thePlayland

burning bay

This was one of the best vacation weekends I have had all year! We left late Friday night after a quick stop at Del Taco. We got on the road and had already begun to get silly. Unlike the last time we journeyed to the bay area, this time we left before midnight and had all gotten enough sleep the night before. The drive up was pretty easy and we arrived (without a copy of Harry Potter in hand) at Roar’s sometime around 2am.

Roar’s place… wowie. He no longer lives in Oakland (thank Christ) and instead he now lives above Haight Street! That’s right, a San Francisco hot-spot and we were right above it. We got our tour of the place which ended with us on the rooftop of the building next door. This rooftop proved to be much more fun than I had expected, as I will go into more detail about it later.

We stayed up too late, considering we just got there and we were excited to see Roar and meet his new roommates. We slept for a few hours, then woke up for our afternoon meeting. We bought Harry Potter 6, ate some crepes from a place down the street (Haight has everything!) and then headed off to the meeting, reading HP6 aloud the whole way.

The meeting was awesome. Well, the sun wasn’t so great, as I now have a burnt scalp, arms and face. But, the actual content and the people of the meeting were really cool. I met Pearl and all the rest of the gate staff. The meeting was like a meeting I have always wanted to attend. Everything was super organized and they served us vegan sushi and beer! I am now signed up for a number of shifts to work at the gate this year (mostly the night shifts) and I can’t wait to get out there into the dust and welcome citizens to the best city on the planet.

The meeting ran long and I ended up being able to get to my family’s place a little later than expected. So, I missed dinner, but not the people. To get out there, I hopped on BART at Civic Center. What I did not know what that I would be passing the Fire Arts Open House on the way! Passing it rather quick, I did not get a chance to take a picture, but what I saw looked very cool, indeed. Once I arrived, I saw most of my father’s side of the family and even met some I did not know. Everyone was really pleasant and we had some great conversation. Of course, considering what I was up there for, everyone had quite a selection of questions about Burning Man, which I was more than happy to answer. It really was wonderful to see all those people again after so long and I am hopeful that I will be able to stay in contact a lot better now.

Instead of a BART trip home, my Uncle Chris gave me a ride back to Haight. Once I returned, I found most everyone on the roof. We speant the rest of the night entering into a more and more depraved state of drunkeness. We began our hippie calling and harassment of passers-by. We got flashed some butt by one particularly rowdy group. Mostly, we were just entertaining oourselves at 3am on the rooftop. After a great deal of drunken fun, we all headed off to bed to ready ourselves for our trip home.

While we didn’t get to do all the things we wanted to, we discovered that a trip up there is not only cheap, but easy, too. So, hopefully we will be able to return asometime after the burn. Our trip home was fantastic, as we now had a copy of Harry Potter, so we read aloud the whole way home. This made the trip fly right by and we were home in no time at all.

All in all, this was the best time I have had in the bay so far. The company and the meeting served only to get all of us very worked up about Burning Man, though. So, now I must fight to keep my sanity as I wait the 5 weeks until Amanda and I leave for the empty playa. Pics from this weekend are coming soon. I didn’t take as many as I would have liked, but there’s at least a record of the trip.