Decompression: The return from Burning Man

By Greg Zeman
The Guardsman

A thin, smiling man in his early 50s stands in the middle of a city street—naked except for a tiny loincloth. His entire body is covered in metallic, silver paint, making the skin-bald dome of his globe-shaped head resemble a sparkling pinball in the light of the midday sun.

The man’s smile is close-lipped and unmoving—his eyes are placid droplets of liquid glass. His expression suggests that he knows something wonderful the rest of us don’t.

Two small children, a boy and a girl, are giggling and stroking the silver man’s glistening forearm, treating him like a goat at a petting zoo. Their parents watch this from the sidewalk with unworried amusement.

And then the spell is broken.

A seven-foot tall, human-fly mutant wearing a black, tactical gas mask lurches by on six long, spindly insect legs. It stops and lowers its body to peer inquisitively into the little faces of the no longer giggling children.

The children hold their ground in the enormous shadow of the hideous beast for a whole five seconds before exploding into terrified screams and running to the sidewalk.

The “Brundlefly” creature lifts itself up and continues it’s precarious, weaving walk down Indiana Street as a squadron of fighter planes soars just overhead, deafening the gathered crowd with the screeching roar of jet engines.

This is not some post-apocalyptic nightmare coming to a theater near you, this is what Columbus/Indigenous Peoples Day weekend looks and sounds like in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood.

The US Navy Blue Angels are out scraping rooftops and knocking pictures off the wall for Fleet Week, and all the naked insanity from the most recent Burning Man festival is spilling into the city streets for another Decompression Festival.

Some people just want to see the Angel’s stunt show against the wholesome backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge, and those people are standing somewhere on Pier 39, in “property of Alcatraz” t-shirts, eating $20 cups of clam chowder from the crusty shells of a stale, sourdough rolls.

But for those people who want to see what happens when you bathe the minds of an entire artistic subculture in all the chemical acronyms your DARE officer warned you about, there is the 11th Annual San Francisco Decompression street fair.

Crunchy, pulsing, digital bass waves assault the foundations of surrounding buildings, vibrating the entire block.

Everybody is either doing something outrageous or watching someone do something outrageous, usually involving stilts and feather boas.

Kolby Chase, head server for a Lafayette restaurant, says he couldn’t afford a ticket to Burning Man this year, so he came to Decompression with his co-worker Ted Dureto to unwind and “roll balls.”

When asked where his ball is—he isn’t rolling at the moment—Dureto laughs hysterically for a few seconds and then makes a face like he’s going to cry.

“He lost it,” Chase says, as if it’s a touchy subject.

Dureto angrily slurs the word “balls” at the sky, as if the sky or something in it has offended him.

Then, a disembodied, female voice bleats from a nearby speaker, stealing Chase and Dureto’s attention.

“Burning Man, the lifestyle, the movement, the people you meet, all of it is a kind of saving thing, a sanctuary if you will,” the voice says. “And if Burning Man is your savior, one might argue it is your own, personal Jesus.”

Both men make solemn faces and are silent for a moment or two.

“I don’t like that there’s so many naked dicks walking around,” Dureto says. “That’s all I’m saying.”

Chase agrees. “Lots of naked dudes,” he says with a frown. “But you know, the good comes with the bad.”

As if to reinforce Chase’s point, a blotchy-skinned, overweight, elderly man wearing a Santa hat, a white, costume beard and a penile constriction ring walks past—slick and glistening with tanning oil and sweat.

The whiskey vapor radiating from the naked Santa is strong enough to taste. He chuckles unkindly when asked why he picked the particular outfit he is wearing.

When Chase is asked if he is having a good time, Dureto answers for him, “yeah, of course I’m high,” he says.

But Decompression is more than just a wild, seasonal treat for the uninhibited and those who enjoy human spectacle. It also the place where the inspired lunacy of “Black Rock City,” the name of the plane of existence where Burning Man takes place, can be shared with the rest of us, and where some future Burning Man projects first get introduced before they make their debut appearance on “the Playa,” the dry, Nevada lake bed where Burning Man happens.

An enormous, saucer of geodesic spheres suspended from a crane dominates the southern horizon of the block where the festival takes place. Standing in the shade created by the alien-looking craft are a team of mad scientists with an idea.

“It’s called the Airship Victoria,” says co-inventor Stacey Reineccius. “This is a prototype, called the X2. It’s a an aluminum frame that houses seven 10-foot helium balloons. The final version will float over the Playa, and we’ll control a musical light show from a car on the ground.”

When asked whose idea the ship was, Reineccius smiles. “We all came up with the idea and Kristian had the space to build it.”

Kristian Akseth says the idea for the Airship Victoria came from a simple notion. “I just thought, everything on the Playa is flat,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect. “I want people to look up.”

And look up they surely will if the craft meets the goals of its creators. Their plans call for a one-kilowatt Tesla coil to be suspended, upside-down, from the bottom of the ship so it can be played as a musical instrument using a midi controller on the ground.

There will also be laser lights and other effects projected up at the ship from below, where the creators hope people will be dancing.

“I would never dance under that crazy thing,” says Paul Lawrence, 38, a first time visitor to Decompression who plans to be at next year’s Burning Man. “All I can imagine is the whole thing coming down on my head and then—zap.”

Others are more optimistic.

“I think it’s great,” says a middle-aged woman with pupils for eyes, wearing a Lord of the Rings-style costumes with no pants. “I think everything here is just great.”