Hey there sports fans, MOOP maniacs and line sweepers extraordinaire! The Hun here, interrupting our ongoing coverage of the 2011 MOOP Map with a special report on THEME CAMPS.
Theme camps are a huge and central part of what makes Black Rock City a participatory community. And, it can be argued, theme camp members are the most dedicated Burners of all. Often working throughout the year to build and fund their camps, theme camp members continue working through the event itself, serving hundreds and even thousands of participants with music, food and other gifts.
The result: an excellent experience, tens of thousands of happy Burners… and a whole lot of MOOP. Of the thousands who come to dance and play, how many leave tiny bits of themselves behind? How many glowsticks, cigarette butts and earrings fall unnoticed in the midst of an epic rave? Theme camps must then clean up after their guests, or risk being marked Red on the MOOP Map. Red comes with consequences, including a possible change in camp placement for the next year.
This year, the DPW Playa Restoration team performed a “MOOP Audit” of two major sound camps: Rites of Zion and Disorient, which occupied the 10:00 and 2:00 corners of the Esplanade respectively. Here’s what we found:
Both camps passed with flying colors, and both are marked Green on the MOOP Map. However, something interesting happened: The areas outside those two major camps were very messy. Not just there, but all along the 10:00 side of the open playa: MOOP galore. Though the theme campers did a good job of cleaning up their own areas, it would appear that they couldn’t tackle the mess left in the open playa. Technically, 100 feet into the open playa is still considered part of the camp — and in the case of Rites of Zion, their “Temple of BOOM” outpost was a SERIOUS mess and would easily have failed a BLM inspection. But who left that mess? Did YOU dance at a sound camp this year?
The Dirty Thirty
The issue of theme camps and MOOP is deeply complicated. That’s why, for the first time this year, DPW invited theme camps to join the Playa Restoration MOOP lines. D.A., Restoration manager, reached out to theme camps. He asked each to send a representative back to Black Rock City, if they could, to learn more about the Restoration process.
In future years, D.A. hopes that there’ll be 30 theme camp representatives — enough to form a new Line Sweeps team, which will MOOP its way through theme camp areas to solidify the connection between the experience and the leftover litter. That team will be called the “Dirty Thirty.” This year, our new experiment garnered five brave representatives: the “Fearless Five”.
Theme camps, here are your 2011 Dirty Thirty representatives:
I asked these wonderful people a few questions about who they are, what this experience means to them and what they’ve learned. Watch the interview here:
Voted Best Camp
Voted Best Camp, a punk rock camp in the back blocks of 2:00, sets an excellent example. For years, this camp has set up a bar and skate ramp, blasting punk music and entertaining all sorts of drunken antics. VBC also consistently scores well on the MOOP Map, and was the first camp to be all green in 2011.
Two Voted Best Camp members have joined DPW and marched on the MOOP lines. I asked Scumbag and Voted Best Dave about their MOOP strategy.
Voted Best Dave: “MOOP as you go. Every day I go out and spend about an hour or so just going around picking up every little bit, and I kind of encourage other people to do the same. When teardown comes around, everybody does their bit and then we emulate the DPW MOOP line.”
Scumbag: “A good thing to do if you have a bar and such is to get people to MOOP. Be like, ‘while you’re hanging out here all week, pick some shit up.’ … I think a good thing to realize is that if you get even a small group of hands, you can take a huge mess and actually clean it up really fast.”
What Do YOU Think?
Now that you know everything there is to know about theme camps and MOOP, please weigh in!
What can YOU do to help theme camps Leave No Trace?
Know anybody at Rites of Zion, Temple of BOOM, Disorient, Booby Bar, The Artery, Voted Best Camp, or Pandora’s Lounge & Fix-It Shoppe? Invite them to join the discussion too.
Tune in tomorrow for Day 4 of the MOOP Map, full of drama, heat and biting flies. ‘Til then, this is The Hun signing off.
I think there are more huge dance camps than can be well populated by Burners wanting to dance all night. Everyone wants to run the biggest and best rave on the playa, but if a camp shirks their responsibility and doesn’t effectively moop their area, maybe they shouldn’t get such great placement again. If your dance floor extends 200ft into the deep playa, that’s clearly YOUR camp and YOUR moop to contend with… and I thought that would have been obvious.
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Bernie is the SHIT!
Yo E. Rochester!
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Setting up the sound system outside the location of the camp’s placement on the dial doesn’t relieve them of their responsibility to clean up after themselves and their guests. If a camp completely fails in that department, there should definitely be consequences regarding placement location and placement size. And in the case of either a black spot or repeatedly ending up in the red, deny them placement.
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I love the idea of the dirty 30!!
I have a question. As I was mooping Dustfish ( 7 and A) throughout the time I was on playa, I would see moop blow into our camp from behind us. I thought about this when I left the camp and hoped we did not get a lot of other peoples moop because of the wind.
Clearly, on the moop map, we missed a section and the wind had nothing to do with it. But is that taken into account when camps are down wind from most camps?
Oh and I miss you guys and being there…I hope you are all in good shape!!
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After a decade of residing in Hushville, we had the good fortune to camp with the Booby Bar. MOOPing daily and constantly was the mantra. What bugged me was having to pick up ancient MOOP which arose from the playa during the week. The embedded black hair was … interesting. And we found weird bits and pieces caught by our shade structure as we broke down. So I understand how old MOOP or flying MOOP can be an issue.
My opinion is that if you know your camp will draw a HUGE crowd, you had better have a HUGE clean up strategy in place. What works for a smaller camp isn’t going to work for an Esplanade camp. Yes, there is always blown in MOOP (what’s with all the freakin’ feathers this year?), but for the most part, hard MOOP stays where it falls.
Perhaps an end of the week, daytime sound camp sponsored clean up of their playa dance areas would be a useful event. Get those rump shakers out there!
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You’re knockin’ it out of the park with this series, Miz Hun! So informative and interesting, and we all end up with a very finely detailed education about what we can do! Well done and go Resto crew!
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antiM hit the moop on the Head…I’ve said it before and i’ll say it again….if the DJ’s and the Large Sound Camp Heads come together and ACTIVELY PROMOTE MOOPING to their guests, whether by gentle prodding or DERISION AND SHAME, or by THREAT OF NO MORE MUSIC, than this problem would dwindle, possibly even go away….10 minutes per two hour set would be a HUGE HELP to the people who have to sweep the playa clean of the sparkle hordes droppings, not to mention the good will this would generate amongst some of the ‘haters’…I was in a large sound camp for many years, in all fairness, it aint easy, with that many people every night…grinding that shit deep into the playa, the ten oclock corner is by far the heaviest trafficked location, but that does not mean it’s impossible. There are enough Rave-Bunnies and Furry Fellows out there to make a fucking difference, all they have to do is Do.
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Thanks for the shouts-out, Hun – I loved my short time out on Resto, and I’m kicking myself for not making enough time to spend the whole two weeks out there with you all.
The live moop map is generating lots of good discussion, mirroring the great discussions happening amongst the burners of Resto. Making the map live lets those discussions happen simultaneously.
Franny Panny – Resto members are all veteran burners, wind is well understood. :) While we can’t always tell where something blew in from, you can tell the difference between windblown and static moop. Most moop does not move around much, but does get covered and uncovered by the shifting dust. While sometimes a part of an area listed as “yours” might get a slightly lower rating if it bordered a moopy area, it will usually be only a small change, since only a small portion of moop is mobile, if that makes sense.
The mess at the sound camps is both the responsibility of the camp, and the participants who danced there. At Pandora’s Fixit Shoppe, we make people take their own Moop when they are done fixing something. But at the end of the week, the buck still stops with us when we moop our own space.
Maybe an organized group of participants could volunteer to help the sound camps with their mooping? Sort of a “Rave Support Squad” made up of people who love to dance their faces off that meets on Sunday at 11am to line-sweep the dance areas along with the sound camp members? Maybe a Resto volunteer would be willing to join said squad and offer their experience and organization to help make it effective?
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Sound Camp Saturation – What seems like an obvious conclusion to you, doesn’t seem so obvious to the person running the camp. Thanks for sharing your opinion.
Simon of the playa – YES HE IS. And you’re right! That would totally work.
Trilo – That’s precisely what happens. Camps have lost their placement for bad behavior, including MOOP footprints. But it still keeps happening… why?
Franny!! We miss you too. And yep, like Sam said, it’s pretty clear when MOOP has blown into a camp… and it’s very rarely enough MOOP to actually change the camp’s score. Even the greenest of green zones always contain a certain amount of litter.
AntiM – Great suggestions!! I totally agree. Now how can we get those ideas into the camp organizers’ heads?
Andie G – Aw shucks, thank you. I was just telling D.A. how awesome it feels to be in my element so completely.
Sam – That’s an awesome idea too!! We could put it in the What Where When and I bet that would really happen.
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i’ve heard this exact same discussion on ePlaya regarding Root Society a few years back and the mess they would leave behind after their legendary parties. sounds like the problem is improving if the camp areas are green which wasn’t always the case! seems like the large sound camps need to work just a little harder and extend their responsibilities beyond their camps where all their attendees MOOP. clean up after your party, plain and simple. this is a very important challenge! these large sound camps should realize that they are a major part of our community and they should seize this opportunity to lead by example. if an enormous theme camp can show up, throw an amazing party, AND leave zero trace behind then why cant the rest of us do the same?
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Simon, that is a really good idea. Sort of like the public pool (when we HAD those), they would kick everyone out of the pool for ten minutes while they checked the water, and it also enforced a little down time for the kids who would invariably play themselves to exhaustion, not unlike many dancers in BRC.
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I led my first camp this year (my 2nd burn). I showed up with 12 brave virgins, and we picked up 7 more that camped near us, and the 20 of us were Camp YNot. We had a 10×20 open canopy, a dome, a big art installation, and hosted numerous dinners for the neighborhood and had a big party drinking night at our camp. And I just looked at the map, and we are officially green. What led to our success? The very idea that I was taught in my first year- MOOPing needs to be a biological function, just like pooping! All my campers were trained from day -1 to pick up MOOP whenever and wherever they see it, in our camp or elsewhere. It was really solidified when we went to pick up some cans left behind at 10:00 and D, and discovered they were in fact full, unopened beers! If everyone is taught this mentality, then the MOOP cleanup is easy, because those thousands of people aren’t just MOOP leavers, but are also amazing MOOP pickeruppers. I think we need to abandon “leave no trace” as a mantra, and go for “have a positive impact” or “leave it better than you found it”. If you do that, more people in an area means more people to pickup MOOP.
Now, granted, night time MOOPing during a rave is tough. But there is a simple solution here. Do something at the big sound stages during the day, to attract a more concious crowd. Like, IDK, a hangover curing pancake breakfast and MOOP cleanup party.
I’d also have to say that I think good ground cover is key. In our eating area, we tried an experimental ground cover from CGear that let’s playa dust filter through and keeps everything else on top. I think next year, every open area in our camp will be covered with this stuff (except for areas that might get wet, which will have a more traditional tarp). We also purchased a used 20×60 billboard that made an incredible ground tarp and was cheaper and more heavy duty than a standard blue tarp. This definitely helped in our cleanup efforts, and is something every theme camp needs to carefully consider in their planning.
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This year, our camp put down blue tarps on the ground to cover our entire camp space. When it came time to moop our space on Monday morning, it was pretty much perfect. We just rolled up the tarps and any moop went home with us. We still walked a moop line and we picked up one or two blue tarp threads where the tarp had torn, but that was it.
It also had a great benefit of making the camp a whole lot more pleasent. It kept the dust way down, and you didn’t track a bunch of dust into your tent every time you went in.
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Temple of boom = ketamine’d out, loud sounding dubstep loving bros
I hate to narrow it down that much but I went there a couple of times this year (cause my friends just HAD to see DJ whatever-the-fuck wreck their ears with pig sequels) and from what I saw and the music i heard I’m not at all surprised that it was so moopy.
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squeals* lol
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This makes me so saaaad. I got up every morning & filled bags & bags & bags of garbage from in front of & around Temple of Boom. Pretty sure you would be baffled @ the amount of garbage we picked up & we then got to transport home. Filled every last nook & cranny we had with yuck! I’d don my rubber gloves & pick up all kinds of disgusting things. Big things & tiny things & creepy mystery things. I’d walk way out into the open playa behind the sound crew. I wasn’t alone – it was common practice. I brought rakes (But couldn’t afford magnetic ones this year) We had an art Quonset & a dome with a mandala in it that I also kept clean everyday. (Green rating!) I got to clean up a used rubber & even the under ware in there…that was fun – “Thanks for the drizzle on the couch man!”. I picked up moop everywhere I went. This was my second burn & honestly by the end I was very disillusioned @ the “Leave no Trace” ethos. Leave no trace @ your own camp is what it felt like. I realize it’s dark & there are 1000′s of people & it’s crazy & people are high & drunk sometimes etc. & might be confused or disoriented. It makes me feel better that our camp of 200+ peeps was green, campers were fairly good @ getting their own moop but almost never helped de-moop the playa around Temple. I personally only saw 1 person pick up moop who wasn’t from our tiny crew. That black spot is a black spot on my heart :( Yes we care….. kind of freaking out! We deserve some heat for this for sure but I wish there was a way to make the masses realize what they leave behind after EVERY night. I have a hard time believing with the amount I picked up DAILY we still left a black scar…… sobering. It must have been 3 feet deep. We were told not to put out trash cans & recycle cans because it encourages people to dump their trash on you. Maybe it would have been better because randoms would have been more inclined to pick it up if there was an easy place to put it, but then what… we take an extra semi just to take home other people’s garbage? Maybe we need more signage reminding people to be aware. (we had a quonset dedicated to the 10 principles) Maybe we need a system of asking for volunteers from the larger Burning-man community. The crew who built & took down the stage & all those structures was really quite small…about 10 or so. I’ve cleaned up cleaner “Raves” as you all so like to use as a dirty word. We worked our tails off and mooping was something everyone who worked, did regularly. It wasn’t wanton disregard. We kept up on it everyday. Maybe we could make & give cool patches or some incentive to encourage the help, work a shift get a special edition Magic Mooper patch? I am truly sorry & open to suggestions. I’m not trying to shift blame but I know I never treated anywhere I visited on the playa (or anywhere in the world) with the kind of disrespect I saw on the corner. Maybe an Art Car vs a big sound camp is the way to go because then your constantly on the move & never have to deal with it the way we did as a large stationary installation. I for one never want to be on the corner again…… wasn’t worth it. It’s not prestigious…. it’s trash central.
@ Chrome – I hate Ketamine, I’m not a Bro I’m female & regardless of how you feel about our music selection (HUGE RANGE of genere’s covered in fact, I could list but what would be the point) Music & art are SUBJECTIVE & it has nothing to do with the matter of trash. That is an issue of 1000’s & 1000’s maybe even a 100,000+ over the course of the week being dealt with in the end by 10 people. You do the math. Thanks for passing judgment though… thanks for being a steward of the 10 principles yourself. Your a shining example to follow. Love your solutions????
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I believe you Sad. I like the big sound camps being at Burning Man, even if I might not like the music played at any particular time. I’m thinking a volunteer corp of moopers is needed. Perhaps a bit of cool shwag in return – maybe a special medalion necklace given for X number of hours. That’s the sort of thing I’d kick a few $$ towards on a Kickstarter sight personally.
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@ sad I actually do believe that you and your camp mates cleaned up (there is clearly evidence of that) however coming from the bay area where the dubstep scene is huge and having seen it grow from this underground scene to being played at massives, I have noticed the type of people it attracts. These people almost always take heavy drugs (ketamine, MDMA) which I have NO problem with being that whatever drugs people take is none of my business. However I do have a problem when they don’t know how to party responsibly/affect other people with their bullshit. It may SEEM silly to correlate the genre of music and the amount of trash, but its not ridiculous to note that heavier music generally attracts more aggressive music listeners. I mean no disrespect to temple of boom or anybody in your camp, I just think that its interesting that every time I went to temple of boom I witnessed kind of outta control actions, then it turns out there was a lot of moop there. I’m curious to see how well distrikt does on the moop map…
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It’s seems a bit harsh to singly point out a camp for Moop from thousands of thousands of participants who themselves are responsible. The Moop generated by this body of masses would still be created, with or without a sound camp.
I can only imagne the amount of Moop around the Man Sunday morning, and without the aid of DPW to clean it up, I’m sure it would be the HOTTEST RED ZONE.
Let’s gain some perspective. Yes, they have responsibility being on “Icarus Corner”, but so do every participant who goes there. So instead of singularly bashing on one group, spread the blame please.
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And rather than spread the blame, lets try and come up with a volunteer corps that can help. I can try and help Moop next year on Tuesday morning, then leave in the afternoon.
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Homiesinheaven – You’re right, it is an important challenge! And I like the idea of theme camps leading by example. But some of the stories from theme camp members make it sound like the MOOP left by their visitors is actually out of control. What then?
Flame – Great ideas for the MOOPin pancake breakfast, and ground cover too! It’s hard to do ground cover for a dance floor, because it will get torn up and because the party can be pretty massive. But I do agree that theme camps could organize some community events that would activate their communities around the process of CLEANING UP AFTER THEMSELVES, instead of leaving the mess for the camp to deal with.
Mike – Yep, ground cover works great, particularly in a smaller camp! Gotta watch out for that idea, though: People often bring carpet scraps, but don’t tape the edges. That leaves little sprigs of carpet all over the place.
Chrome – You may have a point there, but I’m asking for solutions. Got any ideas to make it better?
Sad Temple of Boomer – I’m so glad you stopped by. This is exactly what I thought you might say! No, you should not put out trash cans — your visitors should be considerate enough to not be dumping their garbage (and used rubbers!!!!!) on you. We’ve got to find a better solution. And a roving art car isn’t it… that just encourages people to scatter raver trash all over the playa. I hope y’all find a solution that helps you keep bringing the BOOM without having to deal with so much MOOP.
HandJamMasterC – Great ideas!! Better yet, maybe you could spearhead this project yourself for next year? I’d donate to a Kickstarter for sure.
Ex Burner From Utah – Oh yes, the Man is the hugest, MOOPiest zone ever ever. But we have a plan for that. We put down a layer of protection, and then we remove the entire mess. The idea is that DPW builds it, and DPW cleans it up. But we can’t clean up everyone’s mess for them, we just don’t have the resources. Black spots aren’t just a difficult situation, they’re something that could make us fail our inspection if we can’t figure out how to clean them up in time. That’s where it gets to be a big deal. That said, I agree. Bashing on one camp won’t help anything at all.
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Spearheading a new project and running a theme camp = Burning Man burnout !
Hey, where is the next moop map?
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@ handjam you know i thought about that on exodus this year, why should I spend half my day waiting in line when i could be helping out the community one last time before i go, then leave Tuesday with a much shorter wait
@ the hun good point, i’ll think about what I can do to help the big sound camps with moop next year
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Ya, it took me 12 hours to get to the Sacramento area leaving Monday at 5pm. Think I’ll help moop next year – why not. Hopefully our camp got green – looking forward to the complete moop map being posted.
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HandJamMasterC and Chrome, you are awesome! Looking forward to hearing about your MOOP adventures next year. Maybe this could really become a movement.
CULT, since you cross-posted your comment, I’m going to see about having it deleted from this thread. It will remain on the most recent post.
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What do you think would happen if “someone anonymous” were to post an event in next year’s schedule book? along the lines of –
Sunday, 2-5pm. Calling all people with extra water/alcohol/snacks. Meet at the 2 or 10 o’clock corner of the city and hand that shit out in exchange for MOOP removal. Help clean up the soundcamps.
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There should be a set time every day (2:00? ) for everyone to take 15 minutes to moop their location where ever they are on the Playa. Also folks need to stop stashing their trash at the art installations !
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Speaking as the LNT lead of Disorient, as well as someone who spent two years on the Playa Restoration crew, on Day 3 of Disorient disengage, we had about 30-40 people participate in a line sweep of the GeoTem installation, and we walked out about 200 feet from 2 o clock. When we started this sweep, this site had already had a preliminary sweep on Day 1 of disengage, and I would have given it a yellow after that first sweep given the amount of moop we picked up on Day 3 – so I’m interested to know what kind of moop was on the GeoTem site?
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As AntiM mentioned above, the folks at The Booby Bar spent hours every single day mooping, as did every other camp in Terminal City Village. I think we still had people on playa as late as Wednesday or Thursday working the grid back and forth (not counting Bernie who stayed on after that – way to go Bernie!). So when we got a yellow we were, to say the least, surprised. Our (or I should say my) issue is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to find out why we got the yellow. No reasons equal no suggestions for improvement. Certainly the Moop Map has better intentions than compliance through shame. All we know is that we worked very hard and got (our first ever) yellow for our efforts. Looking for suggestions? That would be mine: if you’re going to call out a theme camp for leaving moop behind you should at least tell them what the moop was, so they can look for ways to add that to their plan next year.
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Victoria – YES. DO IT. I love you!
Cheryl – Yes again!! Great idea. All we gotta do is get these things into the What Where When…
Hi Ocean!! I’m assuming GeoTem was the red zone outside Disorient. If that’s correct, we found a lot of washers and metal hardware, plus general rave MOOP. We knew that y’all had done line sweeps, which is part of why we audited you — we wanted to show everyone that big sound camps can leave their sites green. Your cleanup effort was excellent. I think maybe next time a magnet rake and a landscaping rake would seal the deal, but really you did great (and you know it).
Nick Collide – “Certainly the Moop Map has better intentions than compliance through shame.” – It does, and I’m sorry you feel shamed, but we just don’t have the staff to accurately document every yellow area. Yellow zones — as Bernie can tell you — are usually full of a mix of things. Maybe it was buried, or maybe you didn’t consider it MOOP. Maybe this can help you: http://blog.burningman.com/2011/09/news/moop-map-live-2011s-top-moop/ Our job is just to report what we find, and I’m sorry it felt like you were getting “called out.” Please don’t react badly by blaming the Restoration crew. You may notice that the map image I’ve posted doesn’t show enough detail for people to read camp names (excepting the biggest camps). That was done on purpose, specifically to avoid “calling people out” in public. Next year, make Bernie your LNT guru and he’ll tell you how the Restoration crew operates, so you can get back in the green. Thanks for caring, and don’t worry! At least it wasn’t red.
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Temple of Boom, you guys have an amazing sound system, and you brought amazing artists. You danced my fanny into the ground. Next year I’ll be there on Monday to help clean up rather than enduring the exodus.
But just one more guy won’t make the difference we as a community need. I think Simon had a great idea up there. That sound system would make one heck of a PA. Announce that Beats Antique has decided they want to hear Rick Astley until they get a pound of moop. Hell make theatre out of it. The beat won’t drop until the moop scale tips? Ooooh! Co-ordinate with all the other big sound camps: create a mooping hour where only calliope music is played across all the big sound camps until the moop tax is paid. You know the DPW would freaking love being involved with that: demanding tribute paid in trash. You could have a sarcastic yoga instructor could talk about grounding yourself by bending over and picking up some moop. Fuck with people a little. Make it funny.
That would at least get it picked up. I for one would happily add another dozen trash bags to my trailer. What about a huge “please take a bag of moop” sign, or an entry to that effect in the What Where When? I’d pick up a few at least. I know a bunch of other guys who’d take a few, too.
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Cheeky!!! Great ideas and input! If you get a chance, maybe you can contact Rites of Zion/Temple of Boom (or any other big camp of your choosing) and volunteer to help them dial in their LNT efforts. You could potentially make a HUGE difference.
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