US Gypsum to close. Gerlach to dry up and blow away?

[ygmir]

methane for a co-gen plant?

more "power to the playa"?

[Bob]

Ceding the property to the Pyramid Lake Paiutes must be worth some kind of tax break.

But I still don't know wtf is really inside an Indian taco.

[Roberto Dobbisano]

Just Ask Charlton Heston.

[ygmir]

moving day?

[Simon of the Playa]

we knew all along....

[ygmir]

*opens the door, follows Sol*

[Dr. Pyro]

To be entirely accurate, wouldn't Indians be inside an Indian taco?

[ygmir]

To be entirely accurate, wouldn't Indians be inside an Indian taco?

It's clarity of thought, that has allowed you to rise, like the cream you are........

[Aiee! It burns!]

Cream in side an indian taco, what are you talking about?

[Liz Estrada]

injuns are people too.

[Bob]

Surprised no one's mentioned the obvious -- I mean, when I hear 'company town', I think DPW.

[theCryptofishist]

Ah gee, Bob.
Now you've set us up for pages of jokes like: Could they really live inside houses instead of trailors?

[Liz Estrada]

DPW are people too.

[Sham]

DPW are people too.

Liz, normally I agree with you, but on this you are dead wrong!

By the way, you may be confusing the Indian tacos with the Native American tacos. They are made from very different "meat"!
No matter what, DO NOT put on the white cream.

[theCryptofishist]

DPW are people too.

Well, of course. But as the old adage goes: Bad jokes don't kill people; people telling bad jokes kill people.

[Aiee! It burns!]

so we wil have to bring our own water now .

[Bob]

Must be some product DPW could make mixing all that JOTS sewage with Empire gypsum...

I know -- Chinese sheetrock!

[geekster]

Poocrete?

Excrecement?

[Sham]

In six weeks, the gypsum plant in Empire will be shutting down and the for exodus of the residents of Empire will start, and continue until June, when school is out and the company owned homes in will be mothballed. With no place to go, some of the residents of Empire may choose to move to Gerlach and stay in the area until a job prospect come up elsewhere, but I suspect most will leave.
This tiny micro-economy will crumble further as the teachers of the 75 kindergarden thru grade 12 students need to move to find work and houses elswhere. Empire will become a ghost town by design, but Gerlach will just struggle and slowly fade from it's 175 residents down to a substantially lower number.

My questions are:

Is there anything that would draw people, jobs and some industry to this area to allow it to survive this developing senario?

Would the BM festival want to stay in this remote area, and will they become a respected entity and partner in saving the area?

Does BMorg hold any leverage in controlling how we are perceived by law enforcement, and the forced milking of fines from the participants?

Should we stay in the Black Rock Desert or should we look for dustier fields?

[ygmir]

In six weeks, the gypsum plant in Empire will be shutting down and the for exodus of the residents of Empire will start, and continue until June, when school is out and the company owned homes in will be mothballed. With no place to go, some of the residents of Empire may choose to move to Gerlach and stay in the area until a job prospect come up elsewhere, but I suspect most will leave.
This tiny micro-economy will crumble further as the teachers of the 75 kindergarden thru grade 12 students need to move to find work and houses elswhere. Empire will become a ghost town by design, but Gerlach will just struggle and slowly fade from it's 175 residents down to a substantially lower number.

My questions are:

Is there anything that would draw people, jobs and some industry to this area to allow it to survive this developing senario?

well, sure: H.P. could build a new assembly plant there.
Gov. de-regulation could allow for more, or different power plants.
Bill Gates could set up his "anti-MAC" substation.
as with all things, all it takes is money........

Would the BM festival want to stay in this remote area, and will they become a respected entity and partner in saving the area?

Why not? As nice a town as it is (IMHO), I don't see it as totally "necessary" for the event. As defined, the event is self reliant, really.
I'd see no change it attitude, towards the event, short of the Org. buying Empire and giving free housing.


Does BMorg hold any leverage in controlling how we are perceived by law enforcement, and the forced milking of fines from the participants?


Nope, I doubt it.. I'm sure, they could hold secret meetings, threaten to move the event, and further "break" the local gov. budgets, but, in the end, I'd bet the PTB would say "move" if you want.


Should we stay in the Black Rock Desert or should we look for dustier fields?

I don't see it mattering, really. I'd say, part of the allure, and even part of what keeps BM sort of "exclusive" is the environment, and remote location. no matter where it moved, it'd be a trade off and give and take as far as advantages.
I love it there, and, have spent many years, in general, out in that desert. I don't go to "test" myself against the elements, so, for me (and probably others), it could be in a beautiful sod farm in Oregon, and, it'd be ok. I go, for the people, really.
But, that's just me.

[theCryptofishist]

Ah, the eternal struggle to find that rock candy playa that will provide the perfect Burningman site...

Forgetting that the burn is itself is inherently imperfect. And that abandoning the ranch and moving somewhere else is not that easy....

In other words, I think you're gluing some old stuff onto this new thing, and forgetting that Empire doesn't have much of a supporting role to the llc in the first place.

[TomServo]

Is there anything that would draw people, jobs and some industry to this area to allow it to survive this developing senario?

Build a wind farm and Brewery. They get wind in Empire right?

[TomServo]

http://start.beerlabelbuilder.com/?page ... A8960F2397

[knowmad]

Ah, the eternal struggle to find that rock candy playa that will provide the perfect Burningman site...

Forgetting that the burn is itself is inherently imperfect. And that abandoning the ranch and moving somewhere else is not that easy....

In other words, I think you're gluing some old stuff onto this new thing, and forgetting that Empire doesn't have much of a supporting role to the llc in the first place.

While I am not so versed on the Mechanics of BRC's inner workings (permits, access, LLC, ranch, etc.) I am relieved that those that are are also aware of this.

[BAS]

The remoteness was part of the reason the Black Rock Desert was chosen in the first place, IIRC. All the closing of Empire does is make it more remote.

Of course, for all the right reasons, helping out the people of Empire and Gerlach should be pursued.

[mdmf007]

In all honesty there is not much that Gerlach and Empire contribute to BM that cant simply be added to another contract line item coming from Reno.

Water is already set up elsewhere,
Shitters are from Reno
Generator are from Reno
Caterers are from Puget Sound
Medics are from REMSA in Reno
all the magic is participant brought
all the BM infrastructure is kept at the ranch the other direction from Gerlach
BMAN management almost all lives in the bay area
BMAN's office is in the bay

the only thing in Gerlach BMAN owns is one of the bars. Bevs will dry up with no customers, and Bruno will do OK with the hotel and hunters, land speeders, off roaders etc. The gas station is still necessary but it will slow down as well im sure.

Thats how I see it...Sucks to live in a one industry town.

[Simon of the Playa]

Reality Show.

DPW Hotties.

Just look whats it's done for the Jersey Shore.

[Thecatman]

I see the price of ice going up, the lines getting longer, without Empire

[Here and there]

Now for a moment of honesty ...

I don't care about what happens to the people in Gerlach. Not in the least. I could watch one of them shrivel and die in the desert while I dangled a bottle of water just out of his reach, laughing at him, much as I could to most of you, and for the same reason. I know he'd do the same to me.

The line we're all raised to believe in is something like "we're all in this together", but the great lesson of the last few decades is that we aren't. When blue collar people find themselves out of work, and wondering how they're going to make ends meet, should I care? If so, why? When America started building up its ever growing army of unemployed and barely employed professionals, most of them in the beginning being kids who had worked their way through school and found that the reward for their hard work and accomplishments was to be tossed into the gutter, how much sympathy did their "friends" with blue collar jobs have for them? When those kids found that they were being denied the lower level jobs on the basis of their "overqualification", while being denied the other jobs on the basis of lack of experience, meaning that they were now being arbitrarily condemned to lifetimes of destitution, from which they had no realistic hope of escape, what did the blue collar community have to say about that?

One need go no further than the most recent posts in the Long Cold Winter discussion to get an answer to that, and the response never varied much. That community spoke with one voice, and the one voice told us to suck it up. So, what can I say other than "right back at you, bitch"? You assholes thought that first downsizing and then outsourcing was a dandy idea, wiping out careers that people had worked hard all of their lives to build, in exchange for - what? Quick, easy money for those rich enough to invest in the stock market and unconcerned with the unsustainable future that they were helping to build, and cheaper crap at Wal Mart for the joe sixpacks? Just how much fun is the idea of long term unemployment, now?





I recall that we're also supposed to believe that where our ancestors lived doesn't matter, because "we're all Americans, now" - excuse me while I muffle a laugh. Oh, yes, we're all equal in this great wonderful land of ours, but funny how the Anglo-Saxons and their teutonic northern european relations always seem to be a little more equal than everybody else, except maybe for a relative handful of black people whose humanity they've graciously decided to recognize.

I did notice that lovely, lovely post by lurker, the one in which he tells us that he wants to see mass murder committed in the Middle East because he saw some protesters on TV. I saw some disagreement. What was altogether absent was outrage, something that really isn't hard to find in other parts of this board. Apparently, if one's skin is olive brown instead of light pink, one's right to life is negotiable, something up for discussion, about which the rest of us are supposed to accept that reasonable people can agree to disagree? How charming. How typical.

Which brings us to one of America's many, many dirty little secrets, doesn't it? Something about this shithole of a country's long history of anti-intellectualism that nobody ever seems to talk about, but really puts the discussion in a new light? If one drops by the graduate schools of departments in Mathematics, the real sciences like Physics or Chemistry (no, Economics doesn't count), one doesn't really tend to see very many Anglo-Saxons in the programs, and those who are in them never seem to come from wealthy backgrounds. I guess that being a rich, privileged elitist fuck is supposed to get one out of the need to do grubby things like spending long hours in the library and then more long hours in the lab, when one would rather be out with the rest of the real 'Mericans getting hammered at a frat party.

Americans like to pride themselves on their country's accomplishments in science and technology, while conveniently forgetting that those accomplishments tend to be produced by icky ethnic people who don't look much like them, and are welcomed practically nowhere in this supposedly enlightened country, one which owes so much of its wealth to their efforts. Worse still, the remaining people in these subjects who have had the decency to be white enough that they would be accepted in the proper country clubs, are almost always unassimilated outsiders in some way or another - clearly ethnic, but European (usually Southern or Eastern European at that, tsk, tsk), from some out of the way subculture (eg. an unreconstructed, and yet vocally anti-racist, confederate I once knew), or otherwise failed to be from a sufficiently white bread background. If that weren't bad enough, these lower class ruffians who have the bad taste to be smarter and better educated than their waspish betters, are intermarrying, and producing children who look like that Star Simpson character, who a number of you seemed so desperately eager to put away in response to an offense that existed nowhere outside of the imagination of a - yes, blue collar - employee at the airport she made the mistake of entering. Remember that? The archive surely does.

By the way, this is what that "lump of grey putty" looked like. Finding this image was, gosh, oh so difficult - I had to do a Google search under "Star Simpson" and "flower", something that I didn't see any of you doing, but then who ever heard of Google?





It's a ceramic flower. Have to love law enforcement's ethics on this one, and here's the interesting part - a whole bunch of real 'Mericans did love those ethics, all while pretending to not be at all racist, and expecting the rest of us to take their denials seriously. But then one learns to expect this kind of crap from one's "betters".

I can still remember the experience of walking home from the computer lab, late at night, and getting to freeze because I was surrounded by some of the city's "finest", cops so white I was sure they'd start to glow, who had guns pointed to my head and heart and a few other strategically chosen locations. "Oh, great", I remember thinking, "these assholes are about to drop each other" - because most of them were in each other's line of fire - which would have been mildly amusing if I weren't in just the right place to be caught in the crossfire. Apparently, I was guilty of the offenses of being out late and being inadequately caucasian, and I'm told that I needed to be taught a lesson. Mom got taught much the same lesson, as she came out of her office at about the same time.

Or there was the funny, funny time, down where I went to grad school, that our house of worship was blown up, turned into a pile of scorched toothpicks, and the same police department that had the time to carry out a few summary executions for heinous offenses like jaywalking, found that they didn't have the time to investigate a little thing like that, crediting it to "outside agitators". "Case closed, sit down boy, if ya know what's good for you".

Lovely. and typical, with not a single member of the master race expressing any objection to this, whatsoever. So I look at that video, see another group of Anglo-Saxons, and this time life's turning to shit for them, instead of for somebody else?

GOOD!

Why should I care about the treatment being dished out to those who would dish out the same or worse to me, and expect me to smile and say "thank you" about it? Let them get swallow of the same shit their people have been dishing out to others for generations. Let them eat it up until they choke. Maybe their suffering will teach them a little humility. Here's hoping that most of you get to take that class with them.

[oneeyeddick]

OMG just shut the fuck up.


and stop cutting and pasting shit from your neice's high school textbooks.