Salon has a story on the “Gun Culture’s Burning Man“, the Knob Creek Machinegun Shoot near Louisville, KY.

The Knob Creek Shoot is best understood as American gun culture’s Burning Man. Like the annual art and music festival in the Nevada desert, it has spawned a community that stretches across the country, even as the defining event keeps a regional heart and spirit. The same way “Burners” meet up locally throughout a calendar year anchored by the August pilgrimage to Black Rock, Nevada, “Knob Creekers” stay in touch between biannual shoots. They socialize online, meet up at gun ranges, and organize Knob Creek crews. Like Burning Man, the Shoot has been around long enough to become a multigenerational rite of passage. At the range reserved for small arms like Uzis and Mac-10s, it is common to see a father-son ritual of dads taking their boys to fire their first machine gun, a sort of ballistic bar mitzvah. The grass parking lots around Knob Creek are dotted with tents, canopies and clusters of folding NASCAR seats, around which friends fire up barbeque and tailgate to a nearby soundtrack of simulated war. Ask them why they come, often using vacation days to do so, and they’ll tell you, “it’s a hoot,” that it’s “all the stuff you want to do in your backyard but can’t,” and that it’s a chance to see old friends and “get your hands on the big guns.”…

…The most obvious parallel between Knob Creek and Burning Man is the way both events culminate in a cathartic nighttime fire. Burning Man peaks with fireworks and a wooden effigy bonfire. The Shoot’s big finale begins at sundown on its second day, when downrange targets are larded with explosive charges and surrounded with brimming drums of diesel oil. After the setting of the sun and the singing of many patriotic songs, a firing line of machine guns and artillery pieces light up the night sky with a deafening and mesmerizing pyrotechnic barrage. It is, as the Knob Creek Shoot brochure boasts, a scene featuring “giant, explosive mushroom clouds like fireballs from Hell!” Thousands of tracer bullets crisscross the field and ricochet off their targets at what seem like improbable angles. Watching their pinball trajectories could be a lesson in the tragic geometry of urban gun violence, where cars, street signs, and fire hydrants often send bullets on new line paths far from their intended targets.

Looks like a lot of fun!

Salon thinks that Burning Man has no political consequence, and neither does this party for machine gun enthusiasts:

So long as these weapons and the “hosing down operations” to which they are suited remain confined to rural gun ranges, the Shoot doesn’t signify much beyond all of the smoke and the fire… for all its neo-Nazi apparel, neo-Confederate Mad Max fantasies and eardrum destroying fury, the larger machine gun subculture has settled into ritualized gun-range play dates where the weapons, which have been banned from entering civilian circulation since 1986, are as much museum pieces as weapons. History tells us to take seriously the record number of Patriot and Militia groups sprouting up around institutions like Knob Creek. But as a self-contained celebration of the machine gun, the country’s biggest Shoot is of roughly the same political consequence as the party at Burning Man. Which is another way of saying none at all

The next Knob Creek shoot is April 11-13, 2014. You can camp on the property, or there are RV hookups at a nearby KOA.

If you can’t make it to Kentucky, you can always try Juplaya…

…so says the New York Times, speculating on Google’s massive floating barges made out of shipping containers. Google are famous for being Burning Man fans, and founder Larry Page said earlier this year that the company would like to have zones like Burning Man where they can experiment with new technologies.

Google has been developing a barge on Treasure Island for most of this year. Treasure Island has a strong Burner community; Marco Cochrane made Bliss Dance and Truth or Beauty there, and his Bliss Dance is on display in a public park on the island, with an amazing backdrop of the city. ekoVillages has office units on Treasure Island for rent made from up-cycled shipping containers, as well as art containers that they take to Burning Man. Peter Hudson’s Charon and Homouroboros Zoetropes call TI their home base, as well as a number of other art cars and art projects – including the largest electronic artwork in the world, an $8 million commission to Burning Man Project Board member Leo Villareal. The Disorient founder’s Bay Lights project covers the North-facing side of the Bay Bridge from Yerba Buena island to the city.  Treasure Island is a popular destination for Burner parties, like Ghost Ship and the Treasure Island Music Festival.

ekoVillages.com upcycled art container

So if Google are thinking to make their Google Glass and other new technologies “cool” by getting a Burner vibe on their barges, they’re in the right place. Burning Man is a major user of shipping containers, containers and Burners go hand in hand. Will the barge be a Temporary Autonomous Zone? One that is free to set its own rules and laws, once towed out to international waters? San Francisco’s Bay could definitely use more cruising destinations for the 50,000+ boats kept here.

Here’s what the NYT had to say:

Google has finally commented on its mysterious barges floating near San Francisco and Portland, Me. But its comments do not shed much light on the mystery.

The barges, four stories tall and made of shipping containers, were hiding in plain sight until last month, when a Cnet reporter uncovered their cloaked connection to Google. Reports have speculated that the barges could be floating data centers, traveling Google Glass stores or showrooms with party decks.

On Wednesday, Google issued its first statement on the matter, hinting that the barges are showrooms for new technology, which could include Glass.

“Google Barge … A floating data center? A wild party boat? A barge housing the last remaining dinosaur?” the statement said. “Sadly, none of the above. Although it’s still early days and things may change, we’re exploring using the barge as an interactive space where people can learn about new technology.”

The statement brought to mind comments made by Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and chief executive, at its I/O developers conference in June. He acknowledged that people often have a visceral, fearful reaction to new technology and fantasized about a place to experiment with new products.

“People are naturally scared of change,” Mr. Page said. “We haven’t built mechanisms to allow experimentation.”

“There’s many, many exciting and important things you could do that you just can’t do because they’re illegal or they’re not allowed by regulation,” he lamented. “And that makes sense, you don’t want our world to change too fast. Maybe we should set aside a small part of the world — I like going to Burning Man, for example — that’s an environment where people can try out different things.”

So will the barges be a place for Google to ease people into new technology? Are they going to be like Burning Man at sea? And how far off the coasts would Google’s barges have to float to escape all those pesky laws and regulations?

The answer to the last question is 22 kilometers, or not quite as far as the Farallon Islands.

Google denies that the barge will be a wild party boat. Which, as a public company, they probably have to. Still, everyone’s definition of “wild” is a little bit different…I say let’s get some DJs, lasers and Funktion1′s and fire that bad boy up!

There is already a floating party in the SF Bay, the annual Ephemerisle at the Sacramento river delta. It is put on by the Seasteading Institute, who very much support the idea of Temporary (and Permanent) Autonomous Zones. There’s a great article about the event at N Plus One, here are some excerpts:

At around noon, six of us took off in a small motorboat, speeding past Venice Island, a private sliver of land where Barron Hilton, heir to the Hilton hotel fortune, hunts ducks and puts on an annual July 4th firework display. Five minutes later, Ephemerisle came into sight, bobbing gently in an area called the Mandeville Tip.

It looked, at first, like a shapeless pile of floating junk, but as the boat drew closer, a sense of order emerged. The island was made up of two rows of houseboats, anchored about a hundred feet apart, with a smaller cluster of boats and yachts set off to the west. The boats had been bound together with planks, barrels, cleats, and ropes, assembled ad-hoc by someone with at least a rudimentary understanding of knots and anchors. Residents decorated their decks with banners and flags and tied kayaks and inflatable toys off the sides, giving the overall landscape the cephalopodan quality of raver pants. Dirty socks and plastic dishes and iPads and iPhones littered the decks. An enormous sound system blasted dance music, it turned out, at all hours of the day. 

Each of the two-dozen boats at the party had a name—Bayesian Conspiracy, Snuggly Nemo, Magic Carpet, Mini-ocracy—and each name a personality to match, conveyed by the resident boaters’ choice of drug, beverage, or degree of exhibitionism. When I arrived, the Ephemerislers were partying in various stages of undress. They had been encouraged to make the space their own, to mind their own business, and to do as they pleased. This was, after all, a celebration of the laissez-faire life—an escape from the oppressive, rule-bound grind of dry land. In this suspended, provisional unreality, everybody was a planner, an economist, a designer, a king. Attendees were ready for everything the elements had in store, but knew escape was just a few clicks away, should the experiment go terribly wrong.

If it sounds a lot like Burning Man, that’s no coincidence. The founders of the Seasteading Institute are Burners, as is PayPal and Facebook Kingmaker Peter Thiel, who wrote a $1.25 million check to the Institute.

Ephemerisle was its own little beehive of decadence, a floating pillow fort saturated in sex and soft drugs. It billed itself as a “gathering of people interested in the possibility of permanent experimental ocean communities,” but felt more like Burning Man, if Burners frolicked in the tears of Ludwig Von Mises.

Ephemerisle got its libertarian streak from its founders: the event was originally conceived of by the Seasteading Institute, a San Francisco nonprofit that supports the creation of thousands of floating city-states in international waters. After overseeing the first Ephemerisle in 2009, the Institute handed over responsibility for the festival to the community in 2010—it turns out a raucous floating party costs too much for a tiny think tank to insure—and last year, the group consisted of 300 amateur boaters, intoxicated partiers, and a committed clan of Seasteaders.

Seasteaders made up about a quarter of Ephemerisle’s attendees. If they took the operation somewhat more seriously than the young Californians who came just to party and build things, it’s because they dream of a day when they’ll have their pick of floating city-states to live on, work from, and eventually abandon in favor of a different platform when they get bored. Borrowing from the lexicon of evolution, the Seasteaders say that a “Cambrian explosion” of these new countries will bring about greater freedom of choice for individuals, stimulate competition between existing governments, and provide blank “nation-slates” for experiments in governance. Ephemerisle is supposed to distill the ambitious project into a weekend that would “give people the direct experience of political autonomy.” It combines its political ambitions with appeals to back-to-the-land survivalism, off-the-grid drug use, and a vague nostalgia for water parks. “There are no tickets, no central organizers, no rules, no rangers to keep you safe,” reads the Ephemerisle mission statement. It’s “a new adventure into an alien environment, with discoveries, adventures, and mishaps along the way.”

[Update 11/11/13] After we published this story last week, Google went to the Chronicle to reveal their plans for the barges.  

Magnetic has published an entertaining tongue-in-cheek guide, “EDM Culture: Ten Traditions That Bring Burners Together“. It’s amusing and insightful:

1. SUNRISES AND SUNSETS

Burners don’t believe it, but there are seven of each. No, you weren’t there for just one really long day, bud.

2. BONDING THROUGH BODY ODOR

Burners reject all aspects of civilizaiton- cleanliness and hygiene too. Pass the Patchouli!

3. PAGAN RITES OF INITIATION

Don’t you dare kill that flying cockroach in Black Rock City- for many, it’s a spirit guide.

Read the rest here

I’m in Honolulu, where I just went to a Burner event called Fire Jam at Kakaako Beach Park Amphitheater. Some great fire spinning and smooth beats, being sampled live. I met one of the Regional Contacts for Hawaii, Illumi Nate. The Hawaii Burner Crew are called Ka Palina. They are throwing the Hawaii Decompression on November 30 at The Fix nightclub, 80 Pauahi St Honolulu HI.

The tropical island paradise is about as far to the opposite of the harshness of the Playa as you can get – certainly while staying within the United States. Thanks for your hospitality, Hawaiian Burners! Burn on.

by Whatsblem the Pro

St. Nicholas and the L.A. Krampus Troupe – IMAGE: Phil Glau/Al Ridenour

We’ve told you about the Cacophony Society; we’ve told you about their role in creating Burning Man, flash mobs, the film Fight Club, and SantaCon; we’ve introduced you to Al Ridenour and his psychomedical-cum-burlesque arts troupe, the Art of Bleeding.

Al Ridenour is not one to rest on his laurels. His latest project, Krampusfest, is rapidly coming together in Los Angeles for this year’s Yuletide.

Working from an idea by comrade-in-arts and co-producer Al Guerrero, Ridenour, Guerrero, and the troupe – many of whom have been active both in Cacophony and at Burning Man – are poised to unleash a robust echo of traditional European Krampus festivals on Southern California. Wearing elaborate, unique Krampus costumes made largely by hand and from scratch, the L.A. Krampus Troupe will make scheduled and unscheduled appearances throughout the month of December.

Krampus is a Yuletide boogie man who acts as the yang to Saint Nicholas’ yin. With a cruel switch of birch wood in hand, he takes care of the naughty list from December 5th until the 21st, punishing children for their misbehavior. Regional traditions vary; depending on where you wander, Krampus morphs and mutates into Knecht Ruprecht, Hans Ruprecht, Rumpknecht, Rû Clås, Bûr, Bullerclås, Zwarte Piet, Père Fouettard, and others. He arrives traveling with Saint Nicholas, and his various guises range from that of a wizardly old bearded man who looks like a second Saint Nick, to a Moor in fancy dress. . . but the canonical Krampus, the oldest of Krampuses, is a hideous demonic or demon-like abomination, first seen in obscure medieval iconography depicting St. Nicholas taming a chained-up demon.

Typically, the European traditions involve young men of the community dressing as the local interpretation of Krampus, having a parade accompanied by Saint Nicholas to mark his arrival, and running loose in the streets bearing chains and/or bells. Sometimes they carry birch switches or whips, sometimes they distribute booby-prize gifts (like lumps of coal), and sometimes, in the milder traditions, they hand out candy. It is often customary to offer them schnapps or other strong drink, to placate them.

Krampusfest, like SantaCon and like the Art of Bleeding, carries a sulfurous whiff of mayhem to us from a less safe and more primitive world. It reaches through and beyond the lurid horror commonly found in original-version fairy tales, in which brutality, beheadings, immolation, dismemberment, and horrible, violent death of all kinds is featured prominently; Krampusfest reaches deeper and farther back for its elements of terror. One does not touch the truest archetype of Krampus without touching all the implied menace of prehistory; the tradition has its deepest roots in the adrenal, primitive-dark sympathetic magic of forgotten hunters gathered ’round fires on the edges of eldritch forests. That primal, mist-obscured, stag-headed terror of which Krampus is an agent will allow Krampusfest to carry out its mission with sublety; it will surely be wild, but the blatant mayhem and hobo-style public drunkenness of an old-school SantaCon wassail won’t be necessary.

The website of Ridenour’s L.A.-based Krampus troupe explains:

“While the Cacophony Society was known for a general attitude of cynicism and satiric manhandling of sacred cows, Krampusfest encourages an inquisitive and respectful regard for the practice of Krampus traditions (along with playful reinterpretations!). Krampus Los Angeles is in correspondence with Krampus groups overseas in an effort to ground our activities in authentic practice and understanding of the tradition.”

Al Ridenour works on a Krampus mask – PHOTO: Phil Glau

I caught up with Al Ridenour early this week for a Q and A:

Whatsblem the Pro:
Al, what is Krampus?

Al Ridenour:
Well, the name probably comes from Austria, but it’s also used in Southern Germany and elsewhere. He’s a folkloric devil character who basically plays bad cop to St. Nicholas’ good cop, when Nicholas is off doing his gift-giving. . . and I don’t mean Santa Claus here. All this mythology is associated with December 6th, the feast day of the 4th century saint. The Nicholas figure dresses like a medieval bishop and is accompanied by a few Krampuses on house visits.

There are also Krampus runs, which consist of lots of these groups, each traditionally with their own Nicholas marching down the street. The bigger Krampus runs, the ones people here are more likely to see videos of, can be very elaborate with pyrotechnic effects and such, but in the smaller Alpine villages where this stuff originates there’s not really an organized parade route; it’s more just like a bunch of groups running around the town all at once — and there’s more risk, i.e., fun; that is, spectators get chased and get some light smacks with switches. . . especially women.

Whatsblem the Pro:
How much of that will you be reviving in L.A.?

Al Ridenour:
We’re actually trying to do all of it. We put the word out offering a traditional home visit, but somehow no one has jumped on that. Maybe something about having their kids scared shitless.

Actually, I should say that kids are never really smacked with switches. We certainly wouldn’t be doing that, and from talking to Austrians and what I see in videos, it’s really just about the Krampus throwing scary theatrical tantrums and rattling his chains and cowbells.

Whatsblem the Pro:
But you’ll be doing a Krampus run?

Al Guerrero suiting up – PHOTO: Phil Glau

Al Ridenour:
Yes, a run and some other events. We’re doing a public run in conjunction with the Downtown Art Walk on December 12th. The Krampus L.A. Troupe will be there in full costume, and we even have an ‘Austrian’ band marching alongside. They’re actually a Balkan band, the Free Range Orkestar, but the one I talked to lived in Austria, and they’re learning Austrian-style folk tunes. So there’ll be music and switch-swinging and we’ll have a Saint Nick giving out some sweets, too.

Whatsblem the Pro:
How many of you are there in the troupe? Can other people just join you in costume?

Al Ridenour:
Yes. That’d be great. We just want to touch base with any participants first. We’re just asking them to arrive early to check in with us to go over some guidelines. Because switches are involved, and it’s a new potentially scary tradition, we just want to take that precaution.

There are about fifteen of us with full costumes, maybe even a couple more. Some people are still working on stuff, so I’m not sure.

Whatsblem the Pro:
The costumes look pretty elaborate. Do you expect a lot of people to show up in full Krampus suits?

Al Ridenour:
Well, that’d be wonderful, but I know the suits I made took quite a lot of time. Unfortunately, I don’t know a way to do it quickly or that cheaply, really.

At first you might just think “gorilla suit plus devil mask,” but if you look at the European costumes, there’s much, much more going on. Still, simplified costumes are okay, particularly for the other events. In fact that’s part of the reason we added other masquerade-type events, so that folks who just want to wear furry boots and their horned headdress but don’t want to go whole hog will also be able to take part. We’re doing Krampus Ball, and a Krampus Rumpus where we’re mixing up traditional stuff — like an Austrian brass band, and a Bavarian group doing traditional dance and music accompanied by alpenhorn — with goofier costumed parody bands like The Kramps and Krammpstein. Of course, the Krampus troupe will attack those events too.

Jason Hadley (foreground) and Al Guerrero (right) ponder a naughty child’s fate – PHOTO: Jon Alloway

Whatsblem the Pro:
So how did you make those costumes? They’re wonderful.

Al Ridenour:
Everyone approached it somewhat differently. There are certainly some elements you can buy ready-made; in fact, you can buy a whole traditional suit ready-made online from European websites, if you want. . . but it’ll cost you a grand or more.

We did a lot from scratch as well as adapting some ready-made stuff. I’m not really sure how everyone made what they did. My masks, I actually used lots and lots of pieces of cardboard, hot-glued together. Then over that, coats of Bondo mixed with Fiberglass resin. Some epoxy putty details, some more tooling of the plastic, and you’re ready for paint.

The horns are all real; I used goat and kudu on my biggest one. In Europe, the masks are traditionally carved from wood. I did sculpt my teeth from wood, but I’m just not a woodcarver. I tried to emulate that chiseled look in what I made, though.

The fur suits are a combination of real fur from old thrift store coats, as well as sewn wefts of bulk synthetic hair sold for braided extensions, along with faux-fur yardage. There’s a lot of raggedness and wisps of long fur on traditional suits, so even if you buy a werewolf, gorilla, or Yeti suit, you need to doll it up a bit. We’re hoping to do some workshops next year, after we generate some interest and get the public acquainted with the look this year.

Whatsblem the Pro:
It does sound like a lot of work. So why are you doing it? Why Krampus? Is this a sort of next step beyond Santacon/Santarchy? An antidote for the creeping sanitization of Santa crawls?











Al Ridenour:
There’s no way to get around the comparison, especially since it was some of us from the old Cacophony Society that started that ball rolling. Honestly, I haven’t been part of that for going on twenty years, so I wouldn’t know anything about sanitized, but I do know it can be fun if it’s new to you.

I was there for the Santa gathering of the tribes in Portland in 1996, when Santa Palahniuk was along taking notes and we ended up facing off with riot police in full riot gear, so after that they started seeming a little anti-climactic, I guess. I organized one, I think, the year later, where the Santas attended the gun show they used to have out at the Pomona Fairplex. That made for lots of nice photo opportunities, but the joke just sort of got old.

The real problem with things like this is, as the numbers grow, the challenge and adrenaline rush diminishes. When it’s just a few of you out there, you don’t feel as safe; there’s more individual risk. As the safety-in-numbers factor sets in, the rush diminishes. Because we’re not just talking about a $35 Santa suit you can buy the day before you get here, we have some built-in safeguards against this thing becoming the same kind of mob scene.

Whatsblem the Pro:
But isn’t the Krampus run you’re doing sanctioned by virtue of being part of the Art Walk?

Al Ridenour:
Yes, and that’s a very good point. It does make it less challenging, but we’ll still be encountering people who have never heard of this tradition, and who won’t like what looks like a bunch of Satanists armed with bundles of wooden sticks. There is always the danger of some radical misunderstanding.

Krampus isn’t just a funny visual spectacle, like a mob of drunken Santas. He directly confronts and interacts; he swats at people, for heaven’s sake. The performers need to be on their toes to make wise judgments about who seems to comprehend what’s happening and might want to be playfully chased, and who to stay away from. It’ll be a balancing act. . . and beyond that one event, we’ll also be doing a secret guerilla-style appearance on December 6th, just to honor the traditional date and the rambunctiousness of the tradition as it’s practiced closer to its source, in the smaller villages where the Krampus runs wild and isn’t presented as a parade.

Mike Biggie strikes a menacing pose – PHOTO: Jon Alloway

Whatsblem the Pro:
But again, why Krampus, and why now?

Al Ridenour:
This really just seemed like the last possible moment to make this our own, before someone else took over the tradition, reshaped it, and sold it back to us. Krampus was a figure I always felt close to. My B.A. was in German Culture and Literature, and I had grandparents who spoke German at home, so I felt a little possessive once I discovered him. Then, way back in college, when I first read those passages in The Golden Bough that you and I were talking about, it just set my little heart a-pattering and I began digging for more info. I’ve been watching this thing catch fire with the compilations of Krampus postcards appearing in books and circulating online, and the next thing I know, I’m hearing about Krampus cameos on The Colbert Report, The Office, American Dad, and The Venture Brothers. This year I discover that even Walmart is selling a shitty Krampus mask, via their website at least. I guess I felt like I was losing my intimate connection with my buddy Krampus. The only way left to get closer to Krampus was to become Krampus.

Whatsblem the Pro:
And convince a bunch of other people to become Krampus, too?

Al Ridenour:
No convincing was needed; that’s just my story. The others in the group had already grown their own attachments, I’m sure.

What happened, actually, was that in 2012 I finally made it to Austria and Germany to attend some Krampus events, and in the evening after I came home from my first event, I opened an e-mail in my hotel room to find that my friend Al Guerrero from Cacophony was announcing the creation of an L.A. Krampuslauf — a Krampus run — so I was just all over that.

Maybe there was also some aspect among us of wanting to give SantaCon a second try. I remember doing lots of reading on the history of Christmas, and trying to tell reporters that what we were doing was really, in a sense, the ‘real’ way to celebrate the holiday, in that drunken costumed street theatrics have an older historical association with Christmas than the red suit we were all wearing. In Europe they had wassailing. In early America, they called wassail groups Callithumpians. These wassailers would blacken their faces, or cross-dress, or turn their clothes inside-out, and bang on pots and pans and light fireworks while singing drunken songs. When I read about it, it felt a lot more like what we were doing.

I don’t think we could have stated it quite like this at the time. . . but in a way, I think you could fairly say that with SantaCon, we were breaking down that wholesome Coca-Cola character. We were besmirching his reputation by drunken assholery, and thus destroying him so that he could re-emerge in his original form.

Whatsblem the Pro:
There’s The Golden Bough again: Kill the ceremonial king, so he can be born anew. So Spring will come! But Coca-Cola Santa came from Madison Avenue.

Al Guerrero wears the traditional chains – PHOTO: Jon Alloway

Al Ridenour:
Yes. That version of Santa Claus was created to get people off the streets, to turn the holiday into a quiet family-centered idyll.

The popularization of Clement Clark Moore’s poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” was really part of a concerted effort by New York bluebloods to create something closer to the Santa we know. It’s true he may have been somewhat standardized by those Coke ads, but the basic idea goes back to that poem. . . and what’s funny is that the illustrations that went with it were drawn by a German immigrant, Thomas Nast, and both what he drew, and the poem itself, are still close to the German Belsnickel — or “Pelt Nicholas” — who is more of a sly trickster character than our old familiar Santa. He didn’t leave gifts in your home; he threw treats out into the street to bait kids. They would go for the treats, and he’d crack the whip he carried, to send them scattering. It was much closer to a game, and with his face blackened by soot and the ragged animal pelts he wore, he’s really only a hop, skip, and a jump from Krampus.

The real kicker was the cowbells. Krampus, in a few remote regions, cracks a whip. . . but everywhere he wears cowbells. This noise-making tradition associated with the holidays goes back to the pagan idea of driving away bad spirits at turning points in the year whenever they are likely to menace us mortals. We still have this notion preserved in the idea of New Year’s fireworks and tolling church bells, but it was also part of these costumed Christmas riots with their pot-and-pan banging.

When I heard the cowbells on the belts of the first Krampuses I encountered in Europe, it really hit me that this was my kind of cacophony! I just hope we can make a good run of it.

Whatsblem the Pro:
I hope you can, too. Wassail, Al!

For information on upcoming Krampus L.A. events, visit the troupe’s event calendar at http://krampuslosangeles.com/calendar/

Ashley ‘Actually’ Huizenga lays down an informative Krampus carol

by Whatsblem the Pro

You think YOU’RE an underground artist? — PHOTO: Ra Paulette

If you’ve spent much time at all sitting around camp fires and burn barrels chewing the fat with people who go to Burning Man, then you know they tend to be fond of talking about buying land and forming intentional communities of one kind or another, building on the lessons learned by participating in the culture that has grown up around the event.

It goes without saying that they’re also rather fond of art, and uniqueness, and deserts.

Somewhere nestled in the big empty between Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico, there’s a burner daydream for sale: 208 acres of privacy and freedom to spread out on. . . and the property features two hand-excavated art caves.

Eloi need not apply — PHOTO: Ra Paulette

The large and intricately carved underground spaces – described in the real estate listing as ‘cathedrals’ or ‘meditation caverns’ – are the handiwork of 67-year-old Ra Paulette, who has spent the last quarter of a century working alone at digging out and decorating a series of mind-blowing sandstone chambers beneath the surface of New Mexico.

Describing his process, Paulette says “manual labor is the foundation of my self-expression. To do it well, to do it beautifully, is a whole-person activity, engaging mental and emotional strengths as well as physical strength.”

Armed only with hand tools and his trusty wheelbarrow, Paulette follows his own very particular star in a starless darkness whose sky lies beneath our feet. He seems to have developed techniques all his own that allow him to work with remarkable efficiency, accompanied only by his faithful dog.

“When digging and excavating the caves,” he elaborates, “I break down all the movements into their simplest parts and reassemble them into the most efficient patterns and strategies that will accomplish the task while maintaining bodily ease. Like a dancer, I feel the body and its movement in a conscious way. I’m fond of calling this ‘the dance of digging,’ and it is the secret of how this old man can get so much done.”

Paulette’s strange story and that of his long and solitary labor of love has been immortalized in a documentary that may just be on its way to an Academy Award nomination: director Jeffrey Karoff’s CAVE DIGGER. The film, which has been much-lauded at international film festivals this year, spelunks both Paulette’s artistic ouevre, and the artist’s difficulties in dealing with the demands of his patrons. Paulette’s clashes with those who would try to direct his artistic efforts in exchange for mere money have spawned a distressing number of unfinished projects and left the cloistered cave-carver determined to work only for himself as he completes his magnum opus over the course of a decade of digging.

“My final and most ambitious project is both an environmental and social art project that uses solitude and the beauty of the natural world to create an experience that fosters spiritual renewal and personal well being,” explains Paulette. “It is a culmination of everything I have learned and dreamed of in creating caves.”

According to the real estate listing, grid electricity and telephone lines are ready to serve the lot at its perimeter, and the gated property features roads that connect with New Mexico State Highway 285 for easy access. Along with Paulette’s underground cathedrals and their “candlelit niches, recessed seating and various breathtaking side rooms that are washed in sunlight,” the 208-acre homestead boasts “majestic mountain views” and “surreal rock formations throughout.”

See you there?

The trailer for Jeffrey Karoff’s Ra Paulette documentary, CAVE DIGGER

by Whatsblem the Pro

Or you can just sit there forever in your Rules-Royce, sucker

Whether the topic is children on the playa, cops on the playa, feathers on the playa, or just rules in general on the playa, burners are going to argue bitterly and at great length about it. Any time these topics are raised in any burner forum online, the conversation draws hundreds of comments, many of them aggressive to the point of abuse. It’s as though the desert fosters endless dispute in spite of all the groovy talk about togetherness and family and unity of purpose.

How can we resolve these seemingly unresolvable disagreements?

Consider the original reasons for going out to the Black Rock Desert in the first place; it was largely because the remoteness and harshness of the place made it a good place for a Temporary Autonomous Zone. It was a place where you could get your dog good and drunk and let him drive your car across the playa at 120MPH while you leaned out the passenger window, peppering the drive-by shooting range with buckshot. . . and there was nobody who could tell you with any authority that anything about that was wrong.

Ever since Larry Harvey and his gang co-opted that freedom by putting a fence around it and selling tickets, you aren’t even allowed to bring your dog, much less get him drunk. The speed limit is 5MPH, and firearms are frowned upon. . . because as everyone will tell you if you happen to lament those bygone days, the event is just too big for it to be practical to not have any rules. While that’s probably very true, it’s also true that without the fence and the tickets the event may very well have remained small enough for it to be OK. . . but I digress.

When the festivities on Baker Beach grew too large to avoid unwanted attention from the police, it became clear that San Francisco was no place for a Temporary Autonomous Zone of any size, as it would not and could not be tolerated by the locals. . . so, thanks to the Cacophony Society, a TAZ capable of supporting Burning Man as it existed in those days was established in the Black Rock Desert. Now Black Rock City itself is so big that the locals there balk at the idea of having no rules. . . so instead of discarding the best thing about the event in its early days, why aren’t we establishing a new TAZ to serve the needs of the woolier, more freedom-loving denizens of Black Rock City?

The obvious answer, of course, is that no matter what Larry Harvey or Marian Goodell say in speeches and press releases, Black Rock City LLC is a corporate business entity that exists for the purpose of making money, not for fostering anything too radical in the way of culture, and that purpose is inimical to the very idea of autonomy. The Disneyfication of the playa marches ever onward in the name of profits, and public relations problems are dealt with in the corporate way: by paying people off and covering things up. For example: rape kits are not available at Burning Man, not because there’s any reality to what the Org says about the environment being too harsh or the chain of custody being too difficult to maintain, but because having rape kits on the playa would mean that far more rapes at Burning Man would be reported instead of shrugged off and forgotten about; many rape victims would rather stay at Burning Man and quietly put the rape behind them than spend the rest of the burn in a Reno hospital talking to cops and doctors. In short, we don’t have rape kits out there because it would hurt the corporate brand that the Org owns and profits from, and since Burning Man is primarily a for-profit business, that’s unacceptable to the Board of Directors no matter how many unwilling young women have unwanted sexual experiences forced upon them.

The profit motive is what brought us to this, and the profit motive has swollen the numbers of people attending to the point that most of them no longer have much in common with the free spirits that came to share their visions with each other in the early days of the event. At this late date, any proposal that suggests Burning Man might return to its origins of envelope-pushing freedom is immediately shouted down as unreasonable and unrealistic.

Imagine, though, a designated area on the playa – for waiver-signing adults only – with no rules. A place near enough to BRC to get to easily, but far enough away that gunfire isn’t a problem. A controlled-access TAZ. An anarchy park, within the confines of Burning Man. A place with no cops, no rules, and no limits.

Black Rock City can grow and grow, and so can the rules and the Disneyland-like aspects and the mandated safety and the numbers of children and the vast hordes of finger-pointers and burnier-than-thou shamers. . . and we’ll still have (we’ll once again have) a place to be ourselves, completely unfettered by anyone’s rules or expectations.

Comments are encouraged.

Reallocate.org is a charity founded by Burners and staffed by Burners, but you don’t have to be into Burning Man to participate. Anyone who has skills that they would like to use to help charities around the world can join Reallocate.

Reallocate are hosting a Christmas-themed HACKtivation at the Embassy, 399 Webster St San Francisco. It’s on next Saturday, December 14th from 9:30am until 10PM.

HACKtivations are a chance for people to use their skills to contribute something good to the community, by helping projects that do social good to thrive. This is a great way to show your support for Burner principles like Gifting, Civic Responsibility, Radical Inclusion, and Radical Self-Expression. There are a total of 80 spots available, sign up now because previous events have filled up.

• ReAllocate is hosting its 3rd HACKtivation! You can still wear your Santa Costume and join us to #hackforgood! Date/Time: December 14th 9:30AM -10:00 PM Registration: http://hacktivationd14.eventbrite.com/ Location: The Embassy – 399 Webster St, San Francisco  Calling all coders, designers, entrepreneurs, and curious do gooders. Come and lend your amazing talents for good. We will provide the place, food, drinks and projects. You just need your skills, smiles and computers. Sign up now for one of the 80 spots available! HACKtivation December 14th Join us for the next ReAllocate HACKtivation. We are welcoming new partners, new teams of developers, designers and entrepreneurs and growing the community of people who want to use their skills to help social good projects thrive!  An introduction to our project partners: BAYCAT educates, empowers and employs underserved youth and young adults to produce digital media that tells their unique stories and engages them to positively transform themselves, their communities and the world. PollVault is a new non-partisan website designed literally around your ballot, delivering all the information you need to make better voting decisions in a single, easy-to-read format.  Bay Bucks’s mission is to foster a more just and sustainable economy in the Bay Area. We are enabling people to create their own money through a process called Mutual Credit Clearing, so that money can always be available when a productive member of the community needs it. #GameName is a smart phone game that taps into the everyday lives of disconnected youth and connects them to resources and people in their communities.

This video made my day today, much more than waking up early like a kid on Christmas Day waiting for Santa to have come…hoping that a theme was finally going to be announced, 7 months before the gates open, only to find that it was a “bazaar” one…and Lottery 2.0 with it.

Happiness, and helping the world, doesn’t come from figuring out ingenious new ways to tax people. Masking new taxes and surcharges and “additional fees as applicable” with a hint that “it’s good for the environment”…well, draw your own conclusions, I’m not even going to go there tonight. I’ll let this video speak for itself.

You want to see 3 people with nothing to do with Burning Man on a stage? Then watch a frikking TED talk on YouTube, you don’t need a $30 million a year dance party and 100+ “Regionals” for that. You want to spread a culture of gifting, compassion, and kindness, and environmental responsibility around the world? You could do worse than the sentiment expressed here. Ain’t no BLM “rangers in action” “we’re Earth Guardians” videos making me cry tonight…

From the comments:

“Anyone who saw how the cows ran into the open today would ask themself, where do you even see something like that these days … this joy of life, the spontaneity, the excitement. How could anyone not have seen that”.

$40 is about the cost of a decent steak in a San Francisco restaurant. Support this cause here . I eat a lot of steaks. My girlfriend is a vegetarian, as are many of my beloved friends and family. Some of whom are Burners. How can I live with myself, then? Am I a hypocrite, accusing others of hypocrisy? Whatever, bra. A wise, magical woman told me once: “cows need a lot of land. If we didn’t have a commercial use for them, the land would be used for other things. Therefore, by eating steaks as a species, we’re actually preserving these massive amounts of land for this animal species, which otherwise would get next to nothing”. I know that militant vegans will debate this statement, but that doesn’t make it wrong. What other animal in the Universe gets so much land? Certainly not elephants, tigers, orangutans, or even humans living along the ancient Silk Road between Bodrum to Chengdu…

To me, the happiness of these animals, and preserving habitat for all animals, is a more worthy cause than “commerce and trade on the Silk Road”. Oh, wait: “we’re going to save the roads in the middle of nowhere with a $40 surcharge” #cowavoidslay #cameltoe #savingtheworld

Maybe gleaning an extra $40 from 35,000 people is really going to make a difference in the world, and I’m just being a hater.

P.S. Where do you think those mushrooms you’re chomping down on the Playa come from? The Silk Road? Or the cows? Or both?

P.P.S. From Wikipedia:

Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of the civilizations of China, the Indian subcontinent, Persia, Europe and Arabia. It opened long-distance, political and economic interactions between the civilizations.^[5] Though silk was certainly the major trade item from China, many other goods were traded, and various technologies, religions and philosophies, as well as the bubonic plague (the “Black Death“), also traveled along the Silk Routes. In addition to economic trade, the Silk Road served as a ways of cultural trade between the networking civilizations.

We like to move forwards. Backwards, in reflection, sometimes helps; usually, not. Looking forwards, then…here is some Monday inspiration for you. Coming from, where it is we’re coming from. The pulsing heart of Infinite Love of Gaia, the earth. The true heart.

The story of Spirit. And “Animal Communicator” Anna Breytenbach.

The story of making the impossible, possible. See it for yourself:

Burners, you don’t need to join our cult, you don’t need to send us money, but we suggest: do this. Permaculture, Nature engineering. Animal communication, hey, why not, human communication? Universal physics. It’s so much better for everyone than “social engineering”, or “profiteering”, or “DJ rules“.

This is how we do it.

There is a spirit here, advancing humanity throughout the Ages. It should be celebrated. These tribes sure knew how to bring it to the desert, for a long, long time. Sustainability is a better goal than any of the Ten Principles of Burning Man.

Oh, was that an #encore I heard? <=> Maybe I just gifted it to myself. Maybe Yothu Yindi gifted it to all of us. Recommend you turn this one up…(Aboriginal people this might contain…you know what I’m saying)

Reno’s Morris Hotel is being turned into a Burner hotel – quite literally. They now answer the phone as “Morris Burner Hotel”, and the web site is morrisburnerhotel.com. From the Reno Gazette-Journal:

The neon purple sign glows “Burner” over the front entrance to the 85-year-old four-story, red-brick historic Morris Burner Hotel on Fourth Street.

The building, purchased last July by brothers Don and Jim “Jungle Jim” Gibson, has since undergone renovations removing its aged, yellow layers and turning it into the beginnings of a creative hub for Burning Man participants, artists and the community.

Next week, it will open its door in a soft-grand opening with artist group NadaDada for its second annual, three-day spring Dada art and music event, “NADAgras.” The event will include artwork, tours of the Morris, food, live music and performance art displays.

We’ve told you tales before of NadaDada and their motel shows.

“’NADAgras’ is a match made in heaven for us,” Gibson said. “NadaDada is one of my favorite events — I have wandered around for one or two days every year, visited with the artists; it’s so fun to see all the crazy art. Doing it here is an honor.”

During “NADAgras” the hotel’s third floor rooms will be filled with Nada artists and their work. He said hosting a grand opening during the event also offers exposure to both the hotel and Nada that the community may not have experienced before.

“The art part (at the Morris) has turned into such an important piece of the puzzle,” Gibson said. ”It’s not only how we’re decorating the place, but we have an art proposal and program that we put together that defines how we deal with the art in the hotel and in the community, and relationships with other art galleries and groups.”

On nearly a half an acre of land and with more than 30 rooms, the Morris is home to over a dozen residents, a series of themed art rooms, such as the Goddess of Creation room and the Sparkle Pony room, and the alternative media source, LoadedTV, featuring “Studio M” streaming interviews and segments about the Burning Man and art community.

“I didn’t go out intentionally looking to buy something like this — it kind of happened and the rest, as they say, is history,” Gibson said. “What has happened here is nothing short of amazing and it’s turning into what could be an incredibly-nice boutique hotel.”

Gibson said as the first phase of renovations comes together, there are future plans to create a coffee shop, an organic food restaurant and an aquaponics greenhouse and outdoor seating area in the backyard “playa” space.

He said he would also like to use the 18-foot high “M” from the 2009 Burning Man art installation piece, “MOM” created by California artist Laura Kimpton, as an entrance gate on Valley Road behind neighboring businesses Abby’s HWY 40 and Studio on 4th.

“We’re on the books as a hotel, but the reality is that we’re an art and a community space,” Gibson said. “It’s something for people who want to understand Burning Man and it’s for the greater Burning Man community around the world. When they come to Reno, they can stay here and they immediately get to know the burner community. That’s always been a real driver for doing this.”

In room 223, “NADAgras” coordinator and performing artist James Dilworth will present a silent, interactive performing art piece, “Room of Silence.”

He said holding the event at the Morris is ideal because there is the overlap between Nada and burners where anything can happen and people can come out of their normal world and experience something they’ve never experienced before.

The Nada movement began in Reno four years ago with its “Dada Motel” exhibit featuring artists residing and exhibiting in the El Cortez Hotel on West Second Street for a weekend. The Nada artists’ work challenges conventional art politics and portrays a variety of more eccentric themes.

“There’s an artistic revival going on in Reno, and there’s a lot of artistic things happening here,” Dillworth said. “I think the community at large should be aware of this. It’s something to experience, appreciate and be a part of it. It’s not just for artists; it’s for everyone and they need to participate.”

Last year’s first off-shoot of the main Nada event started in midtown with “NADAgras” in the Best Bet Motel. Dilworth said this year’s event is more extensive and features a wide-variety of activities to participate in.

“I think there is going to be a lot more buzz about NadaDada,” Dilworth said. “With this event, we’re testing the waters to expand the Nada movement. It isn’t just gallery shows; if you have an idea with Nada, try it out — get a room, put it up and see how it works.”

Displaying in the Oxbow Press group show, “Naughty, Taboo and Just Plain Wrong,” British artist Carole Anne Ricketts joined Nada in the summer of 2010. She said the magic of Nada is allowing the artist the opportunity to speak directly to the public in their own words.

“Nada is where the truth can be told or the outrageous can be put on display,” Ricketts said. “It’s not the words of a hanging committee or a curator looking for commercially viable items, then the show going up after the subject has lost its current cultural relevance.”

For this year’s “NADAgras” event, Ricketts along with the help of artist and musician Jill Marlene, created the Goddess room she hopes will inspire creativity in those that stay in it.

“It (”NADAgras”) is a perfect fit for the Morris Burner Hotel, where the show takes on a mini ephemeral art community, much like that of Burning Man on a way different scale,” Ricketts said. “Although Nada is non-exclusive, so tickets for entry have no place here. Within the rooms of the Morris, the exhibitions take on a level of intimacy, while the corridors, indoor spaces and outdoor area, provide an almost carnival banality with the possibilities of spontaneous entertainments of burner style revelry.”

Sounds great, I wanna go! If anyone in Reno could take a picture of the neon purple Burner sign for us, we’d be much obliged.

NADAgras starts March 7

Video has been released of Larry Harvey’s speech last month at the Being A Man 2014 conference in Southbank, London. The warm up to his talk suggested it might be rather controversial, with Larry’s revelations about child abuse and necromancy. The talk itself is not so juicy, and consists mainly of Larry reading a long email about his hat that he wrote to his dog-burning son Tristan (“if he’d only perservered!”) during a time of great tribulation.

Larry says in his speech that the first burn “gave me the idea finally that it was OK just to do things, without worrying about the venue and without worrying about permission, without unduly worrying about the purpose, and to do these things in a spirit of pure self expression that was shared with other folks”.

In later burns, watching others “pulling together” to haul the ship’s rope to lift the Man statue he designed up right “it was as if people had merged with it, and it mirrored us all back to one another. It was so conspicuously self conscious that we thought that we were the man – we were being a man, together”.

Here’s Larry on another panel from the conference, hosted by the winner of the George Orwell prize for journalism who wrote a compendium on conspiracy theories. Note he’s swapped out his trademark cowboy hat for the Burning Man Project Not Merchandise scarf, the hit new fashion accessory of the winter.

One significant aspect of these talks is, did Larry Harvey get paid for the engagement, or is this our donation dollars at work? The Burning Man Project, a non-profit, is now the owner of the Burning Man event. All the profits from the event, as well as our additional donations, go to the Burning Man Project. In the new structure they’ve devised, our tickets and vehicle passes are not tax deductible for us, only BMOrg gets the tax advantages. We buy them from their for-profit subsidiary, which then can reduce its tax bill to $0 by making an annual donation to its non-profit parent. This way, BMOrg and its owners get the benefit of the deal – ie, the tax break – and Burners foot the bill.

What does the Project do with all the money, both profits and donations? It pays salaries, travel, and costume expenses. And it supports a UFO art project going to Vegas, an event in their office on crowdfunding, and a sympoisum with the founders in New York that we were told would be released on video, but is still being kept a secret. One wonders, what was said there? We heard that Larry said Burning Man would accept Bitcoins (not true). Anyone else got any tips on what might have been said that was so controversial it had to be hushed up?

Sadly, we’re not just providing a few selected examples of all the good that the Project does. That’s it – this is the extent of it. It’s been several years now since what the Bay Guardian called the Old Bait and Switch. How is the Burning Man Project being a Catalyst for Creative Culture in the world? BMOrg  don’t seem to be interested so much in gifting and sharing Burner culture, as they are in monetizing Burner culture for their own benefit and leveraging it to promote themselves and spread their own principles and ideas and rules.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll be familiar with the refrain “if you don’t like it, start your own”. It’s a BMOrg “talking point” that their allies like to parrot when they come to our site to blast back at us for posting anything that is critical of the almighty BMOrg. You know, BMOrg, the ones who say “everything’s fine because we’re a non-profit now”, while they run the World’s Biggest Guest List and come up with ticket lotteries, new taxes and scalper opportunities, $150 scarves, and all manner of absurd lawsuits - always, at the expense of the Burner community.

Well, once again, someone has tried to start their own alternative, and once again, BMOrg is trying to shut them down.

Newsflash, people: it is possible to LOVE Burning Man, and NOT LOVE the organization that profits from it. They are two three different things. One, is an annual party put on by us Burners. We bring all the art, art cars, music, drinks, food, and everything else you get given for free. There are “No Spectators”. The other, is a mysterious organization that makes all the money from this, who are prone to making public statements that are not congruent with their public actions. The organization that actually puts on the event is technically Black Rock City, LLC, a subsidiary of the Burning Man Project, a 501(c)3 charitable corporation; but, most of the work actually gets done by another group of Burners who are key to the event, DPW – Burning Man’s Department of Public Works. DPW are primarily volunteers who go to the desert for months to build the city where we put the party on. We mention them to point out to newbies that the people who build the party are not the same as the people who send the lawsuits out, but they’re not part of this discussion, we love those guys and gals, we rely on them, there’ve been no posts critical of DPW at this blog.

The problem with “if you don’t like it, start your own”, is that this friendly non-profit BMOrg corporation that is “trying to spread Burner culture around the world”, will threaten you with legal action at the slightest hint that you actually are spreading Burner culture around the world. Meaning that, in their minds, ALL BURNER CULTURE EVERYWHERE BELONGS TO THEM FOREVER. And they can monetize it however they like, as much as they like, and stop everyone else while they’re at it. This would be OK if they were Microsoft and Oracle, and had spent billions to create proprietary intellectual property that they licensed fairly to a global market. In this case, though, BMOrg are more like Linux. The success and strength of what they’ve created has come from those who’ve contributed to it, and is due to its open source nature, liberal intellectual property licensing, crowd-sourcing, and crowd-funding. Linus doesn’t go around suing people who contribute to his code, he doesn’t try to get forks in the code shut down. Companies like Red Hat have been very successful at monetizing the free, open source Linux, without doing anything to take its value away from anyone else in the world. The $30 million+/year tax free BMOrg juggernaut, allied with Rockefellers and Rothschilds, boasts a considerable team of lawyers –  lawyers who have no problems suing governments, getting laws changed to suit them, or correcting judges in the media. Any little old Burners inspired by Larry Harvey’s speeches that “it was OK just to do things, without worrying about the venue and without worrying about permission, without unduly worrying about the purpose, and to do these things in a spirit of pure self expression that was shared with other folks”, are going to have to figure out a way to stand up to this formidable crew of One-Percenters. 

We’ve covered this topic before over the years, especially in these three pieces:

Love It Or Leave It

Do Not Use The Words Burning Man

The Fishy Smell of Corporate Excess

Well, record attendance numbers, a sold out show, and the public statements from the Founders that their non-profit future is as “Catalyst for creative culture in the world”, have done nothing to change a wolf into a sheep. This is still the same greedy, rapacious, litigious beast as ever. Their latest victim? Some Burners in Southern California, who dare to have an event on private land where they burn an effigy. Do they use photos from Burning Man to promote their event? NO. Do they use the words Burning Man or Black Rock City? NO. What’s their crime, then? It appears to be someone writing about the event in a blog, saying that like Burning Man you have to bring your own generators and provisions. How committed are BMOrg to money? So much so, that their representatives change their names to demonstrate where their loyalties lie:

“$teven Ra$pa, Arts Advocate & Community Event Producer, Burning Man”

Mr $teven Raspa, Arts Advocate , would seem to be the same person as $teven Ra$pa, Regional Network Committee, who sent the letter below to the Dr Devious organizers. You need to watch the $’s closely, they’re somewhat slippery, they move around in bizarre ways – a bit like BMOrg themselves.

“Are you the organizer of Dr. Devious’ Gypsy Circus & Sideshow Carnival? If so, it looks great but some concerns have come up I need your help to address. 

At these links and on your ticketing page you are drawing numerous direct associations with Burning Man as a way to affiliate and appeal/market to people and you are using a Man likeness. This combination is an infringement on intellectual property and is leading to confusion about your event being an officially sanctioned event Burning Man is affiliated with and/or something we are organizing. That is how it came to my attention, as my role is supporting official community events by and for the community involving a local regional contact. 

You seem to be burners and so we don’t want to be unnecessarily difficult, but I need to request that you not use the Man likeness and so heavily associate yourselves in your promotions and be clearer about who is organizing this for what purpose and who will gain financially from this event. You are charging for tickets but not fundraising for any art projects or theme camps for Black Rock City that I can tell. 

As burners I would sincerely appreciate your help in being clear about these things and with a couple quick and easy tweaks you can help us preserve our vital trademarks from hostile infringements by non-burners and those who are looking to financially gain from our community–which we must be vigilant about. 

I must request you remove the image of the man effigy from your promotions and reduce your references to “just like Burning Man” in your marketing. I can help you with what to say to strike the right balance.

If you are supporting a good cause we’d love to be supportive, but we do need your cooperation quickly on this. 

Do you have a moment to speak by phone and can I call you to discuss this further and help you to let burners know they are welcome but not do so in a way that leads to confusion?

If so, what number can I reach you at? I’d love to talk with you and learn more about your goals. 

Alternatively, please call me at the number below. Part of my role is helping out in cases like these. 

Warmly,

$teven Ra$pa Regional Network Committee  Burning Man

https://www.facebook.com/events/1390048944589266/ http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/560670

There’s lots of flowery prose in there trying to soften the blow, which perhaps was ordered from on high via this committee, but there’s no mistaking the message: the iron first of BMOrg inside the lovingly supportive velvet glove of $teven Ra$pa. “Those who are looking to gain financially from our community” is, unquestionably, BMOrg. We don’t deny them their right to make money, good on them for being capitalists in the second richest city in the world’s #1 capitalist country – but their “it’s not enough for us to win, everyone else must fail”, zero-sum game, take no prisoners and burn the villages approach, is 19th Century robber baron thinking that does not gel with the 21st century high tech world that we live in today. Here’s a response from the Dr Devious side:

Are these people on crack? They are under the impression that someone will mistake “Dr. Devious’s Gypsy Circus and Sideshow Carnival” for “Burning Man” ? Not to mention he can’t tell the difference between a Man and a “Pyramid”… Your Burning Man Dollars At Work (this is the exact reason I’m an Ex-Burner). What an insult to the Burning Man Community The Burning Man Thug Organization has become, in my humble opinion…

Perhaps Dr Devious already moved the offending links, because we sure can’t see any. The only things that seem to be even slightly related are:

We are planning a man burn, an effigy burn. This is a radically self reliant and Leave No Trace event. It’s near Red Rock (not Black Rock), Garlock (not Gerlock). “LEAVE NO BURNER BEHIND”

That’s it! Burning Man doesn’t own the town of Gerlach, and as far as I know they don’t own “Gerlock” either. The Black Rock desert was there long before they were, although they do own the trademark “Black Rock City”. Wicker men have been burned for thousands of years, an idea they stole from the Druids, witches, and Bohemian Grove for their event. Leave No Trace is a registered trademark – of the US Department of Agriculture, not BMOrg. Another piece of culture taken by BMOrg then claimed as their own and used to muscle others with. From the blog that mentioned the event, we see a few more words…but really nothing that seems questionable or confusing:

this is a Burner Event, if you come you bring your own Equipment, Power, Etc just like Burning Man, no one is paid to bring there Art, Perform or Set Up a Theme Camps

That is hardly anyone saying “we are Burning Man” or “this is a Burning Man event”. An original picture of their effigy under construction looked like this: The final version has “tits and a vagina” – so, clearly not a man of any kind other than metaphorical. Here’s Burning Man’s 2014 effigy: Other than, both statues are made of wood and are vaguely resemblant of humans, I see no similarities whatsoever. They have some statues with blinky lights…so what? There is some history between BMOrg and these organizers. In the past, they put on a party called “Not Burning Man”, and were told by Burning Man that was too confusing. Couldn’t be more clear, if you ask me! Anyway, the organizers obliged and changed the name.

Plenty of big theme camps, lots of Djs, we have a 25′ Pyramid that will have a light show and DJ… We throw burner Events all the time. Every year at the same time we throw a Local burn called “Not-Burning Man” and cost $20, this will be our 4th year. We started with one of the now regional managers Athena Demos, but they started trying to produce their own local burn and on the 3rd year they said we couldn’t use the name Not-Burning Man, because people would conflict the two, so we changed the Event to Burning Love Festival…

Here is the Facebook page for the upcoming Event…

https://www.facebook.com/events/1390048944589266

and here is the Facebook page for last Event “Jingle Burn” that had over 300 people attend. https://www.facebook.com/events/681614688530361/

We just bought this 22 acre piece of Property in Dec so we are just starting out here, after a bad economy made us give up our last spot. But it is such an amazing place, people told us it was just like being back at the BM Playa only better, no cops, no rules other than don’t be a Dick, and cheap, easy to afford tickets, Vendor Fee Free, (we encourage people to come and set up a table and sale anything you want for Free. We Support the Arts and the Artist…

We are 10 miles from town, 5 miles from a Gas station, snack shop, propane market, and 6 Rickey Ricardo Campground for Potable water and a grey/black water dump. 35 miles from a Homedepot, Walmart, Etc.

Type this address into your map…13144 Munsey Road, Cantil California 93519

I typed the address. It’s about 500 miles away from Black Rock City. The idea that this is a threat to Burning Man is preposterous. The idea that anyone could mistake “Dr Devious’s Gypsy Circus and Sideshow Carnival” in March 2014 in the Mojave Desert (Southern California), for Black Rock City, LLC’s event “Burning Man Caravansary” in August 2014 in the Black Rock Desert (Northern Nevada), is ludicrous. So what, then, is really driving BMOrg to act like the biggest bully in the global TAZ playground? The oldest motivators in the book. Greed. Money. Power. We gifted the culture to them, now it’s theirs and only theirs, we can’t have any piece of it. No matter that we created it. No matter that they’re corrupting it, with their endless saturation of mainstream media publications, rambling speeches supposedly representing our culture, ever-present price increases while begging for donations, and their determination to sell tickets and merchandise to newbies in preference to old-timers.

It’s not on. Burning Man, as the world’s biggest and most famous arts festival, should be a beacon of support and encouragement for Burner artists everywhere. Not some kind of EDM/Pagan culture patent troll. We ask Burners, please support Dr Devious’ Gypsy Circus. They’re not making rock videos at Burning Man or selling soundtracks. They’re Burners, wanting to throw their own party. We need more events like this, BMOrg needs to understand that they DID NOT invent burning effigies or raves in the desert. They stole these things off others! Any Burners who want to use an event, should use the words Burning Man as much as they can get away with, use photos that may or may not be of the event, and use satire to make fun of BMOrg. Let’s overwhelm their letter-sender bullies with thousands of these frivolous lawsuits for them to  launch. Then let’s complain to the IRS that the 501(c)3 non-profit created from our self-expression is spending all of its money suing its donors.

Hope to see you all at the Gypsy Circus. It’s Friday March 14- Sunday March 23, at 13144 Munsey Road, Cantil CA 93519. It’s right by the Airplane Graveyard in the Mojave desert, 2 hours from LA, 4 hours from San Diego and Las Vegas, 5 hours from San Francisco and 6 hours from Reno.

Dr Devious’s Gypsy Circus & SideShow Carnival 2014The World’s Most Amazing Circus Sideshow Carnival ever.http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/560670

Its that time of Year, It’s Summer Time. City Life has just about driven you Mad, and you long for the Serenity of the Desert, but yet you still want to Party your Ass off.. Depressed you can’t go to Bequinox, because you have Pets, or afford the Ticket, etc. or if you just want to come here then go there, you are Welcome to Camp here, and do such! Well, we don’t want you to feel Lonely and UnBurny during the Equinox… So we decided to plan a 7 Day, “LEAVE NO FAMILY BEHIND” Camping Event called “Dr Devious’s Gypsy Circus & Sideshow Carnival”… THIS IS NOT A RAVE!!! SO DONT COME IF THATS WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR!!! BRING LOTS OF FIREWOOD!!!! (no plastic or painted parts ie. must be striped of any moop) this is a self-reliant Event, if you come you bring your own Equipment, Power, Etc, no one is paid to bring there Art, Perform or Set Up a Theme Camps all ages 14 and under, are Free. ‘

Circus-Folke $29 after March 1st $39

Non Circus-Folke $39 after March 1st $49 (you need a special code to purchase Circus-folke Tickets)

To get this send an email requesting one to mlook420@gmail.com All Ticket(s) are non-refundable.

For those with RV’s, right up the road is a very inexpensive Water refill, and Grey Water Dump station, at Red Rock State Park Ricardo Campground, please call them for up to date info. ( http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=631)

The Details: Its on 20+ empty acres of private desert land, up Highway 14, but only 2 hours outside LA (instead of 12), near Red Rock (instead of Black Rock), just down the road from Garlock (instead of Gerlock). ** Its just to get a head count of how many are coming so we can get enough Portos. Some Cell Phone and 4G Data services do not work out there, however AT&T seems to work fine. You can Tent, RV, Camper, or sleep in your Vehicle. Radical Self Reliance must be practiced here. Just like any Camping Trip, bring everything you will need. You will need your own H2O as well. And as always, Leave No Trace.

You can come out as early as march 13th, but I’m sure most will arrive on march 14th ….. We will have several nice sound system out there, and various DJs will be spinning a set. If you want to provide some entertainment, please let us know. You are welcome to bring your fire toys, but also bring your fire safety equipment as well. All musical instruments are welcome. (will be posting more info such as performers etc. later on in the month as time slots/spaces are filled) Hey Guys Just So You Know…

We are a VENDOR FEE FREE Event… Come and set up a table, sell your wares, there will be no set-up/Booth Fee of any Kind. We encourage Artist Painters Jewelers, Artisans to Barter, Share or Sale Their… We may set up a Bartertown” area over by the Drumcircle. Sound like something you be interested in Contact Mindy or myself… “Support the Arts, and the Artist.” Our World would be just a little bit duller without you… We are planning a Effigy Burn! On the property there are 2 little Bars (mostly BYOB), Volley Ball, Badminton, a 2 Story Pyramid, 16′ Dome, Desert Golf, Horse Shoes, Darts and 2 private RVs. Oh, and Fun… In the area there are many really cool things to do as well. The Mojave Boneyard or the Airplane junkyard, and Mojave SpacePort are right down the street. There are a few Ghost Towns in the nearby area, one Living, and some awesome yet bizarre manmade Rock Formations. And you are welcome to bring some of your Art out there as well, large or small. Bikes are welcome too, and highly recommended, the desert is a big place.

Yes, Pets are allowed.ONLY IF THERE ARE PET AND HUMAN FRIENDLY THE OWNER OF THE PROPERTY IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR PET, YOU ARE!!!! Please RSVP the following information: Camp Name or Your Name: Number of people in camp: (not everyone in your camp needs to RSVP. We just need a total head count) Arrival Date: Type of camping: RV, Camper, Tent, Vehicle Approx. footprint size needed: (No one will have assigned camp areas, we just want to make sure there is enough room for everyone. )

IMPORTANT INFO FOR PERFORMERS, ARTISTS, DJS, ART CARS, AND MAJOR THEME CAMPS PLEASE EMAIL ME at mlook420@gmail.com with your name, general info, (ie. phone number, email where u can be contacted) and your ETA. This is a non paid gig, all money made from the event helps establish the ranch for future events..so that we can continue providing a safe place to play! it also covers portos! Don’t forget to include a short summary, pics etc of what you would like to bring to be considered for two comp Tickets. Please note: Theme Camps unfortunately still only get two Tickets..we may be able to provide discounted Tickets.

THERE IS A DEAD LINE OF MARCH 1st TO HAVE THIS INFO TO US AND TO BE CONFIRMED, PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU TAKE NOTE OF THIS AND GET YOUR INFO IN PROMPTLY THANK YOU… For Future Info and Pics/Videos of the Event, as well as Questions about the location… join our group https://www.facebook.com/groups/556290801106792/ See you in the Desert,

Reallocate and [freespace] are two non-profits made up almost entirely of Burners, and we’re proud supporters of both of them. These are Burners with civic responsibility, gifting their time and energy to do good, using their blessings to help others.

We’ve covered some of their activities before:

[Temporary Autonomous Zone] – Proof the Model Still Works

Civic Responsibility Hacks the White House

Reallocate and Burning Man in Fast Company

Hack for Good for Christmas

Lately there has been a lot of talk in San Francisco about the tech industry moving out of Silicon Valley’s leafy suburbs and into the hustle and bustle of the city. San Francisco has the second highest income inequality in the United States. This divide between rich and poor is nothing new, the same debate went on in the 80′s. Some techies, though, don’t want to just sit back and watch an argument. They want to use their skills and talents to contribute to making the world a better place. You don’t have to be a Burner to get involved in helping, but many of the helpers are Burners, and many Burners do want to help.

At the end of this month, Reallocate is hosting a weekend-long Hacktivation for the Homeless, at [freespace]‘s new location.

• HACKtivation for the Homeless

  Hack with Purpose on March 28th-30th, 2014. Join the HACKtivation and use your skills to address homelessness in San Francisco.

  Bring your skills and help your neighbors

  HACKtivation for the Homeless is an opportunity to join partners from the public, private and nonprofit sectors to collaborate on civic issues and address homelessness. This is just the beginning of a series of events for ongoing civic participation to create lasting impact and build a stronger San Francisco together.

  HACKtivations are NOT just for developers. If you want to help make San Francisco better, this is the event for you!

  Join
  for 3 days of fun, hacking and learning.

These events are a chance to do good personally, but also to meet other people on your wavelength. So far Reallocate’s Hacktivations have attracted some very smart, talented, and positive people.

[freespace] is blowing up right now with events all around the world, such as a recent one tied to Paris Fashion Week.

Creativity, fashion and good energies in a very playfull and multicultural atmosphere. That’s how I’d describe the Freespace fashion event of yesterday night. Several designers took part in a fashion show in a very relax state of mind, unveiling inovating and funny pieces in a unique place

They just got a grant from the San Francisco Mayor’s office, and are opening a new space in the Tenderloin.

In a short amount of time, both Burner-supported charities have been able to start from nothing and do a remarkable amount of good. The Burner ethos of gifting time and attention, sharing skills, being playful and making it fun, and inclusivity to those who want to contribute, are all fundamental parts of their success. 

Reallocate is adding new members every day, putting on regular Hacktivation events, and building an online collaboration platform to accelerate social entrepreneurs. Membership is only $5 (a tax deductible donation), and is open to anyone who thinks they have skills and ideas to contribute to solving society’s problems and helping other charities with technology.

Burning Man, and any other non-profits who are interested, would do well to use Reallocate’s (free, open source) platform, rather than trying to build their own proprietary masterpiece. If you’re interested in this email Kyle Stewart.

Shareable has just published an excellent interview with Reallocate’s Executive Director and [freespace] founder Kyle Stewart, and [freespace] co-founder Ilana Ipsett.

Top image credit: michael+yan / Foter.

Supporting the needs of San Francisco’s homeless population has been a constant challenge for decades. There are thousands of volunteers and scores of nonprofit organizations dedicated to addressing the problem, but a disparate ad-hoc network of support means that large gaps in service continue to exist.

Meanwhile, the growing disconnect between the city’s new wave of well-paid tech workers and its more vulnerable residents is most profound when it comes to San Francisco’s homeless population. Last year, a Facebook post by AngelHack CEO Greg Gopman further exacerbated the tension when he wrote that the homeless “act like hyenas” and that “in other cosmopolitan cities, the lower part of society keeps to themselves…They realize it’s a privilege to be in the civilized part of town and view themselves as guests.”

Recognizing that many people who work in the tech industry don’t share Gopman’s views and that thousands of people across the city would like to contribute to finding solutions, the San Francisco nonprofit ReAllocate is organizing a HACKtivation for the Homeless event on the last weekend in March to connect existing nonprofits with new solutions to their challenges and the resources necessary to implement them.

Shareable had a chance to ask the organizers, Kyle Stewart and Ilana Lipsett, about the upcoming HACKtivation.

Please introduce yourself for our readers and tell us a little bit about who you are?

Kyle Stewart: I am the Executive Director of ReAllocate and a cofounder of [freespace]. My background is in operations, logistics, and supply chain management with a degree in marketing from the University of Colorado. I’ve been in San Francisco for two-and-a-half years and moved here to run the customer service division for a small software company. After a few different tech jobs, I found myself volunteering with ReAllocate and realized that I wanted to be doing more meaningful work. It’s been a trial by fire and a lot of fun connecting with and helping to build a community of supporters who are using their skills for good.

Ilana Lipsett: I’m a Bay Area native and have been working in the mid-market community since 2010. I’ve worked with nonprofits, tech companies, and the city of San Francisco to bring people together to make the community stronger through events, pop-ups, and [freespace], a community cultural and arts center I co-founded with Kyle and handful of other engaged organizers.

What is ReAllocate and what has your organization done previously

KS: ReAllocate helps nonprofits and social entrepreneurs connect with volunteers, mentors, and resources to turn their ideas into reality. Our past projects include the ReAllocate Online Platform, Hactivations, and [freespace]. Early on in our history, ReAllocate was working on hardware technology-focused projects including the creation of a new bracing system to treat kids with a clubfoot and a mentorship program called “Printing the Future” that helped at-risk high school girls learn the print-making process and create prints of their own.

Most of us probably know what a hackathon is — a sort of marathon session that started with programmers cramming to develop software solutions that has since been applied outside of software development — but what is a hacktivation?

IL: Hackathons are great for getting people together working on solutions for a defined amount of time, but historically there is little follow-through for the projects that get started.

KS: Hacktivations work with established nonprofits and social impact projects, before the event, to identify their needs. The ideas come from the community we are serving (in this case, the nonprofits that already serve the homeless) and projects are presenting real challenges so that teams have the best opportunity to create real solutions.

IL: In fact, [freespace] was inspired by the National Day of Civic Hacking, a nationally sponsored hackathon in June 2013, when its organizers saw the value in providing a longer runway (and physical space) for projects to manifest. The idea behind a hacktivation is to “activate” participants and encourage longer commitment to a project and issue that is addressed during the weekend.

KS: We recognize that hackathons do not create change themselves. It’s the sustained efforts of people working together for long-term solutions that will have an impact and we are committed to helping select teams that come out of the HACKtivation continue to develop their projects.

HACKtivation kick-off and planning event at [freespace]. Photo credit: Josh Wolf.

Tell me about the previous HACKtivations that ReAllocate has produced and a little bit about the outcomes.

KS: Past events have been more broadly focused on social impact and taken place over one day instead of three. Even with a shorter period of time, we have seen mobile app prototypes built to process payments for an alternative currency called Bay Bucks; built a new parallax website for Stop the Pity; and built, launched, and funded a crowdfunding campaign for two returning female veterans with homefrontfan. More than 2,000 hours of skilled volunteers’ services have been provided to 21 different social impact projects.

Why homelessness?

KS: While running the last HACKtivation in December, my Facebook wall started exploding with some poorly thought-out comments about the homeless people in San Francisco. The conversation focused around tech workers and tech employees not doing enough to address homelessness and poverty in Mid-­Market. At the HACKtivation, I was surrounded by coders and designers who were using their skills to help each other. Rather than placing blame and fueling the fire, we set off to do what we can to help.

IL: We thought we could bring people together to do something about it. We saw, with [freespace], that bringing together people from different backgrounds is conducive to finding new solutions. We saw homeless and formerly homeless people coming into [freespace] literally rubbing shoulders with tech workers, and saw the positive impact that could have — on both groups of people.

Is homelessness really a problem that’s lacking adequate creative solutions? Or is there simply a lack of adequate funding to address the problem?

IL: I think the answer is yes to both. We want to acknowledge that there are organizations who are doing incredible things for the community — all of our partners have been around for years providing vital services to the homeless community. And they need to keep doing what they are doing! At the same time, there are new opportunities that tech and non-tech present that can address homelessness from a different angle. For example, our good friend Marc Roth, who is formerly homeless, is starting a program to teach homeless individuals skills in the maker movement. That was what got him out of homelessness.

KS: More funding for these organizations to grow their capacity and hire new staff will always be helpful. Many have seen their budgets cut over the years and are trying to address growing challenges with less resources. We want to help bring in new energy and ideas. Creative solutions come with creative people and it’s those people getting involved that can have impact in new ways. Homelessness and poverty are not technology problems, they are people problems. Caring people participating in civic issues can make an impact.

IL: We are not going to try to make the argument that tech can solve homelessness; it can’t. But if tech (or marketing or social media help) can get a nonprofit from serving 50 clients per day to 500 clients per day because they are that much more efficient, that’s a huge step in the right direction.

There are many organizations in San Francisco that have been providing vital services to the homeless for longer than any of us have been alive? Can you describe how receptive these organizations were to your proposal and whether some organizations responded different from others?

KS: The response has been mostly positive and the kickoff meeting on February 13 really showed the level of excitement that is being shared by the partners who have signed up to participate. There are opportunities for technology to help inside these established organizations and between the different groups with similar missions.

IL: Based on the work we’ve done in the past, we had existing relationships with many of the organizations who are partnering with us, so they were very receptive to us and to this idea. With all the tech companies moving in — regardless of if they have a community benefits agreement — everyone is trying to figure out how this new ecosystem of companies, people, and nonprofits will work. Given that we kind of straddle all the worlds, we are in a unique position of being able to reach tech, nonprofits, and the government. We don’t work in tech, and we also understand that tech won’t solve everything. But we do see the importance of people talking to each other, and in providing avenues and venues for them to do so. We don’t have the answers. Going in with that humility and respect for what existing organizations are doing has opened many doors. We are more about connecting people to potential resources than we are about telling them what they should do.

HACKtivation kick-off and planning event at [freespace]. Photo credit: Josh Wolf.

Tensions between tech companies and the rest of San Francisco are higher than ever before. John Oliver joked at this year’s Tech Crunch awards that Google is going to tint the inside of the bus windows so their workers won’t have to see those outside the tech elite. How do you see this HACKtivation affecting this growing cultural divide?

KS: I wish it were a joke. I know people who take a taxi three blocks down market from the bus stop to their office so they “do not have to see homeless people.”

IL: These tensions are rooted in real, deep-seeded issues about growing inequality in our city, and are manifesting in conversations about who “deserves” to be here. I think a big problem is that, for the most part, people on different sides of the debate are talking at each other, but not necessarily with each other. When they do come into contact, it’s at a point when tensions have already escalated. We want to offer a space that is comfortable to all sides, neutral, and also productive, so that people can come together, share their stories and passions, get to know each other as humans, and then start to work toward solutions.

It’s clear that there are many people in the tech community who honestly care about improving the lives of our most vulnerable, but others have suggested that those who can’t afford to live here should just leave and that the homeless should stay outside of downtown and remain invisible. How will you differentiate between solutions to help the homeless versus solutions to help diminish their impact on the rest of the city?

KS: There are so many faces of homelessness that people never see. We want people to get involved and learn what homelessness really looks like, how they can help, and who they are helping. We are providing opportunities for people to get closer to the issues not to hide behind technology.

IL: By pairing volunteers directly with nonprofits who are working on solutions to help the homeless, we are ensuring that people will be working on projects that will positively impact the lives of homeless individuals. We are working with our nonprofit partners leading up to the event itself to help identify their challenges, so that the solutions participants work on will be actionable and relevant.

What do you hope to accomplish with the upcoming HACKtivation?

KS: The HACKtivation is a starting point for ongoing civic participation. We want people to come to the event with an open mind and work on projects that address the needs of the nonprofits that already serve the homeless. We want people to learn what homelessness really looks like and show them ways they can improve peoples lives.

IL: We want this to be the first of ongoing conversations between the tech world and the rest of the city, introducing people to each other as fellow humans with a common interest in making this city livable and better! We are partnering with the Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation which is working on facilitating ongoing collaboration between companies and nonprofits, and we want to show how this can be done — that there is a way for companies to engage in their communities that is positive and constructive. We believe there are, as you said, many people in the tech community who do care about the rest of the city, and we want to provide them with opportunities to get involved. We also want to make sure that our nonprofit partners get results to the challenges they articulate. Last, we want to help facilitate ongoing conversation between the nonprofits themselves. Sometimes a solution can be found in an allied organization who you didn’t know existed or what they did.

Register for the upcoming event here.

Burners are scattered all over the country, and all over the world. From the 2012 Census:

Up north in Redding, veteran Burner and Dancetrohottie Adrionah has become the unofficial go-to person for Burners in the region. She is putting on a “Circus of Fire” this Saturday March 22: a festival featuring fire dancing, acrobats, aerialists, contortionists, bluegrass music, break dancing and belly dancers, and local food and crafts. She says:

I like that people refer to me so often for Burning Man related stuff in the area. And the festival is really pulling Burners out of the woodwork. Which is perfect! That is exactly what I wanted to do. It seems to be moths to the light:) The more Burners I gather, the more we can collaborate and integrate participatory and counter-culture art. Plus, it is giving me the opportunity to promote the traditional Burner values that were instilled in me a decade ago. Things like giving unconditionally, to think is to create, etc. Hopefully, we will someday be able to have a pre-compression here. I actually have some of BMORG come out for it:)

The festival goes all day and is kid-friendly, come to Redding for a sunny Saturday and help support the spread of Burner culture. Tickets are only $5.

_______________________________

Redding Fire Festival, Vendors on the Go are proud to present “Cirque du Feu!”

Fill your soul with the harmonic melodies of BLUEGRASS music. Gaze upon awe inspiring ART DISPLAYS. Arouse your senses with both savory and delectable treats from numerous LOCAL FOOD TRUCKS. Peruse the various VENDOR BOOTHS and give a home to the commodity of your choice. Take your chance at being a winner in our fundraising RAFFLE. Participate in the fiery fun with GLOW STICKS and a festive FACE PAINTING. Join the adventure with a HOOP or POI LESSON. Witness the astounding feats of our impressive ACROBATS! Let your mind be twisted while our CONTORTIONIST twists her body in sleek AERIAL SILKS! Fill your heart with the beauty of BELLY DANCING sirens. Let our BREAK DANCERS bend your mind! Then experience the fervor and intensity of flames caressing the night air and allow yourself to be entranced by the performances of our featured FIRE DANCERS!

Seating is not provided. Please bring your own chair.
If it rains, this event will be rescheduled.

This is a FAMILY FRIENDLY event!

Admission:
Adults- $5 Presale
$7 Door
Children- FREE

Location: Lawn @ North Valley Art League’s Cater House Art Gallery, Caldwell Park, 48 Quartz Hill Road, Redding, California

Please LIKE our fan pages!
www.facebook.com/ReddingFireFestival
www.facebook.com/VendorsOnTheGo
www.facebook.com/MulletsMetallurgy

Performer Pages:
www.facebook.com/FireDancerDesertFlower
www.facebook.com/PyrateTechnics
www.facebook.com/Lumininjas
www.facebook.com/dancingwiththesun
www.facebook.com/FireDancerMistep
www.facebook.com/megamorhoops
www.facebook.com/waya.utsetsi
www.facebook.com/pages/Flash-Crew/314221342049673
www.moderngypsy.org
www.facebook.com/themwreckinboys
www.facebook.com/coldsweatmusic

Schedule of Events:
11:00 am-Gates Open
2:00 pm-Drum Circle & Music Jam
3:30 pm-Intermediate/Advanced-Arm Hooping-Meg Amor (See pricing below)
4:00 pm-Band Performance-”Cold Sweat”
4:00 pm-Beginner Poi Lesson-Dallas McKenzie (See pricing below)
4:00 pm-Beginner Staff-Jack Ober (See pricing below)
4:30 pm-Beginner Hoop Lesson-Raquel Monterrey (See pricing below)
4:30 pm-Intermediate/Advanced Poi-Jack Ober (See pricing below)
5:00 pm-Band Performance-”Them Wreckin’ Boys”
6:00 pm-Cirque Performances-Acrobats, Contortion, Aerial Silks, Belly Dancers, Break Dancers
6:30 pm- Fire Safety Demonstration with Pyrate Technics
7:15 pm-Raffle (must be present to win)
7:30 pm-Fire Dancing Performances
8:30 pm-Freestyle Fire Performances

Event Workshops:
Hoop/Arm Hoop Class (Mature Children-Adults)- Beginner Level, Intermediate/Advanced Levels
$10- w/Hoop Rental
$5- Bring Your Own Hoop
(Hoops available at the Mullet’s Metallurgy Merchandise Booth)

Poi Class (Mature Children-Adults)- Beginner Level, Intermediate/Advanced Levels
$10- w/Poi Rental
$5- Bring Your Own Poi
(Poi available at the Mullet’s Metallurgy Merchandise Booth)

Staff Class (Mature Children-Adults)- Beginner Level
$10- w/Staff Rental
$5- Bring Your Own Staff
(Staffs available at the Mullet’s Metallurgy Merchandise Booth)

Available Products:
Hoops- $35-$65
Practice Poi- $10-$40
Staffs- $65+
Fire Products are available as well!
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.208304902651808.1073741826.150568751758757&type=1&l=13cef263b8
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.218062621676036.1073741828.150568751758757&type=1&l=a550815baa

Last week I wrote about Professor Dean Radin and the team at IONS (the Institute of Noetic Sciences), who are conducting experiments at Burning Man as part of their research into consciousness. Some scientists debate whether consciousness exists at all, since there is no mathematical formula, chemical compound, or law of physics to explain it. They don’t “think” it is there – the ultimate irony. The word “scientist” has only been with us since 1837, but the idea of magic has been with all cultures for all time.

It seems that these days, the world of science is taking a turn for the better. The sort of things that were formerly dismissed as impossible, or viewed by the more primitively inclined as magic, are being recognized as true phenomena. We should study the things we don’t understand, learn from them. Maybe one day we’ll figure them out and then they can become “science” too. Supposedly, we had no idea about gravity before an apple fell on Isaac Newton’s head. No matter that the Chinese and Greeks had already built flying machines, thousands of years earlier…but I digress.

There’s a lot of stuff that happens at Burning Man that science can’t completely explain. The wicker effigy we burn has no consciousness of its own, yet there is a measurable rift in the space-time continuum formed by it. There’s also a lot of expansion of consciousness going on – the transcendental theme of the hippie Sixties. Many Burners like to accessorize this process with some sort of psychotropic substance. In fact, the father of drugs, Dr Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, who synthesized 217 different psychoactive compounds, still lives today in the East Bay and is a repeat Burner.

Are there animals at Burning Man? I’ve seen ‘em!

Would it surprise you to learn that animals seem to get off on that stuff too? It’s part of Nature, right. “All in the game!” Apparently hallucinogen-injecting scientists have been doing consciousness experiments on animals, just like government agencies here did to unsuspecting humans in the hijinks and capers of “Operation Midnight Climax – How the CIA Dosed S.F. Citizens with LSD”.

One scientist who loved him some acid was Dr Francis Crick. He discovered DNA while on an acid trip – not a bad contribution to humanity, right?

At Dr Crick’s Memorial Conference at his old college, Cambridge University in England, some of the world’s leading scientists gathered together to acknowledge that animals have consciousness, too.

From Scientific American:

Elephants cooperate to solve problems. Chimpanzees teach youngsters to make tools. Even octopusesseem to be able to plan. So should we humans really be surprised that “consciousness” probably does not only exist in us?

This privileged state of subjective awareness in fact goes well beyondHomo sapiens, according to the new Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (pdf), which was signed last month by a group of cognitive neuroscientists, computational neuroscientists, neuroanatomists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists who attended the Francis Crick Memorial Conference on Consciousness in Human and non-Human Animals at Cambridge University in the U.K.

“The weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness,” the scientists wrote. “Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.”

From higherperspective.com:

Scientists Sign Declaration That Animals Have Conscious Awareness; Just Like Humans

The Burning Man Project are throwing a free “donate what you want” event next month at their headquarters, to bring together Burners from a range of co-operative living situations to talk about their experiences.

Perhaps this gives us a hint of the direction the new “Burning Man 2.0″ non-profit is going to take: permanent communities, where everyone is welcome and there is no commerce, everyone just gets gifted everything for free; there is no trash collection, you have to take it yourself to the next town; there are no other public utilities, you have to bring your own. Oh wait – there are port-a-potties. Just bring your own paper, soap, and water. In these BMOrg New-Topias, you live under the Ten Principles of Burning Man, but will get sued if you actually use the words “Burning Man” in any way to describe your community.

Is living on communes, the same as communism? Yes and no…perhaps if you attend, you might want to raise this Progressive issue with the “Mainstream Republican” Burning Man crowd.

Building Community through Cooperative Living

If you’ve wondered why this blog appears to have gone quiet in the last week, it’s because I’m travelling on a trip that has taken me from the White House to Miami’s Winter Electronic Music Conference to West Point. Meanwhile, nothing much seems to have happened in the Burning Man world during this time. That may be about to change, with a rival civilization springing up to challenge Burning Man’s supremacy as a temporary city.

Fox TV has begun casting for a new reality show, called Utopia. The show is being produced by Dutch TV maestro John de Mol, who has won 25 Emmy awards for his contribution to the medium. He created the Big Brother show where people live together in a house with cameras on them 24/7. There they perform all manner of bizarre antics and entertainment for the home viewers, trying to avoid being voted out. What kind of antics? Well, the show’s most famous and controversial moment in Australia was a “teabagging incident”.

If you think you have what it takes for reality TV, then you might enjoy dedicating a year of your life to this new show, Utopia. It has debuted on Dutch TV already – so strongly that it triggered a bidding war amongst American networks looking for “the next big thing”.

The debut exceeded expectations, ranking as SBS 6′s highest-rated nonscripted premiere in six years. It won its time slot and pulled a 25.2% share in adults 18-49, improving the network’s market share in the time period by 500%, and drew almost 1.6 million overall viewers compared to SBS’ average viewership in the slot of 300,000…and nearly 100,000 people downloaded the app after the first episode

John de Mol also created Deal Or No Deal, Fear Factor, and The Voice – but he says “this is the purest form of reality that I have ever produced in my career”. The Hollywood Reporter called it “the most ambitious social experiment on television”

The premise of the show is “start your own civilization”, and see what you can achieve in a year. The location of where in the United States this will be remains a secret; it is unlikely to be the Black Rock Desert. Still, radical Burner skills of self-expression, self-reliance, participation, communal effort, civic responsibility, and immediacy could all be useful in this new civilization. Some creativity would be required to demonstrate how a society could be built entirely from Gifting: surely someone would have to have access to more resources than others, in order to have more gifts to distribute over the course of an entire year. Decommodification also seems like a challenge, when you are a wannabe star in a mainstream reality TV show broadcast around the world. Something tells me Fox will find some sponsors for this. I find it hard to believe how a TV production crew on  a set they construct from nothing over a year is going to “Leave No Trace”. Still, Burners are nothing if not ingenious, so this could be a fantastic opportunity for The Burning Man Project to test how their principles work away from a rocket testing site in the Wild West – perhaps a useful exercise before they start their own brand-licensed colonies.

Gretchen Miller is doing the casting, and she says they have already received applications from some Burners. You can contact her here.

UTOPIA is a bold new unscripted series that moves 15 everyday Americans to an isolated, undeveloped location – for an entire year – and challenges them to create their own civilization.

With cameras following the pioneers 24/7, viewers can watch their society unfold, both weekly on FOX and also online. As they observe the inhabitants living together, and building their new existence, viewers themselves will have the chance to become a valuable and powerful asset to the community, and ultimately to question whether Utopia remains an elusive but alluring fantasy, or whether the pioneers have truly realized their dream

We are looking for those strong individuals who will create this new world on live television to see if they have what it takes to work together and create a new society from scratch.

We need people from all walks of life and skill sets to contribute to this new community being founded.  I am familiar with Burning Man and have attended in the past. Attendees have such a great sense of community and ideals which I think will be a great asset on the show. We are looking for artists, tradespeople, activists, contractors, doctors. lawyers,inventors, chefs, firefighters etc.

Please check out the show’s website at http://www.fox.com/utopia/.  For anyone interested in applying they can go to http://www.utopiatv.com  and fill out the questionnaire or contact me directly.  The show’s trailer can be found here: http://youtu.be/xfnaDbmFpP4.

John de Mol says:

“Utopia is a positive and constructive program that gives people the opportunity, if you can start all over again, start from scratch and create laws and make decisions, will you be able to build a society that is better than the one we have; will it be chaos or happiness…Big Brotheris a competition among 12 people who don’t have the worry about money, their fridge is always full, it’s a totally different setup.” He also noted that the cast members on Utopia, which requires a lot of skills, tend to be more upscale

Pro tip for budding social engineers: wear a Stetson.

Aurora is a 3-story high art-ificial tree made up of more than 40,000 LED lights. It was created by Bay Area artist Charles Gadeken. After debuting at Burning Man in 2011, it has been re-constructed as a temporary art installation outside Palo Alto’s city hall. The project was funded by a Kickstarter project promoted by the Black Rock Arts Foundation.

Aurora is an opalescent willow with hand-beaten copper leaves that chime in the wind. At night, the tree comes alive with light, rotating through the spectrum of colors and providing spectacular illumination. It is a fairy tree that re-ignites our childhood imaginations, full of wonder and endless possibility.

The installation illuminates the area around City Hall, and invigorates the civic heart of Palo Alto. Aurora draws Palo Alto citizens, creating a welcome place for the public to gather beneath its canopy.  This piece provides branches to read under, benches to sit on, and momentarily transports viewers into a fantastical world of endless possibility. By installing this work in front of City Hall, Aurora captures Palo Alto’s distinctive social and cultural history as a thriving center for innovation, art, and technology.

Aurora runs a year-long full color light display that changes every day with the seasons. An interactive mobile app will allow the public to play with the tree, modifying the color and pattern of 40,000 LED lights that bring the tree to life and making it an ever-changing, collaborative work of public art.

The idea to re-assemble the tree for public display came from two young kids who saw photos of it from Burning Man:

The initiative to display Aurora in Palo Alto began with local residents Sam and Julia Hirschman (ages 10 and 8) who have been working on the project for over a year.  With the support of their Father, Harry, they have engaged local civic and business organizations to support the project as well as gathering petitions to support the project. They have secured the support of the Palo Alto Art Commission and the Palo Alto Business Association.

The artist described the project as a magical wardrobe/secret clubhouse:

With this piece, I am creating an environment of mythical beauty that instills a sense of awe, wonder and joy to those who experience it. It acts as a unique and unexpected element placed in the world that empowers and transforms the viewer at the moment of participation. Viewers become enveloped in the magic of the experience and are taken out of the everyday. This work brings light to the darkness, making nature come alive in the desert night. This piece provides branches to read under, a forest in which to play or fight, waging a war full of knights and princesses, a fairy tree to re-ignite our childhood imaginations, full of wonder and endless possibility.

This tree represents the secret clubhouse, the magical wardrobe, the portal from a practical reality into a real life fairy tale. It is the barrier between waking and dreaming. The tree enacts a time outside of time, and a place outside of place. It is a universe all your own, that responds to your presence and an alternate reality that connects and inspires all of us to play.

Here’s the CBS Local story on the project.

You didn’t have to go to Coachella this year to hear about the #coachellaastronaut. It reminds me of the Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters, which is maybe lost as a reference on most of the born in the 80′s-and-90′s Coachella audience. Although the astronaut appears to be inflatable, it is actually a giant machine, based around a forklift. Did someone say “art car”?

Here’s their official announcement:

April 11, 2014- Poetic Kinetics Inc., known for their large-scale interactive kinetic art, is introducing “Escape Velocity” to this year’s Coachella Music and Arts Festival on April 11-20.

This year they are shooting for the stars with “Escape Velocity”, a 36’ tall x 57’ long x 40’ wide mobile Astronaut. This gigantic kinetic sculpture features radio-controlled animatronics, giving it the ability to articulate life-like gestures, such as peace and thumbs up signs.  The visor of the Astronaut is equipped with video projection mapping, allowing for video content as well as a live, interactive facial and name capture system. This will allow participants to interact with the Astronaut and have their face projected into the helmet visor as well as have their name appear on the suit’s name-tag.

Festivalgoers and artists can follow the astronaut’s adventures via Instagram @CoachellaAstronaut. They are also encouraged to use #CoachellaAstronaut to document their festival experience and interact directly with the astronaut.

“Escape Velocity” is the highly anticipated follow up to “Helix Poeticus,” widely known by festival-goers as #CoachellaSnail.  The Snail garnered critical praise and worldwide attention after debuting at last year’s sold-out festival.

Poetic Kinetics Inc. has created art pieces for the festival consecutively for the past 3 years. Aiming to capture the true creative spirit and ingenuity that Coachella represents, Patrick Shearn and the Poetic Kinetics team poured themselves into crafting this work of art over the last three months. They embraced a broad range of technologies and materials, utilizing modern day digital fabrication processes.

After “Escape Velocity” makes its big debut at Coachella, it will be searching for a new adventure.  It would love to find a home, be it a Space and Science museum or a really, really big backyard.  There are rumors of an eBay bidding war after the first weekend…

Follow this friendly giant and its adventures all festival long via socials.

Story and photos from Fast Company:

It deserves to be in a museum…or my back yard! Let’s hope they go ahead with this eBay auction, should be interesting.

This video shows some of the projection on its visor. Rad. Congratulations to Tyler and the rest of his team.