Post by deletedbarkeep on Mar 3, 2006 0:49:20 GMT -5
Talking seriously. Some messed up stuff has been happening during the last few burns. People have always pushed the envelope at Burning Man, and some of them have pushed a little too hard and gotten hurt, but now its different. Me hurting me is my business and my mistake to make. Me hurting you is what's messed up.
We had a few burners get sliced and banged up pretty badly in 2005 because of some yahoo's rebar garden, If you haven't heard about this, what the guy did was take lengths of rebar and leave them sticking up out of the ground, a whole forest of the stuff. This was not the only boobytrap on the Playa, either. The good news is that nobody got killed by these, but at least one very nice lady has years of reconstructive surgery to look forward to. Worst part: nobody ever caught whoever did this, so he's still out there doing it.
Somebody once wrote that Burning Man is a do-ocracy. I agree with a lot of that, so when I see something go wrong, one question I start to ask myself is "what did I do to help make that mess". I hope to be serving booze at a future burn, but I can't not notice how many out of control drunks are stumbling through the dust. You know the question somebody always asks when somebody else does something horrible. "What was he thinking about?" When somebody's that wasted, he's not thinking, and that gets people hurt.
What can I do? How might I end up becoming part of the problem?
At home, when I serve I've started working on this and it's made me think about what I've seen in Black Rock. A few of the problems, as I see them:
1. Hard, dry liquor on empty stomachs.
A lot of the people who tend bar serve hard liquor. That makes sense. You don't have a lot of space going out, and hard liquor packs a lot more flavor and punch for the ounce. Problem is that a lot of other people don't bring enough food, so we have some high proof stuff hitting the bloodstream almost directly and really fast. That's trouble.
The rule at my place is "if you don't eat, you don't drink,.and you got to eat first". Nothing fancy, usually something with a lot of grain and beans, something that's going to take a while to digest.
2. Dehydration.
We've all been to the med tent, right? We've seen the dehydration cases? Ever notice how much they look like somebody with the DTs?
What I heard is that alcohol works by taking some of the water out of the brain, so if you've already lost a lot of water, I'm guessing that it's going to hit harder. What I've taken to doing is serving homemade softdrinks along with the alcohol, make sure they stay hydrated. You make something interesting, people don't mind.
I'm also steering away from a lot of the mixed drinks. Like I won't serve mudslides or pina coladas. Those go down too smooth and it's easy to end up chugging. One thing I serve instead are liqueurs, which are full of flavor and people love them, but they've got so much sugar in them that if you tried to chug, you'd just end up puking. Thinking some of the saltier drinks might be good that way, too.
Not that I'm in favor of making people puke, just making them slow down.
If you're thinking this all sounds like a lot to mess around with, think about this - does the liquor ever last as long as you'd like it to? When they're eating, they're not drinking and that's going to stretch out your supply at any burn, and the food doesn't have to cost that much. You take a one dollar bag of lentils, soak it in water and you get more than two large guys can finish at one sitting and I mean BIG. One of the guys in our camp was 6 1/2 feet tall and 260 pounds. He was full.
I'm not saying that this is going to make the yahoo problem go away. Some people are a**holes because they like being a**holes. But some a**holes are good people who just didn't know their limits, and if we can keep them from going too far, I think we can help them and a few of the other burners too, so I'm giving it a try. It's worked at home, now I'm going to try it in the desert.
Anybody else trying anything sort of along these lines? How did it work out and do you have any suggestions?
We had a few burners get sliced and banged up pretty badly in 2005 because of some yahoo's rebar garden, If you haven't heard about this, what the guy did was take lengths of rebar and leave them sticking up out of the ground, a whole forest of the stuff. This was not the only boobytrap on the Playa, either. The good news is that nobody got killed by these, but at least one very nice lady has years of reconstructive surgery to look forward to. Worst part: nobody ever caught whoever did this, so he's still out there doing it.
Somebody once wrote that Burning Man is a do-ocracy. I agree with a lot of that, so when I see something go wrong, one question I start to ask myself is "what did I do to help make that mess". I hope to be serving booze at a future burn, but I can't not notice how many out of control drunks are stumbling through the dust. You know the question somebody always asks when somebody else does something horrible. "What was he thinking about?" When somebody's that wasted, he's not thinking, and that gets people hurt.
What can I do? How might I end up becoming part of the problem?
At home, when I serve I've started working on this and it's made me think about what I've seen in Black Rock. A few of the problems, as I see them:
1. Hard, dry liquor on empty stomachs.
A lot of the people who tend bar serve hard liquor. That makes sense. You don't have a lot of space going out, and hard liquor packs a lot more flavor and punch for the ounce. Problem is that a lot of other people don't bring enough food, so we have some high proof stuff hitting the bloodstream almost directly and really fast. That's trouble.
The rule at my place is "if you don't eat, you don't drink,.and you got to eat first". Nothing fancy, usually something with a lot of grain and beans, something that's going to take a while to digest.
2. Dehydration.
We've all been to the med tent, right? We've seen the dehydration cases? Ever notice how much they look like somebody with the DTs?
What I heard is that alcohol works by taking some of the water out of the brain, so if you've already lost a lot of water, I'm guessing that it's going to hit harder. What I've taken to doing is serving homemade softdrinks along with the alcohol, make sure they stay hydrated. You make something interesting, people don't mind.
I'm also steering away from a lot of the mixed drinks. Like I won't serve mudslides or pina coladas. Those go down too smooth and it's easy to end up chugging. One thing I serve instead are liqueurs, which are full of flavor and people love them, but they've got so much sugar in them that if you tried to chug, you'd just end up puking. Thinking some of the saltier drinks might be good that way, too.
Not that I'm in favor of making people puke, just making them slow down.
If you're thinking this all sounds like a lot to mess around with, think about this - does the liquor ever last as long as you'd like it to? When they're eating, they're not drinking and that's going to stretch out your supply at any burn, and the food doesn't have to cost that much. You take a one dollar bag of lentils, soak it in water and you get more than two large guys can finish at one sitting and I mean BIG. One of the guys in our camp was 6 1/2 feet tall and 260 pounds. He was full.
I'm not saying that this is going to make the yahoo problem go away. Some people are a**holes because they like being a**holes. But some a**holes are good people who just didn't know their limits, and if we can keep them from going too far, I think we can help them and a few of the other burners too, so I'm giving it a try. It's worked at home, now I'm going to try it in the desert.
Anybody else trying anything sort of along these lines? How did it work out and do you have any suggestions?
