a naked huggles is a happy huggles
Hey LJ,
Gather round children, for I shall tell you a tale of a magical land where small metal canisters fall from the sky like rain, trash is a four letter word, and bare tits abound like the nectar of the gods. Indeed, it is time for Burning Flipside once again.
Pre-Flip
There isn't too much to say about our Flipside preparations. Dyeing went incredibly well. There were near 30 individual garments that went from white to bright purple. Dyeing using a clothes washer is way more efficient than doing it using buckets.
alucardkitty, fruit_smoothie, wesbante, feetwilltravel, little_bird27, fractallia and I pulled a yurt together in the weekend before Flipside. We got the much-needed tape from a recent camp addition and were able to make it happen in only a matter of days. I love that kind of shit.
Wednesday
fractallia and I arrived at the new land during the afternoon on Wednesday. My first impressions were that the new land was entirely too small for the event, but as more and more people started to show up, I slowly realized that it was more or less the same size as Flat Creek with two exceptions: there were less bushes and cliffs breaking up the land and there were trees everywhere, giving us a huge amount of delightful shade.
After checking in at gate, we drove down to the camping area for Purple Taco where we happened upon a sweaty knighthorse who was already putting up our kitchen shade structure. We hopped out, helped him a bit and then reported to our Shaven Apes shift lead. As it would turn out, we were able to bring some Apes back to our camp, and they assisted us in pulling the enormous purple tarp over our temple walls. We met a gentleman who had come here all the way from gay Paris and a film maker who had migrated from the west coast. Both lovely dudes, the film maker spent quite a bit of time waxing poetic about his projects in potentia and I got fairly excited hearing about it.
It turned out City Planning had been utterly awesome to us and had given us the two unused camp lots that were sitting next to us, so fractallia and I were able to spread out - we put our tent right up against the tree line. After making camp and parking, fractallia and I went over towards the ranger station to help setup the K F Li P radio tower. This was an especially cool experience for me. In past years, the radio tower has been set in the middle of an open field. This year, it butted right up against a corn field which was walled off by rusty barbed wire. To assist in erecting it (huh huh I said erect) I got to actually go into the corn field and help tie it down at one end. It was kind of awesome.
After our Shaven Apes duties had been completed, fractallia and I were going to follow emmainfiniti down to get our first glance at the crick, but fate (and the Shaven Apes lead) had other plans. We were intercepted half way to help one of our neighbors, The Temple of Eros, erect their 12 foot tall yurt. It was quite an interesting experience, and we used the height afforded by gators in creative ways. After all of the hassle of lifting the roof over the top of the enormous obelisk, I was left with the impression that bigger is not always better.
The rest of the day didn't involve too much other activity. fractallia and I went walking around some and saw a few of the camps that had already been set up. It seemed like half of the city was there, and the event hadn't even officially started.
We slept that night listening to owls and cows.
Thursday
The next day, most of our Tacoteers arrived in force. Our camp rose bright and early for greetering, and it was just as much fun as it's always been. ambientsidewalk drove us to the greeter station Mexican style in his little SUV, and we passed Red Camp along the way and talked about making them drink blue koolaid. You know, for refreshments.
I love greetering; you get plenty of hugs and people are incredibly happy to see you. There was an older blonde woman who I greeted and kept seeing over and over as the weekend went on. People really do remember you when you greet them; you're the first face they see as they're entering our magical land of happiness. As far as gifts are concerned, I didn't receive any this year, but fuck me if I'm not going to be first in line to do it again next year.
So, we set up the temple and our 8 foot yurt later in the day. Everything went up beautifully, and the yurt itself only took 30 minutes or so. That thing is really fucking cool inside and a great place to nap. Over the course of the weekend, I think most of our Purple Tacoteers snoozed in there at some point. Next year, we need to bring more soft matress-y things. It was a bit rough to lay directly on the ground.
Our friends alucardkitty and fruit_smoothie arrived fairly early in the afternoon. I went with alucardkitty to help her park and along the way we ran into a camper from Happy Tower who wanted to offer us a lollipop. I had a rather extended conversation with this gentleman and it went something like this: HELLO ARE YOU HAVING A GOOD DAY? I'M HAVING A GREAT DAY! I'M SO HAPPY TO HEAR THAT YOU'RE HAVING A GREAT DAY WOULD YOU LIKE A LOLLIPOP? YES INDEED, I AM HAPPY THAT YOU ARE HAPPY AND I WOULD LOVE A LOLLIPOP. IT MAKES ME EXCITED THAT YOU WOULD LIKE A LOLLIPOP. I AM EXCITED THAT YOU ARE EXCITED ABOUT THE LOLLIPOP THAT MAKES ME VERY HAPPY. I AM SO HAPPY THAT WE ARE FRIENDS. BEING YOUR FRIEND MAKES ME VERY EXCITED etc. You get the idea. By the way, the lollipop didn't seem to be laced with anything, in case you might have been wondering.
Later that day, a group of us went floating in the crick. emmainfiniti graciously provided us with some floaties and we took the full trip down the entire length of the river. There was a definite current, and as might be suspected, areas where the water was shallower caused you to be swept away faster. More than once I ended up with scratched knees and bruised buttocks because of it.
A group of us went clubbing later that night. We hit up the Country Club, Wonderlounge and Lava Lounge for drinkies and dancing. I had some fucking awesome Blackberry Beer at Wonderlounge and fractallia and I got to look at all the wall hangings of past effigies. We also stopped off at Camp Candyland and got a few delicious snackies.
We also visited the Burning Soul Lounge. They had some weird sort of polarized glasses and a corridor of hanging lights and fire. Walking through the tunnel, the glasses made everything look fucking awesome. Any light that you see would multiply itself on sort of a horizontal plane - the same way that car lights look through a dirty windshield or dirty glasses. At the end of the corridor there was the Burning Man symbol in bright red, and that really kind of brought it home.
Later that night, we visited Camp Smack that Ass! and earned our paddles. I think maybe one of the women there might have had a crush on me. Anyway, my collection has grown, and I was able to withstand 8 or 10 strikes of the paddle before I felt like my body was giving out, which I'm pretty sure is a new record for me.
Friday
By the time Friday rolled around, two things had become evident. The first was that the porta potties near our camp were the cleanest on the land. Keep in mind that there could have been two whole extra theme camps next to us, but that area ended up being Taco territory instead. As a result, the porta potties were heavily underused and basically stayed tolerable throughout the entire event.
The second thing that had becoming evident was even though the whole of Pyropolis had been worried about the dangers of poison ivy, those perils were heavily overstated. I don't think I heard about a single case where someone had a brush with it and got badly inflamed. Granted, that might have been because of all the fuss, but that's not the point. The point is that there was something that none of us had really been prepared for - and that was the flies. There were flies everywhere in our campsite. The land we were using was also used by cows to graze, so there were cow "patties" all over the place, and the requisite flies as well. They were everywhere, and made sitting down a challenge in and of itself. Evidently, one simple way to keep flies away is to fill a ziplock bag with water and then tie it to your shade structure. Apparently, such bags will create an optical illusion that will cause a fly to believe that it's about to collide with something, so they will turn around and fly the other way. Who knew?
Early Friday morning, a group of us went down to The Spa and had a one hour massage crash course. The stuff I learned there was incredibly helpful. The class focused on techniques to give massages without wearing yourself out (you know, by doing stuff like pressing in with your thumbs). I learned to take things slow and use long strokes, and a few other ways to deliver deeper pressure without killing my arm and fingers. It was pretty fucking cool.
After massages, we returned to camp to help serve tacos. The line was long and the flipizens were happy, but we were actually under quota by the time the last taco had been served. We all made a trip down to the water afterwards and just hung out. I think I still kind of prefer the crick at Flat Creek since there aren't swift currents that can cause you to scrape your bottom, but it was delightful all the same.
On the way back from swimming, we all took an incredibly long detour to a camp that had basically cleared out a lingere shop and was gifting all of the goods. The very sexy ladies in our camp each got a piece, and fractallia got this very sexy southern belle looking white shear coat-thingie. Hoooo-oooot.
Later that evening, we explored more of the city. After a quick detour so that I could take a picture of fractallia next to Neptune's Enormous Blue Cock, we made an entire circle around the whole land. fruit_smoothie and I stopped over at Lava Lounge from some dancing with a badass Brazilian DJ. There was a smoke cannon that shot smoke rings at people on the floor. It was kind of cool.
Afterwards, we stopped at a weird art camp that had black-light-reactive paint and a black canvas to paint on. Instead of the board, alucardkitty ended up painting fractallia and I, and I made a pretty cool painting of a flaming tree on a woman's back. Oddly enough, the blacklight camp was directly across from another camp that had an enormous bright glowing sphere that cast light everywhere. The sphere lost power while we were painting, however, so we spent a few glorious minutes basking in the glow of our black light art. The glory was short lived since the loss of the large glowing sphere meant that my friends and I were now the best-lit objects in the immediate area. Guess where all of those moths who were hanging around the orb decided to go. We continued on and rested at (d)Ishtopia, relaxing in their awesome plywood recliners while we watched some mesmerizing rainbow lights dance in front of us.
Ish was basically the last camp before you reached the Badlands, the area where non-theme campers were camping. At that point, we turned around, started heading back and ran into some camp-mates at Beer and Darts. We lounged around for a bit and had some utterly scrumptious lemon cello drinks before we decided it was time to return to the Taco. On the way back, we hit Art Car Camp and took a gander at the exhibits. One that particularly stood out to me was an orange and yellow motorcycle that drove around blowing bubbles. It had some delicate lighting that made it look like a rainbow-colored swan at night. It was sort of gorgeous.
We heard the telltale buzzing of the Arc Attack Tesla coils as we were heading back to camp, so we stopped over for a bit to hear them play. They have a different setup every year, and this year there was a cage that you could actually get in to dance as the coils electrified the outside. Arc Attack is just amazing every year. Watching the lightning arc just gives you a sense of immense power and deliberateness. Also, they love to play video game music, so that's doubly cool for me.
Saturday
Saturday was the day when I was finally able to go, "Alright, I've finally seen all of Pyropolis. From this point on, everything is just a bonus." The morning routine was more or less the same as Friday's, except that we actually went and hung out in the water before serving tacos. I actually helped out with the serving on Saturday, asking people "hard or soft, meat or beans?" and backing up emmainfiniti's husband as he worked the crowd. I have to say that it would have been difficult for him to have been more charismatic. That man has a filthy, filthy mind.
Afterwards, a group of us went to get some mojitos from Happy Campers. We spent a fair amount of time figuring out which "happy" camp we actually needed to go to. There was Happy Tower, a tall yellow tower that played children's music basically the entire weekend. Happy Tower is where the LOLLIPOP GENTLEMAN came from. There was also Happy Camp, who served PB&J sandwiches. We visited them last year, but didn't get the chance this year. Finally, there was Happy Campers. We ended up at their awesome dome and had some mojitos. They were fucking awesome, and I'm saying that even though I really, really dislike mint. I'm finding out that I can easily handle natural mint, but when it comes to mint flavoring I really just can't take it.
Since we were in the area, we also decided to stop by The Temple of the Steaming Pot so fractallia could get a cup of coffee. Earlier in the day, we met a delightful hispanic gentleman who invited us over for some java. I would learn later that the delightful hispanic gentleman got down and dirty with one of our other camp mates later in the evening. That is, if the stories and video footage are to be believed (I kid, btw).
We wanted to watch the Saturday Morning meets Saturday Night burlesque show after dinner, but due to some technical difficulties, it didn't go on. Instead, we went home and dressed in our prom dresses. fractallia and I made a badass purple duct tape dress for her and I made a fully functional duct tape tie which looked awesome. I skipped prom in high school, so this was literally my first. I am so happy that I was able to have fractallia as my date. Her prom dress was pretty awesome; it was two pieces, made of tie-dyed and purple duct tape and had some shear curtains as falls. It was too damn cute.
We stopped at Burning Glam and fractallia participated in their fashion show along with another of our camp-mates who had gotten an amazing purple dress and wings earlier that day. The Glam Fashion Show was glamazing and fun and glamtastic being full of glamazons who were sporting badass outfits. fractallia strutted her stuff on stage as "Purple Splendour" and ended up winning a hand-crafted medal for her awesome costume.
Afterwards, we went out and hit the town. We stopped in at Lick N Suck my monkey, a badass bar camp, and took some piccies in front of an awesome post-apocalyptic painting. We had some drinkies and continued on to more camps. We hit fractal camp and saw some badass patterns projected on to one of those infinite-triangle-thingies. Evidently, they had a fractal feedback loop thingie set up, but I didn't get to try it.
As we were walking around, a really cute woman from Burning Glam pulled me aside, gave me a kiss and asked if we could hang out outside of Flipside. Score :D
Towards the end of the night, we finally settled in at Professor Curly's for some chatting with jenmarie and salembroomrider. I got to roll a bigass D20 (got a 16), and generally sat around shooting the shit. I won't go into too many details, but there was a little bit of relationship-in-potentia drama that was unresolved when we left Curly's. fractallia and I stopped at the Temple of the Burning Question on our way home, and our short musings there induced us to return to Curly's one more time, and as luck would have it, the relationship-in-potentia drama was all resolved and left all parties feeling incredibly happy.
Burnday
The day of the big burn had finally arrived. By this time during the event, I'm usually reeling from a serious lack of sleep. Staying up until 3 AM every night and getting up at 7:30 because it's too hot to sleep isn't something that I think I could keep up forever. Anywho, I started the day off by heading over to Strawberry Feels 4Ever to get some vodka-infused strawberries and then went to the Steaming Pot to bring back some coffee for fractallia. The guys from Strawberry Feels 4Ever recognized us from last year. Their previous camp had been called Beastville, and evidently we had saved their asses by providing them with a ladder during the great torrent of 2009. Needless to say, they were kind of happy to see us. Once we had eaten breakfast, served tacos and gone swimming, fractallia and I went out to photograph some of the art installations that were on the ridge near the effigy. I won't take the time to describe those here since I've already done it below.
Later on, fractallia, alucardkitty and fruit_smoothie wanted to go to Third Camp to get body painted, and so I tagged along. fractallia and I have wanted to ride on an art car since we first started going to Flipside, and while we were on our way to Third Camp we finally got our chance. We hopped on the Zebra Tour Bus thingie for a short while as it was travelling to Ice, which was fairly close to our destination. I wish the ride would have been longer, but it was nice to finally have been able to get on one. We stopped over to get some more mojitos while we were waiting for danamongden to prepare his snacks and paints.
While we were waiting, fractallia suggested that the three of us go do Beer and Dart's snowball fight. We set out down the road expecting to come upon a mass of people lobbing ice balls at each other. Instead we encountered a parade of happy hot flippy people heading towards the large open area in front of the effigy followed by a truck with several coolers in its truck bed. We joined the group and soon found ourselves standing before the effigy, lined up on two sides with rows of coolers in front of us. The flags waved, the lids popped open, I screamed, "Charge!" and chaos was borne unto our city of Pyropolis.
I swear to god, I haven't laughed that way in a very, very, very long time. It wasn't the kind of laughter that comes with good jokes, loving friends or contentment. It was blaring, reckless, desperate, hoarse and breathless. There was nothing that I could do to stop it; it bubbled up from somewhere forgotten and I almost didn't believe that it was coming from within me. I was absolutely glowing after that.
After the girls' bodies had been painted, we returned back to camp, ate dinner and dressed for the burn. All of the other Tacoteers put on their prom dresses that night, but fractallia and I put on our comfy "let's burn that shit" outfits. I dropped by Burning Glam and exchanged contact info with the cute girl who had kissed me the night before and we made our way out to the great circle.
The effigy this year was amazing. It was a couple struck in a dancing pose and framed by a spiked wooden wreath. Each of the dancers had a detailed face, a skeletal structure, and the entire effigy had a skin made of thin flat black boards. There's a picture on Burning Flipside's Wikipedia Article, but I'm not sure how long the picture might stay up. Also, that picture is of the effigy as it's burning, so it doesn't really do its beauty justice.
The burn began. Purple Taco had front row seats. There was a sort of parade made up of the members of various theme camps, but they stopped on the outskirts of the fire circle before the burn began. Myriad fire dancers encircled the effigy, and towards the end of their show, there were three awesome performers - one with a flaming blade who performed martial arts forms, one with a burning orb on the end of a chain that he could swing in wide, wide arcs, and a fire breather who launched immense cones of flame with spectacular sexiness.
The firework hatters paraded out next as pyrotechnics exploded above our heads. I can't get enough of those guys. They were just incredible to watch, although I couldn't help but wonder how hot those hats must get. If I remember correctly, some of the fireworks that were launched were actually real fireworks - the kind that fly up in the air and go boom.
The circle was then cleared, and the burn began in earnest. When I think about it, the burn could easily be described as awkward if it hadn't been so cool, dramatic and cathartic. The left side of the effigy caught on fire before the right side did, and members of DaFT had to shoot roman candles at the structure to try to get it to ignite. Geysers of white flame burst at regular intervals to spray the dancers with fresh heat, and multi-colored fuel containers splattered open as they slowly began overheating.
The effigy's collapse was simply beautiful and inspiring. The dancers burning deliberately, first losing their slat-work skin and revealing the flaming skeleton underneath. The left side crumbled slowly, flecking off pieces of wood and ash as it burned hot and violently. The right side burned regularly, engulfed in an even flame. It did not lose its component pieces slowly, but instead tumbled onto the ground in one single spectacular swooping motion and loosed a raucous scream from the happy burners able to witness such an awe-inspiring event.
The effigy lay in ruins, still burning brightly, and the citizens of Pyropolis walked lovingly around it. At times like that, I can't help but feel a real sense of acceptance, community and inspiration. I wonder if the same thing happens at Burning Man. I can only image a large swirling circle of people surrounding a smouldering sculpture erected with care and burned with love.
After the burn, fractallia and I returned to camp and parted ways temporarily. She went out to hang around the effigy area and check out the art while I got my freak on in the temple. For the first time, I got to fuck using a sex swing. I discovered that when using such an apparatus, calibration is a highly important first step. If it's not at the correct height, it takes a large amount of stamina to keep your legs bent long enough to get some good sexing in.
After the fun sexy times in the temple, fractallia and I went out for some fun times during our last night in Pyropolis. We didn't really do much as most of the camps were closed at that time, but we did happen upon a camp near the river showing an odd cartoon with people changing into dogs and butterflies and chasing each other in someone's front yard. The cartoon got unexpectedly brutal as people starting stabbing each other, etc. It was a real trip and I kind of want to know what it was called.
We moseyed around a bit more, met the people who maintained the Zebra truck that we rode around in, had some late night candy and ran into a few friends of ours, but eventually we turned in, had some sex and went to sleep satisfied and utterly exhausted.
Monday
Monday was fairly uneventful. We packed up, had one last walk down to parking with a few quick photo ops on the way and a pot of the Steaming Pot's delicious coffee, and got our shit moving. We broke down our entire camp after only 3 or 4 hours - and that was everything - personal tents, temple, kitchen, shade structures, etc. fractallia and I left missing a few items - specifically a green folding chair and one of our seven 5-gallon jugs of water that we came with.
Returning home, we had the most epic shower in the world, had a nap, and then relaxed while watching some Sherlock Holmes.
Cool Art Installations
The effigy was incredibly badass, but there were other awesome art pieces scattered around Pyropolis. I've already mentioned Neptune's Enormous Blue Cock which was, as you might expect, a six foot tall blue penis. I snapped a picture of fractallia in front of it. Also, there was a whole garden of metallic bugs sort of near the effigy. If you were to read my review of Flipside 2009, you might see that I made mention of a metal flower that spat cones of flame. The flower was back this year, although it didn't have the long stem that it was sporting a year before.
There was a sculpture of zombie prom king and queen that was available for anyone to paint, adorn and distress as they liked. I thought that it turned out very well before it was burned to the ground.
fractallia and I also discovered a weird double-ring of panels with no apparent purpose. Eventually we saw them being used as a sort of screen for playing movies on.
There was a metal tree that was adorned with shiny metal canisters which made it look like it was covered with snow.
There were tons of shirtcocking signs. For those unfamiliar with the ancient tradition, shirtcocking is where you wear a shirt but no pants. Each of the signs had an awesome little saying on it like "This shirt is cocked and I'm loaded," etc.
There were also a ton of awesome little signs scattered around the land. They were the kinds of signs you would see if you were going on a some kind of tour (come to think of it, they might have been put there by the Zebra tour bus people). I can't really remember what any of them said specifically, but they were fucking hillarious.
Things I Missed Doing
I feel incredibly satisfied with my participation at Flipside this year. Even so, there were a number of camps that I would have liked to visit like Plunderdome, a camp with some more poly people in it. We also missed visiting the Human Caracas wash even though we had wanted to go pretty much the entire weekend.
*Sparkedelica was awesome to us last year, and I would have liked to spend more time in their badass little club. I also was able to finally ride on an art car this year, but it would have been nice if the ride had been a little longer.
I also wish we had gotten to know our neighbors more. We had Electric Numbtastic right next to us and Temple of Eros and The Whores of Babylon across the street. I just didn't spend very much time talking with them, oddly enough.
I heard some funny stories about the "Senior Prom" which was a bunch of people in wigs and wheel chairs that went around crashing parties. I would have loved to see that.
There was a camp called Lego Land. It had legoes. Noooooooooooooo! This does not deserve to be in the "Things I Missed Doing" section.
Random Thoughts to Leave You With, You Lovely Person, You
It really feels like I met a lot of film makers at Flipside. It seemed like every third person I met made movies. Is that some sort of thing, then?
Watching the effigy burn made me realize how slowly things can catch on fire. The more and more I see things burn the less scary it becomes.
Asking for what you want is awesome, and getting it is even more awesome.
I was very pleased with this Flipside for a number of reasons, but one of them was that everything that I bought/made/brought got used at some point or another. Some things only once, but the fact that they were there in the first place helped add to my experience.
Besides having music round the clock, KFLiP also broadcast useful information over the weekend. Did you know that porta potties smell better if you leave the lid down after using them? It helps them vent their gasses out the top rather than in the potty itself.
Being someplace like Flipside changes the way you view the world. After being there, I feel much more capable than I normally do. I feel like I can do anything. A weekend of helping people out and making things happen can do that to a guy.
Thoughts on our Camp
The yurt was awesome. It gave quite a number of us a sweet repose from the day's heat. It's easier to stay out at night if you remember that you'll be able to take a nice cool nap during the middle of the day. Next year, I want to expand our cooled yurt space and bring more pillows, blankets, etc.
The yurt did sort of change the camp dynamic a little bit; to escape the day's heat, many tacoteers retreated into the deliciously cool air, but even at night, it became a space for cuddling and sex.
I wish the temple had been arranged like it was last year. One whole half of the temple was essentially not used for cuddling or sex. Instead, that half was more or less a "pass-through" that could be used to gain access to the back of the kitchen and the kinky-sex chamber thingie. I think I would have preferred it if the temple had been arranged like it was last year with cushions, mattresses and chairs laid out all over the place. Granted, it would have been more difficult for people to pass through, but there would have been more space to sit.
The camp's food was incredibly well organized and I was incredibly happy that everyone pitched in during clean-up.
Final Thoughts
Flipside this year was amazing and inspiring and I'm so terribly happy to have spent it with my friends. The burn this year is my favorite so far, and I really felt like I was part of something special. Thank you all!
Gather round children, for I shall tell you a tale of a magical land where small metal canisters fall from the sky like rain, trash is a four letter word, and bare tits abound like the nectar of the gods. Indeed, it is time for Burning Flipside once again.
Pre-Flip
There isn't too much to say about our Flipside preparations. Dyeing went incredibly well. There were near 30 individual garments that went from white to bright purple. Dyeing using a clothes washer is way more efficient than doing it using buckets.
alucardkitty, fruit_smoothie, wesbante, feetwilltravel, little_bird27, fractallia and I pulled a yurt together in the weekend before Flipside. We got the much-needed tape from a recent camp addition and were able to make it happen in only a matter of days. I love that kind of shit.
Wednesday
fractallia and I arrived at the new land during the afternoon on Wednesday. My first impressions were that the new land was entirely too small for the event, but as more and more people started to show up, I slowly realized that it was more or less the same size as Flat Creek with two exceptions: there were less bushes and cliffs breaking up the land and there were trees everywhere, giving us a huge amount of delightful shade.
After checking in at gate, we drove down to the camping area for Purple Taco where we happened upon a sweaty knighthorse who was already putting up our kitchen shade structure. We hopped out, helped him a bit and then reported to our Shaven Apes shift lead. As it would turn out, we were able to bring some Apes back to our camp, and they assisted us in pulling the enormous purple tarp over our temple walls. We met a gentleman who had come here all the way from gay Paris and a film maker who had migrated from the west coast. Both lovely dudes, the film maker spent quite a bit of time waxing poetic about his projects in potentia and I got fairly excited hearing about it.
It turned out City Planning had been utterly awesome to us and had given us the two unused camp lots that were sitting next to us, so fractallia and I were able to spread out - we put our tent right up against the tree line. After making camp and parking, fractallia and I went over towards the ranger station to help setup the K F Li P radio tower. This was an especially cool experience for me. In past years, the radio tower has been set in the middle of an open field. This year, it butted right up against a corn field which was walled off by rusty barbed wire. To assist in erecting it (huh huh I said erect) I got to actually go into the corn field and help tie it down at one end. It was kind of awesome.
After our Shaven Apes duties had been completed, fractallia and I were going to follow emmainfiniti down to get our first glance at the crick, but fate (and the Shaven Apes lead) had other plans. We were intercepted half way to help one of our neighbors, The Temple of Eros, erect their 12 foot tall yurt. It was quite an interesting experience, and we used the height afforded by gators in creative ways. After all of the hassle of lifting the roof over the top of the enormous obelisk, I was left with the impression that bigger is not always better.
The rest of the day didn't involve too much other activity. fractallia and I went walking around some and saw a few of the camps that had already been set up. It seemed like half of the city was there, and the event hadn't even officially started.
We slept that night listening to owls and cows.
Thursday
The next day, most of our Tacoteers arrived in force. Our camp rose bright and early for greetering, and it was just as much fun as it's always been. ambientsidewalk drove us to the greeter station Mexican style in his little SUV, and we passed Red Camp along the way and talked about making them drink blue koolaid. You know, for refreshments.
I love greetering; you get plenty of hugs and people are incredibly happy to see you. There was an older blonde woman who I greeted and kept seeing over and over as the weekend went on. People really do remember you when you greet them; you're the first face they see as they're entering our magical land of happiness. As far as gifts are concerned, I didn't receive any this year, but fuck me if I'm not going to be first in line to do it again next year.
So, we set up the temple and our 8 foot yurt later in the day. Everything went up beautifully, and the yurt itself only took 30 minutes or so. That thing is really fucking cool inside and a great place to nap. Over the course of the weekend, I think most of our Purple Tacoteers snoozed in there at some point. Next year, we need to bring more soft matress-y things. It was a bit rough to lay directly on the ground.
Our friends alucardkitty and fruit_smoothie arrived fairly early in the afternoon. I went with alucardkitty to help her park and along the way we ran into a camper from Happy Tower who wanted to offer us a lollipop. I had a rather extended conversation with this gentleman and it went something like this: HELLO ARE YOU HAVING A GOOD DAY? I'M HAVING A GREAT DAY! I'M SO HAPPY TO HEAR THAT YOU'RE HAVING A GREAT DAY WOULD YOU LIKE A LOLLIPOP? YES INDEED, I AM HAPPY THAT YOU ARE HAPPY AND I WOULD LOVE A LOLLIPOP. IT MAKES ME EXCITED THAT YOU WOULD LIKE A LOLLIPOP. I AM EXCITED THAT YOU ARE EXCITED ABOUT THE LOLLIPOP THAT MAKES ME VERY HAPPY. I AM SO HAPPY THAT WE ARE FRIENDS. BEING YOUR FRIEND MAKES ME VERY EXCITED etc. You get the idea. By the way, the lollipop didn't seem to be laced with anything, in case you might have been wondering.
Later that day, a group of us went floating in the crick. emmainfiniti graciously provided us with some floaties and we took the full trip down the entire length of the river. There was a definite current, and as might be suspected, areas where the water was shallower caused you to be swept away faster. More than once I ended up with scratched knees and bruised buttocks because of it.
A group of us went clubbing later that night. We hit up the Country Club, Wonderlounge and Lava Lounge for drinkies and dancing. I had some fucking awesome Blackberry Beer at Wonderlounge and fractallia and I got to look at all the wall hangings of past effigies. We also stopped off at Camp Candyland and got a few delicious snackies.
We also visited the Burning Soul Lounge. They had some weird sort of polarized glasses and a corridor of hanging lights and fire. Walking through the tunnel, the glasses made everything look fucking awesome. Any light that you see would multiply itself on sort of a horizontal plane - the same way that car lights look through a dirty windshield or dirty glasses. At the end of the corridor there was the Burning Man symbol in bright red, and that really kind of brought it home.
Later that night, we visited Camp Smack that Ass! and earned our paddles. I think maybe one of the women there might have had a crush on me. Anyway, my collection has grown, and I was able to withstand 8 or 10 strikes of the paddle before I felt like my body was giving out, which I'm pretty sure is a new record for me.
Friday
By the time Friday rolled around, two things had become evident. The first was that the porta potties near our camp were the cleanest on the land. Keep in mind that there could have been two whole extra theme camps next to us, but that area ended up being Taco territory instead. As a result, the porta potties were heavily underused and basically stayed tolerable throughout the entire event.
The second thing that had becoming evident was even though the whole of Pyropolis had been worried about the dangers of poison ivy, those perils were heavily overstated. I don't think I heard about a single case where someone had a brush with it and got badly inflamed. Granted, that might have been because of all the fuss, but that's not the point. The point is that there was something that none of us had really been prepared for - and that was the flies. There were flies everywhere in our campsite. The land we were using was also used by cows to graze, so there were cow "patties" all over the place, and the requisite flies as well. They were everywhere, and made sitting down a challenge in and of itself. Evidently, one simple way to keep flies away is to fill a ziplock bag with water and then tie it to your shade structure. Apparently, such bags will create an optical illusion that will cause a fly to believe that it's about to collide with something, so they will turn around and fly the other way. Who knew?
Early Friday morning, a group of us went down to The Spa and had a one hour massage crash course. The stuff I learned there was incredibly helpful. The class focused on techniques to give massages without wearing yourself out (you know, by doing stuff like pressing in with your thumbs). I learned to take things slow and use long strokes, and a few other ways to deliver deeper pressure without killing my arm and fingers. It was pretty fucking cool.
After massages, we returned to camp to help serve tacos. The line was long and the flipizens were happy, but we were actually under quota by the time the last taco had been served. We all made a trip down to the water afterwards and just hung out. I think I still kind of prefer the crick at Flat Creek since there aren't swift currents that can cause you to scrape your bottom, but it was delightful all the same.
On the way back from swimming, we all took an incredibly long detour to a camp that had basically cleared out a lingere shop and was gifting all of the goods. The very sexy ladies in our camp each got a piece, and fractallia got this very sexy southern belle looking white shear coat-thingie. Hoooo-oooot.
Later that evening, we explored more of the city. After a quick detour so that I could take a picture of fractallia next to Neptune's Enormous Blue Cock, we made an entire circle around the whole land. fruit_smoothie and I stopped over at Lava Lounge from some dancing with a badass Brazilian DJ. There was a smoke cannon that shot smoke rings at people on the floor. It was kind of cool.
Afterwards, we stopped at a weird art camp that had black-light-reactive paint and a black canvas to paint on. Instead of the board, alucardkitty ended up painting fractallia and I, and I made a pretty cool painting of a flaming tree on a woman's back. Oddly enough, the blacklight camp was directly across from another camp that had an enormous bright glowing sphere that cast light everywhere. The sphere lost power while we were painting, however, so we spent a few glorious minutes basking in the glow of our black light art. The glory was short lived since the loss of the large glowing sphere meant that my friends and I were now the best-lit objects in the immediate area. Guess where all of those moths who were hanging around the orb decided to go. We continued on and rested at (d)Ishtopia, relaxing in their awesome plywood recliners while we watched some mesmerizing rainbow lights dance in front of us.
Ish was basically the last camp before you reached the Badlands, the area where non-theme campers were camping. At that point, we turned around, started heading back and ran into some camp-mates at Beer and Darts. We lounged around for a bit and had some utterly scrumptious lemon cello drinks before we decided it was time to return to the Taco. On the way back, we hit Art Car Camp and took a gander at the exhibits. One that particularly stood out to me was an orange and yellow motorcycle that drove around blowing bubbles. It had some delicate lighting that made it look like a rainbow-colored swan at night. It was sort of gorgeous.
We heard the telltale buzzing of the Arc Attack Tesla coils as we were heading back to camp, so we stopped over for a bit to hear them play. They have a different setup every year, and this year there was a cage that you could actually get in to dance as the coils electrified the outside. Arc Attack is just amazing every year. Watching the lightning arc just gives you a sense of immense power and deliberateness. Also, they love to play video game music, so that's doubly cool for me.
Saturday
Saturday was the day when I was finally able to go, "Alright, I've finally seen all of Pyropolis. From this point on, everything is just a bonus." The morning routine was more or less the same as Friday's, except that we actually went and hung out in the water before serving tacos. I actually helped out with the serving on Saturday, asking people "hard or soft, meat or beans?" and backing up emmainfiniti's husband as he worked the crowd. I have to say that it would have been difficult for him to have been more charismatic. That man has a filthy, filthy mind.
Afterwards, a group of us went to get some mojitos from Happy Campers. We spent a fair amount of time figuring out which "happy" camp we actually needed to go to. There was Happy Tower, a tall yellow tower that played children's music basically the entire weekend. Happy Tower is where the LOLLIPOP GENTLEMAN came from. There was also Happy Camp, who served PB&J sandwiches. We visited them last year, but didn't get the chance this year. Finally, there was Happy Campers. We ended up at their awesome dome and had some mojitos. They were fucking awesome, and I'm saying that even though I really, really dislike mint. I'm finding out that I can easily handle natural mint, but when it comes to mint flavoring I really just can't take it.
Since we were in the area, we also decided to stop by The Temple of the Steaming Pot so fractallia could get a cup of coffee. Earlier in the day, we met a delightful hispanic gentleman who invited us over for some java. I would learn later that the delightful hispanic gentleman got down and dirty with one of our other camp mates later in the evening. That is, if the stories and video footage are to be believed (I kid, btw).
We wanted to watch the Saturday Morning meets Saturday Night burlesque show after dinner, but due to some technical difficulties, it didn't go on. Instead, we went home and dressed in our prom dresses. fractallia and I made a badass purple duct tape dress for her and I made a fully functional duct tape tie which looked awesome. I skipped prom in high school, so this was literally my first. I am so happy that I was able to have fractallia as my date. Her prom dress was pretty awesome; it was two pieces, made of tie-dyed and purple duct tape and had some shear curtains as falls. It was too damn cute.
We stopped at Burning Glam and fractallia participated in their fashion show along with another of our camp-mates who had gotten an amazing purple dress and wings earlier that day. The Glam Fashion Show was glamazing and fun and glamtastic being full of glamazons who were sporting badass outfits. fractallia strutted her stuff on stage as "Purple Splendour" and ended up winning a hand-crafted medal for her awesome costume.
Afterwards, we went out and hit the town. We stopped in at Lick N Suck my monkey, a badass bar camp, and took some piccies in front of an awesome post-apocalyptic painting. We had some drinkies and continued on to more camps. We hit fractal camp and saw some badass patterns projected on to one of those infinite-triangle-thingies. Evidently, they had a fractal feedback loop thingie set up, but I didn't get to try it.
As we were walking around, a really cute woman from Burning Glam pulled me aside, gave me a kiss and asked if we could hang out outside of Flipside. Score :D
Towards the end of the night, we finally settled in at Professor Curly's for some chatting with jenmarie and salembroomrider. I got to roll a bigass D20 (got a 16), and generally sat around shooting the shit. I won't go into too many details, but there was a little bit of relationship-in-potentia drama that was unresolved when we left Curly's. fractallia and I stopped at the Temple of the Burning Question on our way home, and our short musings there induced us to return to Curly's one more time, and as luck would have it, the relationship-in-potentia drama was all resolved and left all parties feeling incredibly happy.
Burnday
The day of the big burn had finally arrived. By this time during the event, I'm usually reeling from a serious lack of sleep. Staying up until 3 AM every night and getting up at 7:30 because it's too hot to sleep isn't something that I think I could keep up forever. Anywho, I started the day off by heading over to Strawberry Feels 4Ever to get some vodka-infused strawberries and then went to the Steaming Pot to bring back some coffee for fractallia. The guys from Strawberry Feels 4Ever recognized us from last year. Their previous camp had been called Beastville, and evidently we had saved their asses by providing them with a ladder during the great torrent of 2009. Needless to say, they were kind of happy to see us. Once we had eaten breakfast, served tacos and gone swimming, fractallia and I went out to photograph some of the art installations that were on the ridge near the effigy. I won't take the time to describe those here since I've already done it below.
Later on, fractallia, alucardkitty and fruit_smoothie wanted to go to Third Camp to get body painted, and so I tagged along. fractallia and I have wanted to ride on an art car since we first started going to Flipside, and while we were on our way to Third Camp we finally got our chance. We hopped on the Zebra Tour Bus thingie for a short while as it was travelling to Ice, which was fairly close to our destination. I wish the ride would have been longer, but it was nice to finally have been able to get on one. We stopped over to get some more mojitos while we were waiting for danamongden to prepare his snacks and paints.
While we were waiting, fractallia suggested that the three of us go do Beer and Dart's snowball fight. We set out down the road expecting to come upon a mass of people lobbing ice balls at each other. Instead we encountered a parade of happy hot flippy people heading towards the large open area in front of the effigy followed by a truck with several coolers in its truck bed. We joined the group and soon found ourselves standing before the effigy, lined up on two sides with rows of coolers in front of us. The flags waved, the lids popped open, I screamed, "Charge!" and chaos was borne unto our city of Pyropolis.
I swear to god, I haven't laughed that way in a very, very, very long time. It wasn't the kind of laughter that comes with good jokes, loving friends or contentment. It was blaring, reckless, desperate, hoarse and breathless. There was nothing that I could do to stop it; it bubbled up from somewhere forgotten and I almost didn't believe that it was coming from within me. I was absolutely glowing after that.
After the girls' bodies had been painted, we returned back to camp, ate dinner and dressed for the burn. All of the other Tacoteers put on their prom dresses that night, but fractallia and I put on our comfy "let's burn that shit" outfits. I dropped by Burning Glam and exchanged contact info with the cute girl who had kissed me the night before and we made our way out to the great circle.
The effigy this year was amazing. It was a couple struck in a dancing pose and framed by a spiked wooden wreath. Each of the dancers had a detailed face, a skeletal structure, and the entire effigy had a skin made of thin flat black boards. There's a picture on Burning Flipside's Wikipedia Article, but I'm not sure how long the picture might stay up. Also, that picture is of the effigy as it's burning, so it doesn't really do its beauty justice.
The burn began. Purple Taco had front row seats. There was a sort of parade made up of the members of various theme camps, but they stopped on the outskirts of the fire circle before the burn began. Myriad fire dancers encircled the effigy, and towards the end of their show, there were three awesome performers - one with a flaming blade who performed martial arts forms, one with a burning orb on the end of a chain that he could swing in wide, wide arcs, and a fire breather who launched immense cones of flame with spectacular sexiness.
The firework hatters paraded out next as pyrotechnics exploded above our heads. I can't get enough of those guys. They were just incredible to watch, although I couldn't help but wonder how hot those hats must get. If I remember correctly, some of the fireworks that were launched were actually real fireworks - the kind that fly up in the air and go boom.
The circle was then cleared, and the burn began in earnest. When I think about it, the burn could easily be described as awkward if it hadn't been so cool, dramatic and cathartic. The left side of the effigy caught on fire before the right side did, and members of DaFT had to shoot roman candles at the structure to try to get it to ignite. Geysers of white flame burst at regular intervals to spray the dancers with fresh heat, and multi-colored fuel containers splattered open as they slowly began overheating.
The effigy's collapse was simply beautiful and inspiring. The dancers burning deliberately, first losing their slat-work skin and revealing the flaming skeleton underneath. The left side crumbled slowly, flecking off pieces of wood and ash as it burned hot and violently. The right side burned regularly, engulfed in an even flame. It did not lose its component pieces slowly, but instead tumbled onto the ground in one single spectacular swooping motion and loosed a raucous scream from the happy burners able to witness such an awe-inspiring event.
The effigy lay in ruins, still burning brightly, and the citizens of Pyropolis walked lovingly around it. At times like that, I can't help but feel a real sense of acceptance, community and inspiration. I wonder if the same thing happens at Burning Man. I can only image a large swirling circle of people surrounding a smouldering sculpture erected with care and burned with love.
After the burn, fractallia and I returned to camp and parted ways temporarily. She went out to hang around the effigy area and check out the art while I got my freak on in the temple. For the first time, I got to fuck using a sex swing. I discovered that when using such an apparatus, calibration is a highly important first step. If it's not at the correct height, it takes a large amount of stamina to keep your legs bent long enough to get some good sexing in.
After the fun sexy times in the temple, fractallia and I went out for some fun times during our last night in Pyropolis. We didn't really do much as most of the camps were closed at that time, but we did happen upon a camp near the river showing an odd cartoon with people changing into dogs and butterflies and chasing each other in someone's front yard. The cartoon got unexpectedly brutal as people starting stabbing each other, etc. It was a real trip and I kind of want to know what it was called.
We moseyed around a bit more, met the people who maintained the Zebra truck that we rode around in, had some late night candy and ran into a few friends of ours, but eventually we turned in, had some sex and went to sleep satisfied and utterly exhausted.
Monday
Monday was fairly uneventful. We packed up, had one last walk down to parking with a few quick photo ops on the way and a pot of the Steaming Pot's delicious coffee, and got our shit moving. We broke down our entire camp after only 3 or 4 hours - and that was everything - personal tents, temple, kitchen, shade structures, etc. fractallia and I left missing a few items - specifically a green folding chair and one of our seven 5-gallon jugs of water that we came with.
Returning home, we had the most epic shower in the world, had a nap, and then relaxed while watching some Sherlock Holmes.
Cool Art Installations
The effigy was incredibly badass, but there were other awesome art pieces scattered around Pyropolis. I've already mentioned Neptune's Enormous Blue Cock which was, as you might expect, a six foot tall blue penis. I snapped a picture of fractallia in front of it. Also, there was a whole garden of metallic bugs sort of near the effigy. If you were to read my review of Flipside 2009, you might see that I made mention of a metal flower that spat cones of flame. The flower was back this year, although it didn't have the long stem that it was sporting a year before.
There was a sculpture of zombie prom king and queen that was available for anyone to paint, adorn and distress as they liked. I thought that it turned out very well before it was burned to the ground.
fractallia and I also discovered a weird double-ring of panels with no apparent purpose. Eventually we saw them being used as a sort of screen for playing movies on.
There was a metal tree that was adorned with shiny metal canisters which made it look like it was covered with snow.
There were tons of shirtcocking signs. For those unfamiliar with the ancient tradition, shirtcocking is where you wear a shirt but no pants. Each of the signs had an awesome little saying on it like "This shirt is cocked and I'm loaded," etc.
There were also a ton of awesome little signs scattered around the land. They were the kinds of signs you would see if you were going on a some kind of tour (come to think of it, they might have been put there by the Zebra tour bus people). I can't really remember what any of them said specifically, but they were fucking hillarious.
Things I Missed Doing
I feel incredibly satisfied with my participation at Flipside this year. Even so, there were a number of camps that I would have liked to visit like Plunderdome, a camp with some more poly people in it. We also missed visiting the Human Caracas wash even though we had wanted to go pretty much the entire weekend.
*Sparkedelica was awesome to us last year, and I would have liked to spend more time in their badass little club. I also was able to finally ride on an art car this year, but it would have been nice if the ride had been a little longer.
I also wish we had gotten to know our neighbors more. We had Electric Numbtastic right next to us and Temple of Eros and The Whores of Babylon across the street. I just didn't spend very much time talking with them, oddly enough.
I heard some funny stories about the "Senior Prom" which was a bunch of people in wigs and wheel chairs that went around crashing parties. I would have loved to see that.
There was a camp called Lego Land. It had legoes. Noooooooooooooo! This does not deserve to be in the "Things I Missed Doing" section.
Random Thoughts to Leave You With, You Lovely Person, You
It really feels like I met a lot of film makers at Flipside. It seemed like every third person I met made movies. Is that some sort of thing, then?
Watching the effigy burn made me realize how slowly things can catch on fire. The more and more I see things burn the less scary it becomes.
Asking for what you want is awesome, and getting it is even more awesome.
I was very pleased with this Flipside for a number of reasons, but one of them was that everything that I bought/made/brought got used at some point or another. Some things only once, but the fact that they were there in the first place helped add to my experience.
Besides having music round the clock, KFLiP also broadcast useful information over the weekend. Did you know that porta potties smell better if you leave the lid down after using them? It helps them vent their gasses out the top rather than in the potty itself.
Being someplace like Flipside changes the way you view the world. After being there, I feel much more capable than I normally do. I feel like I can do anything. A weekend of helping people out and making things happen can do that to a guy.
Thoughts on our Camp
The yurt was awesome. It gave quite a number of us a sweet repose from the day's heat. It's easier to stay out at night if you remember that you'll be able to take a nice cool nap during the middle of the day. Next year, I want to expand our cooled yurt space and bring more pillows, blankets, etc.
The yurt did sort of change the camp dynamic a little bit; to escape the day's heat, many tacoteers retreated into the deliciously cool air, but even at night, it became a space for cuddling and sex.
I wish the temple had been arranged like it was last year. One whole half of the temple was essentially not used for cuddling or sex. Instead, that half was more or less a "pass-through" that could be used to gain access to the back of the kitchen and the kinky-sex chamber thingie. I think I would have preferred it if the temple had been arranged like it was last year with cushions, mattresses and chairs laid out all over the place. Granted, it would have been more difficult for people to pass through, but there would have been more space to sit.
The camp's food was incredibly well organized and I was incredibly happy that everyone pitched in during clean-up.
Final Thoughts
Flipside this year was amazing and inspiring and I'm so terribly happy to have spent it with my friends. The burn this year is my favorite so far, and I really felt like I was part of something special. Thank you all!