State of the Playa 2013
Every year the state of the playa surface that provides so much support against the evil forces of gravity present new and interesting challenges to Burners. 2013 is no different.
After persistent thunderstorms the playa finds itself in a condition like 90s pop band flavor of the month Wet Wet Wet. This is a vast improvement over the playa conditions in 2003 that were deemed by DPW to be ‘Tony! Toni! Toné!‘. Getting anything heavy into the playa for the Burn will be a challenge without Four Wheel Drive. Leave your Prius at home. Mud is reported to be 2 feet deep in areas and was reported to have almost swallowed the SpaceCowboys Unimoog during an ill advised 4th of Juplaya rave.
The Playa Before it Started Raining
Burning Man is trying it’s admirable best to deal with this situation. DPW is in the midst of laying down a tremendous amount of cardboard to make the mud more passable. This may help for those lucky enough to be on early arrival passes, but by the time you regular, non-special Burners are let in Sunday night…well…y’all are fucked. Be prepared to leave your car on the side of the playa and walk in. Bring only what you are able to carry on your weak, lily white collegiate backs.
ART!
To those setting up art projects out on the playa. According to emergency regulations just issued by The Artery, ‘Any installation bigger than a breadbox will need rebar anchors no less than the size of a man’s thumb in width and 24″ inches in length’ to prevent your art from sinking irretrievable into one of the thirteen mud encrusted entryways to hell found in Nevada (the other 12 are found in Vegas).
It’s not a Playapocalypse, more like a Playapocalipso
Another danger is that that sun will actually come out and bake the mud dry. This sounds like a great miracle that will save Burning Man from being a muddy morass of dubstep’d mayhem. But beware Burners! Danger lies in that there sun. The playa is made of heavily concentrated alkaline soil. When soaked in water over a long enough length of time and then exposed to the UV rays of the sun a chemical reaction takes place. Normally innocent, non-violent soil is turned into a mild explosive when brought into contact with flames for 10 minutes or longer. Poi and art-based flame affects more than 3 feet off the ground aren’t affected. However, new emergency regulations issued by The Cookery state: “Propane cookers and camp stoves without exception are banned with immediate affect.” The Cookery suggests cooking your bacon, cous cous and potato chips with a dehydrator, solar oven, or just eating out of cans all week like those bro-stepping tourists camped beyond ‘F’.
Leave your bikes at home!
With the ubiquitous mud bikes will only slow you down this year. Hiking boots, moon shoes or just plain old ‘hippie barefoot’ is the recommended mode of transport this year. Yes Burners, you’ll have to trudge on foot to the 120 dB dubstep before you awkwardly pretend to dance to that arrhythmic aural nonsense.
That is all, please enjoy your Burn.
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