We finally lost ACE Junkyard to the ravages of an unreasonable San Francisco landlord. She won only on a technicality, after a long expensive battle by Bill Kennedy, proprietor extraordinaire of ACE Junkyard.

I hope many of you know the wonders of San Francisco’s ACE Junkyard.  If not let me clue you in to the significance of what we are losing.  Bill who is also known to some of as Billy the Junkman, Junkman or even Belinda, has been the purveyor of fine junk in San Francisco for over 25 years and ACE has been THE resource for playa artmaking in Bay Area for over 15 years.  Let it be known Bill has provided an incalculable about amount of funding for playa art in the last 15 years, in the form of JUNK – wondrous, glorious, re-usable, transformable, JUNK!

Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

Over the years this junk has evolved into many ground-breaking forms of art.   Junk from ACE has been transformed into SRL’s machines, SEEMEN’s interactive work and Cyclecide’s pedal-powered carnival.  The list of artists doesn’t stop there. The following incomplete list of artists can all thank Bill for his uncanny ability to find that essential widget or for donating his  Junkyard venue to events like the famous Power Tool Drag Races: Flaming Lotus Girls, Rich Humphrey, Jarico Reese, Laird Rickard, Paul the Plumber, Big Daddy, John Law, Jim Mason, Michael Michael, Simone Davalos, Kimric Smythe, Shannon O’Hare, Sue Glover, Dan Das Man, Karen Cusolito, Scott Gasparian, Charles Gadeken, Kal Spelletich, Mark Perez, and Chicken John.

Come celebrate and say Goodbye to our favorite Junkyard on Saturday October 31st, Halloween at Cellspace 5020 Bryant Street. The Junkyard will be gone, but Bill remains and I’m sure he will figure out other ways to enrich us.

“The other side of it is…. well it was and is worth ever penny of it. The people, events, art, and most importantly to me the parts of myself that I found, and the person that I have become. A large part of who am now is because of the love and support on my family of friends I have made from this place.” -Bill The Junkman

Do you have a favorite ACE or Bill memory?

We went over to the Noodle Factory in Oakland on Sunday to get a taste of “The Burning Opera – How to Survive the Apocalypse.” It was one of the final tuneups for the show that opens Monday, October 5, at Teatro ZinZanni, on the waterfront in San Francisco.

The rock opera is a little bit “Hair” in that it tries to capture the zeitgeist of a movement, and a little bit “Rent” in the joyful exuberance that sometimes comes along with incredible hardship, and maybe a little bit “Jesus Christ, Superstar” in the way it touches your spiritual buttons.

The storyline is about a guy and his girl who make their way to the playa for the first time.  She’s a lot more reluctant about everything than he is, at least initially. She tolerates the greeters, gets freaked out trying to set up their tent in a dust storm, and in general is having a really crappy time. She finds very little amusing about shirtcocking, but of course she’s not alone in that assessment. But she’s uptight and really unsure about this whole radical self-expression thing in general, especially when it comes to nudity and sexuality.

But things happen.  There are transformations. Hilarity ensues. And you’ll want to see it all for yourself.

You definitely don’t need to have gone to the desert to get a kick out of the Burning Opera, but there is lots that will be familiar to people of the playa: PortaPotties, blinkies and pasties, plus the eternal question: How can people who wear pink fur get along with the folks in black leather and studs?

Here’s more from the website:

Driven by the desire to bring the Burn off the playa, but without the crusty snot, “How to Survive the Apocalypse” aims to communicate the culture of Burning Man to wider audiences. On a larger level, the show aims to explore the inherent conflicts and painful paradoxes of the event itself, from its tangled origins to its ongoing mutation.

The tale unfolds with the help of some really beautiful music and some incredibly talented people.

You can find out about tickets over here. The workshop performances in January sold out, so you might want to grab some tickets before it’s too late for this go-round.

Lots and lots more photos after the jump.

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Welcome back! It was very strange not being there with you, and watching the event, vicariously and compulsively, on the streaming feed on the web over the course of a week. For me, Burning Man has been a learning experience from the beginning, and I have learned so much this year, only this time I’ve learned it by not being there.

It has been incredibly painful going through the motions here, maintaining a typical existence, going to work, doing what I normally do. Except it’s been anything but normal, because I wasn’t there, I was here. And I should not have been going to work. I should have been building a dome, contributing to life in our temporary city, hanging out with all of you.

So what did I learn by NOT going to Burning Man this year?

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I’m writing from Room 906 in an undisclosed Reno hotel casino, or as we like to call it, 9 o’clock and R. It took me 20 minutes to get to the truck and back because every dusty Black Rock City refugee stopped and wanted to talk about Exodus and whether theirs was good or not so good. You can spot Burner cars in Reno, the really, really dusty ones loaded with all manner of camping necessities; the ones that other Burners have traced images of the Burning Man through the playa dust onto the clean paint below.

Sunday was a great day as we tore down the Man Museum so that our long timers wouldn’t be stuck with all the loading on Monday and Tuesday. As we were taking apart the shade, two bikes collided on the Esplanade out front and we ran over to them. The two girls involved stood up and hugged each other. No one was hurt and they went on their merry way. Only in Black Rock City do you have a “Hit and Hug”.

Yes, there were intermittent dust storms Saturday and Sunday, but that didn’t slow us down. Sunday was a party to celebrate cleaning up after our last party, which was a celebration of the previous party and so on.

Then we began getting ready for the night’s festivities and THAT MOMENT came about, the time when….

… the dry-pulverizing desert sunshine suddenly disappears with a pop, as the sun dips behind the Granite Range to the west of 34, and that harsh white daytime baking spotlight on the playa is replaced with a breathtaking cool gentle sky of gorgeous uterine pinks and blues that enchants and makes everyone so beautiful; makes the colors come alive, then it all slides slowly into a purple gray slate sky, and Black Rock City suddenly comes alive.

Dinners and cocktail parties are in full force and the Esplanade is packed with those going to and fro, all fabulous. Photographers live for that brief moment and they save up their shots to get there and shoot the Art. In camps, lights shake off the day’s dirt and start their twinkle and costumery is suddenly warm as shadows play tricks on the eye. Daytime sculptures go to sleep and the night time Art comes into focus as El-wire cars passing light up and suddenly make sense and take shape and everything is transformed as we slowly slide into the night time world where planets and grand constellations rise and dance across the sky with much felicity above our temporary bacchanal.

Sunday night the Moon rose full and heavy up over 2:15 to the south east and as citizens beheld it, a great howl arose from all parts of the City, a primal howl that made you look to the sky and see what they saw and in turn, howl yourself, because it felt right and good after all the time out here in this magnificent City.

If only all cities howled when the large moon rose close to the ground all around.

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There are 40+ thousand people these days eating on the playa every year and there’s really no way to encapsulate that entire experience but if I had to point to one word it would be BACON!

Sizzling salty swine in a pan. Love the smell and the taste of that stuff out on the playa. Make it free range if you will, but BACON.

At Burning Man, Bacon is a gateway meat for vegetarians. Bacontarians, if you will. They may taste it when that morning pan fried aroma is slinking through camp and offered to them. They’ll promise to swear off the pig when they leave the playa with much consternation, but for now they’ll imbibe in the irresistible bacon.

BACON MAN! Bacon without Borders, Bacon as currency, Optimus Bacon, Megs and Bacon, Bacon Gunz, Squeez Bacon… just search for “bacon burning man” on Google and you’ll find everything you need to know.

Fannie Brice once sang a song called “Cooking Breakfast for the One I love” where she says, “My Baby likes Bacon and that’s what I’m makin’” Fannie would have had a good time on the playa.

In 2000 this tall, tan guy was pushing his bike around the playa and he had a gas stove attached to his handle bars. This was right after the sun came up and Bird and I were relaxing on our dusty couches on the Esplanade at the Headless Maiden. The guy stopped and asked, “Would you like some bacon?” to which we stood and said, “Yes please,” and he stopped there naked with his bacon sizzling, pushing it around with those metal tongs.

We asked him if he’d ever burnt himself and he said, “So far, so good”. This was the first time he’d done it and he did it because he’d always wanted to make bacon for the City naked.

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