The story of Nick's trek to Burning Man

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In late August, 2007, Nick realized a long time dream to attend Burning Man. Burning Man is yearly gathering of about 50,000 people, many from the San Francisco Bay Area, celebrating life, passion and art during one week in the desolate Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Nick spent months in anticipation, creating luminous headgear and other items out of sculpey and learning to use Terry's Serger. He located a Washington area group (calling themselves Disorient) who were planning for the expedition and he joined in the preparations.

from Frances Glascoe...

Below are two photos of Nick at Burning Man (September 2007). One was taken outside the Disorient bus (aka Dex) which was essentially a rolling DJ booth and lounge. You can see him with DJ Czeska* (I think) and otherwise in one of the many costumes he commandeered from Kostume Kult (a group from NYC who distributed about 2 tons of outrageous outfits donated from college and regional theaters).

from Leslie McLaughlin (Ottawa, Canada)...

*The dj BigNick is working with is in fact myself, dj Ocean, as we try and get our sound system going. My friends from Ottawa FranCzesca Mirai Star, her fiancee Freeon (eriC) and erik heckman, camped with us at the Space Bass within disorient, it was also their first trip to burning man (and my fourth)! Sadly I do not have any photos to contribute - there's something about the heat and the dust and living in the moment that makes me want to leave the camera buried in the car. But perhaps I can paint a picture with some of my memories. We were all honoured to share our burning experience with him.

I first met BigNick on disorient's planning and discussion forum, where we planned the camp and events for 2008. A friend of ours proposed that we host the Deep Down Disorient Days - daily afternoon dj sets of chill music, to keep us cool from the burning hot sun. BigNick jumped right into the planning, and shared with us a few dj sets that he had created, which were beautifully orchestrated, and we were on our way! Around the same time, I proposed forming a camp within disorient called the Space Bass. This was to be a gathering place for those of us who shared a love of sci-fi flicks, psybient music and ambient lighting. BigNick was happy to join us there, and we were happy to have him! Once arriving on playa, he helped construct one of our two Delta Shades, in the middle of a dust storm, along with our neighbours from Boulder, CO (see Nick with screw gun, below). I think I then went to work at Center Camp, and when I returned, his Delta shade was beautifully decorated with blacklight and fluoro.

Every day on the playa (a playa is the dry lakebed that is Black Rock desert) with Nick brought new ideas....little colourful things with which to decorate our bikes (fluro zip ties!!), crafty costume making, and best of all - he played a set for quite some time on Monday night, and was ready to go again Tuesday at noon for our DDDD.....although we had to wait out most of the day for some repairs on the sound system. The photo below is of Nick patiently awaiting the system to be ready for our tag set to begin. I was really impatient and cranky.....and Nick wasn't having it! He did a great job of reminding me to let our friends do their work and we would be ready to go when the system was. The outcome.....the set never really happened. I played for only a short time before the DeX had to go and be registered as an art car. BigNick had the honour of rolling around with the DeX on Wednesday afternoon instead sharing his love of music all across the playa.

(....and now back to Frances Glascoe!)

Occassionally servere dust storms blow up in the Black Rock Desert. Dust masks (aka gas masks) are often incorporated

into the costumes to weather such events. Nick's goggles featured colored lights sported on the ends of sculpey tentacles.

A manificent sculpey-and-lights spider sits atop a turbin of Nick's own creation. Nick designed the robe from fluoro spandex. Thomas reported that when he wore this at Gaian Mind, he looked from afar like a giant pink tent bopping through the crowd.

The whole effect ablaze under black light can be seen below. Clearly the man boldly wore what no man has ever worn before!

This photo just in (January, 2008) from folks at Burning Man

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