Travels – I Has Them « design-newyork.com

Archive for the ‘Travels – I Has Them’ Category

Belgium for Thanksgiving 2012, Part 4.

Tuesday, December 4th, 2012

Europe sure does love its dead things. If I didn’t know better, I would think I was in Montana, what with all the mounted heads and bearskin rugs and antlers all over. Everywhere, all over.

I kept begging The Moomins for things. The answer was always no.

“Can I have this wet bowl of tiny horns?”

“How about two hares playing cards?”

I liked this restaurant tableau. “Come, come read our menu and enjoy our two pheasants fighting and a moldy-looking squirrel with a nut in its mouth!”

One night I passed the store of my dreams. They had the best dead things I’ve seen in a while. It’s good that both times I walked past it the store was closed, otherwise I would be the proud owner of many a piece of corpse-art.

Something else I saw at night: the real name of The Smurfs. Belgium is all about comics. They love ’em. I saw this charmer on the side of a building.

Is the Manneken Pis peeing beer? Or is the man too drunk to know that he’s drinking pee? I thought about that for a while. I regret that decision.

I walked past a magazine and comic-book shop one night and that is where I saw this.

Les Schtroumpfs. That’s a mouthful.

The flower shops in Belgium are amazing. They don’t just show the flowers off, they do whole window design statements with them. We came across this one in Tongeren. It had fabric lilies draped over the doorway with tiny led lights in them that lit up.

They had cascades of rose petals sliding down the window and itty-bitty bouquets of stripey roses at the base.

And they had a Saluki guarding the door and being adorable and lanky. Not actually related to the flower shop’s awesome flowers per se, but delightful nonetheless.

I made friends with a dog on one of the trains. It’s owner was looking out the window and she was trying to explain to the dog to join her in looking out the window because trains were going by. I tried to help by pointing my finger (“Look, dog! Sights to see!”), but the dog licked my finger because maybe there was a delicious treat on the end (there was not). Eventually the dog figured it out, but it took a while. It was a very sweet dachshund.

Another thing Belgium is famous for is chocolate and desserts. Hoo boy, did I see some drool-worthy sweeties, especially in Bruges. The Moomins insisted that we go to Bruges because she said it’s her fairy land. Now that I’ve been there and looked around, I can’t really argue with that.

They also had a charming Grand Place. No sculpture with a dude flinging a hand and lungfish and skull-dragons, so this will not be my top Grand Place, but still good.

According to Cricket when we were in London, we saw a ton of brick buildings with stars on their exteriors. Cricket told me that these are not just decorative, they actually help hold up the building. In Bruges, I saw some buildings that had those but they also told the date the building was built.

Anyway, sweets. Holy moly, so delicious and magical. Look at those loaves of marzipan and nougat. And the chocolate displays. They put a fruit tart all alone in a window like it’s a diamond tennis bracelet. Mmmmmmm.

There is an ancient candy that you can buy there called a cuberdon. It looks like a little frosted cone. By the way, by “ancient” I don’t mean they bury them for sixty years, I mean the recipe is mad old. Just clarifying. The authentic color and flavor is purple/raspberry, but they come in other flavors too. And therefore I had to try them.

(In that last photo they call them “squirrel noses”.) Cuberdons are super-sweet syrup which have been poured in those pointy-shaped molds and left to dry for five to six days. That’s what forms the leathery “skin” on the outside. When you bite into them, the syrup glorps out a little bit, and it is delicious but exceptionally sweet, so one cuberdon is plenty. And because they’re time and temperature-sensitive they are not found outside of Belgium. I looked up buying them here and you can’t.

There was also a old-fashioned candy-maker’s shop, and I walked by they started making candy! Right in front of me! I was so happy. I took pictures of the shape-maker devises in the window.

First, the two men pour molten hot sugar/water/glucose/flavoring on a cool metal table with square bars to prevent it from rolling off the table. Because it was cherry-flavored, they added red coloring and a bit of white coloring in the corner. And then they mixed and mixed and mixed.

After waiting for the stuff to gel up a bit, one of them took out the biggest shears ever and cut the white part from the red part.

After the shears, they put on nuclear oven mitts and attempted to shape the candy while it was still hot and malleable. Until I watched these guys, I never realized how much upper body strength is required to make this. You’ve got to heave the enormous cauldron full of sugary lava over to a metal table and pour it all on there without getting it all over yourself because you know it ain’t coming off ever, kiss your forearms goodbye. Then after it sets a bit, you have to wrangle this and it’s sticky as hell and hot and twenty pounds and it keeps being affected by gravity so you have to stay on top of it. It should be part of the P90X regimen. Impressive.

So the guys made a couple of long shapes and took it over to some silicone mats to assemble the design.

Oh look, a heart! That one guy started pulling and pulling until it got about a finger’s width thick and then broke it off, and sho’ nuff there’s a little heart in there. Awww.

They turned on a machine of rollers that helped in the reducing-the-width-thing and banged off foot-long pieces of this candy, which they then broke into bite-size pieces. I bought some. I normally don’t care for cherry-flavored candy, but it’s not overpoweringly flavored so it wasn’t like cough drops.

Finally, when we were in Brussels we walked down the fanciest street they got, I guess Fifth Avenue would be a good analogy. We walked past a shop that had what appeared to be giant hippos made from clay or maybe metal. When we walked inside The Moomins and I realized that they were made of chocolate. OMG, that’s fantastic. There was a sign that said Please Do Not Touch, but I was like, do they have a policy on licking? I did not lick, but I definitely thought about it.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Nature, Random Art Bloggery, Travels - I Has Them | No Comments »

Belgium for Thanksgiving 2012, Part 3.

Monday, December 3rd, 2012

Still Antwerpin’ it up! Until I went to Antwerp’s Grand Place, I did not know how the city got its name.

See that statue in the middle? That is my new favorite statue. One, it’s got a fantastic creepy skull-head dragon at the base.

At the top is a guy throwing a hand. Here’s the myth: There was a giant guarding the harbor of Antwerp, and if a ship couldn’t pay the entry tax, the giant would pick up the boat and put it on the land, thereby screwing up everything. One day, this young guy on the statue chopped the hand off the giant and flung it far away. “Ant Werp” means “Hand Throw” in the oldey-timey Germanic-based language. Go ahead and tell me that’s not awesome.

Also, at the bottom of the statue is the giant lying with his stump of a arm and there are tiny metal tubes coming out, which makes me think that in the summer water comes out his severed wrist. AND there are lungfish with gaping mouths on all four corners of the base. Therefore, this is now my favorite sculpture.

The fountain-makers were not afraid to make fountains come out of all kinds of places. There’s the famous Manneken Pis (who they dress up for various things). And I saw this one in a museum. I originally took the photo because I loved that the horse had fins on his hooves like a aquine-clidesdale*. Then I noticed that the woman at the bottom was presenting a boob like it was a tray full of pizza rolls and there was a spigot coming out of it.

• | • | • INTERMISSION • | • | •

In Brussels I saw a lesbian couple taking their ferret out for a walk on a leash. I feel like that’s the beginning of a joke, “Two lesbians were walking a ferret…” I got a pic of the ferret as he scampered by.

• | • | • INTERMISSION OVER • | • | •

After seeing the Grand Place, we went to the major cathedral in Antwerp which was ridiculously beautiful and had some neat features.

Have you ever been to Notre Dame in Paris? If you have you’ll notice that the walls are naked stone. That’s not how it was when it was made in 14-something-something. All the walls were polychrome, meaning they were painted with wallpaper patterns and crests and scenes from the bible, etc. These walls have their polychrome still on them which was lovely to see. In addition, my friend B. once told me that it is difficult to make purple glass, really purple-colored. He said it tends to be milky and dusty. I noticed that there was quite a lot of purple glass in the windows, which makes me think either they put two thin layers of transparent glass together, one pink and one blue, so your eye perceives it at purple, or they are painted with some kind of glaze. Considering how old these cathedrals are, either technique is pretty impressive.

On the floor near the pulpit there’s a brass line going down the floor. It seems to be arbitrary, but nope.

High above it is a stained glass window. If you look carefully all the way on the left edge about a fourth of the way down, you’ll see a hole. When the sun shines through the hole and lights up the metal strip on the floor, it’s noon. SCIENCE!

There are paintings hanging off all the columns. Each one was commissioned by a guild, so often their trade will be highlighted in the painting. This one was sponsored by the weapons guild, so tons of spears and swords and other pointy weapons.

And this one was sponsored by the baker’s guild, so… loaves.

And since I was over there during Thanksgiving break, when I saw this turkey carved in wood on the lectern, I had to take a picture of it.

Two more Antwerp things: We walked through the lower-class medieval area and it was TIGHT. Beautiful, but two people cannot walk abreast through these streets. I cannot imagine these were nice when people didn’t have hygiene and were heaving poop buckets out the windows and whatnot.

We came across the greatest building while trundling around. Why is it the greatest? Two words: boat balcony.

*See? See what I did there? A horse is equine, but I made it aquine because it’s a oceanic horse. I’m very clever.

Tomorrow, some Brussels and some Bruges. Get ready for chocolate and dead animals.

Posted in Random Art Bloggery, Travels - I Has Them | 3 Comments »

Belgium for Thanksgiving 2012, Part 2.

Saturday, December 1st, 2012

So, Belgium. It’s a weird little country. No one knows it’s there, but it’s actually a big deal. If I could live anywhere in Europe, I would live in Brussels. Why? For a few reasons. One, the food. Maybe the best food in Europe, for realzies. Bread, ham, cheese, pastries, chocolate, salad, seafood, wild game, soup – I ate everything and everything was exquisite. C’mon, they have a restaurant just for mushrooms called Les Spores, how awesome is that? One point five, the beer. I don’t drink beer, but they have really special water that makes really amazing beer. Beer is a food group there. Jem loves beer, and she asked me to take pictures for her while I was there, so Jem, these are for you.

The one being poured out of the little jug is a lambic which is only brewed in Belgium and only in a very specific area. And the one with the Brian Froud drawing on it, Troll Beer, I made The Moomins drink that just so I could get a pic of the bottle and glass (she didn’t mind, she said it was light and refreshing).

Two, the centrality and trains. Belgium was one of the first countries to have a train system going all over the place, and the rails are smooth as butter. It’s like there’s Metro-North all over the country. Some of the trains are double-deckers! Also, Brussels is the home of the European Union, so it is very worldly. And here’s the clincher: It’s got those crazy high-speed trains. A guy we met up with said, “Whenever I want to go clothes-shopping, I leave my house at 8:00 a.m., I’m on a train at 8:30 a.m., and I’m in Paris at 10:30 a.m. Then at night, I take a similar train home and I’m in my house at 9:00 p.m.” One way costs $30.00. So envious. It’s about one hour and forty minutes to London and about an hour and a half to Cologne. And it’s not like a flight, you can show up seven minutes before the train leaves.

Three, the architecture. Belgium is the home base for my favorite art movement, art nouveau. Here is Wikipedia’s definition of art nouveau:

Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name “Art Nouveau” is French for “new art”. A reaction to academic art of the 19th century, it was inspired by natural forms and structures, not only in flowers and plants but also in curved lines. Architects tried to harmonize with the natural environment. It is also considered a philosophy of design of furniture, which was designed according to the whole building and made part of ordinary life.

Translation: Lots of nature and swirly curved lines with tension. I love it. I kept walking all over almost getting hit by cars while gawking at amazing buildings that I wanted to hug. They really love that style. It’s on their buses:

And their bus stops.

But even when their architecture isn’t art nouveau, it’s still beautiful and visually delicious.

By the way, please note that it is overcast in all these photos because in Belgium it rains all the time, which I actually count as a plus. First of all, everyone’s skin is soft and beautiful from the mist. And guess who would never have to squint and wear sunglasses and sunblock ever again? This guy *points to self*. Their winters don’t get as cold as ours here, so there’s no biting wind that chisels your flesh offa your bones.

They also have a Grand Place (Center Square), which is ORNATE. Did I type that in big enough letters? Because it is. Guilds were/are an important thing there. Each one of these buildings is a guild house of some kind. Lonely Planet has a short list:

No 1: Maison des Boulangers (Bakers’ House)- Le Roy d’Espagne, one of the square’s most popular cafés, occupies this building, which belonged to the bakers’ guild. The gilded bronze bust above the door represents their patron, St Aubert.

No 2: La Brouette (The Wheelbarrow)- Faint gold wheelbarrows can still be seen above the door of this house, which was home to the grease-makers. The statue of St Gilles was added in 1912.

No 4: Le Sac (The Bag) This incredibly ornate building was the headquarters of the cabinet-makers.

No 5: La Louve (The She-Wolf)- The archers’ guild topped their building with a golden phoenix rising from the ashes to signify the rebirth of the Grand Place after the bombardment.

No 6: Le Cornet (The Horn)- The boatmen’s guild is easily identified by the stern-shaped gable.

No 7: Le Renard (The Fox) This house served the haberdashers.

No 8: L’Étoile (The Star)- Across Rue Charles Buls from the Hôtel de Ville, this is the smallest building on the square. Everard ‘t Serclaes, the city’s hero and modern-day good luck charm, died here.

No 9: Le Cygne (The Swan)- Adorned with a huge swan and built in classical style, this house originally served the butchers’ guild. Nowadays it’s home to the square’s finest restaurant.

No 10: L’Arbre d’Or (The Golden Tree)- Hops plants climbing columns hint at this building’s former and current role as the brewers’ headquarters.

Nos 26 & 27: Le Pigeon- This guildhall belonged to the city’s artists. Later, Victor Hugo lived here during his exile from France in 1852.

One of the things that we don’t get here in ‘Merka is old things. Really old things. They’re so used to it, they build around it. I came across this walking around. I would love to live in the building next door and give directions. “Yeah, so when you see the chunk of monastery parked in the middle of the road, turn left.”

Same thing in Ghent. Castle hangin’ out in the middle of traffic.

And Antwerp. Castles be everywhere.

So The Moomins and I used Brussels as a base and took day trips to three different neighboring cities: Antwerp, Bruges and Ghent. They are all less than an hour away, so it was no big deal with those fab trains they be rockin’. Antwerp was a must-see on my list because of the buildings there. They have a famous neighborhood that is now a city heritage site and cannot be torn down or modified in any way. See, Antwerp was and still is a major harbor city with goods going in and out all the time. At the turn of the century (and I mean 1899 to 1900, not the recent turnover) a great deal of wealthy German merchants were coming through, so someone had the idea to build an enticing and elegant neighborhood for them to live in. This is what it looks like. Every building is a jewel.

Well, all the buildings except one. When Antwerp got bombed in the Second World War, one of the buildings was destroyed, so this one was built in its place. People were MAD. I would be mad too. Those two houses are not working with the theme at all.

There’s a crossroad that is so sweet. They got the same architect to build all four buildings on all four corners, and each one is named after a season.

While it looks like each building is a mansion, it’s actually three or four houses inside. This cracked me up. Apparently the person on the right paid to have the exterior of their home cleaned and the person on the left did not. It’s like a before and after clip in an infomercial for tub cleaner.

As I said, Antwerp is a harbor city. Since the harbor isn’t in as much use as it used to be, they built the art museum on the banks of the river. While I don’t love the look of it, I like that they made the windows out of woogly glass so it resembled water.

We didn’t go to any of the exhibits, we only went to the roof to look at the view. And then the sun came out, which caused everyone to react like they were either seeing God manifested as man, or to sizzle and hiss.

We passed this cool samurai sculpture on our way up though to the roof.

Tomorrow: more Antwerp.

Posted in Random Art Bloggery, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Travels - I Has Them | 1 Comment »

Belgium for Thanksgiving 2012, Part 1.

Friday, November 30th, 2012

I think I have lived in America too long. I consider myself an open-minded person, but after a week in Europe I realize that the puritanical values America is famous for have rubbed off on me in a big way. Let me tell you about my first 36 hours in Belgium. Remember a bunch of posts ago when I wrote about Tardar Sauce the Grumpy Cat? While walking around the streets of Belgium, I made a specific Grumpy-Cat face every time I was confronted with a big chunk of political incorrectness, which I will place here periodically for emphasis.

I arrived in Belgium at 9:00 a.m., and as soon as The Moomins and I got off the plane we headed to the major train station so we could go to a city called Tongeren. We went because it’s the oldest city in Belgium, but more importantly it has an enormous antiques market on Sunday. The train station we had to transfer in was beautifully-designed and airy:

While we were there we grabbed some late-ish breakfast (fantastic, the food in Belgium is fantastic, more on that later) where I saw a man have a glass of red wine with his meal. At 10:00. I saw a lot of that. I think they are not as miffed by drinking as we are here. I decided that everyone there would be classified in America as a “functioning alcoholic”. So, so very much beer consumption. Holy crap-badgers.

Moving on. We arrived in Tongeren eventually where I fell asleep for the next fourteen hours. I hadn’t really slept in going on four days and I thought I was going to die. Also, I wanted to be rested for the antiques market the next day. At 7:00 a.m., we woke up and toddled off to look around the city center and the various large open spaces where people had set up booths. At this time I was introduced to Swartepiet.

Brace yourselves.

They don’t have Santa Claus the way we have him. If you have been good, Saint Nick the Bishop comes to your house and gives you gifts. However, if you’ve been bad, a black man names Zwartepiet (Black Peter) comes to your house and whips you. Imagine what it must have been like in, say, the 1910s and 1920s. You’re a black man from the Belgian Congo and you come to Belgium, but everywhere you go children who have never seen a black man freak out and scream as you approach. Sounds delightful, no? Apparently, since travel is so prevalent now and there are black people over here and white people over there and everyone’s mixed together, Zwartepiet’s role has been changed to Saint Nick’s helper. Okay, better. BUT, whenever he is performed by a living breathing human, it is always a white person in blackface. ALWAYS. And it’s EVERYWHERE.

I was APPALLED. I wanted to walk up to everybody and say, “Ummm, you know you’re not allowed to do that?” And there was no escaping it. I kept waiting for Al Jolson to come out singing about Mammy, it was so offensive.

During my unavoidable tour of racist imagery, I was walking in and out of booths people had set up on the street. I ended up buying some art nouveau stuff, it was great. And then there were two or three booths selling… Nazi memorabilia.

Tongeren is on the border with Germany, so it’s pretty easy to come by that stuff. It’s just weird to me to see passports and books and medals and helmets with swastikas and scary black eagles on them all out in the open. There was a second-edition copy of Mein Kampf sitting out there, so I thumbed through it. And I was saddened, but not for the reason you’d think. I realized the entire book, every last word, is written in the Olde Englishe typeface. Who can read that? I found a sample page to show you how difficult it is to read (by the way, I recommend not typing in “Mein Kampf” into Google and hitting images – not good):

How obnoxious would it be if, because I am white, I wrote my whole blog like this?

Or even worst, because I’m an Eastern-European Jew, how about this?

Horrible. I quickly shimmied away from the creepy Nazi stuff and had an amazing lunch and then we went to visit the big church in the middle of town. Cricket asked me later in the week how many museums I had gone to and I said, “None.” He was puzzled and asked what I was doing. I said, “Going to churches.” He said, “Why?” and I said, “Because that’s where they keep the art here.” I went to about seven churches/cathedrals in six days. Here’s the Tongeren church.

We got to the church around 12:30 where… the local nuns were hosting a cocktail party in the aisles. At 12:30 on a Sunday.

I turned to The Moomins and said quietly, “Is everyone in the village getting drunk on nun wine in the middle of the day? Aren’t they supposed to be praying or something?” Call me old-fashioned, but I think Brides of Christ should be tending to the poor or teaching children to read, not getting tipsy and jocular at noon in a House of God, in front of a giant wooden sculpture of Jesus on the cross bleeding.

I took a bunch more pictures of the church (very lovely) and The Moomins and I wandered around the city looking at old ruins. It used to be a Roman garrison and there are still bits of wall left over from when there were Gauls and Huns, marauding hordes, all that good stuff.

Speaking of Huns, in one of their squares they have a giant statue of a Hun and he looks exactly like Thor, with the winged helmet and an axe instead of a hammer. The base had boar’s heads and spears all around, it was terrific.

In another square, however, there was another statue and I could not believe my eyes when I saw it. Could not. It was, and I’m not making any of this up, a fountain slash bronze sculpture of three whores, two of whom are arguing and one who is WASHING HER NO-NO PLACE AND YOU CAN SEE HER LABIA OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE.

Are there no rules in your country? Is everyone just perpetually drunk and in blackface, proudly displaying their Third Reich trinkets while doing genital ablutions in the town square??? Seriously, Europe, get it together.

Not to imply that Tongeren wasn’t lovely. It was. For example, outside the church was a small metal model of the church with braille so blind people could figure out the layout. That is super-thoughtful.

And the local pastry shop was exquisite. The Moomins and I stood in front of the window and almost wept at the beauty of the baked goods.

And everyone was really nice at the antiques market. Really gracious and pleasant. So please don’t get the wrong idea. As I said at the beginning, I think I have become extremely politically correct against my best intentions, so when I encounter things like this, it throws me a bit.

Coming up next: Brussels and some Antwerp.

Posted in Random Art Bloggery, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Travels - I Has Them | 2 Comments »

And I’m back.

Wednesday, November 28th, 2012

Belgium for Thanksgiving with The Moomins was wonderful. We walked a lot, ate a lot, and looked at a lot of art and architecture. I am at present sorting through 1,071 photos to pick out the bestest. It’s a saga. Several people asked me why I chose to go to Belgium, and there were a few reasons, like THIS*:

Or THIS:

Or how about THIS and THIS:

Long story short, get ready for some pictures of buildings. Many, many pictures of buildings.

*It helps if you imagine me wisking away a cape like a magician when I say “THIS”.

Posted in Random Art Bloggery, Travels - I Has Them | 1 Comment »

Head’s up.

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

I am going to be in Belgium from November 16th to November 24th because the hell with Thanksgiving. I will be in Belgium eating mussels and frites and not even remotely thinking about how pilgrims gave smallpox to Native Americans. It’s going to be super-swell. Except that I found out today that it’s been raining in Brussels since… January. Really. That’s what the nice lady who lives there that The Moomins spoke to. “It’s been raining here since January.” I’m bringing a million pairs of socks because they’re going to get soaked every fifteen minutes. Maybe if the gods love me I will get to see the goose parade.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxDjuZY1oC0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGn_rH7LejI

Posted in Travels - I Has Them | 1 Comment »

Belgium and some charts.

Friday, October 5th, 2012

The Moomins and I are going to Belgium for Thanksgiving this year, so in order to find out all the awesome things The Moomins called the Belgian Tourist Bureau. And the Belgian Tourist Bureau informed her, without a hint of humor, that they only deal with the Wallonia region (French-speaking), not the Flanders region (Dutch-speaking). Okay, this is pathetic. Do you know how big Belgium is? It’s 11,000 square miles. New York State is 54,000 square miles. Belgium is teeny-tiny. However, the Frenchies and the Dutchies are still fussin’ and gripin’ and won’t play nice. So The Moomins had to call a different tourist bureau to get info on the Flanders chunk. It’s fine if the two regions are cranky. My people are from Israel, I am in no place to judge people fighting about land the size of Rhode Island. However, do you think the the official tourist bureaus can put their differences aside to send my mother information about the entirety of the stupid country so we can visit it and give it our money? Perhaps maybe?

I asked The Moomins, who was raised by Belgians and speaks both languages, what holds the country together and without blinking she said, “Beer.”

In other news, charts.

Posted in Charts, Travels - I Has Them | 2 Comments »

Burning Man 2012 Recap #7.

Friday, September 14th, 2012

Before I get into California and Reno, I want to impart some helpful tips that, had I known, would probably made Burning Man a far better experience for me. If I ever go again, I will be far more informed.

1. If you live on the West Coast within ten hours driving distance from The Black Rock Desert, you must go. You cram a bunch of stuff in your car and head out. Easy. If you’re from the East Coast, you might want to reconsider. It’s a massive hassle, with the flying and the luggage cost and the car rental and everything. Not to say it’s not worth going, it totally is, but it’s more frustrating.

2. If you rent an RV (which is crazy, the rental places jack the price up to $4,000 or more for that week), don’t use the bathroom. Just don’t use it. There’s nowhere to dispose of your tainted poopwater. Use the Porta-Potties or gas stations on the road on your way there, the way people in cars do. You can shower and use the sink, but then when you get to Burning Man you’ll need to make a gray water evaporator.

3. The sun is a cruel mistress who wants to crush all your hopes and dreams. All you want is shade. We had two places to hide for the six hours a day that the sun was beating down on us – the car (bad idea, metal box) or the tent. The tent was directly in the sun, so it was hot, too. What Cricket figured out is we needed a tent for our tent. You know those four-cornered tent-things you see at street fairs? Put one of those over your tent, and then it will be in the shade and cool. If you rent an RV, make sure it has folding arm awnings Melbourne that you can unroll and sit under during the hot bits.

4. Another option to beat the heat: buy, like, three five-gallon containers of gas and strap them to the roof or shove them in the trunk of your car. During the day, run the air conditioning for a couple of hours without fear of running out of gas in the middle of the desert.

5. The dust is highly drying and it is blowing around you all the time. Your hair will get dusty and feel like straw that’s been pressed in a panini machine. Do not try to comb it or brush it. Before you go to Burning Man, find a middle-school girl and have her braid your hair into a bunch of French braids all over your head. Don’t take them out until you leave. I crammed my hair into a ponytail and didn’t touch it again until we got to a hotel. Bring a bottle of conditioner and Neutrogena shampoo with you. The conditioner doesn’t have to be fancy, it can be Suave. When you get to a post-Burning Man showering facility, lather that conditioning glop into your gross dirty hair and work out all the knots gently with your fingers. Then shampoo with the Neutrogena and wash out the conditioner/dust/hair grease soup you’ve just created. If you do not follow this plan, your hair will turn into a lightly matted giant dreadlock that you cannot untangle. Try to avoid that. Don’t fret, this whole process took me ten minutes. It’s not a whole-evening-occupier.

6. Since there are no trash receptacles and you must keep all your trash with you, Cricket and I opted to only eat dry food (granola bars and Pirate’s Booty predominantly). That way, when we were done we only had empty wrappers and nothing that would rot and have a nasty odor. While it gets kind of tedious on the palate after a while, our trash did not stink, so maybe consider that as an option.

7. When you go to rent your car, LIE. Lie right to their faces. Dress conservatively. Don’t let bits of your costume or anything peek out. They are waiting for you. Why? Because none of their vehicles are permitted to go off-roading and it is a colossal pain in the keister to clean all the dust off the car. Seriously. Here’s one of several warnings printed on our rental paperwork.

The smart thing to do is to bring a giant tarp with you and cover the whole car with it so when the dust storm kicks up, some dust might swirl up under the tarp, but the wind isn’t actively cramming the dust with force into the nooks and crannies of your vehicle. We had the back of the car facing the wind during our dust storm, so when we got back to Reno Cricket power-washed the minivan and we went through the car wash. Then we waited for the van to dry and hand-wiped down dusty remnants with wet paper towels. The next day, Cricket power-washed the van AGAIN. We went through the car wash AGAIN. Even after all that, dusty water was seeping out from behind the lights and the mirrors. It was infuriating.

Cricket recommended wrapping clingwrap around the mirrors and lights where dust can go and hide, and while that’s an option, it isn’t terribly environmental, so try the tarp thing first. Make sure the tarp is secure either to the ground or the vehicle, otherwise when the wind kicks up it will become a giant festive kite.

8. If God forbid you forgot to buy a thousand LEDs or weird club outfits, don’t panic. At the two gas stations you will pass on your way from Reno to The Black Rock Desert there will be people with booths, and those booths will be selling light-up things and glow-sticks and fake fur booties and hats and skin-tight shirts and pants. I’m sure the prices are higher than they would normally be, but at least you’re not screwed if you forgot something.

9. This is a culture of gifting. I saw several helpful useful gifts that you may want to consider. It’s hot and dry, and dark at night, so anything that alleviates either of those is a good idea. Those fans with water bottles built in that run on batteries, good. Necklaces or glasses with blinky lights, good. Filling up a weed mister and misting people in the middle of the day with water, good. Small flashlights that you hand out to people who have no lights on them (referred to as Darktards), good. Anything like that.

10. Listen to the Burning Man radio station as much as possible. Not only do they play a wide array of music, they do little PSAs on the art pieces, and people announce different activities that didn’t make it into the book. It’s extremely professionally run.

Since we busted out the desert at about 9:00 in the morning, we had the whole day ahead of us. We went to Reno, blasted our vehicle with water in an attempt to eradicate the dust (fail) and then decided to check out Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe straddles Nevada and California, and we ended going to California. (Sad moment: Cricket told me we would end up in California, and I turned to him all panicked and said, “We can’t! I didn’t bring my passport!” Waa-waa.) We drove for a bunch of hours through some seriously picturesque American landscape. I wanted to sing songs about Paul Bunyan and Babe the Big Blue Ox, but I didn’t know any. Lucky for Cricket, because I would have sang lustily and loudly and antagonized him.

On our way to Lake Tahoe we came to the Land of A Thousand Donners. The Donner Party, in case you don’t know, were pioneers who were moving out West. They got caught in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the winter and many of them died. The rest were forced to resort to cannibalism to survive. Only half of the original eighty-something people that started on the journey made it out. Everything in that specific area is Donner This and Donner That to commemorate this unfortunate experience.

Lake Tahoe is very, very high up and is one of three largest bodies of freshwater in America. The water is clear up until 67 feet deep. And it is COLD. But in a good way, if you can imagine, really crisp and biting and refreshing. And highly photogenic. It smelled amazing too, all pine-y and fresh. I would not want to be there in the winter, but in the late summer/early autumn, it is blissful.

After our sojourn in the state of California (where I thankfully did not need my passport), we headed back to Reno to sleep for the night and then catch the 7:00 a.m. flight back to New York. That evening there was a rib festival in front of The Nugget Hotel and Casino. Not one to pass on a food festival, we went. It was okay *weeble-wobbles hand*. The food was good and all that, but the lines were long and the sun was harsh. It was tough for us to decide which rib joint to patronize. Each one had their awards plastered all over booth area on every available inch of space. Some of them had big ole trophies too.

Since I had no knowledge about which booth to go to, I made the choice to go to the Texas one solely because they had a giant inflatable armadillo on top. And I made a wise choice because their ribs were excellent. They made their own sauces too, and the honey chipotle was lip-smackingly good.

That’s it. That’s my five-day trip to Burning Man (plus a touch of Reno and a splash of Lake Tahoe). It was a great experience.

Posted in Burning Man, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Travels - I Has Them | No Comments »

Burning Man 2012 Recap #6.

Thursday, September 13th, 2012

Something I missed that is vaguely artcar-related:

The cupcake! I love the cupcake cars. This one had illuminated candy corns. The best thing about these vehicles is how they look when they’re zipping around. Here’s some video I found of a similar baked-good in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSis6QT1i-A

The one major element I haven’t touched on at Burning Man is the Temple of Juno. Out beyond the Man is a very large, very beautiful building called the Temple. In past years it looked like this.

This year it looked like this. It was utterly mind-blowing.

It seems that people write messages to loved ones they have lost. Some people also post pictures. It was heartbreaking.

And inside people were meditating or praying. It was quiet and respectful, quite different from the frolicksome nature of the rest of the Playa.

Here’s some video I took. You can appreciate how big this building was and how quiet everyone was being.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmVBWN_lXs8

The last night we were there, we found out they were burning all that cool art on the Playa that I spoke about previously. The egg. The lighthouse. The onion domes. Anubis. All going up in flames. I wasn’t upset because the artists knew that when they built it, but if I had spend a million billion hours and a ton of money making something, I don’t know how I would have felt about watching it become a charred pile of ash. Probably bad. Also, I’m not a big fan of fire. I find it off-putting, always have. Cricket, on the other hand, finds it fascinating. Not in an arson kind of way, but in a science oooh-light-and-energy kind of way. I (in a manner that I expect many people around me found creepy) turned my back on the fire, tipped my head down and stood there like the guy at the end of The Blair Witch Project. I just waited for Cricket to finish experiencing whatever he was experiencing. Also, fun fact: fire is hot! Like, really hot. When thirty-four large art sculptures are burning in close proximity to you, it’s faaaaar too hot. And ash be blowin’ all up in your face along with the dust… not my cup of tea. I faced the fire a couple of times to take some photos.

The last day we were there we went out to the far reaches to the airport because they have a real airport. We saw people gently gliding to the earth with parachutes or on those gliders with the little engines the whole time. Considering that we’re in the middle of nowhere, it’s an impressive airport. They even had an itty-bitty traffic control tower.

After checking out the airport, we made our way back to the car where we heard on the Black Rock City radio station that the Critical Tits parade was happening at 3:00, and it was the largest collection of exposed mammaries biking anywhere. 5,000 topless women, biking. We looked at each other, like, “Can’t miss that!” And it looked like this. For about ten minutes, non-stop.

See how in that first picture the sky looks ominous? It was ominous. Shortly after the parade went by, the dust storm started.

Dust storms are horrible. Horrible. You remember those chalkboard erasers from school? Imagine someone is clapping them against your face using 40-mph winds. You can’t breathe, you can’t see, you can feel your skin drying out on your body. The worst. It lasted for hours, and we were near the Man when it started so we had to trudge back to our vehicle through all that horror. At one point I started pathetically weeping to myself, thinking, “At this point in the real world I would hail a taxi or get on a subway to take me back to where I live, but even if there was a transit system here I couldn’t catch it because no one takes money. I HAVE MONEY AND NO ONE WILL TAKE IT.” Then I climbed into Cricket’s tent (I slept in the minivan all three nights – additional fun fact: The earth is hard and uncomfortable!) where I simmered with rage and took this video. You can taste my anger, it is so palpable and chewy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN0YW7YiIGY

And then the next morning we left. This is the tent with all the dust that blew in during the night. We did not track any of that in. It all blew in and swirled around and sucked. Screw you, dust! *shakes fist*

Here are the leftovers of my photos from Burning Man. Not that they are less worthy than the others, I just haven’t gotten around to putting them up. All my pictures are precious and special like snowflakes.

There was the dude on the bike with triangular wheels. You would think that a bike on triangular wheels would bounce up and down in an extremely unpleasant manner, but it does not. PHYSICS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk7s4PfvCZg

There was the shoe sculpture that I used as a landmark several times.

Landmarks are important because the entire place looks pretty much the same. Some people would hoist flags on long poles on top of their RVs to assist in finding their camps.

In order to help find our camp, I draped our tent in Christmas lights and put blinky LED tea-lights on the dashboard of our car. I can tell you that that was vital in me finding my way back from the Porta-Potties at 4:00 in the morning.

On one of our journeys during the hot part of the day we passed a man cooking bacon using a cast-iron skillet and a large television screen. Solar bacon!

These are the two signs we saw as we came in.

We also went out to the outer edge of the Playa. On my right… nothing. Nothing for forever in that direction.

The sunset was beautiful every night.

The firefighter’s camp had a cute thing in front.

I met the artist who made this and it is called… Flablingo. Of course it is.

There was a dude dressed as a crayfish. Those thins tubes all over his costume lit up. Please note all the debris in the air.

As we were driving in, I saw this lovely example of craftsmanship. There’s a bug, and an RV, and poof! Togetherness.

A tree made of bones. Thankfully, they did not set that on fire because that would have smelled awful.

Small child on a giant mutant bike.

There were lots of kids there. You might think that that is a bad idea, but it’s not. The sex and drugs could be readily accessed if you wanted them but they weren’t out in the open. There was a kid’s daycare center/scouts thing during the day and they went on activities, like to the firefighters’ camp and various artists. So they saw naked people, so what? I saw tons of naked people when I went to Africa all throughout my childhood. Kids don’t care, they really don’t. And can you imagine being a little kid and seeing all those lights and artcars at night? I’m surprised their little heads didn’t explode.

A tree made of wine bottles and metal. Once again, the metal-workers are the real winners of Burning Man.

A metal praying mantis welcoming the incoming dust storm. I didn’t see it at night, but because there’s that solar panel next to it, I imagine that it lights up.

A giant tree root that someone carved.

A dinosaur bike. I didn’t see it in motion, but I’m hoping the wings went up and down as it traveled.

Giant bike wheels. This looked mighty dangerous but simultaneously awesome. The riders have to climb through the spokes to get to the seats.

I found this fantastic video that shows a great deal of what I have mentioned in action taken by a far far better videographer with better equipment. Enjoy. It’s really great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxRAg9Pcpm4

Tomorrow I’ll finish up with California and Reno pics.

Posted in Burning Man, Random Art Bloggery, Travels - I Has Them | No Comments »

Burning Man 2012 Recap #5.

Tuesday, September 11th, 2012

Artcars! These things really blew my mind. It’s rare that one gets to sit in one’s tent and have this slowly roll on by, squeaking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJyNCTploFA

Every evening, Cricket and I would walk down to one of the main areas to see the lights and the artcars. If you remember correctly, the main reason I went in the first place was to (hopefully) see the snail artcar.

There were a ton of them and they varied in size, from modified golf carts to full-length city buses. Once again, there were several popular choice themes. Ocean flora and fauna was big, as well as dragons/reptiles and boats/ships. I’ll go through the ones I saw during the daylight hours first.

One particular artcar I was excited to see at Burning Man was the big dinosaur I saw at the entrance of Maker’s Faire. Here’s the blog entry on that.

There was the chameleon tiki bar on wheels:

The anglerfish:

The beetle with all the detritus on top:

As well as the Wonder Why toaster, the manface-mobile, the N’Awlins mask, and the hubcap-encrusted vehicle. (All these names are what I call them. I don’t know what the artists who made the artcars call them.)

But wait! There’s more! The geometric dinosaur, the golden dragon, and the blorpfish with a RV-controlled mini-blorpfish hanging off the front (awww).

The first morning we were there, the artcars were taking people on a tour of all that Playa art. Cricket and I arrived too late to get on to one of the vehicles, but while we were standing there the bestest thing shimmied out from behind one of the larger vehicles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88v5L5JarFA

LOOK AT THEM. They’re so beautiful!

I never saw the twin serpents at night, but apparently they light up in a variety of ways and the black one shoots fire. Swoon.

The first night we were there, we didn’t know any rules or anything. Luckily, our neighbors who had been to three previous Burning Mans informed us the next day that if you walk up to a stopped artcar and there looks like there is room, you can ask the driver for a ride and more often than not they will say yes. You don’t get to tell the driver where you’re going, but it’s super-cool nonetheless. I rode on two artcars. The first one was this gorgeous Viking ship that played Indian sitar music.

Almost all the artcars play music they feel is appropriate for their vehicle. In this video I took of a traffic jam, you can hear bits of everyone’s tunes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWYb6fFpR8s

The second time I rode on an artcar, I hopped on and it allowed me a much higher vantage point from which to see. As we slowly wound past some of the camps, we passed a camp called Empire of Dirt where the twin serpents were parked, and… what? What is that behind the OMG BBQ WTF

MY SNAIL CAR. THERE’S MY SNAIL CAR. And it’s made by the same people who made the twin dragons! How fantastic! As soon as the vehicle we were on came to a halt (due to a giant speaker falling down, but whatever) I leapt off and ran back to where my beloved was sitting basking in the sun. And then promptly freaked out.

See how my hands are balled up in fists? It’s because I want to touch SO BAD but you should not touch but I want to touch NNNGGG. The door was open so I could look inside. It’s quite spacious. They’ve built some kind of couch into the back part. The poor people who built all this stuff were sitting there trying to eat lunch and I ran up to them to tell them that I love them and I came to see the snail and I’m so happy now hooray snail! They were very nice to me. They also had a lovely trilobite.

If I had to decide who are the winners of Burning Man, I would have to say the metal-smiths and welders. They made some really extraordinary things, and because those things are made of metal they could shoot fire without their beautiful creations charring or melting.

Okay, night-time. I’ve already talked about the awesomeness, with the lights and the music and the whatnot. Now imagine cars with blinky hoo-hah all over them slowly meandering around the sculptures.

There was the mushroom-mobile and the nautilus.

A video of the mushroom-mobile and the nautilus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUcw5XT7sFk

A spaceship (that played Mariah Carey’s “Hero” which is an interesting choice), a horse-n-carriage, a fish, and Hell in a Handbasket.

How about some video footage of a lionfish covered with the same LED strips I used on my jelly-brella? How about if it’s playing “Proud Mary”? How about that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bCpUBWl0GE

Here’s my beautiful chariot, the Viking ship, at night.

In addition… the Flintstone car, two unicorns going at it under a rainbow, a sea-dragon, a cricket and two giant fake Volkswagens. I took the same basic picture twice because I loved how their colors kept changing.

Here’s a dragon covered in old CDs blowing fire. You can hear Cricket in the background go “Wooooo!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe4BEWHNWm0

I never actually saw this lotus-thing move, but I saw it parked in various places, so I’m going to assume it was a car, or at least mobile in some way. And there’s a jazz band playing in the background.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNrGOnJrd4Y

Probably the most impressive of all the art cars was the cruise ship, solely based on its size. It was ENORMOUS. The base was a city bus, one of those crazy-long ones with the accordions in the middle. On top of that was a ship with multiple decks. That shot fire. And had a giant green laser that you could see anywhere on the playa.