Set
Up and Clean Up
by Coyote, aka Tony Perez
Hey, hey, what do you say - the Coyote knows how the set up goes and
it ain't nothin' but being a good host and making sure the table is all
set and ready for the biggest city/party in the world! And, of course,
because of the bust-in-the-dust environment and the rather fervent nature
of this city, the method of that set-up and eventual teardown is, shall
we say, "specialized". The set up crew are glorified "Carneys", after
all.
Starting several weeks before the initial survey, our work ranch shop
is astir with prep work and prefab items being constructed for the playa.
Items like shade structures, art pieces and even the Man are built here
and the energy of accomplishment is high and satisfying. This was the
energy of the ranch when I arrived on the weekend before August first
to prepare for the survey and set-up. The permit we are granted from the
Bureau of Land Management (BLM) allows the survey to start on the playa
on August first and traditionally has been kicked off with a ceremonial
driving of the first spike. This year was no exception with a small and
high-spirited gathering of our core group; each of us taking a swipe at
a golden spike set at a predetermined location that marks the site for
the Man and the exact center for Black Rock City (BRC).
The author,
Coyote driving the golden stake. Photo: Dale Scott |
Directly after the ceremony, my group and I were left very much alone
in the middle of the vast, "dead-level" Black Rock Playa to start the
survey. It's a profound feeling of satisfaction standing on a blank slate
playa, straddling a four-inch spike, the tallest and first item out there,
and in a matter of four weeks watching an amazing city appear out of the
dust.
The system that we use to mark all the points of BRC is actually surprisingly
simple, but of course the implementation of the system is made difficult
by the raw elements and potential for confusion as your brain slowly fries.
The system starts out with a transit, a small telescope on a tripod that
is centered over the spike, has crosshairs in the scope and swivels on
a 360-degree turntable. The crew splits into two groups of two and they
go to opposite ends of the city (2:00 and 10:00). They are equipped with
laser range finders, which enables them to determine their distance from
the tripod that is now known as the Man. When they reach a distance of
2100 feet, I can then, through the use of radio communication, move them
left or right until they are in the crosshairs of the scope, wherein I
tell them to mark it and they do so with a small wire survey flag.
Every fifteen degrees is one half hour on the clock for radial streets.
And in this fashion, the Esplanade is born. With this one ring of flags
I begin to recognize the face of home, and an old familiar friend. Intermediate
measurements are taken between the half-hours and these become road pegs
that guide motorists onto what become circular cross-streets, and create
the giant sculpture of the city. The cross streets are 200 feet apart,
and upon completing the Esplanade, the crews move out in 200 foot increments
until they are out of the range of the range-finders which is usually
three or four blocks into the city.
I then enlist a crew of about eleven for one day and we do a grueling
but fun task that I call 'The Great Chain Drag'. This method has been
criticized as being rather primitive but given the environment and the
nature of things, I am convinced this is the most accurate and efficient
way to measure the outer intersections of the city. It simply consists
of a series of links of 200-foot chain that are stretched into a line
by this crew. Positioning myself past the furthest intersection, using
binoculars and communicating with the old childhood "telephone game",
I can get the crew to line up exactly with the Man. Everyone pops in a
survey flag and then we all drag the chain to the next mark. I have no
trouble assembling this crew because everyone is usually eager to get
off the ranch and walk the playa.
One hundred fifty-three intersections, 588 individual measurements, about
2,000 survey flags and four days later the general outline of BRC comes
to fruition. And we've only just begun. After the initial survey, the
next week is spent detailing, which takes a crew of eight. Each survey
flag marks the center of an intersection; the four corners need to be
measured out using a triangular cable system to create a 30 x 30 foot
intersection, and the outlines of the blocks, intersections, and roads
begin to be clear.
Due to the stipulations of our BLM permit, actual construction cannot
begin until the fifteenth of August. Here come the T-stake pounders, the
muscle, the sweat and blisters as the city is literally built by hand.
One T-stake typically takes 10-15 swipes with a 20-lb. T-stake pounder.
With 612 intersection T-stakes, my crew has no trouble sleeping at night.
Meanwhile, the beef-cake fence crew of people needing to hammer out personal
issues or something, pound out a 7.5 mile fence in 120-degree heat in
just under four days; that's about 3,000 T-stakes. BUST THAT!!!
At this time, the road pegs are also installed using crews of two, and
thirty foot chain. Using the components of the road pegs and the intersections,
a few days and a few tanks of gas will drive the roads in.
Then everything starts happening at once. Here comes an entire fleet
of street and road signs. All the artisans flock in with their individual
projects and structures. The awesome Center Camp café goes up like a coliseum
that's rigged like a cat's cradle and, by the way folks, Center Camp is
measured with a screw driver, a tape measure, a bundle of survey flags
and two people during lunch.
Working with
a new sifter. Photo: Will Roger |
Meanwhile, the work ranch blossoms out with the warmth of routine and
solid friends for life are formed. The breakfast siren goes off at 7:00
AM, we eat, the chief of staff has a few words and announcements, people
find their various job placements, we go to the site and bust ass, eat
lunch at noon and let the heat of the day pass at the work ranch. Starting
up in the afternoon, we bust ass at the site again and quit around beer-thirty,
usually between 5:00 and 6:00 PM. We eat at 7:00 PM, watch yet another
spectacular sunset, then it's sweet, deep sleep.
When the table's all set and fine-tuned, we bring in, assemble and set-up
close to 200 hundred lampposts, or spires as we call them. This is like
putting the candles on the cake, serving a visual effect that brings the
grand curve of BRC and her promenade into focus. This is more of a skilled
labor phase that breaks down into two parts. The spire assembly and repair
crew operates an on-site shop located at the DPW Depot; I take a six-man
crew and the assembled spires and pound them in. Four cement stakes measuring
4 feet in length get driven in with 10-lb. sledgehammers and then are
screwed to the base of the spire with battery operated drill guns. 200
spires, four stakes apiece - you do the math, now we're working on the
railroad. This is the largest task of the city grid set-up and takes four
to five days but the desired effect is achieved and they stand tall and
elegant, and will incidentally withstand the high wind punishment of the
Black Rock Desert.
Without a doubt, the single most incredible aspect of BRC is that it
actually breaks down and gets packed away for the winter. An entire city,
population 26,000, disappears. Someone please tell me where else in the
world this happens. The evaporation of this city is due to the thankless
cleanup job, and it's interesting to see who sticks around to do the dishes.
First let me extend an enormous amount of gratitude and thanks to
the literally 90% of the populace who picked their camps completely clean.
The first time I witnessed this I was brought to tears for there was hope
for the human race after all. But even with this amount of response, the
teardown and cleanup job is titanic and takes the entire month of September.
Photo: Will
Roger |
After the momentary interruption in this project called the Event, the
gathering of troops and restoration of their focus requires a good deal
of energy. There's a very different mood in the camp after the event,
and a lot of this is attributed to the lack of impetus that the oncoming
event provides for the setup. The setup holds an exciting spot in the
limelight as everyone is building and all are watching as this grand sculpture
erupts from the playa. Hammers are flying, cameras are clicking and interviews
are being conducted with the masters. Now, the spell is broken, the news
reporters have left, a massive exodus of hangovers are heading back to
their jobs and the man is dead. When roll call is taken the next day,
a different line of inspiration is drawn from an environmental respect
that brings on a special bond amongst the remaining crew. In some ways,
this motivation is as rewarding as the setup and fuels our morale.
It was said to me that all you have to do to tear down is take the setup
agenda and turn it upside down. It's a weird feeling to be taking out
the millions of screws that you just put in. But over the years we've
gotten better at considering the teardown as we set up. It gives BRC a
certain traveling circus feel.
Things like shade structures and camp structures are put together with
duplex nails that can be quickly pried out, and the structure is used
again next year. The spires, for example, can be disassembled on the field
with relative ease, packed onto trucks and shipped back to the ranch for
winter storage. All building and structures are required to be taken down
and hauled off the playa in two weeks' time, so our lives become a world
of trailers, hitches, loading and unloading of trucks and that slow lumbering
drive down the same stretch of highway again for the umpteenth time. That
makes for a lot of crazy-looking Burning Man loads rolling by. After that
we get a few big box Ryder trucks, grab what now has become a genuinely
motley crew and go on what we call "stupid stuff patrol" picking up big
stupid stuff. You know - burnt sofas, entire carpets, oh-joy!-a-big-wet-mattress,
gobs of lumber, hunks of failed art parts, a broken down scooter with
a swordfish head on it - all the "it's broken, let's leave it" stuff.
We need to see less and less of this junk each year. Bags of garbage,
mounds of filthy, dusty whatever, everything cruddy, dusty, heavy and
awkward. For us it's lots of slivers, lots of barked shins, lots of dust
masks, lots of Gatorade.
Removing
the burn blanket which protects the playa under the Man. Photo:
Rivka |
Of the many pioneering aspects of BRC, one of the big ones is burn scar
management and removal. We have been developing ever-improving methods
to handle this and have actually set standards that others must now follow.
Burning down something is one thing, catching this fire and erasing its
mark is quite another. Through the usage of high tech burn blankets and
sand we've been able to wipe out the footprint of a 100 foot burning structure
(the Man, of course.)
We've also developed a system of community burn platforms that flank
the Esplanade. They are constructed from corrugated metal and welded frames
and sit up on cinderblocks. The results are amazing and will only improve
each year.
After several days of stupid stuff patrol, all the big objects are gone
and we start the last phase of clean up which is the largest, most brain-scrambling
and grueling task of the project. It's called the line sweeps and entails
removing all the MOOP from the city. For those of you who've just joined
us, MOOP is an acronym for "material out of place" which is really just
a creative way of saying litter. And the only way to effectively accomplish
this is the old fashioned method of walking along, stooping and picking
up what is now known as MOOP and putting it in a MOOP bag. It generates
a lot of frustration because it never ends: always one more gum wrapper,
always one more wood chip, always one more beer cap. We do this by walking
in a line on a block-to-block system and after about fourteen days of
shadeless, dust blasting toil, essentially every square inch has been
poked, raked, picked and shoveled clean. Blocks are also numbered and
charted for camp identification through GPS.
Some of the bigger challenges are busting the up-to-three foot deep
dunes that form around any structure that was there during the event.
These dunes can hide entire carpets, 4x4 beams and we even found a bicycle
hiding in one. It's a lot of back breaking monotony and keeping the crew
motivated becomes a huge task. It can be very disheartening to hear the
collective groan of a sun-baked and sluggish crew as they happen upon
an entire field of blue spray-painted twigs and crumpled leaves that have
spread into millions of blue bits and then trampled into the clay. It's
hours of squatting and grumbling but it gets done because it has to get
done. All through the line sweeps, or Zombie Walks as we call it, I was
wishing that pistachios would go back to being red like they used to be.
The Coyote knows about pistachios and it is the number three MOOP next
to wood chips and cigarette butts. Somebody please tell me why.
Photo: Will
Roger |
The BLM inspection deadline fell on October 4th this year and we all shared
confidence and optimism because we knew that the condition of the playa
had been restored to an even higher standard than required. The feelings
of pride and self-satisfaction match those of the setup when we looked
at the playa and saw that the city was truly gone! After a flying-colors
inspection pass, it was time to pop a few champagne corks back at the
ranch and I, myself, smoked a cigar the size of a table leg.
Much of the crew leaves soon after this, largely due to the closing
of the kitchen, but some remain because the work continues perpetually.
Winterizing, organizing and the continual upgrading of the work ranch
itself needs to be done.
In Burning Man's past, when it had come time to turn in my radio and
break this magic spell by returning to the world of pavements and advertising,
it was always done with sad farewells. But this year, I am visited with
a new perspective of the continuation of an attitude and way of living
which is spreading like, well…fire. And my 'farewells' have turned into
'I'll see you soons'. Next year just got a whole lot closer and I'm all
over it because in the set up and teardown world of Black Rock City, the
Coyote knows. 