REPORT ON BURNING MAN 2005
Sep. 30th, 2005 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ltmurnauBURNING MAN 2005 AFTER ACTION REPORT
Yeah, this one is done kind of linear, but let’s not be all McLuhanesque about it.
HOW WE GOT THERE
THURSDAY, AUGUST 25
In the morning we picked up a 2005 Yukon SUV rented from Avis, quite big enough for all our gear but hard to drive in populated areas. We were all reconfigured and loaded by 1100, and left just after 1200 shopping for food and (prescription) drugs to get into the Port Angeles ferry lineup by 1300. Getting a reserved spot on the sailing was a very good idea – the company just started that this year, for a $10 charge. The ship sailed at 1500, we got waved through at Customs (but just to make sure, I had taken field-stripped the Pantzooka and distributed the parts throughout the cargo), and arrived at Carry and Angie’s in Federal Way about 2030. We were all tired, we talked a bit and went to sleep about 2300.
FRIDAY
We got up early and I helped to prepare the van Carry and Angie had rented to serve as a printing room down there. I moved 1,000 pounds of paper (20 boxes of 11x17” paper, 50,000 sheets in all) around in the back and then we all helped lift the 450 pound RISOgraph duplicator machine into the front of the cargo space, where it would stay. We left about 1100, found Cosco and bought water, jerky, dry sausage, and other snacks. By evening we were in Eugene, and we spent an entire freaking HOUR driving around trying to find the hotel. One complication is that Eugene has regulations about signs, i.e. that they must be hidden behind greenery. But we did find it, and it was nice, and we had a good dinner and a swim.
SATURDAY
We were planning to turn off south of Eugene and take Route 58, which would have taken us through the Cascade Mountains and down to Klamath Falls. However, your faithful chronicler and navigator screwed up so we followed I-5 down to Medford (were we went to a Hot Topic in a shopping mall to get some bandanas for Lianne) and across to Klamath Falls on Route 66. No, not that one, this was a torturous winding two-laner through mountains and scrubby hills that required real attention to drive through. We found the hotel at Klamath Falls no problem and went to the Fred Meyer to get final supplies of water, food, and booze. I filled the bulk water containers (two 5 gallon cubes and one 6 gallon jerrican) and did final packing.
SUNDAY
The last driving day and was a bit of a stretch, about six hours. Same route via Alturas – Cedarville, though we did not go to Gerlach this time. We were at the Gate by 1430 and found the camp without trouble, at 9:00 and Amnesia, on the south side of the “keyhole” at the 9:00 plaza. Not a bad spot but we were only about 100 yards away from the end of the power grid, so we had to use generators for electrical power – not a convenient option.
WHAT WE DID THERE
Black Rock City on Wednesday or so, population between 25,000 and 30,000. Final city population unconfirmed at just over 40,000.
SUNDAY
First, unpack. I nearly killed myself in the heat running back and forth grabbing stuff from the truck, trying to get the tent set up and ballasted and being unpleasant to people in the process. I apologize for that. After I learned not to overdo it, the day seemed to get hotter and the wind stronger, but by the evening we were set up and went for a walk trying to find Tinker Bill’s dome at Asylum Village, just down the road. No one knew where anything was, since there were still large gaps in the neighborhood and people were still trying to get their own bearings, so we gave up and went to bed. Spotty sleep.
MONDAY
We got up, had some breakfast, said proper hellos and went over to see Bill in the daylight.
We found him and then poor Lianne came down with the “playa bends” – combined heat exhaustion and altitude sickness, worsened by no supper, booze, not enough sleep and too much water drunk too quickly. Later that day we went to the EMT station down the street (another good part of living on the Plaza) to get her some Gatorade, electrolyte tablets, and good advice. She felt much better after a nap in the shade structure, and when it got dark we got ready to set out to see the Man. Just as we were leaving Mitch, the publisher, arrived in his 37’ RV with entourage inside.
The Man was built on top of a place called the Funhouse, a maze of rooms with revolving doors and many small chambers with art inside them – e.g. a wall of face molds that would light up randomly and “speak” a pre-recorded message. The wind was strong all day and picked up at night, we ran into several white-outs where the only thing you can do is stop moving and hope someone on a bike does not plow into you.
That night we produced the first edition of the Black Rock Beacon- 2500 copies. I learned to run the Risograph and became rather proprietary about it.
TUESDAY
The weather was much improved. The wind dropped and it was still quite hot. In mid-morning, we were sitting in the shade structure when a columnist from Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi, walked in and started to interview us. Media Mecca had sent him over. He asked some good questions about the Beacon, the ex-Gazette, and about BM in general. There were about 10 of us and we talked to him for over an hour. I think I even impressed him when he let slip that he had edited an expatriate newspaper in Moscow in the late 90s, the Exile, and I told him I had read the book-length collection of excerpts from the paper he published on returning to America. As it turned out, he left Black Rock City on Thursday and filed a story on Burning Man that was exactly what you’d expect from someone who didn’t get it – “white middle-aged hippies playing in the sandbox, trying to convince themselves they matter” etc. etc.. Obviously no sign that he had actually talked to anyone there (except selective quotes from Larry Harvey), least of all us.
Later in the day we took our bikes out to the Machine to interview the crew working on it, with the intention of writing an article on this massive sculpture. Lianne took my notes and wrote the article – I had written so much stuff for the Beacon it wasn’t all going to see the light of day anyway, so I was glad to give her the byline.
Later that night I did some casting. This was the only night I had enough time, light, and low winds to do this. I turned out a few of the two-sided mold castings; the only one that really worked was the Brain. Unfortunately I did not have enough time to cast much new metallic schwag at home, so had to rely on what I brought with me – there was enough.
Beginning tonight, we started to have problems with deadlines. At the daily production meeting at 1000, the announced deadline for writers and photographers to have their stuff in to the editor of the day was 1600. This would have allowed the editors (usually Mitch) and layout people (Carry and Angie) a few hours to work on the stories before the production people (me and Lianne) could start printing it. As it was, stories were not handed in until late, editing was persnickety as many stories and photos had to be cut or shrunk considerably to fill available space., and Lianne and I did a certain amount of waiting around in the dark for the word to get printing. This night we started printing at 2300 and worked until 0330, printing 7,500 copies. We were tired and unhappy when we got to be, because we knew we could not sleep past 0830 – the temperature in the tent rose so quickly after that hour, when the sun hit the roof.
WEDNESDAY
I can’t quite recall what we did on this day besides eat something and try to rest, while hanging around camp waiting to get an early start on printing the paper. I think Lianne went to Empire with Carry and Angie, or maybe that was Tuesday. Again, problems with deadlines and our hope of starting to print by 2000 came to naught when someone turned in a story at 2230, after a hole had been held in the paper for it. It was a good story but it meant that we did not start printing until 0100. Lianne’s story on the Machine ran in this edition. We worked until almost 0400, printing 3,000 copies, and were rather disgruntled when we hit the sack.
THURSDAY
Another good day, weatherwise. Today at the morning staff meeting we spoke up again about the delays and how it was unfair – Carry and Angie scored us some time off so in the afternoon we went out to see some camps. We went to see our friend Linda at the Rocktoria camp, looked for but did not find Big Puffy Yellow Camp, had a drink and a nice chat at Citrus Dome where we spun the wheel for random drinks and looked at their dome cooling systems (they were engineers), and went to Pewterman camp.
Pewterman camp was made up of staff rom Reaper Miniatures in Texas, and they had used their centrifuge and plentiful supplies of scrap pewter to make hundreds of flat Burning Man shapes, strung on a string with a pewter bead marked 2005. Primo schwag. We had a good chat with Erin, the only one in camp at the time, about Burning Man, the camp, kids, casting, etc. She liked my handmade castings too.
On the way back via the Esplanade we looked for but did not find [Bad username or site: ”rosminah” @ livejournal.com] at Hookahdome. near there we had a chat with a Mexican fellow who was working at Winking Lotus Camp and was going to have brass-casting demonstrations, he brought all his stuff but couldn’t generate enough interest. I left him some of my stuff. I also dropped off packages of “Japanese” castings (from old molds I had bought of a samurai and a lady in kimono) at Camp Wabi (a from-Seattle camp where there was afternoon Go, but I didn’t have a chance to play) and some samurai style bar on the Esplanade. Two topless girls gave me a cold beer and Gatorade in thanks. I drank the beer when I got back, my first drink in weeks – cheap Mexican Tecate, common find at Burning Man and good when it’s cold.
We did not print this night – the next paper was the Friday/Saturday edition, so it didn’t really matter. Instead we ate an enormous amount of pork – it was “Lord Fouffypans”’ 46th birthday and he barbecued an enormous amount of meat Texas-style over fruitwood. The entire BBQ surface was solid meat, including a whole smoked shoulder. Among the guests was Anthony Haden-Guest, art-journalist in New York for different trans-Atlantic magazines (apparently Tom Wolfe satirized him as “Peter Fallow” in Bonfire of the Vanities, but I didn’t see the resemblance) and half brother of Christopher Guest the film-maker. He was supposed to be doing a piece on “the art of Burning Man” for Art in America. I talked to him for a little while and loaned him my mug. The folks you meet out on the playa….
At 2200 we went to see Quixotic Windmill Burn. This was [Bad username or site: ”extrastout” @ livejournal.com]’s big project for the year, he and many of his friends worked their guts out practicing designing and raiding funds all year to build three working windmills out on the playa, and then at the climax of an allegorical performance light them on fire. It was the most impressive performance I saw all Burn and I am very glad things worked out so well for him and his group.
At 2300 we walked across to the 3:00 plaza to Club Verboten for their annual Kraftwerk concert night. We had a good time! By sheer accident we sat next to Julie X, the medic who had treated Lianne for playa bends on Monday. Later we danced and I met Mr. Jellyfish Mr., a guy from Camp Apokiliptika who was wearing a black Lycra suit – with his balding head and glasses he looked just like Dieter from Sprockets. I got up to give him a pin, apropos of nothing other than admiring his dress and dancing style, and a moment later Jason introduced me to him as one of his friends! Mr. Jellyfish was ecstatic when Jason told him I was the inventor of the Pantzooka. At the end of the evening “Robot MR-1” visited us, a 10 foot tall robot with glowing eyes and mouth with long rod puppet hands. “Kernel Killbuck” leader of Camp Apokiliptika across the street, was controlling it and the robot danced with everyone for an extended version of “The Robots”.
FRIDAY
In the morning we printed up the Friday/Saturday edition of the paper: 5,000 copies. We could work in the van by using the air conditioner (though we had to get a jump-start from our SUV first. Good job I bought those jumper cables) which made it tolerable for men and machines and we were done by Around Lunch. After that, we visited with Bill at Asylum Village again.
On returning, I shouldered the Pantzooka and walked across the playa to show it off at Camp Apokiliptika. The camp was done up like a military base and Kernel had done his minivan over in some kind of Russian desert camouflage style. I was joyously received by Jellyfish, detoxified from the night before (though he still had some weird kind of red stuff smeared on his face) and Kernel Killbuck, leader of the camp. I also by accident met Erin from Pewterman camp while they were demonstrating “Miniman”, a remote-controlled wisecracking robot they had made. The Apokiliptikans loved my metal castings and I got a neat radiation badge and shoulder flash. They also appreciated the Pantzooka as providing a valuable public service, though I certainly noticed a lack of targets for it this year. Perhaps word is out?
I got back around dark (it falls so quickly on the playa it’s as if someone flipped a switch; also the nights were very dark this year because a new moon was coming – next year it will be a full moon) and we got ready to go out and see the death of the Machine. We were too late for the shows of acrobats etc. but the flame-shooting air cars were still driving around.
The engineers pulled the pins out of the structure and passed ropes into the audience, as planned, but the Machine, which was supposed to represent the three levels of the Freudian psyche, was too well build to yield to the pulling efforts of the audience, who were supposed to represent the mass Jungian unconsciousness. They could not do more than crack a few members, so at length a crane truck from DPW arrived and pulled at it some more, then with another go at the ropes it all fell down. Rather ironic that the Machine had to be destroyed by another machine.
This took a long time so it was after 2200 when we got free of the crowd – we went to Spike’s Vampire Bar, had a cup of wine and went to bed tired.
SATURDAY
In the morning and early afternoon we printed up 2,500 copies of the back page of the final, Sunday edition of the Beacon. We left a hole in the front page “above the fold” for the best photos of the Burn to be printed afterwards. In the afternoon we took a couple more hours to walk out on the playa and look at art. We saw, among many other things:
“Procession”, one of the best pieces out there this year. You can see the concrete footprints the statues have left behind them – in the day they held water, in the evening they held fire (fed in either case by underground pipes).
This was also a great attraction – no, you couldn’t get inside.
As it got dark we suited up and found a fairly good spot to watch, only 2-3 rows back from the front. I was feeling kind of antsy because I don’t like large crowds as a rule, because of the nastiness last year at the Temple burn, and because of the uncontrolled surge forward by 30,000 odd people as the Man falls.
Carry and Angie, from Federal Way; Jason and Emily, from Portland
Francis, Lianne and me
But the fire show was good, no attempt to synchronize everything like last year but some really nice spinning and this fire-breather in front of us grabbed one or two people from the audience to teach them how to do it.
photo by Taymar
I snapped pictures but ran out of film as the fireworks stopped, so I had no pictures of the Man himself burning. The ones below are excellent ones taken by Taymar, Beacon staff photographer (in fact, all the pictures that don't look as if they were taken by me were taken by him).
photo by Taymar
photo by Taymar
As the Man fell I got Lianne to her feet so the crowd would not trample us, and Angie and Carry and Lianne and I all held hands as we went forward and got swept up in the massive crowd that closed up and began to move counter-clockwise as it always does. I enjoy this feeling of being lost and powerless in a crowd less and less every year. After a quarter turn we had had enough and Lianne led the way out – fortunately my webbing kept people at a distance and cushioned me against their spiky gear. Carry and Angie went off to await the photographers and we killed time at Spike’s, from where I think we will watch the Burn next year, until 2300 when we went back and finished printing the Sunday and final edition of the Beacon. Our work was done.
SUNDAY
On Friday we talked about it and changed our minds – we were going to leave on Sunday midday instead of Monday morning. Good move, as it turned out. I helped Angie and Carry pack up the Risograph, leftover paper, bicycles and other things into the production van, helped Gothalot hitch up his “Aristocrypt” trailer, and struck our camp. For some reason our stuff was easier to pack this time, though I don’t think we were leaving with any less stuff – we had only disposed of water and some food during the week.
We were mobile by 1230, and after a long while stuck in the slowly moving exodus line, including one complete white-out, we were on the road back to Klamath Falls. Black Rock City was folding its tents behind us, the event was over for another year. Our last sight of a Burner at the gate was a fellow done up in a kilt, scarlet jacket and white pith helmet exactly like a Zulu War era British infantryman. Unfortunately I did not get a picture of this!
HOW WE GOT BACK
MONDAY
- Klamath Falls, stopped at Dollar Tree for lots of junk and candy
- Oakridge, on the way through the Cascades, gutbuster lunch at A+W
- Portland, La Quinta Inn and Suites, hard to find but a nice place in a mini-mall with a good pool and sauna. We ate microwaved burritos for dinner.
TUESDAY
- Portland, on the road by 0930
- Quilchena, no luck finding a public toilet but we ate lunch at a small place in this small town
- Port Angeles, we were very early for the 1715 ferry. We killed time by buying books and picking at food. We were back home by 1900.
Vacation over.
THE END.
OOOOH, JUST WAIT UNTIL NEXT TIME
WHAT WORKED
- The paper proved really well received.
- Having our own toilet in camp! Best money we ever spent, besides the ticket.
- The Risograph cranked out almost 21,000 copies with no problems beyond the occasional paper jam.
- The Pantzooka, though there were almost no targets seen and no time to go hunt Donald Ducks.
- We had plenty of water - didn't touch the cubes.
WHAT DIDN’T WORK
- Way too many people in too small a space. There wasn’t much empty ground for trash to fall onto.
- circulation of the paper could have been better - there were a lot of leftover copies.
- Camp was not strictly a “working” camp – we had a few people who didn’t have any defined function on the paper, and that caused some friction.
- Even though the tent was much bigger and far more comfortable this time, it got too hot too fast and we spent ay too much time keeping the interior organized. Next year we are going to go in a light pickup truck with a camper-top. No more tents.
TAIL PIECE – THE BLACK ROCK BEACON
HISTORY
Well, you remember the daily paper Black Rock Gazette, that I talked about in previous accounts? This year it's gone, casualty of a budget cut. In April 2005 this bomb was dropped on the BRG staffers, essentially firing them from volunteer positions. There was a pitiful pre-printed "Gate" edition of the Gazette handed out with the packages one got on arrival, but that was all.
So, instead of sulking, the ex-BRG staffers decided to make a new daily paper, the Black Rock Beacon. A revenge paper, a grudge paper, but evening the score because it was going to be a better paper, without censorship by the BMOrg and printed on the playa itself.
We were a theme camp, located at 9:00 and Amnesia (one ring out from the Esplanade, and a bit out from the 9:00 Plaza). Our website is http://www.blackrockbeacon.org.
photo by Taymar
Oh, and the proper spelling of the paper is the Black Rock B(e)acon. We are into pork products, our motto is:
Lux, Veritas, Lardum
(Light, Truth, Bacon)
PRODUCTION NOTES
Facilities and Resources
Our facilities were a van, as described, and a two-room tent for the computer and printer. Both were kept closed as much as possible against the dust. The Risograph and such paper as was needed for the next edition was kept in the van. The machine weighed over 400 pounds so we moved it into the right position in the van in Federal Way, after Angie had built a nice little pallet for it.
The computer and printer were in the second, “cleaner” room of the tent. Carry and Angie did the layout and some proofing/editing, used inDesign for layout on an old Macintosh G3 (I think). As we did not have a digital-download module that would have let us print the files straight to the Risograph, we had to print out a copy of the paper on the laser printer, tile it as we had only an 8.5x11” printer, tape it together, and make a master from that. It worked, but the layout was a little funny, as stories could not cross the fold line. Frequently the laser-printed originals were not in good shape because it got so hot in the tents during the day the toner would melt in the cartridge. For the same reason the computer was generally unusable in the middle of the day.
How I printed the paper
- Place the original on the glass on top of the duplicator; lower cover.
- Press “M/P” button to set for Master, then press Start. Machine takes a moment to make a master of a sheet of thin plastic film which is then wrapped around a large drum in the centre of the machine. A cylindrical ink cartridge is loaded in the centre of the drum. Paper is fed through one end of the machine and is pressed against the drum, the master acts as a stencil through which the ink is squeezed, and the print is fed out the other side.
- The machine will make one test print. Sometimes you have to make a few because the ink needs to get “started” in flowing through the master, which works as a stencil. We found this to be more of an issue after a hot day, for the heat in the van seemed to have “baked” the ink onto the drum in a few spots.
- When the print looks OK, punch for the number of copies you want and keep the machine fed with neatly stacked paper. We kept the speed low to avoid paper jams in the drum area – the most common problem, easy to clear but took time and disturbed the master each time we had to open the machine.
- Because the machine could not print two-sided, we would print first one side, “jog” the printed sheets into neat stacks, and print the other side when the second page prints were ready. It was important that the papers be jogged correctly to feed into the machine properly, and Lianne did a great job at this boring task.
Risograph tips
- When making a master with photos, set scanning to “lighter” instead of “auto”, otherwise the photos will be too dark to be visible. An unreadable photo is just a waste of expensive ink.
- In general, avoid large patches of ink like dark photos or blocks of reversed text. These gobble up ink, which is expensive, and tend to cause paper jams as the machine spits them out unevenly.
- If one end of the print is ink-heavy, e.g. the masthead, make it feed last. This avoids jams.
- Masters will get wrinkled over time depending on a number of factors: large inky areas as above; unevenly fed paper; stopping the machine too many times to clear jams or the output bin.
– Keep a close eye on copy quality but avoid making too many masters – the film is very expensive. The beauty of a duplicator like a Risograph is that if you can avoid making too many master, the cost per copy gets cheaper the more you print!
Paper and ink
We used up about half the paper we brought, about nine boxes of 20, but almost all of the ink – only 1 ½ tubes were left of the original 10. Goes to show you how too many photos and reversed text blocks can gobble up ink. There was less spoilage than I thought there would be.
Editions and Circulation
Volume 1, Number 1, Tuesday, August 30, “Histrionics” – 2,500 copies
Number 2, Wednesday, “Narcissism” – 7,500 copies
Number 3, Thursday, “Delirium” – 3,000 copies
Number 4, Friday/Saturday, “Schizophrenia” – 5,000 copies
Number 5, Sunday, “Pyromania” – 2,500 copies
Total press run about 20,500 copies.
We had homemade fire-spouting porcine delivery units!
photo by Taymar
Staff
(not sure who took this one)
PDF editions of the Beacon can be viewed here: http://bitethe.com/brb/archive.htm
Yeah, this one is done kind of linear, but let’s not be all McLuhanesque about it.
HOW WE GOT THERE
THURSDAY, AUGUST 25
In the morning we picked up a 2005 Yukon SUV rented from Avis, quite big enough for all our gear but hard to drive in populated areas. We were all reconfigured and loaded by 1100, and left just after 1200 shopping for food and (prescription) drugs to get into the Port Angeles ferry lineup by 1300. Getting a reserved spot on the sailing was a very good idea – the company just started that this year, for a $10 charge. The ship sailed at 1500, we got waved through at Customs (but just to make sure, I had taken field-stripped the Pantzooka and distributed the parts throughout the cargo), and arrived at Carry and Angie’s in Federal Way about 2030. We were all tired, we talked a bit and went to sleep about 2300.
FRIDAY
We got up early and I helped to prepare the van Carry and Angie had rented to serve as a printing room down there. I moved 1,000 pounds of paper (20 boxes of 11x17” paper, 50,000 sheets in all) around in the back and then we all helped lift the 450 pound RISOgraph duplicator machine into the front of the cargo space, where it would stay. We left about 1100, found Cosco and bought water, jerky, dry sausage, and other snacks. By evening we were in Eugene, and we spent an entire freaking HOUR driving around trying to find the hotel. One complication is that Eugene has regulations about signs, i.e. that they must be hidden behind greenery. But we did find it, and it was nice, and we had a good dinner and a swim.
SATURDAY
We were planning to turn off south of Eugene and take Route 58, which would have taken us through the Cascade Mountains and down to Klamath Falls. However, your faithful chronicler and navigator screwed up so we followed I-5 down to Medford (were we went to a Hot Topic in a shopping mall to get some bandanas for Lianne) and across to Klamath Falls on Route 66. No, not that one, this was a torturous winding two-laner through mountains and scrubby hills that required real attention to drive through. We found the hotel at Klamath Falls no problem and went to the Fred Meyer to get final supplies of water, food, and booze. I filled the bulk water containers (two 5 gallon cubes and one 6 gallon jerrican) and did final packing.
SUNDAY
The last driving day and was a bit of a stretch, about six hours. Same route via Alturas – Cedarville, though we did not go to Gerlach this time. We were at the Gate by 1430 and found the camp without trouble, at 9:00 and Amnesia, on the south side of the “keyhole” at the 9:00 plaza. Not a bad spot but we were only about 100 yards away from the end of the power grid, so we had to use generators for electrical power – not a convenient option.
WHAT WE DID THERE
Black Rock City on Wednesday or so, population between 25,000 and 30,000. Final city population unconfirmed at just over 40,000.
SUNDAY
First, unpack. I nearly killed myself in the heat running back and forth grabbing stuff from the truck, trying to get the tent set up and ballasted and being unpleasant to people in the process. I apologize for that. After I learned not to overdo it, the day seemed to get hotter and the wind stronger, but by the evening we were set up and went for a walk trying to find Tinker Bill’s dome at Asylum Village, just down the road. No one knew where anything was, since there were still large gaps in the neighborhood and people were still trying to get their own bearings, so we gave up and went to bed. Spotty sleep.
MONDAY
We got up, had some breakfast, said proper hellos and went over to see Bill in the daylight.
We found him and then poor Lianne came down with the “playa bends” – combined heat exhaustion and altitude sickness, worsened by no supper, booze, not enough sleep and too much water drunk too quickly. Later that day we went to the EMT station down the street (another good part of living on the Plaza) to get her some Gatorade, electrolyte tablets, and good advice. She felt much better after a nap in the shade structure, and when it got dark we got ready to set out to see the Man. Just as we were leaving Mitch, the publisher, arrived in his 37’ RV with entourage inside.
The Man was built on top of a place called the Funhouse, a maze of rooms with revolving doors and many small chambers with art inside them – e.g. a wall of face molds that would light up randomly and “speak” a pre-recorded message. The wind was strong all day and picked up at night, we ran into several white-outs where the only thing you can do is stop moving and hope someone on a bike does not plow into you.
That night we produced the first edition of the Black Rock Beacon- 2500 copies. I learned to run the Risograph and became rather proprietary about it.
TUESDAY
The weather was much improved. The wind dropped and it was still quite hot. In mid-morning, we were sitting in the shade structure when a columnist from Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi, walked in and started to interview us. Media Mecca had sent him over. He asked some good questions about the Beacon, the ex-Gazette, and about BM in general. There were about 10 of us and we talked to him for over an hour. I think I even impressed him when he let slip that he had edited an expatriate newspaper in Moscow in the late 90s, the Exile, and I told him I had read the book-length collection of excerpts from the paper he published on returning to America. As it turned out, he left Black Rock City on Thursday and filed a story on Burning Man that was exactly what you’d expect from someone who didn’t get it – “white middle-aged hippies playing in the sandbox, trying to convince themselves they matter” etc. etc.. Obviously no sign that he had actually talked to anyone there (except selective quotes from Larry Harvey), least of all us.
Later in the day we took our bikes out to the Machine to interview the crew working on it, with the intention of writing an article on this massive sculpture. Lianne took my notes and wrote the article – I had written so much stuff for the Beacon it wasn’t all going to see the light of day anyway, so I was glad to give her the byline.
Later that night I did some casting. This was the only night I had enough time, light, and low winds to do this. I turned out a few of the two-sided mold castings; the only one that really worked was the Brain. Unfortunately I did not have enough time to cast much new metallic schwag at home, so had to rely on what I brought with me – there was enough.
Beginning tonight, we started to have problems with deadlines. At the daily production meeting at 1000, the announced deadline for writers and photographers to have their stuff in to the editor of the day was 1600. This would have allowed the editors (usually Mitch) and layout people (Carry and Angie) a few hours to work on the stories before the production people (me and Lianne) could start printing it. As it was, stories were not handed in until late, editing was persnickety as many stories and photos had to be cut or shrunk considerably to fill available space., and Lianne and I did a certain amount of waiting around in the dark for the word to get printing. This night we started printing at 2300 and worked until 0330, printing 7,500 copies. We were tired and unhappy when we got to be, because we knew we could not sleep past 0830 – the temperature in the tent rose so quickly after that hour, when the sun hit the roof.
WEDNESDAY
I can’t quite recall what we did on this day besides eat something and try to rest, while hanging around camp waiting to get an early start on printing the paper. I think Lianne went to Empire with Carry and Angie, or maybe that was Tuesday. Again, problems with deadlines and our hope of starting to print by 2000 came to naught when someone turned in a story at 2230, after a hole had been held in the paper for it. It was a good story but it meant that we did not start printing until 0100. Lianne’s story on the Machine ran in this edition. We worked until almost 0400, printing 3,000 copies, and were rather disgruntled when we hit the sack.
THURSDAY
Another good day, weatherwise. Today at the morning staff meeting we spoke up again about the delays and how it was unfair – Carry and Angie scored us some time off so in the afternoon we went out to see some camps. We went to see our friend Linda at the Rocktoria camp, looked for but did not find Big Puffy Yellow Camp, had a drink and a nice chat at Citrus Dome where we spun the wheel for random drinks and looked at their dome cooling systems (they were engineers), and went to Pewterman camp.
Pewterman camp was made up of staff rom Reaper Miniatures in Texas, and they had used their centrifuge and plentiful supplies of scrap pewter to make hundreds of flat Burning Man shapes, strung on a string with a pewter bead marked 2005. Primo schwag. We had a good chat with Erin, the only one in camp at the time, about Burning Man, the camp, kids, casting, etc. She liked my handmade castings too.
On the way back via the Esplanade we looked for but did not find [Bad username or site: ”rosminah” @ livejournal.com] at Hookahdome. near there we had a chat with a Mexican fellow who was working at Winking Lotus Camp and was going to have brass-casting demonstrations, he brought all his stuff but couldn’t generate enough interest. I left him some of my stuff. I also dropped off packages of “Japanese” castings (from old molds I had bought of a samurai and a lady in kimono) at Camp Wabi (a from-Seattle camp where there was afternoon Go, but I didn’t have a chance to play) and some samurai style bar on the Esplanade. Two topless girls gave me a cold beer and Gatorade in thanks. I drank the beer when I got back, my first drink in weeks – cheap Mexican Tecate, common find at Burning Man and good when it’s cold.
We did not print this night – the next paper was the Friday/Saturday edition, so it didn’t really matter. Instead we ate an enormous amount of pork – it was “Lord Fouffypans”’ 46th birthday and he barbecued an enormous amount of meat Texas-style over fruitwood. The entire BBQ surface was solid meat, including a whole smoked shoulder. Among the guests was Anthony Haden-Guest, art-journalist in New York for different trans-Atlantic magazines (apparently Tom Wolfe satirized him as “Peter Fallow” in Bonfire of the Vanities, but I didn’t see the resemblance) and half brother of Christopher Guest the film-maker. He was supposed to be doing a piece on “the art of Burning Man” for Art in America. I talked to him for a little while and loaned him my mug. The folks you meet out on the playa….
At 2200 we went to see Quixotic Windmill Burn. This was [Bad username or site: ”extrastout” @ livejournal.com]’s big project for the year, he and many of his friends worked their guts out practicing designing and raiding funds all year to build three working windmills out on the playa, and then at the climax of an allegorical performance light them on fire. It was the most impressive performance I saw all Burn and I am very glad things worked out so well for him and his group.
At 2300 we walked across to the 3:00 plaza to Club Verboten for their annual Kraftwerk concert night. We had a good time! By sheer accident we sat next to Julie X, the medic who had treated Lianne for playa bends on Monday. Later we danced and I met Mr. Jellyfish Mr., a guy from Camp Apokiliptika who was wearing a black Lycra suit – with his balding head and glasses he looked just like Dieter from Sprockets. I got up to give him a pin, apropos of nothing other than admiring his dress and dancing style, and a moment later Jason introduced me to him as one of his friends! Mr. Jellyfish was ecstatic when Jason told him I was the inventor of the Pantzooka. At the end of the evening “Robot MR-1” visited us, a 10 foot tall robot with glowing eyes and mouth with long rod puppet hands. “Kernel Killbuck” leader of Camp Apokiliptika across the street, was controlling it and the robot danced with everyone for an extended version of “The Robots”.
FRIDAY
In the morning we printed up the Friday/Saturday edition of the paper: 5,000 copies. We could work in the van by using the air conditioner (though we had to get a jump-start from our SUV first. Good job I bought those jumper cables) which made it tolerable for men and machines and we were done by Around Lunch. After that, we visited with Bill at Asylum Village again.
On returning, I shouldered the Pantzooka and walked across the playa to show it off at Camp Apokiliptika. The camp was done up like a military base and Kernel had done his minivan over in some kind of Russian desert camouflage style. I was joyously received by Jellyfish, detoxified from the night before (though he still had some weird kind of red stuff smeared on his face) and Kernel Killbuck, leader of the camp. I also by accident met Erin from Pewterman camp while they were demonstrating “Miniman”, a remote-controlled wisecracking robot they had made. The Apokiliptikans loved my metal castings and I got a neat radiation badge and shoulder flash. They also appreciated the Pantzooka as providing a valuable public service, though I certainly noticed a lack of targets for it this year. Perhaps word is out?
I got back around dark (it falls so quickly on the playa it’s as if someone flipped a switch; also the nights were very dark this year because a new moon was coming – next year it will be a full moon) and we got ready to go out and see the death of the Machine. We were too late for the shows of acrobats etc. but the flame-shooting air cars were still driving around.
The engineers pulled the pins out of the structure and passed ropes into the audience, as planned, but the Machine, which was supposed to represent the three levels of the Freudian psyche, was too well build to yield to the pulling efforts of the audience, who were supposed to represent the mass Jungian unconsciousness. They could not do more than crack a few members, so at length a crane truck from DPW arrived and pulled at it some more, then with another go at the ropes it all fell down. Rather ironic that the Machine had to be destroyed by another machine.
This took a long time so it was after 2200 when we got free of the crowd – we went to Spike’s Vampire Bar, had a cup of wine and went to bed tired.
SATURDAY
In the morning and early afternoon we printed up 2,500 copies of the back page of the final, Sunday edition of the Beacon. We left a hole in the front page “above the fold” for the best photos of the Burn to be printed afterwards. In the afternoon we took a couple more hours to walk out on the playa and look at art. We saw, among many other things:
“Procession”, one of the best pieces out there this year. You can see the concrete footprints the statues have left behind them – in the day they held water, in the evening they held fire (fed in either case by underground pipes).
This was also a great attraction – no, you couldn’t get inside.
As it got dark we suited up and found a fairly good spot to watch, only 2-3 rows back from the front. I was feeling kind of antsy because I don’t like large crowds as a rule, because of the nastiness last year at the Temple burn, and because of the uncontrolled surge forward by 30,000 odd people as the Man falls.
Carry and Angie, from Federal Way; Jason and Emily, from Portland
Francis, Lianne and me
But the fire show was good, no attempt to synchronize everything like last year but some really nice spinning and this fire-breather in front of us grabbed one or two people from the audience to teach them how to do it.
photo by Taymar
I snapped pictures but ran out of film as the fireworks stopped, so I had no pictures of the Man himself burning. The ones below are excellent ones taken by Taymar, Beacon staff photographer (in fact, all the pictures that don't look as if they were taken by me were taken by him).
photo by Taymar
photo by Taymar
As the Man fell I got Lianne to her feet so the crowd would not trample us, and Angie and Carry and Lianne and I all held hands as we went forward and got swept up in the massive crowd that closed up and began to move counter-clockwise as it always does. I enjoy this feeling of being lost and powerless in a crowd less and less every year. After a quarter turn we had had enough and Lianne led the way out – fortunately my webbing kept people at a distance and cushioned me against their spiky gear. Carry and Angie went off to await the photographers and we killed time at Spike’s, from where I think we will watch the Burn next year, until 2300 when we went back and finished printing the Sunday and final edition of the Beacon. Our work was done.
SUNDAY
On Friday we talked about it and changed our minds – we were going to leave on Sunday midday instead of Monday morning. Good move, as it turned out. I helped Angie and Carry pack up the Risograph, leftover paper, bicycles and other things into the production van, helped Gothalot hitch up his “Aristocrypt” trailer, and struck our camp. For some reason our stuff was easier to pack this time, though I don’t think we were leaving with any less stuff – we had only disposed of water and some food during the week.
We were mobile by 1230, and after a long while stuck in the slowly moving exodus line, including one complete white-out, we were on the road back to Klamath Falls. Black Rock City was folding its tents behind us, the event was over for another year. Our last sight of a Burner at the gate was a fellow done up in a kilt, scarlet jacket and white pith helmet exactly like a Zulu War era British infantryman. Unfortunately I did not get a picture of this!
HOW WE GOT BACK
MONDAY
- Klamath Falls, stopped at Dollar Tree for lots of junk and candy
- Oakridge, on the way through the Cascades, gutbuster lunch at A+W
- Portland, La Quinta Inn and Suites, hard to find but a nice place in a mini-mall with a good pool and sauna. We ate microwaved burritos for dinner.
TUESDAY
- Portland, on the road by 0930
- Quilchena, no luck finding a public toilet but we ate lunch at a small place in this small town
- Port Angeles, we were very early for the 1715 ferry. We killed time by buying books and picking at food. We were back home by 1900.
Vacation over.
THE END.
OOOOH, JUST WAIT UNTIL NEXT TIME
WHAT WORKED
- The paper proved really well received.
- Having our own toilet in camp! Best money we ever spent, besides the ticket.
- The Risograph cranked out almost 21,000 copies with no problems beyond the occasional paper jam.
- The Pantzooka, though there were almost no targets seen and no time to go hunt Donald Ducks.
- We had plenty of water - didn't touch the cubes.
WHAT DIDN’T WORK
- Way too many people in too small a space. There wasn’t much empty ground for trash to fall onto.
- circulation of the paper could have been better - there were a lot of leftover copies.
- Camp was not strictly a “working” camp – we had a few people who didn’t have any defined function on the paper, and that caused some friction.
- Even though the tent was much bigger and far more comfortable this time, it got too hot too fast and we spent ay too much time keeping the interior organized. Next year we are going to go in a light pickup truck with a camper-top. No more tents.
TAIL PIECE – THE BLACK ROCK BEACON
HISTORY
Well, you remember the daily paper Black Rock Gazette, that I talked about in previous accounts? This year it's gone, casualty of a budget cut. In April 2005 this bomb was dropped on the BRG staffers, essentially firing them from volunteer positions. There was a pitiful pre-printed "Gate" edition of the Gazette handed out with the packages one got on arrival, but that was all.
So, instead of sulking, the ex-BRG staffers decided to make a new daily paper, the Black Rock Beacon. A revenge paper, a grudge paper, but evening the score because it was going to be a better paper, without censorship by the BMOrg and printed on the playa itself.
We were a theme camp, located at 9:00 and Amnesia (one ring out from the Esplanade, and a bit out from the 9:00 Plaza). Our website is http://www.blackrockbeacon.org.
photo by Taymar
Oh, and the proper spelling of the paper is the Black Rock B(e)acon. We are into pork products, our motto is:
Lux, Veritas, Lardum
(Light, Truth, Bacon)
PRODUCTION NOTES
Facilities and Resources
Our facilities were a van, as described, and a two-room tent for the computer and printer. Both were kept closed as much as possible against the dust. The Risograph and such paper as was needed for the next edition was kept in the van. The machine weighed over 400 pounds so we moved it into the right position in the van in Federal Way, after Angie had built a nice little pallet for it.
The computer and printer were in the second, “cleaner” room of the tent. Carry and Angie did the layout and some proofing/editing, used inDesign for layout on an old Macintosh G3 (I think). As we did not have a digital-download module that would have let us print the files straight to the Risograph, we had to print out a copy of the paper on the laser printer, tile it as we had only an 8.5x11” printer, tape it together, and make a master from that. It worked, but the layout was a little funny, as stories could not cross the fold line. Frequently the laser-printed originals were not in good shape because it got so hot in the tents during the day the toner would melt in the cartridge. For the same reason the computer was generally unusable in the middle of the day.
How I printed the paper
- Place the original on the glass on top of the duplicator; lower cover.
- Press “M/P” button to set for Master, then press Start. Machine takes a moment to make a master of a sheet of thin plastic film which is then wrapped around a large drum in the centre of the machine. A cylindrical ink cartridge is loaded in the centre of the drum. Paper is fed through one end of the machine and is pressed against the drum, the master acts as a stencil through which the ink is squeezed, and the print is fed out the other side.
- The machine will make one test print. Sometimes you have to make a few because the ink needs to get “started” in flowing through the master, which works as a stencil. We found this to be more of an issue after a hot day, for the heat in the van seemed to have “baked” the ink onto the drum in a few spots.
- When the print looks OK, punch for the number of copies you want and keep the machine fed with neatly stacked paper. We kept the speed low to avoid paper jams in the drum area – the most common problem, easy to clear but took time and disturbed the master each time we had to open the machine.
- Because the machine could not print two-sided, we would print first one side, “jog” the printed sheets into neat stacks, and print the other side when the second page prints were ready. It was important that the papers be jogged correctly to feed into the machine properly, and Lianne did a great job at this boring task.
Risograph tips
- When making a master with photos, set scanning to “lighter” instead of “auto”, otherwise the photos will be too dark to be visible. An unreadable photo is just a waste of expensive ink.
- In general, avoid large patches of ink like dark photos or blocks of reversed text. These gobble up ink, which is expensive, and tend to cause paper jams as the machine spits them out unevenly.
- If one end of the print is ink-heavy, e.g. the masthead, make it feed last. This avoids jams.
- Masters will get wrinkled over time depending on a number of factors: large inky areas as above; unevenly fed paper; stopping the machine too many times to clear jams or the output bin.
– Keep a close eye on copy quality but avoid making too many masters – the film is very expensive. The beauty of a duplicator like a Risograph is that if you can avoid making too many master, the cost per copy gets cheaper the more you print!
Paper and ink
We used up about half the paper we brought, about nine boxes of 20, but almost all of the ink – only 1 ½ tubes were left of the original 10. Goes to show you how too many photos and reversed text blocks can gobble up ink. There was less spoilage than I thought there would be.
Editions and Circulation
Volume 1, Number 1, Tuesday, August 30, “Histrionics” – 2,500 copies
Number 2, Wednesday, “Narcissism” – 7,500 copies
Number 3, Thursday, “Delirium” – 3,000 copies
Number 4, Friday/Saturday, “Schizophrenia” – 5,000 copies
Number 5, Sunday, “Pyromania” – 2,500 copies
Total press run about 20,500 copies.
We had homemade fire-spouting porcine delivery units!
photo by Taymar
Staff
(not sure who took this one)
PDF editions of the Beacon can be viewed here: http://bitethe.com/brb/archive.htm
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-09-30 08:50 pm (UTC)mind if i add you, mister burner?
no subject
Date: 2005-09-30 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-30 08:58 pm (UTC)I would have been out there with those guys, too, if I hadn't decided to turn my life upside-down and move to Philadelphia. Maybe some other year....
no subject
Date: 2005-09-30 09:20 pm (UTC)