(and this blogger’s final wrap-up)

Coyote (Photo by Cloe)

Coyote (Tony Perez) is our Clean-Up Manager. He’s also in charge of surveying (and superintending) Black Rock City, serving on the DPW Council, and telling bad jokes the whole time.

Jimmy

He drives around in a big yellow truck with delineator cones and empty beer cans in the bed, usually accompanied by a cute girl or two in the cab. He conducts the Golden Spike ceremony and the Green T-Stake ceremony, and the 4:20 Spire ceremony – then he goes back into town and tends bar at the Black Rock. Oh, and occasionally he’ll cook up a gourmet meal or two, while espousing common-sense philosophy and stories about Burning Man in years past.

This is exactly the sort of person you want in charge of things out here. It’s no joke when he tells you that the event hinges on him doing his job right. If he doesn’t run Clean-Up smoothly – if we fail that inspection – then the event doesn’t happen.

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The Green T-Stake ceremony marks the end of DPW’s work

As they say in the biz, it’s a wrap. Today, the cleanup crew swung the last rake, picked up the last traffic cone, chased the last piece of runaway moop. Black Rock City is gone, leaving no trace…

Lucky

It was a good day all around; in fact, it felt a lot like the last day of school. Line Sweeps meandered through the outer edges of the city, then took a walk down Gate Road. There was so little moop that we ended up taking a few unscheduled breaks, just sitting around on the playa and chatting.

Breaktime

Breaktime, more

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Yes, it was as scary as it sounds.

Mayfield was really excited about having a talent show. He kept announcing it at the morning meetings, almost ad nauseam. It sounded like a pretty dorky idea at first, but Mayfield has a knack for convincing people – and besides, he kept reminding us that we could do it DPW-style.

He was right, too. He had wrangled up a big group of volunteers for the weekend; the Black Rock Social Club was packed to the gills for the best talent show this little blogger has ever seen.

Click any small photo to enlarge it. And please excuse the dust on my camera lens!

The show was hosted by Tremain Calm and Sleep Dep. Pandragon and Tom each performed spoken word (which was excellent, despite Mayfield’s repeated warnings that anyone reciting poetry would be fed to Lazlo). Next up was a very disturbing clown act by Fitz in Your Mouth.

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All photos by Cloe

It was just another day on the playa. Line Sweeps crew was walking around, noses to the ground, mooping the Temple site. Bobtuse was driving through the major sand dunes, dragging a metal square to flatten them and expose any litter. Special Forces were roaming the city, going from one orange cone to the next to clean up the worst spots.

On Line Sweeps, we were taking an early morale break when DA called over the radio: Special Forces had found a bad hot spot, and could use some backup. “Finish your break,” he said, “and moop your way over here.” Easy enough.

Coyote was the first to arrive at the spot, where he found Special Forces raking up debris – and Super Dave on site, pretty worked up. Look at all this rebar they’d pulled out of the ground! Look how bad this site was! It was the sort of thing that the BLM would be very unhappy to see – the sort of thing that could get the event canceled. And then, he lifted one of the orange cones to expose the worst part of all:

The head of Blackbeard Matt, who was buried up to his neck in playa.

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The Gerlach high school challenges DPW to volleyball

The Gerlach Lady Lions

This is a small town, and it would be impossible for the locals to ignore all these DPW kids roaming around with strange haircuts and black clothes. In truth, I think we provide them a little entertainment, you know?

A week or two ago, it was announced at our morning meeting that the Gerlach High volleyball team – the girls’ volleyball team – had challenged us to a tournament.

Needless to say, we took the challenge as seriously as we possibly could. We planned extensively: what are we going to wear? Who has zombie makeup? What cars should we drive into the high school parking lot in order to create as much disruption as possible?

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