2009 placement

DirtyDiablo · Post by **DirtyDiablo** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 2:49 pm

Anyone seen the placement list yet?

I heard that 130 camps got denied this year vs just 16 last year!

kiuney · Post by **kiuney** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 3:08 pm

Nope. We're still waiting on placement. Right about now is usually when I get a call from our placer asking "Just how deviant are you guys?" :)

~Kel
Deviant Playground

Ugly Dougly · Post by **Ugly Dougly** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 3:14 pm

It's supposed to be out this weekend.

Can I be snarky yet?

Daisygirl · Post by **Daisygirl** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 3:22 pm

I wait every year with baited breath at this time waiting for my camp placement. I hope we get a high trafic area this year. Last year we were in a quiet residential neighborhood near the ketchup bottle and I didn't even use earplugs to sleep at night. That was a first.

Stinkbug - Spirit Dream Cafe

Token · Post by **Token** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 3:25 pm

The rejections went out today.

I wouldn't be surprised if they wait till Monday.

kiuney · Post by **kiuney** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 3:26 pm

[quote="Token"]The rejections went out today.

I wouldn't be surprised if they wait till Monday.[/quote]

Really? They are actually sending out rejections? I didn't know they did that.

DirtyDiablo · Post by **DirtyDiablo** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 3:39 pm

So no news might be good news?

Playa Tom · Post by **Playa Tom** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 7:42 pm

The first bundle of rejections went out this week, the others should be out by the end of August.

cutmeoffandcallmeshorty · Post by **cutmeoffandcallmeshorty** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 10:08 pm

Ah Fuck! I just received my rejection. Motherfuckers waited to send it out at 10.00 o clock on a Friday night, Sneaky Bastards.
This really sucks !!!! Now what the fuck do I do with 40 screaming smelly hippies?

Im fucked I tell you......

Ugly Dougly · Post by **Ugly Dougly** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 10:14 pm

Have a party. Nobody is stopping you.

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 10:17 pm

doesn't the rejection just mean you'll not be on the map, or placed?
As I understand it, you can still get a spot for you all and set up..........

MozyBonz · Post by **MozyBonz** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 10:26 pm

Both ...they can't come in early ether.

wedeliver · Post by **wedeliver** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 5:54 am

It seems that there will be no reserved theme camp areas as of Monday morning.

Shaded areas reserved until 11:59 pm, Sunday August 30th for registered, placed theme camps, and also includes some space held back for the general public. After that, all unoccupied camping areas of BRC become available to all.

[quote]For your planning pleasure, here is the Black Rock City Map for 2009.

Shaded areas reserved until 11:59 pm, Sunday August 30th for registered, placed theme camps, and also includes some space held back for the general public. After that, all unoccupied camping areas of BRC become available to all.

This year's street names will be:

Esplanade
Adapt
Biology
Chaos
DNA
Extinct
Fossil
Genome
Hominid
Inherit
Jurassic
Kinship
Lineage

Center Camp ring road: Evolution

2009 BLACK ROCK CITY PLAN

We received a great deal of feedback critical of the expanded size of the 2008 city, so itâ€™s "deja vu all over againâ€

sputnik · Post by **sputnik** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 8:14 am

So, if you've always wanted to camp on the Esplanade, just find a space that a theme camp hasn't occupied and go for it!

madmatt · Post by **madmatt** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 8:47 am

cutmeoffandcallmeshorty wrote:Ah Fuck! I just received my rejection. Motherfuckers waited to send it out at 10.00 o clock on a Friday night, Sneaky Bastards.
This really sucks !!!! Now what the fuck do I do with 40 screaming smelly hippies?

Im fucked I tell you......

The only really bad news, IMHO, is that you don't get placed on the map or get your spot reserved where you want it. Hundreds of camps, some really big ones, just plant their flag on the outer streets where they can find space, and the earlier they arrive, the better their chances. Plus, your chances are even better now because they have moved the "non reserved" areas farther forward toward Esplanade.

Make it work!!!!!! and pray

Token · Post by **Token** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 9:27 am

The real bad news is gonna be the extra 130 cars with search lights loitering the gate, followed by the mad dash on the esplanade and inner streets in the middle of the night for the land grab.

I think the Org should give these folks two noon access Sunday entry permits to do the land grab in the daytime so no one gets run over.

flashingjanet · Post by **flashingjanet** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 11:36 am

I'm in one of the rejected camps, and I think the placement team has a lot of explaining to do to justify this jump in the number of rejects. Why can't they just allocate more space for theme camps? Or create a new category for the rejects, to at least give us 1 day early access to find a spot in the non-theme areas? At this point, even a 12 hour or 6 hour head-start would make a huge difference in helping us deal with our setup.

They are making the 12:01am landgrab even worse (while simultaneously asking us to spread out our arrival times). And since we'll be spending Monday and Tuesday setting up the basic needs of our camp, we'll have a lot less time to install the decorative features we had planned. Net result: LESS ART.

I'm really sick of the ridiculous double standard, where someone with a car battery and a string of Christmas lights can get an early admit pass if they call it "art", yet a camp that needs to erect a 50' tower and/or shade for 100 people is not even offered 1 hour of early access.

Would someone with power please make a sane decision, and offer the rejected camps a chance to be reconsidered as art projects with one day of early access? It's not much of a consolation prize, but it would be better than nothing.

oneeyeddick · Post by **oneeyeddick** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 11:46 am

To all of you who got rejected:

A "public shade" structure, combined with a bar and ambient music does not make a "theme camp".
If this is all you had, that is why you got rejected.

Come up with something original or actually give out a public service, and your chances will improve next year.

Or..... plan on NOT registering your camp, and valiantly participate in the oh-so-fun land grab next year...the choice is yours.

Post by **AntiM** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 11:49 am

No one "with power" reads these boards, or they do so rarely enough to catch complaints. Do complain straight to the BMORG. We'll just commiserate or mock here.

Token · Post by **Token** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 11:53 am

Ouch!

I guess their shit wasn't good enough to hang with the cool kids this year.

Smells like Revenge of the Nerds.

Stay in school kids, study your math and science, build cool stuff at BM and you will get VIP treatment.

flashingjanet · Post by **flashingjanet** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 1:17 pm

this is bullshit. If our application was interpreted this way (as just a chill space), it wasn't read very carefully. We were offering a 50ft tower with a beacon on top that could be seen anywhere on the playa (and has been a great public service in past years in helping people find their way home).
Inside the tower, under our shade structure, we were planning to set up a UV-reactive jungle under a laser-star night sky, with custom lighted vines and an insane number of RGB LED strings that were being recycled from old projects.
We were going to make it interactive by building a giant panel of knobs and switches that would let visitors play with the lights, controlling the effects and designing their own color combinations, etc...

The key designers of the project are all accomplished high-tech artists in our fields. If anything, we ARE nerds who have been building cool stuff at bman for years. Being forced to start our setup on Monday means we'll have half as much cool stuff.

oneeyeddick · Post by **oneeyeddick** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 1:41 pm

sorry to hear that you got rejected, maybe try to join a village next year ?

I wonder if any villages got rejected?...I doubt it.

I also wonder if thet fellow that wanted 2000 gallons of water for his fountain got rejected ?....I bet he did.

wedeliver · Post by **wedeliver** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 1:48 pm

on your marks
get set
go

Post by **AntiM** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 5:57 pm

The jungle does sound kinda cool.

EspressoDude · Post by **EspressoDude** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 6:53 pm

questions/comments for flashingjanet:

How many days before the deadline did you submit your application?

I see a lot of "we WERE GOING TO BUILD" like lights, control panels, etc.

Maybe the placers looked at what they interpreted as your groups ability actually have something DONE.....Just saying...Only 2 posts...and both after the rejection.....

lhyr · Post by **lhyr** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 7:02 pm

i think a part of it has to do with how many folks are in a camp versus how much interactivity there is, what the ratio of land occupancy for personal use versus communal/social use. the tower and light jungle sound really neat, but if there's four times the amount of space for the camp bedding and kitchen and non-social areas as there is for the interactivity part of the camp, well...

but that sucks. seriously, i'm sorry for your loss...

i mean, they DID say they were concerned by having "bedroom communities", seeing already large theme camps growing even larger and not providing anything extra for the community at large, just for the internal camp community.

then again, i'm coming at it from the P.O.V. of having just six to ten of us in a theme camp, with an equal amount of space for our camping as for our interactivity (one dome each). i wouldn't want to figure out how to fit fifty people into a space and then make sure everybody's providing some form of neat shit for the community.

gratitude to everyone who pulls that insane shit off each year. THANX YALL!

flashingjanet · Post by **flashingjanet** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 7:14 pm

We submitted our application about a week early, and included examples of our prior playa art projects (some done through official channels with early entry, and some done as personal smaller-scale things).
Our shade structure and about half of the lighting had been taken out there before, and we had photos documenting our ability to set it all up. We were going to recombine these in a new way, and add the jungle part, and interactivity, and more lights, so we thought we had a good balance of something old/proven while also being new and original. We also had perfect green scores on the MOOP map the past two years that we've been together as a camp. Honestly, we're stumped as to why we were rejected, and it sucks that there's apparently no way to appeal the decision, or to even find out if this was a misunderstanding.

As far as the recent sign-up, I know it looks bad. I had an account on eplaya years ago, but I'm more involved with my local bman group than this forum. I couldn't figure out my username or password after multiple attempts, so I decided to start over with a new account.

flashingjanet · Post by **flashingjanet** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 7:26 pm

We recognize that our size might have been a problem - we need 200' x 200' to accommodate our structure/art plus over 100 people.
BUT, because of the size of our infrastructure, we also need more time to set up than a small 10 person camp, so the early access was especially important to our plan.
Our internal lighted area might have seemed small (~50 foot diameter space under the main dome), but it seems we could have been given at least a little bit of credit for the lights that would be visible several miles away. How many camps can offer that?

Serolynne · Post by **Serolynne** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 7:43 pm

Our camp, Camp Nomadia, was also denied placement. It's annoying, for sure.. and changes our logistics and plans. We went through the stages of grief yesterday - anger, denial, bargaining, acceptance. We'll adapt.

While we wish it were as easy as just allocating more space for placement, for whatever reasons, they're not doing that this year. Oh well.

For the criteria used for selecting which camps would be placed, we know why we weren't selected (even though we were last year). We're a group of full time traveling nomads converging on the playa. We have nothing visual to offer up (none of us have room to cart infrastructure out. as we're bringing out our full time homes - creating a neighborhood of our actual houses on the playa *is* our art), and our interactivity is just a few gatherings for other nomads across the playa and workshops on becoming nomadic.

All of that can be accomplished without pre-placement by using Playa Info to register wherever we do set up. The bummer is just trying to coordinate 30-40 folks who are traveling in from around the world who have never met each other to an as of yet unknown location.

But.. we're nomads. We thrive on not having an address. And we will thrive this year on the playa too.

To all the other denied camps.. we understand your pain. And we hope that you too will be able to adapt your plans.

- Serolynne

wedeliver · Post by **wedeliver** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 9:08 pm

flashingjanet wrote:We recognize that our size might have been a problem - we need 200' x 200' to accommodate our structure/art plus over 100 people.
BUT, because of the size of our infrastructure, we also need more time to set up than a small 10 person camp, so the early access was especially important to our plan.
Our internal lighted area might have seemed small (~50 foot diameter space under the main dome), but it seems we could have been given at least a little bit of credit for the lights that would be visible several miles away. How many camps can offer that?

I bet you can still do it. 100 people all making an effort, like an old barn raising, you'll have it done in a few hours. It's gonna be so much fun this year..