REPORT ON BURNING MAN 2006
Oct. 31st, 2006 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ltmurnauREPORT ON BURNING MAN 2006
Hard to decide on a report format to use, as I can't be arsed to think of anything new. Though maybe it should be kind of non-linear, since this year there was no real progression on anything in particular. The one constant was my back going out. Well, here goes:
HOW WE GOT THERE
Saturday, 26 August - took the 0610 ferry to Port Angeles, reservation was a good idea as always, in Salem OR by early afternoon.
Sunday, 27 August - off by 0930, made the turn and took the highway through the Cascade mountains to Chemult. Good to get off crazy I-5 but the mountains ate up the gas. Reached Klamath Falls in the early afternoon, Fred Meyer for water, Converse shoes, some food, and gas cans.
Monday, 28 August - off about 0900, reached Alturas and had huge lunch at the Black Bear Diner. Burners visible all over the place now. Gassed up and used 1/2 a tank getting to Gerlach, gassed up in Gerlach so we didn't have to do it on the way out, bought some transmission fluid just in case. Reached the gate around 1530, cruised around 7:00 and Brave as agreed to find Angie but she wasn't there and the area was already densely populated. Left the truck at 7:00 and Guess, walked to the Beacon offices at 9:00 plaza to check in and see what was what. I was on a cane by this time. As it turned out, we camped on the Beacon site, which had plenty of room, was well planned and even had grid power for the printer, all vast improvements over last year.
NOTES ON WHAT WE DID THERE
Sorted by topic, in no order of priority.
Back
Friday, 25 August - I got home from taking Akito to the Vancouver Airport and was bending over to pack a bag when my back, which had been sore for a week or more, went *SPUNG* and I subsided onto the bed like a wounded sandbag. Managed to finish packing the truck, including all the Robaxacet in the house and my cane, in case it would be needed. (It was.) Whirlpool in the hotels at night plus Obus pillow on the car seat did my back a lot of good, or at least it did not get any worse.
On Wednesday morning I got a long massage at Mystic Massage Camp, the masseuse spent a long time working over me and even did my injured leg. I guess I was just a mass of knots. Problem was a muscle spasm together with what I then thought was sciatica, but wasn’t. I felt a lot better afterwards but far from 100%; I spent much of the week learning to sit instead of stand whenever possible as standing (e.g. in a line, or talking to someone) really hurt. Fortunately I could ride a bicycle without any problems (though gel or cushioned seat covers are a MUST for next year!). By the end of the week I was getting better, but did not feel the same until weeks after coming back. I think it was due mostly to the extreme stress of the summer, compounded by the way I’m off-balance with my leg injury and just general muscular decrepitude.
Besides the massage, I generally took it easy and lots of Robaxacet, with Emtec at night. Perhaps it was good that I was mildly sedated all week.
Movie
I was in a movie!
On Tuesday night as it was getting dark, I began the long (to me) trek over to Spike’s Vampire Bar to present Spike with the fangs that I had cast for him and his playmates. I had just started out when this woman came up to me and said, “We need you in a movie, come on!” It was a group of people making a 48 hour movie – there was a theme camp to this effect this year – and they needed someone “scary and official-looking”, or so they told me, to play a sentry guarding the God Phone Booth, to stop the Protagonist from calling God to ask his help to get back on the road. And, since I was wearing khaki, my Balmoral, big goggles, South African Army assault pack and carrying my cane slung like a rifle, I seemed a good choice for the role. Actually, I think they thought I was a Black Rock Ranger because of the khaki, a number of people made the same mistake that week.
So, they started filming as the light went rapidly – the hero came up to me, I menaced him with my “rifle”, he distracted me and ran into the phone booth. Just as he started talking to God his girlfriend drove by in a car, and off he goes on the road without God’s help after all. End of Scene. If I (or anyone else) finds that film online, I am “Citizen X – Ranger” in the credits.
Camps
Our camp: Very well organized this year, with lots of space and even had access to the power grid to run the printing press! Everything seemed to go right. Visitors included:
“Tinker Bill” Egbert, on leave from his Orgasmateria;
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
prettyoctopussy, whom it was very nice to meet and found a good welcome at the paper, I really hope she will come back and write for it next year; and
Lancelot, on break from managing Spike’s but he did come over for his liquorice allsorts, the good English kind [Bassett’s] we bring him every year.
Other camps visited:
Village Camp – these people had gone to a lot of trouble to make a Prisoner-themed camp. They built a Green Dome (natch) to shelter in, and made costumes and pins and even those weird statues that appear in the TV show. There was a trampoline too, nothing to do with the show but these things seem to draw Burners to one’s vicinity. We met them just as they were about to leave on a walkabout to judge nearby artworks, declaring them “unmutual” or not.
Spike’s Vampire Bar – Lots of fun as always, and we made it our habit to stop by whenever we could and when there was room to get in. The place is a BM institution now.
Geisha Camp – just across the way from us, a nice place to lay around in. They served cold sake and really liked my metal castings. Attracted many Japanese burners (see note below in Swag).
Kamp Apokiliptika and Club Verboten – these were neighbour camps this year, and rightly so. We had a good time at both places (see below).
Bugs
Tuesday night we were in Angie’s trailer when she asked me to get a spider in her sink. It was a Black Widow! I was sure of it – shiny black body, slim pointed legs, red markings underneath. I caught it in a glass and crushed it instead of preserving it in alcohol as I should have, because no one believed me the next day. We agreed later that it must have come from a pile of wood that our neighbours had dumped next to the trailer, and that it had been searching for water. The next day Angie found a wolf spider, probably also from the woodpile.
On Thursday night we went over to visit Camp Apokiliptika before going to Club Verboten’s annual Kraftwerk night, and met completely randomly in the bar a woman who said she was a “semi-entomologist” (I quipped, “do you study the front half of the insect or the back?” Actually she was a lab tech with a strong interest in bugs.). She confirmed that it was likely it was a Black Widow, and told us all about Black Widow spiders, and wolf spiders, and all other kinds of bugs and flies to be found out here. It was nice to hear someone so enthusiastic about their work.
Another interesting bug to find out in the desert is the praying mantis. These seem to blow in from the hills where there is more vegetation and more bugs for them to eat. We found one sitting on an ashtray outside the Rite-Aid in Alturas, and I have found them sitting around on the playa. Still one of my favourite bugs and one of Aki’s too.
Paper
My back problems prevented me from printing the paper, as the kind of crouching I would have to do in the back of the van was exactly the wrong angle. I did get it together to write one story for the paper, on the First Annual Shirtcocker’s Parade – we interviewed a couple of guys who were more presentable than the others, and I was maybe a bit too nice to them in my article, but still it was nice to have made some kind of minor contribution to the paper. Angie took the photo, and it was the first time any nudity had run in the Beacon!
PDF versions of the issues produced are here: [uh, link broken right now]
Swag
New castings this year were:
• vampire fangs, in two sizes, for the workers at Spikes Vampire Bar, reaction from Spike was great, everyone loved them though they proved rather brittle
• “The Scream” by Munch that I thought was rather well done, and was very popular – wish I had had time to make more of them
• Herman Munster, that was rather less well done – could not get that little smirk he does
I must have cast about 10 pounds of metal, in the week or two before we left (which I think materially contributed to my back going out). Gave away about half of it, and I gave Lianne a “swag allowance” to spend as she wished. I did bring my casting kit, but with my bad back there was no chance or desire to do any casting out there – or any need, really.
At the Club Verboten Kraftwerk show, I gave them some swag to the people putting on the show – a nice girl named Catriona and some guy named Lothar who had come all the way from Sweden. They loved the stuff and we took some pictures.
Also, at Camp Geisha across the way from our camp I stopped in and gave away some swag for a rune necklace (that Lianne wears, I don’t wear stuff around my neck except for dogtags and this year my titanium spork) and some great photographs from a Japanese girl named Chieko who lives in Arizona casting bronze temple bells and things at some foundry that had something to do with Paolo Soleri. (Funny, I ran into a lot of Japanese people this year, my Japanese is rusty but still OK for basic purposes.)
We also dropped by a bar called Blackie’s down the 9:00 street a ways, looking for Linda at the Rainforest Refugees (never found her) but had a beer and gave them a couple of skeleton-playing-bagpipes figures, which they loved because there was a piper in their camp!
Good swag obtained this year:
• Nice Nalgene bottle marked with the Man and year
• “Lazy Ass Fuckers” medallion
• Delicious plate of chicken, rice and vegetables when I really needed it, plus a beer, from the wonderful people at Spike’s
• Some BM 2006 fridge magnets, from the same people who gave me some BM 2003 fridge magnets at my very first burn, met completely randomly at that big blinky-dot thing
Art
We had a whole afternoon to go out on the playa to see some art projects.
Some came to us.
Particularly impressive was the Spider, it must have been 30 feet high with a slowly rotating turret on top that housed a laser. (picture by Angie)
Also impressive, but on a smaller scale was a shiny metal dish that concentrated the sun’s rays and could melt metal (it’s thawing one of my brain pins in the picture).
But the best was the three-figure assembly in front of Centre Camp, made by the people who made the “Procession” piece last year. (picture by Angie)
At the Temple of Hope we stopped to look at the many plaques and memorials people had put up. Many people were there sitting thinking or crying. Lianne got very sad thinking about her deceased father. I found a small cube of wood just like a die, wrote “Akito-I-miss-you-very-much” on each side, and tossed it in to be burnt. The Temple is not there just for the dead.
Burn
Well, with over 39,000 people in Black Rock City by Saturday night, and with two or three experiences of being in that Big Scary Crowd behind us, we sat on the front porch of Howeird’s Overseas Press Shack next to the Beacon tent at the 9:00 plaza and watched it from afar. None of my pictures came out but that doesn’t matter.
One person who shared our porch was a woman called Rebecca, who had been working for about two weeks to weld together the pieces of the tremendous three-figure installation in front of Centre Camp. They had started pre-fabricating sections of it 2-3 months beforehand in San Francisco and trucked it out to the playa in pieces. She showed me her arms, full of welts and cuts and burns from the sharp metal.
HOW WE GOT BACK
Sunday, 3 September – we helped pull down and pack away the Production Tent, and left around 1100. Unfortunately it took almost FOUR HOURS to get on the road out of there, including an hour and a half where we sat in a lineup of vehicles doing nothing at all. I got bored.
Why was this? Well, I suppose everyone wanted to miss the Monday rush, so left a day early, which only created another logjam. Peak population was over 39,000 on Saturday, so no wonder things were crowded. Our target that night was Klamath Falls, and we made it to the hotel a little after dark. A few miles short of Klamath Falls we ran into an enormous cloud of insects, must have been mosquitoes. The sound of thousands of them hitting the front of the truck and camper sounded like rain. Missed Lianne’s much anticipated dinner at Sizzler as it closed early that night, I think we ate at a Jack in the Box or some such down the road.
Monday, 4 September - off about 0900, up to Chemult and turned west through the Cascade mountains again. Ate at a diner I am sure we ate in a couple of years before. Spent the night in Portland, at the same place we were the year before, in a decent motel out in the industrial area west of the big bridges over the river.
Tuesday, 5 September – long run up to Port Angeles, caught the 1715 ferry (reservation was a good idea as always), home by dark.
Conclusion
Another good year, unfortunately marred by my dorsal weakness. Next year, hoo boy, just wait till next year.
The weather was uniformly good except for one big storm on Wednesday.
For sure we are going to use the truck + camper combination, and never use a tent again. It was a lot easier in many ways.
That’s all for now!
Hard to decide on a report format to use, as I can't be arsed to think of anything new. Though maybe it should be kind of non-linear, since this year there was no real progression on anything in particular. The one constant was my back going out. Well, here goes:
HOW WE GOT THERE
Saturday, 26 August - took the 0610 ferry to Port Angeles, reservation was a good idea as always, in Salem OR by early afternoon.
Sunday, 27 August - off by 0930, made the turn and took the highway through the Cascade mountains to Chemult. Good to get off crazy I-5 but the mountains ate up the gas. Reached Klamath Falls in the early afternoon, Fred Meyer for water, Converse shoes, some food, and gas cans.
Monday, 28 August - off about 0900, reached Alturas and had huge lunch at the Black Bear Diner. Burners visible all over the place now. Gassed up and used 1/2 a tank getting to Gerlach, gassed up in Gerlach so we didn't have to do it on the way out, bought some transmission fluid just in case. Reached the gate around 1530, cruised around 7:00 and Brave as agreed to find Angie but she wasn't there and the area was already densely populated. Left the truck at 7:00 and Guess, walked to the Beacon offices at 9:00 plaza to check in and see what was what. I was on a cane by this time. As it turned out, we camped on the Beacon site, which had plenty of room, was well planned and even had grid power for the printer, all vast improvements over last year.
NOTES ON WHAT WE DID THERE
Sorted by topic, in no order of priority.
Back
Friday, 25 August - I got home from taking Akito to the Vancouver Airport and was bending over to pack a bag when my back, which had been sore for a week or more, went *SPUNG* and I subsided onto the bed like a wounded sandbag. Managed to finish packing the truck, including all the Robaxacet in the house and my cane, in case it would be needed. (It was.) Whirlpool in the hotels at night plus Obus pillow on the car seat did my back a lot of good, or at least it did not get any worse.
On Wednesday morning I got a long massage at Mystic Massage Camp, the masseuse spent a long time working over me and even did my injured leg. I guess I was just a mass of knots. Problem was a muscle spasm together with what I then thought was sciatica, but wasn’t. I felt a lot better afterwards but far from 100%; I spent much of the week learning to sit instead of stand whenever possible as standing (e.g. in a line, or talking to someone) really hurt. Fortunately I could ride a bicycle without any problems (though gel or cushioned seat covers are a MUST for next year!). By the end of the week I was getting better, but did not feel the same until weeks after coming back. I think it was due mostly to the extreme stress of the summer, compounded by the way I’m off-balance with my leg injury and just general muscular decrepitude.
Besides the massage, I generally took it easy and lots of Robaxacet, with Emtec at night. Perhaps it was good that I was mildly sedated all week.
Movie
I was in a movie!
On Tuesday night as it was getting dark, I began the long (to me) trek over to Spike’s Vampire Bar to present Spike with the fangs that I had cast for him and his playmates. I had just started out when this woman came up to me and said, “We need you in a movie, come on!” It was a group of people making a 48 hour movie – there was a theme camp to this effect this year – and they needed someone “scary and official-looking”, or so they told me, to play a sentry guarding the God Phone Booth, to stop the Protagonist from calling God to ask his help to get back on the road. And, since I was wearing khaki, my Balmoral, big goggles, South African Army assault pack and carrying my cane slung like a rifle, I seemed a good choice for the role. Actually, I think they thought I was a Black Rock Ranger because of the khaki, a number of people made the same mistake that week.
So, they started filming as the light went rapidly – the hero came up to me, I menaced him with my “rifle”, he distracted me and ran into the phone booth. Just as he started talking to God his girlfriend drove by in a car, and off he goes on the road without God’s help after all. End of Scene. If I (or anyone else) finds that film online, I am “Citizen X – Ranger” in the credits.
Camps
Our camp: Very well organized this year, with lots of space and even had access to the power grid to run the printing press! Everything seemed to go right. Visitors included:
“Tinker Bill” Egbert, on leave from his Orgasmateria;
prettyoctopussy, whom it was very nice to meet and found a good welcome at the paper, I really hope she will come back and write for it next year; and Lancelot, on break from managing Spike’s but he did come over for his liquorice allsorts, the good English kind [Bassett’s] we bring him every year.
Other camps visited:
Village Camp – these people had gone to a lot of trouble to make a Prisoner-themed camp. They built a Green Dome (natch) to shelter in, and made costumes and pins and even those weird statues that appear in the TV show. There was a trampoline too, nothing to do with the show but these things seem to draw Burners to one’s vicinity. We met them just as they were about to leave on a walkabout to judge nearby artworks, declaring them “unmutual” or not.
Spike’s Vampire Bar – Lots of fun as always, and we made it our habit to stop by whenever we could and when there was room to get in. The place is a BM institution now.
Geisha Camp – just across the way from us, a nice place to lay around in. They served cold sake and really liked my metal castings. Attracted many Japanese burners (see note below in Swag).
Kamp Apokiliptika and Club Verboten – these were neighbour camps this year, and rightly so. We had a good time at both places (see below).
Bugs
Tuesday night we were in Angie’s trailer when she asked me to get a spider in her sink. It was a Black Widow! I was sure of it – shiny black body, slim pointed legs, red markings underneath. I caught it in a glass and crushed it instead of preserving it in alcohol as I should have, because no one believed me the next day. We agreed later that it must have come from a pile of wood that our neighbours had dumped next to the trailer, and that it had been searching for water. The next day Angie found a wolf spider, probably also from the woodpile.
On Thursday night we went over to visit Camp Apokiliptika before going to Club Verboten’s annual Kraftwerk night, and met completely randomly in the bar a woman who said she was a “semi-entomologist” (I quipped, “do you study the front half of the insect or the back?” Actually she was a lab tech with a strong interest in bugs.). She confirmed that it was likely it was a Black Widow, and told us all about Black Widow spiders, and wolf spiders, and all other kinds of bugs and flies to be found out here. It was nice to hear someone so enthusiastic about their work.
Another interesting bug to find out in the desert is the praying mantis. These seem to blow in from the hills where there is more vegetation and more bugs for them to eat. We found one sitting on an ashtray outside the Rite-Aid in Alturas, and I have found them sitting around on the playa. Still one of my favourite bugs and one of Aki’s too.
Paper
My back problems prevented me from printing the paper, as the kind of crouching I would have to do in the back of the van was exactly the wrong angle. I did get it together to write one story for the paper, on the First Annual Shirtcocker’s Parade – we interviewed a couple of guys who were more presentable than the others, and I was maybe a bit too nice to them in my article, but still it was nice to have made some kind of minor contribution to the paper. Angie took the photo, and it was the first time any nudity had run in the Beacon!
PDF versions of the issues produced are here: [uh, link broken right now]
Swag
New castings this year were:
• vampire fangs, in two sizes, for the workers at Spikes Vampire Bar, reaction from Spike was great, everyone loved them though they proved rather brittle
• “The Scream” by Munch that I thought was rather well done, and was very popular – wish I had had time to make more of them
• Herman Munster, that was rather less well done – could not get that little smirk he does
I must have cast about 10 pounds of metal, in the week or two before we left (which I think materially contributed to my back going out). Gave away about half of it, and I gave Lianne a “swag allowance” to spend as she wished. I did bring my casting kit, but with my bad back there was no chance or desire to do any casting out there – or any need, really.
At the Club Verboten Kraftwerk show, I gave them some swag to the people putting on the show – a nice girl named Catriona and some guy named Lothar who had come all the way from Sweden. They loved the stuff and we took some pictures.
Also, at Camp Geisha across the way from our camp I stopped in and gave away some swag for a rune necklace (that Lianne wears, I don’t wear stuff around my neck except for dogtags and this year my titanium spork) and some great photographs from a Japanese girl named Chieko who lives in Arizona casting bronze temple bells and things at some foundry that had something to do with Paolo Soleri. (Funny, I ran into a lot of Japanese people this year, my Japanese is rusty but still OK for basic purposes.)
We also dropped by a bar called Blackie’s down the 9:00 street a ways, looking for Linda at the Rainforest Refugees (never found her) but had a beer and gave them a couple of skeleton-playing-bagpipes figures, which they loved because there was a piper in their camp!
Good swag obtained this year:
• Nice Nalgene bottle marked with the Man and year
• “Lazy Ass Fuckers” medallion
• Delicious plate of chicken, rice and vegetables when I really needed it, plus a beer, from the wonderful people at Spike’s
• Some BM 2006 fridge magnets, from the same people who gave me some BM 2003 fridge magnets at my very first burn, met completely randomly at that big blinky-dot thing
Art
We had a whole afternoon to go out on the playa to see some art projects.
Some came to us.
Particularly impressive was the Spider, it must have been 30 feet high with a slowly rotating turret on top that housed a laser. (picture by Angie)
Also impressive, but on a smaller scale was a shiny metal dish that concentrated the sun’s rays and could melt metal (it’s thawing one of my brain pins in the picture).
But the best was the three-figure assembly in front of Centre Camp, made by the people who made the “Procession” piece last year. (picture by Angie)
At the Temple of Hope we stopped to look at the many plaques and memorials people had put up. Many people were there sitting thinking or crying. Lianne got very sad thinking about her deceased father. I found a small cube of wood just like a die, wrote “Akito-I-miss-you-very-much” on each side, and tossed it in to be burnt. The Temple is not there just for the dead.
Burn
Well, with over 39,000 people in Black Rock City by Saturday night, and with two or three experiences of being in that Big Scary Crowd behind us, we sat on the front porch of Howeird’s Overseas Press Shack next to the Beacon tent at the 9:00 plaza and watched it from afar. None of my pictures came out but that doesn’t matter.
One person who shared our porch was a woman called Rebecca, who had been working for about two weeks to weld together the pieces of the tremendous three-figure installation in front of Centre Camp. They had started pre-fabricating sections of it 2-3 months beforehand in San Francisco and trucked it out to the playa in pieces. She showed me her arms, full of welts and cuts and burns from the sharp metal.
HOW WE GOT BACK
Sunday, 3 September – we helped pull down and pack away the Production Tent, and left around 1100. Unfortunately it took almost FOUR HOURS to get on the road out of there, including an hour and a half where we sat in a lineup of vehicles doing nothing at all. I got bored.
Why was this? Well, I suppose everyone wanted to miss the Monday rush, so left a day early, which only created another logjam. Peak population was over 39,000 on Saturday, so no wonder things were crowded. Our target that night was Klamath Falls, and we made it to the hotel a little after dark. A few miles short of Klamath Falls we ran into an enormous cloud of insects, must have been mosquitoes. The sound of thousands of them hitting the front of the truck and camper sounded like rain. Missed Lianne’s much anticipated dinner at Sizzler as it closed early that night, I think we ate at a Jack in the Box or some such down the road.
Monday, 4 September - off about 0900, up to Chemult and turned west through the Cascade mountains again. Ate at a diner I am sure we ate in a couple of years before. Spent the night in Portland, at the same place we were the year before, in a decent motel out in the industrial area west of the big bridges over the river.
Tuesday, 5 September – long run up to Port Angeles, caught the 1715 ferry (reservation was a good idea as always), home by dark.
Conclusion
Another good year, unfortunately marred by my dorsal weakness. Next year, hoo boy, just wait till next year.
The weather was uniformly good except for one big storm on Wednesday.
For sure we are going to use the truck + camper combination, and never use a tent again. It was a lot easier in many ways.
That’s all for now!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
skeleton piper
Date: 2006-11-20 08:17 pm (UTC)Thanks again, just the memory of that piece of metal brings back great memories.
You've inspired me to make swag.
Re: skeleton piper
Date: 2006-11-20 09:53 pm (UTC)I use superglue to attach the pins - they don't always hold but I don't have much choice as the metal I cast with has a lower melting temperature than the solder.
Please write me an e-mail with your snail mail address, and I will send you a replacement one!
no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-21 05:59 pm (UTC)