Building a City

JT Scott | 08/22/2013 | 7

I’m on my way this morning to Nevada… a desolate stretch of Nevada outside of a tiny town called Gerlach, to a bit of federal land known as the Black Rock Desert. In this horrible, inhospitable environment I’m going to work gleefully with 60,000 of my friends to build a city. Black Rock City. Burning Man.

This city only exists for one week each year. It rises out of the desert and disappears into the dust after the week is done. And what dust! The Black Rock Desert is not quite a mile in altitude, and the desert floor is an alkali lakebed of dust that corrodes metal and flesh. It gets above 100 degrees in the daytime and sometimes hits freezing at night. There is no water or food but what you bring with you. There is no shelter but what you build. It is a hostile environment and it is trying to kill you… and everything you bring with you has to be taken with you when you leave.

That’s the simple part.

The beautiful and wonderful part is that there is no community but what you build, too. In a short span of days the bare desert will transform into perhaps the world’s most musical, artistic, sculptural, and spectacular cities… and one that is intentionally decommodified. Nothing is for sale. No money changes hands. (Almost nothing: the organization sells coffee and ice to fund art projects.)

The building of this city requires the hard work and playful imagination of every person that enters it. I am in continual awe of the effort and vanity of the endeavor – all these humans leaving comfortable homes and systems to enter the wilderness. All these humans striving against very real survival pressures to build fantastical artwork and performances for the sheer joy of it.

And at the end of it, it all burns and returns to dust.

The Man Burns in 8 Days.

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Every day I’m hoping to have a little Burning Man vignette queued up for you along with the regular WOD notes. Classes will proceed as usual, but of course your emails won’t get answered when I am (for all intents and purposes) on the far side of the moon.

A few notes on the work today: The strength portion is another of the “gymnastic strength AMRAPs” that we’ve been tossing in over the last month. Go slow and get the movements correct – perfect reps are much more important here than speed. The intensity comes from holding yourself perfectly braced and picking a loading that is hard, but doable with perfect form.

For the WOD, it’s more fun time with your pal the medball! This time though, we’re prescribing a lighter ball very intentionally. These are some new and unusual movements in this chipper, and we want you to manage it with alacrity. The 800m run should be all out and is the main focus of the intensity in today’s programming.

Strength:
Gymnastic AMRAP 12:
5 HSPU (or appropriate scale)
10 bridge progression reps
1 Turkish Get-Up each arm

As last time, these are not for time and should not be rushed through. There is no score here.

WOD:
50 wall-balls (14/10)
50 ball slams
50 ball tosses
50 ball sit-ups
800m run

Ball tosses are lateral throws against the wall, alternating sides – aim high (above the electric cable) and catch the rebound.

Reminder: JT is out of phone/email contact until September 5th. If you have urgent membership questions or other concerns, ask your coach in class or email Nick to get it handled. Otherwise, JT will get back to you when he returns.