Strange Days

Published: BBC Top Gear

Strange Days

‘I’m Lobster Bob,’ booms a deep voice from the impenetrable depths of an unforgiving sand storm. As the abrasive dust clears, it reveals a ghostly looking man covered from head to toe in fine, white sand. The sand is deeply ingrained into the creases on his face, accentuating his features. And he’s driving a ten-foot lobster.

Lobster Bob fits in perfectly here. ‘I don’t usually take people for rides,’ he continues, ‘but I’m gonna make an exception for you British girls.’ Lobster Gary, the owner and driver of the motorized crustacean sits in the cockpit with my companion, Rachel, while I perch on the back with Lobster Bob. With a jerk we scuttle off across the desert.

The arid area in question is the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, USA. For one week a year this usually inhospitable place plays host to the unique Burning Man project – and it’s the surrealist motor show on earth.

Imagine an experimental community cocooned inside a giant snow-globe. Substitute snow for sand, add thirty-five thousand people, several hundred Art Cars, shake it to wake it and prepare your mind to be blown away.

At four thousand feet above sea level the daily temperatures exceed one hundred degrees and sand is regularly whipped up into dust storms so ferocious you can’t even see your own outstretched hands. Those making the pilgrimage have to bring enough water and food to survive, as there’s not a sniff of civilisation for miles.

Burning Man began in 1986 when a guy called Larry Harvey set fire to a wooden man on a small beach in San Francisco, apparently to appease his broken heart. As the event grew, Harvey moved it to the desert in Nevada. The event bills itself as an art festival and experimental community and it’s this that sets it apart from any other event in the world. No acts are booked  - music, art and performances are all organised by participants. Art Cars, like the Lobster car, are an integral part of the event – and we’re not talking simple paint jobs, more motorised fluffy rabbit slippers and sailing boats.

The mid-day temperature is pushing ninety as we drive into the dust bowl, a huge flying carpet floats past us, it’s closely followed by a life-size Viking ship – the ship in turn is being pursued by a naked man alternately running and cocking his leg as he tries to board the moving ship.

Each year the circular Black Rock City rises up to become the seventh largest city in Nevada. It has its own newspaper, post-office, pizza-delivery, even its own airport. In the middle of the city is a huge open expanse used for building art sculptures and driving Art cars. The centrepiece is the wooden Burning Man sculpture.

The city is an urban tentopolis. Billowing fabric covers geodesic domes and enormous shade structures stretch as far as the eye can see. RV’s and trucks have transported everything each camp needs from solar power showers to cocktail bars. The streets are full of people strolling or riding bicycles and anything goes. No, really - anything goes. Granted the drive-by shooting range went out of business when they banned fire-arms but if you want to launch fireworks from your head or cycle naked with a six foot cuddly rhino strapped to your back – then welcome home.

The Playa is like an intergalactic waiting lounge; characters dressed in other-worldly fashion mingle around unfamiliar structures and art installations. Art Cars float surreally by - an un-choreographed waltz of pirate ships, motorised zebras, living rooms, sofas and other outlandish creations.

A three-wheeled bike roars across the playa. The driver is lying face down, his head concealed in a clear plastic dome and his legs stretched out towards the enormous single back tyre. The bike’s designer and owner, Mark Christensen from LA, raises the dome’s shield and dismounts. As well as restoring and selling vintage sports cars Mark is a part-time sci-fi film director and he built the bike - called ‘The Horizontal Hammer Head’ - for his latest film.

‘I found the rear 1927 Dodge truck wheel in a junk yard in the desert,’ explains Mark, ‘It gives the impression the bike is going faster than it is actually is. It has a VW engine, Harley suspension and the body is foam that I shaped and painted. It took two months solid to build.’

Top speed is over 100mph but with The Playa speed limit of 5mph he hasn’t been able to put her through her paces. ‘This is my first time at Burning Man. I thought it would be a real heroin trip, but it’s not at all. It’s a euphoric, creative community. Everybody is really friendly.’

Art Cars are the only vehicles allowed to be driven around the city and they all have to be licensed by the Department for Mutant Vehicles (DMV). A strict vetting process decides whether they qualify. Many, like the Lobster Car are built around modified golf carts. But just draping a golf cart with a few flags is not going to cut it. Cars fall into three categories: interactive/community based like mobile dance clubs, whimsical/stunning like the Lobster car and performance orientated like the pyrotechnic fish. What makes a good Art Car? According to the DMV its all down to the WOW! factor.

‘Burners’ travel thousands of miles to take part. It took Captain Mojo Gaddamit and Chief Engineer Sir Fixalot two days to haul their pleasure cruiser all the way from Seattle. Captain Mojo is sitting up front with his ladies. ‘We took a 1988 Compass Quad,’ he explains, while Sir Fixalot is in the back of the boat fixing ice-cold margaritas, ‘and we pretty much cut everything off and just lowered the boat right down on the top.’

Even though there are 35,000 people here the city is so expansive it never feels busy. Although nobody really discusses what they do for a living, participants are from a variety of backgrounds, lawyers, accountants, students and artists. The community is based on sharing and all around the site people set up bars with free drinks, theatres, maze’s, clubs, trampolines, game-shows you name it and it’s probably here.

During the day the glare of the sun and reflection from the sand makes the city look like a faded seventies Polaroid. At night Burning Man bursts into colour.  ‘Geez it’s dirty on Uranus,’ shouts a man passing our camp, dripping with glowsticks he looks like Bertie Bassett on acid. ‘Has anybody seen our ladders, there are short people in our camp who need the ladders to reach the dinner table – they are getting hungry,’ shouts a passer by into a megaphone

‘In the distance a batch of cupcakes are twirling and dancing in the dust. ‘They were baked from scratch,’ explains Lisa Pongrace, ‘Mine is a blueberry muffin and my partner Greg’s is a chocolate cupcake.’ They are accompanied by a vanilla cupcake with pink frosting and sprinkles, bran muffin and a milk chocolate cupcake with fluffy pink frosting. Lisa and Greg are old-hands at Burning Man. ‘The city is so big that we started making art cars as a really cool way of getting around. Our first Art Car was a motorised couch that we built in 1996,’ explains Greg, ‘then we built a couple of pink fluffy rabbit slippers. The cupcakes are new for this year.’

‘I’m not sure where the idea came from,’ ponders Lisa, a graphic designer from Berkley, California, ‘I love the shape of cupcakes and I love pop art and scale – underscaled or overscaled things.’ The cupcakes are all slightly different but all are made from electric motors from wheelchairs or electric golf carts.  ‘Ours are chain drive,’ explains Greg, a software engineer, ‘the motor is attached to the forks which means that you can turn the handle bars 180 degrees and go backwards,’ ‘We can spin and do muffin dances across the Playa,’ interjects Lisa.

‘Burning Man is like the final exam for your creativity,’ explains Greg. ‘You want to produce something really cool and you work your butt off to get it finished but then driving around is such fun.’ ‘We never made it more than 15ft without people stopping us to chat or to take photos.’ Lisa adds, ‘I love the creativity of Burning man, seeing other people’s art. I like the gift economy and just the fact that I can walk around in my pyjamas all day if I want to.’

The climax of the week is the burning of the Man on Saturday night. For the first time you can get a sense of just how many people, and Art Cars, are there. Fireworks blast into the air and as the man topples the crowd rush forward like moths to a flame and run, whooping and hollering, in a frenzied circle around the fire.

After a night of hard partying the exodus back to reality begins. ‘Leave no trace,’ preach the event organisers. This time next week the barren, inhospitable environment will be deserted and you’d never know this microcosm of madness ever existed.

Photography ©Rachel Palmer