2009 MOOP Map (click to enlarge)

We’re happy and proud to share this glowing report, received from Black Rock City Superintendent Tony “Coyote” Perez:

“The vanishing of Black Rock City ’09 was complete today with the passing of our annual October BLM playa surface inspection.  Roger Farshon was the BLM agent presiding and was deeply pleased to inform us that we passed well under the limits set by us and the BLM (those limits being less that one square foot of debris per acre of BRC city site).  Judging by his initial observations, Mr. Farshon was of the opinion that MOOP levels were lower than last year’s.

The MOOP map, which will be on display at Decom, was over all greener that last year as well. Especially Center Camp…!!  There were not as many red areas, but the ones that were the worst ever.  Fewer offenders are offending worse.  Don’t they know that they are surrounded?!

This marks the eleventh passed inspection in a row with a steady overall improvement as our event matures.

Special thanks, and all my love and respect to an amazing crew that toward the end had been enduring sub-freezing temperatures and snow, picking up litter for days on end, and kept their cheer and good spirits to the last.

Special thanks to my fellow Ops team members that kept the project on track and worked tirelessly, flying the ship through mine fields with just a few dings in the paint job. To DA the Playa Restoration Manager – he has become an expert in his field. To Logan, our volunteer coordinator for orchestrating and taking care of this amazing crew. And to the super staff of managers that each owned their tasks to the highest levels of professionalism.

I am not a person with shit-loads of money – but I am extremely wealthy in family, friends, and a community that truly is changing our world.  We are succeeding in getting an entire city to pick up after themselves – there’s hope for us yet!

Coyote
City Superintendent
BRC-DPW”

We’d like to add our heartfelt thanks to this hardy crew!!  If you agree, let ‘em hear it in the comments.

As an artist who has been creating work to display at the dust fest for well over a decade, I am fascinated by the process of playa art making.  You might not know this but it is truly a unique process which you will not find replicated in the Artworld (captial A artworld).  My Black Rock City artmaking process has been something like this: initial inspiration happens; next, the evolution of the conceptual framework; followed by the process of translating that idea into a proposal (well, most of us do this; Michael Christian doodles on a napkin, but he’s charming and produces provocative work, so he is a special case); then comes the obsessive build, build, build time, and finally struggling with the complications of the desert to install your work.  All of this is done within a six month time frame.

I have been curious how other BRC artists approach their work; what they are inspired by and how they face the challenges of building art on our desert platform.  So to fulfill my own curiosity and to give you some insight, I am randomly interviewing a few of this year’s Honorarium artists for your reading pleasure.

Name:

Jess Hobbs: Tell me a little bit about yourself.  What might be pertinent to know about the creator of “Bio*tanical Garden”?

Rox Scapini: I’m an artist and I have been making sculptures for 16 years. Sculpture is my favorite form of art because it gives me the possibility of bringing my imaginary world into reality. Sculpture for me is not about materials but physical presence in space. My style is figurative but not realistic, and my sculptures represent something that “might” exist in this world. I have a strong fascination of cyberpunk literature (HR Giger is the artist that most influenced me, indeed) and a cynical view of our world.

JH: Have you produced work for Burning Man before?  If not, what work has affected you the most?

Read more »

Red Eye Diner, 2008; image by Nightshade

If you dropped off your Burning Man recycling at one of the free 24-hour drop off centers in Reno-Sparks, perhaps you’re wondering what happened to your cans and bottles? Here is a summary of the free drive-thru recycling project operated by Save Mart in the Reno~Sparks area for burners during and following the week of Burning Man.

The total amount of recyclable materials dropped off in ’08 was about three times larger than in 2007.

Read more »

We watched the Man watch the sun go down

Are you packed?

Were you up all night? Have you wrapped up the loose ends? Have you finally decided what will just have to wait until you get back? I know, I know, no way. But just get your mind around it: You’re going to be away for a week, and I promise, the the minute you hit Gerlach the rest of your life is going to seem like it’s a long way away, I guarantee it. It’ll be ok.

Things are going to slow down and become more simple. Your customary items of conversation — the conventions, that new iPhone cover, they’re all going to fall away and you won’t miss them. In their place will come concerns about the basics: food, water, shelter. Oh, and love, friendship and fun. The basics. It’s what’s really important, and it’s pretty much what happens here. Things become more fundamental, and it gets a little easier to live in your true self. You’ll be less connected to the world, but more connected to people.

The Man actually has a heart, too. And a lot of the people who worked on him sign their names to it.

Sorry. I might have gotten carried away there for a second. It’s happened a couple of times now. I was out at the Temple yesterday, and ran into Shrine, the artist behind it, and I mumbled something about the “feeling” of the Temple emerging, that quiet, contemplative mood that will only get deeper when people start to bring out their own mementos, and you’ll look at the pictures and read the stories and your heart will ache. But I think there was just too much happening for Shrine, too much still to happen, for that feeling to have taken hold for him.

Speaking of the Temple, the major structures seem pretty squared away, and now all the amazing decorative pieces are being welded and attached. But I did hear that there was a bit of a problem with the second level, something about “wobbling,” which you’d have to view as a negative. This is an unconfirmed report, but this is a blog, so I’m going to take that liberty for now. And the only reason I do it is because I also heard that after some thought about keeping the second level off limits (not really a good option), an engineer arrived and figured out the way to make it all rock solid. So off we go.

The opening is really pressing down upon the city. Read more »

Monday, Aug. 18.

The wind arrived last night, and it didn’t stop all night, or all the next day. And with it came the dust.

It’s been curious to be so relatively windstorm-free for what, 11 days? (counting the off-playa hiatus). Every other time I’ve come out here, there’s always been a whiteout as I was arriving. The first time, I’ve got to tell you, it was pretty unsettling. But it was also one of those moments you don’t ever forget; you don’t forget who you were with, or what you were wearing, or what music was playing, or exactly how you felt.

So coming in and out of Gate road now that the wind is here puts the community imperative on you. Yes, you want to get where you’re going. And you probably want to get there faster than 5 miles an hour. But if you do, you kick up the dust. And the wind carries the dust across the whole camp. So you don’t go faster than 5 miles an hour, and if you DO see someone going faster, you give them the palms up sign out the window, or you hear them get scolded on the radio.

(A little word about the radio. The radio is the only way of communicating out here, other than talking face to face. There are no phones; don’t be silly. So there’s no texting, either, can you imagine? And no IM. But there are radios. Quite a few of them. And there are trunks and channels to route all the conversations. I’ve been on DPW Site channel 4 until today. It’s a great channel. Busy. Important. Vital to the building of the city. But I switched over to Media Mecca today, because that’s more where I belong, really. So goodbye to HazMatt and Playground and Reyposado and Sleep Dep and Big Stick and dozens and dozens of other voices, and hello to Meow Meow and Action Girl and Kid Hack and all the new crew. Nice to be here!)

Every day things happen and you can’t keep up. They put the triangular top of the obelisk up on the Man base today, and I wasn’t there. Last night, they dropped the spiral staircase in the middle of the Temple, and I wasn’t there. Crap. … It’s just like the event week, really. You check out the What Where When booklet and mark it all up with the great things you’re going to do — oh yeah, I DO want frozen eclairs and champagne at 3:30 on Wednesday. Elk dinner? Yes please. Oh, and I really want to go down to that camp where they’re making the cool necklaces.

Read more »

Center Camp is going up fast. Really fast.

First, an admission.

I was off the playa for most of two days. The details are boring; just mark it down to the demands of the default world.

Still, you can tell the people who’ve been out of the dust and the sun for even a little while. Their eyes aren’t as red, their clothes aren’t as dirty and their mental state isn’t quite as blasted as those who’ve been out in it each and every day.

So I’ve become one of “those” people now, and it’s not a happy thing.

Everything got bigger when I was away. Three of the platforms for The Man were constructed, and one of them was even hoisted on top of another one, creating a second level. Eventually, there will be three levels, each of them 16 feet high. And there’ll be spiral staircases inside that you’ll be able to walk up  when the the construction is finished.

The platforms for the base of the Man have been assembled

“It’s like an obelisk,” said Brian as he squinted into the sun and worked to make the fittings just right. “You know, like the Washington Monument. Or a big prick.”

Oh yes. A mighty big prick.

Center Camp is also taking shape fast. The headers are in place, and the crew even finished the cabling by Wednesday. By Thursday, the netting was going up for shade. Believe me, you will appreciate the shade. And you simply have to marvel at the work ethic of the Center Camp crew. They are just unstoppable. “Everyone on the crew is trying to impress me,” Joe the Builder said. Whatever the reason, things are  ahead of schedule.

Out a little further at the Temple, more of the pieces have arrived. Huge wooden poles will support giant walkways are lying prone in the dust, waiting for a three-crane lift later in the week. There will also be a “double-helix” circular staircase in the middle, the handiwork of Brandon, who’s got years of experience building stairways and took a lot of that knowledge with him out to the desert. Read more »

Flags are everywhere.

Posts, beams, cables, spikes … eventually, all these flags will have something put in the ground where there are only flags now.

Surveyors have been out walking, consulting maps, stepping off distances, trying to make sure that drawings and plans become actual facts on the ground.

the orange flag marked the very center of where Center Camp is being constructed

Yesterday, Monique and Danny were working their way around the rim of Center Camp, repeating the same process over and over and over again: Go to the pink and green flag, put a stake on the digging machine, slowly rotate it into the ground,  adjust the sheath, put it in a little further, adjust the sheath again, then sink it so that only a  loop of steel was peeking out of the dust.

Later, cables will be attached to keep the shade sturdy.

Danny is very much like a lot of people out here: He’s got another life in the default word, but more and more the Burner life and the default world are intersecting.

Earlier this year, he went to Peru in the wake of the earthquake there to help put devastated villages back together again. He’s got a variety of skills — plumbing, electricity, carpentry — so he brings a lot to the party. He planned on spending a week helping out, then he’d spend a couple of weeks traveling around. “Two months later, I was still there,” he said.

Danny adjusts the sheath

The villagers were accustomed to having water for only an hour a day, and that was before the earthquake.  “But they were happy,” Danny said. “They’d just say, hey, it’s Peru.”  So he and the other Burners Without Borders were building concrete tanks that would gather water, so the villagers would have water when they needed it, not just when it was running.

So how does a guy find it possible to go helping people out around the world? “I sold a software company at the right time,” Danny said.

Monique in the cab

... and because we declared this flag day, here's one that seemed appropriate.