothing like starting off the day with a margarita, shot of tequila and a baby carrot chaser. I made it a point to start each day here, and usually ended up staying until "last call." It was entertaining to hang out and observe whatever passed by. Various art cars would park and play great dj sets. One gal had a polaroid camera and took pictures of everybody there and stapled them to the bar. (It was great to see the front of the bar hung on a fence in San Francisco at the decompression party a few weeks ago with all the pictures still attached--brought back great memories!) There was a posse of what must have been stunt-doubles there each morning tossing eachother across the tables and out the door after the slightest provocation. I was disappointed to see on my last morning that the saloon doors had been completely flattened by an art car that was now parked in front of the bar. I though to myself, "how rude!" Maybe I said it outloud, because one of the guys driving it loudly declared, "this is a BAR not a CLUB!" and promptly marched out back to play a game of bocce ball. That art car came in handy later for hauling home a female patron who had finally had enough fun and passed out limp on a table. My friend Dave quickly recovered the beer he had given to her; it was still cold.

Having experienced much exhaustion and fatigue the year prior, this time around I was determined to keep a better pace. I'm a morning person by nature, so getting up at 4am is rarely a problem for me. Besides, sunrise on the playa is my absolute favorite part of the day, so I decided I would try to incorporate my regular home schedule into the Burning Man scene. My up and at 'em hours were roughly 4a to 11p each day which set me at odds with most of the rest of my camp as they were usually rallying when I was going to bed, and going to bed when I was rallying. Truth be told though, I was never wanting for company, as most of the night crew was still going strong at 4am--and by then they had a bead on where all the hot spots were at the moment.

One of the cardinal rules at Burning Man is to leave no trace. It's taken very seriously by the organizers, but not always by all the participants. In an effort to cut down on MOOP (matter out of place, aka: garbage) around camp, we elected to ban those ubiquitous red party cups. Although we still managed to generate a fair amount of trash, it certainly could have been much worse. Next year, we will aspire towards even less.

Speaking of our camp, this year we added another parachute shade structure (one for covering the tents, and one for the "living room") and Dave set up his "mini-mog" in the living room. The mini-mog is a home-built 2 amp, ~800 watt portable dj system thats design is loosely based on Space Cowboy's Unimog. The mini-mog proved to be quite popular with our neighbors; especially during our Pancakes with Harry Belafonte breakfast special.

I could drone on and on about the minute details, but I'd get sick of typing and you'd get sick of reading, so I will return to my original thought about Burning Man being an event with diminishing returns. I can see how each year I will have to put more and more energy into my participation if I want to continue to get anything out of the whole experience. It will always be interesting and fun, because there's not many places and times in your life where you are able to stand over a blank canvas and encouraged to let your mind explode. I went through the trouble of planning, shopping, sewing; completed the roadtrip, helped coordinate, organize camp and cook--I may as well maximize each and every moment.

Burning Man is like life. The older you get, the more energy it takes just to tread water.

P.S. King Tut has more and better pictures here than I could be bothered to take.