AND PERFECT WEATHER FOR 5 DAYS!
I have to admit it: one of my biggest fears about going to Burning Man, is the tradition of having first-time ‘Burners’ – aka ‘Virgins’ – get out of their vehicle at the entry gate, lay down on your back in the dirty, dusty (but soft, like baby powder) desert playa . . . and make ‘playa’ angels. I had heard about the dust – and how you can’t take showers at Burning Man (unless you have a swanky RV – or some kind of solar/sun shower setup) – and how the dust gets everywhere – and its totally inevitable that everything you own will be covered with the alkaline dust that you will have to clean feverishly with white vinegar for days after you get back to civilization. I didn’t want to be a wussy . . . but did I really have to get all crapped out the VERY first thing I do at Burning Man? WTF.

We would end up having ideal weather for most of our trip. The rain kept the dust down for 4-5 days – the wind was minimal – and the daytime temperatures climbed slowly and incrementally during the week from the low 90’s on Monday to the high 90’s the Friday and Saturday. Our first evening on the Playa – after we set up the campsite – was quite cold – I needed a comforter, sleeping bag and slept in a t-shirt and sweats. The subsequent evenings were like the days: incrementally getting warmer. The last night, I slept nude with just the sleeping bag open on top of me. It was very comfortable temperature-wise.

SEX, SEX, SEX and MORE SEX
This is the first thing my friend Brett asked me about Burning Man:
BRETT: “So, how many?”
BOB: “How many what?”
BRETT:“You know: how many times?”
BOB: “You mean - how many times did I get LAID?”
BRETT:“Yeah! How many?”
BOB: “You mean – the first DAY? probably about 6 or 7 times!”
BRETT:“REALLY!!!!?!?!?!” (smiling and wide-eyed)
BOB: “Nah – just messin’ with you dude! I didn’t get laid at all!”
BRETT: “Awwwwwww – rrrrrreally?” (sounding really disappointed!)

YOU WILL BE TRIPPING OVER
PEOPLE HAVING SEX
Even before I went on my first mission to Burning Man this summer of 2010, friends were saying to me “take lots of pictures” and “be sure to tell me about it!” I was also told – actually implored – to ‘bring LOTS of condoms . . . and LUBE! You have to bring lube – people will thank you for bringin’ lube, because its REALLY dusty and grimy there.” I had several friends tell me to be amply prepared for lots of gang sex – even though I really had no intention of getting laid by strangers in public with my dusty, hairy, middle-aged ass in the air – I wouldn’t be doing humanity a favor at that point, I reckon. Reluctantly, on my last day of shopping at Fred Meyers to get supplies for the trip, I caved in and shelled out for a tube of lube. Needless to say, I kept the Fred Meyers receipt: I suppose I can get my money back on that un-used product.

I have to say – even though I had condoms and a tube of lube at the ready for any spontaneous sex-fest-orgy-thon that might erupt at any moment . . . . I did not score at Burning Man. WEEP NOT FOR ME!!! I just wasn’t looking for that (there is a very nice woman in my life that I’m spending time with – no disrespect to the THOUSANDS of gorgeous women at Burning Man). I think you can definitely explore any and all aspects of eroticism across the sexual spectrum of possibilities at Burning Man – in a safe, acceptable environment. In fact, for any and every kind of sexual practice, preference, or fetish known to humanity, there’s probably a workshop and support group at the festival so you can get even MORE into it! That is the great thing about Burning Man: people can be real – and a person’s proclivities that might be considered ‘out of the norm’ or ‘dysfunctional’ in the ‘real world’ can be accepted, discussed and accepted by a community and mission-statement that makes that possible. Everybody is accepted. We’re all in this together, so it is all of us with all our differences and unique traits that make up the colorful tapestry of humanity. You really feel this at Burning Man.

I saw a lot of naked bodies: lots! Tits. Cocks. Vaginas. Tatoos. Piercings. People getting led around on leashes. I’m sure there was a lot of sex happening, but I didn’t see any of it happening. I didn’t really look for it. One of the old-time Burners I was talking with said his only disappointment with this year’s festival was there weren’t enough public displays of spontaneous banging – like in past years. In earlier years of the festival’s history – from what I hear anecdotally – that was a bigger part of the festival. I think its just grown into much more than that.

I will say, there were gorgeous women – and men – everywhere. To me, the healthy thing about people being free with their sexuality and their bodies – is that it de-mystifies sexuality and makes it part of our everyday being and expression. Its taken out of the realm of ‘naughty’ and ‘inappropriate’ and it just becomes a ‘normal’ day-to-day expression of who you are. Don’t get me wrong: it is really awesome to be standing in a long line in the middle of the day waiting to buy bags of ice, with gorgeous half-naked 20-something goddesses all over the place. But it also just becomes ‘the norm’ and after a while, you find you’re not staring at a woman’s tits, wondering what they look like under that shirt – because everybody’s tits are hanging out. And when everybody’s tits (and butts and cocks – - – ok, maybe not too many cocks!) are there for everyone to see – well, then we start to get past obsessing on the unseen, and ironically, start to see people for who they are – not what they look like, or what they do. Its the dichotomy of living in our mixed message society that is simultaneously puritanical on the one hand – and exploitative of eroticism on the other – that creates so much dysfunction, confusion, angst and pain in people. The openness of the festival really shines a light on that.

GIVE WHAT YOU GOT – SAFETY THIRD!
When you enter the gates at Burning Man, you are committing to an unwritten contract that says you are totally free to be all that your are in your true-blue, authentic-self glory; that you are a CONTRIBUTING, GIVING member of the community. Meaning, you either have gifts to give; services to offer; workshops to teach; talents to entertain; time to serve or volunteer — or you are one of the many artists creating the vast array of mind-bending, technology-pushing, creative smorgasbord of art installations, nightclubs and art cars that populate the desert playa. You and 50,000 other people – for 7 days – will partake in a money-free, barter-free economy where the currency is based on freely, joyfully giving and sharing of resources without no expectation of receiving anything in return; that you will be radically self-reliant for 1 week in a dusty, hot, high (elevation 4,000 ft.) desert environment); and MOST importantly, that you will have A BLAST doing it. Like they say at Burning Man: “Safety Third!”

IT IS A TOTAL TRIP – GET YOUR HEAD STRAIGHT
There’s an old adage that says, if you’re going to take hallucinogens, you’d better be in a good frame of mind when you take it. That principle need not be limited to the injestion of LSD – its good to have a good, secure sense of self doing anything in this life. And so it is with one’s expectations – and experience – going to Burning Man. You get what you put into to it – and you’ll likely find what you’re looking for, if it doesn’t find you first! My main reason for going, is I wanted to see and experience something I haven’t seen and experienced before – to see the application of alternative ways of being, community, commerce, city planning, spirituality – and experience it on a large scale. Burning Man is a festival – it is also a project; a study; a laboratory for community building and socialization. If you have personal or relationship issues happening – and you are at Burning Man with your partner, or the devil on your shoulder – those issues can be magnified there at the festival. But the magnification can be transformed into illumination. There are all kinds of workshops and support for those kinds of relationship issues that might arise at BM. Also, there is a tradition of BM elders and veterans sharing their experiences with the newbies like myself. That was invaluable – to have friends in our camp that had over a decade of experience with the festival totally enriched my experience. I was surprisingly in a great head space for this event. It really felt like I was at ‘home.’

PARADOXICAL CONVERGENCE – WE’RE ALL IN IT TOGETHER
Burning Man is a total trip – and it is totally transcendent. A hedonistic bohemian smorgasbord of indulgence and excess – and a forward-thinking, compassionate culture of innovation, creativity, inspiration – with a Wild West ‘can do’ frontier spirit. In the mainstream – or what my friend Jo Ostgarden calls ‘the default’ culture – that dichotomy may seem irreconcilable. At Burning Man, paradoxes co-existing are the norm!

Burning Man is a quintessentially American event that could not happen any where else in the world. The combination of geography – the beautifully spacious, barren vistas of the northern Nevada desert playa, coupled with the relative freedom, diversity, energy and ingenuity of our American culture – would be very difficult to replicate anywhere else in the world. What I came away with from this event was HOPE and INSPIRATION. HOPE – for humanity. I experienced many disparate groups of people, cultures and lifestyles not just co-existing but flourishing in this setting of acceptance and creativity. INSPIRATION: There is a community spirit of “git ‘er done” as regards banding together and surviving the harsh elements – not only a feeling of “we’re all in this together,” but a sense that we can build something amazing and beautiful our of the desert playa: that we can shape the challenge and desolation into the art of living freely and creatively. A sense of innovation, creativity, spontaneity and possibility permeates every moment. A premium on fun, and a recognition of the greatest gift we have: ourselves. Human beings are amazing, and can do amazing things. Go to Burning Man and be amazed by humanity.

LATER DAYS, MR. CORPORATION MAN – POWER TO THE PLAYA PEOPLE
There are no corporate sponsors at Burning Man. Everything that happens there – everything that is gifted, everything that is created and shared – is by and from the people attending it. People deeply invest their time, money and soul to contributing to these 7 days of celebrating freedom, innovation, creativity, community, sexuality – and fun, fun, fun!  There is so much to consider – and so much inspiration and compassion to be brought out into the world after experiencing something like this. I hope some of my words can convey – and convince – anybody who’s been considering this event to take that next step and DO IT!

DAYWEAR – GETTING THROUGH THE HEAT OF THE DAY
It is hot and dusty, and the sooner you accept and embrace that, the better off you’ll be. The daytime temperatures were in the low-to-upper nineties. I spent almost 20 years living in Tucson, so I wasn’t freaked out by the heat – but the conditions there are even more extreme than Tucson: the elevation is high (4000 ft.) so the sun feels stronger – like there’s less filtration of the sun’s rays. And it is even dryer and more barren – in the valley of Black Rock City, there ain’t SHIT for life: no vegetation, no creatures. We were told that there were no insects, but we did see a couple of flying bugs – we were astounded to see a dragonfly flit through our campsite one afternoon. In terms of attire, it is good to dress light and comfortable – because this is Burning Man, if you can combine outrageous and kooky qualities to your wardrobe, all the better. My typical daytime checklist for attire and Black Rock City commuting would include:

• Hiking boots or high-top Converse (keeps the dust off the feet)
• Batman or Superman underwear (no pants or shorts)
• Maybe a shirt
• Sunglasses
• Goggles (in case of dust storm)
• Bandana (or dust mask) in case of a dustup
• Either a second bandana or a hat for the head
• Sun Screen
• Bottle of water w/electrolytes (I brought a lot of Emergen-C)
• An extra cup in case you drop into a bar for some gifted hospitality drinks
• A fat-tire bicycle with a lock

STARFUCKS COFFEE’S GLOBAL CLIENTELE -
OUR HOME ON JERUSALEM STREET – FINDING THE CLEAN PORTA-POTTY
Burning Man: Hippie Fest. NOT! So many different people go to Burning Man. Our campsite was almost to the outer ring of Black Rock City’s circular city plan. When we arrived to set up camp, our street name was “Jhakarta.” After the Israeli contingent moved in (they flew a big Israeli flag on our street!), ALL the “Jhakarta” signs throughout the city were changed from “Jhakarta” to “Jerusalem.” Nobody minded! You can just do shit like that at Burning Man – as long as they kept the street name a “J”, it was cool!

The first morning at Burning Man, I woke up early – I was usually the first one up; either me, or my camp mate Linda. First thing I’d do in the morning would be to jump on my bike with my roll of TP and hit the cleanest Honeybucket I could find. At the outer edge of Black Rock City (the city plan is a circular grid – rather than a rectangular grid as is typical of American cities) – which would be street “K” – there is a fence, and outside that fence is the walk-in camping, as well as the airport for Black Rock City – about a mile away from the city’s edge. Small planes ferry people in and out of Black Rocky City – ultra-lights flit about – there was also a steady-stream of stunt parachute artists dotting the skies throughout the days at Burning Man.

About half a mile away – across a barren plane of playa desert strewn with the occasional walk-in campsites – was THE SCORE: the least-used porta potties at the whole festival! Just about a 3-4 minute bike ride across the desert sands. So, every morning early, I would have this lovely bike ride across the playa – it was the quietest part of the day. The sunrise is a gorgeous time of day – and many people are partying at the clubs all night long till the sun comes up, so there is almost always big boomin’ music thumping until dawn every day – - and then everybody chills out during the daytime. Because of the heat – and I suppose the plethora of hangovers – the daytime is much quieter as people are chillaxin’ and getting ready for the evening reverie, dancing and debauchery of choice. So, that was my favorite time of day – that real quiet time AFTER the partyers finally collapse when the air is cool, clear and comfortable – and BEFORE the middle-agers like myself get up in the morning. The early morning desert sky was always soft pastel colors – soft violets, umbers and blues with some light feathering of the atmosphere from the dusty plain floating in the air. I’d ride my bike across the slightly bumpy playa – looking for some tire tracks to ride along in – swerving to avoid the little pileups of playa dust that would abruptly put the brakes on your bike like quicksand. There are no facilities at Burning Man. The only things that are provided are port-a-potties, ice for sale, and some beverages at Center Camp. Not being a fan of port-a-potties (I don’t think port-a-potties even have a fan page on FB . . . ), I will say that BM did an amazing job of keeping those facilities clean on a daily basis.

Upon doing my duty, I returned to camp – body and head clear. No one’s up. No access to a stove to heat water to make coffee. Must have coffee. Hmmm. Burning Man: the giving culture. Could I just take my cup in hand, stagger off and go find coffee? I decided to test out this idea of joyful giving that was supposedly permeating every nook and cranny of Black Rock City. I had to go no further than the corner of my ‘block’ (a stagger of about 100 ft.), where I saw the SOMEWHAT familiar sign, perfectly, graphically rendered: STARFUCKS COFFEE. Yeah: I knew this would be my kind of place. I sat down on one of about 8 barstools surrounding a semi-circular plywood coffee bar centered beneath a huge pillowy, billowing parachute that served as the roof and shade structure, proudly built by the Starfucks Camp husband-wife team of Matt and Amy. There were about a half-dozen, bleary-eyed-but-smiling souls milling about, the seductive scent of freshly brewing coffee holding the promise of a fantabulous DAY 1 of my Burning Man experience. A friendly couple in their early 30’s, Matt was doing his 12th Burning Man; Amy, her 5th. He is a teacher in Weed, CA near Mt. Shasta – she is a stay-at-home mom with two kids ages 2 and 4. The kids were in CA with their grandparents. Amy told me that this was her’s and Matt’s one big adventure / ‘vacation’ they took each year without the kids, and it was something that was very strengthening for their marriage – it was something that they could deeply involve themselves with together, and solidified their relationship. I thought that was cool. They were just the most unassuming, kindest, warmest young couple – in the ‘real world,’ you might think them to be very ‘ normal and typical.’ Here at the festival, they were super-creative, extraordinary people who became the hub and community gathering place of our little neighborhood – at least for the early morning crowd.

My first day at the coffee bar, I not only got the best cup of coffee at the whole festival, I met 31-year old Adam from Perth, Australia; I met Linda – a 53-year old executive for a music soundtrack/licensing company from L.A.; there was 23-year-old Claudia (correctly pronounced ‘CLOUD-ee-uh’ she implored to the banal Americanese speakers who would ‘wrongly’ pronounce her name ‘CLAW-dee-uh’) from Switzerland, a beautiful and gregarious young lady (kind of a high-energy, naughty Zsa Zsa Gabor meets Amy Winehouse) who was having a lot of fun covering her hand with colored chalk, and giving as many people as she could convince into receiving bare-bottom spankings, leaving her handprint on many a bum across the playa. She had quite a few takers (for some reason, I never got one! Oh well, I’ll have to go back next year!). I met the gay couple airline stewards from Philadelphia: it was their first Burning Man too – they seemed very put together and strangely ‘straight ’  on the first day. By the second day, they were wearing makeup and wearing sarongs! It was amazing – every morning – to just meet people from all walks of life and cultures: best coffeeshop I’ve ever been to!

BLACK ROCK CITY
The Burning Man site is referred to as Black Rock City (BRC). BRC isn’t actually a city – it is a temporary community of 50,000. It is progressively exploring alternative commerce, radical self-reliance and alternative energy among other things – but it is not a long term sustainable model. It doesn’t have a government nor communications infrastructure, although somebody did try to operate a local, on-site texting network – but that performed spottily at best. There’s no cell phone coverage out there – nor web coverage (although there is a tower and texting/e-mail service at Center Camp), so, you’re really away from ‘the world.’ There are some services – there are greeters, local Black Rock City rangers (volunteers), a local radio station with music and information. So, it has a lot of things.

THE TEMPLE
The Main Temple is the spiritual heart of Burning Man. It is an all-inclusive temple and spirituality that accommodates and supports every individual’s beliefs. The sum-totality being greater because the value of each individual’s perspective and  experience encapsulates the full spectrum of humanity’s dark and light and re-combines it into something greater. A unified, diversified whole – rather than a splintered, disconnected conglomeration of separation and divisiveness. At Burning Man – the recognition is that we are ‘the gift’ – that we ourselves in our default dualistic context of dark and light; good and bad; idealistic and cynical; happy and sad; hard and soft – are in it together. And the Burning Man culture (mission) enourages this.

People had mixed thoughts – and mixed emotions – about the temple. In past years, the temple designs had been more ethnic and intricate – more ‘beautiful’ in a traditional sense. This year’s temple with its undulating and collapsing forms suggest motion and geography; mountainous forms that are at once monumental and stark and yet tectonically, energetically moving forward. I would also describe it as controlled chaos, which does reinforce and visually describe the Burning Man ethos. The artist’s statement describes the temple as suggestive of the earliest pre-architecture temple & sacred space gathering places of primitive man – when Mother Nature housed the places of worship in her caves and canyons. In effect, this temple being an example of architecture replicating nature.

Another condition (many visitors would prefer the word ‘problem’ to ‘condition’) the architectural design enabled was large-scale scrawling: graffiti. The Temple, with its vast, angular, flat areas and cubist, faceted shaped planes made it easy to scale the exterior walls. Some people took advantage of this to scrawl some very large messages, that were totally out of context with all the very heartfelt, personal and smaller messages that people wrote on the walls. Thankfully, the overly large graffiti didn’t stoop to cynicism (there is some of that at BM) or smut – it all conveyed a higher  if not banal  message (example: Be Here Now). In my mind, it is interesting to consider at what point the size of somebody’s scrawling devolves from what is acceptable and becomes unacceptable. Even though I found some of the large-scale scrawling uncomfortable, I would rather be uncomfortable living in a society that allows free-expression, that to live in a benign, comfortably numb society where all expression is generic and sanitized. The temple evoked strong emotion and provoked spirited dialog amongst the Burner’s as to its contextual, symbolic and aesthetic qualities. In my mind – for all these reasons – it was a huge success as a work of art and a place of worship.

The interior of the temple evoked the walls and canyons described in the artits’s statement – and to me, evoked emotions one might experience at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. People could write their prayers – vent and release their heartaches – shed the tears of grief and love – celebrate life’s gifts or cry out for help. There were words of wisdom and hope and remembrance. Typed-out eulogies or articles and pictures brought and stapled to the walls of the temple.  It felt like biblical times: we, in the desert, with this plywood-made huge temple on the dusty, hot playa. Candles smoke and the sacred scents of sage and incense permeate the air. Total strangers hug and console each other while realizing their compassion and humanity. What a gift to be here – a profoundly emotional space – a sad place; a happy place; a human place.

MUSIC AT BLACK ROCK CITY
The most amazing nightclub I’ve ever been to in my life: The Opulent Temple at Burning Man. 2 Massive video screens; flame-throwers synced to the music spewing dragon-fire over the dancing minions; bodies bouncing on the desert sands. Plus great music to boot. There are dozens of large ‘clubs’ dotting the playa. Most of the music is dance music – lots of techno, which was usually great a the clubs. The one downside to the music being broadcast over the playa, is that many of the art cars had their own booming sound systems, and they were often blaring what I think must have been very amateurish home-made techno beats. Some of it was just awful. There was some live music on the playa – but not much. My best guess is, the environment (specifically the alkaline playa dust – but also the temperature extremes between night and day) would be very harsh on musical instruments. I think if you want to  jam on the playa, you’d best bring an old thrasher guitar, so as not to risk the health of your favorite axe. Even some of the smaller campsites and villages in Black Rock City had little bars, clubs – even dance floors – that people set up. As always, if you can’t find a dance club, one will find you, because there’s an art car disco-on-wheels coming around the corner at any time.

OUR NEIGHBORS AT BLACK ROCK CITY
There were people from everywhere at Burning Man. Our neighbors to the west were a very nice mixed-race couple – not sure where they were from. They came a day or 2 later, and they may have been first-timers: it looked like they just had a rental truck that they camped out of, and 1 shade structure. They were pretty cute. Then there was the Tiki Hut Art car camp to our east: 3 generations of cowboys from Reno. The Grandpa of the group came over and spoke to us one morning – he knew a lot about the police enforcement there – he used to be a state trooper. Now, he and and his boys had this rolling bar on wheels that was trolling around the playa at all times of day and night. We had another couple of cowboys across the street – a very nice couple with a fancy RV. They seemed to be really getting their groove on: he started wearing a sarong – with his cowboy hat – several days into the event. I did hear that they probably would not come back to Burning Man. I think he enjoyed it, but his wife might have had a hard time with it. I heard there is a 60/40 ratio of men to women at BM. That statistic is heresay, but I dare say the lack of showers and abundance of dust can be especially tough on the ladies. Directly next to the cowboy couple, was a musician/drummer Jimmy and his advertising executive girlfriend from Austin, Texas. He was a gun-totin’ radical liberal, non-stop jibber-jabberin’ conspiracy theorist who had a trailer-hitch on the back of his bike: he would take his little drum set out to the middle of the playa, and just start jamming away. Jimmy was eccentric for sure, but he was a great, fun guy to hang out with: an awesome drummer! Then of course there was Matt and Amy running Starfucks Coffee. Down our street further, were Cougar and Tom: 2 middle-aged guys who lived a few blocks away: they would come by every day to flirt with my camp mates Linda and Joni, who were able to finagle a nice shower from those guys after a couple of days. The coolest guy I met, was Paul – from Vancouver, BC – a former big-time advertising executive who was attending his 15th – and last, for the time-being – festival. Paul is an amazing character who had a trailer with a dance-floor set up in front of his campsite. He had 2 vintage-sewing machines in his rig, and would do little impromptu sewing workshops with whomever would want to stop by. Paul also would do readings at Center Camp every day – he would stand there for several hours in the morning – holding up a sign that said something like “I will tell you something about yourself you don’t know.” He gave me a reading – and it was fantastic. That is a story unto itself. And of course, there was Adam from Perth, Australia . . . and Claudia from Switzerland. And the Israeli contingent down the street made me feel at home too. I loved my neighbors! Talk about diversity.

CAMPING STRATEGY AND EXECUTION – DEALING WITH THE ENVIRONMENT.
RADICAL SELF-RELIANCE. LEAVE NO TRACE.
Heat. Dust. Wind. Put those together, and that’s the extreme of what you’re dealing with. I was with some veterans of the festival – I can’t imagine doing it without somebody who’s had experience there, but I met several people there (young people) who came for the first time alone. But after being there for a week and seeing how cool and helpful people can be in an environment like that, its not too hard to see how a person could trust that everything would work out fine. Its not an expectation that people will be kind and helpful at Burning Man – its something that just IS – its something you can trust. I can’t tell you how radical and amazing it feels to KNOW that anybody you encounter is going to be cool – people go out of their way to help you.

My crew consisted of Phil and Toby-lyn (2nd time “Burners”) – they are my good friends/neighbors and own a Winnebago; then there is Wayne (5-time “Burner) who drove the converted Airporter Shuttle (named “Be Be Bus”) that he has totally pimped out Bollywood style; and then there was Douglas & Joni (14 yrs?) and Linda (6 or 7 yrs), who drove a van. It is awesome to have people with you who know WTF is going on. Burning Man’s credo might be “radical self-reliance’ – my style was more like ‘radically self-reliant with a support team!’

You have to bring enough water for your trip – for personal use. They say a gallon-and-a-half water for personal use – per day. I’ve heard 3 gallons of water a day for personal use and showering. Bringing water for 7 days is a big commitment – it even ends up being a weight consideration for your vehicle – a gallon of water weights 8.3 pounds, so if you multiply that by 7 – and the number of people in your group . . . that’s a lot of water/weight to haul in. You can’t buy water there. You can’t buy anything at Burning Man, except ice, coffee, chai, tea, hot chocolate and electrolyte drinks at the Center Camp – and it is expensive.

Everything else is gifted and shared. There are no public showers at Burning Man. No facilities other than porta-potties. You have to collect your gray water, and take it with you when you leave. You cannot dump it on the playa. There are options to showering: lots of people bring hand-wipes/baby-wipes; you can do the hand-towel thing; some hearty souls will chase after the water trucks that roll by to water down the dusty roads – - – but that technique usually ends up getting you dirtier: your feet get muddy, and the first gust of wind delivers a dose of playa dust that quickly adheres to your bod. And then, there are some camps that offer showers and bathing services. Or, as I think happened a lot – you make friends with somebody who has a nice phat RV, and they offer you a shower. Everybody is really gracious and nice at Burning Man.

OK – back to the camp. We took the 3 vehicles: the Winnebago; Wayne’s Airporter shuttle and the smaller van and positioned them to create a horseshoe or “U” – with the closed end of the “U” forming a protective barrier from the prevailing playa winds, which seemed to blow mostly from the northwest or southeast – sort of diagonally across our campsite. We had 3 tents as part of our group which we positioned within the “U” to provide some protection from the winds. You have to have at least 12 in. tent spikes or rebar to secure your tents and shade structures. We ended up having 4 shade structures covering the area between the vehicles. Shade structures are probably the most important part of your camp. If you bring an RV – unless you have a monster rig with a generator running AC – it is otherwise a big solar oven on wheels.

Same with your tent – unless its under a shade structure, your tent is a fry bucket for humans. So, you want to have some shade to hang and nap under during the peak heat of the day. The peak heat of the day is pretty much sun up to sun down. It ended up that our campsite layout strategy worked perfectly, as we were on the outskirts of the city, and we positioned ourselves in such a way that we were able to avert much of the intense dust blowups that would happen during the day. The dust devils and sudden, radical wind whip-ups are a result of rising heat during the day. Most of the dust storms happen during the day, usually abating by dusk. Although on the evening of the burning of the man, there was quite an intense dust storm during the fireworks display, the burn, and the exodus from the burn that night. It was great to be with a veteran crew of people who knew what they were doing, because you can easily lose your bearings and get lost in those dust storms. Sometimes, the visibility is zero: you have to hold people’s hands, or you’ll lose each other. Sometimes the dust storms last a few minutes – sometimes, they can last for HOURS.

ART, ART, ART and MORE ART
The level of creativity and ingenuity at this event is amazing. This has to be the biggest art installation – albeit it temporary – in the world. There are monumental sculptures – geodesic domes and all kinds of amazing temporary buildings and structures. The Art Cars are sensational, rolling nightclubs on wheels – ferrying revelers around the desert and acting as Taxi Cabs to take you home. There’s nothing like getting dropped off at your campsite at 4:00 in the morning by a giant Flintstones Mobile with 25 people on board toasting you goodnight as you collapse into your tent. There is so much creativity in people’s costumes – and almost everybody brings a creative touch to the event, large or small. The larger nightclubs feature some of the most radical and up-to-date sound, electrical and video technology: huge sound systems, giant video screens. And lots of fire! Huge bursts of fire spewing out over the audience – to where it feels like you’re eyebrows are getting singed. Performers everywhere: firespinners and jugglers. THUNDERDOME! OMG: they had a Thunderdome just like in Mad Max. A huge Geodesic dome framework – with spectators climbed up all over it, and 2 contestants suspended from large bungee cords swinging and flying back and forth, while they swat at each other will large foam swords – like the kind of large pillowy foam swords a marriage therapist might prescribe to a couple trying to work out passive aggressive issues. OMG – it was so authentic, right down to the scary, Gothic costuming of the fight ‘judge’ and the dark henchwomen – - – and the hilariously snarky woman MC imploring the contestants to beat the crap out of each other. What a crazy, whacked out scene.

THE DANCING WOMAN AND ART CARS
The dancing woman just deserves her own commentary – to many of us, she set the tone – she was emblematic certainly of the dance, the expression, the grace, the art, and I think the spirit – if not the collective spirituality – of the event. I visited her several times – day and night. I heard that this year – 2010 – there wasn’t as much monumental art as in previous years. Old-timers said it seemed as if much more energy went into making Art Cars. There certainly were a lot of them, and some of the ‘monumental-ness’ that might normally be applied to sedentary art installations was being conveyed through the ‘medium’ of Art Cars. There were several ships, which is a popular theme for vehicles sailing across the desert. There was an amazing Butterfly Car – with enormous wings – maybe 25 feet in length? – that actually flapped. There were fire-breathing, metallic dragon mobiles that ran by pedal power. There were so many things to see – and so many things you could not possibly see in 7 days, because the scale of the event is massive. I am astounded as I look at other friends’ photos from Burning Man at all the things THEY saw that I didn’t see. And I got around quite a bit – you just can’t possibly experience everything there.

“TYPICAL” DAY: LOUNGING • TOOLING AROUND
CENTER CAMP FUN • MARTINIS AT NOON
Camp days were spent getting up slowly – seeing the bicycles come and go from our camp for morning porta-potty runs – coffee getting fired up – some would lounge and read their Vanity Fairs and Cosmos; some would ride off into the Playa to see the daytime sights, do workshops, see the large art installations. Some days, we were just laying REAL low around camp – it was either just brutally hot, or we were hung over from the day before – or some combination thereof. One thing about Burning Man – if you can’t go to the mountain, the mountain WILL come to you! Just sitting there in our campsite on Jerusalem Street, you’d see huge art cars come ambling by, some with sound systems bigger than most clubs in Bellingham. One guy had bought an old wooden yacht – huge, like 4 stories high and I don’t know, maybe 70 feet long? Put that sucker on a truck chassis and brought it to Burning Man. He was only able to take it out for one ride before he had to park it: it looked like the bow was starting to bend – like it was going to collapse under its own weight!

The Center Camp is a great destination during the day. It is a large circular building (just like the circular layout of Black Rock City) that sits on the inner edge of the Esplanade (the road that rims the inner circle of the city layout) at a position of 6 o’clock. The Burning Man – who sits at the center of the city layout – faces the Center Camp building. Center Camp to me, was kind of like Mad Max meets Star Wars Bar. The building is a doughnut – it is roofed, except for a huge cutout in the center of the roof that is open to the sky. At each end of the building, there is a performance stage. This is also where you can purchase coffee, chai, electrolyte drinks, etc. Those drinks – and ice – are the only things sold at Burning Man. In the Center Camp building, there are just tons of amazing looking people milling around – doing yoga and acrobatics – people giving psychic readings – there was an amazing gallery of fine art there, as well as some profoundly and emotionally moving photo exhibits – one project was a group effort – a collaboration of various photographers capturing portraits of people on the playa, holding signs. The Center Camp is the base of operations, and all the other functioning bodies of the festival are either located in or near the Center Camp building – or in the satellite buildings that comprise the Center Camp.

We’d see all kinds of art cars – huge pirate ships – lots of little, tricked out electric golf carts all pimped and schwagged-out – some human-powered bicycle-based vehicles. Many people who have their own vehicles supplement their electrical usage partially – or entirely – by solar panels. People would drive by – usually with drinks (any time of day or night), stereos pumping, smiling and waving. Almost always in costume of some sort. Sometimes they’d stop at our camp for a conversation or a drink – and then go on their way.

ART CAR TECHNO-BAR GONE HORRIBLY WRONG
One morning, the silence was abruptly broken by the deafening sound of BAD techno blaring at about 7:30 in the morning – which is pretty much the middle of the ‘night’ at Burning Man – most nightclubs kick out the jams until dawn, then everybody recovers during the day. This art car had run out of gas on the next block behind our campsite and was cranking out this very bad techno music – lousy. I heard SO much BAD techno music at this event – I finally deduced that it must be home-made techno – people doing their own mixes, which sounds like jackhammers relentlessly pounding. One of the downsides of technology ‘freeing up the creativity’ of the masses. Ooooooooh – we were pissed. My camp mate Douglas – and another camper nearby – both siphoned some gas and gave it to the guys so they’d get the hell out of the neighborhood. Douglas was so brave – he stormed over there in his underwear swinging the gas can, and approached the art car – it seemed like there were maybe 15 guys on the car, either passed out or sitting around looking dazed. I didn’t see Douglas for a bit – and wondered if he might need some help (form me?) – then I see him appear, and the absolute largest, giant of a man jumps down off the car – approaches Doug – and gives him a big bear hug! Whew! No problem – they gassed up and went on their way. They were initially asked to turn their stereo down – but we think they mistakenly (they were drunk) turned it UP instead.

COMMERCE – A CURRENCY OF GIVING;
NO CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP;
MORE STARFUCKS COFFEE
& ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT FRENCH TOAST
One interesting component of the festival is a moneyless economy. Everybody brings what they need – and everybody shares something. It is expected that you participate and have something to give to the community. There is no money exchanged for goods or services – there is no barter or expectation of reciprocation – except the spirit of giving definitely begets the reciprocation of giving back. Its kind of contagious in that way. People spend exorbitant amounts of money, time and resources to have something to give to the festival – it could be food, or massages, or an art exhibit, or a rolling art car disco that ferries 70 people around all hours of the day and night across the desert sands. There were the guys down the block who started giving away french toast every morning, out of the back of the truck they rented. They started doing it just because they thought it would be fun and nice, until the Health Department came and shut them down, because so many people were lining up for free french toast, they qualified as a restaurant – and thusly, didn’t have a properly outfitted kitchen to be operating a public eatery. Then of course, my friends Matt & Amy who operated Starfucks Coffee in the morning – and then served up a choice of homebrew IPA, Honey Mead Wine or Barley Wine every afternoon. Our Pink Heart Camp hostesses operated a smaller, more modest operation: if you came at the right time, a perfect martini would be in your hand in no time.
The money-less commerce at Burning Man – and economy based on giving, rather than getting – is a feel-good, utopian idea, but it is obviously not a longterm alternative; it is not sustainable in our current reality. People give a lot of themselves at Burning Man, and it creates a unique, special TEMPORARY community in the context of a giving, gracious and compassionate modus operandii – but we obviously cannot give and give until we have nothing left. However, it is refreshing to create an attitude and atmosphere and modality that places value upon giving and sharing of resources. You go to an event like this – and even somebody like me, who is living at the financial margins of our society in America – has PLENTY to share. We all shared our food that we brought – and we STILL had extra food to divvy up when we got home after 7 days. We have so much abundance in America, its ridiculous. Even in this down economy – we are so blessed to have what we have.