Originally published in Phazer Magazine, Issue No. 3.

And so after months of meetings and benefits and planning and endless streams of e-mails and at least two hours of actual preparations, we've got artist Tony Campanelli's trucks loaded with painted canvasses, a kitchen sink, a golf cart, 25 tins of Tang, and enough beer to last maybe three days in the desert (about ten cases) and off we go to Burning Man! Into the 8 am Oakland Tuesday morning traffic and I'm behind the wheel of a heavily weighed-down Datsun pick-up with a metal humanoid sculpture-thing riding shotgun and my choice of about a hundred or so really bad pop and country CD's but I've got six hours to lose myself in the contemplation of "why in the fuck do 10,000 humans of seemingly high intelligence drive across two states to spend upwards of a week struggling to survive in one of the most hostile environments on earth, and why am I one of them?"

In all honesty, much as I love a good road trip, it's pretty damn hard to get my city-dwelling ass out of the 49 square miles that is San Francisco; in fact, the concept of "Berkeley" was purely abstract to me until well into high school, and I only made it to Santa Cruz a mere two years ago. So paying good money to sweat out an overgrown street fair on a shadeless, waterless lake bed hundreds of miles from anywhere seemed rather asinine to me for quite some time. I guess Love, and the call to High Weirdness, can make one do some strange things...I felt vaguely like we were trespassing on the continent's roof as our little convoy slithered through the gray dust out onto the vast, utterly flat playa. Rocky, treeless mountains ringed us in and the sky was a crisp metal blue. A mirage-like vision, a beautiful, translucent dancing girl twirled out there against this moonscape; it was the Princess, gloriously dirty, tanned deep and shining gorgeous, dancing for the joy of it, being goofy all by herself, and I knew I had arrived; the City was behind and this was something different indeed, and escape was impossible...

Sin & Decadence on the night of the burn

Things get blurry rather quickly from here on out, as it seems our camp, the Blue Light District, not only harbored some insanely creative types such as the Space Cowgirls, members of the Cult of Barbie and various factions of the shadowy Cacophony Society, but also doubles as a den of debauchery and decadence unmatched since the Somewhat Over the Rainbow camping expedition some months earlier, and that suited us just fine. You know, I had always thought of our little cipher of club types and party kids as rather rambunctious and wild, but here was a whole community (for Labor Day weekend, the 6th largest town in the entire STATE of Nevada at an estimated 16,000 people) based on getting crazy and creating strange and wonderful things out of fire, mud, booze, words- indeed, almost out of air itself; that put to shame anything I had ever witnessed before... Here are mo’ fuckas' building yacht clubs and fern grottoes and Frankenstein bikes out in the middle of a desert where the daytime temperature often tops 100 and the only shelter is whatever you yourself can construct. Our humble crew of dysfunctional substance abusers was lucky to get up a surplus parachute with random stakes and duct tape before we fried to a crisp.

Then we hit cocktail hour at Chez Newt's for a round of margaritas. I borrowed a longbike from Pedal Camp and headed out to the Fly Hot Springs for a muddy, nekkid soak. Got deputized by the Cowgirls and watched Tha Governor accost unsuspecting straight girls. Attended the Barbie Wedding and the Daughters of Ishtar opera. Rode shotgun on the amazing Nub Chai bus from Santa Cruz and met Sister Dana Van-Iquity's tongue at the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Cross Burning & Communion Ceremony. Princess Jen helped the Coffee Achievers MC their Do Something Stupid for Beer night and hosted the Olivia Newton John Pre-Memorial Roller Rink & Disco Derby. Beyond Race freaked their goddess-heavy trance-psychedelia into the collective night as Daddy Love's served up burgers and beer 'till the wee hours. Miz Jewelz cooked her Cheezy Grits, Lady Bee set up her Shrine of the Dessicated Rats and Bianca's Smut Shack offered hors d'oeuvres, downtempo beats and raunchy sex 24 hours a day. There was an ice sculpture the size of a VW Bug. John Hell and Analog Tom ran loose over the pirate airwaves on Radio Free Burning Man. A turbocharged Betty Page/clown/sexologist named Ducky Doolittle just ran free. Absinthe was served and madness reigned supreme.

Tornadoes and mud storms on Tuesday, Sept. 2 "In the end, even the desert wanted us gone..."

It's a most unlikely place for a massive artist's gathering, and the release of a coffee-table book of photographs by Wired, together with a fatal accident at the '96 encampment, brought in hordes of media and police attention, much to the disgust of many veteran participants. The cops, while finding new and creative ways to line their pockets, ended up enjoying the spectacle and cheerfully posed for pictures with naked hippies. And the idea of sequestering news crews in pens was averted when one San Francisco Cacophony-ite, Hernan Cortez, started making all photographers strip to the buff and/or do his camp's dishes. Violence was nearly achieved when Cortez began assaulting noted underground filmmaker Harrod Blank's sexual prowess; which, of course, gave Hernan nothing but the most twisted pleasure... Like a night at a club or a trip to church, Burning Man is what you make it. Some base their lives around it, some merely go and watch; while others incorporate their own experiences with the overall picture, accept the good and bad as inevitable, and make the best out of whatever there is to work with... Burning Man is not Woodstock, or a rave, or a pagan ritual; although it very well could be if you want it. It is a circumstance; a chance encounter between dynamic people in an extreme place at the dawn of a new era in cultural evolution. As the sign read over Center Camp, "No Observers", and son, that means you better quit 'yer bitchin' and heed ol' Scoop Niskers words- "If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own!"

Phazer Magazine: Burning Man by Toph One | Burning Man 1997