Imagine a desert valley. Flat everywhere you look, and far into the distance, violet mountains encircle you. At your feet the earth is cracked and dry, covered with soft white dust, fine as talcum powder. It’s hot and you are sweating.

Photograph provided by the author.

Now onto that vision, superimpose a city of 50,000 people with little to no infrastructure which pops up once a year for 1 week. With no incoming water or power, the city is made up mostly of immobile cars, RVs, bikes and tents. Yet these boring objects are overshadowed by their more extravagant cousins. Grandiose art cars, otherwise known as mutant vehicles, prowl the streets. Strange, flamboyant and billowy housing/hanging out structures line the dusty roadways. Art cars drive about the city, putting their quirks on display while providing public transportation for those without bicycles. It’s a lot of fun to hitch a ride on a giant elephant-shaped vehicle. In addition to all of this, sprinkle some art installations throughout this vision, some in the city itself, then many more out in the surrounding desert. Some of these installations are enormous and can be seen from great distances, enticing you from afar with their mysterious shapes and colors. Imagine a 40-foot tall metallic sculpture of a woman dancing, delicately balanced on one foot. A sphere of air and metal which periodically puffs fire. A chain of hundreds of interconnected balloons drifting through the sky, each lit by its own LED. Other installations you may not notice until you are quite close when they surprise you with their unexpected creativity. Imagine a collection of 3 foot long metallic cockroaches hanging out on the desert floor. Now take all these visions, and throw in about 10,000 more bikes than you’d had in there before, and make sure to decorate them. If you shift this vision from day to night, imagine the whole city glowing, lit up like Las Vegas.

Photograph provided by the author.

Now finally we can add the people, the residents of this city. Attire, when worn at all, is something a kin to a cross between Halloween, a rave, and a bunch of hippies going camping. When you go and interact with these people, they are warm, friendly, and generous, happy to share what they have and inflict smiles everywhere they go.

When one typically thinks of cities, one thinks of economy and of money underlying that economy. Here, surprisingly, there is no money exchanged. In fact, rarely are things exchanged at all. Rather, things are freely given: food, booze, cozy spaces and the products of people’s plentiful creativity. You might play a concert for people on one side of the city, then, while biking through the dry heat, you might be treated to a shower of mist. Further along your path, you might be offered cool ice cream. Around the corner you may see a tent of people offering massage, or bloody marys, or lessons in sustainable farming practices, or who knows what else…

At the end of the week, this bountiful creation shifts toward destruction. Many of the installations are burnt to the ground surrounded either by music, dancing and revelry, or by solemn reverential silence. The residents of the city disperse as quickly as they came, leaving the desert as barren as it started, leaving no trace.

It sounds like a magical place, no? Try visiting Black Rock City next summer, when it comes into its temporary existence August 29 to September 5, 2011.