Our first
official Day…
Since we had
arrived during darkness the sunlight brought all sorts of new sights and
allowed us to see a bit of the immensity of the whole operation. As we picked
our final campsite I pointed out the necessity of at least being in sight of
porta potties—trailer was only for old people and night. Although they have many they are spread out
with quite a bit of distance between the poo stations. The kids agreed after
the first refusal of the trailer bathroom and they realized we were serious. It
was a no no to pee or poo on the playa.
What is the Playa? Landforms
·
Sink (geography), also known as an alkali flat or sabkha, a desert
basin with no outlet which periodically fills with water to form a temporary
lake
I will try
to explain the layout somewhat…Black Rock City is set up in a circle of a clock
with camping from 2 to 10. The man is considered 12 but he is also a bit in the
center like where the hands of the clock would attach. On the north side of the
city or between 10-2 is open playa where sculptures (Embrace and the Temple
plus many many others) are displayed and art carts can drive. Art cars also
drive through the city streets. The city itself is set up is kind of a half or
3/4s circle using the clock format on it’s cross streets with the alphabet as
the circle roads that started with A as the inner circle and going out. We
camped at 2:15 and J so were basically on the outskirts on the NE top side of
the city. I am guessing but I would say
the city is at least 3-5 miles wide and the only transportation, if you aren’t
lucky enough to have an art car, is bike and hoofing it.
So back to
camp—Of course Kelly and friend were chomping at the bit to explore but the
evil aunts made them help set up camp before anyone played. And it turned into
a fine camp. As an afterthought it would have been nice to be closer in just of
logistics but as the week went on we discovered there was a price to pay for conveniences,
dust and noise. More about that later…
Our camp had
all the comforts and we finally released the youngsters and decided to take our
first step into the land of the bizarre…by bicycle. It started out well but I
quickly realized my bike, although looking very cool, was about as
uncomfortable as is could be. It just didn’t fit my body and had an incredibly
hard and skinny seat. Stacy’s borrowed bike was a bit too short for her but at
least it had shock absorbers and a cushy seat. But bikes were definitely the
way to go, so after a couple of hours and lots of sights later, we headed back
to camp to try to do some adjusting.
We are also
now beginning to see what we were involved in. I had always thought at this age
I was relatively well traveled and have seen a lot of the bizarre and creative.
I have seen a punk rocker demonstration in London, I have done the largest
women’s music festival for a week. When my sister lived in SF I wandered Haight
Ashbury and Castro Street. I have seen bizarre. I have NEVER seen anything like
this.
This city is
full of all ages of people. I would say 30% of them are over 50, probably
another 25% between 35-50 and the rest the under 30 crowd. And EVERYONE is
showing their creativity—in their costumes, their camps, and art cars. So much
creative talent, money and energy had been spent to create their playa persona.
Everyone can dress or be anything they want to be—it’s all performance art. The
costumes have been from nothing at all, then maybe a bit more with pasties and
a parasol, to full fur animal costumes, and everything in between. One of the
oddest were two people on bicycles with one being a naked guy with some sort of
an orange skintight over his privates. Or they could have just been painted
orange—I didn’t look close enough to check for sure but all I could think was
–that has got to hurt on a bicycle.
The bicycles
themselves are a different class. Since most use them at night they are lit up
like the Vegas strip and BM has the commodity on fake fur. Bicycles, art cars,
camps…it’s everywhere. I could write pages but no matter what I said you would
not be prepared. It’s basically indescribable. But it does renew your faith in
the creative talent out there. And quite of a few participants are obviously
financially successful—if the large number of luxury RV’s and incoming private
airport traffic is any indication.
People from all over the world.
For us, BM
has been a people watching experience. And there is no place on earth that is
better for that than BM. Much of it has been from the comfort of our
trailer…Since Wed the weather has warmed and the last couple of days the wind
has become a big issue. But we had excellent seats to watch a bunch of BRC
rangers follow a screaming naked guy around outside our camp area for over an
hour. It was really HOT and it was probably a combination of bad drugs and heat
stroke but they were really nice. Just tried to corral him and kept offering
water which he refused. Finally they had to take him down and put ice on him
and eventually the real rangers were called and an ambulance showed up to take
him away so that was probably the end of that guy’s burn. But we were impressed
how long they just tried to talk to the guy. The funny thing was that a
flamboyant lady on an orca whale bicycle rode up to the group. Before we knew
it she was getting her medic shirt out of her big sparkly bag and it brought
home what they said in the literature—undercovers are EVERYWHERE! And this has
got to be a huge revenue for the law enforcement in Nevada. But I guess it’s
the only smart way of doing it. No doubt there is a whole lot of drugs and
alcohol consumed here.
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