Kirkwood is steep and deep

The origin of the South Fork American is the backside of Kirkwood Resort. We'll have some solid run-off and a nice season with news that there is a fresh 3 feet of snow! Rafting trips will be awesome. California River Trips are on for 2009.

Buff Castle 2nd. Saturday!

Last Saturday night in Sacramento, our local Hip-Shack: Buff Castle threw it down with two live bands, racks of vintage clothing, vinyl records, vintage electronics, and bric-a-brac! White Fang drove down from Portland/Hood River Oregon to make the show. They "filled the space" with cowbell, small drum kit, lead guitar, and lead vocals....super fun and high energy combined with soem genuine talent...you can't hide solid musicianship. White Fang finished their set in front of a wall-to-wall crowd inside Buff Castle with owners Lizz (in her vintage W.E.T. River Trips T! and Dan-Dan (as well as their capable assistant Christian) held it all together with PBR, Humus, fruit, juice, pretzels, cheese, crackers, and a pile of Oreos (Oreos are VEGAN...'ya know!). Out back in the Buff Castle courtyard the Religious Girls from Oakland set-up and played for a packed crowd that spilled over into the alley attracting a major crowd (luckily the local Po Po got busy with a robbery suspect at the corner liquor store and a smaller crowd had also gathered at 21st and L for another show).....No issues. No Foul. The Religious Girls tore it up with incredible percussion (their drummer is better than killer!) mixed with crafted electro keyboards, gizmos, and augmented vocals. The show ended with drum heads covered with paint and spraying the crowd though some psycho beats....Big fun @ the Buff Castle!

New York has the Ball....Sacramento now has The Cube!

On a foggy New Year's eve Sacramento entered the Big Time and the ranks of "World Class" cities (at-least by the estimation of our new mayor, Kevin Johnson. With two fireworks displays (one early at 9pm and the other at midnight) over Old Sacramento, the river, and the Tower Bridge (so prized that the city painted it gold!)...the foggy night was lit-up like a gauze curtain over a Christmas tree!...it was actually surreal and oddly cool. A crowd of over 15k people looked on while I was on hand for the early show.

I then hopped on the KLR and split the traffic for a close look at the "Cube" that would descend from a rooftop at 12th and K Streets dolled-up with colorful lights and an outdoor stage and sound-system for performances by the Broadway cast of "Stomp" and a U2 cover band (yes, it is Sacramento.) The Cube was a high-tech collection of LED's capable of being programmed with over seven million color and pattern combinations while it descended from the dizzying height of 40 feet...

The organizers had planned for a crowd of three thousand; however, twelve thousand actually showed up! All in all... a nice first attempt and definitely a new tradition for Sacramento. Long-live the Cube!...just take it to a "higher level"!

Here's a link to my photos...without a fast lens, I turned to "art" for my image preservation!
http://picasaweb.google.com/liles.stephen/SacramentoBlackAndWhite02#

Happy New Year!

Burning Man Movie/slide show

For the love of X!

1. The seminal, legendary, critically acclaimed (sounds pretty stuffy eh?) So-Cal punk band X have reunited with the original members: John Doe, Exene Cervanka, D.J. Bonebrake, and Billy Zoom. In the early and mid eighties, our original W.E.T. River Trips crew had been to several X performances and wet rafting events in Sacramento at venues that no longer exist; however, they were coming back for one show at Harlow's (a compact club/restaurant).
   

When I heard about the show, I made a mental note and thought I might go. I didn't buy tickets due to my 25-year plus memory of an obscure band playing for small crowds of punks & hipsters and their appearance in town wouldn't be a big deal...I was wrong. The show sold-out 6 weeks in advance. So what did i do?...I went any way. Hey...It would be an another event no matter what.

As I stood outside on the sidewalk with a line snaking out the door and repeated announcements that the event was sold-out and no tickets would be available, I joined a clutch of others who had made the trip without tickets and were furtively asking passerbys for "tickets"..."got an extra ticket"...."cash for your ticket". It felt a little silly and a bit sleazy. After watching another ticketless sucker get a ticket by holding up a cardboard sign, I picked up the same sign and in 5 minutes I had a ticket at face F'n value! I'm was in. (I handed off the sign to one of my ticketless brothers....awesome team-building exercise!)

After going next store for a slice of pizza, I got in with my wristband and staked out a prime spot next to a pillar just to the right of center stage about 8 feet from the lip. The first band (hadn't even asked who they were) turned out to be the Filthy Thieving Bastards with Spider Stacy (a founding member of the Pogues). The band planned a rippin hour long set of classic Pogues material mixed with a few of the FTB's tunes. I felt like I had just seen the Pogues (without the spitting, beer bottles hucked at one another, and an on-stage fight)....almost PG...cool...but PG.



After the appropriate rock-star delay for X, I got a chance to look around at the crowd and interestingly...I didn't feel old at 53 (I had plenty of company). There were plenty of vintage punk t-shirt stretched at the waist, baldness, and greyness (replacing the dyed black do's of the 80's) ear to fill the room: toe-to-heel and shoulder to shoulder. I felt comfortable an oddly proud of these surrounding old people mixed with 20-30-40 some on a Thursday night listening to too-loud live music in a normally "upscale" club.

X hit the stage looking like X (Exene in trademark frumpy Granny dress and ragged lipstick, John Doe in denim and plaid, DJ grinning ear to ear behind his kit, and Bill Zoom in his trademark leather jacket accessorized with his Cheshire Cat grin, "Bill Zoom" tooled into his guitar strap and sporting a "Billy's Back!" lapel button). They were older...a little thicker and a little thinner (Billy's hair). John Doe led, Exene harmonized, DJ destroyed his kit (he did ruin a snare), and Billy (in full trademark style) ripped off lead after lead and fat distorted cords on his silver metalflake guitar while smiling his Cheshire grin, winking at the women, and refusing to look at his guitar.

John didn't chit chat...he just kicked ass. The only intro was political as he introduced "This must be the new World" with the reminder that the presidential election was looming large. The show was loud, note perfect, angst-ridden, and just a bit sloppy....the show was simply "right" and I felt pretty damn cool for an old bastard as I rode my motorcycle home...no not a Harley...the W.E.T KlR 650. (did I mention I couldn't hear for about 3 hours...it was awesome!)

Time for a long drive to some American whitewater to have the rationale to drag out the old-school I-Pod loaded with tons of X!

Burning Man - American Dream

The American Dream was the theme of Burning Man the “BMC” held on the Playa of the Black Rock Desert in Northeast Nevada. I went with Maggie after a long series of river trips and we stayed for four days out of the six (we had to go to work!). As the theme of Americana was imprinted though the layout of clock-wise (there is no “counter” at BMC) by naming those avenues after Iconic American Cars: Corvair, Falcon, Dart, Corvette, and even… Hummer. Additionally, this year’s costumes mirrored the theme with scatterings of flags and a plethora of red, white, and blue cloth, skin, and lights.

The American Dream is essentially the realization that you/we “have everything”: cars, clothes, houses, food, entertainment, friends, family, etc. The Playa provided that: no one went hungry, art cars were everywhere, music never stopped, there was plenty of housing, people were surrounded by friends and family (real, constructed, and evolved), and entertainment was always within eyesight and arm’s reach. The American Dream came to fruition on the inhospitable soil of the Black Rock Desert. Everyone was from somewhere and the indigenous people provided the venue (through the BLM). The gates of the BMC were an approximation Ellis Island and the Playa succumbed to the “Manifest Destiny” of those who had conspired to stage this American Dream. The citizen’s of the world were present with representatives from most continents (Antarctica didn’t have a contingent; however, the others did!). So the World was represented by folks from countries such as: England, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Ireland, Greece, Russia, The Ukraine, Israel, Iran, Iraq, India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Canada, and even Oklahoma! Many others were there as well…we just met or heard of folks from these Countries.

Our founding “fathers”…yes, the old, dead, white men who allegedly “constructed” our constitution and Declaration of Independence (based upon their readings and interpretations of Locke, Hume, Payne, and others that they plagiarized freely) would have thrived: B. Franklin by creating electrical madness and Art Cars, T. Jefferson would have raged the Deep End, set-up the bachelor party and Domes while hooking-up, and G. Washington would have piloted the largest of land-yachts across the Playa day and night. The rest of their posse would have created a killer theme camp (colonial columns, wheeled ships, exploding muskets made of L-wire, and rivers of rum). All in all, they would have approved.

Not a bad “Dream”. No one went hungry, thirsty, un-sheltered, optionally clothed, and un-transported (in the real and imagined senses). The American Dream lives through our excess, excesses, and Burning Man ’08 was just that: a celebration of our collective and global excesses rammed at hyper-speed through all of the available senses.

Burning Man Part 2

Maggie won the Golden Ticket and Big Poppa decided to drop in...
Burning Man Camp (BMC) 2008!

I picked up Maggie in Reno after loading the Dodge up with provisions, shelter, and bikes to deal with the Black Rock Desert where Burning Man is held (about 140 miles northeast of Reno) and just to the east of Pyramid Lake.

Since neither of us has ever been to BMC, we were apprehensive, excited, and a little bit giddy.

We were welcomed "home" by the BMC staff at the second checkpoint and we figured out the lay-out quickly (the whole camp is laid out like the dial of a clock. We found a great spot at 9:30 "Hummer" (the Axis paths were named after American cars in keeping with this year's them of "The American Dream". In less than one hour, we were on our bike and cruising across the Playa of the Black Rock Desert. Since it was only the second day of the six day run, the BRC was still coming together and the installation zone in the center of the "clock" was still sparsely populated with installations and sculptures. It gave up the opportunity to really see it all come together and it did...with amazing precision and creativity. We rode our bikes at-least 15 miles through the camps and installations.....and then darkness fell....the lights (powered by solar, generators and glow sticks....) filled the night combined with the costumes, Art Cars, Mobile DJ's, and hordes of cycling kooks (like us). We swam through the crowds and landed at installations everywhere we could travel....at 2am, I called it a night and Maggie powered on to play putt-putt golf with an Irishman named Ruckus and his friend and ran into old friends in new locations. The music never stopped so sleeping was merely a concept.

I rolled out to see the sunset and folks wide-eyed, zombied, and some staggering through still thumping drum and bass sessions with dust settling from the night air as a blaze of red, orange, and crimson flooded the blue sky above the desert to reveal a mile long string of balloons arching across the Playa with ultra-lites plying the skies. Overnight, new installations appeared, new structures developed, and more campers filled in the minimal gaps.... Maggie saw the sunrise from the top of "Babylon" (a 8-story structural steel tower just to the northeast of the "Man") and we met back up in camp. Due to our river guiding skills, we whipped out a breakfast of potatoes, sausage, and eggs with ice cold orange and grapefruit juice and watched the human parade from our campsite. After a session with the sun shower, we headed out again to see what we could see...no agenda, and with no plan.

six hours later...we had met up with Kevin at the Fixation Lounge, seen countless new installations, listen to live music, watched dance performances, elbowed through the crowd at the Deep End (an open air world-class DJ Club), saw a circus, observed human combat in the Thunder Dome (sponsored by the Death Guild), watched a series of fire shows (with flame throwers, explosions and twirling, flaming batons), stopped at numerous open "bars", received cooling mist-offs from other campers and we circumnavigated the Playa at least three times....then we had dinner (which was awesome: pasta, watermelon, and margaritas) and we were joined by Kevin and his friend from Minnesota. Back on the bikes....'till 4am with new sights and a consistent soundtrack of House, Trance, Techno, Folk, Eastern, and everything else blended together (we even found a Punk camp with a half-pipe skate ramp at 2 O'Clock).

The scale of BRC became etched into us...it was huge. This year, approximately 65,000 campers were expected to attend and the "clock" was filled from 2 to 10....and deeply! Interestingly though, we could bike or walk into the open zones and feel the quiet and the isolation of the desert and turn to the mountains or the open expanse of "12 O'Clock" framed by the lone installation of "The End" (a 24 ft' tall wooden edifice of the the words: THE END).

The quality of everything we encountered was first-class or even world-class: the best Art, sculpture, Mechanicals, technology, Music, Dance, and Creativity on our small planet was present and represented on a patch of desert in northern Nevada...strange, yet very appropriate. Although Burning Man sprang from a event of 20 artists burning an effigy on Baker Beach in San Francisco 20 years ago, the event is now global and populated by citizens (young and old) of the world (at some times I felt that maybe even "beyond" our world).

We needed to leave early for other commitments: jobs and River Trips; but four days on the Playa during Burning Man is a life-long memory that I am sure will be repeated.