Introducing Sand Ho Pyro Department

Clouds · Post by **Clouds** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 4:56 pm

Sand Ho Pyro Department is recruiting active participants to join us for the 2015 burn. We are a new theme camp located within Silicon Village, a village with a long-standing history for lots of interactivity.

We are looking for like-minded people who also believe that, when it comes to fire performance and fire art, safety is definitely not third. We will be hosting daily workshops to help educate attendees about fire safety as it relates to performing with fire, using fire in art installations, bringing large scale fire art to burning man and how to properly act as a safety during fire related events.

After the sun sets, we'll be hosting fire dancing events intended to attract fire performers from across the playa to show off their skills in a safe environment. We will be ensuring that every fire performer has someone acting as safety, thus helping to ensure that we can minimize any risk of injury.

In addition, we built a fuel spin off station which will be used to collect excess fuel that is expelled from a freshly fueled prop during what fire dancers call 'spinning off'. Often times, fire performers will simply spin off using some form of plastic bag or can - or sometimes nothing at all - and the result is that fuel can get all over people in the area and the playa. We have built a device based on a design which has been tested at numerous fire arts festivals around the country for a number of years, and we're really hoping to draw people from all across the playa to come out and play with us.

In addition to our camp infrastructure which includes a basic kitchen tent with stove, sink and prep table, a shade structure and a shower, all Silicon Village members have access to our diesel power generator which runs 24/7 during the event (except during lightning storms!), close access to lots of different theme camps which are a part of our village, a history of excellent placement (see past maps for our 6:00 and D-G placement) and amazing participants.

We have a number of events listed in the playa events directory - but we don't have the support to pull off everything we had hoped for in our first year. If our theme sounds like something you would be interested in participating in, you can find us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/sandhopyrodept/ We would love to have some great people who are enthusiastic about what we're doing join us for our inaugural year on the playa. If you think you'd like to join us, let's talk!

Post by **trilobyte** » Fri Jul 03, 2015 9:18 am

If it's not third, where would you rank it? I remember back in my first year, as I walked across the open playa at night, some random shouty drunk guy stumbled into me shouting "Safety Ninth!" I think he even had a pin with a Safety 3 cubed symbol on it.

All safety gags aside, that sounds like a great camp! What a better way to encourage fire performer participation than to make a great environment for them - cool!

digital · Post by **digital** » Fri Jul 03, 2015 11:04 am

Sounds like a great camp indeed.

Be sure to connect with the other pyro groups on playa. Such a great playground.

[T - 1 day till I get to play with these little guys!]

Bless · Post by **Bless** » Fri Jul 03, 2015 11:55 am

Is "Sand Ho" a derogatory term?

Clouds · Post by **Clouds** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 10:35 am

trilobyte,

While performing, it should probably be first. I've had too many good friends get injured, some close to death, in fire related accidents. One wasn't an accident, it was an outright attack, but I digress....

digital,

Thanks for the kind words of support! We're hoping we can draw on some of those same people to come out and play with us. Hopefully, our placement team can get us in a similar location to last year to help with that, too.

Bless,

Terms aren't derogatory by nature, people make them that way. I don't mean it to be derogatory, but more of a play on words. Lots of the core members are from San Jose, and it's a play on that. If it offends you, that wasn't my intention.

Post by **trilobyte** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 2:43 pm

Yikes, sorry to hear about the serious performance injuries... and the attack (yikes!)

Blaess, I thought it was a play on the old nautical term, Land Ho! What the spotter in the crow's nest calls out when they spot land on the horizon...

Clouds · Post by **Clouds** » Wed Jul 22, 2015 12:15 pm

We still have five available spots for people who are a good fit with us. If you are interested, please come join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/sandhopyrodept/ - I have way too many things to check on regularly, so I don't make it back to this forum as often as I would like.

We have received our village placement from the BM Org and we will be at 6:00 and Ersatz - our camp will be along 'E'. We're not sure if that means 6:05 or 5:55 yet. We do know that we are neighboring our village bar (Ali Bar-Bar), a camp full of hoopers and a crazy group from overseas bringing a Sauna dome to the Playa.

With any luck, the porta-potties will be moved back a block this year along 6:00 closer to 'F' (fingers crossed this rumor is true)....

Introducing Sand Ho Pyro Department

Introducing Sand Ho Pyro Department

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