Sure it's blurry. It's also how the Greeter's Station looked to us when we arrived at dawn.
Burn virgins (AJ, in this case) have to ring a bell...
...and roll in the dirt.
Setting up camp at sunrise. The tube case holds my didgeridoo.
I love my $40 Craigslist Playa bike. Crow, painted milk crate, can-faded safety flag with orange EL wire, parrot, custom fluorescent orange paint with purple trim, hotrod flames, Hokey Spoke lights, matching purple water bottle, silly bell, smiley-face valve stem caps, lights, mirrors, after-market kickstand for dirt.
The Duck Pond camp. They have 2 giant slip & slides. I was supposed to play here on Saturday, but a dust storm had other plans for me.
Amanda of the Duck Pond crew. I really wish I could've made the gig this year.
Dead cow art car
Flying Saucer VW art car
Cow & VW Saucer
Dragony-thingy car
I never saw this out on the Playa but it shore wuz kewl
F18 Tomcat car. Cupholders not included.
Figures from the Crude Awakening derrick burn last year
Rear view (duhh)
I forget what this was called. Zsu Zsu's something or other?
I think the idea of this thing is always better than the execution. No pun intended.
“No worries, Barb! Before today's over, we'll be, like, dining at my dad's table.”
You'll note he is neat.
I ran into Barbara Gentile at The Deep End. She camped with us last year. Great photographer.
Plucking on someone's heart strings
I think the law dictates a certain percentage of Star Wars art cars. Otherwise I can't explain it.
Campmate Jason & his bitchen hand bike
I thought this would look much cooler than it does. Story of my life, really.
Desert rats
6:00 Street heading toward the Man. Jason on his hand bike.
OK. I never saw this thing working. Supposedly it crushed cars.
6:00 street north of the Man, heading to Basura Sagrada temple.
Da Man
Clever bike mirror angle. Fortunately taken before someone stole my clever bike mirror.
Basura Sagrada temple, and the reason I came to Burning Man this year
The Temple made a lot of pleasant noise in the wind.
View of the Man from the Temple. My bike on bottom right. I love you, Playa bike.
Holding up the box that held my father's ashes.
I placed my father's ashes and the sign at the very front & center of the Temple. The pic on left was already there, no other sign. It didn't need one.
My dad played a pretty damn good harp.
The Temple's double helix staircase, my father's ashes in front of them at bottom.
Karen Hillyer was a friend of mine from high school. She died a few years back. Last year I fulfilled a promise and scattered her ashes at the H on the Hollywood sign. I kept some to bring to the Temple, though.
I found a quiet place all by itself. It seemed something Karen would have liked.
The staircase and dangly things that made nice noise in wind.
An alcove. The box with Karen's ashes is near the bottom.
Various items people put on the Temple
One of the Temple's side towers.
One of the self-contained altars to either side of the Temple.
A letter my wife wrote and asked me to place in the Temple.
Temple tower. I brought my didgeridoo out here late one night and played it for my dad.
Jason's shrine to his brother Eric, who died earlier this year.
Looking down on a tower. You can see someone's didgeridoo on the floor.
Temple mezzanine view of the Man, Tetris cubes on right
The Man, tetris cubes, art cars.
Jason
Self explanatory. The mini pack on my hydration pack strap holds my camera, SD card, sunbloc, chapstik, eyedrops, blinky lights. Welcome to the serious desert.
Goodbye, Dad.
Rear view of the Temple
Blurry shot of an art piece taken from the Nautilus X art car while I was gigging.
Car phones. Phone cars. Whatever.
At night they projected Tetris cubes onto this.
The mighty chicken car.
Outer Limits static suit.
Office cube. It had porn everywhere.
This revolved. Just beautiful, very Art Nouveau.
People would pose dramatically inside it. I never got a good shot of that.
For some reason I think the huge cherry picker in the b.g. is funny
Another view of the altar
This was called Babylon. It took about 2 minutes to get renamed the Parking Garage. There was nothing else to this. I thought it was stoopid. I also think the builder meant to call it Babel.
From our RV roof.
The Nautilus X art car, where I DJ'd Wednesday from 9:30 PM to 7:30 AM. Whee.
Setting up in tbe Nautilus. Yes, my shirt plays Pong. Note Ed Roth-style laptop art painted by Ken Mitchroney.
DJ's in back of the bus, please.
They got to hold onto stuff when we hit dunes. I didn't. By some miracle I didn't mess up or break anything.
While my sunrise set was playing I ran outside and snapped this shot of the Nautilus as the sun was about to rise.
Desert sunrises take FOREVER. I was running out of life-changing, epiphanic tracks. I was down to Moby by sunrise!
Three fellow travelers greet the dawn on the Nautilus
Heading back after the sunrise. This isn't out of focus; everyone was really that blurry.
This scared the hell out of me.
Art cars.
Center camp. The hub of Burning Man. Also a hippie magnet. Peace, love, harmony, and you better lock your bike.
Dirt twister that ploughed through Center Camp. Probably made half the people there cleaner, if only through abrasion.
The post office. I wrote Maureen every day. There's really a BRC postmark, too. And I LOVE their sign.
Look, it's my name! In print! Here at Burning Man! See, I'm performing here! Now this whole trip is tax-deductible!
This was made from baseballs and bats. I don't know why.
Origami crane thingy.
Floating fossil fish.
Campmate Kai at the Bummer art car. This piece should have been much more crazy aggro macho to parody the Hummer, I think.
I think the paint scheme subtracted more than added to the effect. Everyone's a critic, huh?
Shuttlecraft art car at the Temple.
Mountain Man
The DJ booth at Shiva Vista Project, where I played Thursday night.
Performer's platform. Big sound-activated flame cannons to either side. Hellyeh.
Shiva Vista at night.
Blurry wide shot of Shiva Vista. Flame cannons, performers, DJ booth.
The beautiful and talented A_delle, who asked me to gig at Shiva Vista. She & her husband Juice are great people. Note stylishly gray Playa Dust hair on DJ who did an all-nighter on a bus the night before.
View of the stage from the DJ booth.
Some goths setting up for a performance piece. Here mostly to show the flame cannons & booth panorama.
Performers during my set
Friday in the RV. It got about as dirty inside as out. I know cool Ninja anti-dust tricks, but would they listen? Huh? Nooooo....
My friend and former co-worker Richard Becker came by to say hi.
Quack. Honk.
Sunday in the Park with Man
It's the little things I end up liking best at Burning Man
“You see it, too?”
Note tutu, bottom left
A gorgeous sunset...
...that got a cheer going...
...that you could hear spreading all over the city.
Which is one of the things to love about Burning Man that you really don't get other places. The cheer, I mean. Nice sunsets are a dime a dozen.
There are a million stories in the City. Well, 50,000, anyhow.
Skydiver. Bet the sunset looked pretty dang cool to him, too.
Isidore Duncan makes her triumphant return.
I'm in the RV. I hear “wooosh! Wooosh!” I instantly realize a hot air balloon is venting gas to try to land slower. I grab my camera and run to the roof. Auditory memory. Don't leave home without it.
Silence of the Johns
Whiteout dust storm. Our neighbors sat in the truck lee and talked. I loved these guys.
Jason. He's entertaining when he forgets to take his meds.
Top of an art car. Pic doesn't do it justice.
Even blurry this is worth putting up. This thing was HUGE.
The head & neck were articularted & it breathed fire. Screw you, Disney engineers.
Night calls the Golden Duck
Dragonfly art car; general Playa
Burn night panorama, starting & ending at the Nautilus X art car
Absolut Burn
Arms up -- time to burn
Presiding over the fireworks
I guess “Burning Man” is easier to remember than “Blow the Living Crap Out of Him Man”
Oh, say, can you see...?
You can hear this, can't you? I can.
The Man was definitely more fully involved than the crowd was.
“No, wait, did I say three wishes? Four! I'll give you FOUR wishes--”
Man uber alles
They removed the country flags before they burned him. Sissies.
Andropyrophilia
It's a nice shot, but it also looks like an old Black Sabbath album cover
The foundation supports are starting to go...
Told ya
Now we're supposed to look on his works, we mighty, and despair
Fireworks before the Burn
And during it, too
The Temple at night
The Temple in focus at night.
The temple unlighted before the burn. Suddenly gothic as hell.
The torchiere procession lights the base. The self-contained altars have been moved inside. Oddly this put Maureen's letter, my father's ashes, and Karen's ashes right next to each other.
I didn't honestly think this temple was beautiful until it was burning. Should I feel funny about that, you think?
The dangly noisemaker shapes moved a lot while the temple burned. It looked as if people were in there. Hippies are posting on the forums about ghosts. I like how hippies cut straight to the most likely explanations for things.
Setting aside my sarcasm for a moment: I expected that I would grieve and say my own goodbye to my father when the Temple burned. To my astonishment what I felt instead was joy. The power of Burning Man, and of the way the Temple embodies it, is that it provides you with templates of symbols to which you can assign meaning, in a world that has largely become bereft of ritual and ceremony. I'm really grateful for this.
The beginning of the collapse. The Temple took a long time to burn.
Down to the main structure.
And all that was left standing after that fell
The beginning of the Temple Burn
The dust twisters were amazing
A dust storm came along at the end of the burn and whited out everything
320-degree collage from our RV roof
