Oh, the Places You'll Go!
By Alan Mittelstaedt & Alfred Lee & Andy Klein & Anthony Miller & Rebecca Schoenkopf & Ron Garmon
Weekend Getaway
Bohemian Grove
~ By Ron Garmon ~
Like the location-crazed auteurs of the silent-movie 1920s, moguls of the underground party set are beginning to find L.A. a bit cramped for their ambitions. Despite vast tracts of hidden urban space, cops with better things to do, and a near-Nietzschean will-to-party, it was inevitable the scene would take in surrounding hill and dale. Most of the party elite consist of Burners, who assemble a scratch utopia every year out in the Nevada desert just for fun, so Lightning in a Bottle, held May 23-26, is a pleasant, pastoral As You Like It romp by comparison.
This happening, staged annually at Live Oak Campground in the wooded hills above Santa Barbara, has grown from a preliminary gathering of the Burner clans into a sprawling festival in its own right, with attendance last year springing, magic mushroom-like, from a little over one thousand to well past four. The whole is the creation of downtown arts collective the Do LaB, whose magic misting garden-cum-disco is a perennial hit at Coachella. I spoke to Dee Dee, who along with twin older brothers Josh and Jesse oversees much of the LaB’s far-flung party interests from a warehouse space on Bay Street.
“It started about eight years ago as a one-night mountain birthday party for Jesse and Josh, always on their birthday weekend,” says Dee Dee. “The first year, we had a hundred people, the next year 300. By the fifth year, it was a 24-hour party on a ranch outside Los Angeles, then we wanted to make it grow. We took a year off to find the proper location, found it and we built what became Lightning in a Bottle Music and Arts Festival out of that.
“If you’ve never been to this festival or never been part of this community at large, you’re gonna see some things you’ve never seen before,” Dee Dee continued, running down a Burning Man 101 primer for civilians: “Clothing you’ve never seen before and a lack of clothing in a public event. Your eyes will be opened and hopefully you’ll come with an open mind to accept all that. This is a group of people who are more friendly than you’re used to – people who’ll go up and give you a hug just because. People have conversations with you without having an ulterior motive. Different sounds, an eclectic mix of producers, musicians and bands. I think the thing that makes this different, apart from the art we provide, it’s the people that bring the magic. We just provide the canvas for the art they bring with them, whether it’s their personality or their physical art or the music or clothes they share with us.”
Besides the weird dada and bric-a-brac hauled to the site by volunteers (which in 2006 included a nightclub shaped like a 1960s-era Boeing jetliner, complete with stripper pole and “cabin club”), expect performances by West Indian Girl, Bassnectar, the Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque and many more, including DJ sets by the cream of the art-party underground. The campsite is literally miles from any civilization and so petty customs like curfews, social inhibitions and expectations of hired flunkies to direct you to the party are best left behind. In this remote and sylvan locale, you are the party.
Of course, that does worry some. “The more the county is aware of what’s going on,” Dee Dee grins, “and they are aware, as I go through the steps with the sheriff’s office and the Highway Patrol, but the more we grow, the more their eyes twinkle, as in ‘What can I get out of this?’ But Santa Barbara county has been a great host so far and it’s absolutely worth it.”
www.lightninginabottle.com
Published: 05/14/2008
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
Other Stories by Alan Mittelstaedt
Other Stories by Alfred Lee
Other Stories by Andy Klein
Other Stories by Anthony Miller
Other Stories by Rebecca Schoenkopf
Other Stories by Ron Garmon
Related Articles
Comments
Wow, you're so right - and to think that all along everyone's been thinking Hitler was this bad, inconsiderate dude!
The train! The train!
The BEST WAY TO TRAVEL!
Funny (as usual) and to the point (also, as usual.)
I am really, really, really, really glad you are the editor.