View Issue #7! - The Burro Lifestyle Magazine

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THE BURRO
ART
ENTERTAINMENT
DANCE
MUSIC
UNDERGROUND CULTURE
LIFE S TY LE M A G A Z IN E
FASHION
V
Vooll.. 22,, IIssssuuee 22
JJuunnee 2211,, 22001144
WANDERLUST CIRCUS
BODYPAINT BY NUMBERS
AmyElizabeth
Black Rock
Couture
Boutique
D.J. Bombshel
Editorials by Noah Mickens, Jay Lieber, and Zenith Spins
THE BURRO
LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE
Vol. 2, Issue 2—Summer 2014
CONTENTS
Bodypaint by Numbers interview by Ari Lynn
The Pros vs. The Underground by Noah Mickens
Swim into Summer interview by Elle Stanger
Mining for Sunstone by Josh the Terrible
Dance and Sing images by Scott Belding
Wanderlust Circus Interviews by The Burro
Black Rock Boutique interview by Josh the Terrible
The Sasquatch Diary by Zenith Spins
D.J. Bombshel interview by Ari Lynn
Castles in the Clouds by Jay Lieber
West Coast Festivals
8
13
16
20
22
27
36
42
44
46
47
Night of the Fairies
!!
June 30, 2014
@
9:00 p.m.
FREE at ANALOG
720 S.E Hawthorne Blvd.
PDX * OR * USA
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June 30, 2014
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9:00 p.m.
FREE at ANALOG
PDX * OR * USA
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June 30, 2014
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Lizzie
Rummy Rose
Josai Carr
Clementine
Aaron Schallock
J$ & Zelah Juniper Lunasri
Brooklyn
Alice Faeland
Shell Bell
D.J. : Mellonhead
Hosted by:
by: Nik Sin
First 40 Guests to Arrive get a Free Copy of the NEW Spring 2014 Issue
&
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GOTHIQUE BLEND
Emmie G.
Soren High
Lizzie
Rummy Rose
Josai Carr
Clementine
Aaron Schallock
Brooklyn
Alice Faeland
Shell Bell
D.J. : Mellonhead
Hosted by:
by: Nik Sin
Emmie G.
Soren High
Lizzie
Rummy Rose
Josai Carr
Clementine
Aaron Schallock
Brooklyn
Alice Faeland
Shell Bell
D.J. : Mellonhead
Hosted by:
by: Nik Sin
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THE BURRO LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE—
Produced by: Ari Lynn and Josh The Terrible
Edited by: Ari Lynn and Michaell Lynn
Front Cover: Photography by Cloud City Photography; featuring
Kayla Kilby Inside Front Cover and Page 1: photography by May
Faith Photography; featuring Lucy Emter MUAH Rayna Thomas
Page 8: photography by Matt Adamik; featuring Charlotte Treuse
Page 9: photography by Cloud City Photography; featuring Kayla
Kilby and Blake Hicks Page 10: photography by Oblique Foto;
featuring Whitney Paige Rhodes; MUAH Harmony Ray Page 11:
photography by Oblique Foto; featuring Treya Bushell Page 12:
photography by May Faith Photography; featuring Sarah Willey
Page 15: M. Ambrosia Photography; featuring Panda Stubits Page
16: featuring (from left to right) Tucker and Amy Snyder Page 17:
featuring Amy Snyder Page 18: featuring Tucker Page 19: featuring
Amy Snyder Page 22: featuring (clockwise from top left to bottom)
Tracy Rhaj, Nicole McLaren, Tracy Stanbury Page 23: featuring
Jumana King-Harris Centerfold: featuring Melissa Loza Page 26:
featuring Lindsay Marquino Page 45: photography by GSG
Photography Rear Cover: Photography by Eli Schmidt; featuring
Russell Bruner
THE BURRO LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE Vol. 2, Issue 2—Summer 2014
W
8
8 Bodypaint by Numbers
Interview of Matt Huntley by Ari Lynn
After years experimenting in many
different mediums, Matt Huntley has
found his calling as one of Portland’s
premier bodypainters. Here’s what he
has to say about being an artist.
Matt Huntley: I’ve been an artist my
whole life. As a kid, I used to do all this
drawing and drawing and drawing,
and I found sculpting when I was a
teenager. Then, as a late teenager I
read a Fangora Magazine and I found
special effects. I was living in San Diego
at the time. I grew up back East, but I
was living in San Diego after high
school, and I found places that I could
intern and work on special effects. At
the same time, I was going to San
Diego Zoo a lot, and I’d work for the zoo
once in a while and I’d do nature
drawings. So, I was doing all this
drawing, and all this sculpting, and
special effects. Now, skip forward many
years, and the special effects turned
mostly into mask-making, and then I
moved to Portland, and I started
working at haunted houses because
you make a lot of money. So, I started
focusing on bodypainting. It was a lot of
fun. I wanted to do something pretty. I
didn’t wanna just do blood and guts
and gore. So, I started doing pretty and
started focusing on that. Doing shows is
great because you paint someone and
they get to perform in front of hundreds
of people and it’s that instant
gratification. Photoshoots are great
because you can take your time and
take a photo of it and it’s sort of
immortalized forever and ever. There it
is.
The Burro Lifestyle Magazine: You’ve got
that piece with Charlotte Treuse that has
its own life now.
MH: Right. But then live events are good
because it’s that instant gratification.
It’s that fast-food mentality: “Here it is.
Now go out and show people.” And
then everybody, right away, they’ll see
it. And sometimes you’ll see pictures
and talk months and months later, but
that for that moment right there, it’s
really cool. I like both of those aspects. I
like the special events. I started working
with a bunch of burlesque performers. I
was chatting with a friend of mine who
is an actor who was on Grimm recently
about how it’s weird going places and
have people recognize you. You lose
that anonymity.
TB: Did you have a big bump in that
after The Oregonian did all that press?
MH: I did. That’s a double-edged sword
that whole Facebook thing where
Facebook says that bodypaint is porn,
then The Oregonian picked that up,
and a couple other magazines around
the world picked it up, and radio
stations because more people were
exposed to my work. The negative
aspect was Facebook deleting my
photos and deleting my page and I
had to start all over again.
TB: So, Bodypaint by Numbers got
deleted entirely?
MH: Oh yeah. I had to start a new one
because there are people out there in
Facebook who are like, “Well, I am now
going to police this person and anytime
they post anything that is remotely
sensitive, I’m going to flag their work.”
So I started to see a bunch of that.
9
because none of your work
is pornographic, and some
of the things that were
getting flagged weren’t even
close.
MH: Yeah, bellydancers with
a bellydance costume who
were also painted.
TB: Right. There was nothing
about it that could have
been construed in any way
for being pornography, for
having nudity, for violating
any of the community
standards.
MH: It’s a double standard.
When
you
look
at
Facebook—I can talk about
this for hours until I’m
purple—there’s a double
standard…
and
they
consider
bodypainting
wrong, so they delete it.
Some
people
say,
“Someone has it out for
you.” I say it’s a standard
across Facebook. When you
have
50
bodypainters
around the world get hit and
flagged and removed all at
the same time, that’s when
you go, “Okay, there’s a
policy out there that says
bodypaint is bad.” In my
case, I kind of laughed. I
don’t
take
Facebook
seriously. It’s not real life. It’s
not real. At the same time,
here they are targeting me.
I’m
not
a
famous
bodypainter. Some of these
people are world class, and
now Facebook is lumping
me in with them, and they’re
getting their stuff deleted at
the same time I am, and
Facebook is treating me like
them, and part of me is like,
“Oh, that’s cool. I rate up
there with somebody.”
TB: You’re with the heavyhitters.
MH: It’s one of those things
where your art is now
censored, and you’re like, “I
made it big time!” It’s funny.
I did get a lot more press
and a lot more people
wanted to know what the
deal was and what was
going on.
TB: Why do you think
bodypaint touches a nerve
for some people?
MH: I’m gonna pull from my
art history. When the Sistine
Chapel was first painted, all
of the depictions of humans
were all naked. And then
about 70 years later a new
Pope had come in—I think it
was like 70 years later—and
he said, “Cover them up.” So
a new painter went in and
painted
clothing
and
shrouds and clouds here and
there. I think what it comes
10
TB: Which, in your case is crazy, too,
down to is what people don’t
understand or what they don’t consider
art, becomes a negative for them…Not
everybody can relate to bodypainting.
They don’t understand it. Then there’s
the people that honestly think that
nudity
is
immoral.
They
don’t
understand that in most cases of
bodypainting, you have people that
are covered up. They wear panties and
pasties or are photoshopped.
TB: But there is the impression that there
is a nude or nearly nude figure that’s
then sort of engaged in some sort of
fantasy element, so not only is it a nude
or nearly nude form, but there is some
sort of fantasy.
MH: Right, there’s a fantasy, but it’s not
a
hyper-sexualized
thing.
Sports
Illustrated never gets any of their
images removed, and you have
women that are bodypainted in bikinis,
but a bikini is something that’s seen all
the time. So, for some reason that’s
okay, but if you took the same model
and I paint her from head to toe in
something different—you can’t see any
of her skin—and that’s where the weird
part comes in. If you cover everything
from
head-to-toe,
people
don’t
understand it…when, it comes to being
offended, I think art should offend
people. It should get them out their little
box.
TB: It should challenge the status quo.
MH: It should make you think. If you look
at something and you say, “Oh, that’s
pretty,” then you should move on and
find something that maybe disturbs you
a little bit and think about it: “Is that art?
Is that art?” And I do think about that a
little bit when I’m painting, but most of
all I just want to create. Bodypainting is
so amazing to me. When I found it I was
like, “This was what I want to do.” I
didn’t know it, but all of my art led up to
it—from sculpting to drawing to coloring
with pastels—all of it led up to me
going, “I want to paint people now.”
TB: Are there like one or two bodypaint
projects that you’ve done that stand
out.
MH: There are a few. One of them was
Adelle in purple where she went out
and got shot all over town with Kyer
[Wiltshire]. Another one is the one you
mentioned earlier with Charlotte Treuse
and the zebra. I fell in love with an
image from an artist Olivia called “Lady
Zebra” and one day someone
mentioned to me something about
painting a zebra and instantly I just had
to do it. I started looking for a horse and
then everything fell together. We had
multiple photographers and I had a
great team helping me out, and those
images just keep coming back over
and over. People keep showing them
left and right. I had somebody in
Germany putting those images off as
their work, and I was like, “No. You
didn’t just do these. No, these are not
just fresh from this weekend! I did those
a couple years ago, but they keep
resurfacing, and I think that’s amazing.
Then there was one with Treya. The only
guidance I had for that one from the
photographer, Oblique Foto, was that
he had this texture that he had in mind.
He had these little rubber balls—like
half-balls that were for electronics—you
stick them on the bottom of electronics
called feet, and he was like, “I just want
them stuck on her and then you can
paint her however you want.” So, his
thought was lizard-like, but he said, “I
don’t want green. I already did a green
bodypaint person, so don’t do green.”
So I started thinking about what to do
as I’m sticking all these rubber feet on
her. The first thing I thought of was, “this
is pretty surreal.” And that’s what I’ve
come to call it because it’s yellow and
blue and there’s a little bit of green and
you’ve got blue and white, but you’ve
got this little bit of texture effect going
on. I loved it. I think those three are my
favorites so far that I’ve done. There are
a lot though.
TB: They all have different motivation
and different inspiration. The zebra
shoot sounds like it was something for
you that was percolating for years.
MH: Yes. Absolutely. Sometimes I’ll plan
painting, and sometimes I’ll just show up
and have no idea what I am going to
do and it always comes out better than
I could have imagined.
TB: I think that’s the way it is with a lot of
stuff.
MH: Sometimes it just grows right in front
of you. Sometimes when I have no
motivation whatsoever, I’ll just start
painting someone and it just gels. I
forget everything else and I focus on
one thing, and there it is.
TB: What do you have coming up?
MH: I’m doing some conventions this
year. I’m looking forward to trying to do
my own show. I put my own show
together a couple of years ago with a
couple other bodypainters. I’m looking
to do something similar, but maybe
even partner up with one or two fashion
designers so we can do something
more because I want to push my limits
more. I want to do things bigger and
better and not just the painting. Even
though we call it bodypainting,
everything we use is makeup as
opposed to acrylic paints. I was actually
at a store the other day at one of these
stores that sells makeup and costumes
and some woman didn’t want to buy
some Ben Nye. She just wanted some
white face—a mime face—and the
person who was helping her didn’t
know much about it. And the person
wanted to know if she could use acrylic
paint on her face, and I just blurted out,
“No. Don’t do it. You’re skin’s not going
to be able to breathe, you’ll feel
overheated. It’s just liquid plastic. Don’t
do it.” The person behind the makeup
counter was like, “Thank you very
much.” Don’t ever use acrylic paints. It’s
not good for you. And glitter. Don’t use
glitter.
TB: Never. I never use glitter.
MH: Glitter is bad.
For more examples of Matt’s work visit:
mhuntley.wix.com/bodypaint-bynumbers
11
12
12 THE PROS vs. THE UNDERGROUND
By Noah Mickens
I'm not going to use any names of
individuals or organizations in this article,
because the subject is highly sensitive. I
really do want to talk about this,
though, and as is generally the case I'm
going to address the matter frankly
even at the risk of stepping on some
toes.
The subject of working for free has lately
been the subject of much controversy.
There are articles and infographics and
snarky Facebook comments filling up
the memescape, pushing the idea that
nobody should ever perform for free.
You've probably seen these. For that
matter, there are equally-adamant
voices saying the same thing about
working for cheap. And that, my friends,
is a harder target to hit.
"Free" is a pretty simple idea, but how
much is "cheap"? Some of these articles
insist on minimum levels of pay that I
find
frankly
ludicrous—
minimums that could never
be met by any venue
owner or independent
troupe, and are hard to
come by even in the
lucrative
world
of
corporate or civic events. If
every working performer
were to demand these
kind of sky-high rates, then
only the wealthiest clients
would be able to afford
entertainment;
which
means that only a vanishing small
number of people would have the
opportunity to perform. Not the most
talented people, either, but those who
are best at marketing themselves—
those with connections in the square
world, presenting a palatable and nonthreatening version of their given art
that is seen as a safe investment by the
professional talent buyers who operate
at that level. And that’s if every single
performer all stuck together and
demanded the same rate of pay.
indeed, for no money at all. Are those
low-paid artists as skilled as the highpaid ones? Probably not. When you put
a world-class entertainer in front of an
audience, that audience will take
notice. There's no substitute for hiring
the very best people, even if they do
cost a little more. Or a lot more, like...
holy shit, 30 TIMES THE PRICE?!!!?!?!
One begins to see how this looks to a
client. How the folks at high-end pro
troupes are offended and disturbed by
less-established
troupes who
are,
intentionally or not, undercutting their
fees and taking big gigs away from
them. And those people in the B
troupes have the same attitude toward
performers working in the high-end
nightclubs, who in turn resent the
people working in the low-end clubs.
"How can you work for so cheap?" they
say. "Don't you see that you're hurting
the industry?"
Albini wrote twenty years ago, and it’s
only gotten worse. Theater is the same
way—when you go to see a big,
prestigious show at the Keller, you would
be amazed how little the lead actors
are being paid. There is a process of deprofessionalization afoot in the arts and
entertainment world, and it's already
damaged the lives of working artists in
ways that may not be possible to repair.
Me, I'm in the category of just-barelymaking-a-living
that's
considered
"success" in local Portland showbiz. All I
do for money is perform and produce.
Like most professional artist types, the
majority of the money I make comes
from corporate clients—I do about 1020 gigs a year as an MC for this certain
sports apparel company, plus various
other shows for private parties and city
governments, without which I would be
living a far more modest lifestyle. More
modest, that is, than living in the semifinished attic of a two-bedroom house
while
leasing
the
downstairs bedrooms to
two other grown adults
who are not related to
me; riding a bike or the
bus instead of a car;
going
without
health
insurance
until
Obamacare
or
Teapartycare
or
whatever you want to
call it both forced me to
buy some and made it
possible for me to sort-ofafford. I feel very keenly the sting of lessestablished performers undercutting my
fees and taking gigs that might
otherwise be mine. I was haggling with
a private party client a while back, and
in the midst of negotiation they told me
they had found an entire troupe of fire
dancers who would work all night for a
grand total of $50. I can't compete with
that—the people in my troupe would
not accept that little money, and I
would never ask them to. However, like
me, those artists are barely making ends
meet with whatever combination of
performing, teaching, stripping, petty
crime, even DAY JOBS! They need every
gig they can get, and they're counting
on my broke ass to land those gigs. I'm
faced with the reality of being forced to
accept lower fees lately than I would
have a couple years ago, while
performers are up in arms demanding
that I pay them more. And I, again, live
in an attic.
New styles, fresh aesthetics,
challenging and subversive ideas—
these can only rise into public view via
venues and cultures that are driven by
something other than monetary gain. This has not happened, however. And
the reason it hasn't happened is that
most artists are very... not desperate,
necessarily, but let's say... very very
eager to perform. Especially lately,
because lately there has been a
tremendous surge in the number of
people who decide to become artists,
and the market is flooded. Everyone is
in a band, or they’re a burlesque
dancer, or a stand-up comedian,
whatever. Out there in the clubs,
people are working for tiny amounts—
sometimes as little as $20 per night, or
This is a valid perspective, to be sure. An
entire industry can get caught up in this
kind of race to the bottom. Rather than
working hard, apprenticing, paying your
dues, and maybe eventually getting
into a pro troupe that's getting that
crazy-seeming fee; Johnny Artist can
just charge less and have gigs now. But
a few years down the road, Johnny will
find himself undercut as well; as will the
person
who
undercut
Johnny.
Eventually you wind up with this
enormous pool of entertainers and
producers who are happy to work for
next to nothing as long as they can do it
all the time. This is, for example, what
has happened to the music industry. So
many musicians are content to spend
the rest of their lives working shit jobs
and playing for peanuts, it's almost
impossible to find a high-paying music
gig anymore. Even world-famous
musicians, big stars whose fans assume
are living lives of luxury, are often
wound up in shitty contracts that have
them functionally working for free, debtslaves to the big entertainment
machine. It’s all in that article Steve
Venue owners are often in the same
boat—they're making it, but just barely.
The pattern of one Upper Middle Class
13
guy deciding to sink his savings into a
venue, only to lose all his money and his
house and his wife and kids chasing the
showbiz dragon, is one I've watched
with uncomfortable frequency as I've
skipped from one hustle to the next. This
is another flaw in the sort of union-esque
strategy of insisting that venues pay a
certain minimum wage to the artists
who perform there—the venues just
can't afford that. This has, for one thing,
driven the transition from live music to
DJs—if the total take for a night is only
$300, and the venue has to take some
of that to pay the sound guy and the
door guy and 1/30th of the monthly bills,
you're looking at $150 for the talent. Will
that go to three bands, or one DJ who
can play all night? Maybe the model
works if you're a very popular band who
can reliably draw lots of people, but if
you're anything less than that you need
to perform at the kind of smaller venue
that will never be able to provide a
living income.
But that’s also what’s great about these
places. The relatively low-pressure
culture of a small venue that stakes
little-to-no guaranteed money on their
talent is an invitation to try new things.
Hip Hop, Punk, Jazz—these genres of
music
were
bizarre
and
utterly
unprofitable when they first emerged.
Hip Hop started in the playgrounds and
rec rooms of Bronx housing projects.
Punk came from the seediest little bars
in what was then the derelict and
dangerous
Lower
East
Side
of
Manhattan. Jazz, straight out of the
brothels and public squares of New
Orleans. If those entertainers—Kool
Herc, Television, Jelly Roll Morton—had
insisted on being paid for their work, not
a soul in the world would have taken
them up on it. New styles, fresh
aesthetics, challenging and subversive
ideas—these can only rise into public
view via venues and cultures that are
driven by something other than
monetary gain. If the new ideas
develop into something good, then a
hard-working promoter will emerge
(Russell Simmons, Malcolm McLaren,
whatever forgotten smart-guy first
championed jazz). That promoter will
direct fans and clients to the new style,
and the artists who created it will have
their chance to sink or swim. In short,
less-professional venues paying little-tono money for fledgling performers trying
out new things are part of the big
picture; and they benefit the culture as
a whole in ways that may not be
apparent to those of us caught in the
day-to-day hustle of the working artist.
This is happening right now in Portland
(and everywhere else that I know of). In
venues like The Kit Kat Club, The Analog,
Lovecraft, Sky Club, The Funhouse,
Devil's Point, Crush Bar; and the moreestablished Star Theater and Dante's; I
14
perceive the most exciting and
energetic new performance work in the
city emerging. It's this blend of cabaret,
performance art, drag, burlesque,
circus, comedy, and stripping. There's a
radical early-oughts drag influence by
way of Sissyboy and Trannyshack, an air
of Burning Man and the festival culture,
a very clear lineage from that old
melting pot Sinferno Cabaret, and ties
to
the
legit
PICA-approved
performance scene via artists like
Pepper Pepper who play both sides of
the tracks. The best of it looks to me like
Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Lisa Carver,
Leigh Bowery, Richard Kern. Be
prepared, though—this marvelous art is
emerging from a field that also includes
some pretty mediocre Work. Since there
are few limits placed on who gets
booked and what sort of act they’ll do,
I’ve seen some acts and artists that are
definitely not ready for the stage. But
then the next act comes up, and it's
some budding genius in the rough,
some extraordinarily challenging and
entertaining
artist
whose
fearless
exploration of their own vision is giving
birth to something unprecedented right
there on that crappy little stage,
slipping around in the glitter and fake
blood of previous acts as they utterly
commit themselves to the moment. It's
rough and dirty and god-damn thrilling,
and it can only be there because some
venue owner and some producer have
conspired to create an event that
doesn't need to make much money in
order to survive. And the performers—
scores of immensely talented people,
many of whom are not-coincidentally
associated with this very publication—
are
liberated
by
that
same
arrangement. Shit, they're not even
getting paid for this, or they're walking
out with $50 on a good night. So why
not just go for it? Just say, I don't feel like
doing a conventional strip tease
tonight, I'm going to do that crazy-ass
performance that's been eating its way
out of the back of my head all month.
That dangerous, unique person that
wants to emerge from my imagination
and into my skin—I'm going to let that
happen, here, tonight, at this stupid bar.
And even if there's only twenty people
here to see it, that motherfucker is
going to be alive and raw and real
here.
I mean, I won't hire you to do that shit. I
do my shows at 400-seat venues that
cost me hundreds or thousands of
dollars off the front end just to open the
doors—everybody’s counting on me to
bring a certain caliber of show, and
failing to do so will impact my ability to
produce big shows in the future. My
ability to put on big shows trickles right
down to the ability of performers to get
paid relatively-good money to perform
in those shows. So if you bring an act to
my show, you better have it down to a
tee. All practiced and performed and
videotaped and revised until it glitters
like a Mid-K tiara. But I do hire acts that I
discover from the small venues. I just put
on a big Dirty Cabaret night at the
Alberta Rose Theatre cast entirely from
this subculture (which doesn’t really
have a name as far as I can tell—
“neoburlesque”
seems
insufficiently
inclusive to me). That night sold out
faster and got a bigger standing
ovation than any other night of the
Umbrella Festival of Circus and
Comedy. I didn't hire any of the scrubs,
of course. Just the gems, who saw their
low-paying nightclub gigs as a chance
to refine their artistic vision into
something that could play on a big
stage to a demanding audience. The
chance to workshop new material on
stage is essential to performers of any
level of experience, and the small
venues are providing that opportunity.
After all, that's how I got my start. I
produced and performed for years
without making a dollar. I won't take this
whole article off track by starting to talk
about all the shit I used to do; but I
mean, there was a lot of it, it was mostly
pretty dope, and I did it all for free. We
all did, back then. Like, this person over
here who talks trash about anybody
who works for less than $300 a night; I
remember when they were dancing for
dollars at the Sandy Jug. This troupe
that lives off hefty NEA grants used to
be so excited if they made a couple
hundred bucks off the door at the
“theater” in the abandoned building
where they also lived. To insist on being
paid a lot of money for one's art is the
luxury of the already-established. But it's
also the way we can all hang onto
what we've got, right? If you, the newblood kid who doesn't really know what
you're doing but has a lot of heart and
natural talent, can be convinced to
patiently learn the ropes as a student,
then an apprentice, then a bit player;
all in hopes of someday becoming a
star performer yourself; then that lofty
possibility can still be there when it's your
turn. Do you see what I mean? If you
dream of big money and glamor and
success at the top of the ladder, but
you begin your journey by digging the
ground out from under the people who
are there now, then the top rung will be
lower by the time you reach it. If you,
young artist, believe you've got what it
takes to hit it big in the future; then
you're hurting yourself by undercutting
the pros of today.
So once again, constant reader, I have
no simple solution to offer. But the goal,
I think, is for the Pro and Underground
worlds to work in cooperation. For
people on each side of that indistinct
boundary to consider the needs and
perspectives of those on the other side.
To realize that we really are all in this
together, including the producers and
venue owners who fund our Work.
To my peers, the modestly-successful
arts administrators and showbiz
hucksters of the West Coast bohemian
scene, I say: Let the newbies come to
you, let them learn from you. Instead of
spending your energy trying to hold
them down, offer them a way up. Give
them a path to follow, as students and
apprentices to your own Work who can
help you now while securing their own
futures. If a paying gig comes your way
that’s not lucrative enough for you or
your peers, consider kicking that gig to
your apprentices instead of turning it
down outright. If you don’t, the odds
are good that someone at that level will
take the gig anyway; rewarding artists
who work outside the system instead of
those who are loyally paying their dues
and learning from you. And pay
attention to what’s happening in the
lower reaches of the Scene, because
there is magic being born down there,
and you can stay relevant and
engaged by keeping track. Believe in
yourself. You got here because you're a
creative bad-ass with great ideas who
works hard. Stay that person. Don't rest
on your laurels. Take risks. Embrace the
new. Never fall off, and you can keep
this up until you're old and gray, and
the young people will still like you and
come to see your shows when all your
friends are dead.
To the young up-and-comers, I say:
Don't be in too much of a hurry.
Respect
the
game.
Resist
the
temptation to compete with the pros
for the big money gigs—it may not be
obvious to you, but you’re hurting your
own future by lowering the standards of
pay and quality. Better to find an
experienced troupe or individual whose
work you respect, and offer yourself to
them as an apprentice. The art hustle
can be like an old-fashioned guild
system, chaotic and informal as it is,
and it’s the surest way to progress from
a novice to a true master of your form. If
you can’t find the right people to
follow, or if what you’re doing is so
unique that a more-developed version
plain doesn’t exist, then refine your craft
and your concepts in the Underground
venues that will allow you to do
whatever you want and pay you a few
bucks for doing it. If you've got It, that
special Thing, not the notes you play or
the notes you don't play but THE OTHER
THING; then in time someone like me will
notice. That person will invite you in and
find a place for you in their productions.
And once you've spent some time at
that level, making a little money and
quitting your job and really getting
serious about practicing and training
and creating new material, you can
make the next leap to something even
bigger. It’s out there—in spite of
everything, there are still plenty of
people in the world making their living in
the arts, and for most of us it’s a pretty
sweet deal. You can make it, and the
smart and ethical way is to pay your
dues and learn from the people who
have already made it.
And me? I'll still be here, in the middle
ground, typing away on a mattress on
the floor of my attic, eyes wide open for
what's
coming
next.
For
some
combination of reasons that I can’t sort
out, this is the Work that interests me;
and I’m satisfied to look back at a rich
15-year history of truly wonderful artists
that I’ve been able to help along the
way to something better. I’m getting
kind of old now, and wondering if I
should have spent all that energy on
promoting and developing my own
artistry instead. Like, if I had gone on
singing for bands, or developed my
crazy scrap metal percussion project, or
continued to study and work with butoh
dancers, or any of the other things I
used to do; maybe now I would be
traveling the world getting paid big
bucks to perform like so many of my
peers. And if my aunt had balls, she’d
be my uncle. Fuck it, right? Stay the
course, make the Work, hope it all turns
out OK. That’s my philosophy. It may not
be much, but it’s all I’ve got. – N.
15
16
16 SWIM INTO SUMMER
Interview of Amy Snyder By Elle Stanger
Amy Snyder: My background would be
best described as a childhood
addiction to handicrafts—beading,
hand sewing, knitting, crocheting,
needlepoint, et cetera—combined with
an intense awareness of beautiful
women, and a love for dancing. I was
blessed with the ability to craft with my
hands and quickly proceeded to
commercial patterns and a sewing
machine. I didn't have the discipline to
"follow directions", so my garments
never really turned out the way I
envisioned, although my mother tried
her best to be patient with me. My
refinement came when I went to
college, at the Art Institute of Portland,
where I was given formal training on the
process of fashion, from start to finish. I
was a figure skater competitively for
years, and the outfits were so
expensive. I started making my own.
Originally, in college, that's what I
wanted to do—design and make figure
skating costumes.
TB: What do you specialize in?
AS: Phases of my life. At one point, I was
highly skilled at beading. Another, I was
making custom corsets and bustiers.
Then another, I was making silk cocktail
gowns and tailored jackets. For the last
seven years, I've been specializing in
swimwear and extreme stretch knits.
Along with that, customizing my designs
in order to fit a clients needs.
TB: Where have you been featured?
AS: It's hard to say, because I sell my
clothing to people all over the world,
and it's hard to know where it ends up.
But I've worked with some amazing
photographers, like, Steve Prue from
New York who has photographed my
designs on some familiar faces. Daniel
Hoyt, aka Danger Ninja has also taken
my designs on tour with him, and I've
seen my suits pop up on some really
well known models. I've been featured
TB: What makes your designs unique?
AS: I wouldn't say that my designs are
unique, really. I follow the trends, and
produce designs that I think people will
want. However, what makes my designs
different is the ability to customize. Since
I do all my own patterns, someone can
ask for minor changes to be made—in
size, shape or silhouette—to make the
garment perfect for their body type.
The ability to collaborate with a
designer on a garment just for you, is
unique. The customer gets to bring their
issues, concerns and ideas to the table.
I rarely produce the exact same
garment twice. It truly is custom, it truly is
as close to couture as you can get,
when you buy directly from the
designer.
TB: You seem to use social media to
advertise and sell your product. How do
you do so, and how do you think that
social media has affected fashion, if at
all?
AS: Social media has become free
advertising.
Instagram,
Facebook,
Twitter, Pintrest, et cetera, are all easy to
use advertising tools that allow potential
customers to see my work on real
people, in real time. When you open a
Vogue, you see a model who doesn't
represent the average body type, in a
photograph taken by a professional
photographer with help of photoshop
and makeup artists, that make the
viewer think, "Wow, what a beautiful
garment. It would never look like that
on me." With my social media, I use real
customers, of all shapes and sizes,
wearing my suits, taking their own
photos, being their own testimonial for
AmyElizabeth Couture.
THE BURRO LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE: What is
your background in fashion or clothing
design?
in Exotic Magazine as a Designer of the
Month. I've done travelling fashion
shows, like Sugar Art and Fashion Show
as well as RAW Artists. I've seen some of
my suits used in SuicideGirl.com photo
sets. It's always a trip to find something
I've made on a beautiful model, in a
beautiful photograph.
TB: What are you best at, in regards to
sewing?
AS: Guess-timating. That sounds silly. But
it means a lot. Guessing what is going to
be trending, style wise, silhouette wise,
color wise, etc. Guessing which cut will
look best on which body type, and
Photography by Danger Ninja
17 17
Here in the moist, mossy forests of the
northwest sprouts local swimwear
designed by Amy Snyder. Each year,
she presents a new line of swimwear just
in time for the hot, summer season. We
are pleased to present the 2014 line by
AmyElizabeth Couture.
overlooks swimwear when it comes to
fashion shows. Perhaps I'd be more
popular in sunnier, beach towns.
TB: What, if anything, would you change
about high-end couture, fast fashion or
runway?
AS: I don't think I would change much
or anything about high-end couture, or
runway. Truthfully, it's an art form that
the basis of trends are based on. Highend, designer couture from fashion
houses are usually one of a kind, and
the epitome of clothing art. The fantasy
couture art is basically created as
inspiration for what you can do with
fabric, the body, and aesthetics. It's not
functional, or wearable, in daily life
unless you're Lady Gaga. The only thing
that I wish I could change, about the
fashion industry, is the sweatshops; the
crap clothing that we buy and toss is
made there. There have been so many
building collapses in the last few years
that have resulted in total tragedy in
impoverished
countries.
It's
heart
breaking. How would I change it? I
don't have the answers. I would say
create awareness of it, and encourage
local designer shopping.
TB: There are some arguments to be
made regarding the waste that can be
generated with fast fashion, i.e., tons of
materials and fabrics that end up in
landfills, what are you thoughts on that?
AS: Thankfully, we live in Portland, where
re-sale clothing stores are a plenty. It's
at least trendy in the Northwest to have
a taste for vintage and re-usable items.
There are plenty of designers that utilize
second hand garments, reshape them
and resell them. Unfortunately, again, I
don't have any answers. I tend to not
find much interest in fast fashion, as I
gain more knowledge about my body
type and what looks best on it.
where the garment will need to be
tighter, longer, looser, etc. Guesstimating. Who knew you could make a
career out of educated guessing?
TB: What is challenging, in regards to
sewing?
AS: Explaining to people who don't sew,
what it is that I do. I get emails or
questions, frequently, from people
wanting a brand new garment that I've
never made, to be made for them. I
have to explain:1.) I have to design it, to
make sure we are communicating the
same idea; 2.) I have to pattern it; 3.) I
have to make a sample garment to
make sure the kinks are worked out; 4.)
Fabric has to work with the design or
needs to be ordered; 5.) I usually have
18
about 3-4 orders I'm currently working
on, so it's going to take time before I
can even look at yours. People have a
hard time understanding this. This is why
I've simply stopped patterning new
garments during peak season, and save
new design requests until October or
November, when I have time to design
next year's line. If it's a simple addition or
tweak to a design I already have, it's
simple to do. If it's a completely new
garment, it becomes a process.
TB: Do you have any upcoming events?
AS: I don't. This probably irritates me the
most. It's spring, soon to be summer,
and I know there are many fashion
shows going on soon. I feel as though
the Portland fashion world completely
TB: A lot of your designs go around the
country and you say you'd perhaps do
better in beach towns, would you ever
consider uprooting?
AS: I have a lot of love for Portland.
However, I've made my bed here, so to
speak. Portland is what has inspired me
to be what I am, and where I am today.
I wouldn't be running my swimwear
business if it weren't for the strip club
industry I've pulled so much inspiration
from. Of course, ideally, I'd like to travel
more and set up shop somewhere with
a warmer climate and therefore greater
need for swimwear.
TB: What would you hope to see from
the next generation of designers?
AS: I would hope that the next
generation
of
designers
finds
themselves, and isn't afraid to take a
unique detour for inspiration. Have faith
in your skills and ideas. Sometimes, I
have ideas for designs that don't come
around for 5-10 years, and then I kick
myself for not doing it first. I'd like to see
more collaboration and co-creating
with mixed medias to recreate fashion.
TB: What inspires you?
AS: Inspiration to me, for my designs
comes from color-ways and trends, and
the dancers, performers and clients I've
worked with over the last 7 years. Each
dancer chooses to represent herself
however she finds herself to be the most
attractive. This usually results in a style
sense or comfort level that is
compatible with their body type.
Working around women who are
comfortable in their own skin is definitely
inspiring. My personal inspiration, as in,
what motivates me as a human being is
the desire to do it all. I want to be a
great mother, a fast bartender who sells
the most, the most sought after dancer,
the designer everyone wants something
from, the boss lady. All while keeping it
humble and with full gratitude. Striving
to constantly out do myself is my
motivation.
TB: What is your design process?
AS: Each fall, after the swimsuit season is
on the decline, I sort through my scraps
of magazines, and photos I've saved,
and start sketching. I sketch about 20
designs. From those 20, I veto a few,
combine a few, and re-work a few.
Normally ending up with about 10-15
designs. Then, I start patterning each
piece, name them, and place them in
plastic baggies. Then, I choose fabrics,
and fabric colors, order them and
begin the sample sewing process. If all
goes well with the sample garments
(which never happens—adjustments
usually always need to be made), I
create my line that will be used for the
year, in photo shoots and fashion
shows.
TB: Most institutions and industries tend
to be male dominated. Do you see any
gender differences in fashion?
AS: Fashion, is ultimately, for the female.
Even if you have male designers, or
male owned companies with male
CEO's and head honchos, it's all for the
women. Even women dress for women.
Not many industries are like that. It's all
for the pleasure of a woman. Even men
who enjoy the company of men, love a
woman's approval when it comes to
fashion. When a woman compliments
you on your clothing, or presentation of
yourself, it's far superior to a man’s
opinion. I don't know why this is, but a
woman's approval, in the fashion world,
is the be-all, end all.
TB: What have you designed for men?
What are your capabilities with male
apparel or clothing?
AS: I have a few styles for men. A lot of
the heterosexual men of the world are
afraid to wear the styles I have
available. They fear it contradicts their
sexuality. Which is ironic to me,
because the styles I've designed are
very closely comparable to the
spandex shorts that UFC fighters or
wrestlers wear. I wish men saw spandex
shorts as motivation to look good in
them, the way that women look at a
bikini each year. They see it, they know
they're going to be wearing it, so they
spend hours at the gym, or dieting to
feel confident in their swimsuit. Men,
instead of rising to the challenge, pass it
off as a less masculine fashion. Men
would be more fun to design for if
they'd just get over it and have some
fun with their bodies.
TB: Are you left handed or right handed?
AS: Leftie-for-life.
You can find more AmyElizabeth
Couture swimwear and party wear at
www.etsy.com/shop/PistolitaLaMuerta.
!
!
!
!
THE BURRO
LIFESTYLE
MAGAZINE
theburrozine.com
19
MINING FOR SUNSTONE
By Josh the Terrible
While most of my friends are gearing up
for their summer festival plans, I too am
making plans for my summer…but they
are very different plans than most. As
soon as mid-April rolls around, I wake up
with one thing on my mind every day.
Mining. Yep, that’s right. I don’t need
much more than a pick and a shovel
although, I must say, having the “luxury”
of
backhoes,
excavators,
and
jackhammers sure does help a lot. I
love lots of different stones but my
number one passion is Oregon
Sunstone. It’s the state gem of Oregon
and is very rare. Most Oregonians have
never heard of it.
Out of all of the experiences I’ve ever
had, mining could very well be the most
satisfying and fulfilling experience I’ve
had the great fortune of discovering.
And why is that? Well, I think it has
something to do with the heart of what
makes us special as humans: our
insatiable curiosity.
For millennia,
humans have been finding shiny rocks
and attaching great value to them.
Gems and jewels have been symbols of
royalty and great wealth and even
believed
to
possess
supernatural
powers.
And these beliefs still carry on today.
The gemstone industry relies heavily on
people’s belief that certain stones can
get rid of negativity, enhance your
chakra’s, cure ailments, etc. People
often ask me what attributes this stone
or that stone may have. I usually tell
them, “Some people believe that this
stone can _____________.” But, for me,
the real magic happens when I pull a
beautiful stone out of the ground and I
am the very first person to ever see it.
It’s been lying there, hidden, encased in
lava rock for millions of years. Now, that
is magic.
So what is Oregon Sunstone? Well, a
gemologist would tell you that it is a
plagioclase feldspar of the labradorite
variety similar in chemical composition
to andesine. So what the hell does that
mean? Well, feldspar is quite common,
which is generally a clear yellow-ish
color
often
described
as
“Champagne”. You can find it all over
the earth. But only in Oregon does it
have copper in it. This is what makes it
so rare. The copper is arranged in
platelets and depending on the size of
the platelets, will exhibit a wide range of
colors. From light pinks and oranges to
deeply saturated, ruby red colors that
could be worth $600+ per carat once
faceted. Even more rare are the green
20
variety that can tend towards greenblue/teal for the most desirable stones.
More astonishing yet is a phenomenon
in Oregon Sunstone called dichroism
that only occurs in a small number of
gem varieties around the world. In
simple terms, it means that you could
look at it in one direction and it will
appear red and then if you rotate the
stone 90 degrees, it will appear green.
The effect must be seen in person in
order to fully appreciate its splendor.
Interestingly, scientists don’t even
understand how it works!
It all started about 7 years ago. My
girlfriend at the time saw some sort of
treasure hunting show on TV and said,
“We should go try that on our
vacation.” She talked my dad in to it
and the three of us made plans to visit
the mine that they had seen on TV.
It took us nearly nine hours to get there.
That part, I didn’t mind at all. Growing
up, my parents would take us to L.A.
every other summer to visit my grandma
so I’ve always loved traveling. Plus, with
this trip, I got to see parts of Oregon that
I’d never seen before. It was only the
last 30 miles or so of the trip where I
started to second-guess our decision.
As we left a tiny town called Plush and
followed the crude directions that we
had printed off the Internet, the road
turned to gravel and the road became
increasingly worse.
The washboard
roads made our whole vehicle vibrate
uncontrollably.
We finally arrived at the Spectrum
Sunstone Mine. Their staff was super
friendly and helpful. We told them it
was our first time out there and they
explained the different options that we
had for digging, helped us get set up,
and checked up on us frequently to see
if we had questions. We had a blast! I
had no idea how fun it would be to
discover buried treasure.
We drove home recounting the
highlights of our trip. Soon after arriving
back in town, I started thinking about
what we should do with the bags of
gems that we had mined. I did a little
research and discovered that you get
them faceted in to gemstones! Well,
that sounded fun! It turned out that
there was a group in Portland that
teaches you how to facet gems so we
signed up for the class and learned how
to cut gemstones. The instructors loved
me. They said I was a natural. We
joined their club (Columbia Willamette
Faceters Guild) and have been
members ever since. Not long after, I
began teaching gemstone faceting
both for the guild and offering private
instruction. I learned how to cut a
variety of stones (Emerald, Sapphire,
Tanzanite, and many others), but my
favorite was always Oregon Sunstone.
It was my first love. I also began a
silversmith apprenticeship with a jeweler
who specialized in Oregon Sunstone
and worked for the Ponderosa mine. I
learned a lot from this man and I highly
value the experience I gained from him.
I now possessed the skills to take a stone
from the ground, cut it in to any design I
wanted, and mount it in jewelry.
Going in to our second season, we met
Randy Reinikka at a gem show who
had a giant green sunstone on display.
We chatted for a while and we told him
that we were interested in getting our
own mining claims. He was also very
friendly and helpful. He said there was
some unclaimed land near some of his
claims and he even gave us the
necessary paperwork that we needed
to file with the BLM. We’ve been friends
with Randy ever since.
A year later, Randy told us about a new
spot that he and his partner, Dave, had
discovered while out walking around
the desert. He said they were finding
large crystals on the surface and gave
us directions to the new spot. Me, my
(new) girlfriend, and my friend Blake
followed the directions and I was very
surprised at how far the new spot was
from the known Sunstone area. Like, 10
miles! What were they doing walking
around the harsh desert environment all
the way out here?! Well, sure enough,
we found lots of large Sunstone all
around the hill that they had described.
It was a year later and Randy had
moved his main operations to the new
spot and began digging.
Some
geologists came out that year and
determined that we were digging on a
dormant volcano, or more specifically,
a cinder cone. They believed that this
was one of the original sources of the
lava flow that created the Sunstone in
the first place, which explained the
large size and high quality stones. We
began hearing about stones being
found that were 1000+ carats, which
was virtually unheard of at the other
mines.
This is where I have been
digging ever since and I have a lot of
high quality stones to show for it.
But even if there were no stones here in
the remote regions of Oregon’s desert, I
would still come out here. For me,
there’s nothing like it. I love waking up
to the sound of coyote’s yipping and
desert sounds being carried by the
wind. The majestic Hart Mountain in the
distance is about the only thing that
keeps your bearings in an otherwise
rolling sea of sagebrush that extends for
as far as the eye can see in all
directions. There is all kinds of wildlife
that you just don’t see back in the city—
jackrabbits,
rattlesnakes,
scorpions,
owls, antelope, kangaroo rats, horny
toads, lizards, prairie dogs, and many
other critters. I love the early springtime
when the desert flowers are in full
bloom. It just so happens to be located
in the very best star gazing region in the
entire country as well.
And there always seems to be
something odd and unique happening
out there. I remember the first time that
we saw military planes practicing their
aerial maneuvers overhead. They were
dropping flares and occasionally flying
very low to the ground. Sonic booms
are pretty badass although they will
scare the shit out of you if it happens at
6 a.m. when you’re still asleep!
On one of my many trips out to the
Sunstone mines, I decided to go
exploring. I am convinced that there
must be undiscovered deposits of
Sunstone and if I could be the first to
discover one, and stake a claim, I could
be sitting on land worth millions.
Anyway, I hiked towards an expanse of
desert that, to my knowledge, had
never been explored, except by cattle
and possibly the cowboys who herded
them back in the 50’s. I followed some
natural contours of the land hoping that
I might find signs of Sunstone coming
out of an outcrop or plateau. I saw an
interesting ridge in the distance and
decided to investigate. I knew I would
be able to see the lay of the land much
easier than where I was currently.
When I got on top, I could see a dry
lakebed on one side and some rolling
hills on the other. Walking a little bit
further, I began to see obsidian chips all
over the place. I knew what this meant.
I had happened upon an old Native
American lookout spot where they
would carve their arrowheads and
hunt, likely for deer and antelope
coming to drink from the lake at dusk.
Aside from the many obsidian chips, I
found a few really nice arrowheads and
one spearhead.
I also found one
arrowhead made from green obsidian.
This was a significant find in my mind
since it has been believed that the
Natives from this area traded for
obsidian from the tribes around the
Glass Butte area, but there is no green
obsidian from that area. I believe they
may have also traded with the tribes
from the Davis Creek area in Northern
California.
It’s really something special to realize
that you are likely the first human to set
foot in an area for possibly hundreds of
years. Even more so to close your eyes,
listen to the wind, and imagine what
their life must have been like; to see the
many caves nearby and realize that
they must have called some of them
home.
There is a lot of lore associated with
Sunstone and Native Americans. In fact,
it is said that their graves have been
discovered with large Sunstones and
that they believed that they harnessed
the power of the sun. It’s easy to
imagine why when you see a big, bright
schiller variety. I’ve also heard several
stories about Native American ghosts
out there.
One miner in particular
swears that his claims are haunted. I
don’t believe in superstitious things, but
one night, when my dad and I were the
only two people at the mine, we both
heard what could only be described as
human
footsteps
making
slow,
calculated steps across our gravel
parking lot. We got up to see who or
what could possibly be there in the
middle of the night and there was no
sign of anybody or anything. To this
day, it remains a mystery. The nearest
mine/camp is about 12 miles away, a
ridiculous distance for a human to
traverse at night across the open
desert. Could it have been a cougar?
An elk? A wolf? I have no idea. But I
know what I heard…
On another occasion, we had dug a
test hole to see if there was any
Sunstone in the area and, about 10 feet
down, came across a small lava tube.
Interestingly, the air coming out of it was
very cool. And it had calcite crystals all
over it. A few nights later, as the story
goes, in the middle of the night, the
miners were awoken by the sound of a
woman screaming. Mind you, this is
about as “the middle of nowhere” as
you can get. To hear an unknown
woman screaming bloody murder is
extremely unsettling. With flashlights in
hand, the miners began following the
sound of the voice. It led them to the
test hole and the exposed lava tube.
The sound must have been caused by
the air escaping from the vent—unless
you believe in ghosts. They filled in the
hole the next day.
It always amazes me how one
seemingly simple decision, to go dig in
the dirt for a weekend, could turn in to
a lifelong obsession. So, enjoy your
summer festivals, my friends. I’ll look
forward to hearing your stories. But, as
for me, I’ll be treasure hunting.
For further questions about mining or to
inquire about purchasing Oregon
Sunstone: [email protected]
21
If you can walk,
The Burro Lifestyle Magazine
Photography by Scott Belding
You can dance.
THE BURRO
Vol. 2, Issue 2, Summer 2014
www.theburrozine.com
LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE
If you can talk,
You can sing.
WANDERLUST CIRCUS
Featuring original artwork by Sam Roloff
The Burro Lifestyle Magazine met up with the leaders of Wanderlust Circus, Noah Mickens
and Nick D’Creature, in late spring as they were getting ready to kick off a summer tour at
the Sasquatch Music Festival performing all weekend long with the Super Geek League.
Interview of Nick D’Creature
by Josh the Terrible
Interview of Noah Mickens
by Ari Lynn
THE BURRO LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE: Tell me about Nick D’Creature
and how you got involved with Wanderlust Circus.
THE BURRO LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE: Tell me about the Noah Mickens
story and how you got here where you are now with Wanderlust
Circus.
Nick D’Creature: Nick D’Creature is this guy who is just trying to
do his thing. I got this thing where I’m really into helping people
realize their own potential and succeed in their own dreams
outside of the conformity of mainstream society.
TB: That’s really important to you?
NDC: It is.
TB: Why do you think that is? Most people don’t approach life
that way.
NDC: It just is. That’s a difficult question to answer. I just feel that
so many people feel trapped in the world that they’re in. It’s the
way that I felt when I was in Houston and wasn’t exposed to
much counterculture at all. I was really frustrated. I was stuck in
this life with these parameters that I don’t identify with. When I
moved to the West Coast I discovered things like Burning Man,
and in San Francisco the Cacophony Society and all these
different things in like 2001, I realized that it didn’t have to be
that way. You could completely live within these cultures that
have value systems that make more sense to me. I see a lot of
people out there they just feel discordant. They’re cognitively
dissonant because it has to be this way. If you show them an
example that it doesn’t have to be that way then you see their
eyes light up and you see their lives change and they start
producing things. The more people I can open up—as long as
they want to—I feel like I’m doing good work.
Noah Mickens: The story of how it came to pass that I was the
ringmaster and co-owner of a circus is not a simple story at all.
What it isn’t is that I went to performing arts college and got a
degree in acting or stagecraft, and then went and started a
show and then it was a show. That’s not how it was. It was a
much more roundabout, complex tale than that. I was raised in
a pretty unstable household. We moved around a lot. In my
childhood, I was really into singing and acting when I could do it,
because my mother had been an actress, so I got involved in
summer workshop programs and classes in school and stuff like
that and even did some performing. We never stayed put for
very long at all, so I never had a chance to really get involved
with anything like that in an ongoing way. I am a natural frontbend contortionist—I’m very flexible overall, but my hips are very
flexible—and still to this day without stretching out or preparing in
any way, I can put both my feet behind my head and stand up
on one foot with the other foot behind my head. It got to the
point where I was insanely flexible and I started doing my frontbend contortion routine at the renaissance festival in Kansas
City. I did that for a while, we got off the street, and there was a
long period of time where I really wasn’t doing anything you
would call circus. I was singing for rock and roll bands. I was a
rock and roll singer and writing. I got really into drugs and
everything. I went through a number of bands and one of them
finally stuck, and we started doing a bunch of shows in L.A. in a
very small-time, local way, became very popular.
27
…interview with Nick D’Creature continued…
TB: You feel like that
started when you moved to the West Coast?
NDC: Absolutely. Both my parents are Gypsy musicians, but
growing up in Houston everything was really competitive. Both
my parents are really bohemian, so it was always instilled in me
with the values I had growing up, but I was surrounded by this
environment that didn’t match up with that. It was so confusing.
TB: Where’d you move to first? The Bay Area?
NDC: I moved to San Francisco. At the time I was working at
Starbucks. I transferred to another Starbucks there. The hardest
thing about moving there is getting a job. I had a job. I had a
friend and slept on his couch for a few months. I got my own
place, and started working my way up there. And I finally got to
do it! I got to go to Burning Man! It was a great Burning Man
experience. Not one a lot of people talk about as their first
Burning Man experience. I didn’t know nothing about it. I didn’t
even read the survival guide. Me and this one dude I went with
we set up our tent on one of the outer roads. I didn’t have a
clue. I didn’t even know what a theme camp was. I just went. I
told somebody I like the “lot” scene and they told me I should
come here. So what’s up Burning Man! It was cool. I met some
people, but not anybody I’ve had any lasting relationships with. I
saw some cool stuff and got laid out there. I remember I got
naked around people, which was a big deal for me at the time.
If you know me now… So, going out there, I remember my
thought at the time was, “Wow, this is really cool. There’s this
counterculture thing going on out here and it’s one week out of
the year. What if my whole life was like this? What if every day
was like this?”
TB: So, Burning Man was actually fairly profound for you then?
NDC: Absolutely. Some people think that I don’t like Burning Man
or I’m over it or something like that because I don’t go anymore,
but really when it comes down to it, Burning Man showed me a
way of life that was so profound to me that I wanted to make
my entire life like that. I’ve so succeeded in that that going to
28
…interview with Noah Mickens continued…
TB: You were like 17 or 18 at this time?
NM: The band that I’m referring to—Poor Old Timer—I think I
started playing with when I was maybe even at the end of my
16th year, so, yes, 17, 18, 19 was the rock and roll period of my
life. I got real into drugs and was kind of getting into crime and
stuff like that. I met this woman, Robin, and shortly thereafter I
quit the drugs and she and I were building a little life together
and got jobs and got an apartment and got married and had a
baby. Then all of our friends moved to Portland. Me and her and
everyone we knew all moved to Portland.
TB: We’re talking old-school Portland, now, right? When was that?
NM: 1996 is when I moved here. For a little while I wasn’t doing
any art, which is really hard for people to imagine that know
about the rest of my life. This really was the only part of my life
that I wasn’t.
TB: You didn’t come to Portland because it was this cool art
scene, because back then it was still a rough rocker town, right?
NM: It was rough. There was still a lot of great stuff happening
here already. For a few years I just had dead-end jobs and it was
real shitty. Me and the wife broke up. I ended up with the kids. I
was a single dad just working jobs. Then in 1999 I started doing
shows and it had a lot to do with falling in with a group called 2
Gyrlz Performative Arts. 2 Gyrlz were the freaky, weird,
underground kind of art collective presenting organization of the
time and were really quite prominent, locally. There were a lot of
articles about us all the time. Falling in with them, I became
quickly acquainted with a lot of amazing artists that includes
some folks who are still around today. There was another sort of
sister group called Kaosmosis that sort of evolved into the March
Forth Marching Band. So through them that’s how I met AWOL,
who are still the primary aerialists that I use in the circus. I met
them and met a lot of other folks and started doing my own
music series called the Thirty-Six Invisibles. The Thirty-Six Invisibles
was at the J a s m i n e Tree Tiki Lounge, w h i c h was this real
Burning Man is kind
of limiting. I can’t get away with the shit that I
cool
little place that used to be over by PSU [Portland State University].
I did all my shows over there starting in 1999 and through about
2004. I had a band back then that was a scrap metal and found
object percussion improvisation. For me personally, that was my
primary creative outlet was this band, making this music in
addition to booking and presenting other artists. So, you know, it
all happened pretty fast for me when I went from being this guy
with a bunch of jobs raising a couple of kids to being really in the
heart and in the thick of things. During that same period I
became really involved in the scene at Sinferno Cabaret. At first,
mostly because I was playing a lot with Soriah—that’s Enrique
Ugalde, throat singer and ritual performer—doing scrap metal in
his band as well. Sinferno itself used to be a lot more artsy than it
is now. It was always like strippers, and fire dancers, and circus,
but there was more of an element then that was more
experimental and underground performance art than it is now.
In Portland, back then, the whole circus scene was in the
underground. We didn’t have any mainstream visibility at all.
can do in my own house out there. There’s just more people and
more big art. The fact of the matter is that I’ve been so
successful in making my life what I found out there that it would
actually detract from the awesomeness that is my life. I’ve been
back. It’s cool. You drop a couple of grand and get an art car or
theme camp.
TB: There’s this aspect of Nick D’Creature where I feel like you’re
in the echelon of the top three percent where you have these
big grand ideas and you actually make them happen. Most
people don’t do that. Most people have big ideas, but they don’t
follow through and make them happen for themselves, but you
do. Do you think that started from those Burning Man days?
NDC: That’s really hard to say. I feel like I’m a product of my
environment. I feel like all living things are a product of their
environment. It wasn’t until I got into the environment that was
there on the West Coast that I was able to flourish, but if I really
think about it and what gave me the drive to do this and
manifest these things and to turn my dreams into something real,
it’s gotta be my mom. It’s gotta by my mom believing in me and
making me feel like there aren’t any limitations in my life. Anyone
that knows my mom knows she’s an amazing woman. She’s
written 11 books on how to play the violin. She’s the most
supportive, caring person. I think that has played a really big part
in it. Having somebody believe in you and telling you that you
don’t have to settle. Having that, I think is a really big foundation
for my ability to be able to manifest, and coming to a culture
where people facilitate that.
TB: Tell me about the circus.
NDC: I’ll tell you about how the circus started. It’s not necessarily
the story of how Wanderlust Circus started, but it’s how the circus
started for me. When I was living in San Francisco I developed a
lot of friendships with circus people because they’re interesting.
These were a lot of people that I was hanging out with and I was
living in this warehouse collective art space called CELLspace. It
was like 10,000 square feet with a consensus decision-making
Board of Directors and a non-profit. I was the AV director there.
TB: So, is this how you got back into the circus?
NM: I used to emcee a lot of the 2 Gyrlz shows and Thirty-Six
Invisibles shows because I’ve got the gift of the gab. It’s
something that’s always been true about me even before I
made a profession out of it. So, I had booked a band called the
Moe!kestra!. This guy Moe Staiano was also in a scrap metal
percussion band out of Oakland. There I am emceeing the
Moe!kestra! and the Liminal Space. It was a really well attended
event because it was in the newspaper. There was a guy in the
audience named Tony St. Claire, who was very, very important,
because he is the guy that got me back in the circus. He saw me
emceeing and liked the cut of my jibe, or whatever, and after
the show asked me if I would be the ringmaster of his circus.
Now, his circus had never performed before. When you speak of
his circus, it represents basically a hustle he had put together
with the McMenamin Brothers. They had recently opened up the
Crystal Ballroom and the idea was that this would be a high-end,
ongoing dinner circus that they could call their own sort of like
Teatro Zinzanni. I said yes, and started talking with Tony about it.
It became clear that he had no actual circus performers. I
talked to him and was like, “I actually know a lot of circus
29
TB: How long had it been running when you came on?
NDC: 10 years. I was there about a year-and-a-half. In my time
there, I remember my mom came out to visit me. One night, we
were just hanging out and she said, “I would like to take you out
to dinner, and if money were no object, where would you like to
go?” I was like, “Teatro Zinzanni, hands down.” Teatro Zinzanni is
a circus dinner show. We got tickets. There was a last minute
cancellation. We saw the show. It was a beautiful combination
of top-notch, world-class circus, and singing. When we saw the
show there—the band was playing over here, there were
performances over there, and food service—we were like, “We
could do this.” I was living at that warehouse space at the time
and I was like, “I’m going to do this.” So what I did is I developed
a Gypsy dinner circus called Circo Romani, because having
been raised in a family of Gypsy musicians, this music was just
indoctrinated in me. It’s in my blood and in my head. You don’t
know what it’s like to have Bulgarian folk music in 11/16 time
signature in your head! From birth! It’s a weird thing. I decided
that if I could take this music and this circus thing and put them
together and make this beautiful thing and take this work that
my parents do—because they’re independent musicians doing
this important thing—they’re an important part of culture
because they’re artisans—and I feel very strongly about being a
third-generation artist. My grandmother is an artist. She writes
and illustrates children’s books. Being an artisan, I feel very
strongly about. It’s a legacy that I’m part of. A really big part of
humans is to feel a part of something greater than themselves.
Circo Romani, the Gypsy dinner circus, we did it at CELLspace.
TB: Was that a monthly thing?
NDC: No, no. It was nine nights. It was just one run. I was the
ringmaster. I was on stilts, and I was the Gypsy ringmaster. I
talked in this really fake Gypsy accent. We got this woman that
was part of this local Gypsy group that had this restaurant called
Taste of Roma and she did all the catering for us. It was
traditional Gypsy food. There wasn’t actually hedgehog in the
stew, but there was goulash, and all these other traditional
dishes. I found these old Gypsy folktales and incorporated them
into the show. We had a guy in a bear costume that was rollerskating and causing havoc all over the place and a four-course
meal. It was over Valentine’s Day weekend. Of course, this
wasn’t a new thing. People have been doing dinner circus all
over Europe for ages, and it was inspired by Teatro Zinzanni.
During that time, I just decided, “This is it. This is what I want to
do.”
30
performers.”
I brought in AWOL Dance. I brought in Pandora, the
sword swallower, and the Fire Ninja, and Cherry, and Peach,
who were all fire dancers of one kind or another from the
Sinferno scene. I put a bunch of the band together, too. There
was no gypsy circus band that existed in Portland at the time
that I knew of anyway, so we made one. We managed to
convince the local press that we were a hundred year-old circus
family from Romania. Somehow they went for it, and every press
article we interviewed in character for all the newspapers, and
went on TV on A.M. Northwest and I think another morning show
in character, in accent, and it didn’t tip the hand at all. We were
like, “This is who we are. We are a Romanian circus.” And then all
went for it and wrote articles describing this fictional history of us
and who we were and how exciting it was that we were coming
to Portland.
Based on that campaign of lies and deception, it was a hugely
attended show. They put out tables and chairs but with that set
up, it sold out. We were getting ready to do this even better
second show when all of a sudden something went weird with
the deal, with the money deal in whatever back room
negotiations, which I was not a part of. I was not involved, which
was a rookie mistake, so we discovered—at least what Tony
said—that although we had sold out the Crystal Ballroom, they
didn’t give him any money at all, and had an expense sheet. He
was probably being straight with me. Tony was a good guy, but
whatever happened, he got so discouraged by it that he not
only dropped our second gig, he pretty quickly pulled up stakes
and moved to Chicago. So there I am. I’ve had this huge
breakthrough. I’ve had this amazing show combining all these
amazing performers that was very successful and well known,
and I pretty much saw that I could keep on doing this. I could
take all these performers and make another show. So I did, and
it was called Societas Insomnia.
TB: So, the move to Portland, how did that happen?
We did Societas Insomnia. It was great. We did it at the
Roseland. We did it at Mt. Tabor. At this time, I still have a day
job. I’m working the whole time. At that time I was working at a
marketing agency as an account executive. It was about this
time that my kids went to go live with their mother. This was
about 2004 or 2005. They left. At that time, it was kind of my
decision. Everything got weird. My girlfriend left. The money was
real bad, and right then their mom was getting back on her feet
in San Diego and wanted them to come live with her for a while
because she hadn’t seen them a bunch for a number of years,
and they wanted to see her, and I felt like it would be nice to
have a break. There I was all of sudden with no kids to take care
of. She didn’t need me to help out with the money at the time,
and I had this opportunity come up, so I just did it.
NDC: That happened because the person I was working with,
Mike Templeton—a great performer and producer, and allaround good person—we had started working on Circo Romani
together and I developed a parent company called
Wanderlust. He really wanted to push the Circo Romani thing,
but I actually started to feel like, “You know, this is cultural
appropriation/exploitation.” I’ve got Roma blood in me and if
you know me, you’ve seen me go off on somebody who calls
themselves a gypsy because they like to travel. It’s not like that.
Even though I have this Roma blood in me, this is cultural
appropriation and it’s not how I want to roll. I wanted to stop
doing Circo Romani, but he didn’t. He didn’t like that idea. I was
hanging out with my girlfriend at the time, who was the costume
designer for the show. Things were sort of falling apart with my
producer. I wanted to do this Wanderlust thing, and he wanted
to do this Circo Romani thing, and I wasn’t feeling it. She was like,
“You know, I used to live in Oregon, and we could get a piece
of land or something like that, so let’s just go to Oregon.” We
packed up the truck and went to Oregon. What I wanted was
land. The idea was that I wanted to get some rural property with
like five acres and a creek where I could do more of a
It was the last time I had a stable day job. I just went to go live on
a school bus with a bunch of freaks and musicians. I brought a
bunch of fire dancers and some of the musicians from my crew.
The tour was very much feast or famine. Sometimes we’d make
a bunch of money at the festivals, and then we’d hit some hard
times and be completely broke and busking on the street for gas
money and eating out of the trash. That whole saga lasted
almost nine months with little breaks here and there. We did
another Societas Insomnia show in the middle of all that. They all
wanted to go to Burning Man, but I didn’t want to go. I was tired.
I was like, “Fuck this, I don’t want to go,” so I stayed in Seattle.
They were at Burning Man when Hurricane Katrina hit New
Orleans, so they all joined this effort called the Third Line Circus
that went to New Orleans guerilla-style. At that point they
weren’t letting people in, but they snuck in and started doing
these crazy runs where they would go out to East Texas and run
charity drive shows getting money and blankets and food and
construction supplies, and then guerilla-style re-enter New
Orleans with all that and were trying to help out that way. It was
a really laudable effort that was one of the earliest on the
ground relief efforts post-Katrina. They weren’t even letting the THE BURRO LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE Vol. 2, Issue 2—Summer 2014
sustainable
living thing. The idea was that I would go through
southern and central Oregon, and if I couldn’t find a place that I
could make it financially then I would land in Portland. And I did,
and I found Noah Mickens, and the rest of it is the Wanderlust
Circus that people know today.
TB: How’d you come up with the name Wanderlust?
NDC: Back when I was working at that collective arts warehouse
in San Francisco, one of my jobs as AV coordinator was to raise
funds for a sound-proofing system. I threw a party. I was really
inspired by the Tribal Fusion Bellydance a way long time ago—
like in 2002 and 2003. I was really blown away by this tribal
culture. It was this new thing that was popping up. I was really
into the aesthetic not just the bellydance. There was this whole
tribal way of life and way of living that was getting back more to
these cultural paradigms that we’ve moved away from in our
modern society. I was so mesmerized and so blown-away by it,
that I really wanted to embody it in the party that I threw for
CELLspace to raise money for the sound dampening stuff that I
wanted to call the party Tribal Dreams. I started putting it
together. I teamed up with a local producer. Actually, at this
party, Bassnectar spun back when he was just Lorin. The thing is, I
wanted to call the party Tribal Dreams, and I sent him all the stuff
for the poster, and he came back to me with the poster and he
said, “Yeah, you know the name Tribal Dreams is actually pretty
stupid, so the name of the party is actually Wanderlust.” He just
changed the name. When the time came for me to create a
parent company, the term Wanderlust really stuck with me.
When I packed up shit and moved to Oregon, Wanderlust just
kept going.
Red
Cross in. But I didn’t go because I didn’t go to Burning Man,
and all of a sudden my whole scene was gone. I was semi-living
in this abandoned building called the U.S. Rubber Building with
all these Butoh dancers and other performers, and my brother,
Sam. I was really immersed in this squatter, performance art life. I
had just written this grant for us all to go to Korea that was
successful, and I was getting ready to go to Korea when I was
contacted by the guys who were opening the Someday
Lounge.
The Someday Lounge was a room that had been discovered by
Shift, which was a suspension troupe. They had found that
venue. It was a big storage space, but they saw the potential in
it, so in just an amazing act of brashness, cleared all the stuff out
of there and threw it in the trash and built a stage and set up a
P.A. system and set up some lights and created a venue in this
room without ever talking with the owner of the building. It was
an incredibly renegade effort.
TB: It’s sort of hard to imagine that right now with the current
situation that the city of Portland is in, especially in that district,
which is highly visible as the “Entertainment District”.
NM: This really was before any of that. There were still a lot of
empty buildings. So, they just did it. 2 Gyrlz got involved in that,
too, and I was going back and forth between Portland and
Seattle and doing stuff in that early, renegade version of that
space, and the guys who ran the Backspace, which was the
space next door, caught wind of what was going on, and they
were helping out. We had the ability to sell non-alcoholic
beverages, so we had our little scene in there. This sort of little THE BURRO LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE Vol. 2, Issue 2—Summer 2014
31
TB: How’d you meet
Noah?
NDC: I first found him online. I show up in Portland. It’s actually a
really great story. He was doing a show at the Someday Lounge.
I came in and I was like, “I’m Nick D’Creature. We talked online. I
do circus stuff.” He was like, “Oh, yeah, cool.” A lot of people
come to this town and say they are going to do stuff so I was like,
“How can I help?” He was like, “Well, I gotta put out all of these
chairs. There are some chairs over there. Put them out.” So, I go
and put out the chairs and come back in five minutes: “What
else?” He was kind of taken aback a little bit because maybe
most people feel like they’re above this or they’re not even
going to offer or if they do it they’re going to fuck it up. I helped
him with the show a little bit. Then, I got asked to do the Village
Building Convergence, which is like city repair and it was their
annual big party. He at the same time got asked to do
Convergence Thirteen, which was like this big goth thing. So we
were like, “ Hey you wanna come help me with my things and I’ll
help you with your thing?” It just kinda kept going. It was a while
before we established that we were doing this together. I would
get a gig and I would call him.
TB: How long between that first time at Someday and you guys
deciding to really do a partnership together?
NDC: I don’t even know I could really say. It just happened so
gradually. For a while we were running two simultaneous shows.
We were running Batty’s Hippodrome and Wanderlust Circus.
Sometimes we would do one and sometimes we would do the
other. We were living together at the time, too, and then that
became the Wanderlust Circus that everyone loves today. He,
like me, is able to see something greater than ourselves and I
think this is why we are able to do what we do. We are able to
see the works and what it is. We see this bigger thing and what it
could be and we’re always striving towards that. The deeper
groove that I can carve into the planet, the better I feel about
the time that I’ve spent here.
TB: If money weren’t an issue, what would you and Noah do with
Wanderlust?
So, to catch us up, I’m about to go to Korea and then the
Backspace guys it turns out through official channels, have
gotten the lease on the room. So they contacted me in Seattle,
and I had a real decision to make. Was I just going to continue
with this rootless, performance art life, or am I going to start a
venue? So, I went to Portland and started a venue. We did a
bunch big shows there. It was really awesome. I feel like we did
some really good shows there. It was getting a ton of attention
from the press. Attendance was quite good. One of the things I
started doing there was another circus. I started doing a circus
called Batty’s Hippodrome. It was one of the first regular nights I
started programming there. Very shortly thereafter, I was
contacted by Nick D’Creature via Tribe.net. So, Creature had
contacted me with this basic message like, “Hey, I, too, am a
guy who runs circuses. I’m in San Francisco, but I think I’m going
to move to Portland, and when I get there we should hook up
and do shows.” Because there was so much press at the time I
was getting a lot of these kinds of contacts from a lot of different
people. There was a lot of hype surrounding the Someday
Lounge. I didn’t completely take him seriously. I was like, “Sure,
come on in to Portland, and when you get here we’ll fuckin’
see.” That was generally what I was telling people at the time.
There were all these people coming out of the woodwork.
NDC: Wanderlust Circus I see as a means to an ends. I want to
develop culture. I feel that our generation and the people that
identify with our values are really spread out and they really
don’t want to identify as anything, but we really are a culture
and there is such a strength in numbers. The other cultures that
are out there, you can see them because they have these
identifying characteristics, and they share value systems. I feel
like there are so many great people out there with great minds,
and they have the same values, and we all want the same
dream, but we’re all off doing our own thing and we’re all
scattered around. Anything that I can do to create a beacon for
people to identify with and gather to I feel like that is what I
really want to do. The circus has provided the best outlet for me
to do that. I feel like if money wasn’t an issue, I would just find
more ways to do that. Right now, we’re in the process of filing for
a 501(c) status and we’re going to become a non-profit, so
maybe that way money won’t be as much of an object as it is
now.
So one night he showed up at one of my Batty’s Hippodrome
shows. He was all done up in this amazing ringmaster costume
with his big white top hat and tailcoat. At that time his girlfriend
was Naia Archer, who is an amazing costume designer, so he
was wearing one of her beautiful, cream-colored ringmaster
circus costumes. That was when he still had his giant dreadlocks.
He was very impressive figure. Right away, he got my attention.
He asked if there was anything he could do to help, and I did
what I always did in that circumstance, which was give him an
unglamorous job to do. I was like, “Yeah, those folding chairs
over there should be set out there. Just set them out because
the audience will be here in half an hour.” I went backstage to
work on my stuff. When I came back out, he had set up the
chairs beautifully. They were perfect in even little rows with a
center aisle and a side aisle. It may sound strange to someone
who doesn’t produce shows—but I know you do—he did it. He
cared. He did the hard work, and didn’t hesitate to do it and
was there waiting and was like, “Okay, what next?” It really
dawned on me right there that this was somebody that I should
pay attention to.
TB: How far would you build this thing?
TB: This was the beginning of a very beautiful thing.
NDC: I would go the whole world if I could.
NM: It was. We teamed up pretty much right away. He had
parked his trailer in the driveway of the Clown House, which at
that time was Dingo Dizmal and his whole crew, and was trying
to get down with them. Within a week of him being here he had
his picture in the newspaper because some reporter from the
Mercury had gotten together with them and gone on some
crazy adventure. He was immediately a public figure here in
town. So, the name Wanderlust Circus had come with him. He
was already using the name. Right away, he and I were working
on Batty’s Hippodrome together, but he was also running
Wanderlust Circus shows. For a while we maintained the two as
separate troupes. We were doing both, but there was just so
much crossover, they were very much the same show.
TB: Besides the circus, what does Nick D’Creature want?
NDC: I just want to hang out and have a good time. I try not to
think about these things! What I want to do is I want to carve this
groove into the planet. I realized at a young age that I was
always going to be a dragon chaser. I’m always looking for a
feeling. There’s a feeling that happens when a certain thing
happens. I’ve come close to death a number of times. I’ve been
in crazy car accidents. I’ve been shot at. I’ve been suicidal at
various times in my life. Death has always been there. The idea of
life and the exhilaration that comes from risking your life—doing
32
collaboration
was going on between the Backspace and all the
freaks that were running shows in there. Finally, we were doing
this huge 2 Gyrlz show there and the Fire Marshall showed up
and was like, “Hey, it’s really crowded in here. Can I see your
capacity rating?” I was sort of running the space, and I was like,
“Haha! You know, it’s actually worse than that. We don’t even
have permission to be in here. All this stuff, we just built it
ourselves.” I just told her that on the spot: “Not only do we not
have a capacity rating or an occupancy rating of any kind,
we’re seriously here illegally. The owner of this building doesn’t
even know we are here or that any of this is happening.” And
she was pretty amazed, and was like, “Well you all have to leave
right now.” I didn’t even live in Portland at the time, so I just went
back to Seattle.
things like extreme
sports—living an extreme lifestyle—you know,
TB: I assume the more you did these shows together, the more
they became similar.
you develop a taste for it. I guess I’m sort of an adrenaline junkie.
There are other chemicals in the brain. It’s not just adrenaline.
You make up these different sort of cocktails that you just sort of
savor and enjoy. I feel like the biggest high that’s out there is that
moment before you die. That one where your life flashes before
your eyes, and that pretty much puts everything in perspective.
In a way, my entire life is for that moment. That day is going to
come whether I mean for it to happen—whether it’s an
intentional death or not—my life is going to flash before my eyes
and I really want it to be a good hit. Everything I do is for that,
and if I want to foster that—and I know myself and I know what I
like—is that I want to see something that’s going to last longer
than the time that my body spent on this planet. I want to
create some sort of legacy. Kids is the default way of making
that happen. I don’t know if that’s going to happen. I like kids,
but not necessarily raising them.
TB: What’s going to happen to the pneumatophone after you
pass?
NDC: I don’t know! I hope somebody will pick it up. I think it
would be great if someone were so inspired by it that they
wanted to take it to the next level.
TB: What is the next level?
NDC: I don’t know! I just made it! The thing about the
pneumatophone is that it’s more than just a pipe organ. It works
on different mediums. All the different things that happen—the
notes that are there, the CO2 that comes out of it, the balloons
that come out of it, the confetti and streamers that come out of
it—those are all parts of the composition of the song that it
makes. It’s a multifaceted instrument.
TB: When you dreamed it up, were those all parts of it?
NDC: That’s hard to say. When I first dreamed it, it was more
percussive pressure type of stuff, but as the dream grew, yes.
And if I really had it my way the pneumatophone would take up
the entire stage and have to be run by several people and the
song that it would create would involve so many different things.
Sure, there would be this pipe organ element to it, but there
would be so many different steams and valves and switches and
clicks. It’s all just valves and levers.
TB: Tell me one thing that you feel that most people
misunderstand about Mr. Creature.
NDC: People think that I don’t like stuff. I was talking to Jay Lieber
the other night about his act. I was like, “Hey I really liked your
act.” He said, “Wow, that’s a huge compliment. I don’t really
NM: At first, he was trying to bring up a lot of his performers from
San Francisco from Circo Romani from the crew that had been
the nascent Wanderlust Circus crew in San Francisco and
Oakland. He was trying to get his own people involved and find
his own talent here in Portland so that his crew and my crew
would be different but they just started to look awfully similar
after a while. It started to feel a little silly to have that much
distinction. Right around that time I lost my Someday Lounge job.
They fired me over some bullshit. Those guys fired me, and I
immediately became the booker at Rotture.
The guy that ran that place, Mike Wolfson—at that time Rotture
was just the upstairs, which is roughly a 300 person venue—he let
me know that they still had this huge venue downstairs, which
became the Hippodrome Circus Arts Center, which is a very lofty
and professional-sounding name for a very dirty and run-down
venue. We had ambitions of it becoming more of a serious circus
center, but it turned out to not be possible with the resources
that we had in terms of how much money the club was willing to
spend. There was no door separating the outside from the inside,
for real, at the end of the night we’d have to take out a Mikita
and screw a big piece of plywood over the doorway. For a while
he couldn’t pay his garbage bill so he was just piling up bags of
garbage in our venue. We would seriously get there on a big
show night and there’d be these big piles of rancid garbage
piled up. It was crazy. We did our best. Through my mastery of
hype we managed to get articles in the paper saying that we
were Portland’s new circus arts center. By the time the paper
was saying it, it was already pretty clear to us that it wasn’t going
to work out. What are you going to do? The show must go on.
We did some shows there. We did some pretty big shows. This is
the room now that’s pretty much known as the Branx.
Right at that time, a much better booker came on the market,
and Mike hired him. Eventually Mike let me go. I really feel like
Mike made the right decision and handled it really well. There I
was, I was out of a job. During that time my kids came to live
with me again and so me and the kids and my girlfriend, Patricia,
and Creature were all living in this house together, and within a
week I got fired from my job, my girlfriend left me for a DJ, and
the kids’ grandparents took my kids away from me with lawyers
and everything, and we had to move out of the house. So, I
went from being a guy with two kids, an awesome girlfriend, a
nightclub job, and a big, nice house, to being homeless and
childless and girlfriendless and jobless within a week. I was
sleeping on this girl’s couch. Certainly the biggest week of losing
everything I’ve ever experienced in my life. So, Mr. Creature and
I started doing these shows. We stopped using the Hippodrome
name at the time because it was so associated with that venue
33
you to like stuff.” People think I don’t like things. People
think I don’t like Burning Man. People think I don’t like house
music. People think I don’t like this and that. It’s not that I don’t
like things. Really what happens is that I see the potential for
them to be greater and my focus is so much more in facilitating
that that it comes off that I don’t like this or I don’t like that or I
don’t like this person or something like that.
that
we didn’t want people to get confused. At that time we
made a decision to just be the Wanderlust Circus. He and I had
a big talk about it and I decided to fully invest myself in that
brand and that name. We did a show at the Mt. Tabor and then
we started doing shows at the Bossanova. Those were huge. The
shows at the Bossanova were very popular and successful,
especially right in the beginning, and it swiftly cemented our
reputation as the Wanderlust Circus and the biggest circus in
Portland.
know
TB: You’re perceived as more critical than you intend to be?
NDC: And I don’t see critical as a negative thing. To me, it’s like a
great honor to give something criticism because it means that
you’re giving it attention. The world—or at least society and
people—is a commodity or an economy of attention. They’re
giving and exchanging attention. When the guy on the street
who doesn’t get enough attention wants to talk to you, he wants
that from you. Sometimes, I don’t want to give it. My attention
span is very short. I’m just trying to hold on and do all this stuff. I
can barely hang on. So, for me to give something my full
attention and analyze it and try to make it better, for me is a
great honor. When people give me constructive criticism I dig it. I
wish people would do it more. I think it comes off a lot of times—
because maybe I’ll skip a bunch of stuff like, “Oh I really like your
stuff. I see potential for it to be more. Would you like some
feedback?” Instead it’s like, “What you’re doing is good, but
here’s what you gotta do.” People think I don’t like stuff when I
do. I like a lot of stuff. I just want to see it grow and reach its full
potential.
For more information visit the Wanderlust
Circus website at wanderlustcircus.com.
TB: If money weren’t an issue, if you had virtually limitless
financial resources, what would Wanderlust Circus do?
NM: Creature and I would have to have a big meeting and
agree on all of this, but I’m pretty sure we would have a facility
here in town that would be a training and rehearsal facility. We
would not want it to be a public venue. There have been times
that we have thought seriously about starting a venue, but it
would be a rehearsal and practice and storage space. The plan
would be to have those set up in other cities as well. We already
have our second troupe in San Diego that to one degree or
another, we’ve managed to work with them. Now, we’re starting
this non-profit with them, and I feel like that can be the next step
in really more thoroughly integrating the two troupes. That has
always been Mr. Creature’s vision, and one that I shared with
him once he shared it with me: to establish a sort of touring
circuit with Wanderlust headquarters in these different cities so
that it’s possible to produce shows and then tour them from city
to city and each town there’s a friendly space and a friendly
producer that are all sort of affiliated with Wanderlust, and they
have their own troupe as well. This sort of circuit would work for
everybody because we can all produce our own creative shows
and touring shows through this network of spaces. That doesn’t
necessarily have to all be called Wanderlust Circus because we
share that goal with a number of other people such as Jasper
Patterson in San Francisco, Shay Freelove in Humbolt County, all
these guys we have worked together with a little bit on what is
called the Pacific Wheel Vaudeville Circuit, which is like the
same basic idea. Each city has a venue, a producer, and a
troupe, and by cooperating together we can tour our shows all
up and down the West Coast and be an established circuit. For
Mr. Creature, he’s also wanted that to be some sort of outdoor
touring festival as well. At this point, we’d have to figure out
something about that because now there is a festival called the
Wanderlust Festival and it’s more of a conscious, yoga festival.
TB: What about the shows themselves?
NM: We’ve got a bunch of big ideas. I think we’d want to keep
on doing the orchestra, and keep on doing these Megabounce
type shows, along with some of the established shows we’ve got
like Circus Carol and White Album that are reliable winners. And
I’ve been conceiving of larger shows these days, and I think I’m
going to get the opportunity to produce one of them that
combines the circus arts with live music and puppetry and video
effects. Nancy Aldridge who is the director of Tears of Joy
Puppet Theater has said in no uncertain terms that we’re putting
this show on in 2015. I’ve been trying to finalize a venue so I can
redesign the logistical aspects of the show to fit whatever room
it’s going to be in.
TB: Do you ever consider doing work that doesn’t involve
Wanderlust Circus?
NM: Wanderlust has become all-consuming for me. I used to be
a person that did a lot of different stuff, and the circus has just
crowded everything out. It’s working and it’s providing a living
for myself and a bunch of other people that are making these
Wanderlust shows, and through that we’ve all connected to
other people and producers and we’ve all become better and
better at what we do.
34
Photography by M.Ambrosia Photography
BLACK ROCK BOUTIQUE
Interview by Josh the Terrible
Once upon a time, I was convinced to
go to Burning Man. I didn’t know
exactly what I was getting myself into,
but I ended up going with a theme
camp based out of Portland, OR called
the Black Rock Boutique (BRB) and, I
have to say, all things considered, it was
one of the best things I’ve ever done.
The premise is simple: collect funky,
furry, fabulous clothing all year long,
load it all up in a trailer, drive it 9 hours
over mountains, through forests, and in
to the dusty, barren desert only to give it
all away to the citizens of Black Rock
City. Eric Steindler, one of the longest
members of the Boutique shares with
me how it’s possible to take on such a
huge project.
The Burro Lifestyle Magzine: Tell me
about the Black Rock Boutique and
your involvement in it.
Eric Steindler: Well, officially, the Black
Rock Boutique started in 1996. A couple
of women went down to Burning Man
who now own the Frock Boutique on
Alberta. They brought some clothing
with them and a pop up [tent] and just
started giving away clothing. Over the
years it grew and morphed. Around
2002, I had some friends that went to
Burning Man who were in the Black
Rock Boutique. My friend Joseph would
tell me all these crazy stories about the
Boutique, and I just thought it was the
coolest thing. They seemed so cool,
and I really wanted to go with them.
Halloween rolls around and I threw an
event that is now called Howl which
went down as one of Portland’s most
legendary house parties. It was on an
acre called the Wildlife Sanctuary and it
was insane. By 11pm there was 15001800 people and a line as long as you
could see. A dozen police cars showed
up and they didn’t know what to do.
The March Fourth fire truck rolled up, I’m
wearing this tutu outfit, and I asked my
housemate, “Can you ask the police
officers to move their vehicles so the
March Fourth truck can get in?” And
then all hell broke loose. A couple from
the Boutique helped at that party and
the next day they were like, “Oh yeah,
you’re coming with us.”
There wasn’t a lot of clothing back
then. I was like, “That’s it?” and they
said, “Well, we put some out and when
we run out, we close”. Within about a
month of joining, I hooked up with a
local nonprofit that was getting clothing
donations around town and holding a
monthly sale. On a weekly basis, we
would collect their clothing, sort it, and
buy clothing from them for a very
minimal price. So, the first thing I do
when getting involved is double or triple
the amount of clothing that comes in.
We went to the Playa and I thought it
was the greatest thing ever and I had a
blast.
When we got off Playa, it became
apparent that nobody else had any
interest in continuing and the people
that actually started the Boutique were
just done with it, so I was like, “Do you
mind if I take it over?” So, it’s now
September 2004 and I’m the Black Rock
Boutique.
When HOWL rolled around, I wanted to
use some of the Boutique’s equipment. I
picked up all the stuff from the
backyard, stages and stuff, with Manoj.
I bought his ticket and he became our
DJ. We had this new thing called iTunes
with all this music on the computer
which was this totally new thing back
then.
TB: That’s great, to take it from an
established thing that runs the way it
runs, and then you come in and
basically take it over and have all new
everything.
ES: I really tried to run it like a business.
We had weekly meetings and we set
the intentions of what it means to be a
Black Rock Boutiquer and what our
mission was. We hit Playa that year, with
18 people and all hell broke loose. It
was a very chaotic year. By the time we
got off Playa, I realized a lot of the
camp wasn’t going to come back, so
post 2005, again, I’m the Black Rock
Boutique. The very first person I recruited
after that was Tim Gallagher. So, it’s
now 2006, late April, and I get the first
BRB committed person. From there it
snowballed pretty quickly.
By the time we get back onto the
Playa, we were about 22 people. In
2005, Carlos [Montano] came. He drove
the truck and was a huge help in our
setup. It was a challenging year for me
because, by that time, I’m the full-on
leader and there were a lot of people
who came on late or just wanted to
party and take drugs, didn’t want to
work hard, and the Boutique required
so much work. So I found myself in the
same position as the people back in
2004, complaining and being pissed
about some people not working, so that
was an interesting perspective. I really
took it personally with people not
working. It was a huge lesson in
leadership.
Returning Boutiquers in 2007 were
Joyce, who is now my wife, and Yveline,
who came last minute in 2006 right
before we left for the playa and Tim
Gallagher. We were building up steam
and a good crew of people who really
wanted to work. That year, TheWiz
joined us. He set up a shade structure
with a parachute and they put carpets
under there. For me, it was an amazing
moment for the Black Rock Boutique
because he didn’t ask if he could do it.
He didn’t consult me. He just did it. It
36
was a huge moment because up until
that moment, no one would do
anything without asking or consulting
me. It was awesome. So, 2007 was a big
turning point for us. Dr. Peter, Roy
[TheWiz], Brenda, Jeremy [Dapper],
Matt Phillips, Ducky, Tim Gallagher, and
Joyce all returned the next year. We
really hit a critical mass where, post2007, a lot of the Boutique was still
intact. That year, we really started to
establish a name in Portland as a hard
working camp.
As we moved into 2008, we really
started getting organized as a camp.
We started creating committees that
people could fall into. Now, when
everybody shows up, they sign up for
shifts and we start building up the
organization of the camp in a much
deeper way.
2009 rolls around and now we’ve
bumped up from 25 people to 35
because we’ve got the Groove Bomb
crew and a lot more people want to
join us. We’re very organized now. We
built out this huge new structure and we
rock it, the way it should be on the
Playa. You can’t miss it, it’s this huge
structure. We’ve got runways coming
out of it and we do huge dance parties.
We went into 2010 again with a really
solid crew, a lot of returning Boutiquers,
we’re getting more fabulous and still
doing clothing sorts weekly, getting
more
and
more
clothing
and
encouraging people to come into the
Boutique.
Now it’s 2014 and every year we refine
a little bit more. We’re very structured
and we’ve got a solid crew. We’re
open every day at Burning Man, from
roughly 12-4, and we have 3 or 4
parties.
us to Burning Man. It’s never ending.
TB: What’s the best piña colada you’ve
ever had?
ES: I mean, you know, I have piña
coladas every single day on the playa,
so... Same thing with smoothies. Part of
my mission, years ago, was that I would
get on Bunny, my scooter, and deliver
smoothies all over Burning Man to
people I knew. So, if you were there in
2010, I was making smoothies every
single morning.
TB: I remember! In your mind, how does
the Black Rock Boutique fit in to the
bigger picture of Burning Man? It’s
almost a staple, in my mind.
ES:
Yeah, for us it is. Black Rock
Boutique is actually one of a handful,
probably three or four, of the longest
running continuous theme camps at
Burning Man. We’re definitely a staple.
We’ve been in Center Camp since
2001.
But, yeah, fitting in to the bigger picture,
we’re still doing what Burning Man used
to be back in the day. We work all year
in order to bring all these clothes to the
Playa and then give it all away. That’s
how it used to be. That aspect of
Burning Man has really disappeared.
There’s kind of that old school value at
the Boutique.
TB: Is it possible to bring that spirit back
to Burning Man? Or is it just too big now?
60,000 people show up every year now
and it sells out.
ES: I think Burning Man has gotten so
big and so mainstream and has
become
so
fashionable
among
celebrities and the rich that, to some
degree, you can try but… well, you can
only be responsible for yourself.
TB: What would you like to say to
someone reading about the Black Rock
Boutique for the first time?
ES: Come visit us on the Playa. Bring
clothing to donate. We have tons of
volunteer opportunities.
Along with my first experience with the
Black Rock Boutique, I met a couple of
hard working, well respected individuals
named Yveline and Dapper. I would
come to find out that their dedication
and leadership roles were integral to
the Boutique. I sat down with them to
get
their
perspective.
TB:
Yveline, tell me about your
involvement in the Black Rock Boutique.
Yveline: My involvement has evolved
over the years. I am currently helping to
facilitate the group meetings and
provide mentorship to people so I can
do other things, one of which is run the
VIP area. I remember the VIP section
when I was there [at Burning Man].
What’s it like now?
Y: It’s refined and working well now.
There’s two things that I love to do: one
is to style people and the other is to
help manage the camp during the day.
TB: I think Eric said something like,
“People think I’m the boss, but Yveline is
actually the boss.”
Y: That’s sweet. He’ll probably never
admit that to my face. You have that
on recording? Just kidding… We’ve
really evolved this shared leadership
style where we’ve all done a lot of
different things and we trust each other
so much. I don’t know how long that’s
TB: One thing that impressed me was
the quality of the clothes, considering
that you take most of them as
donations. To be able to sort through all
that and end up with a high level of
quality clothes is no small feat.
ES: Yeah, every Boutiquer is responsible
for bringing several hundred items of
clothing and then we get things
donated and every year, before
Burning Man, we do a massive sort to
keep what we want and reject what
we don’t want.
TB: I think that’s one of the things that
most people don’t realize, that you guys
work your asses off all year long to get
all of these clothes.
ES: We collect clothing all year ‘round.
From about mid-spring until Burning
Man, it’s pretty full on. We meet every
other week. In the spring and summer,
there’s always something to do to get
37
going to be but we’re free to move
around.
TB: You’ve been involved in the décor
end quite a bit, correct?
Y: Yeah, because I have delegated so
much over the years, I wasn’t getting to
actually do anything, if that makes
sense? So, now if someone else is in
charge of décor, I can just go in and
tighten it up. There’s a part of
orchestrating something large that I
really like, especially the people
component. I love to see people doing
something new or applying themselves
with their talents. That gives me great
joy. But I also want that for myself, I’m
very hands on and I like to do things.
And so, I’ve kinda scaled my scope a
little bit so that I can do some of those
things.
because that needs to be driving
around at Burning Man.” I bought it and
gutted out all of the hover-y parts and
put in drive-y parts. I think it was 2010
and that year I did not bring it with me. I
put in an application with the DMV
(Department of Mutant Vehicles) and
they were like, “Looks great, bring it.” It
got to the point that I was counting the
hours before I had to leave and
counting all the things I had to do and I
was like, “Okay, this weekend, if I can’t
drive it down the street and steer it
around corners, I’m not going to bring
it. I’ll just focus on packing underwear
and stuff.” And that weekend came
and I couldn’t drive it down the street
and turn it around corners. Although, it
turns out that it might have been just
because I had a dead battery. So,
maybe I actually could have but I
didn’t. So then I kept working on it and I
brought it in 2011.
TB: And how long have you been going
to Burning Man?
TB: And what about this year? Are you
going to take it back out there?
D: Yeah, this year is already looking
really good ‘cause I have already set
aside funds specifically for that and so
I’ve been buying the right parts so I
don’t have to try and Jimmy something
in there and I’m fixing the connectors
on the speakers so it’ll be really easy
and I’ll have no excuse not to just plug
them in. So, I think this will be the year
that it just rolls out and parties.
TB: Tell me a little bit about your dad.
D: My dad is TheWiz. One word. Capital
T, Capital W.
Y: This will be my ninth year.
TB: What’s that dynamic like on Playa?
Most people don’t go to Burning Man
with their father.
TB: And have you camped anywhere
else?
Y:
We have a number of family
members in camp that we’ve had over
the years.
Y:
No, I don’t know what it’s like
anywhere else. I’m not really interested.
TB:
I think that’s true for most
Boutiquers. They go and that’s all they
want to do is come back.
Yeah, I do it because I love it.
D: I was first and then there were two
others. And that’s just in our camp. So, I
guess it’s not “normal” but I bet it’s a lot
more common than you might think.
TB: Dapper, what’s it like building an art
car?
TB: Tell me about the infrastructure and
the setup.
Dapper: Hell. No, it’s fun. It’s just
frustrating if you don’t have the right
resources. If you’ve got the money to
do it and the time and the tools, it’s a
lot of fun.
Y: We get there early, on Wednesday.
Setup is the fun part. There are a lot of
other fun experiences that happen
after Monday but we all simply love that
part ‘cause it’s so free form; we don’t
have shifts and we’re highly organized
and that appeals to a lot of people.
Every year we get more and more
organized and you might think that
would take away from the creative, fun
process but it actually seems to work for
a lot of us. We know when to take
breaks and it feels good when things
are moving forward and not getting
stuck. We have a schedule for setup
and goals every day.
Y:
TB: Give me a brief timeline of the
Hurricane [the name of Dapper’s art
car], from inception to where it’s at now.
D: Well, a friend of mine who is also in
the Boutique sent me a Craigslist post
one day saying “You should buy this”
and I said “I am gonna buy that” and
that was a personal hover craft. It’s a
snowmobile but it’s a hovercraft. And
that’s, remarkably, a ‘thing’. There’s
Formula 1 racing, there’s stock car
racing, there’s speedboats, there’s
hovercrafts! There’s even a hovercraft
circuit. The model that I have was
made in the mid 70’s and they don’t
make it any more. …although, I met a
guy who used to work with the guy who
designed that shell. He was just walking
down the street and was like, “I know
that! I know the guy who built that!” It
was kinda cool.
So, I was like, “I’m gonna go buy that
38
there to turn the lights on. It sounds like
a little thing but just because of the way
they’re built inside these wings, you
gotta crawl in and the particular
connectors I had were a real pain in the
ass so I just didn’t do it. The little things
really add up.
In 2011, I think it pretty much worked the
whole time but I had some mechanical
issues with the steering which made it
kind of unreliable. In 2012, I got the
mechanical issues with the steering
fixed but I had electrical issues with the
steering. And then in 2013, which was
last year, it was the first year I actually
got it registered for night.
TB: It has lights on it now?
D: Well, having finances is really key. I
mean, it’s been basically ready to go
since 2010 if I had, you know, a bank
account. I could just go out and buy
the couple of parts I need and put
them on there and be off and ready to
go. So, since the beginning, it’s had a
stereo, speakers, lights—it’s just I haven’t
had the time and the money to get
that last little thing that I gotta put on
TB: That was one thing that impressed
me when I camped there, how well
organized the camp was. My guess is
that other camps aren’t necessarily like
that.
Y: I’ve heard feedback from other
people about how great our staff is,
especially from our DJ’s because we
always bring them drinks and food and
take care of them and have the piña
colada hour afterwards. The DJ’s are
always happy to come play for the
Boutique which makes me really happy
that they keep wanting to come back
every year.
It’s not going to be the type of
experience that everyone is going to
want. Some people function better in a
much looser and chaotic environment.
And that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong
with that. But, we have a gift to offer
and it requires some infrastructure and
delivery and we like to do it really well
and we don’t just do it for us, we do it
for people.
D: It’s a camp of people that have the
same mindset of liking to go there and
liking to work. “Work” is our preferred
means of interacting with the event, I
think. We don’t want to just go there
and drink beer and watch people walk
by.
who really, you know, was not in the
zone of friendliness or kindness or
receptivity and no matter how many
times we would tell him to, “Please stop
cutting through our camp.” It just wasn’t
working and finally, Joyce, who is the
sweetest person on the playa, asks that
guy to, “Please stop going through our
camp.” He starts mouthing off to her
and giving her problems and, basically,
went to go and grab her. Roger
happened to be close by. He’s one of
the biggest dudes we’ve ever had in
camp. He’s like a big bear, but he has
the hugest heart. He really does. So, the
guy was standing there and he had
suspenders on and Roger grabs the
suspenders, pulls him away from Joyce,
and lifts him off the ground. As this is
happening, Ty tackles the guy. He ran
after him and tackled him. And that
was that.
TB: When people tell me that they’re
going to Burning Man for the first time, I
tell them that if they want to do
something really awesome and get
involved in contributing to the event, go
with the Boutique. If you just want to run
around and party all week, go with
someone else.
TB: How about a favorite memory from
the last eight or nine years? Something
that stands out as extra special for each
of you?
D: Ty tackling that guy coming through
our camp. I wasn’t even there and
that’s my favorite memory.
But, what happened was, Café Camp
Village was located behind us and we
got there a little bit later than they did.
As shifts started opening up at Center
Camp Café, our camp was “in the
way.” They could see the exits through
our camp and would just cut through. It
was
happening
a
lot.
Through
communication with them, it whittled
down to one. There was this one guy
One of the best memories ever though
was when we took the fashion police
out.
D: That was a high point for sure.
Y: We all spend so much time in camp
and we’re always working. Yes, we’re
having a great time, but it’s good for us
to get out. So, Tall Steve ended up
building a bike trailer that had a
clothing rack on it. So on my day off, on
Friday, I spent it retrofitting [the trailer]
with racks and crates and I put a bunch
of displays on the back and got a really
nice selection of clothing and we
organized a small group of us to go out
on the Playa and do the Fashion Police.
I had no idea how well organized the
guys were who were going to be the
“police”. Jim Brenner and I were the
stylists and they came out all dressed in
short shorts and they had sheriff stars
and they looked good.
D: We had hats and we had guns. It
was me, Chris Dawson, Automatic, and
Steve was pulling the trailer. We would
pick somebody three hundred or four
hundred feet away on the Playa. Yvelin,
Jen Brenner, and Steve would sort of
hold back and me and Automatic and
Chris Dawson would sort of fan out and
then, like, piranha in on them and we’d
jump off our bikes and they’d go
tumbling and we’d do summersaults
and be, like, “Freeeeeze!” and then do
our arrest.
D: Most of us have very sedentary daily
lives. We don’t get to go out and build
things very frequently so I think that’s a
really big part for us. We enjoy building
things but don’t get the opportunity to
do that in our daily lives. So, we get to
go out there and spend a week
building
things
in
the
desert.
Y: Yeah, that’s probably one of the
best ones. We’ve always had to be on
top of people cutting through our
camp or coming in, because we’re in
Center Camp and there’s so many
people. We’re not trying to be rude, we
just want to see if they’re looking for
somebody or if there’s something we
can help them with or direct them to
Playa Information which is usually just
right around the corner. Some people
get lost and wander in to our camp.
Y: We get along great now and we
both know the story about this guy, who
was a total idiot. They don’t want him to
come back anyway.
TB: Ty’s not a very big dude.
D: He’s not a very big dude. And not
violent, at all. That’s what makes it such
a great story.
Y: I think it was because it happened to
Joyce and we were like, “Oooh, no!” I
found out later that they were planning
to come over to our camp and fuck our
shit up.
TB: What!?
Y: Because we had “attacked” that
guy. I’m hearing these stories now
because I have met one of the
infrastructure leads who is now the comayor for Café Camp Village and now
I’m dating him.
TB: What!?
Y: People were shocked when it would
happen. They’d be looking around all
scared because they thought… I don’t
know
what
they
thought
was
happening. We’d roll up with the
clothes and tell them they needed
some help and then list off all the
reasons they needed to strip down.
D: We pulled over an entire art car of
people which I think was our biggest
catch. Like, sixteen or twenty people.
Y: It was seriously one of the most fun
things we have ever done.
D:
It’s really the essence of the
Boutique, right? It’s all of the fun parts of
the Boutique and none of the hassle. It’s
just taking a person and putting
awesome clothes on them. It’s not like,
“Oh, I have to pick up the hangers. I
gotta manage the door. What’s going
on with the DJ?” None of that hassle. It’s
just putting clothes on people.
39
D: It’s better now.
Manoj and I were riding bikes around. It
was one of those nights where we
wanted to go see music, right? And I
think we were with Endi and… Umm…
You! Oh my god! It was totally you! That
was one of my favorite stories. We were
riding around all night looking for music.
It was a classic “Chasing music” night. I
don’t know if you remember.
Y: I don’t know, it feels the same to me.
TB: I remember!
D: There are more cops now, which is a
drag but, I always say, “Next year is
going to be even better.” I’m not down
with this whole, “It was better last year”
thing.
Y: It was literally like zip-lining back and
forth, in slow motion and just going to all
these different places looking for music
and finally, you guys were like, “Yeah,
we really know where thee spot is.
Manoj and I are, like, “Okay, they know
this last place and it was…”
Y: It’s a real slimmed down version of
what we do.
TB: How about some perspective on the
festival altogether? Like, eight years
ago versus now. It sells out. Sixty
thousand people.
Y: I think the last couple of years—last
year in particular—there really was a
big influx in newbie’s. Not just in our
camp but on the Playa. I don’t really go
to places where they’re probably going
to be frequenting so I’m a little bit
insulated. I call it “The dark side of the
moon” which is around the corner of
3:00 and 9:00. When I go there, I feel like
I’ve lost communication and like it’s a
whole different world over there. I try to
push my boundaries but I just feel I
don’t belong there. And that’s okay. It
reminds me of another story, if that’s all
right.
40
Yveline and Josh the Terrible in unison:
Tsunami Bass!
immediately run up and lay down on
the stage! It was this huge wood stage.
Manoj and I are just standing there, so
confused. We’re like, “This is it!? This is
what they were so excited about!?”
And they’re, like, “C’mon! C’mon, you
gotta come try it!” We’re, like, “Okay…”
and we lay down with them. The stage
is vibrating and rickety and it feels like
it’s going to fall apart at any second
and it’s so loud. It feels so obnoxious
and we don’t understand why it’s such
the level of excitement that those two
are exuding. Manoj and I are laughing
so hard because we have arrived at
thee spot, at the end of the road, at the
end of the “Chasing Music”. I
remember laughing so hard at the
silliness of the whole thing. That’s one of
my favorite memories because it was
just so ludicrous.
TB: That’s my favorite memory now, too.
TB: Oh my god, that was my favorite!
Y: It’s, of course, all the way on the dark
side of the moon. Like, 10:00 and J or
something. We get there and there’s
this huge tsunami wave painted on the
backdrop of the stage and, yes, there is
a tsunami amount of bass. There is
nobody there. Not one person. But Endi
and Josh are so excited and they
Y:
One person’s arrival is another
person’s departure. You can quote me
on that.
Want to help the Black Rock Boutique?
Want to donate some funky, furry,
fabulous clothes? Have questions about
getting involved? Contact Eric at
[email protected].
Photography by Keith Allen Phillips featuring Velocity
THE SASQUATCH DIARY
Friday, May 23, 3:00 a.m.
It is 3 in the morning and I’m finally
pulling up to where I think that my
crew, Super Geek League (SGL), is
camped. I’m currently in vendor
camping at the Sasquatch Music
Festival at the Gorge Amphitheater. I’m
jacked up on a Five Hour Energy
because I knew it was going to be a
long drive and a late night. I’m a
pharmacy student by day and a circus
freak by night with a goal to not be
addicted to caffeine despite all of the
late nights studying. So far, I’ve been
successful. A quarter of a Five Hour
Energy keeps me wired for hours. I
wander around looking for familiar
faces by spinning my LED poi and
hoping that a friend sees the beacons
of light and screams my name. No such
luck. I set up my tent next to my car, try
to pass out, and stare at the ceiling of
my tent until 6 am as my Five Hour
Energy becomes a “Nine Hour Energy”
and a neighbor blasts obnoxious music
to keep their party alive. Clearly they
don’t have to work in the morning.
By Zenith Spins
of the SGL team spends the rest of the
set dancing the night away before
heading
back
to
camp.
More
shenanigans occur, but by now my
drunken alter ego has taken over my
body with the ominous promise of
having fun, but erasing any trace of the
memories.
Friday, May 23, 9:00 a.m.
The sun gently warms my one-person
tent and the light of morning wakes me
up. Apparently I fell asleep at some
point. I groggily stumble out to “GOOD
MOOORNING!!!”
sung
into
a
megaphone by Megatron, our camp
mom. Our crew wakes up and I spend
the morning greeting old friends,
meeting new teammates, and giving
an impromptu double staff lesson. Call
time is at 10:00 am, and we spend the
next two hours working choreography
and getting painted by our make-up
artists, Shashonna Knecht and Bromley
Jones.
Friday, May 23, 5:00 p.m.
Our first several sets have gone
extremely well, and we’ve managed to
get festival-goers to participate in our
antics. Said antics included running
after a clown confetti cannon, pillow
fights, and getting punished with canes
onstage by Goblin and other sexy
clowns. By this point, I’ve been a gold
garbed object manipulator known as a
gold emulate, an alien, a fluffy pink guy,
and a sperm that wraps audience
members in industrial rolls of saran wrap.
We have a long break in the late
afternoon, and performers are eating
dinner provided by festival hospitality or
checking out other shows. I decide to
catch up on sleep backstage to make
up for the night before I have to
transform into a ten foot tall Medusa for
the nighttime show.
Friday, May 23, 10:00 p.m.
The evening shows have gone well so
far, and it is time for the fire set. My
fellow circus freaks are clowns, Celtic
warriors, fire gods and goddesses, and I
am performing my first stilt set ever as
an ominous embodiment of Medusa
42
Saturday, May 24, 2:00 p.m.
We’ve ran through multiple sets already
and by now, we’re used to the flow of
the show. Normally, drunk me takes
care of sober me and drinks copious
amounts of water. The night before,
drunk me decided to jump into a
cuddle puddle to pass out and now I’m
hung over. It made for an exciting
morning when I realized I woke up on
an air mattress. I don’t have an air
mattress. Friends fill me in and flashes of
the night before return—sneaking back
into
the
festival,
snatches
of
conversation, a steamy make out
session under the stars…apparently I
had fun last night.
herself. I am accompanying Shiva and
Kali, two other resident stilt master
badasses, and we are out to scare the
masses into submission. I’m sweating in
the cold night now. Even after training
for a few months with stilts, I am still
nervous that something out of my
control will mess up my debut as a stilt
walker. It’s my time to perform, and I
follow Shiva and Kali into the audience.
Time slows down—it stops as I stare into
the eyes of audience members—and it
instantly speeds back up to normal as I
make my way backstage. I can
breathe again, and I’ve conquered my
fear of performing for the first time using
a new apparatus. Scott and Dutch from
the Wanderlust Circus affiliated RAD
[Rosecity Acro Devils] acrobat troupe
are dressed in sparkly leotards,
performing a flamboyant acrobatics set
to the song “Ray and Stan”.
Saturday, May 24, After Midnight
An unspecified amount of time has
passed, and I am now happily
celebrating success with my fellow
circus friends. The night is still relatively
young, and we are stocked with PBRs,
Fireball, honey whiskey, and who knows
what else. The perks of being a
performer include the honor of being
right up next to the stage as Die
Antwoord is performing. Ninja is shirtless
and we can make out his intentionally
grotesque facial expressions in vivid
detail. My friend is videotaping this
legend from high school history with her
smart phone and reveling in nostalgic
bliss as Ninja rips the phone out of her
hands, shoves it down his pants, rubs it
around, and hands it back to her. Much
As the day wears on, more people flock
to our performances. I think it’s a
combination of more people arriving
and our awesome guerilla advertising.
We’ve created quite a following by
running around in stilts and stunting,
shooting confetti out of a remote
controlled
clown
faced
cannon,
grabbing meals at hospitality while in
costume, photo bombing selfies with
festival celebrities, and shooting people
with silly string as they go in for a picture
or hug (courtesy of Goblin). Our
afternoon pillow fight is a huge success!
Whoever does festival clean up will
have a fine time picking up confetti
and shredded pillows.
Saturday, May 24, Evening
The nighttime performances have gone
swimmingly well, and once again it is
after midnight—time to play! In
remembrance of parts of the night
before, I go easy on the alcohol.
Tonight, I’m sober and wandering
through the other stages to see what
the other artists have to offer. As the last
artist of the night finishes their set, the
soaring voice of Bill Withers singing
“Lean on Me” fills our ears. It was heartwarming to see the collective crowd of
hundreds of festival-goers grab hands or
hug neighbors while Canadian and
American flags floated over the
audience. With a feeling of well-being, I
ended my night.
Sunday, May 25 – Final Day
The festival has been progressively
churning towards a climax, and each of
the sets that SGL performs gets
progressively better, more fantastic,
and more intense. It’s incredible to think
that after three days of performing and
playing hard, we’re still full of energy.
We have begun to see some familiar
faces in the crowd who keep coming
back for more of the action. I get to fire
dance as a fire goddess tonight instead
of being on stilts, and I revel in the
chance to get up close and personal
with the audience members. The
exhilaration of feeling fire roar around
one’s body while dancing to intricate
nuances of the song is intoxicating—as
is the satisfaction of whirling around the
stage and picking out audience
members to tease. As the last fire
performance of the night draws to an
end, the once open space rapidly fills
with festival-goers. The crowd of bodies
is now dense enough to crowd surf, and
I see SGL band members on inflatable
inner tubes floating in a sea of hands.
I’ve never crowd surfed before, so I
excuse myself from conversation with a
cute Canadian, jump on stage, and
launch myself into the crowd. As our last
song draws to an end, band members,
performers and supporting staff pile
onstage to say their goodbyes to the
cheers of the audience.
The rest of the night is a blur as the SGL
artists celebrate a successful festival.
After a toast to our successes, many of
us run over to the next stage to catch
Major Lazer’s set. The combination of
bass and reggaeton compels us to
dance with abandon, and many of us
include the security around the stage in
our revelry. It was amusing to get the
stone-faced giants to crack and start
dancing with us. Major Lazer invites
audience members onstage as he
performs “Bubble Butt”, and soon many
body painted and spandex clad
unicorns from SGL are twerking right
along with Major Lazer’s neon camoclad back up dancers. Once again, it is
a perk to have a performer bracelet,
and I’m in awe as I realize that my
friends and I are onstage and
interacting with a headlining performer.
Fireworks launch into the sky to signify
that the festival is at its close, and our
merry band of freaks and geeks go on
a mission to party in uncharted
territories—general camping.
Monday, May 26, Morning
The sun is high in the sky as I make my
way back to camp. People have
started to break down their campsites,
and the SGL stage is being busily
dismantled. I clamber on the tour bus
taking my friends home to Seattle and
say my last minute goodbyes to those
who aren’t already passed out again. I
pack up the last of my belongings and
meander to a bathroom. The night is
not very kind to airbrushed body art,
and my disheveled appearance needs
some touching up so I can feel like a
human again.
I end up meeting up with the cute
Canadian I partied with the night
before, and he and his two other
buddies are up for an outdoorsy,
wholesome adventure. We spend much
of the late morning driving around and
trying to find a swimming hole, but out
of the blue we accidentally stumble on
a rock climber’s mecca close to the
town of Vantage. By now, I am so
happy that I always have my climbing
shoes with me! My new friends and I
spend some time clinging to the rock
faces like geckoes, and I climb until I
can no longer completely close my
fingers into fists. We all pile into our
respective vehicles and finally find a
swimming hole to rinse the grime off in.
Sadly, my time with them is coming to
an end as they have to make their way
back up north. I hear the gravel
crunching under their tires fade away,
and then it is just me alone—laying in
the sun on top of my car and reading a
historical
account
of
a
man’s
adventures in the French Foreign
Legion. My mind drifts to my memories
of the weekend and how incredible it
was to become so close to a wild band
of incredibly talented and eclectic
characters. Super Geek League made
history as the first band to host their own
stage for an entire weekend at
Sasquatch, and each and every one of
us have given fully of our hearts and
souls. As I climb into the car and
prepare for the long drive home alone, I
feel empowered and my soul is in
ecstatic anticipation of the fruits of our
endeavors and the adventures yet to
come.
43
D.J.Interview
BOMB
SHEL
by Ari Lynn
Shel Bailey, AKA DJ Bomb Shel, has spent her life carving out a niche in male-dominated
entertainment industries, with20 years experience in professional radio, including 12 years with Clear
Channel, and 8 years for Entercom, to just touch on her experience. Her beginnings trace back to
Oklahoma, where her childhood was spent largely in poverty before she ran away at age 15, She has
been forging her own path ever since. Her new venture, www.nakdfm.com, launches on 6/21.
The Burro Lifestyle Magazine:
What brought you to where you
are now, as DJ Bomb Shel?
tougher, and often they use that.
Women have to fight, fight, fight to
get in. So much electronic music is
all about gear. And that barrier
hasn’t been broken, really. Gear—
stereotypically, computers—it’s a
male-dominated
niche.
It
is
changing. A lot of women are
getting booked. A lot of women
are making strides. We just had
Sandra Collins, who’s an amazing
house DJ, get a lot of attention.
There are a lot of women out there
who are doing it, and a lot of
women who want to do it. Then
you have the Paris Hiltons of the
world making a mockery of it.
Shel Bailey: When I was let go
from Entercom, instead of trying
to get back into the corporate
world, I decided to become a
“real” DJ. I had seen DJ Ikon
and I was so intimidated and
jealous. I wish that wasn’t the
thing that motivated me.
TB: Sometimes a little negative
motivation can light a fire under
your ass!
SB: Exactly. I took my year of
unemployment and just started
going into the rave scene and
ended up running a rave
production company. That’s
where DJ Bomb Shel came it.
This whole Naked DJ thing was
when
unemployment
was
ending. My whole goal was to
be able to pay my bills as a DJ,
as I always had, but not in the
corporate world, and I got an
offer the Golden Dragon to spin
naked, so I took it.
TB: Why do you think women, by
and large, have so much harder
of a time getting booked as DJs?
From my perspective, there’s an
unsavory hypocrisy in the EDM
scene
that
completely
objectifies women. The women
that you see in the EDM scene,
to generalize, are not the
producers or DJs. They’re the
cute gogo girls.
It’s an
unfortunate perpetuation of a
“seen but not heard” type of
mentality.
It’s
disappointing
because there are elements of
the EDM scene that you would
hope would be more forwardthinking than that, a little more
progressive than that. Why do
you think it’s gotten trapped in
the male-dominated mold?
SB: I have to agree with you. I’m
whoring
thing
out
just
completely, by spinning naked,
aren’t I? I was getting booked,
but it’s a fight. I have literally
almost gotten into fist fights—
most definitely chest-bumping
matches with guys behind the
decks—over who’s going on
next: “That’s my motherfuckin
slot.” You gotta shove your way
through, and when you’re
dealing with men, there’s a lot
of testosterone there, they’re
44
TB: And if you look at the fan base
of who loves EDM, it’s probably like
50/50 as far as men and women.
But women are disproportionately
represented in the DJs.
SB: It’s mostly men. We just have to
keep doing the work. Women and
girls have a difficult position
because men want you around,
but no guy wants to get beaten by
a girl. It’s just that mentality.
They’re competitive with each
other, but they’ll do every thing
they can to keep a really good
female out—in a lot of instances.
But I have a lot of men who totally
support me. It’s also difficult
because women are supposed to
be pretty, so you can’t go out
there all fat and pock-marked.
TB: But guys can do it. There’s
plenty of unattractive male DJs out
there, but it’s about the music.
Being naked is powerful.
I don't lose power when
I take my clothes off. I gain it. Society tries to
usurp power from
women either way —clothes on or off. SB: There is a glass ceiling—I feel
very proud to be working in an
where there is a glass
industry
ceiling and I can still do some
work. But at the same time I’m
going both backwards and
forwards because a lot of the way
I’m doing the work is by being
super sexy.
TB: Tell me about the Naked DJ.
SB: I DJ naked. I decided to just
go for it. I’ve got a column with
Exotic Magazine called “Behind
the DJ Booth”. I’m the world’s only
naked DJ. I spin at the Golden
Dragon twelve hours a week on
turntables, naked. You’d never
believe how long it takes to get
ready to spin naked! I’ve got a
website that I’m developing
where I’m going to do naked
radio where you’ll dance your
pants off. That’s where my expertise.
This is sort of the merging of corporate
and non-corporate. I’m just going for it!
Now that I’ve got my pictures naked all
over the place, now that I’m live
naked, the corporate world will never,
ever take me back, so I might as well
just go for it. The goal is to be
something bigger.
TB: Why do you think EDM has become
such a huge part of the underground
scene and the festival scene?
SB: Part of it really is underground, but I
think part of the reason that it’s
become so successful is that it’s the
new arena rock. It’s the new Rolling
Stone. It’s the new Beatles. It’s the new
Led Zeppelin. It’s the new Grateful
Dead. When hippies got together they
changed the world. They came
together through music. And this is the
music that’s bringing people together
now. That’s why here in Portland there’s
such a struggle with the government to
procure places for shows. This is where
the people gather. This is where the
youth gathers. This is where ideas are
formed. This is where connections are
made, and this is where people wake
up. We’re not sitting in front of the
fricking television. We’re changing—
we’re here.
TB: It’s sort of ironic that Portland has
sort of become inhospitable to that
scene—at least at present. You
wouldn’t think that.
SB: It’s just a cycle. If people want it, if
people continue to want it, and if the
music continues to be really good, and
if this is evolution of music—which I
know that it is—it’ll come out. It’ll be
mainstream.
TB: So, what do you think is the magic
recipe for women to really get their due
in the music scene, and in the EDM
scene?
SB: Work, work, work. Just work. And a
lot of us have to be willing to work. And
we have to support each other. Just go
to work. I love men, but there really is a
problem here. The rates that women
are beaten or raped and the
employment rates—women are still
making less than men on the dollar—
percentage of women that are ruling
in congress—the numbers stand—we
have a problem. We just really, really
need to work.
My mantra is to entertain, inform, and
inspire. You can’t talk to people from
the top down. You can’t preach to
them. You got to entertain them first,
and then just throw in a bit of
information. And then hopefully that
leads to some sort of inspiration. I hope
I’m not sending some sort of double
message or mixed message by, “Hey,
look at my tits! Girls, go achieve
equality.”
TB: Objectification, bad.
SB: Food, good. Hey, it’s a confusing
world. I can’t figure it out for you. Work
on it yourselves. Love, Bomb Shel.
www.nakdfm.com
www.djbombshel.com
Facebook
bombshelbailey
Soundcloud
bomb-shel-bailey
Twitter
@DJBomb Shel
45
CASTLES IN THE CLOUDS
By Jay Lieber
Lo! My childhood years are filled with
fanciful tales of exotic worlds, mysterious
creatures, disappearing cities, secret
treasures, majestic hierarchies and
nomadic barons... tales of secret rituals
held
under
inexplicably
textured
tapestries
woven
with
ancient
geometries, incense swirling between
the reveling bodies in various states of
undress, lit only by the shining cobalt
moon and the raging crimson bonfire
that steals as much air as it offers light at
the precipice of an endless sea...
Woe! My adulthood is devoid of color,
save the muted tones of concrete, brick
and dull brass. Bent over my tools and
machines of trade, I diligently perform
my assigned tasks to provide for myself
and/or my spouse and 2.5 children. The
security I enjoy exists only at the length
of a very short leash and the prospect
of adventuring in foreign and exotic
lands, every day, drifts farther away
from
the
realm
of
legitimate
possibilities...
Albeit slightly poeticized, the
above represents a very serious
existential crisis that plagues many
people who are prone to having
those sorts of things. As the
unimaginable
cosmos
turns
overhead, whether you are a
humble farmer in Kentucky or a
cosmopolitan plastic surgeon in
Dubai,
the
great
question
of
"Goddamnit why the hell do I keep
doing
this
same
stupid
bullshit
EVERYDAY?" has shaken the mental
well-being of nearly everyone who
exists above the poverty line, all
throughout history.
to be. And not only that! Your new "true
self" may also be responsible for not only
the forces of nature functioning
correctly, but the overall spiritual health
of the entire human race! You're pretty
fucking amazing, aren't you?
YES YOU ARE!
"Yes, yes indeed you are absolutely
fucking wonderful!" This is an affirmation
that is not always available to people,
and is one of humanity's basic
psychological needs that is fulfilled by
the Festival. The assurance that magical
fairy castles, steel dragons, firebreathing pirate ships and the everpresent promises of romantic collusion
with nymphetic zealots are REAL. That
you are a character in a living
storybook happening in a city that will
disappear before the moon wanes.
This sense of alienness and wonder,
coupled with the sense of universal
connection, is necessary for a full and
healthy life. But, like the duct tape that
Somehow, it's everything but legal at
festivals, provided you just don't act the
fool about it. Go ahead... Experiment
with your consciousness. You know
you’re tired of seeing the same old shit.
People Build Some of the Greatest Art
Installations in the World
"It’s all toys man. It’s all the shadows of
toys from a factory. They make toys all
year and the owner makes the scrap
wood into the temple and oversees its
construction. There should be some fire
tornadoes in the spires when it goes up.
I like fire tornadoes."
He was right. That guy in the crowd was
so fucking right. When it went up fire
tornadoes formed quickly in each of
the 3 spires, all being over 2 stories tall. It
changed the direction of the wind with
a roar like a massive, ancient behemoth
and seemed to shake the earth. Not far
away a man in a rubber suit and
bubble helmet is wielding a steel rod
between 2 6-foot tall Tesla coils,
commanding lightning like a
living god. An old Victorian
house drives by, affixed with
a chassis and transmission. A
woman meditates in a
massive, revolving copper
lotus. Someone is piloting a
fire-breathing dragon. This is
the land I dreamed of as a
child, tits and everything. I just had no
idea how much ecstasy I would be on
when I finally got here.
"Home" is not a place that
charges $400 at the door… Naturally, the church has their offer of
consolation: Keep at it, say your
prayers, pay your tithes, and all the
good stuff happens after you die.
Honest.
That works out fine for some, but more
imaginative and enterprising individuals
need something a bit more stimulating.
Less contemporary religions had an
excellent approach to this: place
humanity directly in control of the
universe!
...Well, not really, but telling peasants
that the crops wont grow unless they
have an orgy in the fields every spring
definitely gave medieval farmers
something
to
look
forward
to
throughout an otherwise miserable life.
And that's what we're buying every
summer—a special time and a special
place far, far away from your job and
your routine, far from your misery. A
place where all manner and variety of
duty cease to exist and you can be, at
last, the person you've always wanted
46
holds your Dr. Who theme camp
together, festivals have a light side and
a dark side. Indeed, many types of
agencies are to be found skulking at
the fount of psychedelic freedom. Let’s
start with the shiny things, shall we?
There’s a Kind of Revolution Going On
Blasting off on DMT into a subtle
dimension of conscious, patterned
energy. Where am I? I? I... am not. That
was someone else's dream and there is
consciousness now. Thought is form and
motion and there are others here
reaching out to connect...
Being pulled back through membrane
after membrane, sheer velocity sucking
the ectoplasm out of the ears and
nostrils to awaken a human being in the
presence of an 11-foot tall Alex Grey
painting hanging in a geodesic dome
full of statuary, tropical plants and other
finery.
While these are purely subjective
experiences, they change you. They
change they way you see the world
and yourself, thereby changing the way
you interact with the world and yourself.
It hoses off your soul. Unless you have an
exceptionally tailored lifestyle, it is
generally not acceptable for most folks
to engage in this type of behavior.
You Need to Know How to Do This
Check the supplies. Update maps.
Secure the baggage. Coordinate with
group B. Head count. ETA. Off-peak
hours. You need to know how to do this.
Navigation. Highways. Local dialects.
Regional topography. Pay attention.
Snow line. Dune lines. Road signs
growing into the wood. Wood giving
way to desert. Desert giving way to sea.
Look at that shit. You need to see this.
Anticipating solutions. Smooth talking
out of a ticket. Dust devils. Elk shedding
their antlers. Set up the tent. Drive the
spikes. Create environment. Game
plan. How effective are we as people?
Let’s find out. Make a fire. Hang the
food up. This is important. This is a way
for people to practice working together
toward a common goal. To be effective
as a team in the pursuit of a freedom
specific to this season. To take this time
in the summer when the universe is
perfectly accommodating to you for
running around naked in the woods
howling like a stoned coyote. Your body
and your brain need this more than you
do. To throw yourself into the mud and
make out with strangers and just SHAKE
IT THE FUCK OUT.
You need to know how to do this
because it absolutely has to be done
right.
...Wow, between the drugs and the
spectacle, the absence of formal social
pretext, the focus on a universal joviality
and mutual community support, its easy
to think you've found the "real" world
after all! A new type of society not
based around money, but spirituality,
love and happiness. The enchanted
land where people believe you when
you tell them you are a gypsy jellyfish
shaman. Again, this is what we are
buying. And yes, we are buying it.
It’s Really a Business and You are a
Customer
bubblegum wrapper, an empty lighter
and some string then handed it to him.
He was visibly disappointed by this and
had trouble maintaining his happy-golucky "you just want to give me things"
attitude for the duration of our
conversation, which did not last much
longer before he left to "cover more
ground."
Still, I prefer him to the blacked-out,
smacked-up gutterpunks who shamble
straight at you muttering, "gotta-smokegot-some-whiskey-got-somemushrooms-got-a-dollar-gotta-beer,”
and don’t even give you a chance to
say yes or no.
White Light for White People
Temporary "cashless" societies aren't
cashless. It’s big business. The biggest
camps at the biggest festivals are
corporate installations. "Home" is not a
place that charges $400 at the door,
goes through all your things and is full of
cops. Alas, the vast majority of festivals
are for-profit businesses and thus are
subject to the type of dick-baggery that
one expects to find in a profiteer's
crowd-sourced amusement park. Stories
of performers and laborers being stiffed
for their work haunt the festival circuit,
rife with sleazy producers and outright
gangsters. The casual drug use tends to
attract drug pushers who don't have
Kundalini activation in mind when they
sell you meth-laced cocaine.
Convincing you that taking a bunch of
drugs in the desert while things explode
all around you is somehow making the
world a better place for everyone is just
part of the script. There is nothing
sustainable about most festivals. Don’t
get me wrong: I love the script.
However, when I get home I’ve pretty
much gotten over the idea that all that
positive focusing with people didn't
actually make food available to
starving people, end war or curb
greed.
The New Bums
My friends and I have worked very hard
building our camp, which is rather
impressive. A man walks in and
introduces himself. He seems a little
younger than me. His hands are very
soft, like his jaw line. He is all smiles as I
ask what I can do for him. "Well," he
says, "I’m covering ground around the
festival harvesting resources for my
camp. Do you have any resources here
that I can harvest?" "How many people
are in your camp?" I ask. "Just me," he
says, slightly smirking to cover his
discomfort
at
being
questioned.
"Resources you say? What type of
resources are you looking for?" He looks
down for a moment and says, "Well....
anything." "Anything? Anything at all?" I
respond, slightly confused by the
vagueness of his inquiry. "Yea!" he blurts
earnestly.
"Well, let me look around." I found a
There is an old, old con. It has existed for
as long as there have been social
classes and has existed in all cultures
rely on them. The mark: The leisure
class—people with excessive amounts
of money and free time. The hustle:
karma is real and determines how one is
born into the world. This is demonstrated
by the Hindi Monarchy (the Hindus
invented karma, you know!), in which
the king is the living incarnation of the
god Vishnu and therefore has the
greatest karma in the world. He
deserves to live in lavish excess while his
country starves around him. They
deserve to starve because their karma
is poor. Therefore they are poor. Posing
as a spiritual guru of some kind or
another, it is possible to identify and
exploit people who are so isolated by
privilege that they will pay you to tell
them that their wealth is proof of their
spiritual
potency
using
some
bastardization of the logic shown
above, coupled with some fun,
theatrical rituals and psychedelic drugs.
This con takes many forms often evolves
into small cults. "I was initiated by a
shaman and I now am composed of
300 times more astral light! So worth the
$700!" sounds too much like what it is
back home in civilization, but is
common verbiage at some festivals.
So what have we learned here? Was
there anything to learn at all? Was it just
a bunch of flashing lights, colors and
pretentious 50-cent words? That’s
usually how I feel after a festival. I can’t
say for sure if that dragonfly was talking
to me or where my pants went or what
all these bruises are from. No way of
telling if that freak you hooked up with is
going to turn out to be psycho.
Certainly not going to see that flask
again...
But you know what? It feels GOOD.
Whether or not I changed the world,
even though I’m broke now, maybe my
relationship is all weird now but
goddamnit I FEEL GREAT. I’m going
back to work with a smile because
deep down, some part of me knows
that maybe—just maybe—I really did
communicate with jellyfish through a
lightning bolt on top of a floating castle
while getting blown by a giraffe.
Probably. There’s always next year...
WEST COAST
FESTIVALS!!!
MAY 2014
•
•
•
•
•
May 22-26, Lightning in a Bottle – Temecula, CA
May 23-25, Sasquatch Festival – George, WA
May 30-June 2, Enchanted Forest – Navarro, CA
May 31-June 1, Summer Arts & Music Festival –
Benbow, CA
May 31-June 1, Redwood Mountain Faire – Felton, CA
JUNE 2014
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
June 1, Planetary Dance – Mt. Tamalpais, CA
June 5-28, Pedalpalooza – Portland, OR
June 7-8, Union Street Festival – San Francisco, CA
June 8, Haight Ashbury Street Fair – San Francisco, CA
June 12-15, Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival – Grass
Valley, CA
June 13-15, Reggae in the Hills – Angels Camp, CA
June 13-15, Live Oak Festival – Santa Ynez, CA
June 14-16, Coyote Spirit Festival – Paisley, OR
June 14-15, Fairfax Festival – Fairfax, CA
June 19-20, What The Festival – Wolfs Run Ranch, OR
June 19-22, HonkFestWest – Seattle, WA
June 20-22, Electric Daisy Carnival – Las Vegas, NV
June 20-22, Conscious Culture Festival – Tonasket, WA
June 20-22, Hope Mt. Barter Fair – Takilma, OR
June 20-22, Sierra Nevada World Music Festival –
Boonville, CA
June 20-22, 4 Peaks Music Festival – Bend, OR
June 21-22, San Francisco Free Folk Festival – San
Francisco, CA
June 21-22, Berkeley World Music Festival – Berkeley,
CA
June 26-27, West Coast Contact Improv Jam –
Berkeley, CA
June 27-29, Kate Wolf Memorial Festival – Laytonville,
CA
June 27-29, Fairy & Human Relations Congress –
Carlton, WA
JULY 2014
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
July 1-7, National Rainbow Gathering – Montana
Location TBA
July 3-6, High Sierra Music Festival – Quincy, CA
July 10-13, California Worldfest – Grass Valley, CA
July 11-13, Oregon Country Fair – Veneta, OR
July 17-20, Wanderlust Festival – North Lake Tahoe, CA
July 24-28, Motion Notion – Golden, British Columbia
July 25-27, Photosynthesis – Granite Falls, WA
July 25-27, Faerieworlds – Eugene, OR
July 31- Aug. 3, Illumination Fire Circle – Tidewater, OR
July 31-Aug. 4, Wanderlust Festival – Whistler, BC
AUGUST 2014
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Aug. 1-3, Reggae on The River – Humboldt County, CA
Aug. 1-10, Network for a New Culture Summer Camp –
Ashland, OR
Aug. 6-11, Shambhala Music Festival – Salmo, BC
Aug. 7-10, Summer Meltdown – Darrington, WA
Aug. 8-11, Beloved Festival – Tidewater Falls, OR
Aug. 22-24, Pranafest – Ashland, OR
Aug. 25-Sept. 1, Burning Man – Black Rock City, NV
Aug. 30 -Sept. 1, Bumbershoot – Seattle, WA
SEPTEMBER 2014
•
•
•
•
•
Sept. 4-7, Bhakti Fest – Joshua Tree, CA
Sept. 11-15, Pacific Fire Gathering – Oregon Coast
Sept. 12-14, American River Music Festival – Lotus, CA
Sept. 18-21, Origin8 Festival– Williams, OR
Sept. 19-21, Kaleidoscope Music Festival – Mt. Hood,
OR
47
Photography by Jason Langer
BURK BIGGLER
December 19, 1977-March 31, 2014
Photography by Oblique Foto featuring Kyla Ogle
BURRO
LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE
JUNE 21,
2014
FEATURING
Wanderlust Circus
AmyElizabeth Couture
Black Rock Boutique
Bodypaint by Numbers

View Issue #7! - The Burro Lifestyle Magazine

Transcription

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