BIRNING MAN 2002-THREE OF SIX

  Thursday was hotter and the community could be considered finished. It was a weird fantasy community with very little in sight one would be likely to see outside the event. Towers, banners, flags all wavered in the dry wind, with great domes and towers standing above the shelter ground cover interrupted only by the streets. Thursday the weather again continued its trend towards cloudier and windy conditions. Here and there rose billowing storm clouds, some spreading themselves outwards when reaching a high layer of the atmosphere. They often sported dark hazy columns of rain beneath them watering the parched dust underneath.
  With still more people constantly streaming in, the city was fully mature by now and a steady stream of pedestrians, bicycles, small decorated motorized carts and occasional elaborate art cars wove through the thoroughfares with a quietness which would allow hearing conversations nearby. Usually a sense of the local attitudes can be gained by adding up the snippets of communication heard along the way, and what I sensed was appreciation and in general happiness in being there. I personally heard no sense of paranoia or spreading of rumors of police or BLM repression although both did happen. Actually what I found striking was the low key manner of the police presence this year, less seemed to be cruising around slowly in trucks but there were plenty riding their massively wheeled scooters and moving about in an undercover fashion.   Earlier in the event One small camp was celebrating its completion and one young man started handing out in the open little paper 'micro dot' doses of LSD to the others. Immediately police roared up, drew their guns and handcuffed the young man, finding several doses in his pockets. He was taken into the back of a police vehicle and interrogated for an hour, then released and given a date to appear in court.
  Interestingly, since the downgrading of the penalties against possession of Cannabis the actions taken by the cops against those seen with the stuff were far more lenient than in days past. From incidents I heard or read about they seemed as likely to take it away or see it disposed of as to actually write a citation. If one was discreet and only handled or partook in ones tents there was very little chance of being caught. Being inebriated beyond control was another matter, and you were at the mercy of whoever found you first if that happened. In my admittedly limited personal experience at the event I saw no one using any illegal substances out in the open as you might well see in a rock concert, nor did I see anyone staggering around because of misjudging what one could handle.

  I made it a point that day to walk around the entire inner circuit and see what people had set up along this 'prime real estate'. That afternoon it wasn't so hot as in previous days but I still started the walk with a full canteen. There were numerous major structures and entire villages. A hundred really major efforts and a thousand respectable ones assured some kind of sensory overload after a while. The overall building density seemed fairly packed compared to that of a few years ago. There might have been a slightly larger percentage of bare breasted women, perhaps 7 per cent, with the much lower percentage of male nudity unchanged from previous years. There were perhaps not as much mutilation and piercing in evidence as in earlier years, but a great deal of large elaborate tattooing on both men and women. A few people brought young children, and fewer still brought dogs. I saw a black Labrador retriever panting its way across the brilliant heated Playa, tongue hanging low. Another smaller brown dog was being cared for, and a woman who was obviously sick of being scolded interrupted my own admonishments with "I'm sick of people telling me how to take care of my dog!"
  While walking in the sun a bicycle whirled about and like an eagle swooped by with the driver delivering a jet of water to my still camera hanging in view. Fortunately nothing vital was soaked, but it was evident there was at least one malicious prankster bent on vandalizing peoples property. I made sure my cameras were under my sheet hood from then on. I actually bought a rain cover for my video camera, but I never used it unless it was really dusty, the front clear filter generally protecting the front lens element.
There were far worse acts being inflicted on random people. Police were running about trying to find out if people had seen someone 'misting' people, presumably they were interested because of reports of being unwillingly dosed by a stranger spraying them. The police seemed to be conducting themselves with relatively benign professionalism, but many participants were intruded upon by BLM rangers, who seemed to enjoy bringing out their handcuffs and guns in non violent circumstances. Many people did report absurd searches of camps. The days of feeling free outdoors at these events is sadly but a distant memory.
   People with night vision goggles scanned the distant darkness for people lighting up some Cannabis, whisking out to the victim to give out a 250 dollar fine. Numerous undercover types with wired ear pieces snooped about and asked everyone in sight if they knew where to get any drugs. There was a report, of unknown quality, of using 'two way video' to trap people. This 'sting' involved a trick video camera filming 90 degrees from where it looks like it was pointed. While seeming to look at the Man an individual smoking a joint or elaborate pipe would have his image captured and transmitted to a team behind the Man, where the image appeared on their equipment on a screen. A pair of agents would then grab the poor individual, sometimes showing the incriminating images. 5 of 88 DJs in one camp were busted on drug charges. In general the local police seemed relatively decent to people, and again I emphasize the villains of the night were the officers of the Bureau of Land Management. They seem determined to harass the participants if they cannot close down the event as they apparently desire. The preceding two paragraphs rely on posted comments concerning the event which I consider reliable.

 A large silver fabric covered cylindrical drum like affair about the volume of half a train tanker car was mounted on a metal framework in a fashion so the big 'drum' could be rotated on its long axis by people pulling on the outside framework. Several people were helping to do this as I approached this interactive art piece. Inside the view was filled with a painting of underwater scenery and hanging fish models. One end of the rotating horizontal cylinder was open and easily passable, an elevated walkway inside where people would stand and be disoriented by the rotation of their frame of reference, holding onto a handrail.
Passing by the Man again, I saw someone painting over some black spray painted gang graffiti, lamenting the crudity of this defacement. He said that at least if someone had done something creative he might feel different and even perhaps leave it on, but this was nothing better than a dog pissing on a wall. I noticed then and later in the event many 'porta-potty' interiors defaced with gang 'tags' done in wide black markers.

  Night brought an entirely different range of effects into play in art pieces. The 'Magic Glasses' people had their tunnel again this year, handing out diffraction grating glasses to people as they entered the wired tunnel which was lined with dense arrays of white Christmas lights, and retrieving them at the end. Inside every light appeared adorned with wide rainbow 'star bursts' which moved in a mass along with the perspective groupings of the lights as one moved. Another 'color tunnel' relied on ultraviolet lights to bathe fabrics, art, and toys in vivid florescent radiance. On the last stretch of the fairly long tunnel red lights filled the view, and the color contrast was a suitable 'final act' in the presentation.
One truly remarkable thing was a whirling horizontally aligned disk decorated with several concentric rings of dozens of small art class articulated mannequins, each a few inches high. These were posed so that a cycle of movement would be accomplished in a circuit, each concentric layer of little figures 'performing' a different dancing or pushing movement. A strobe light was timed to flash the same number of times as the number of posed mannequins in a circle on the disk rotating at a fixed rate. The result was a visually astonishing miniature crowd of dancing dummies reminding me of a George Pal Puppetoon, or perhaps a solid animation of a tiny Busby Berkeley style sequence, all mounted on a small vehicle I happened to wander near while heading out to see what the edge of the Playa at the perimeter fence was like. It was said a larger version of this existed on the Playa but I never saw it.

 We finally made it to the Duck again, and learned it still was not going to be open due to understandable logistics problems of being among the furthest things in the Playa. Moving on, the duck itself finally became just another silhouette against the thin galaxy of lights spread across the Southern horizon. As if sneaking up on us the pale plastic parameter fence emerged from the blackness. I stood next to it and peered into the dark flatness beyond. I knew this was a patrolled area and we had been warned not to leave the event boundaries. There were distant clouds glowing softly along the Eastern horizon with the golden glow of the Moonrise. The phase had reached about half at last, interrupted by dark clouds pressed by perspective to short horizontal lines. Turning around, at last one could see the massive tent city spread out but not surrounding us. Here and there quiet groups of people were sitting together wanting to be away from all of it for awhile. A few couples also stood, sat, or lay together in the subdued light, all underneath the stars which until then gleamed down as they should. We then headed back and never really ran out of water in the 6 mile round trip. I wouldn't try walking that trip in the hottest part of the day. Even after midnight the wind drove pockets of warm air past us along with the chilly breeze. Heading somewhere distant on foot was like being on a treadmill, with no apparant change in the background visible for much of an hour at times!

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