Critical Massive 2006
As I indicated earlier, we went to Critical Massive, the local regional.
Here's a few notes, with links to pictures:
The event is pretty short for a regional event but, given it's lineage (apparently the event was borne of a music event), Thursday through Sunday makes sense. Unfortunately, due to scheduling and time constraints, we couldn't get out there until Friday midday. We were the last theme camp to arrive and set up, but because of the weekend contour for the event, many of the attendees had yet to arrive anyway.
The site was gorgeous, located in a small valley that drains into Lake McMurray. For Flipizens: it was like the lower field at Rec Plant, but writ large and much more lush. The large trees afforded much sun protection; even though it was not hot by Texas standards, the sun is very intense on the skin up here. A creek runs through the West side of the property and is marked by two small water falls. In fact, the thick, albeit well-groomed vegetation affords a great degree of compartmentalization and privacy over the relatively small area, so it was easy to wander off and not be surrounded by man-made things and people (though not far from them either). Trails led up into the woods and around the boundaries which gave the impression of a much bigger area that it probably was.
Either because of space limitations or our late registration we were placed at the bottom of the field over a septic drain area. We were limited in how far we could drive stakes for the structure and the ground was very soft - good for tents, not good for structures. Despite some worrisome stake-pullouts while setting up, the structure went up rather quickly and turned out to be rather stable - and attractive -- thanks to tanjent's engineering skills. The inside was sparsely decorated, but would have been much sparser still had allea and Ke not been convinced to show up at the last minute and pull off a decorating coup.
The other camps, as a whole, seemed to fall into one of two groups: hang out spaces or large sound installations. To relate it to Burning Man, most camps felt like they were of the non-registered camp variety where people camp with their friends to pool resources and escape the heat. There weren't many sound camps, but they provided the bulk of the interactive element at night. Over the two nights we were there, the flow seemed to revolve around chilling with respective camps, going to one of the big sound installations at night, then retiring back into the small conclaves before dawn. There was not a lot of the roaming from camp to camp that characterizes Flipside, which kind of threw us off since we brought McVeg to be a stopping point for such activity.
We did have our share of other activity, however. Each night we had at least one person crash in our space. The first night out was slow, but punctuated by various visitors including residents of the property and transient partiers who just couldn't seem to understand why the dance floor was covered with pillows and the beats were so slow. We did breakfast tacos our first morning and opened some eyes to new and exotic foods. We hosted the Black Rock Ranger training because we had the largest shade spot that wasn't inundated with big speaker noise. We also ended up hosting ziptie's smut readings once the noise reaching Zü Dome got to be too much.
Thus far I have been avoiding reference to CM as a "burn" event, mainly because there was no burn. Instead, a bunch of people put on a fire performance at dusk on Saturday. There wasn't anything that I haven't seen before - poi, fans, stilts, chains, firebreathing, pole dancing, aerials, etc. - but there was just so much of it at once that it was dazzling. I enjoyed hearing the ooo's and ahh's of the obviously newly anointed in the audience.
Overall, the five of us were left with the impression that this event could use an infusion of Flipside DNA - a bit of burner genetics. Some of the concepts and things we've become accustomed to in Texas need to be introduced here, and having been freed from organizational responsibilities, we feel we will be ready for the task.
Enjoy the rest of the pictures here.
Here's a few notes, with links to pictures:
The event is pretty short for a regional event but, given it's lineage (apparently the event was borne of a music event), Thursday through Sunday makes sense. Unfortunately, due to scheduling and time constraints, we couldn't get out there until Friday midday. We were the last theme camp to arrive and set up, but because of the weekend contour for the event, many of the attendees had yet to arrive anyway.
The site was gorgeous, located in a small valley that drains into Lake McMurray. For Flipizens: it was like the lower field at Rec Plant, but writ large and much more lush. The large trees afforded much sun protection; even though it was not hot by Texas standards, the sun is very intense on the skin up here. A creek runs through the West side of the property and is marked by two small water falls. In fact, the thick, albeit well-groomed vegetation affords a great degree of compartmentalization and privacy over the relatively small area, so it was easy to wander off and not be surrounded by man-made things and people (though not far from them either). Trails led up into the woods and around the boundaries which gave the impression of a much bigger area that it probably was.
Either because of space limitations or our late registration we were placed at the bottom of the field over a septic drain area. We were limited in how far we could drive stakes for the structure and the ground was very soft - good for tents, not good for structures. Despite some worrisome stake-pullouts while setting up, the structure went up rather quickly and turned out to be rather stable - and attractive -- thanks to tanjent's engineering skills. The inside was sparsely decorated, but would have been much sparser still had allea and Ke not been convinced to show up at the last minute and pull off a decorating coup.
The other camps, as a whole, seemed to fall into one of two groups: hang out spaces or large sound installations. To relate it to Burning Man, most camps felt like they were of the non-registered camp variety where people camp with their friends to pool resources and escape the heat. There weren't many sound camps, but they provided the bulk of the interactive element at night. Over the two nights we were there, the flow seemed to revolve around chilling with respective camps, going to one of the big sound installations at night, then retiring back into the small conclaves before dawn. There was not a lot of the roaming from camp to camp that characterizes Flipside, which kind of threw us off since we brought McVeg to be a stopping point for such activity.
We did have our share of other activity, however. Each night we had at least one person crash in our space. The first night out was slow, but punctuated by various visitors including residents of the property and transient partiers who just couldn't seem to understand why the dance floor was covered with pillows and the beats were so slow. We did breakfast tacos our first morning and opened some eyes to new and exotic foods. We hosted the Black Rock Ranger training because we had the largest shade spot that wasn't inundated with big speaker noise. We also ended up hosting ziptie's smut readings once the noise reaching Zü Dome got to be too much.
Thus far I have been avoiding reference to CM as a "burn" event, mainly because there was no burn. Instead, a bunch of people put on a fire performance at dusk on Saturday. There wasn't anything that I haven't seen before - poi, fans, stilts, chains, firebreathing, pole dancing, aerials, etc. - but there was just so much of it at once that it was dazzling. I enjoyed hearing the ooo's and ahh's of the obviously newly anointed in the audience.
Overall, the five of us were left with the impression that this event could use an infusion of Flipside DNA - a bit of burner genetics. Some of the concepts and things we've become accustomed to in Texas need to be introduced here, and having been freed from organizational responsibilities, we feel we will be ready for the task.
Enjoy the rest of the pictures here.