Burning Man Cleanup: Dear Gate, —

October 4, 007
Gerlach, NV

It is with semi-tight shoulders that I report to you that the Black Hole got a yellow on the MOOP map this year.

Yellow. Not green.

We tried. We tried so hard. We cleaned up all the big stuff and put it in the right trailers and boxes and oversaw transpo and then MOOPed our asses off. Busting dunes by hand with a rake. Digging out burn scars. Going over and over the site. Staying later than the other crews each day and using whiskey as a work tool. *burp*

C-Load came out for the weekend to do line sweeps with us. When we found out we were near the Black Hole, we strolled ahead one block to make sure we’d cleared everything. There was nothing there. One cigarette butt, maybe. I didn’t pick up a damn thing and I even full-contact MOOPed the site — crawling on my hands and knees through some newly-formed dunes in chicken pants and a tank top, killing two birds with one stone. Skin exfoliation feels nice.

Burning Man Cleanup: Golden T-Stake ceremony photos

Yesterday was the last day of Burning Man cleanup on the playa. Today, the Bureau of Land Management came to inspect the site, to see if the DPW did a good enough job picking up after 48,000 people.

We passed with flying, pirate-flag, I’ll-show-you-Leave-No-Trace colors.

The Golden T-Stake, pounded in at the end of the City map on 10:00, was the last large foreign object remaining from Burning Man on the playa. To celebrate another job well done, we all gathered this afternoon to watch it get pulled out of the ground by the Playa Restoration managers.

After a morning spent cleaning the trailer park and waiting for last night’s party to wear off, we ate lunch and climbed on the bus for one last ride to the worksite.

Burning Man Cleanup: Lint Farmers on Tatooine

Sept. 19, 007
Black Rock City, NV

They changed the name of what the DPW does from “cleanup” to “Playa Restoration” a couple years ago. The Burning Man Borg are as aware as anyone that naming is power, and that naming something right lends the right ideas and attitude. And the DPW are not Black Rock City’s janitors. We are its guardians — carrying out the final task to make sure a Burning Man can happen next year. That Burning Man is indeed, once again, the single largest Leave No Trace event on the planet.

Lollapalooza, Coachella, the Love Parade, Tour de Fat — at every single one of these festivals I’ve attended and worked, a metric ass-ton of crap covers the ground both during and after showtime.

I know, I know, Burning Man is an entirely different animal — a city of willful interaction and self-reliance rather than a passive concert-environment of spectation and consumption — and it shows. Events based on commercialism always hire an army of blue-collar workers to pick up trash and clean up the puke after everyone leaves.

Burning Man ’07 pre-cleanup vacation: From Black Rock to Bonneville

September 13, 007
Black Rock City to Wendover, NV/UT

Oh, nothing. Just, you know, going to see the most beautiful cars in the universe, that’s all. No big deal. (self-satisfied sigh)

Burning Man’s first days of cleanup make for infrequent blog postings.

Apologies, but anyone who’s been out to the Black Rock Desert in a labor-type capacity knows it’s impossible to get by without physically working on something all day. You just do it because you have a strong work ethic, and/or because if you don’t, you’ll be asked to leave. It’s also impossible not to be so exhausted by day’s end you either crash right after dinner, or accidentally swallow too much beer and DJ a dance party for Face’s birthday at the Black Rock Saloon. (Hypothetically.)

I don’t know if anyone knows this, but it gets really hot in the desert in the middle of the day. Picking up someone else’s trash can make a girl a little … testy.

Burning Man ’07: The “Skank Rag”

September 11, 007
Black Rock City

Yesterday 13 came to work wearing a rolled-up bandana tied just under her right knee. I merely thought she was making a hair-metal fashion statement, but then she told me the best tidbit of playa innovation I’ve heard since coconut juice.

The “Skank Rag” may be untied and used as a wipe on those frequent occasions out here on the Black Rock Desert when over-hydration leads to peeing behind cars rather than in the Porta-Johns. It also doubles as a handkerchief, when playa boogers become encrusted in one’s nostrils to the point where they must be excavated.

Yeah. It sounds gross. But it holds the grossness all in one place. Way down there on your leg, far away from any infection-ready cuts or orifices. And nobody will ever suspect you’re not just taking style cues from David Lee Roth.

i stole this picture off the Internet because my camera is broken. Once again, 13 and I prefer to wear our SKANK RAGS just under the knee, not over it. Less skank surface area touching the skin that way.