Burning To Grow

It's back to the desert to build Burning Man. But man, things have changed.

By D. Brian Burghart

With wildfires in Northern Nevada burning nearly out of control, the air on the way to Gerlach is filled with an acrid, brown smoke, and it seems like the whole world is ablaze.

Heat from the road pours into my window like molten wax, and even in the middle of the morning, there is a feeling of portentousness reverberating between the arroyo.

It’s Wednesday, Aug. 25, and I’m on my way to see what’s up with Burning Man ’99, which officially begins Aug. 30 and runs through Sept. 6, to volunteer my brains and muscles to help set up camp and maybe to answer to my own satisfaction the question our paper raised last year: Has Burning Man become too corporate?

To place this all into context for those who’ve never heard of Burning Man, it is an annual Labor Day-week event that takes place on the playa of the Black Rock Desert, 100 miles north of Reno. It features radical self-expression and art, which have won worldwide praise for the event, but critics have found fault with ticket prices. (This year, as of Aug. 30, tickets are $105 per person, increasing $5 daily through Sept. 6. Prior to June 16, they were $80.) Detractors also have faulted the nudity, drug use and undercurrent of paganism.

Burning Man began in 1986 on a San Francisco beach, when some friends got together and burned a representation of a person, according to one story, to help founder Larry Harvey recover from a broken heart.

People came in droves, but eventually the authorities began showing up too, so the annual observation was moved in 1990 to Bureau of Land Management property in Nevada. In those days, participants numbered in the hundreds. This year, there could be as many as 23,000 people.

What goes on there in the desert is a little harder to describe.

To begin with, a city with roads, streetlights and an above-ground sewer system (Porta-Potties) is designed to be placed on the blank canvas of the desert playa, the largest flat spot on the North American continent. The city is named Black Rock City. The advance work is done by a crew of carpenters, engineers and wildmen known as the Department of Public Works. Other city services, like the police department, known as the Black Rock Rangers, also come early to begin operations.

Then, beginning a few weeks before the official date of the event, thousands of artists from around the world set up mostly interactive exhibits: Pepe Ozán will stage an opera; the San Francisco-based Seemen will build a mall, carnie rides and mechanical art; Steve Heck will build a 30-foot tower that, after funneling the sun’s light through some water-filled lenses, will illuminate a combination of mylar and mirrors to proclaim a 2 o’clock happy hour.

Burning Man will culminate at sundown on Saturday, Sept. 4, when the 40-foot-plus-base—and the balsam-and-neon man—go up in ritualistic flames.

This year’s torching is a departure from the traditional Sunday-night burn. Organizers say that will prevent gridlock for those leaving the playa in the following days. Skeptics have said that it’s also to make use of the ready supply of people with an extra day on their hands for cleaning up the site.

Road Rules
It takes me all of an hour to make my home preparations for my sojourn into the desert. First, I stock up on five gallons of water and ice and I secure a tent, sleeping bag, cooler and a change of clothes. After stopping at RN&R central to grab a couple of cameras, notebooks and various journalistic accouterments, I head over to Albertson’s for enough supplies for two days in the desert.

I fuel up the 1964 Mercury Park Lane, my partner in these stream-of-consciousness, on-the-road excursions. The Merc’s running like a stopwatch, which is to say there is a ticking coming from beneath the hood. It’s about 90 minutes to Gerlach, and the gas station (never go into the desert without a full tank) is busy with Burning Man people.

About a quarter mile onto the playa, I’m greeted by something that looks like a customs checkpoint into another country, consisting of four small shacks and a trailer. An un-uniformed guard meets me at the gate.

“Could I see your ticket, please?” he says.

I’m floored. While I bought my ticket in April, it barely occurred to me to bring it to the playa almost a week before the event begins. I explain that I’ve come to volunteer.

“Do they know you’re coming?” he asks.

“No.”

“Can anybody vouch for you?”

I begin naming people whom I’ve worked with in the past. Finally, he agrees to let me go to the Department of Public Works camp to get something written that’ll verify that I’m not—what, a lagabout, a frat boy, a curiosity seeker?

It’s fairly painless once I get to DPW.

I introduce myself to site manager Tony Perez, although I don’t say I’m writing a story because I was pretty creeped out by the exclusionary reception. Perez radios Flynn Mauthe, director of operations for DPW. I worked with Flynn in ’96, doing my little part in the creation of the Seemen’s project of that year, Helco, a corporate conglomerate that featured stores such as Taco Hell. The burning of Helco in 1996—when John Law climbed up the outside of a 50-foot wooden, explosive-filled tower, ignited it and slid down a zipline through a wall of neon lights—was one of the most awesome things I’ve ever seen.

After some drunk ran over a tent and severely burned its occupants, ’96 became the last year for open campfires and roaming automobiles.

Among my other duties of that year, I helped with the development of the city’s streets, which had me under the direction of Danger Ranger Michael Michael and Tym “Circus Boy” Simpson, psychotically sticking little green flags in the ground for five miles north under the hottest sun of the day. I also helped Mark Perez, (no relation to Tony), construct a human-sized game of Mousetrap.

Fortunately, Flynn remembers me, and I’m in. As it’s approaching 1 p.m., Tony sends me to the commissary, where I’m treated to a free hamburger-and-spaghetti burrito, even though I don’t have a meal ticket.

The first friendly face I see belongs to Circus Boy. He’s moved up the Burning Man ladder and is in charge of theme-camp placement. He says there are hundreds of registered theme camps and large art installations this year. He catches me up on Black Rock City’s layout, where my friends are located, and tells me he expects to join a Bay Area entertainment union next year.

“It’d be nice to have some health insurance,” he says.

Black Rock City’s roads are laid out like an analog clock, with 12 o’clock at north and 6 o’clock at south. The Man is at the centerpoint of the circle. In concentric arcs, beginning with Moon Circle and orbited by Mercury, Venus, and Earth, through Neptune (I don’t know what happened to Pluto) are the crossroads. The system makes for addresses like “corner of 5:30 and Neptune,” which is where DPW is located.

After lunch, I cruise around the camp to get the lay of the land. I’m surprised by the amount of construction that’s already been done: The commissary is serving scads of people; Pepe Ozán’s tower is built; the roads and signs are set. The event is far better prepared to become the sixth-largest city in Nevada than anything I’ve seen in the past.

I don’t know if my greeting at the gate or the state of preparedness is an indication of becoming “corporate,” but they certainly suggest a finer degree of organization.

Working For A Living
I find my old compatriot Mark Perez and his girlfriend, Emily Hastings. Perez welcomes me to his camp like I’d just run to the 7-Eleven rather than been out of the loop for two years.

He sounds like he’s done all right for the last couple of years. He and Emily are making a home a few hundred yards off the San Francisco Bay, and he’s been working steadily as a carpenter in the city.

Perez is a wealth of information about what’s happening with this year’s Burning Man. I think it’s a symptom of the sheer size of the undeveloped city that the various early arrivals, who have made their camps, have become sort of fragmented—the left hand not quite sure what the right hand is doing—except for those encamped in DPW.

As in most sparsely (for now) populated towns, most of the information is coming out of the rumor mill. One of the most disturbing rumors is that law enforcement is going to crack down on drugs and nudity. Another rumor says that some local had stolen Burning Man’s head. Apparently, it was repossessed by DPW.

There is even a rumor that the Department of Public Works isn’t allowing beer in the yard, but that one I chalk up to malicious gossip.

I tell Perez of my troubles trying to get onto the playa, and while he’s a bit concerned about how things have changed during the last few years, he takes a rational view.

“If they didn’t make changes, Burning Man wouldn’t exist,” he says. “I don’t know if it’s good or bad, they just do what they’ve got to do.”

Hastings, a costume designer, says, “Do whatever you want, just don’t be yourself. Four legs are good, two legs are bad.”

Perez and I head over to the Seemen site, and the real work begins. We’re moving enormous pieces of lumber so that Perez can begin construction of the two towers that will be part of the Seemen’s mall.

It’d be 100 degrees in the shade, except the shade melted. We work for a few hours and head back to camp to pop some cool ones.

While we are sitting under a parachute mounted on two-by-fours with green and pink cloth walls, Lulu, an Australian expatriot, stops by and asks us if we want to join him at the Bordello hot springs. We jump at the ride and spend the next few hours basking in the pool. The buzz that the hot springs will soon be off limits makes our time there all the sweeter.

When we return, Emily makes a dinner of desert sushi to which I contribute Albertson’s fried chicken and potato salad. I pull out a packet of CDs, which Emily leafs through, noting the first John Cougar record.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll keep your dirty little secret.”

We drink a few more beers and retire in anticipation of a full day of work tomorrow. My feet hang 16 inches out the rear window of my car, but I sleep like a rock.

What The Heck
Emily and Perez make country-style potatoes and cowboy coffee for breakfast. As the pair debate the logic of adding more oil to make the potatoes cook faster, a member of the Seemen, Jay Broemmel, stops by camp. He and Kal Spelletich (the head of the Seemen) had arrived during the night.

For the record, the Seemen describe themselves on their Web site (www.seemen.org) as “a collaborative of some 40-odd art dropouts and extreme technology inventors who enjoy exploring their taste for the dark side of applied engineering in robot/kinetic art.” They don’t overstate the facts.

After breakfast, I wander over to DPW looking to interview Mauthe. I’m asked to drive a couple of guys, Pugsley Dunn and Curtain Rod, from Austin, Texas, over to help to stand the Man up.

The Man’s head is not attached to the body, and there is a puppet-style head in its place. The real head is beneath the platform, so the story of whether its theft and recovery was true is moot and will likely become a piece of obscure Burning Man lore.

Once it’s been verified that I can drive a big truck, I’m sent over to unload a truck and bring the truck back to help raise the man. The truck’s owner is none other than the notorious San Francisco piano mover Steve Heck. He’s about 6-foot-4, and he’s as much a force of nature—like a thunderstorm—as a human being.

Heck’s two trucks are commissioned to pick up 300 bales of hay to make the steps for BM’s pedestal. Heck’s to drive one crew, and I’m bringing the other. The first truck has a clutch in name only. Heck soon figured out I wasn’t qualified to drive that truck and took it over while I drove the truck that wasn’t quite so idiosyncratic.

The six of us returned with 110 bales of alfalfa, the heaviest bales I’ve ever had the misfortune to lift, weighing at least 120 pounds each. Everyone’s forearms and legs are covered with scratches.

But it’s from this sort of shared effort that friendships are made, and when we return, I sign on with him for a trip to 80 Acres, a ranch that the Burning Man organization uses for equipment and supply storage.

We are to return with the Copper Tree, a water-spewing sculpture that made for some great photo ops last year, but due to its recycled water and the human effluvium that gradually polluted it, according to Heck, caused rashes and staph infections among some of those who used it. Those problems also made it the last Burning Man-sponsored water plaything—at least the last one that would use recycled water. We, with the help of a cherry picker, moved it without difficulty.

On our return trip, Heck told me the story of his first Burning Man.

It was ’96 and after a day of working and drinking, Heck found himself impatient and stuck in Gerlach. He made the questionable decision to walk back out to the site and got lost in the desert. He says the decision nearly cost him his life.

“It was so stupid,” he says. “My lips were so burnt I could hardly talk. I finally got a ride from some hippies, and they didn’t have any water. I kept telling them, ‘Don’t be like me.’ ”

After soaking each foot in a cooler full of ice water and spending the day in the hot springs, he built a structure out of 88 old pianos.

“Now there’s what just busts my balls,” he says pointing at an under-construction exhibit as we pull back into camp. “All-new materials. People are throwing away that kind of stuff every day, and those guys are paying for it. And for what?”

Later that evening, a massive wind comes up, bringing with it practically white-out conditions.

The Seemen are without a solid shelter at their site, so Perez, Emily, our neighbor Bill Plemons, and I help Jay Broemmel and Kal Spelletich construct a “hootch.” It’s made of cedar plywood, used two-by-fours and two-by-sixes, has a door, windows and would stand up to anything sub-nuclear.

The wind shows no sign of abating, so when we return to our camp there’s nothing to do but clean up anything that might get windblown, tell stories and drink beer.

There And Back Again
It’s Friday morning and while the wind is easing off, there’s a smattering of raindrops. I’ve got about three hours to do final interviews and snap pictures.

I head over to DPW to talk to Flynn. He’s already overwhelmed, a parade of people marching through his trailer office wanting supplies, arranging trips to Reno, working on radios, resolving conflicts between volunteers.

Crimson Rose, one of the event organizers, is signing checks—$3,000 worth—while I stood there.

In between crises, I fire Flynn some questions, like how it feels to be stuck behind a desk dealing with toilets instead of outside building art.

“It sucks,” he says, mentioning that he’s been in Gerlach since June 20. “Next year we’re putting Sue [Weeks] back here. And next year, I won’t be coming out here the day after we’re allowed back on the playa, probably Aug. 1.”

He says that he plans on getting out in the coming days to help the Seemen construct a black Victorian house that represents the last rental in San Francisco.

As the next emergency arises, I head back into the yard, where people are using cutting torches to make fire barrels. They are also fueling vehicles and cleaning up the compound. Chris Campbell is constructing an installation piece made up of four immense balls of wood called the “Orbicular Affect.” The balls are 8-feet across, constructed of nearly 4,000 pieces of wood each and weigh a ton apiece.

He says they represent “fire, heat, energy, fuel and air. They burn from the inside out. It’s a metaphor for whatever you choose.”

Campbell says that while some things have changed, many changes are for the good.

“It’s better every year as far as infrastructure,” he says. “The authorities are always going to be a little leery of our intent.”

As I drive back to Reno, I think about the question of whether Burning Man has become too corporate, too structured, too much about money. While it is undeniable that some things have become more structured, I think most of the changes were foisted upon the group by outside government forces. While I’m always a bit skeptical that organizers have taken something that was about art and turned it into something that is about money, I think it’s the volunteers, the women and men who come out to work for free to build art, who maintain the event’s artistic integrity.

Site manager Will Roger was onto something when he described how his crew was assembling the site weeks earlier.

“We were all just working together, having fun in the desert,” he said. “That, to me, is what Burning Man is all about.”