Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Preface to "Bad Times on the Green Tortoise"




Click here for note regarding
recent technical problems.


This is a curious little narrative. You can actually see my point of view changing, as I write it. At the beginning, I say that I don't know if I even want to set up a Burning Man page, any more. By the end, I'm talking about how to get a group of burners going and giving the reader a set of local links.

Why don't I go back and revise the beginning to give this piece a coherent point of view? Because that very change in point of view was an important part of the experience, and the experience wasn't really complete until I wrote about it. Coherence of viewpoint would come at the expense of the honesty of the writing. One should not adopt an angelic point of view when writing in the first person, because that's not how we experience life.

Also, I'm not quite sure what to make of Burning Man or of the Burner subculture, yet, so any "ultimate point of view" taken here would be a premature one, subject to massive revision in an unforeseeable future. I have seen some burners behave in a manner that suggested kind intentions and responsible attitudes. But, when I see the level of petty vindictiveness certain members of BMORG are willing to encourage over the slightest bit of dissent, I wonder if what I have witnessed is a reflection of the best that man has to offer or the worst. Did they do what is kind (or right) by design, as a matter of individual choice, or did they do it by chance, the reflex of those who have been conditioned to go along to get along? Was I being shown the goodness of strangers, or merely being appeased as a matter of habit?

I don't know. I think the optimistic view is more accurate. My guess would be that the online Burner subculture and the offline Burner subculture are two very different entities. Further experience may prove me wrong, or I might never find out at all. Until I do, though, I am not about to pretend that my perspective in this story is anything other than a work in progress to any substantial extent.

Here's the story.






Technical Problems at Internet Trash





"Face it, Flounder, you f***ed up.
You trusted us!"

- Animal House, 1977


Note: I am still rewriting this page, as I relocate this material from Internet Trash to a new provider. As bad as what I was describing here was, it just barely scratched the surface of the badness of service I was seeing. I didn't mention how the Internet Trash server would go down for a month or two at a time, how I had to track the owner down to get him to ask him to clear out the needed diskspace for us to be able to continue uploading files because the help address was no longer in service, how he threw a temper tantrum when he was asked to fix the FTP ... etc. One of my brothers came up with what I think is the most plausible theory: the person running Internet Trash set up the whole thing just so he could pad his resume with a past managerial position, and we, his subscribers, were just along for the ride.

This is what I wrote back when the old parent site for this page was still located over at Internet Trash, where it had been for years:




Here's the situation: a few years ago, my webspace provider started offering FTP access, and with it, the ability to set up subdirectories on one's webpage. "Cool !", I thought, "This will make keeping my site well organized a lot easier". I started building my subdirectories up.

A few months ago, FTP stopped working. Whenever I'd try to upload something, I'd get the same message - "Sorry maximum users logged in". Not cool, especially since there is no way to update pages in our subdirectories, other than by FTP. (Fortunately, in the case of files in our main directories, we can update by e-mail attachment or site manager, so at least we could still work there).

I wrote to our sysop back in May, when this problem had been already around for over a month. Yes, I tried logging in at all different times of day, at different hours, and always got that message. Two months later, and all that I've gotten by way of response is a surly letter from the Sysop asking me to not cc letters sent to the help desk to Langtech, which is listed as the registrant for this domain. That letter came after a series of letters to the help desk went unanswered. I had sent a letter to somebody who had written to me from Langtech before, and helped me with a technical problem, doing so on the off chance that the help desk's inbox was broken. I did not mail to Langtech without reason.

Two months later, I've seen no movement. FTP has not worked here for three months, now. Not only has our provider refused to fix the problem, our help desk hasn't even responded to any of the letters I sent to them, trying to find somebody who could fix the problem, aside from sending the aforementioned surly letter about cc-ing things to Langtech. It's time to face facts. The FTP server is not going to get fixed, period. This means that any pages which I have in a certain subdirectory, where I originally uploaded my Burning Man material, can't be updated.

All that I can do for the moment, is place copies of the material in question in my main directory, where I can still update the pages I have. When I'm a little bit better paid, I'll get a non-free web account to host this material and maybe some more. In the meantime, what can I do other than ask you to please pardon the multiple listing? It just never occurred to me at the time that these folks would invite us to use a service and then refuse to maintain it. Sorry about my naivite on this matter, but this is the first website I ever set up and there are some lessons I had to learn the hard way.




That's putting it mildly. I have since set up the replacement for the old parent site elsewhere, and I can tell you firsthand that $5.95 per month can buy an awful lot of peace of mind. So, from where did you enter this page? Click on it and you'll get back to where you came from.

  1. Introduction to "Bad Times on the Green Tortoise"







Burning Businesses in Chicago and Other Links (circa 2002)





Note: This page is being reorganized. The list of camps has been moved elsewhere. I've added a list of places where one can study improvisational theater (also elsewhere), which will provide one with skills which will prove useful for those who wish to make performance a part of their camp. If you really want to create a fully interactive environment and give it a little soul, you really have to include the people at your camp as part of the environment you're creating. What is called for is a little theater - improvisational theatre, because you never know what a visitor is going to do, and you're going to have to fit it in to whatever your doing.

Which is cooler - a lost Pre-Mayan civilization populated by lost Pre-Mayans or one populated by 2lst century Americans, to take a (sort of) local example? Developing these skills can add a lot to the experience of your camp, and I think you'll find that you're having a lot of fun along the way.




Local Links



Around the Coyote:

The big multi-media arts festival in Wicker Park. See it before "gentrification" does it in? Let's hope that won't be for a while.

Note : This is not just a place to visit. Part of the event takes place in the (somewhat) large triangular park that gives Wicker Park, the neighborhood, its name. Unfortunately, much of that park has been "improved" (turned into a baseball diamond) but there still is some empty space in there that is still open to general use by the general public. Theatrical performances have been held out there, and there might still be space for a small camp or two. (You would list it under "performance").
Generally, the summer festival takes place about a week after Burning Man. There is also a winter event.


Charybdis Arts:

A little piece of the Burning Man here in Chicago, God willing. "A YMCA for the arts".



Chicago Artists' Coalition :

Networking organization for the visual arts in Chicago



Chicago Filmmakers:

Offer classes in film making, show films. The classes do tend to be expensive, though.



Chicago Fun:

Entertainment, the arts, festivals ... the good part of major city life. Also known as : http://chicagofunnews.com/

Note the change in url : according to the site owner, his original url was hijacked by a pack of cyberpirates located in Hong Kong (a notorious safe haven for variety of online thieves). He probably won't be getting his old url back any time soon if he is telling the truth. (He appears to be, judging from the bug-eyed ticket logo that is familiar from a number of other surprisingly reallocated domains, such as wwwboard.net and internettoilet.com, one of Internet Trash's former domain names; and from the results of a "whois" search).


ChicagoPoetry.com:

Local literary events



Guild Complex:

A not-for-profit arts center, with focusing on literature, and its interaction with other art forms



Owmyeye Productions:

Owmyeye is the film company of Joe Winston, who produced "Burning Man : Just add couches" and "This week in Joe's Basement".



Poetry Center of Chicago:

Literary organization, holds reading series



Psychotronic Film Society:

For the enjoyment of strange films. "Quality is no object".





Non-local Links



B u r n i n g A r t:

"Burning art today, for a better tomorrow". Fire arts.



Civilized Explorer's Guide to Burning Man :

General useful information about the experience, with a few photos to round things out.



Invasion from the Dark Side (Copy in Internet Archive) :

The bad news is, we're all going to Hell. The good news is that we're apparently looking forward to it, so I guess it all works out anyway. Are these people serious? They seem to be, but read and judge for yourself and then rejoin the rest of us back in reality, unless you're in the mood for a second serving of this dreck.



Radio Free Burning Man :

Homepage for the radio station for Black Rock City, the city that is created and disassembled each year for the Burning Man festival.



The Unofficial Midwestern Burning Man Rideboard (bm-rides)

Maybe not the most entertaining link on this page, but one which I hope you will find useful. BM-Rides is a list for Midwesterners seeking rides to burns, those seeking riders in the Midwest, and for those sharing experiences and advice regarding travel through our region enroute to these events.


   


If you'd like to find a (blessedly brief) list of things I'm either warning local burners to avoid, or aren't too sure about, click here. Now, where were you before you came to this page? Or where would you like to go?




  1. The main page for these blogs?
  2. Bad Times on the Green Tortoise? Or the introduction to it?
  3. The Official Burning Man Site?
  4. Back to your ring






Camps and Villages at Burning Man (circa 2002)







What is a Theme Camp?



Put very simply: A theme camp, as the name suggests, is a group of people who gather together in a group at a "burn" (Burning Man or similar event) to work together on a concept, and make an interactive event. A village is a collection of camps which have joined together to make a larger community.



Camps and Villages at Burningman in

2003: Mapped ( A - L , M - Z )
2002: Mapped ( A - L , M - Z )
2001: Mapped ( A - L , M - Z ), Unmapped
2000: Mapped ( A - L , M - Z )
1999: Mapped ( A - L , M - Z )
1998: Mapped ( A - M , N - Z )
1997: Mapped


There's a lot to read, there. If you'd like a little more focus in your reading, you might start with some of our local camps, if you are in the Chicago area. For 2003, we have the following listed:





That's not a lot for a city our size, but it's about as many camps as we've seen over the last few years. The first camp, I still don't know anything about. I should write to the gentleman and find out more.

The second camp listed, as the name suggests is a Jewish themed camp (based in Oak Park) which will have kabbalah classes, a sabbath pot luck, meditation and socials. They're inviting everybody, but if you decide to bring food, you really should keep it kosher, because if these guys are davening on the Playa, there's an excellent chance that they keep kosher, themselves. If you put non-kosher food into contact with a serving utensil or a dish, and then other food comes into contact with that, it's not kosher any more. Rekoshering gets to be a real pain even with metal, and wood and ceramics, strictly speaking, can't be koshered at all. So, if you visit and these folks decline an offering of food, please don't feel insulted. Ritually speaking, they may have no choice.

The third is an artists group that includes "StephStuff" (Stephanie Andrews), an artist who moved here from San Francisco a few years ago who works in "new materials". I know, that sounds a little dry, but her site is worth a visit. It's probably unlike anything you've seen before. This camp is probably where the Burning Chicagoans are going to be this year, judging from list announcements regarding Synchroni-city. The bad news is, it's probably where the local Burning Man cabal is going to be as well, and that can get unpleasant.





In 2001, these local camps were listed:



  1. AAA Camp                                                           send e-mail
  2. Blimp Radio Network Compound       send e-mail
  3. Camp Conception                                           send e-mail
  4. Head Lamp Camp                                           send e-mail


Without thinking, I had placed the last of these on the list of "non-local camps" before. This, as I explained, was a purely sentimental inclusion that would probably have made no sense to a non-chicagoan. The address given was that of the "Playa edition" of "Urbus Orbis", a well-loved Wicker Park coffeehouse that folded when its landlord jacked up its rent.

This, admittedly, is a pretty short list considering how big Chicago is, and 2002 looked even leaner. "Camp Conception" had been the 2001 incarnation of the "Burning Chicagoans", cast in terms of the "Seven Ages of Man" theme. In 2002, they returned to take part in the Floating World as Camp Whistleworks, where visitors could make ceramic whistles which would become part of a steam-driven organ. There was also a camp calling itself the "Boditch Navagational Database" (sic) (contact address Eapvor@yahoo.com) - and that was it!

Faced with a shortage of local camps, Chicagoans sometimes took part in camps based in neighboring cities, Milwaukee in particular, which in 2001 was listed as the home base for these camps:



  1. Camp Videogasm                                 send e-mail
  2. Snowflake Village                                 send e-mail


Aside from the local camps, there were a number of camps and villages in 2001 that sounded or looked interesting to me (or at least different):







Non-Local Camps


01. Al-Riyad

A traditional Middle Eastern home is recreated. (send e-mail)


02. Antenna Theatre's Euphorium

They did the "Kubla Khan hallucination" display in 2001. (send e-mail)


03. Burning Man Opera

Would you like to learn Tuvan throat singing or "Balinese monkey chant"? Then drop by here, where you will find people eager to teach. (send e-mail)


04. Burning Scouts

(send e-mail)


05. Camp Cherry

A fun place to make an ass of yourself. Home of the "wheel of indiscretion". (send e-mail)


06. Camp DeNile



07. Dante (2002)

A preview of your eternal damnation. (send e-mail)


08. Draka the Dragon's lair

"Draka" is sort of a train-like bus in the shape of a fire-breathing dragon, with a lounge inside, that people have used to get around "Black Rock City")


09. Dragon Debris



10. Emerald City

Popular Dance location, friendly group of people who, unfortunately, stopped gathering after BM 2001. No, I don't have any idea of what they're up to these days.


11. Firetown

(send e-mail)


12. Funk Camp

Home of the funk mobile, a dance party that works its way down the streets, around a mobile sound stage. (send e-mail)


13. Gigsville

(send e-mail)


14. Gnomefatty

(send e-mail)


15. Gypsies/Dream Theatre

(send e-mail)


16.HeeBeeGeeBee healers

(send e-mail)


17. House of Indulgence

(send e-mail)


18. Illumination Village

(send e-mail)


19. Illuminaughty



20. Le Petite Guignol

(send e-mail)


21. Light Brite Camp

(send e-mail)


22. Live Journal Camp

(send e-mail)


23. The Lost Penguin (2001. Warning: annoying pop-up ads)

This link is a little different from the others. The virtue of "the lost penguin" wasn't that it was especially exciting. It wasn't, and it didn't seem to want to be. It was a nice place to take a load off your playa-cracked feet and talk with people at night. People there seemed more approachable than was the norm after sunset.


24. Love Project

(send e-mail)


25. Lush Camp

(send e-mail)


26. Mad Scientists

(send e-mail)


27. Malpractice Camp

(send e-mail)


28. Nuclear Family



29. OCF County Fair

(send e-mail)


30. Playa Phone

(send e-mail)


31. Technomania Circus

(Or access their site via their url over at Geocities)



32. Temple of Atonement

Not that thrilled with the S and M aspects, but I have to be intrigued with a camp that invites you to sell your soul, and gives you change. (send e-mail)


33. Xara

This camp, which creates a fictional Pre-Mayan jungle culture, does have a Chicago presence in the person of Kevin Ford, who sometimes holds local events. He does generally ask that one be an active part of the Burning community before coming to one of his events, which he seems to want to keep community-style events with a personal touch instead of awkward gatherings of strangers.

Click here to return to Burning Businesses in Chicago, or here to return to the main page for these blogs.











Improv Classes (circa 2002)





Here are a few links to places which have taught Improv here in Chicago in the past.


  1. Annoyance Theatre
  2. Artistic Home, The
  3. Chicago ComedySportz
  4. Free Associates
  5. ImprovOlympic
  6. Noble Fool, The
  7. Player's Workshop
  8. Playground
  9. Second City
  10. Victory Gardens
  11. WNEP Theatre

I should warn you that "caveat emptor" applies with a vengeance here. Even places that are generally good will occasionally bring in instructors who, in one way or another, will give you much less than your money's worth. It is good to sit in on an instructor's class and talk to some of his students before signing up for one of his classes, when possible. Certainly, you should make an effort to see some of the student shows.

In addition to these, I would point the reader in the direction of two relevant resources I came across :

 

Theatre Chicago

Listings of live theatre, and such
http://www.theatrechicago.com/

Yes and ...

Site devoted to theatrical/comedic improvisation, disproportionately
much of it local
http://www.YesAnd.com/

 
 

Where did you come from? Click on your location and you'll go back there.


  1. The main page for these blogs
  2. Burning Businesses in Chicago






Burning Experiences I'm Not Endorsing, Right Now (circa 2002)






Not Recommended


Burkhert Underground

This is an open mike event which I first recommended as a possible meeting place for a local Burning community. I have since learned that this may have been a very bad recommendation, given some behavior out of the host, Fred Burkhert, which caused me great concern, as I explained in this letter on the old alternative list, to some of the very people I recommended the event to. Oops. These things happen, and all one can do is try to get the news out.




Chicago Underground Film Festival, The

Homepage: Cuff.org. I get the feeling that these are people that one would not want to do business with. Here's why. Recently (it's May 2003 as I'm writing this) I drop by their site. I see a notice up about the 2002 festival, clearly marked on their front page, but nothing directing me to information about the 2003 festival. I look a little further. I find a phone number, call it, and get the three ear-splitting tones of death : their phone has been disconnected. Not the best of signs.

Wanting to make absolutely sure to give these people a chance, I write to director@cuff.org asking about the status of this year's festival. I get back a reply. "Tersely worded" would be the kindest way I could describe it. "Downright rude" is what comes to mind. I look some more, and find that they have hidden mention of this year's festival under "site updates", which is where most webmasters put notices about site re-organizations and almost nobody would think of looking for an event announcement. Put a big display for when the 2002 festival was on the front page, and then hide the 2003 notice in the footnotes? And then just expect that people will search your entire site for a notice which would usually be placed in full view?

There's an attitude toward the customer (and everybody else) being expressed and it's not a good one. "Rudeness is so cutting edge" seems to be the belief, and I have to admit that it's a common one in Chicago. But it's still BS, and as far as I'm concerned, so is this festival. If they're going to get testy when one asks them when the event is, just imagine how much of a joy they'll be to deal with once one gets there. In 2003, they'll be holding this thing from August 27 through September 2, in their theater in the Century City shopping mall at Broadway and Diversey, where I'm sure all the cutting edge people hang out (at least until curfew). Enjoy.







Last, and most certainly least, we have the option of Travelling with the Green Tortoise. Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. I mean this. Seriously, don't do it. If you want to know why I'm saying this, click here. Either drive out to Burning Man with friends, or wait until next year when you can get your friends to drive out with you, because otherwise it is just not worth it.

Click here to return to "Burning Businesses in Chicago" and continue.





"Heads Up" (circa 2002)



Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 09:55:19 -0600 (CST)
From: Me
Reply-To: (old alternative list)
To: (old alternative list)
Subject: [(old list tag)] A "Heads Up" on a place I recommended before


Not sure, but I think that I might have mentioned a links page of mine here, some months back : "Burning Businesses in Chicago and Other Links"


webspace.webring.com/people/jg/green_tortoise_reviewer/green_tortoise/burning_man_links.html

(This is a new location. If you go to the old one over at Internet Trash,


(old url ommited, site has been deleted)

you'll find a notice mentioning the fact that I've relocated all of my Burning Man-related material off of it, citing recent censorship as a reason. The fact that the I.T. server has been down for as much as a month or two at a time didn't help, either).

Originally, I had recommended a place called "Burkhert Underground" on that page. Now, I wish I hadn't. Here's what happened.






Burkhert Underground is an open mike event, mostly music but with some fiction writing and poetry. Think very low budget : it meets in Burkert's basement, hence the name. It can be a much more social event than most such open mikes, with people gathering in the man's backyard or upstairs in his gallery between sets, depending on the weather. So far, it all seems good, especially if you're one of the performers, but toward the end of summer something that seemed a little disturbing happened, disturbing enough to make me retract that recommendation.



I came in late, to find one of the writers being yelled at by a red-faced Burkhert, who seemed unhappy about the fact that she had political literature on her, and that a political point of view had come out of her reading. That point of view was a Socialist one : she was a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, apparently. Allegedly.

She remained calm as Burkhert screamed at her, at the top of his lungs, saying that she was saying "fuck you" to him (even as she denied this), going on a rant about how she wanted to steal his home from him (which she denied, pointing out that selling $ 5 tickets to an event in one's own basement hardly made him an oppressor of the working classes). Burkhert then threw her out.

I had always taken the good spirits that I had encountered at this event at face value, which may be a little naive, but it makes for a more relaxed evening. I went up to those who had witnessed the exchange, a minute or two after the lady's departure, and asked them what had just happened. They seemed more than a little nervous, and couldn't even seem to speak for themselves, about an incident that they had seen happen right in front of them. Not that they needed to, as I soon found that Burkert had been hovering just around the corner. He returned quickly, and told me what happened, instead of letting the (sort of) independent witnesses speak for themselves, and then told them what happened!

Huh? They were there. It's a little weird when people are being told what they saw by somebody who knows that they were there at the time. It's a lot weirder when they seem to not know what they saw, until the local authority figure (Burkhert) tells them. Yes, I know that there's a lot of that going around, but who needs to make a trip and pay a cover charge to see more of it?

You might not think much of the lady's politics, but with an open mike event open to writers, that should be beside the point. A writer, to do her job as well as she can, must not censor herself. If her writing is to be worth anything at all, her point of view has to come out of it, regardless of whether or not her point is one that somebody else cares for. One might strongly argue against her point of view. One might even, in an extreme case (a Nazi extolling the virtues of killing non-aryans) decide that the person needs to leave, so that the evening may be enjoyed. But one should not lose sight of the fact that we are diminished every time such an option is exercised, not as comfortable to speak as we were before, and with fewer ideas in front of us to consider, and so such an option should be exercised only with the greatest reluctance. Reluctance was not what was on display that night.

Some will say "it's the man's home, so he's entitled to set any rules he wishes". Yes, perhaps so, but it's also the right of others to choose to not attend, especially when the rules seem less than reasonable.



What those rules might be, seems to change from moment to moment.

Within minutes of his screaming rant regarding the evils of Socialism, Burkhert was already rewriting history, trying to claim that politics was not an issue, despite what he had been saying a few minutes earlier. He went off on some vague tangent about how he couldn't allow her to speak because what she was saying would set people against each other and he wanted to bring them together, and how he wouldn't let George Bush read there, either. "No politics, man". In which case, it's "no content, man", because it's hard to make a statement about life without it having any political implications.

The moral of this story is to never place too many of one's eggs in a single basket, no matter how nice that basket might look, because you never know when it might fall apart. Burkhert Underground has been seen by some as being a good place to meet people to do "Burning Man- type things" locally (and I've been one of them). But, censorship isn't any cooler when it comes from the right, relatively speaking, than when it comes from the left, especially if what one is looking for is a place where one can be oneself and be at ease.

I never did get the lady's version of events, as she was long gone by the time I got done talking with the witnesses I had first gone up to, but looking back I can see that I saw enough. I can not recommend this event.



Footer for old alternative list deleted. Click here to return to the previous page