PHOTO--gordon burke, co founder and chief engineer of Radio Free Burning Man, a regular guy.
Lots of My Own Words about People I Love
Sat, September 24, 2005 - 1:43 PMDoes the man in the photo with the locomotive horns look like a yuppie or a hippie to you?
Now that Blib Blib and I have just about deflated our Playa Bubbles, it's time for me to have an objective look at certain aspects of the Burning Man festival, and how non-burners perceive the event. I guess my focus today will be on the people who I know personally who have made the six hour or so drive from San Francisco to that dried up prehistoric lakebed in the high desert of northern Nevada.
What I’m trying to do with the words I’m typing this morning is to dispel the popular notion amongst those who are ignorant of what happens every summer in black rock city that Burning Man is a wild hippy party in the desert, or worse yet, has been overrun by yuppies. Some of the blogs i've read written by a few of my online friends who are non burners seem to perpetuate such ill-informed misconceptions about the event. Let's take a look at a few of my real-world friends who are long time or new burners, and those of you who read this can decide if artists and writers like blib blib and john mosbaugh are hippies, yuppies or both.
Before we have a look at my friends, I'll have to make some sort of attempt at describing what i think yuppies and hippies are.
I've also decided just this second that any attempt at objectivity in this garbled nonsense i'm typing will be futile.
Yuppies are well educated (in relative terms) professionals (once again, in relative terms) between the ages of twenty one and forty. The people whom I call yuppies are generally highly compensated for the stultifying work they perform in what are probably corporate offices. Yuppies spend most of their time in their cubicles working and when they are not feverishly slaving away long hours in the office contriving ways of stealing money from working stiffs like me, yuppies scour the world high and low collecting material possessions like SUV's, overpriced road bikes and giant television sets. Yuppies have little appreciation for any sort of art or culture outside of what corporate mainstream american culture forces down their throats. Since the larger part of yuppies never deviated from the straight and narrow paths laid out for them by pedophile clergymen, ill paid teachers and corrupt professors, they're somewhat incapable of much of what i know as critical thought and tend to be somewhat bland in appearance. Yuppies generally seem to be concerned with only themselves and are somewhat oblivious to the rest of the world around them.
Most of the yuppies I see at Burning Man every year appear to feel out of place and don't look like they're having a very good time.
The perception I have of hippies is another story. Many of the hippies I've met anywhere are dirty and stupid. Lots of hippies dropped out of school because LSD, hourly marijauna smoking and educational values are mutually exclusive. Hippies espouse the quaint notion that necessities of life should be lovingly shared with them and that all of the worlds ills could be quickly and mystically healed with two tokes, an eyedropper and a hug. Since a lot of hippies are too lazy, stupid and stoned to hold even the most menial jobs, they sit around all day disjointedly pounding at tambourines and bongo drums while they beg passers by for food, money and drugs.
How hippies come by the money to buy tickets for Burning Man and make it to Nevada is beyond the realm of my comprehension. Panhandling enough cash for a trip to Black Rock City must be a year round endeavor for a dirty, lazy stupid mongrel hippie but thousands of them find a way to the playa. You’ll spot them from time to time skulking about center camp or wherever there’s something being given away, like booze or pancakes, vacant eyed and stinking of human filth and stale patchouli oil.
One hippie chick I met sported a real beard sprouting from her chin, and the filthiest feet I have ever witnessed on a person not claiming to be homeless.
Ok. Now that we’ve established what I think hippies and yuppies are, let’s have a look at a few of my burner friends who are neither smelly hippies nor greedy yuppies.
JOHN MOSBAUGH is a bearded man, but I cannot attest to the cleanliness of his feet. Mosbaugh has something or the other to do with computers for a living, I’m not sure what it is he does but Johnny doesn’t have what I consider a yuppie’s income. Moze drives a big, red seventies era Ford pickup and lives way out in the sunset district of San Francisco in an old house filled with his wife’s paintings, computers, books, a pool table covered with starter motors and assorted electro mechanical geegaws and in the back yard, the headless maiden/carousel numinous bar. Sometimes the garage out at what we affectionately refer to as the “birdsnest” resembles the set of “Sanford and Son”. Johnny’s computer is filled with all sort of strange music and colorful stories, some of which you read right here on tribe. I’m pretty sure John jumps into the shower every day, but once Mosbaugh washes his armpits out and brushes his teeth, one can never be sure what will happen.
Mosbaugh lives on the edge of life sometimes, and on the rare instances Johnny starts to slip away over that edge, some really cool, fun shit often goes off.
‘Ol Johnny works hard, and he lives hard. Mosbaugh is real, folks, he’s about as real as the mold he broke when he was born. He’s not a hippie or a yuppie and everyone who knows him will tell you the same.
John Mosbaugh went to Burning Man this summer for what I think was his seventh time.
Those of us who have had the pleasure of hanging out with GORDON BURKE know that he’s not a hippie or a yuppie, either. Gordon has pretty much single handedly transported and constructed Radio Free Burning Man from a storage unit in Empire, Nevada and his home near San Jose for something like ten years now. I think that Gordon works in the purchasing department of the San Jose public library, but like Mosbaugh, I’m almost certain that Gordon is not raking in giant, tumbling balls of cash every two weeks doing what he does for a living. I’ve never seen Gordon Burke wear a suite and tie, nor have I ever seen Gordon in any kind of costume on the playa. Gordon Burke is a jeans and t-shirt kind of regular guy, with a taste and a knack for the bizarre and quirky things in life.
Erecting a twelve foot high by thirty foot long and ten foot wide building in the hot Nevada sun is miserable, hard work. So is raising a fifty foot radio tower, and taking it all down. Gordon has been known to spend a week on the playa eating nothing but canned schlarve and whiskey.
Gordon Burke has done these things at Burning Man every year for at least the past ten years, often on his own, and mostly with his hard earned money. Hardly the actions of attitudes we’d expect from hippies and yuppies.
JENNY BIRD is Johnny Mosbaugh’s wife. I met jenny Bird because I was madly infatuated with her big sister many years ago, but that story has nothing to do with this story, so we’ll leave it. What I know about Jenny is that she is a gloriously talented artist, and how she courageously suffered though years of having next to nothing, like many artists so often have to. My opinion is that given the combination of Jenny’s otherworldly artistic talent and the bedrock goodness and sensibility of her personality, her world is finally coming together in a big way. Jenny’s name is becoming to be very well known in the world of artists and forward thinking persons, and her work was prominently featured at each of the entrances to the funhouse making up the foundation of the man this year. The Burning Man Festival does not often showcase the work of talented painters but Jenny’s paintings from 2003’s Carousel Numinous along with her stunning work found on the playa this year has perhaps inspired artists who work with canvas and brush to create works to bring along with them to Burning Man 2006.
I’ve known Jenny Bird since 1997, give or take a year. Jenny is the farthest thing from a yuppie of hippie I can imagine. I think Jenny Bird has come to Burning Man five times since 1998.
Last but not least in my attempt to squash the false assertion that Burning Man has been ruined by hippies, yuppies and ravers will be a description of my wonderful girlfriend, JULIA BLIB BLIB MAZAWA. Julia lives with me at the Flying Buffalo Ranch here in San Francisco, and all she heard me talk about the long months between April and August was Things Burning Man. Julia has a BA in studio arts from Bard College in upstate New York, which might qualify her for yuppie status, but true to what could be hippie form, she has not conveyed her so-called validated ticket to success into a high powered job in the corporate art industry. Blib Blib works, however, she toils her days away week after week at a tiny little army surplus store on Haight street. Hippies don’t like to work, nor do hippies like anything to do with the military or wars, so Julia Blib Blib cannot be considered a hippie. Yuppies will look at Julia’s degree from Bard and wonder why she wasted away four years of her young life earning what is an essentially useless document as applied to finding a job providing what a spoon-fed yuppie clone might consider a decent income.
Blib Blib came with me to Burning Man this summer. 2005 was her first year on the playa, and hopefully not her last. Blib Blib got to broadcast her own voice and music over the airwaves via Radio Free Burning Man for the first time in her life along with finding an opportunity to fly high above Black Rock City in an airplane, taking lots of pictures along the way. Not bad for my cute little half-breed honey whose only previous knowledge of Burning Man were the outlandish stories she’d heard about the yuppies, the hippies and the drugs.
I hope that after those of you who have never been to Burning Man before read these little capsules about my friends, you might realize that there are thousands of people like me, with thousands of friends like mine, who pack up a vehicle and drive or fly to that prehistoric lakebed nestled between the jagged mountain peaks of northern Nevada every August. We’re not hippies, nor are we yuppies, some of us are freaks and misfits, but we’re not dumb and dirty flower children, nor are we all money crazed workaholics looking to take a break from the real world in the desert.
Yes, you will find lots hippies and yuppies in Black Rock City but not so many that they dominate the vibe of the playa.
How would Blib Blib and I blow up our Magic Playa Bubbles if we were so busy dealing with droopy eyed druggies and Katie Kitties?
Here’s to the forty thousand Good People of Black Rock City, Nevada. We look forward to seeing you all next year, John and Jenny, Gordon and Max, Stinky Pits, Spliff Skankin, Tiya, Big E, and let’s not forget, Terry, The Man Who Lives in a Desert Shack.
We’ll drive with our lights on, day and night, just to be safe.
