Traffic Cone Archives - La Colina Project

A beautiful lotus growing in our pool

Currently more of a pond…

Jungle Journal

A little madness now and then …..

October 26, 2024November 3, 2024
by Beave

This blog is very late and there has been a lot going on these past five months. I am currently in New Zealand but that is a tale for another day. There is more to tell than I can possibly capture here but have done my best. It’s taken a lot more words than is usual for me so I have produced this offering in three parts to make it an easier read. Chance to grab a cuppa or a kip in between chapters.

PART ONE

Preparing ourselves to Build Coney Mc Coneface

It seems like forever and a day since I had some time alone to reflect and perchance write about a few of the many strange occurrences that have featured in the last few months. Our return from Africa in May gave us a short but delicious rest-bite from what had already been a hectic year. Our attempts at reducing our pace and reconnecting with the more sustainable rhythms of nature were wise and overdue but not entirely successful.

Our remarkable friend Catherine who has been living with cancer for a long time finally and peacefully died. Her complete acceptance of her impending death was extraordinary and inspiring. Thankfully her pain levels were managable but her constant discomfort and vanishing body and energy were tough to witness. She was a legend. Universally loved. Always dressed in white and surrounded by animals that she rescued and cared for. We were with her to the very end. It was humbling and somehow rather beautiful. We all have this in our future. May we all face the inevitable with such poise and grace and gratitude. We will forever miss and love her.

Our relationship with a future sixty foot traffic cone (that we have agreed to build and burn at the Burning man event in Nevada in August) has become somewhat overwhelming. There is so much to pre-arrange months before we have to even cut wood. The days of turning up and throwing something together have gone. It’s a real and involved process. We have to deal with huge volumes of people and rules months in advance. Lots and lots of dos and donts. It’s a full time unpaid job .

We have to imagine how we will support, feed and keep alive up to thirty cone-struction volunteers in the potentially extreme harsh environments of Reno Nevada (where we will build the thing) and The Black Rock desert (where we place it and burn it) . Our architects have drawn up the highly detailed plans to create what is actually a rather awkward shape . If this thing is going to look like an actual traffic cone rather than a bunch of wood in the rough shape of a traffic cone it will require good skills and adherence to fairly tight tolerances. It takes some thinking about and a whole heap of time.

Our core crew are not new to this and include some of the most experienced folk there are. But we are getting old. We need to attract a younger more enthusiastic crew who are keen and reliable and have knees and backs that don’t hurt as much as ours. Our search begins with contacting all the dozens of previous deluded lunatics that have gone through this with us in the past. They then talk to their lunatic friends who in turn talk to others. Through websites and fundraisers and general gossip we have over a hundred serious applications from all over the world to work with us for no pay & terrible conditions, indefinitely, to build and burn a traffic cone. Many lunatics from the past and an encouraging amount of new lunatic wannabees appear. We spend what seems like every moment trawling through and considering all our offers and coming up with a chosen few. We invite the lucky buggers to join us in Reno and also in the desert for the event. We announce the Coney Mc Face Crew. It’s happening.

Our first serious set back is that finding a work space in Reno where you can make noise and vast quantities of sawdust with space to cone-struct a 60 foot behemoth of a traffic cone is an almost impossible task. With a lot of help we consider a dozen options but non of them have the access or shade or facilities we need. We have to start building soon and all the folk that claim to know all about industrial space in Reno are drawing blanks. After a huge amount of begging and schmoozing and pretty much at the last minute we have an offer to take up 2000 square feet of newly created space in The Generator in Reno. This is an excellent worker space with tools and air-conditioning and bathrooms and a kitchen. Despite having to take a worrying chunk of rent from our meagre budget we have no choice. The Coney Mc Coneface project finally has a home.

John is a mighty bloke in his 70s living in a van in the Coromandel in New Zealands North Island. He has agreed to be the first on the ground and fly to the US to prepare our work space and order us up some wood. This is his first time in Reno and his first Nevada Burning Man. He is met in Reno by old friends who show him around. We have our first US fundraiser in Reno to which he attends as guest of honour. It is a burlesque show where all the proceeds go to help us with build costs. John is a well travelled and a generally wise old soul but for some reason had no idea what a burlesque show was. He assumed it was a sort of circus event. He was both delighted and surprised at how the evening progressed. A good time was had by all and we raised a not insignificant amount of cash. Good start.

Over the following weeks further crew arrive from New Zealand and Australia and various US States . Its time so I book my flight to Reno for the next ten weeks. We will fly up to Oregon and drive to a friends place on a lake in Washington for 4th July then to Vancouver. From there I will fly to Reno and Jayne will spend a month in Canada with family before joining me. This will be the longest time we have been away from the jungle. Our artist friend will stay and continue with her mural and is joined by a very capable mate from California who is in need of escaping the USA for while. He moves into our place to wallow in the delights of jungle isolation and feeding Mausetrappe until we return. Timing is perfect.

Our first stop is Bend Oregan. Our good friend has a house there which is full of boy toys. One of which is a large converted bus called Cerberus. It has had many adventures over the years and is going to carry us North to an iconic and now quite infamous party on a lake to celebrate something. We load up and head out. It’s a relaxed and comfortable five hours of cruising in an very cool bus. We stop to acquire oysters and sample local brews on the way.

We arrive at a camp ground next to a huge lake in Washington State. This weekend many hundreds of folk are expected to arrive to celebrate something. We are hosted in an extraordinarily beautiful house overlooking a lake/fjord. No camping for us ! A large number of lunatics have arranged to meet up here, which they do every year, to celebrate their independence from my adopted motherland. This party is much spoken of and we are exited to be here. I’m delighted we removed ourselves from these colonial lands at the time so no hard feelings. We will happily celebrate with them.

It is a hectic few days of playing on the lake and hanging out with strange and wonderful folk. The day of the 4th arrives. During the day we have all been to the Indian reservation down the lake where it is possible to buy strangely branded boxes of preloaded fireworks. We all got a bit carried away and have all accumulated an insane amount of them. A larger throng of mates have now arrived. They all camp in the site next to us around the bus. Most are crew from Burning man so there are enough skills between us to rig all the massive pile of boxes , morters and rockets. They are secured to a 30 foot long old battered wooden dock on the beach in front of the house.

When this now vast setup is lit there follows on overwhelming amount of explosions and colours reflected in the water for what seemed like an eternity. It was stunning but seemingly endless. Ther are competing displays up and down the lake as far as we can see. . After what seemed like forever the bangs and crackles and lights became slightly less frequent. When they finally pause we retreat to the big house for further refreshment till late. We have just watched enough dollars to run a medium size country go up in smoke. Quite something. My first ever July 4th in the USA. Sometime after midnight we are surprised to hear more fireworks exploding close by from the beach . Probably kids. We look out and see a 20 foot flame coming from the deck. Its setting off the straggler explosives that didn’t go up first time which are in turn helping to set the deck further alight. We race down to extinguish the flames with buckets of water from the lake. The deck survives.

After a day of recovery and clean up we head by ferry to Seattle for a night wher we meet some mates from Mexico. We head to our other mexi-mates trendy and sexy restaurant and have a great feed and catch up. The next morning we wake up in our hotel in full panic. Our alarms have not gone off !! Neither of them. It’s not the expected 7.15 . It is now 8.02 am and our train to Vancouver is leaving in 26 minutes. We still have no idea how this happened but by 8.15 we are in a cab on the way to the train station. Our cabby is aware of the challenge and excitedly ignores all traffic lights and cones and speed limits. Somehow he proudly deposits us at the train station by 8.24. We drag our bags at top speed and wave ourselves through the ticket booth onto the platform just as the staff are walking away. We dance forward and throw ourselves onto the train as the doors are closing. We made it by less than a second. Remarkable performance. We are very proud of ourselves and mighty relieved.

The train journey up that coast is gorgeous. It’s a number of hours of relaxing and imbibing the view. We arrive in Vancouver and head to Jaynes brothers house. Everyone is at work so we do washing and prepare ourselves for what is ahead of us. I’m taking a 6 .30 am flight to California in the morning. Jayne is staying in Canada with her family for a month and meeting me in Reno for the end of the build and our transition to the desert. We get organised then cross the street and head to one of the many Vietnamese restaurants around us. A Vancouver treat.

We meet up with Phil and Kelly and kids as they all return from work and school. We take bicycles to the local park and spectate a few of Phil’s ultimate frisbee matches . It’s a weary ride back and a welcome few hours rest before I’m in a taxi and on my way to San Francisco. It’s somewhat of a hectic start but I need to get used to the pace of things to come.

PART TWO

How to Build a 60 foot traffic cone

I sleep on the flight until I touch down at SFO and get a bus from the airport to across the city and the bridge into the Northern suburbs . The bus deposits me in some random industrial estate where i call an uber to take me to a friends house where it has been arranged I collect a my mates truck which I get to use till he arrives in Reno in six weeks time. I set off on the 4 hour 20 min ( sat nav estimate) drive to Reno. Seven hours later I am still on the I-80 outside of Tahoe exhausted but committed. I roll into Reno in the dark a few hours later and finally get to meet the first of the crew. It’s emotional. Haven’t seen a bunch of these idiots for years. I have shared a lot of unique and somewhat extraordinary history with these buggers. Kiwi ( lead artist) has finally left New Zealand after Covid. We met in a dust storm 14 years ago and life was never the same again. I’m absolutely knackered but we stay up late refreshing ourselves and talking shite. A much needed start. I have a good feeling about this lot.

We are perhaps one of the poorest projects to be at burning man this year. No big funders or angel investors. We have faith we can make it work but absolutely no assurances. Because the majority of our crew are from overseas our costs are high. We are housing most of them at our great friend Thundercats family house in town where we have staged tents and hammocks in the yard and mattresses on the floor. He is a crazy bugger having us all but is a splendid chap and taking it all in his stride. Its like a respectful student squat house but very cheap. We have scoured out the cheapest food and alcohol stores and do our very best to stretch every dollar. The fridge is stocked with Chardonnay and ribs. All good.

With the build now underway we have regular wood and materials orders arriving daily . Our pot of cash is not looking encouraging. The project, it has to said, is creating waves and interest from all over the world. The humble traffic cone has a place in the hearts of many more souls than I ever though possible. Social media is buzzing with images and cone related cone-tent. Our intensions by choosing a traffic cone to build have been open to a great deal of speculation. There have been long and protracted philosophical stories created. There have been dozens of AI images, poems and songs. There is a great deal of traction building but so far this is not translating into cash. Raising money for art is hard. Raising money for a large traffic cone we are going to burn is almost impossible. If we run out of money we have a half built cone and a hungry crew in Reno (all very far away from home) to deal with. No pressure.

The very good news is that we have the right crew at the right spot at the right time. That doesn’t just happen. We are working smart and hard . The universe is certainly conspiring with us at the moment. The build is coming along remarkably well. Local boys turn up to help us out and keep things moving along. Large sections of recognisable cone are emerging . Long may that continue. A couple of Australian mad men Jai & Ben have arrived and are all over it. Young , strong, high energy with a bunch of smarts and skills. A rare combination, but we are lucky enough to have them. So the start is encouraging and no one is in the mood to kill anyone yet so that’s good.

Every day starts the same. I wake up in a hammock or on a mattress somewhere and consider , after imbibing the correct amount of Yorkshire Gold Tea, how we are going to get through the day spending the least amount of money. Some days are considerably better than others. In days gone by we were able to support crew with endless treats. Reno is now not the cheap run down place it used to be. Reno is now a bloody expensive run down place. Since the pandemic, casinos and restaurants charge a fortune and close early. It used to be possible to stay in a cheap 24 hour casino hotel for $25 and live off KFC and PBR for a few dollars a day. Things have moved on. You are lucky to get any sort of grotty hotel room under $150 and to my great astonishment the local KFC tried to charge me $48 for a single bucket of chicken !! I can amazingly and fortunately get a dozen bottles of cheap Chardonnay from Trader Joes for that. Downtown bars are charging over 5$ for a PBR in a glass. WTF. The world has gone mad.

Reno life settles down. More Crew arrive from Mexico and slot in well. Scott is the skilled carpenter that built our jungle house. We intend to absolutely abuse his skills. Josh arrives. This year he is blessed with two good arms (He buggered himself up last year on a one-wheel). His missus has now has banned him from even looking at any vehicle with less than 4 wheels. The tent city in the yard is looking like a refugee camp. Extraordinary sounds are being produced. Audio skills are delivered in the form of a talented cheesemaker from Vermont. Ross correctly specifies the optimum equipment within out budget. We acquire it all. Our mate from Seattle has worked with her mate (Chat GBT) and we now have a couple of dozen multi-genre unique songs all about cones. They are surprisingly catchy. A raging irish pub ditty followed by a rap track , country classic and a choir anthem. All AI generated. It’s sadly impressive.

The soundtrack to our build has so far been the soulfully haunting drone of the didgeredoo-cone. Our antipodean contingent have skillfully attached a large traffic cone to a pipe to create a functional didgeridoo. We find bee wax in the local market to make a mouthpiece and the Cone-didge came to life. The acoustics from a well played didgeridoo inside a 60 foot cone can only be imagined. Exciting potential when we get out on the Playa.

We have been given a space in down town Reno to help with our fundraising efforts. We need all the help we can get so gratefully accept. There is a retail space in Reno Public Market (RPM) where we can place a few of our cone sub structures and promote the project. We decide to run a raffle and have crew on site every day. There is a big screen where we can play video and AI animation cone-tent to further raise our profile. We transport huge sections of cone down to the RPM and guilt parents into donating cash while their kids paint them for us. Ours is not an easy story to tell but we make enough of a fuss and just enough cash to make it worth it. It took some work but we are now somewhat infamous if not entirely understood. We are building a huge traffic cone in a desert. It’s not obvious why.

As the days turn into weeks more of our piles of wood turn into more round solid structures. Huge and very heavy sections of cone. We have a lot of restrictions about the paint we can use as it has potential to pollute when burnt. Thankfully the paint we find that is closest to the hue of a traffic cone is not expensive, VOC free and on the shelf at Home Depot. Who knew that traffic cones were a “Hot Tomato” colour.

Fundraising is not going perfectly. It is a difficult ask to encourage people to give you hard earned cash for us to build a traffic cone !! There are so many other draws on funds these days. Rent and food and over expensive KFCs are all considered much more important than a burning traffic cone. Fair enough. Every day I get to stare at the budget praying for money in and watching the inevitable drain of money out. We are making huge economies everywhere and that is making it work. Just.

To add to the fun our trailer is broken into overnight and all our audio equipment is stolen. Long day follows of communing with the many homeless folk around us and in the local park offering a reward for the safe return of our missing kit. This brilliant plan does not work. A late donation saves us and we are able to replace everything we lost. Irritating but not fatal.

The Generator work space has its annual fundraising night and we are invited to also shake a bucket and see if we can raise a few more beans. Our lead artist Kiwi makes a speech about what a great idea Coney Mc Coneface is and pleading poverty. I then conduct a a quickly composed rap sing-along encouraging folk to support the cone. It was very silly and probably repelled more donors than it attracted. Maybe being a rap star is not my future.

All the cone parts are assembled and we load up the cone parts into our rented 48 foot trailer . We also have a big refrigeration semi trailer box that we are gifted for the next few weeks. We fill it to the brim with all our crap, They are heading to the Playa slightly before the first dozen of us load up and say farewell to Reno and hello to the dust and heat of the Black Rock Desert. Here we go.

Pyramid Lake stop off on the way to the Playa

They crew land and head out deep into the desert to find their assigned spot and start the survey and make camp. The cone parts will be arriving anytime and they need a home. We arrive in the heat and find our Playa home and our trailer that has been delivered to the bare piece of playa onto which Media Mecca ( the Burning Man communication centre) will be constructed. This is our Burning Man day job. I am confusingly Project Lead for the cone and Build Lead for Media Mecca. Our job for the past few years has been to create a reception building for journalists, a deck to entertain journalist and a back bar and lounge for the crew to avoid journalists. The boys from Mexico join us and we open up the container full of wood and tools and spend the next few days getting all this done while also supporting the Coney crew that are camped out next the build site.

There is a unique and much loved event every year that we look forward to . On the Saturday night a week before the event begins all the artists and builders and those creating and running the event are invited to offer a small creation to burn. Early Burn allows everyone who has been out in this crazy environment for weeks to have a blow-out. There is a line-up of effigies and structures that are all burnt together. We get to see all our mates who we never do at the event because they are too busy. Scott has knocked up a small cone to represent our project and our pyro lead had filled it with interesting stuff. Mini Coneface is ready to burn.

Our night is put on hold. The weather has arrived. An intense dust storm is battering us. Visibility is down to a few yards and its impossible to breathe outside. Lungs fill up with the talc like dust. Burning anything looks highly unlikely.

And then it happens. Unexpectedly the sky clears and the stars come out and a beautiful night appears from nowhere. We all rush to get our shit together and get ourselves out to the assigned spot in front of the man. Our early crew assembles and we watch in delight as all the line of funky art is burnt. The pyro in the our mini cone explodes in flame. It’s a fabulous sight. We are all inspired to go forward and make Coney Mc Coneface a reality. We all dive into a much needed night of strange connections and spontaneous nonsense

The sections have been unloaded and as we are distracted by Media Mecca building the crew bolt together the parts into what is clearly slices of traffic cone . We await a crane to put them on top of each other. We haven’t had the equipment or space to test if this will work so we pray hard that we have built each of these pre-assemblies absolutely perfectly. There are tight tolerances building a sixty foot cone shape in bits.

Then another of the dust storms appears. It comes unannounced. Visibility is gone and there is no way that any productive work is possible. Scarves are wrapped around faces to keep the fine stuff from filling lungs and goggles prevent blindness. We are at the build site when it hits. We all hunker down in a large tent and open a few bottles to keep us company. The refrigeration semi trailer is between the tent and the wind and saves us from being blown away. It lasts for many hours.

The lift day is upon us. It’s an really significant event for all of us. It’s the time when our sub structures of wood which have been formed and painted and nurtured bond with each other and perfectly form into a traffic cone. Coney Mc Coneface is born today. This is not a simple process. Each of our sections need to match exactly. We need to have built every one perfectly round and dimensionally identical to its matching partner. This is where we find out how smart we are. The potential for a shit show is vast. The chances of us having all our many tolerances correct are slim. It doesn’t take much for things to be so very wrong. It’s a tense time.

The burning man crane crew are some of the very best there are. They have experience of building the craziest stuff in the harshest conditions. No one else gets to do what they do. Today they are going to try and align four great big heavy lumps of wood perfectly. The wind is not helping. We attach guide ropes but that is not what makes it work. The amazingly talented crane operator will gauge the wind shear and at the precise moment plop one bit on top of the other. The first pick goes remarkably well. The second and the third. When the final chunk of cone lands perfectly and completes the job its emotional. So much gratitude to our crane crew and our crew. We have fucking done this thing. Amazingly well. Coney Mc Coneface stands before us in all his/her magnificence. Its good. Really really good.

There is the need to ensure that the now perfectly aligned lumps of wood stay where they have been expertly put. A good strong wind will not be good at this point. We are prepared. Because of the small entrance and diminishing cone structure we don’t have room for a cherry picker or scissor lift to get up to where we need to be to bolt all the sections together. Our search for a 45 foot ladder have not gone well and our budget won’t let us buy or rent anything appropriate. But we have a secret weapon.

Scott is my Thai Chi Master mate who is also the master carpenter that has built a load of good stuff in our jungle house. He lives in our treehouse in the jungle and has been persuaded to donate his skills to us and live in a tent for a month in Reno. He is also a world class professional climber and mountain guide. He has devoted much of his life to ascend terrifying cliff faces. He has had a long and impressive relationship with El Capitan . Rigging himself to the inside of a massive wooden cone is not an issue for him. Up he goes with an impact driver in hand and in no time the sections are secured. Coney Mc Coneface is going nowhere. Until we are ready. Impressive stuff.

Coney Mc Coneface exists. You can see this from miles away. There are not so many people here yet and due to the dust storms few projects have been completed so we stand out. We really strand out. If the dust calms down and the air is clear you can see our massive orange traffic cone from everywhere. There is already a buzz in the city. What the fuck is that traffic cone doing here ? Why would anyone one spend the vast amount of effort and money to do something as ridiculous as that ? Good questions.

The weather has up to this point been dodgy. We have lost a lot of time due to dust storms. But nothing too dramatic. The winds made our crane pick challenging but what follows reminds us of where we are. The dust particles all get together and decide to hold hands and get some wind behind them. The result is that we vanish for many hours. You could be standing almost close enough to touch but our 60 foot (ish) cone is invisible behind the dust storm. The wind also rips up our build crew tent and steals everything that is not tied down. It’s brutal. But predictable. This is the joy of building in the Black Rock Desert. It will always remind you that you really don’t belong there. We are but visitors who have to hang on in and suck it up.

We are exhausted but contented. This bizarre mission that we have all dedicated ourselves to is now reality. An impressive enormous traffic cone now exists in time and space. We have added sound and smoke. Inside we install a finger puppet stage which also transforms into a kissing booth or an advice booth. There is an area to remind folk to be careful and respect safety meetings. We have two screens installed to display the growing amount of highly entertaining video cone-tent that we have acquired over the months of social media fundraising. There is a shrine to coney nonsense. We have lost a few incredible people over the years along the way and they are all honoured there. We also create a dedication to the native land on which we exist. Our smoke machines are dispensing glycerine vapour so there is narrative that the cone is protecting us all from a steamy fissure that has broken through the playa. Outside one of our very talented New Zealanders has created brilliant if slightly insane secret dioramas. It’s all rather impressive.

We break camp and head to our event homes . We are at Media Mecca and the crew are mostly hosted by Day Dream which is a well resourced and generous camp who have kindly offered to feed and shelter everyone. It is, however, placed right in the heart of the 24 hour super loud sound district so there will be very little sleep to be had for the next week.

The Burning Man event is about to start. Many tens of thousands of expectant punters will soon flood the place and Coney Mc Coneface will come alive. We are ready.

PART THREE

The Life & Death of Coney Mc Coneface

We really didn’t have an idea about how this would all go down. The reaction of the masses is unpredictable and sometimes can go against you. We need not have worried. The bemused punters in their thousands all made pilgrimages out of the city to find Coney Mc Coneface. To our great relief they loved it.

The advice booth was filled with bad advice. The finger puppets were busy entertaining day and night. There was kissing in the kissing booth. Cone songs were played throughout to much appreciation. The alter filled with respectful if ridiculous offerings. The sound of the didgeridoo add a haunting ambience. People squeal with delight as they discover the dioramas. Day one and its all going rather well.

At night Mr Coneface takes on a very different vibe. He is up lit and magnificent. Jayne has carefully and painfully installed rope lights around the silver stripes that look incredible. The now throngs of folk decend on us and we invite them to gather inside. I welcome them in batchs of about 50 at a time. I have them all look upwards at the structure which is an incredibly beautiful. The levels are lit up to the top where we direct smoke to add a little magic. As the crowd absorb this totally unique space I have them join me in a short ceremony of daft hand gestures and chanting before declaring them all cone-verted. This happens many times. By the end of the week I have at least a thousand extra cone-verts.

A team of folk with the task of promoting Coney Mc Coneface to as many participants as possible have arrived and been preparing themselves for days. They are mostly from New Zealand so far away from home. I have now officially never seen so many kiwis in one place outside of New Zealand. Our crew is full of them. Their moment arrives. Just before sunset every day cone ceremonies are cone-ducted. Chants and dance and nonsense are performed to an expectant crowd who all leave thoroughly cone-verted. It’s starting to look a bit culty but everyone loves a good cult now and again right ? .

Jayne has been working hard on a project of her own. The Coney Mc Coneface QUEST. She has negotiated with a number of artists to hide within their camp or art piece a bespoke red triangle which has a raised section for a crayon rubbing which imparts a unique image onto paper to reveal the next clue. It’s a challenge that involves a lot of work but there are a large number of folk who are absolutely up for it. There are special rolls of parchment with clues directing people to where the triangles are hidden. We distribute them in all public area for people to find and be seduced to take on the challenge. It take to few days to set up. Triangles are placed behind pictures, on art cars , in treasure chests and art structures. An astonishing amount of folk compete every task and turn up at Media Mascca to be rev-erred and inducted into the ways of the cone. They leave very happy with cone prizes and pride. Everyone who completes it loves it . Great success.

A slightly insane couple at Media Mecca have decide to get married. They request their cone-mitment ceremony be cone-ducted at the cone. I agree to be the officiary. The cone-ductor of ceremonies. I have numerous Playa weddings under my belt. This will be fun. The bride looks resplendant with ballons attached to her dress to keep it suitably suspended. The groom is in a version of top hat and tails and stands with me as the bride party approaches Coney Mc Coneface. The cone-gregation is treated to a splendid set of spicy vows. I manage to squeeze 14 cone-references into the announcements. The two kiss and are whisked away on a dusty mattress in the back of a pick up truck to cone-sumate their cone-ection. So very romantic.

At night the cone has become somewhat of a beacon for art cars and punters alike. The extraordinary Pulpo Magnifico flaming Octopus arrives and entertains with sound and flame. That pulls in vast crowds and is a sight to behold. As the flames hit the sky the cone is lit up to the rapturous delight of all. The quite remarkable San Francisco Bridge art car arrives and Rhino and his crew park close and blast perfect sounds. An instant dance party.

The cone-cophony of sound and lights continues until the sun rises and casts huge cone shaped shadows to the mountains. The light of the day reveals a huge traffic cone holding a remarkable space in a remarkable place. We are all flabbergasted by the love that has been generated by a Coney Mc Coneface. The cone-verted appear again and again to give praise and dance and sing and wonder at the nonsense.

The time comes way too fast when we have to consume our creation with fire. It’s Thursday of the event and It’s time for Coney Mc Coneface to be no more . Our pyrotechnic crew goes to work early. We close off the area. With traffic cones. Fuel is loaded. Wood and gasoline. Incredibly technical things are happening in preparation for the 5 Minute pyro show before the flames start to consume the structure. It takes hours of work in the hot baking sun. Also non technical things are afoot. A few of our crew decide to drill a face onto the side of the cone which will light up when it burns. We approve.

The biggest challenge is to find 90 sober people at 7.30 pm to spend 3 hours protecting our perimeter. They are required to be looking at the crowd not the big burning cone behind them. Some years ago some poor bugger was out of his mind enough to run into the fire here and he died. Since then there are many levels of organisation to prevent it happening again. We are trained and have trained all the perimeter crew in techniques to prevent such tragedies happening again. Burning big art is now a serious business .

It is a unique experience walking around a massive flaming cone looking at the mesmerised crowd. You see the fire in their eyes. We are transfixed by the fire and the pyro and the crowd and the sky full of speckled red embers falling slowly like hot rain. We have a surprise for the crowd. The FAA has finally approved a piloted aircraft to launch fireworks while flying. At precisely 9 pm a light aircraft with lasers firing flys over the burning cone. Flames are 100 feet in the air as suddenly an array of white plume fireworks are launched overhead. Hard to know where to look. It’s amazing stuff.

All the cladding his burnt away. What remains is the frame glowing bright yellow with heat and flame. There is a movement then a twist and slowly and gracefully the cone smashes to the ground. No longer a cone. An ex cone. A pile of white hot debris. When we break the perimeter thousands of people decend upon the fire to dance around in celebration and joy. Sorta kinda makes all the effort , pain , sweat and worry worth it.

So over many many months Coney Mc Coneface, with a great deal of help, has transformed from a mad idea, to an extraordinary installation, to a pile of ash. It’s a beautiful process. One that we have facilitated many times now. It’s a lot of work . It’s emotional. It’s transformative . It’s more than anything addictive.

Watch this space.

Jungle Journal

Mostly Different

May 30, 2024May 30, 2024
by Beave

February does indeed arrive with the promise of slower days and the chance to rest up. February is a liar. We have a new set of friends staying in the jungle with us and a significant contingent of current visitors that stubbornly refuse to leave. They come for a week and stay for a few months. Don’t blame them at all. More guests of guests arrive and our community is once again injected with a fresh dose of somewhat exhausting activity and enthusiasm.

My birthday comes around again. Glad to be older. It’s the time of year when the Cirque de Los Ninos put on my birthday show for me (and the town). Again it’s a well-produced and much practiced display of young talented future superstars. Cirque du Soleil has already snapped up a few of these kids. A large contingent of us go to support and be entertained and are, once again, all suitably impressed.

Our place is finally feeling a little more sorted and relaxed than in previous years. We are for the first time in a long time only looking at maintenance projects. We are not building anything new but there are still very many calls on our attention.

We decide to leave town for 48 hours. Bit controversial as we haven’t been away from the jungle at all this year, actually maybe six months or more. LCD Sound System, a UK band from back-in-the-day is playing yet another comeback gig in Guadalajara. A bunch of us, mostly from back-in-the-day, decide to rent a place and go for the night. It’s a big opportunity to dress up, eat food and dress up and go dancing. A lot of dressing up is apparently required. It’s good to be away and celebrate my actual birthday.

We return to our list of things to do in the jungle which remains endless and keeps us busy enough. Keeping the water, power and internet running around the property is almost a full time job. We have roofs that we are repairing too often and need replacing. We have a huge empty pool that we need to transform back into a natural pool to avoid the constant demands of a needy chlorine-hungry version. There is mostly an overwhelming amount to do but we are seriously looking at the possibly of going to places elsewhere for a change. Take a few more jungle breaks. We have earned them.

There is a total eclipse happening and the one spot NASA has suggested is the very best place to experience it, in the world, is Mazatlán. This is only five hours away. The sun will be fully blocked by the moon for over 4 minutes in this one spot. Pretty much everyone we know in San Pancho and a large amount of Jayne’s family and a bunch of extra Canadians decide it’s too good an opportunity to miss and arrange to be there. It’s been planned for many months and there are a number of houses already booked on the beach. After we stage family and friends in the jungle for a day or two over forty of us embark on the long drive North and descend on Mazatlán.

We end up in a large high ceiling party house where everyone from other houses meets up to eat and DJ and swim in the indoor pool. It’s an extraordinary experience.

We are on the beach a few hours before the “totality” and the light changes, the wind changes and the fluffy clouds that scatter the sky takes on mind bending forms, colours and shapes. Right before the moment the moon covered the very last piece of the sun it was pretty much full daylight. A surreal sepia tinged daylight but in no way dark. As the last tiny speck of sunlight is covered by the moon all the light goes. Silence. Dark. The horizon a full 360 degree sunset. Remarkable. Spiritual. Emotional.

We spend the rest of the day adventuring in many varied, profound and ridiculous ways before meeting up for sunset. We have been blessed by sunsets but this sunset somehow took on a mystical significance. The world resets and normal service resumed. On this beach with this unbelievably beautiful sunset we all ground ourselves and moved on. Grateful and renewed.

One of our newest jungle residents is a rather superb artist. Probably my favorite so we try and take full advantage of her skills while she is here. Her ability with oil paints is legendary and her hand poked tattoos are sought after by all those that know about such things. There are a couple of projects that we have wanted her to help us with for years. The first being a mural on our new bodega wall. It is something that we don’t want to show off till it’s ready and there is a lot more finishing to do. but there are already really funky sections of it that look so good that we offer here a few premature sneak peeks. It’s months of work. No real planning. A flow of creative consciousness. Exciting.

Something very unexpected and entirely disruptive appears in our lives. Over the years we have stayed in touch with our great friends in New Zealand. We have created amazing things together over the last dozen years and more. They have had a daft idea to build something strange at Burning Man in Nevada for some time. This year they threw the dice and decided to put in an application to see if by some remote chance their idea would attract some money . By some shift in the force, universal fart or cosmic comedy they were enthusiastically encouraged , supported and ultimately offered an honorarium grant to build a 60 foot traffic cone and burn it.

The main artist is a close friend and has been fundamental in the production of some of the most beautiful projects that we have nurtured together with fabulous success over many years. Now we are committed to creating a massive traffic cone. A traffic cone. A massive one… Coney Mc Coneface ….. WTF???

Despite my absolute amazement that anyone would give “us” any money to do this, we are, by default, all in. We can’t sit in Mexico when our mates in New Zealand are struggling to build in Reno, Nevada and assemble in the desert and blow this thing up. It’s not anything that I would have planned for us but the universe has spoken. We are now project leads with the mission to bring Coney McConeface (a 60 foot traffic cone) to Burning Man 2024. Of course we are. FFS.

Water water bloody water. It’s almost scary to find out the our well is running dry. It’s two months earlier than ever before. The effect of last year’s crap rainy season showing up to bugger us up. Our new house has a massive cistern which we installed in anticipation of this situation. It’s been coming for a while. We keep it filled by “pipa” water trucks but the rest of the places we have must survive without till the rains come.

The San Pancho well is also dry. Town taps are turned off for long periods. There are accusations that the two out of town cement works that are busier than ever have not helped the situation. Rumours are that we are heading into a period of record high temperatures and low rain fall. Not good news.

Coney McConeface is doing my head in. I forgot how much work these projects take. We need to persuade people that giving money to a crazy burning man project is a great idea. We have to persuade dozens of folk to give us their time and skills for the love of it. No one gets paid. We need to find a build space in Reno that doesn’t cost us a fortune and is big enough to birth a massive traffic cone. We have a crew to feed. Having folk starve to death while building for free is not a good look. We need to plan a burn and a week of interaction attracting as many cone fans as possible. We mustn’t forget that it’s a remarkably difficult shape to construct and we have to build all 60 feet of it. Why are we doing this ?

My biggest surprise is how many people are madly enthusiastic about our project. It’s a bloody traffic cone but who knew the global love and affection for a traffic cone. I had no idea. This project has had more traction worldwide than any other project we have done. It’s quite remarkable that the modest traffic cone can muster so much love and support??!! So many cone heads.

Our friends in South Africa are a persuasive bunch. They have invited us to camp with them at Afrikaburn. This would give us the chance to get away from jungles and cones and see many of our old friends. We could sneak in some safaris and even get to see more friends while checking out Mozambique. We have been to Capetown and Afrikaburn a number of times and absolutely love it. Last time was 2017 so it’s been a while.

I was born in Lusaka, Zambia and our revisit there was very special. Africa is part of my childhood and still holds nostalgia and excitement. After some consideration we decide that we will indeed spend a month in South Africa & Mozambique. It doesn’t give us much time to prepare. A number of good mates from San Pancho are going to meet us there. This has the potential to be a proper adventure.

The proper adventure begins with a few hour flight to Atlanta and a 14 hour hop to Capetown. It’s been a long time since I was stuck in one of those seats for that long. I have certain challenges. I have a lot more legs than the area designated for me to fold them into. Also my shoulders are wider than any economy seat. If anyone passes by they invariably nudge me with their hips to check I’m awake or just bloody irritate me. Worse are the service trolleys that clip chunks out of me. I bravely and patiently meditate my way through this ordeal, occasionally swearing loudly at some clumsy twat or trolley.

We have a soft landing at a friend’s house in town and spend the next few days preparing to be out of touch in the deep semi-desert of the Karoo for over a week. There is much biltong and steak pies to buy. There are jobs to be done in prepration at the bustling workshop which is crammed with remarkable art cars and a ten tonne lorry packed with everything we need for a large camp of 190 souls.

We collect our van home and meet up with fabulous mates who lend us a mattresses, coolers and all the things we need. It saves us a heap of time and rand. We drive back to town and end up in a small industrial estate where the art cars are being prepared for travel. Suddenly the vans horn starts blaring and the engine cuts off. The tracker thinks the van is being stolen. Despite calling the rental company many times it is still disturbing us and the neighbourhood an hour later. We disconnect the horn manually and abandon it. We are exhausted and have had enough. We get a cab to meet up with our San Pancho friends who have all now landed. We restore ourselves with a visit to a fabulous Capetown restaurant. And we arrange to do the same the next night too. The Rand is currently similar value to the Mexican peso so we are feeling relatively flush.

We have arranged to arrive early on site to help build the Mad Hatters camp. There are a number of huge stretch tents holding all the people. There is a large separate lounge and DJ area to construct. A bar and coffee station is ready to commission. There is a small painted tent full of cushions to erect. A big ten tonne truck is in need of unpacking then re-worked into a flaming mobile DJ machine. There are a number of the art cars from the workshop for us to use. We are voluntold to tow one of them and a caravan.

The time comes and we load the trailer and prepare to leave. It’s going to be a long journey over notoriously tyre shredding roads. The winds off table mountain are surprisingly strong and we decide, very wisely, to delay our late afternoon departure. We have a convoy of three cars, an art car strapped to a trailer and a long caravan. We agree to set off at around 10am the next morning and head North very slowly. By the afternoon we are on tiny rough arse unpaved tracks taking us through the mountains and down onto the vast Karoo where the site is. The art car trailer keeps snapping ratchet straps so it’s stop start and even when we are at full speed it’s a glacial pace.

As we get within 30 km we are shaken to bits by endless washboard ruts. The suspension diverts the vibrations through the wheels to our our tail bones and right up to our delicate exhausted skulls. It’s unpleasant but eventually over. It’s dark. The sky hold up a bright orange moon to welcome us. We avoid the sand traps, and gratefully park up our van after 10 hours of travel. The van will be our home for the next 10 days. It is kitted out with a mattress in the back, lights and whole heap of wine and snacks. We manoeuvre so the side door is facing the sunset. We sleep the sleep of the travelled.

Our phones have no signal and are effectively cameras only. I turn mine off and hide it in the van. I don’t touch it again till we leave. It’s a remarkably nostalgic feeling to be out of touch and everything be just fine. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t touch my phone for over a week. I recommend it.

Afrikaburn is a extraordinary event with seemingly endless examples of creativity, interaction and art. Our art cars arrive to ferry us around but we spend hours trekking the hard rocky ground finding treats everywhere. Burlesque shows, large art installations, small art installations, slap bars, endless dance floors and an enormous LED flying insect on a scissor lift. We see a lot of and catch a number of large and small scale burns.

Our own camp has themed bar takeovers every day and a quite remarkable Mad Hatters Tea Party where we distributed free hair extensions, finger puppets, hats and pyjamas. Next to the bar a shipping container was converted into a large mirror room to play in. The whole space was monitored by cameras. The image sent into a huge telescope on the dunes where you could watch the mirror room nonsense. Add a bunch of lights, lasers, music, flame effects and projection and it makes for a uniquely surreal playground.

After we had packed up and gathered what was left of our senses we head out to a rather posh and peaceful lodge to recover. It’s located a few hours from site, stuck up towards the mountain with the Karoo spread out in front of us. Two days of doing very little but watch the stars, look out for tortoises, eat, sleep and soak in the wood fired hot tub. Bliss.

We make the hot drive back to Capetown. After a fairly hectic day of unpacking, laundry and dropping off our van-home we jump a flight to Kruger National Park. There is a small group from Afrikaburn who meet us at the airport. They have arranged a series of safaris and a some time supporting an orphanage in the nearby village. After a stop to load up with wine and endless snacks we eventually arrive at a super posh lodge. It’s stunning. We commandeer the entire first floor. To my absolute joy we find a large deep bath in our room.

Before we have a chance to collapse, drink tea or even draw a bath we are whisked off on our first game drive. We are soon surrounded by giraffe and elephants as the sun sets spectacularly.

The next few days we take a few more game drives and see some incredible sights. The animals are numerous and wild. It’s amazing to be so close to them in the park. We have morning coffee at the restaurant watching the massive hippos in the river outside our lodge. We have a team of masseuse on hand and dinners cooked for us by private chefs. I have already taken six long baths. We are so very privileged and we know it.

Our visit to the local village brings this overriding feeling of privilege home; hard. It’s one of many that are populated with a large number of Mozambiquans who walked through Kruger to escape the civil war. Those that were not eaten by lions settled here.

The community has since been devastated by AIDS and the result is a large number of children without parents. We meet them at the local community centre. We kick footballs and listen to them sing to us while delivering colouring books and stick toys that are enthusiastically received. The grounds have a small farm in development where the kids grow staples to add to their diet. For many the food they get here is their only food. Siblings stick together holding hands and the older boys take charge and keep everyone as happy and safe as they are able.

We return a day or two later with individual pizzas for every child. It’s like Christmas for them. Some kids are sitting in a pile of debris on the road and we carry a few pizzas out for them. They immediately race off excitedly to find friends to share with. Just feeding these kids takes a lot of time and commitment from many local ladies. Holding their hands or tackling a football from them is a truly humbling experience. They look on us with huge inquisitive eyes as if we are from an entirely different world. In many ways they are absolutely right.

Our next stop on the way is Mozambique. We have friends from San Pancho there we want to catch up with. There is also a contingent from Afrikaburn that travel with us who intend to have a few beach days and a big party weekend. The border is a challenge. The grumpiest and least helpful immigration folk on the planet. You can’t find advice, a pencil or the correct form anywhere but the walls are filled with condom dispensers. Hundreds of free condoms everywhere (to combat the AIDS epidemic). We eventually arrive in Maputo late and weary and check into a very basic downtown apartment.

Maputo has a level of poverty one might expect from an African capital city but is surprisingly expensive. It’s apparently twice the price of South Africa. It was a thriving country at one point until the Portuguese were kicked out.The Chinese are shipping vast quantities of coal across the border to ship to China and ISIS are at war with the military in the North. It’s complicated.

We try and connect to the internet but are told that this will not be possible as a submarine has knocked out both the countries sub ocean internet cables. Strange but true. We pack up our phones and only use them for photographs. It’s again quite liberating. After failing to find a SIM card that would work and buying some African fabric we collapse into our apartment with overpriced jerk chicken and decide to leave the city as soon as we can.

Our friends lend us their car and we head South to a beach town that has cliffs above that we are told we can jump from attached to paragliders. We meet up with the Afrikaburn bunch who are having a beach day before heading for the hills. We spend two days almost jumping off a cliff overlooking a spectacularly long, beautiful and deserted beach. The wind was never the right flavour or strength so nothing much happened. We are in a cliff resort by ourselves surrounded by all the staff and huge monkeys that crash around on our roof. As it turns out, doing nothing for a few days was exactly what we needed to do.

Coney Mc Coneface is taking on a life of its own. I’m getting pictures of cones sent to me from all over the world all the time. Our crew has launched our first fundraiser while we have been off grid and we are strategizing about how we are going to persuade folk to help us fund this thing. Art support fundraising is a tough gig. We have a lots of offers of help so that’s a good start. www.conecophony.com

We are very generously hosted in Maputo by our old mates and new Afrikaburn friends and are whisked off to the city’s hot spots before peeling off around midnight. To our deep frustration our well planned flight back has been moved from a respectable midday departure to a horrendous up-at-5am spot. This does not start our day well.

On the way to the airport we are stopped by police just to see if they can get some money out of us. At the airport we argue with customs who try and remove batteries from our hand luggage and other stupidness. I spend the last of the local metical money on a cup of tea and then the tea lady makes a fuss and tries to charge me for a splash of milk. It’s all getting a bit much for 6 am. We land in Johannesburg to connect with our flight to Capetown 5 hours too early. Its hundreds of dollars to change to an earlier flights so we wait for check in at an old school Wimpy. As soon as we are able we check into a quiet, clean and posh airport lounge where we can indulge ourselves in soft furnishings and tea, with milk.

When we land in Capetown we have a day to pack and prepare for the journey home. We perhaps did not make the very best decisions and may have extended our farewells a little late into the night. Just before we leave for the airport we are whisked up the mountain, attached to a kite and thrown off to fly over the city and land on the beach. It’s exhilarating even with a near fatal hangover.

We are like white sweaty zombies as we check in for the flight to Atlanta at 9pm. It’s another 22 hours of enduring further twats and trollies before we make it home. To our jungle. Which we miss greatly. And where we eventually get to properly sleep, deep and long, for at least a week.