Category Archives: Dark Path – Complaints Department

This section is for those who want to bitch, moan, whinge, whine, complain, criticize, diss, or just generally bum people out. It’s not always roses being a Burner, sometimes the squeaky wheel gets a greasing, and sometimes you need to be able to identify mistakes in order to prevent them and grow past them

Apr 25 2013

9 Ways to Die at Burning Man

by Whatsblem the Pro

The Craig Nielson Memorial Intersection at Burning Man - Photo: Danger Ranger
The Craig Nielson Memorial Intersection at Burning Man – Photo: Danger Ranger

The motto “keep Burning Man potentially fatal” is more than just humor; it’s a reflection of the fact that Black Rock City, for all its rules and regulations, began as an Autonomous Zone. Likewise, the warning on the back of each and every ticket: YOU MIGHT DIE, and that’s your responsibility.

It’s kind of an odd responsibility to have, given that the corporation that runs Burning Man ostensibly began as a response to a string of grisly deaths on and near the playa. You’d think that if co-opting an Autonomous Zone was a proper and necessary response to those deaths, the Org would want to explicitly take responsibility for people dying at Burning Man. . . but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, so the Org gets to put a fence around everything and sell tickets and make rules, but the potentially lethal nature of the event is still your problem and yours alone.

Keeping Burning Man fatal means hanging on to as much personal autonomy as we can in the face of the continuing Disneyfication of the event; paradoxically, it is also what prompts control freaks and opportunists to come up with new and unwelcome rules for us to burn by. The heart of the paradox is that in order to keep Burning Man potentially fatal, we need to look after ourselves well enough that our deaths remain unusual or even rare occurrences. Failure means being swaddled in overprotective regulations that smother our culture.

The trick is to keep people who are likely to die away from the event. We don’t publish stories about how dangerous and uncomfortable Burning Man is because we hate Burning Man; on the contrary, we love the party and are committed to the culture, but we recognize that it’s not for everyone, and that encouraging just anyone to come is a Very Bad Idea. Radical inclusion shouldn’t ever be a matter of luring or dragging someone woefully unprepared into a howling wilderness where they will be unable to cope with the prevailing conditions.

Technically, you can be almost certain that you won’t die at Burning Man. . . because even if your heart stops or your head comes off or you otherwise cease to function metabolically at Burning Man, you probably won’t be declared dead until you get to Reno. The Org’s propaganda machine takes full advantage of this technicality, and conveniently does not include deaths declared off-playa in their tally of deaths at the event, no matter how or where the mayhem happened.

This is not meant – by a long shot – to be a complete list of the many, many deaths that have occurred in and around Burning Man. This is an overview, intended to give you an idea of what might be in store for the unwary, the feckless, and the star-crossed among us.

1. GETTING THERE/LEAVING

If ghosts really do haunt the places where they died, then the highway to and from the playa must be an ectoplasmic fiesta of epic proportions. Insane, horrible traffic accidents; battered, overturned, burnt vehicles; blood and body parts strewn across the asphalt.

The examples of typical, ordinary – but horrific – highway accidents are too numerous to pick a single example, but here’s an extraordinary one: Craig Nielson, a young man who joined DPW for his very first burn in 2001, never quite made it to Burning Man. Nielson died on the road, reportedly crushed in a vehicular accident that led to him bleeding to death on the way to do his very first load-out. Details are sketchy, but he may have been riding on top of an RV.

One of two Bonanzas wrecked at the '03 burn - Photo by Rigged

One of two Bonanzas wrecked at the ’03 burn – Photo by Rigged

Let’s not forget that Black Rock City has an airport, too, and that it handles something like a hundred takeoffs and landings a day during the event. In 2003 there were two incidents involving aircraft; in one, a Beechcraft BE-35 reportedly lost engine power on takeoff, severely injuring the four people onboard. One of the passengers had to undergo several surgeries to remove pieces of the plane’s control panel from his sinus cavity, and the pilot, Barry Jacobs, later died of his injuries.

Please drive (or fly your small plane) carefully, avoid engaging in highway hijinks no matter how boisterous your spirits get in anticipation of the burn, and keep emergency supplies – like water and a first-aid kit – in the vehicle. The road to the burn takes you into a remote area; if you have an accident there, help is liable to be quite far away. One of the reasons that Barry Jacobs died is that it took well over an hour for first responders to get to the plane and get him out of it.

2. ART CARNAGE

The ban on driving anything but art cars and the five-mile-per-hour speed limit are not preventative measures; they are direct products of vehicular manslaughter on and near the playa. As Danial Glass reported in the Boston Phoenix, the 1996 burn brought some serious change:

Michael Fury, a friend of Larry Harvey and a creative influence at Burning Man, was killed in a collision while riding his motorcycle at night, playing chicken with a blacked-out van. Others died near a rave camp when a truck ran over their tent while they were sleeping inside.

In 1997, driving was banned on the playa, and fire art was prohibited in areas where people were camped. The admission ticket, which used to admonish participants to “Please keep weapons unloaded in camp,” now warned that firearms were banned within its borders. The county imposed its own restrictions as well. As Burning Man staff toned down the potentially destructive elements of the event, the rough-edged freedom waned considerably.

Those weren’t art car deaths, but the backlash made it a lot less likely for anyone to be killed by any vehicle at Burning Man that isn’t an art car.

In 2003, a burner named Katherine Lampman jumped off a moving art car because she wanted to get a closer look at the Temple of Honor. Somehow, she lost her balance and fell backward after landing, which placed her directly in the path of the car’s wheels. “I will never forget the feeling that surged into my hands through the steering wheel,” remarked Randy Emata, who was driving the art car that ended Lampman’s life. “My worst fears were followed by a myriad of terrified voices, screaming for me to stop the car. I ran back and discovered that the trailer ran her over. Her life was slowly coming to an end as she breathed less and less. Revival was attempted, but failure was inevitable. Someone grabbed a spectator’s bicycle and sped off to a nearby Ranger. Soon after, the Sheriffs showed up with an ambulance, taking her to the medical center. A helicopter was on its way. As I was writing out my statement, a deputy told me that the helicopter left without her and that she didn’t make it.”

3. DIY

There have been a number of suicides at Burning Man over the years, most notably that of Jermaine “Jerm” Barley, who hung himself in a Moroccan-style tent full of gym equipment at Comfort & Joy camp. The suicide went undetected for some time; as witness Don Davis remarked, “It looked like someone was playing a joke with a dummy.”

Rumor has it that a number of people saw Barley’s corpse hanging on a rope, and thought it was art.

Barley wasn’t the first, and won’t be the last. . . and there are also post-burn suicides to tally up. Some people can’t handle the coming-down phase of Burning Man; they return to the world outside Black Rock and everything seems so muted and washed-out by comparison. It can be a real downer. . . and it can and has led to suicides. If you count that as “dying at Burning Man,” then post-burn suicide accounts for more deaths than any other cause on this list. In at least one case, the suicide came several years after the actual event, but was very clearly related. Rest in peace, Paul Addis.

4. MOLECULAR MISADVENTURE

Drugs are like guns, kids. They’re just tools, and the important thing isn’t so much what they do to you; it’s what you do with them that makes the entire difference between use and abuse. Responsible adults use drugs responsibly, or not at all. Sometimes using responsibly means refraining from mixing your pharmaceutical experience with an overly-perilous environment. You don’t want to be wandering around in the middle of the desert alone with your head full of a drug like ‘cup,’ with its well-known side effect of dehydrating and disorienting the user. Even the effects of a drug as ordinary and seemingly harmless as Tibetan poon oil can lead to a serious health crisis on the playa, with your body in a constant state of overstimulated exhaustion and your environment sucking the moisture out of you like you’re inside a giant dessicant sachet.

Do we even need to talk about garden-variety overdoses? Your body is going to be taxed quite a bit out there, and you need to be sensitive to that fact if you’re going to chemically alter yourself in any way that might present a risk.

On the sunny side (along with sunstroke) there’s something positive to mention: although there have been drug-related deaths at Burning Man, burners seem to be quite a bit more responsible about their recreational substances than the average festival-goer. The 2011 AfterBurn report’s Medical section includes this comment from the emergency medical personnel that attended: “The numbers for alcohol- and drug-related patients continue to be remarkably low for an event of this size.”

5. REDRUM

There are two words you don’t say around Org people, or around your supervisors if you’re DPW: one is ‘rape,’ and the other is ‘murder.’ The Org doesn’t like these things – or any of the things in this article, for that matter – bandied about too freely. They actively instruct workers, both paid and volunteer, to stay mum regarding anything that might make them or the event look bad.

Johnson arrived at the DPW ranch wounded... and talkative

Johnson arrived at the DPW ranch wounded… and talkative

Happily, we don’t get a lot of murders at Burning Man (rape is another matter; they are depressingly frequent out there). That doesn’t, however, mean that nobody gets murdered. In 2003, Christopher Scott Johnson (aka “One-Armed Bandit”) showed up at the DPW ranch looking for work. His erratic behavior and his bragging about having killed a man prompted Will Roger and Ranch manager Matthew ‘Metric’ Ebert to call the police, who discovered that Johnson had indeed stabbed a man to death in a van on the road to the playa.

6. AUTO-DA-FÉ

It hasn’t happened so far, but give it time; someone without a posse is going to crank up FREE BIRD at the perfect moment, and an angry mob of zealous whatever-worshippers – enraged at this insult to the highly-evolved and enlightened wisdom that allows them to live superior lives of peaceful Buddha-like tranquility – is going to nail the offender to a cross and toss it into the flames of the Temple. . . and then we’ll have two religions to contend with on the playa.

7. WHOOPSIE-DAISY

Plenty of garden-variety accidents happen every year at Burning Man; people climb things and fall off; people ingest spoiled consumables; people trip over tent stakes; people have bicycle mishaps. Once in a while, especially in a city of 60,000 souls, these things are bound to be fatal.

In 1999, Jim Keith fell from a stage at Burning Man and broke his knee. The week after the burn, he entered the Washoe Medical hospital for knee surgery and died in the Intensive Care Unit shortly after surgery was completed, when a blood clot released from his broken knee entered his lung. The coroner’s report listed cause of death as “blunt force trauma.”

The accidents can usually be avoided, if you’ll just keep your eyes open, keep your stress level manageable, and use common sense. You know how it works: one minute you’re stressing yourself out arguing with your campmates while building some large structure as the Sun beats down on you, and the next minute you’re taking it out on the work, pounding nails a little too hard, until you end up applying your claw hammer directly to your forehead on the bounce-back. Or maybe you’re just walking around, not paying much attention, when a truck full of ice swerves to avoid a pothole and tips over and falls on you. Maybe you’re tired and want to get home as soon as possible, so you stay at the wheel for Exodus and end up falling asleep on it.

Most fatal accidents happen in the home; most in the bathroom. Leave the bathroom at home and you’ll be safer. The dust is your friend.

Nobody knows for sure what killed 37-year-old Adam Goldstone. The East Village DJ hit his head on some rebar, suffering at least a mild concussion, and later slipped or fainted in the shower in his RV, injuring himself further and eventually dying. Emergency medical personnel were summoned, but were unable to save him. Goldstone’s father was of the opinion that his son may have been felled by a heart condition.

Even in the absence of an accident, you might just happen to be on the playa when your time comes. Sometimes there’s just no dodging that bullet with your name written on it.

Erika the Red died tragically young with no warning

Erika the Red died tragically young with no warning

Erika “the Red” Kupfersberger died of an aneurysm on the playa in 2011, for no particular reason that had anything to do with being at Burning Man. People have heart attacks and strokes at Burning Man, not infrequently, and not always because of any particular environmental factor.

8. IN THE SOUP

The hot springs in the vicinity of the playa can be really wonderful, but they’re also perilous as hell to the incautious. . . especially Double Hot, with its twin maw of boiling danger. In 1849, a traveler by the name of Bruff wrote this about Double Hot:

Sept.22. In the first part we reached a pretty clear sparkling rill, about six feet broad, and a few inches deep; when to my astonishment the mules halted short at the edge, and refused in spite of the whip and shouting, to put a foot in it! I guessed there might be a vapor from it, but on putting my hand in, found it quite hot – not sufficiently to scald, however. So we had much trouble here, pulling and urging the teams over; and when they did go, it was accomplished by each pair of mules, in succession leaping over like deer, and thus jerking the wagons after them.

Next, on left, observed a cluster of hot Spring mounds, with their circlets of marsh and tall green grass.- In one lay a dead ox, apparently fell there yesterday; one hind leg in the basin of hot water, which had so well cooked it, that nought but white bones and tendons were left, of that limb, as high as the water had influence.

Some 150 years later, a burner gave the following report to Erowid.org regarding the local springs:

Probably the most dangerous hot springs is Double Hot, which is north of Black Rock about 10 miles. Great camping spot and really nice tubs, even a real bathtub at one location. The *usable* tubs are a hundred feet or so away from where the hot water comes up out of the ground and begins flowing downhill in a boiling hot stream. The tubs are holes dug to the side of the stream, and water is redirected according to the users’ comfort requirements.

The place where the hot water comes out of the ground is called the maw. There are actually two of them and they are incredibly beautiful, deep blue water and you can see down into the sweltering bowels of the earth several fathoms. The water is about 200 degrees. IF YOU FALL INTO THE MAW YOU WILL DIE. In 1994 I witnessed a family from Reno out on a little tour fail to exercise care around the maw. Their beautiful golden retriever–the family dog obviously for many years–thought she would go for a swim. I became aware of the disaster when the screaming began. The whole family was crying horribly as the father stuck his hands in the boiling water to pull out their pet. The little boy and the little girl were absolutely devastated and that is where my friend Louis directed his marvelous efforts to calm them down by telling them distracting stories, away from the scene. I helped the father who was cursing himself and crying uncontrollably. The dog went almost immediately into shock, as her skin began to slough off in patches about as big as my hand. Eventually most of the fur was gone. The family bundled their pet into a blanket and slowly made their way back to Reno. I am sure the father had second and perhaps even third-degree burns on his arms.

Note that the maw is not marked or protected by any sort of barrier.

9. DEATH BY EXTREME OBVIOUSNESS

Being burned to death at Burning Man, really? Sadly, yes. According to the 2001 AfterBurn report, “a participant who chose to run into a fire” later died of his burns in a Reno hospital. The incident apparently took place the night of the burn, somewhere on the deep playa.

You’re never going to know just exactly how much mayhem and death takes place at Burning Man, because the Org actively discourages anyone from talking about it, and discounts deaths that happen on the highway to or from the playa, or in places like Reno hospitals as a result of injuries sustained on the playa. . . but the number is probably much higher than you think it is. Please, don’t make a secret statistic of yourself. It’s your job to keep yourself safe and healthy out there, and the fewer who succeed at that, the harder it will become to keep Burning Man potentially fatal. Do a good job!

Apr 23 2013

Victory! But for Whom?

by Whatsblem the Pro

Nevada State Assemblyman David Bobzien (D)

Nevada State Assemblyman David Bobzien (D)

The Nevada Assembly passed AB374 in a 26-15 party line vote today.

The bill, which prohibits county commissioners from imposing fees or regulations on festivals operating under a federal license or permit, was sponsored by Assemblyman David Bobzien (D). The version that passed this morning is the second rewrite since our last report on March 30th of this year.

Opponents of the bill sought amendments to remove county liability and responsibility of prosecuting crimes, due to the high costs of providing law enforcement at Burning Man. Republican Assemblyman Ira Hansen of Sparks said the bill would undermine the county’s authority, and make funding law enforcement difficult. In response, the bill was amended to give the counties the right to contract with and charge the Burning Man organization (and other event promoters) for law enforcement services. The new provision reads as follows:

2. A board of county commissioners may:

(a) Enter into an agreement, with a person or organization which has been issued a license or permit by a federal agency for an assembly, event or activity occurring on federal land, for the county to provide reasonable and necessary law enforcement services for the assembly, event or activity and to receive compensation for the provision of such services; and

(b) Regulate or license, or require any type of permit or fee for organizing, managing or attending, any assembly, event or activity occurring on federal land that is the subject of a:

(1) Lease between the Federal Government and the county; or

(2) License for recreational or other public purposes from the Federal Government to the county.

What this means is that while the corporation that holds the trademark on Burning Man will be more profitable thanks to the elimination of the necessity to pay county authorities for permits or other fees, the Org may still choose to contract with the counties to bring their law enforcement personnel to Black Rock City. It’s possible that this won’t even be a choice; one of the “special stipulations” of the 2012 BLM permit, after all, was this:

23. BRC shall complete formal agreements with all affected parties e.g. Pershing County Sheriff’s Department, Washoe County Sheriff’s Department, Nevada Department of Public Safety-Investigations Division, Nevada Highway Patrol, and Nevada Department of Health and Human Safety for the purpose of addressing concerns and impacts associated with social services e.g. law enforcement and emergency medical services and physical infrastructure e.g. transportation systems and human waste disposal. Written evidence of these agreements showing compliance with this stipulation must be provided to the BLM by BRC 30 days prior to the start of the event.

Since special stipulation #23 demands compliance but doesn’t spell out what compliance actually involves beyond “complete formal agreements,” we’re left to speculate. Doesn’t this put huge leverage into the hands of Washoe and Pershing counties? They can simply demand that one or both of them be contracted with to provide law enforcement services – and be paid for doing so – or threaten to take their ball and go home; no formal agreement means no BLM permit.

It remains to be seen how the Burning Man Org will actually handle this; they could demand a renegotiation of the special stipulations, given that the terrain has changed significantly in the wake of AB374. Given their track record, however, I predict that nothing in particular will get better for those who attend the event. The Org will become more profitable, as is their apparent primary goal always, and the rest of us will be graciously allowed to eat whatever cake we can find in the middle of the desert. The only question is if the Org will be willing to bend over so far backward to county law enforcement that the heavy increase in on-playa officers continues at the alarming pace of the past few years.

How happy I would be if I turned out to be wrong about that.

Apr 18 2013

Cosmo Says You’re in a Cult for Losers

by Whatsblem the Pro

Cosmo: Too irrelevant to make fun of since the '70s (Image: Harvard Lampoon)

Cosmo: Too irrelevant to make fun of since the ’70s (Image: Harvard Lampoon)

Anna Breslaw, writing about sorority life for Cosmopolitan:

“Greek life lost me when, as a freshman, I heard a rumor about sorority pledges having to sort Froot Loops for their pledgemasters all night long. In the dark. (I’ve also heard wayyy worse, but I don’t want to scar anyone.) It’s always seemed to me, like Scientology or Burning Man, a cult for the lost, the lonely or the drunk.”

Uh oh, Anna. . . a cult for losers, really?

The members of the Burning Man group on Facebook, always notorious for their wonderfully snarky vitriol, seem to have taken notice:

Sam Davidow: A writer for Cosmo bagging on sororities. And drinking. And cultish behavior. And comparing burning man to all three. Let’s see if she wants to go! Maybe she can camp with Krug.

Steve Foxfur Fox: Lost, lonely and drunk? Sounds like a country music cult, lulz.

John William Fairclough: I tried to get lost there, but every time I looked up, I was at Burning Man. Have you ever tried to get lost while you were home?

Sam Davidow: Here’s another gem by her, in which she writes “Since I was 12 I’ve had an unappealing, didactic distrust of people with the extreme will to live. My father’s parents were Holocaust survivors, and in grade school I received the de rigueur exposure to the horror— visiting geriatric men and women with numbers tattooed on their arms. . .”

Jake Gin: “How the cancer victim at the center of the AMC series justifies my skepticism of Holocaust survivors” It must be nice to go through life with no hope of ever finding a clue. Ya know, just blissfully babbling away.

Sam Davidow It’s just. . . fuck, it’s mind boggling.

The backlash has just begun to hit the comments on the article at Cosmo’s own website, and promises to swell into a veritable tsunami of amply-warranted Breslaw-bashing, with people weighing in both from the Facebook group and independently. So far, the comments range from civil-but-chilly to absolutely caustic:

Michael Watkiss: Burning man isn’t a cult. And the lost and lonely often have the most interesting stories. But thank you for your casual generalization.

Sam Davidow: “It’s always seemed to me, like Scientology or Burning Man, a cult for the lost, the lonely or the drunk.” I was raised in a cult, and was an alcoholic. I’ve also been to burning man, and you couldn’t be farther off in your analogy. Are you drunk, or just ignorant?

Angi McFarland: So Sam, how often do you read Cosmo? ;)

Sam Davidow: Well, it’s entertaining. Whenever I want broad generalizations of what “all men want”, I give it a look over, ‘cuz if there’s something that I want and don’t know that I want, i wanna know.

Peter EarthBiscuit: I’m so glad you clumped cults, the lost and lonely, drunks and sororities in there with Burning Man. Because that’s all it is! A bunch of lost, lonely, drunk people desperately trying to fuck anything that will increase their social standing and get them a better seat to the burning of the cult god at the end of the week. Bravo, Cosmo has a real gem on their staff and I’m sure they know it. Can’t wait to read your next piece, “How I know you’re a slut because you use your phone in the toilet.”

Hal V J Muskat: Why would author Anna Breslaw want to camp with Delta Gamma at Burning Man anyway? Why does she troll for Scientology? Did she NOT ever get laid at Burning Man? Why not? Could she not get laid AFTER? Why not? Did she in fact, GET LAID at Burning Man? Why?

Anastasia Marie: wtf did I just read. . .

You can join in the fun and comment too, if you’d like to tell Anna Breslaw and Cosmopolitan Magazine just exactly what you think of being told that you’re in a cult for lost, lonely, drunk people. Hurry, though. . . there’s no telling how long Cosmo is going to leave commenting open on this one. Let’s get in there and show some them that if they want burners to read their publication, they need to avoid filling it with the kind of ignorant, insensitive drivel that Ms. Breslaw seems so prone to writing:

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/celebrity/news/insane-maryland-sorority-email

Apr 16 2013

10 Ways to Get Laid at Burning Man

by Whatsblem the Pro

Let the Jubilee begin. (Image: Whatsblem the Pro)

Let the Jubilee begin. (Image: Whatsblem the Pro)

We have a lot of subscribers here at burners.me, and a lot of people come here via links at Facebook, BoingBoing, and other prominent places on the Web. . . but our traffic-monitoring data also shows rather a lot of folks getting here by searching Google for terms like “dirty naked burning man sluts,” “burning man awesome buttsecks,” or “sparkle pony fuckfest jubilee.”

There’s no sense in getting huffy about it; it’s no secret that Burning Man has a sexy reputation, and we have to expect a certain amount of voyeuristic interest from the general public as a result. In addition, we know that people preparing to visit Black Rock City for the very first time often have urgent, pressing questions regarding the way certain things are done out there on the playa.

Naturally, we want to serve our readers. . . so for all of you who have asked the question, rhetorical or not, we now present the top ten answers to “how do you get laid at Burning Man?”

1. Show up. Be awesome. Smile. Someone will figure the rest out for you.

2. Ask. If you don’t get a ‘yes,’ take ‘no’ for an answer and ask someone else. If you’ve already asked everyone else in Black Rock City with no luck, take the sure thing: go to First Camp and ask for anyone from the Board.

3. Bathe.

4. Be the only person within fifty feet who happens to have coke, K, molly, X, weed, cold beer, drinking water, shower access, and/or an air-conditioned RV to share.

5. Hang around outside of ATTOL looking wistful until some couple or group invites you to join them in the Orgy Dome.

6. Those entire neighborhoods behind Center Camp, out past Kidsville? The ones full of nondescript camps with lots of RVs, occupied by relatively normal-looking, mostly middle-aged people? They came to drink and fuck, and many of them are decidedly not normal even if they do buy their clothes at J.C. Penney’s.

7. Start your own theme camp with unique art, a great bar, incredible sound system, lighting effects up the yin, and an ‘ironic’/comedic theme based on sex with you. Call it SEX WITH ME CAMP so there’s no ambiguity about it. Lube up.

8. Build a time machine and pilot it to some bygone day before Burning Man started sucking. Depending on your tastes, find Bianca’s Smut Shack or Stiffy Lube, and dive right in. When you return to the present, bring me back a grilled cheese sandwich.

9. Tell absolutely everyone you know that you’re going to set the Man on fire early, then follow through in a way that will surely get you caught in the act. When you get to prison, tell everyone you meet exactly how you got there, and announce loudly that you don’t want any trouble. Enjoy the smorgasbord, you dog, and don’t forget to write a thank-you note to your good friends who went out of their way to help by bringing all their receipts to court with them.

10. Stop trying so hard. Look around you and just be in the moment. Enjoy the art and the good company and the party and the desert, and let things happen the way they happen for a little while. If you’re really that hard up, stop by the Mustang Ranch on your way back to Reno, and support the other arts. . . and tip generously.

Mar 29 2013

Forgotten City Buried in Two Inches of Gravel

by Whatsblem the Pro

Image: John Marsh and Kelly Curtis

Image: John Marsh and Kelly Curtis

There’s just a hint of mayhem in the story behind what shouldn’t be a terribly noteworthy change of plans for the fourth annual Forgotten City festival this year.

The event is the Las Vegas Burning Man Regional‘s yearly Memorial Day weekend outing. A month ago, the usual suspects in organizing Forgotten City announced that the event would not take place in 2013, due to a new baby in the family.

“I was actually looking at a site in Pahrump, Nevada for something else at the time,” says Dirk Schmidhofer, the organizer who has taken on the task of keeping Forgotten City’s fire lit this year. “I started calling it St. Elmo’s Fire, but too many people thought of the TV show, and of Sesame Street. Damian was mentoring me then, and I asked if I could use the Forgotten City name. He said ‘Sure, and here’s all my website stuff, too.’”

Dirk Schmidhofer at FC3. Photo: Adam Shane

Dirk Schmidhofer at FC3. Photo: Adam Shane

With the Las Vegas Regional in his corner, Schmidhofer sought a permit for the event in Pahrump, Nevada, a small and economically-challenged town about fifty miles west of Las Vegas.

On March 1st, 2013, Selwyn Harris wrote an article in the Pahrump Valley Times about the Pahrump Town Board approving plans for FC4 to be the inaugural event at the new Pahrump Fairgrounds. Town Board members voted 5-0 to approve the event, but waited for a contract review from the town’s attorney before giving the official go-ahead.

On March 8th, just one week later, Selwyn Harris wrote another article, entitled “Mini Burning Man Event up in Smoke.”

“We went back to the previous location,” says Schmidhofer. “Bootleg Canyon near Boulder City, Nevada. Boulder City Parks and Recreation has permitted Forgotten City the last two years, so they know the organization; we obtained a permit as we had done in previous years, and we’re selling tickets as we speak for Memorial Day Weekend.”

The Pahrump Fairgrounds, it turns out, are a bit unfinished.

“They just bladed off 27 acres,” Schmidhofer told me. “They put in a very large asphalt parking lot at one end. It’s a brand new fairgrounds and they’re doing it as they get money; they are working on more funding, and want to put in soccer fields and so on.”

In order for Forgotten City 4 to burn in Pahrump, Nye County wanted Schmidhofer to either pave the fairgrounds, or lay down a two-inch bed of gravel wherever there would be vehicles parked.

“I was actually planning on renting a water truck, a la Burning Man,” says Schmidhofer, but according to the County, “water is not considered a dust palliative for the purposes of complying with that law.”

And then, according to a press release from Pahrump’s town manager, Bill Kohbarger, “A Nye County Sheriff’s Office representative contacted Burning Man advising them that everyone who gave away alcohol needed to obtain a liquor permit through their office.”

Meanwhile, Schmidhofer was taking a drubbing from citizen attendees in town board meetings over things that seemed to make no sense.

“Although we felt we were there with plenty of time, some felt we were springing this event on them. Others thought I was trying to skirt the process, even though I had spoken with everyone I could find or get a recommendation to talk to. I missed a face-to-face with the town manager, and they really zeroed in on that. He didn’t seem to mind though. Someone was upset because they thought we had the tickets printed up already; I guess they’re still in the 20th century there. What we have is a website created by the founder of Forgotten City a couple of years ago; a few minor changes, and it’s ready to sell tickets online — everything is e-commerce, but they didn’t understand that.”

According to Schmidhofer, the town board meeting attendees seemed to ignore the fact that the group had done this event before, and already had fully-developed and tested plans for security, fire safety, EMS, etc. “One person specifically said at the microphone that twelve weeks was not enough. . . but I had been working with the fire chief on all of it, and he even vouched for us at the meeting.”

This only looks like Satan worship. Photo: John Marsh and Kelly Curtis

This only looks like Satan worship. Photo: John Marsh and Kelly Curtis

Reader comments on the related articles in the Pahrump Valley Times were worse than vitriolic. One Pahrump local logged in as “Desert Cat” called the abortive festival at the fairgrounds “your little Burning Man freak show” and exulted over the cancellation: “Best of days for Pahrump. You see, we succeeded in putting a stop to an event that would have drawn the likes of you and yours to our town.”

In the end, it’s hard to say what went wrong. The Pahrump town board seemed willing enough, but was Nye County angling for Burning Man to surface their new fairgrounds for free, and even pay for the privilege? Were they simply trying to keep the festival out? Was it just a few cranky conservatives among the locals, making waves?

Schmidhofer’s take on it is that the town board was genuinely on his side: “The Pahrump town board chairman and the town manager were both quite upset about the situation. It is a pretty depressed locale economically, and they were trying to bring a little revenue into the community.”

Burning Man itself has come under quite a lot of recent scrutiny in Nevada as a cash cow by lawmakers and local governments looking for more teats to suckle in hard economic times. It’s not hard to imagine a beleaguered town board being hamstrung by a greedy County killing off the goose that might lay a few much-needed golden eggs.

John Pawlak, a burner who lives in Pahrump, had this to say about the reaction of his neighbors to the plan to bring Forgotten City to their rural hamlet:

“It seems ironic that certain individuals in this town can demonize and prejudge the folks at the Regional Burning Man group who were asked to come to our town at our request and then define them as homosexuals, nudists, drug addicts, hedonists and so forth. Are we blind when we in fact have all of those traits and more as a community, but we choose to hide those facts from the general public? Maybe we don’t have the nudism, but we have our brothels, swingers’ club, drug addicts, meth labs, plus we carry guns. We continue to slam shut the door on change here in town. If we are to make this a better place to live, we’re going to have to start someplace. We constantly complain of nothing to do here and when something or someone comes knocking at our door to begin the process, we shut it in their face.”