Damn, I travel too much, and I end up being on the other side of the world when I want to be somewhere else. Or to be in the right place, but at the wrong moment. As for London...
I was in London on November 15, for about a week. I spent 4 days in London, then rent a car to drive all the way South-West to Stonehenge, and then South to Portsmouth. Nice trip - a lot of rain, though... and when I tried to get in touch with my London campmates from Quixote Camp, I couldn't find anybody... =( A couple of weeks later when I'm stuck somewhere else, all of my friends from Quixote, Nowhere, and some fellas from Burning Man Italy met in London for a fab London Decompression 2007 Party!
Here are some of my Euroburners friends such as Kittykaat, Claudi, Dario, Santi e Michael, cut'n'pasted in this photo composition from the amazing shots of NK Guy, who did a photo session at the London party, with great results. The pictures below and many more from NK Guy are available online at Burningcam.com, of course in their full view.
Did you know that Black Rock City actually has a post office?
Burning Man IS a real city, not an Utopian place, and its zip code is 89412!!! If you look for it on Google Maps, you can even spot Black Rock City's location, but you have to zoom in and look very carefully to spot it.
This is how the Playa looks like from above with Google Maps, and a decent zoom - it was not easy to spot the exact location in the area, I had to beat the map almost inch by inch to find Black Rock City!!!
Then you give the zoom a last click, et voila' - ladies and gentlemen, geniouses and weirdos, here is Black Rock City in all its airview splendor!
You actually get two Black Rock Cities in one shot - the South-western one is the previous location of Black Rock City, up to Burning Man 2004. From Burning Man 2005 on the site moved a little bit up, as you can see.
You can zoom in a lot, and explore Black Rock City - this one below is a nice view from above centered at Center Camp, with the Esplanade and all. You can zoom in upo to see the flags!
This definitely is Burning Man 2006, with the rotating Man and the Maze below, you can see it clearly if you zoom your way up to pay the Man a visit - but the deep zoom doesn't have a good quality, I'm afraid. Here is another nice shot from above.
Now you can ask Google Maps driving directions straight to Center Camp! Don't come saying you got lost... in this case you need this map! =)
It was inevitable - after hanging out with the Euroburners at Nowhere 2007 I ended up camping this year with the Euroburners. Well, after all, I'm European too, and a burner! I guess this makes me an Euroburner too...
It really has been a chance, my friend Paul decided not to set up the Hammock Hangout this year, Flaming Lotus Girls were too tired from an entire year traveling the world with the Serpent Mother and the Hand of God, and decided to just hang out this year, with no big artwork commitment. At the same time, I was hooked with the Euroburners newsletters, reading about these Eurofellas actually setting up a nice thing: the Green Man Pub!
I couldn't resist so I got in touch to join the Quixote Cabaret Camp, and I really had a great time. I have also met great people that now belong to my Burning Man family, with which I hope I'll be doing more stuff, starting with Nowhere 2008, for example!
Yes I had some scratches with a couple of campmates - it never happened to me before on the Playa, but I know this is pretty normal, and it happens all the time at all BM camps. Hey, screw that! I really enjoyed my campmates, and I had a great time!
Here are some pictures of my campmates, and some Euroburners friends and Green Man Pub guests - click on any image to be magically teleported on Flickr.com, where I created a Quixote Cabaret Camp and Green Man Pub dedicated photo collection!
I LOVE Flaming Lotus Girls, one of the most creative posse on the Playa... and beyond!
I always enjoyed Flaming Lotus' work, since I hit the Hand of God on the Playa back in 2003. And then there was the Angel of Apocalypse last year - awesome. I still remember the Friday night party with the Space Cowboys soundsystem (the mighty Unimog), but this year they really moved forward, and created the incredible Serpent Mother.
An art piece bigger than a parking lot, the Serpent Mother is an articulated fire-animated pyro-mechanic art installation that will go on a world tour after Burning Man, from the US to Australia, then Europe and more. The art piece really deserves some fame, and FLG deserve some spotlights on their amazing artwork, too. Bravo, FLG!
I do have some cool pictures of the installation, like the one above and more pictures on Flickr.com, with many shots not only of the Serpent Mother, but also of the people partying at the art installation site. Click on the image below to see more pictures of these cool burners!
People is always good, but I believe no picture can describe how majestic the metal-fire art piece is, an installation to be experienced first-hand (of God...). So maybe a video can help a little more.
Flaming Lotus Girls were actually performing a number of shows each night at the Serpent Mother, starting with fireworks and other cool pyrotechnics, then opening up to the crowd to get inside the hot embrace of the big FLG snake.
This video has been shot immediately after the end of the fireworks show, so you can (kind of) experience walking inside the Serpent Mother. Enjoy.
This other video has been shot on the Friday before the burn, with the sound of Space Cowboys as a grand soundtrack for such epic scenery. People chill within the Serpent, and dances nearby, by Space Cowboys' Unimog.
Do you want more Space Cowboys? Here we go, this is one of the movies I posted on YouTube from that night - the description I added to this video goes like this: Space Cowboys rock the house. Flaming Lotus Girls rock the scene. The Serpent Mother is the perfect ultimate rave location for the Space Cowboys' Friday night classic: the Unimog big party of the Playa!!!
It's all true, folks! Here we go with the nasty and trancey Unimog beats!
Flaming Lotus Girrrlsplay hard, but work hard too. I approached FLG after the big crowd left Black Rock City on Monday after the burn, just to say hi! before driving back home.
Last year I spent an additional week or so to tear down the Hammock Hangout, so I felt happy when FLG accepted my help to pack up the Serpent Mother. Funny, I said "I can help you for a couple of hours", then I ended up spending the next three days with FLG !!!
Packing the art installation took less than two days, after which we went for another Burning Man veteran classic: Trego desert hot springs! After that I spent another day with FLG dusting off in a Reno casino, drinking poolside margaritas! The FLG posse works hard, then plays hard again... love them!
I like these pictures at Trego, the Black Rock City desert hot springs - bathing at night, waiting for the sunrise, and cooking eggs in the hottest spot of the spring (the water was actually boiling in the spot!) - follow this link to see more Trego and FLG chill pictures.
Here is the last Flaming Lotus Girl video for this post, shot while packing the Serpent Mother in the middle of a dust storm. Check out how close objects disappear into the dust white-out, and how big the container truck is!!!
Final note: after sharing so much with the FLG gang this year (we also met in San Francisco to discuss potential art projects in Europe) I can now say that I'm a Flaming Lotus Girl too! Read more!
Here are all my pictures from Burning Man 2006, as usual arranged within several Flickr.com photo albums. This year it has been a weird year, after the intensive commitment of last year with the Hammock Hangout.
I believe this has been the first year where I could have just hang out with no much camp responsibilities. I parked my RV at the crazy camp of the Pirates of the Playa, a bunch of cool local people from Nevada who cruise the Playa with a pirate boat where they often perform bondage sessions!
Also, this has been the year where I catch up with Flaming Lotus Girls, the mythic metal-fire collective who amazed everybody this year with the Serpent Mother. I stayed with FLG for four days after burning Man, helping them tearing down and pack up the huge Serpent Mother, but also de-dusting and chilling at the Trego desert hot springs, and poolside in Reno sipping margaritas! Flaming Lotus Grrrrrls rock! Read more!
My good friends from the Roman advertising agency xister asked me to write an article / editorial on - guess what? Burning man, of course. At the beginning I was not so sure - I still believe Burning Man has to be experienced, not told.
But then I put all my experience together, and I tried to surrogate it in a Wikipedia-style article, rich of links and references - pretty much like this blog. Only that the article is in Italian, and geared towards a specific topic, just to launch a little provocation at xister's newsletter audience, basically composed by marketers. So I talked about one of the Burning man principles that inspire me most, the Gift Economy.
Here is the link to the very long article, and here below a selection among my best Burning Man 2006 pictures that has been published with my Gift Economy article. Enjoy the reading (if you can read Italian!).
If you are interested in learning more about Burning Man's Gift Economy, follow the link in the Burning Man essentials, or just watch a movie!
A very good documentary called Gifting it has been circulating at several independent film festivals worldwide in the last years, including the London Burning Man Film Festival.
You can buy the Gifting it DVD for just a few dollars (even less in Euro), so you don't have to chase it around film festivals! To know more about the movie, and hot to get your copy of the Gifting it DVD, click on this link, or on the image on the side.
Planning, preparing, setting up, running and tearing down the Hammock Hangout this year has certainly been my biggest commitment to the Burning Man experience to date.
Not only because it has been a huge work, but also because the work has been done mostly with the smallest team ever: 2 people!!! well, sometimes even 3, and in some cases we had a great support from our BM family, specially in running the Hammock Hangout. but setting up and tearing down has been a two-men-against-time-and-nature work. Heavy, but amazing!!!
Here are some of the pictures of the Hammock Hangout tear down, the guy in most of the pictures is Burning Man veteran, ex-DPW, crazy Dutch cowboyPaul DeJong, a great friend of mine who lives in San Francisco. Paul look tough but really is the sweetest guy around, and a crazy genius. I had a great time in getting involved with him in this project, and in becoming friends, brothers - desert brothers.
Check out how awesome our Hammock Hangout is!
Look how many beautiful people and good vibes we were having on daily (and nightly) basis. You can click on the images to get to the Flickr.com photo album where you can browse all the pictures in full details.
And how about my DJ Sonic silver RV, which I entirely foiled in aluminum wrap paper (and silver glued glitter for some details)?
I love my Burning Man RV, he just passed away after my recent trip to the Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave Desert - but it has been a great companion and comfy home for two Burning Man events, and many trips around beautiful California.
Check out my real grass garden, strategically placed to be in the shade after 1pm, and regularly fed with a water recycling project (all my showers where taken on the lawn, and all the melted ice was feeding my garden too). I really enjoyed having friends over for a tea in my garden in the late afternoons, before getting ready for the Playa nightlife!
Though work that lasted forever, but I really loved it. Paul and I stayed a few more days on site, waiting and hanging out with DPW and PlayaQ and going to the hot springs before even thinking to tear down the Hammock Hangout, then working really hard against a dust storm that lasted two days, and the usual harsh environment of the Black Rock Desert.
But we did it, of course! and we are very proud of it!!! I look forward to set it up again next year, we already have a few upgrading ideas.... Check out also the pictures from the Trego desert hot springs, they are pretty cool...
In the two pictures of me you can see the difference between before going to the hot springs, completely covered in dust, and after hanging out in the hot water ditch all night, back to clean again!!! It's funny, I drunk some water right before Paul took that picture of me, and you can see the sign of the water cleaning off the dust from my mustaches!
Listen to my Last.fm radio stations - this is much better than satellite radio. No interruptions, no advertising, and if you don't like a song you can skip to the next!
Photo credits: PK Guy at Burningcam.com
