This year's Burning Man art theme was Axis Mundi. Next year it is Spellbound. I hope that they (the BORG Burning Man) make the art theme more obvious next year. When you first get into Black Rock City, which is a city built from nothing and becomes an amazing magical place, you get handed the What? Where? When? book and a map of all the camps and other important information. The 10 Principles of Burning Man are explained. Although there are Burning Man phone apps now (like iBurn), which are easy to navigate and tell you everything. I have all my books saved. All my stickers saved. I cleaned, organized and put away my Burning Man bins the other day. Took inventory of what I need to stock up on for next year, if anything. I think I will get a new pair of boots for next year, a robe to schlep around in when I first get up in the mornings and some soft slippers. Yes, I definitely want to experience Burning Man (again) next year. I LOVE Black Rock City! I made new friends this year and we are planning on going back, most of us. A lot can happen in a year......so I am hoping that Burning Man 2027 Spellbound is in the cards for me.
Well reality arrived.....I reluctantly made it back from Burning Man last night. Not at all thrilled to be back. I have showered, washed my hair and put on lotion. And sat down on a real toilet seat. This was probably the dirtiest and crustiest I have ever been. Before I go to bed I will drink more water, layer on more lotion and brush my teeth. This is a picture of my Playa hair, which felt like a heavy cake resting on my head. It was in one braid off to one side for most of the time on the Playa. Hopefully I won't lose too much hair when combing it out.
I have cried leaving Burning Man before. Reality is different than Black Rock City. And yes I know that if I lived at Black Rock City year round it would become reality as well, a rather harsh reality because Burning Man is NOT easy.
So yea....reality again, or the Default World (everything that is not Black Rock City) with everything that comes with that. I do not want to check my emails, go to the grocery store, sit in traffic, pay bills and go through the endless tasks on my to do list.
The art theme of last year's Burning Man was called Tomorrow Today. I had a ticket but decided against going. All my Burning Man gear was stored in the very back of a storage unit, I did not want to move stuff out in order to get to the Burning Man gear. It felt overwhelming. I also did not want to go by myself but finding somebody to experience Burning Man with is not that easy. I am not looking for somebody to latch onto at Burning Man but going with a friend is nice. I was also very sad almost all of last year and I did not want to feel like that at Burning Man. I ended up watching Burning Man online, there was a 24/7 camera at Black Rock City. I was a bit sad that I did not go but I survived. Here are some pictures that I took of last year's Burn while watching it on my iPad.
Wellllll.....there are people at Black Rock City right now, most of them have Early Arrival passes and are working hard setting up for the coming week. The 2026 Burning Man art theme is Axis Mundi. "Latin for axis of the world describing a symbolic or physical center point that connects the heavens, the earth, and the underworld." I love the theme and I am heading towards Black Rock City in a couple of days.
Week 19, it has been several months since I posted the weekly work at the club updates. Not sure why the pictures are showing up this blurry, they look better on my phone.
This is what one does when the club is empty, or if nobody is sitting around the stage and paying attention to you. There are many people that go to strip clubs and do things like read a book.....yes we had a guy that would sit at the bar and read a book the whole time he was in and he would usually stay for a couple of hours. The club was his library. He was telling us by his actions that the book was so much more interesting than everything else and that he was too intellectual for us. I feel that there is a time and place for everything. Just like I would not wear only fishnet stockings and a bra while shopping for groceries, although I would fit right in at certain Walmarts wearing just that, or sit and read a book during a concert. Anyhow, I of course did not engage with him. Sit there with your book. Some come in just to play pool and stare at us. And some come in to drink only and stare at us. You know.....because there are no regular bars to go to, if you go to a strip club to drink you can sit there with a beer for a few hours and stare at girls for free. In some clubs they tell the people that come in and do this to leave. Good! But since our club is a bar and not a strip club (according to the owner of the establishment) it is more than ok that people sit and stare at us for free while drinking beer. Whatever. I do know this, if the dancers would stop showing up the bar would last maybe a month. In Oregon we also have something called video lottery. Some sort of a gambling machine that people will sit in front of and stare at for hours. The video lottery machines are often more interesting than the dancers. But a lot of times the people playing the machines will engage with the dancers. They do get up and away from the video lottery trance and tip us. Week 19. At the beginning of the night on Friday an older man that has no money came in. I know that he comes in just to talk, because he is lonely but he is nice and actually has something to say, I do enjoy bantering with him. So I sat in my street clothes and talked to him for like 1 1 /2 hour. He says that he comes in to talk to me, I don't mind. I am a therapist as well. Some people just want somebody to talk to. Nobody was dancing on stage. One girl was on stage taking pictures of herself. The older man left and after a while some people came in. It was a slow night but I entertained myself by playing fun songs to dance to. Then another person came in just for me. Turns out that I have a whole crew of people that come in just for me. That is so nice!
Siren wrote that one the board. I thought that was cute. And that my friends were the last pictures that I took at that club. That was my last week there. Since those were the last pictures, I am including this one too that I took a while back but forgot to insert in the weekly recap. When people leave you change as tip. I guess in Canada leaving coins as tip is normal. Some of their coins have more value than the coins here in the US. If somebody would come in with a suitcase full of coins for me I would take it. Bring in the bags and suitcases full of coins that you have collected over the years! Anyhow.....I saw the coins and picked them up. And said yes......laundry money thank you! But in general it is seen as rude (at least in the US) to leave coins as tip. Perhaps the person that left me the two quarters was poor and that is all they had? I've been tipped a deck of cards and a can of sardines before. So.....
If you noticed, I have been absent from the blog but I am back (I think). I had some sad, difficult and stressful events happen back to back and it was too overwhelming for a while. I will ease back here with some recent pictures. Me and Kaya have been enjoying homegrown organic berries since a while now. No I do not grow them but a friend does and gives us berries. Kaya loves eating berries.
Look at these blueberries!
Last night's Wordle. On two. I've had a few on two but never managed Wordle on one. Have you? I play Wordle with guys at work too. Instead of being bored out of my mind by the same repetitive conversations.
The days and weeks are going by so fast it all becomes a blur. And I did not take any pictures these two weeks except one. This picture for week 16, of the earplugs in my hand. Sometimes (especially on weekends) the club is SO loud. Yea it is REALLY annoying actually, like torture. I just put in earplugs to escape the noise. I need to remember to do this more often.
Somebody wrote me a poem. It is actually from a few weeks ago but I will include it now. I guess the poem came about because he (a nice man that comes in once in a while) said "What am I supposed to do with you" and my response was "Ask Chat GPT"......and I guess it sounded like "Ask Chad Geepiti" to him at first. LOL! Anyhow.....the poem is great. He showed it to me on his phone so I took pictures of it to save it forever.
Week 17. Ummmmmm what else? We had a couple of new girls but they only lasted like two shifts. Week 18. This week one of "our" girls quit because she moved. No more purgatory torture for her - LUCKY her! The new Exotic magazine came out at the beginning of the month. And in it there is a recurring column called "Tales From The DJ Booth" written by some strip club DJ guy called DJ HazMatt. This month he writes about "12 Rules For Stripping". And I never thought that I would see a man actually recognize and APPRECIATE that less can many times be more. So I guess we are on Rule 5 this month, which is titled "Show Less, Make More". Unfortunately I work in a club where majority of the clientele consists of Larry The Cable Guy, Wrestlemaniac and Kyle Rittenhouse fans type guys and lookalikes and most of them are just not sophisticated enough to appreciate a certain kind of classy and finesse. Instead they appreciate when girls rip off their underwear ASAP and spread eagle, exposing EVERYTHING down below, even some stray butthole hairs, which is something that I do not do. But to go back to the article in Exotic.....headlines like "Your Body is a Steakhouse, Not a Buffet" and "There Are Degrees To Nudity, so Learn to Edge" are written. And, "Nude is nude; it doesn't have to be graphic" and "While buffet dancers are busy treating their customers like their gynocologists, your job as the steakhouse is to put a top-shelf price tag on any part of your body that would get flagged for removal by Instagram", also "If you are required to get fully naked on stage at a club, do so in a way that would blend more into a Playmate Video calendar than something you'd see in a human anatomy textbook". YES to all of that! I do not take anything off on the stage since a while now. And I never understood why girls rip off their bra two seconds after they step on the stage and in nude clubs take off their underwear on the first song out of two or even worse, on the first out of three songs. Just WHY? It is called strip tease but that is overlooked and forgotten. Or to (again) quote the article, "It's a "flash" dance and a strip "tease", not a "speculum simulator" or a "cave dive". Again, a man wrote this, which is surprising but once you work in a strip club for a while (like a DJ in this case), after the initial shock and excitement dissipates you will start observing stuff and start paying attention to details. When I would take my top off on stage in either topless or nude clubs it would be on the second song out of two. If/when I did take the bottoms off it would be on the last song. NEVER on the first. Then I decided to stop taking anything off. We do NOT have to take anything off on the stage. To me most of the clientele are so boorish that if somebody wants to see more they have to pay more. As it should be. Get topless or totally nude for a few bucks??? Are you kidding? Sadly some dancers do just that and in my opinion contribute to cheapen the whole idea of what a strip club should be. When dancers start yapping about that they dance because they just LOVE performing yet they hurry out of their outfit, all of it, on the first song I always smirk. If you truly love to perform only as an exotic dancer, you hold off with taking off your outfit and/or you seek out clubs where a lot of emphasis is put on the performance part. I am ONLY at this club because the no touching is strictly enforced. If all the clubs would be no touching, I would be at a different club with hopefully more sophisticated clintele. We have a few good ones, like the poem guy. Some men do actually appreciate the less is more principle.
