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30,000 Artists Revel in the Dirt Dust is thicker than sex, drugs and beer at Burning Man Festival Steve Rubenstein, Chronicle Staff Writer |
Saturday, September 2, 2000
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There may be sex and drugs and beer out here, but it's not about sex and drugs and beer. It's not about taking your clothes off, either, and riding a bicycle across the desert floor in the altogether. It's about art, that's what it's about. That's because there's sex, drugs and beer back home, and you don't have to buy a $250 ticket and drive to the middle of the Nevada netherworld, exactly halfway from anywhere else, to find it. Besides, there is so much dirt and dust flying around the Black Rock Desert that you cannot see a hand in front of your face, never mind other body parts, which quickly become coated with a fine grit that can make some expressions of love more trouble than they're worth. Thirty thousand artists, including clothed artists, are here this weekend for the annual farewell to summer and common sense known as the Burning Man Festival. This year, the festival is three miles farther into the desert. It's 113 miles from downtown Reno instead of 110 miles from downtown Reno, and even farther from civilization. The new site is much filthier than last year's, say the artists, and thank goodness for that. For a full week, the artists have been he artists have been camping on a dry lakebed in the kind of anarchy that requires lots of rules (``if you can't agree to our rules, feel free to start your own event,'' say the rules) and lots of tent stakes. FEW AMENITIES WITH TICKETSThe main rule is to bring your own water because, with tickets only $250, water isn't included. Neither are two other luxuries known as food and shelter. What you primarily get is access to no fewer than 350 outhouses, which is about 100 more outhouses than there were last year, when the artists complained mightily about all the waiting and stamping of feet. You also get the right to pitch your tent on the dirt. If you don't stake it down with enough tent stakes, you get the right to watch your tent go flying off across the desert sky like an entrant in the Great Reno Balloon Race. The rules begin at the entrance gate, where no-nonsense guards in Santa Claus suits and bikinis make sure that everyone has a ticket. This involves searching arriving vehicles for stowaways, the way they used to do at Checkpoint Charlie. While everyone gets out of the recreational vehicle so Santa can peek, the bikini guard asks arriving artists to drop their shorts so she can slap a sticker on their rear ends, which is something they never did in Berlin. ``Welcome to Burning Man,'' says the bikini guard. Whap. The Burning Man Festival Burning Man Festival has been called a pagan Woodstock, which it isn't, because Woodstock was free with better music and because pagans actually believe in their idols instead of laughing at them and setting them on fire in a pile of hay as a New Age joke. Instead, it is a 105-degree hodgepodge of funny kinetic sculptures, goofy costumes, bouncy trampolines, illicit fireworks displays, all-night dancing and assorted conceptual artwork in which the concept -- whether involving a life-size foosball table, the paint wrestling booth, the Costco soul-mate trading center, the X-rated miniature golf and croquet courses (two each) or a giant motorized lobster -- is meant to be understood. So don't ask. Besides, it makes at least as much sense as the Las Vegas Strip. Doing a brisk business yesterday was the X-rated miniature golf. Passers-by would stroke golf balls through various giant plaster orifices, although the third hole had to be closed after a morning breeze knocked down one that does the duty of a windmill in tamer versions of the game. `EVERYBODY LIKES SEX'``We had to shut down the hole for repairs,'' said the course marshal, who identified herself as Chaos Girl. ``It's a shame, because everybody likes sex, and everybody likes miniature golf. I'm not sure in which order.'' Back on Planet Earth, Chaos Girl is also known as Jennifer Wilde of San Francisco. Sof San Francisco. She is a Web developer. A lot of Burning Man artists have high-tech jobs like Web developer, which might explain why they like to run X-rated miniature golf courses one week a year. A lot of the high-tech types have also taken to renting RVs for the week, for $1,000 or so, so they don't have to worry about blow-away tents and overflowing outhouses. As for the giant motorized lobster, it was one hassle after another. According to the rules, all art vehicles must be checked and ``licensed`` by the Burning Man staff, mainly to make sure they have lights for nighttime driving. Unfortunately for the lobster, the license sticker wouldn't stick to its fiberglass body. As a result, the lobster kept getting pulled over by the vigilant Burning Man police, who call themselves rangers. ``You guys already checked me,'' said Gary Garfield of Fort Collins, Colo., the driver of the lobster, after he had been pulled over for the third time. ``How many lobsters do you have out here?'' Alas, there are so many artists that some duplication is inevitable. In addition to the duplicate miniature and croquet courses, there were countless trampolines, Egyptian pyramids, geodesic domes, laser beams, blacklight displays and fake telephone booths. There was a fake post office, where you stand in line in order to get screamed at by a clerk, and a fake passport office, where you stand in line iyou stand in line in order to get screamed at by a clerk. There were also plenty of motorized boats with wheels and more than one motorized sofa. There was only one booth showing subtitled Japanese porno cartoons, however, and only one booth with 2-foot-tall alien chess pieces on a blacklight board. There was only one fake automatic teller machine. ``Fees,'' the sign on that one said. ``Walking by ATM, $5. Standing in line, 2% per minute. All transactions null and void except the charges. God bless money.'' MILLIONS IN GATE RECEIPTSAnd the Burning Man organizers had a lot to bless, even though they wouldn't say how much. Although some advance tickets went for as little as $100, the gate receipts are a staggeringly high concept that ran into the millions. Organizers say the high ticket price is designed to discourage gawkers and to cover the increase in permit fees. This year, the Bureau of Land Management raised its fee to $460,000, partly to mollify critics who say the festival should be kicked out entirely so the desert dirt can be left in peace. As for the dirt, it is even more enveloping than the art. Thirty thousand people shuffle their feet on a dry lakebed, each one raising a swirl of alkali dust behind him like Pig Pen in the comics. From time to time, with no warning, desert winds upward of 75 mph create clouds denser than summer f denser than summer fog over the Golden Gate. Late Thursday, one gust erupted that reduced visibility to inches and left a thick dusty coating on skin and hair. ``Whatever!' shouted one naked bike rider. ``Keep it up!'' To some, the forbidding conditions are a bigger draw than the art. The unlikeliness of 30,000 people camping together in staggeringly uncomfortable conditions is sufficient reason to do it. The lakebed is utterly flat, utterly blank, like a perfect canvas before Warhol painted a soup can on it. The festival, which began in 1986 on a San Francisco beach, moved to the desert 10 years ago. ``It's a challenge just to be here,'' said Jamie Osborne of Denver while playing his guitar. ``It's a hassle, and it's a little dangerous. But afterward, you don't remember the hassle, and all the dirt washes off, you know.'' BURNING OF THE MANTonight, in what some artists call the defining cathartic moment of the whole thing and others admit is the pagan ritual of a festival that doesn't have one, the artists will climb out of their lobsters, lay down their croquet mallets and turn off the Japanese porno cartoons to assemble around the 40-foot-high stickman figure in the middle of the lakebed and set it ablaze. Like most things involving art, there is no explanation. There is only a pile of burned sticks afterward. Getting rid of that, and of everything else, will be left to about 1,000 volunteers when the mob of artists disperses tomorrow. Returning the dirt to its pristine, dirty state is important, both to stifle critics and to ensure that the organizers get their $15,000 cleaning deposit back from the BLM. Meanwhile, the Burning Man staff is already hard at work planning what has come to be called the Exodus, in which 10,000 cars try to go home on a single two-lane road all at once. Brochures have been printed for all artists. ``A big traffic jam is inevitable,'' the brochures say. ``Plan for it. Enjoy it. Chill.'' Some artists are trying to figure out the likeliest spot to dump a week's worth of garbage. Already the signs are up in Gerlach and Empire, pleading with the artists to take their bags of trash farther down the road --to Reno, say. ``It's a good crowd,'' said J.R. Blakemore, who runs the only filling station for 72 miles. ``If you ask them not to dump their trash, they don't do it. And I'll sell more gas this week than I will in three months. They can come back whenever they want.''
E-mail Steve Rubenstein at srubenstein@sfchronicle.com. |
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