WATSONVILLE — At the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds Friday, a stilt-walking instructor named sCary McHuge was putting up a giant tent-like structure to offer shade and relaxation at a makeshift campsite dubbed the Offcenter Camp Cafe.
Nearby, folks at Kamp Brewhaha were doling out cups of coffee, while a man unloaded a giant, white human face made from metal from the back of a truck.
Meanwhile, four people in lawn chairs shouted greetings to passersby from atop a 30-foot wooden tower, which, festooned with several rope swings, was described as a “playground for adults.”
The fairgrounds is the three-day home of unSCruz, the regional version of the infamous Burning Man.
That August festival in the Nevada desert is an amalgamation of artists, oddballs and eccentrics of every imaginable ilk; an assemblage 70,000 strong whose themes, among others, are “radical self expression and radical inclusion.”
The event at the fairgrounds – which has hosted the event since it outgrew its humble Santa Cruz beginnings – will not begin to approach those numbers. Still, unSCruz is expected to draw as many as 1,600 “burners” for a sampler platter of the main event. Tickets are still available.
“Burning Man is here,” Santa Cruz Regional Coordinator Haley Carter said. “One of the things they want burners to do is to take whatever they love and bring it to their backyard.”
Those who come may see an RV fitted with six metal dragon heads, each of which move on their own and breathe fire. A cart cobbled together from two bicycles offers what appears to be a mobile fire-making device, and aficionados at another display can create jets of fire with the push of a button.
In fact, fire-making is such an integral part of Burning Man festivals that they require a morning visit from local fire marshals to make sure everything is safe.
While pyrotechnics are the main course, the festival also offers various and sundry other artistic media from which to choose, much of which willfully bucks sterile do-not-touch museum philosophies, Carter said.
“We want people to play with it and jump on it and make it change somehow,” she said.
If art is what initially draws participants, it is very likely the community that makes them into loyal burners, Carter said.
Nothing is for sale. Instead, the coffee, pizza, water and whatever other consumables are to be found at unSCruz comes at no cost thanks to the event’s “gift economy.”
“We all come with an excess, with the idea that someone will need what you have,” said a man known as “Wizard,” known for gargantuan wooden works of art that are built to be burned.
sCary McHuge said he has been coming to Burning Man for 17 years and serves as one of several “marshals,” a group of people tasked with keeping the peace and acting as a liaison between the burners and the public. This includes making sure noise levels are acceptable and participants are safe.
“Mostly we just like to play, and we play well together,” he said of the festival. “It’s the passion that people bring. We love to do this stuff.”
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For information and tickets, visit www.unscruz.com.
