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Issue date: September 01, 2000

Root beer floats in the desert

By John W. Kim

Mountain View resident Jack Rigley doesn't do the traditional Labor Day ball games or barbecue. You'll find him out in the desert, building and operating a two-story high combination root beer float tower/dance floor at the 15th annual Burning Man event.

Rigley finds the spiritual freedom of Burning Man a welcome antidote to life in Silicon Valley.

"Burning Man is about being as weird as you want," Rigley said. "It's like living at the biggest party you've ever seen. Most of the public seems to see it as just more Californian strangeness, but people go there because it's one hell of a lot of fun."

Most of Rigley's summer has been dedicated to the design and building of the structure. It's a far cry from his day job as a "six-figure" computer software and design engineer in the Bay Area.

A native of Schenectady, N.Y., Rigley made his way to Mountain View circuitously. After high school, he attended the Coast Guard Academy for a brief time, but finished his college education at Union College. He lived in Los Angeles for five years, and then returned to upstate New York, where he worked for General Electric, honing his engineering skills. In 1989 he found his way to Mountain View.

Rigley worked with several local companies in fields from start-ups to defense contracting to electronic design automation, and one of the few positive comments he can make about Mountain View's social world is that "It's not (yet) Palo Alto."

"There's a sense of entitlement that comes with many of the people who live here (Silicon Valley) now," Rigley said. "It's not the wealth that does it, but the attitude towards wealth that is corruptive. People straight out of school who don't know anything else about the world, think that life is supposed to be like this. What they don't understand is that they are living in a boom economy, and their so-called success is really nothing more than a fluke. It also doesn't make them better people, which their behavior clearly shows as well."

For Rigley, Burning Man's free-flowing organized instant city is a welcome opposite to his daily life in Silicon Valley, enveloping him in a spiritual freedom.

Burning Man, an event that began in San Francisco, has been held every year since 1986. It has grown from a small gathering on the beaches of San Francisco to a week-long "experiment in temporary community" and an "exercise in radical self-sufficiency" in the Black Rock Desert area of Nevada, 120 miles north of Reno. This year, more than 28,000 visitors are expected to attend.

There are different stories about the beginning of Burning Man. One says the event started as a spiritual purging; another, as an exorcism of a lost love. The first effigy to be burned was only 8 feet tall. Now the symbolic wooden figure looms 50 feet high and is burned the Saturday evening before Labor Day. Attendees include campers, artists, and spiritual seekers.

Rigley attended the event first in 1998 after a mention in a local weekly newspaper caught his eye. He found himself drawn to Burning Man's creative atmosphere and desert setting.

Burning Man's "no nonsense" simplicity attracts Rigley. "Burning Man has fewer rules than any other event I've ever seen," he said.

The Burning Man rules focus on a goal of self-sufficiency and emphasizes creativity and a healthy respect for basic survival and common sense. It is the kind of rigorous journey Rigley welcomes, a celebration of uniqueness and ingenuity that seems to bring out the best in people, at the most unlikely of locations.

Last year, his second as a participant, divorced Rigley, who is divorced, brought his daughter, Danyel, 19, with him. This year, she will again accompany him, and he expects to bring as many as a dozen other local campers as well.

Rigley's plans for this year's root beer float tower and dance hall was inspired by his experience last year, when he brought along a cooler filled with ice cream and root beer, chilled by dry ice.

A fellow camper, Caroline Lee, noted that they had enough supplies to provide floats, and shortly thereafter, Rigley found himself "building" root beer floats for passers-by. In Rigley's words, "a theme camp was born."

Theme camps are new to the Burning Man experience. As a "commerce-free" zone, Burning Man prohibits the sale of any goods or supplies, with the exception of two items: ice and coffee, which are sold in the center of the event camp. The revenue supports both Burning Man's volunteer staff and local nonprofit organizations. Restrictions on sales of supplies are so severe that attendees who are not able to show the requisite survival goods at the entrance of the event are turned back. Ticket prices are the same regardless of the time spent at the week-long gathering, and in-and-out trips are discouraged.

The flip side of this rule has been an increasingly playful and dedicated system of trading.

Once Rigley and his friends began placing signs in front of their camp "advertising" their floats last year, they found themselves bombarded with what Rigley called "a nearly constant stream of visitors," all asking the same question: "Do you really have root beer floats here?"

Rigley and crew quickly found themselves bartering for their goods, with the caveat that "we wouldn't haggle," he said.

Inspired by last year's interest, Rigley, fellow Burning Man participant Gary Ross, and a slew of friends together designed the root beer float they are bringing this year.

Officially dubbed "Root Beer Float Camp," their creation consists of a two-story, wood-framed shade structure. Temperatures regularly reach 100 degrees at the event site, and the shade area is expected to greatly increase the desirability of the camp. Keeping with Burning Man's tradition of creativity, Rigley added a spiral staircase, and a small dance floor on the second floor.

Well aware that commerce can overwhelm even the most benign mass events, Rigley has been keeping an eye on Burning Man's growth. He understands the inevitable dangers of a popular event finding an ever-larger audience, but he has pragmatic hope for both the event's survival, and his participation in it.

This week, he may be contemplating all of these things while happily dispensing generous servings of root beer and ice cream in the heat of the Nevada desert, waiting for the burning of a 50-foot, wooden man.

"Burning Man has not yet grown beyond its limit," Rigley said. "It may yet happen, but until it does, I plan on being there."

Pictures of the float can be seen at Jack Rigley's Web site at http://www.rigley.org/burnbabyburn.