Burning Man Playa Condition Report: Not Good

Posted: August 22, 2011 in BurningMan, News
Tags: , , , , ,

Playa Report 2011.

Black Rock City, NV (CN) – I have received several accounts of the state of the playa surface from my well feed dusty moles in DPW.

It don’t sound good folks.

Over the past decade the playa has slowly decayed from a reliable rock hard surface where Andy “Green Man” Green’s art car ‘Pedal Masher’ broke the land speed record at the Burn of 1997 at 763 mph while 20 guests sipped dusty martinis and danced relentlessly from the roof deck into muck and decay.

DMV Would Never Approve This Now

From my most trusted source in DPW:

“In past years the playa surface resembles a baked brownie crust surface.  This year it resembles a brownie mix still in the mixing bowl – a mixture of mud topped by a frothy Santorum  of gas, PBR and last years Astroglide.  It’s like a swamp.

Don’t even consider bringing a bike unless you plan to turn it into fire art.  The playa is unridable.  Hell, it’s nearly undrive-able.  The higher ups at Burning Man are talking about having people park in Gerlach and be bussed in because so many cars are likely to get stuck in the muck.”

Your best way from Gerlach to BRC?

DPW Source #2

The weather has also been more extreme than usual.  During the day it’s actually humid.  The humidity has brought wildlife back to the playa.  Last night I killed a Atropoides picadoi I found under the wheel well of my  Toyota Tundra.  Speaking of tundra; at night it’s gotten so cold that Trego and Frog Pond hot springs have frozen over.  Think Ecuador in August during the Day, Kiev in January at Night.   I expect most people will leave after a couple days, no matter what humiliating things they had to do to get tickets.  50,000 people my ass! By Thursday more like 5,000.

Do whatever you want fellow Burners but I’ve ditched the bike, bought some hip boots and anti-venom of Craigslist and am hoping just to survive.

Comments
  1. B. Moore says:

    From the photos people have posted so far it looks nothing like what your sources are saying…

    weird.

  2. Robin says:

    I trust consumption blog for all my info and up to date playa news. Fair and balanced.

  3. AreJay Vest says:

    Ha Ha…Are you in South America? PLAYA has Atropoides Picadoi and you killed it…bastard…how could you kill a South American Snake on the Playa…Love the Blog!

    • Marc says:

      I live in Costa Rica and yeah – I found one in my bedroom one night, sadly I had to take a machete to the poor fellow – he was acting very aggressive, no one to help me at 1am…

  4. Allan Kaplan says:

    As mentioned above, Atropoides Picadoi live in Costa Rica, not the deserts of the US. Perhaps a different native viper?

    • Marc says:

      Someone from DPW probably put him there as a trick – DPW are like that. And there are a few new Tico DPW folks this year, so it makes sense. That’s my best guess anyway…

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