Lakes of Fire 2015
Jun. 22nd, 2015 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparrLast weekend I traveled from Chicago to Lucky Lake Campground in Rothbury, MI for the Great Lakes Regional Burn, Lakes of Fire, which is a spinoff event from Burning Man, similar to Alchemy, Firefly, Transformus, Burning Flipside, etc. This writing will be about my experience and observations.
The site: Lucky Lake Campground is the most "equipped" site I've been to a burn at. On the one hand, the more raw the site, the more emphasis is put on the principles of self reliance and communal effort. On the other hand, not having to worry about certain logistical concerns allows people to put more effort into more productive goals, whatever those might be. Lucky Lake sells ice and firewood, provides free running water and a couple of warm showers, and has dirt road access directly to almost every campsite, all of which are well-labeled and have picnic tables. In the end, I think I'm a fan of having a burn at a functional campground. The principles in question are still apparent in many other ways, and the wasted effort of a hundred camps dragging their own ice and water from off-site is better spent on art and projects and fun. In addition to all of this, there is the titular lake, around which the campsites are wrapped. It was fun for wading, swimming, boating, and zorbing, and the floating dock in the middle was an excellent chill space, despite the sun.
Ticketing: Great Lakes Experimental Arts does a lot of things similar to other burns, and some things notably differently. The Lakes of Fire ticket lottery was an interesting mix of approaches. Each person who won the lottery or reached the front of the waiting list was allowed to buy a ticket for themselves as well as up to two additional people. Ignoring a few unintentional process hiccups, this seemed to work reasonably well. This approach falls somewhere in the middle ground between a purely random lottery and a free-exchange market where scalping is a risk, and avoids the browser-refresh-race that some events still embrace. I attended with two other people, call them X and Y. I ended up on the waiting list in the lottery, X got an offer, and Y didn't register until later (due to some bad advice on my part). With X's offer, we got tickets for her and myself. To get a ticket for Y I let my friends know that we needed one, and eventually a friend got a ticket offer and didn't already have two other people to include in their purchase. The only notable downside to this system is that it adds a lot of planning and interpersonal negotiation overhead for the attendees trying to get tickets for themselves and their campmates.
Arrival: We left Chicago on Wednesday after work, aiming to get to the burn about 12 hours after the gates opened for non-early arrivals, 2 days after our front line campmates had arrived with all of our heavy project gear. After ~5 hours of departure and driving, we got through the gate smoothly. ID check, wristband, waiver. Parking had amazingly good lighting, the trailer-tower-generator-light things that are used for nighttime highway maintenance. We got a timestamp on our windshield to get in and out with our stuff, similar to Alchemy's approach. It seemed to work about as well as at Alchemy, with too many cars at campsites and little to nothing done about it, unfortunately. We dropped our stuff and made it back out to parking smoothly. Our tents went up in the dark just fine, and I didn't even have to unpack any of the spares, although we did break into our extra stakes.
Project setup: I spent most of Thursday morning and afternoon setting up projects. The hot air balloon went up pretty quickly with lots of help from folks walking and camping nearby and a much simpler steel structure than previous years. That helping attitude puts LoF in the same category as every other burn I've been to except Firefly. The zorb was easy to inflate now that I've figured out some mechanical aspects of the valve and pump, and we got it rolled out into the balloon's field pretty easily, where it was to live for a day or two. Re-assembling the golf cart was an ordeal due to lost hardware; I had to improvise a lot with new bolts and zip ties and tape. I got all the lighting working then put "DRAW ON ME" on both sides and hoped for the best. I tried to hook up with the DMV to get the cart approved, but gave up on that after half a dozen attempts. They eventually found me much later in the event to give me a permit. I never did manage to deploy the vacuum cube. At various points in the weekend I set up a sign saying "Ask to be tied up" and carried rope with me. I got to do more rope as the event went on, more decorative than bondage, and by Saturday evening people were seeking me out at my camp to get things done. That was nice.
Relationship stuff: I've been to burns with X before. We have separate tents, and mostly do our own things, crossing paths for hugs and conversation and meals. She spent a lot of time with a guy that she's seeing. I had fun, she had fun, and we occasionally had fun together. This was Y's first burn, and we camped and slept together. She wanted more interactivity from me than I was able/ready to give, but things still went really well for her and decently for us. I think the net outcome there is positive. Time will tell.
Project maintenance: The zorb got a small hole a few weeks ago and I patched it with tape. That tape failed mid-burn. I replaced it with better tape, and that mostly held for the duration. I had to add air twice in four days, including for the patch failure. On Friday I rolled and dragged it out to the middle of the lake, where a lot of people got exhausted hamster-wheeling in it until I took it back ashore on Saturday before the effigy burn had a chance to throw embers at it. I think it was my most successful "project" this burn. The balloon didn't have enough room to turn, and I made an engineering mistake on the supports, so after moving the anchor a few times to account for shifting winds it went down permanently on Friday. A lot of people got to experience it, and I learned a lot while making the new structure and setting everything up. If I bring it back to Lakes of Fire, I know what to do differently to make it work. Packing everything up went very smoothly. We got the zorb back into its shipping bag for the first time (hooray!) and the entire balloon project fit on the golf cart (a 2-seater with no real cargo space!).
Volunteering: I missed a Greeter shift (oops) and worked a Perimeter Ninja shift during the effigy burn. It was mostly uneventful. There was a lot of walking past the fence and greeting people and checking their wristbands, and one exciting moment of calling rangers/medical to check on one guy who was falling-over drunk but had made finally and just barely it back to his own tent.
Other unique aspects: LoF is the first regional I've been to with a community bike program. There were lit racks in a few places with a few dozen orange mountain bikes for people to borrow and ride. If I hadn't had the golf cart, I'd have made heavy use of them. The effigy was close enough to the water to have a water perimeter for the burn, and many people watched from the opposite shores, from boats, and from the floating dock. The event provided food at some intervals for volunteers, which was very convenient in theory even though I never needed to take advantage of it. Additionally, volunteering enough hours ensures a ticket purchase offer for next year, which is something I haven't seen at another burn.
Overall, I'd say that LoF is one of the most enjoyable and well-organized burns that I've been to. I will definitely be attending again if I'm in the region, and I'd consider traveling for it.
The site: Lucky Lake Campground is the most "equipped" site I've been to a burn at. On the one hand, the more raw the site, the more emphasis is put on the principles of self reliance and communal effort. On the other hand, not having to worry about certain logistical concerns allows people to put more effort into more productive goals, whatever those might be. Lucky Lake sells ice and firewood, provides free running water and a couple of warm showers, and has dirt road access directly to almost every campsite, all of which are well-labeled and have picnic tables. In the end, I think I'm a fan of having a burn at a functional campground. The principles in question are still apparent in many other ways, and the wasted effort of a hundred camps dragging their own ice and water from off-site is better spent on art and projects and fun. In addition to all of this, there is the titular lake, around which the campsites are wrapped. It was fun for wading, swimming, boating, and zorbing, and the floating dock in the middle was an excellent chill space, despite the sun.
Ticketing: Great Lakes Experimental Arts does a lot of things similar to other burns, and some things notably differently. The Lakes of Fire ticket lottery was an interesting mix of approaches. Each person who won the lottery or reached the front of the waiting list was allowed to buy a ticket for themselves as well as up to two additional people. Ignoring a few unintentional process hiccups, this seemed to work reasonably well. This approach falls somewhere in the middle ground between a purely random lottery and a free-exchange market where scalping is a risk, and avoids the browser-refresh-race that some events still embrace. I attended with two other people, call them X and Y. I ended up on the waiting list in the lottery, X got an offer, and Y didn't register until later (due to some bad advice on my part). With X's offer, we got tickets for her and myself. To get a ticket for Y I let my friends know that we needed one, and eventually a friend got a ticket offer and didn't already have two other people to include in their purchase. The only notable downside to this system is that it adds a lot of planning and interpersonal negotiation overhead for the attendees trying to get tickets for themselves and their campmates.
Arrival: We left Chicago on Wednesday after work, aiming to get to the burn about 12 hours after the gates opened for non-early arrivals, 2 days after our front line campmates had arrived with all of our heavy project gear. After ~5 hours of departure and driving, we got through the gate smoothly. ID check, wristband, waiver. Parking had amazingly good lighting, the trailer-tower-generator-light things that are used for nighttime highway maintenance. We got a timestamp on our windshield to get in and out with our stuff, similar to Alchemy's approach. It seemed to work about as well as at Alchemy, with too many cars at campsites and little to nothing done about it, unfortunately. We dropped our stuff and made it back out to parking smoothly. Our tents went up in the dark just fine, and I didn't even have to unpack any of the spares, although we did break into our extra stakes.
Project setup: I spent most of Thursday morning and afternoon setting up projects. The hot air balloon went up pretty quickly with lots of help from folks walking and camping nearby and a much simpler steel structure than previous years. That helping attitude puts LoF in the same category as every other burn I've been to except Firefly. The zorb was easy to inflate now that I've figured out some mechanical aspects of the valve and pump, and we got it rolled out into the balloon's field pretty easily, where it was to live for a day or two. Re-assembling the golf cart was an ordeal due to lost hardware; I had to improvise a lot with new bolts and zip ties and tape. I got all the lighting working then put "DRAW ON ME" on both sides and hoped for the best. I tried to hook up with the DMV to get the cart approved, but gave up on that after half a dozen attempts. They eventually found me much later in the event to give me a permit. I never did manage to deploy the vacuum cube. At various points in the weekend I set up a sign saying "Ask to be tied up" and carried rope with me. I got to do more rope as the event went on, more decorative than bondage, and by Saturday evening people were seeking me out at my camp to get things done. That was nice.
Relationship stuff: I've been to burns with X before. We have separate tents, and mostly do our own things, crossing paths for hugs and conversation and meals. She spent a lot of time with a guy that she's seeing. I had fun, she had fun, and we occasionally had fun together. This was Y's first burn, and we camped and slept together. She wanted more interactivity from me than I was able/ready to give, but things still went really well for her and decently for us. I think the net outcome there is positive. Time will tell.
Project maintenance: The zorb got a small hole a few weeks ago and I patched it with tape. That tape failed mid-burn. I replaced it with better tape, and that mostly held for the duration. I had to add air twice in four days, including for the patch failure. On Friday I rolled and dragged it out to the middle of the lake, where a lot of people got exhausted hamster-wheeling in it until I took it back ashore on Saturday before the effigy burn had a chance to throw embers at it. I think it was my most successful "project" this burn. The balloon didn't have enough room to turn, and I made an engineering mistake on the supports, so after moving the anchor a few times to account for shifting winds it went down permanently on Friday. A lot of people got to experience it, and I learned a lot while making the new structure and setting everything up. If I bring it back to Lakes of Fire, I know what to do differently to make it work. Packing everything up went very smoothly. We got the zorb back into its shipping bag for the first time (hooray!) and the entire balloon project fit on the golf cart (a 2-seater with no real cargo space!).
Volunteering: I missed a Greeter shift (oops) and worked a Perimeter Ninja shift during the effigy burn. It was mostly uneventful. There was a lot of walking past the fence and greeting people and checking their wristbands, and one exciting moment of calling rangers/medical to check on one guy who was falling-over drunk but had made finally and just barely it back to his own tent.
Other unique aspects: LoF is the first regional I've been to with a community bike program. There were lit racks in a few places with a few dozen orange mountain bikes for people to borrow and ride. If I hadn't had the golf cart, I'd have made heavy use of them. The effigy was close enough to the water to have a water perimeter for the burn, and many people watched from the opposite shores, from boats, and from the floating dock. The event provided food at some intervals for volunteers, which was very convenient in theory even though I never needed to take advantage of it. Additionally, volunteering enough hours ensures a ticket purchase offer for next year, which is something I haven't seen at another burn.
Overall, I'd say that LoF is one of the most enjoyable and well-organized burns that I've been to. I will definitely be attending again if I'm in the region, and I'd consider traveling for it.