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Hiya folks, and welcome to this year’s slideshow. The pics are not strictly chronological, but this is the first shot I took this year. At this point I’m still on the road into Black Rock City, stopped in hellish dirt-road traffic as thousands of eager Burners try to get through the gates during the first few hours of the event (which begins at midnight). I liked the idea on the side of this vehicle (misspelling aside) as applied to Black Rock City itself: I try to keep the place in my heart; if I am to be healthy and happy, a part of me should be there even when I’m not.

Here’s my crew for this year. Left to right: Makenna (gf), yrstruly, Brantley (Southern gentleman turned ubercool Coloradan), Laura (Brantlean spouse & classy gal). It is a shame that my magnificent coat (Makenna Couture Ltd.) is blocking your view of Brantley’s tight shorts, which read “CENSORED”.

And so here I am by playa daylight, on my way to see this year’s Man, who will burn Saturday night. Thanks for the shot, Brantley.

This year’s Man sat atop a structure inspired by 2006’s Uchronia (a.k.a. the “Belgian Waffle”).

The Man (daylight view), 2009.

The Man (from beneath), 2009.

Burners gathered at the Man by day, 2009.

An archy view skyward from the Man, 2009.

A bit of the Man’s base against a dusty afternoon sky.

The Man’s base provided plenty of spots for Burners to leave their various sometimes-scrutable messages.

Messages at the Man, 2009.

The nature of the event leads me to assume “Page St” is Page St in SF, and I’ve got a friend who lives there … Andrea, were you secretly at the Burn this year? Got a douchey neighbor?

“CELL PHONES??

WTF!!

” Sigh. Yes. AT&T customers had a decent shot at cell phone coverage on the playa this year. This marks a particularly sad bit of evolution for my beloved city, where phones have not worked before. One afternoon as we were sitting in camp, from inside Brantley’s van came the unmistakeable warbling of a Nokia phone. We looked at each other in horror, experiencing perhaps the deepest “there goes the neighborhood” moment either of us had ever felt.

“MY PLAYA NAME

IS

MY REAL NAME” — I often feel this way. But some people demand that you have a crazy playa name. When necessary, I go by “Groovy” on the playa.

The Man’s base provided spots to get some shade …

… and spots to find your balance …

… and spots to Get Down.

Makenna snapped this’n as we approached Center Camp.

Inside Center Camp, come an afternoon.

Makenna grabbed this shot, and I’m glad she did; folks have asked me about the Center Camp café many times. This is where you can buy various beverages, hot and cold. Proceeds go to a fund that benefits nearby desert communities (see Black Rock Solar for one example of how this money is spent).

Center Camp’s backside is adorned with a multipaneled mural. Let’s take in a few panels.

“SMILE NOW …

… CRY LATER”

Spooky psychedelic tunnel behind Center Camp, 2009.

Worried wabbit behind Center Camp, 2009.

Ah, a piece commemorating the fratboyish tourists our city fills up with late in the week! “Fuck art i’m just here because breasts.” LOL.

Let’s wander around the daytime playa a bit more and see what there is to see.

The Nowhere Omnibus of Black Rock City, 2009.

Crazy dragon art car kickin’ up dust. Perhaps more impressive at night?

Strange little art car. If I recall correctly these guys were handing out drinks, though it looks like the guy in the blue T is spritzing people down with a pressure sprayer (a common Black Rock City pastime).

Party bus! Just one of many.

Ooh! Something to climb on!

Burners lurve them some climbin’.

The Gerlach Stage Company is apparently dragon-powered! Who knew?!

On the Esplanade (our city’s main drag) we came upon MINI GLOF.

A sample hole at Black Rock Mini Glof [sic].

Bzz bzz bzz.

A strange mutant vehicle indeed, but boyo did they have the music pumpin’, and oh man were they a-partyin’.

Who sez you can’t build a dance club out of Tetris blocks? In Black Rock City, anything is possible.

Here’s a lovely Black Rock City tradition. See, we have a lot of stilt-walkers in town, especially at night. And every year there are one or three bars in town that cater exclusively to them. See those bikes? Okay, now see the bottle+can atop the bar, there? Yeah, that’s up over yer head unless you’re on stilts. (And yes, I think you will probably get a beat-down if you try to cheat with a ladder.)

Dustfish was a lovely venue that I should have gotten a better, more square-on picture of. It looked like a bordello out of the wild west. Nice job.

This here’s the Raygun Gothic Rocketship. Apparently you could climb around inside this thing. I wasn’t hip to that. But on Friday night …

… about half the city gathered, anticipating a scheduled rocket “launch” …

… which began two hours late because of high winds …

… but got everyone good and excited when it finally began …

… and sustained the excitement for a little bit …

… and contained lotsa fireworks and a few large jets of flame …

… but which ultimately was totally anticlimactic and not worth the two-hour wait in the nighttime wind and dust.

Okay then, switching gears: folks ask me year after year what the “neighborhoods” in Black Rock City look like. “What’s it like right around your camp?” Well, lemme show you. Here’s sort of a side-view of where I lived for the week. Hominid Street runs parallel to this shot, just out-of-frame to the right.

Some folks just spend the week in an R.V. The classier they are, the more accoutrements they have. A rooftop couch and Big Boy? Two stars.

Some camps hide behind flags.

Some camps are empty all day.

Hominid Street between 6:00 and 6:30 (those are streets, not times), Black Rock City, 2009.

Here was a sorry case. This guy camped next door to Brantley and Laura. He apparently thought he’d gotten a great deal on his tent. Never opened it till he got to Black Rock City, at which point he discovered it was sized for a small child. Or perhaps a dog. And it didn’t hold up in the wind. Dude in question was about six feet tall; he had to curl up like my cat sometimes does in order to sleep in this thing. Serious fail.

Freek Flag Village was right across the street from us.

People always ask, “What about BATHROOMS?” Well, there’s way more than enough of them, and they appear in clusters like this. Don’t camp nearby or downwind.

Had us some interesting signs on Hominid Street.

Really? But …

… Fuck Club was only about five spots down from the sign in the previous shot. See next slide for a closeup of the “rules.”

I captured this not because it’s clever, but because I knew that given the previous shot, some folks would wanna read it. BTW, there was never any evidence of activity inside Fuck Club. Makenna suggested that if you went inside, you’d find two creepy guys who had not arrived together. We did not test her theory.

Aw crap, here comes a dust storm. We had a *lot* of dust this year. Dust storms that ruined entire afternoons, and sometimes evenings.

Dust storms blew holes in our tents. Don’t buy REI tents. They don’t hold up in the wind.

Here I am looking rather weather-worn during a break in an afternoon dust storm.

This is the picture that allows me to imagine that my girlfriend is an Arrakeen Fremen.

This is what your camp looks like after a dust storm if you erect a structure that only stands up in still air.

Oh, nice, storm’s over, sun’s out. Time to relax.

This was the first time I’ve seen advertising fly overhead at Burning Man.

Whoa, is it that time already? It’s been a dusty last few hours, but we’ve arrived in the center of it all to see the Man burn. It is Saturday night, and time to party.

Laura and Brantley await the burning of the Man.

The Man’s arms rise skyward just before he burns. Time to take a picture!

The Man, pre-Burn, 2009.

Woo hoo! Let the wild rumpus start!

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

After the fireworks end, we get down to the actual burning.

The Man’s arms fall back down right quick.

Look at all them camera screens out there.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

The Burning of the Man, 2009.

Not too much left at this point. The crowd begins to spread out into the city to party the night away.

Kinda dark here, but I think you can see that Barney has stolen Fred Flintstone’s car and taken it out for a spin. The sign on it reads “WANTED: BETTY”.

Nighttime party bus. Just one of many.

I always fail to get a good shot of the Golden Gate mutant vehicle.

Like I said, I always fail to get a good shot of the Golden Gate mutant vehicle. But at least you can see here that folks get to dance on the bridge.

I took this shot only so that I could use the following line:

“The money’s buried under the big W!”

I took this shot only because I wanted to see what the flash would do here. What it does: bounces off the dust in the air. (No, that’s not just dust on the lens.)

I took this shot only because I wanted to show that the big W cycled through several different colors. Okay, enough W-car pics.

This blew my mind. I’ve never seen a Beetle-based mutant vehicle before.

There were a lot of fish- and aquatic-beast-cars out there this year, likely as a response to this year’s theme (“Evolution”). This fish had lips and googly eyes.

This beautiful tree-ish installation also had a color-cycling thing going on.

Beautiful tree-ish thing (gold phase).

Crappy crappy pic, but the only one I got of the Yellow Submarine mutant vehicle, which was very very well done, though this shot doesn’t indicate that. Nice touch: the bare breasts painted into one of the “windows” on this side (third from the right, top row).

Squid car, from a distance. Evolve, squid, evolve.

No idea how I got the crazy light trails here. Perhaps my camera horked some psychedelics from the neighbors?

Yeah, that’s a giant flame-shooting penis. More obvious from the other side, but the thing was moving away as I shot this.

Chicken car. Behind chicken car: neon “MOM” on the open playa.

I have no idea.

Flaming thing on the Esplanade.

Flaming thing on the Esplanade, as lit by a flame-throwing vehicle that snuck up behind me and scared the bejesus out of me.

Eyeball car was not in motion.

The Hardly Davidson Cafe was showing old movies.

Crap, this is the only shot I took of this statue, which San Franciscans have seen around town in a couple of spots now. Similar to other works seen in Black Rock City in previous years.

Playa mouth glowed in different colors.

Sometimes playa mouth went all natural and pearly-white.

Again, I really don’t know.

A lotus-crowned structure near the Esplanade.

Our week is nearly done; it’s the final night of the event; we have arrived for the burning of the Temple.

You guys ready? Yeah, they’re ready.

Somehow I managed to take no pictures of the Temple until we started burning it. Must have been finding other things to do.

The Temple of Forgiveness (aflame), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (aflame), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (aflame), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (aflame), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (aflame), Black Rock City, 2009.

The figures passing in front of the Temple here are chanting reverentially, accompanied by a solo trumpet. The Temple Burn is always a quiet affair (as opposed to the boisterous burning of the Man the night before); this procession’s music was splendid and perfectly appropriate without being cheesy.

The Temple of Forgiveness (aflame), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (aflame), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (falling down), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (falling down), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (falling down), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (falling down), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (falling down), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (falling down), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (falling down), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (falling down), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (falling down), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (falling down), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (now gone), Black Rock City, 2009.

The Temple of Forgiveness (now gone), Black Rock City, 2009.

Nothing left but flames. Sigh. Time to go home.

Less than one hour later, I’m in the car, headed back to what Burners call (without irony) the “default world”. All I will really see for the next several hours is tail lights. Sniff.