PDA

View Full Version : Blue Moon New Years Moontribe Celebration


Tunicate
01-04-2010, 07:46 AM
So my New Year was damned entertaining.

First I'll post pictures and a brief story of each one. I'll get more in depth later, because I am starting winter quarter at Uni in about 5 hours :pinch:

Okay. Moontribe is a group of people that throws electronic music events mostly out in the desert but some in the mountains. They're mostly camping things, over the course of multiple days. The culture is very much like that of burning man. People barter with their belongings, take a shit load of drugs, and create and look at art. There isn't much sleep involved. It is, unlike burning man, invite only and runs off of "strongly suggested" donations that help fund the camp sites. This one, we showed up at 3 am Thursday and left around 8pm Friday (stayed about 29 hours through constant music ). The "blue moon" means a second full moon in a month. It's kind of a big deal to hippies lol... and it was New Years, too :thumbsup:

The directions to this place were spotty at best. They are meant to test a person. We went up past Victorville into the high desert where no one lived. 200 miles from anyone, we couldn't use a GPS because there were no landmarks and no definite destination. "6.6 miles past the bullet ridden sign you will take a left" no joke, that was something we had to do. Bumping along in a green ford escort, something not made for going to a desert party... Like, I've been to outdoor raves, but this was a different animal. There were 3 bullet ridden signs. One was so chewed up that we didn't even consider it a viable option. We realized that the old military base out there in the desert must be to blame. Our friend, who had been a marine sniper said he'd have done that from the guard tower... shot at shiny things to keep himself occupied. So, after a couple more suspect turns we started smelling the campfires, or the people spinning fire poi, and we knew we'd gotten close enough to trust our instincts. Thank fucking god I was with the people I was... I could never have made it alone.

I took real acid for the first time a couple hours after we got there. The guys were on some epic quest for cheap drugs because one forgot his wallet :rolleyes: but out of all the free tabs and bowls and pills and all that we got... I just took one. The only other time I'd done it, I dropped 2 hits of DoB (a research chemical that mimics the effects and dose size of acid, is similar, but not the same) but had been told it was acid a year and a half ago. The whole thing was INCREDIBLY reminiscent of an old hippie concert, with a communal aspect, people taking care of each other and trying to get each other the best drugs and food and all that, sharing everything and helping each other out, etc. Everyone was handling themselves pretty well. There were children and dogs roaming around, chilling with people on acid and shrooms and pot and alcohol, etc. I wanted to be in control, meet people, take in the interesting new experience... and the desert went 2d and technicolor, and people were cresting each hill, waving at me... and the giggles... and the giggles... and the giggles... and life was good :p

Me:

http://i50.tinypic.com/2h4xmba.jpg

the main stage

http://i46.tinypic.com/vpztqa.jpg

I'm somewhere in here (the main fire):

http://i48.tinypic.com/2znsvue.jpg

Fire poi:

http://i49.tinypic.com/opa1xw.jpg

throw in an alter:

http://i48.tinypic.com/2zqv67d.jpg

the guy on the right was my new years kiss ( many of us rang in the new year with hallucinogens and howling at the moon :p)

http://i50.tinypic.com/f5661k.jpg


and a barcode tattoo. his name is chuck, he got it back when he ate a lot of salted peanuts, so it's a barcode for salted fucking peanuts:

http://i47.tinypic.com/xbx1f7.jpg

the entrance to the natural quartz crystal mines where we mined for our own crystals, hell yes...

http://i49.tinypic.com/amfr13.jpg

and finally, the lime in the (I shit you not) coconut:

http://i49.tinypic.com/2nc3v5f.jpg

(many more pictures to come...)

Psynthetic
01-04-2010, 12:52 PM
Very cool. How many people would you say were in attendance? And how did you go about getting invited?

It's interesting, the event I attended on New Years had a very similar vibe, but was presented in the complete opposite fashion. Technology vs. Nature. We had light shows, you had fire poi, we were indoors in the city, you were outdoors in the desert, we had projection art, you had a freakin' quartz mine lol.

I had a great time, but I'd love to experience something like what you've described. I much prefer isolated, intimate, & natural settings to the hustle and bustle of city life for my pyschonautical adventures. And music festivals with 30k+ crammed into a tent city just aren't cuttin' it :hrmph:

Tunicate
01-04-2010, 05:19 PM
I'd say there were a couple hundred people in attendance, all with the "self contained- take out what you bring in" idea in the way of trash. We had portapoties and people shared the toilet paper and wet naps and stuff they'd brought so everyone was reasonably comfortable.


Basically out here there are a number of "tribes" that throw their own hippie parties... the main ones being Psytribe and Moontribe and after that there are some random ones like Bramble, etc. there are Djs and some core members that plan the parties who have to invite people personally. That person is thought of as "cool and responsible" enough to bring up to one car load of people. They are put on an email list, it's done all through word of mouth basically. The directions have no explicit location, just odometer readings and kinda sorta landmarks. The whole thing is meant to test you, to see if you really want to be there. In the end it's a community of people who become very close because they have to trust one another. They all do a lot of illegal things out there, but go through a lot of legal channels in order to have the parties and not get disturbed. They rarely have parties in the same places, they only have them a couple times a year, and they are mostly approaching middle age and have legitimate fronts or day jobs.

At this place the art isn't just fire poi, there's glow hoop, fire hoop, all kinds of glow and LED creations, the stages and people's cars are decked out like the art at burning man with baby heads and mosaics and buddahs and all sorts of shit but the most amazing part to me is the fashion. I used to love rave fashion until it got all contrived and looked the same on everyone. NOW THIS PARTY, people were in their best. Dusty though they were,there were dreadlocks entwined with wire, people wearing jewels and silvers and pouches made of fur, and body paints... and all the different kinds of hippies too: techno hippies like me in splash resistant kikgirls and a hand-me-down button-up striped long-sleeved shirt and a fuzzy hood, carrying around an ugly doll looking like a little girl... the tye-dye torn-up hippies, the acid- dealing turquoise-wearing pierced kids, the punks, the people running it who, despite it all, looked like your average starbucks-baby-boomers, and of course the fried guy with the broken umbrella... OH and of course people were playing drums and didgeridoo! It was like I felt when I showed up at a rave the first time- "I'm not sure what the fuck I'm doing here, but I like it".

I'll update later with some tales of the nights and a supply list lol but basically it's a good idea to have thermal socks... and condoms.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y236/RomanticWish1/4234083695_ab4d58e246_b.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y236/RomanticWish1/4234096479_89fbd7b05f_b.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y236/RomanticWish1/4234852604_ca084c34cb_b.jpg

General Butt.Naked
01-04-2010, 09:55 PM
I feel that I love you. Can you invite me next time, since you're now one of the in-crowd? Haha. Ill bring amazing goodies. I live near LAX, and feel that I would be a definite asset to the adventure. Man that sounds/looks like it was awesome. Burning man tends to get a little hectic. This one looks like it was a little smaller and more communal. I would definitely like to do this one year.

Tunicate
01-05-2010, 01:24 AM
haha I wish it worked that way... basically I can't invite people until I go to it a couple more times and get on the mailing list. I have to get to know the people throwing it personally, much better than I did this time... I'm thinking if I bring a bunch of stuff to share with everyone and show them that I'm appreciating the music (which I do, but the fact that a lot of it is ambient trance is.... bluuugh :() then they might let me bring my own car. Either way, there are other tribes in southern california that I want to check out. i have a feeling this might be the best hippie-vibe-wise but psytribe will have psytrance which is more down my alley than the music at this one. The one set that was UH MAZE ING was the dubstep. It was new, different, and intense, lots of fucking acid sounds (for those of you that produce music) and it got everyone much more lively after they'd been partying for a while. I'm glad I stayed sober most of it, even though I needed to sleep more than I'd have liked... I wanted to meet more people but actually sitting around looking tired made a lot of people come up and say hi.

Anyway suggested gear:

-a thermal tent. for like a full family.
-socks, multiple pairs.
-multiple changes of clothes (extra extra underwear for freshest feeling lol)
- more food than you'd expect all the people you're with to eat, and then some. you can use it to barter
-a couple rolls of toilet paper. people run out, and you can barter with it.
-weed or acid or both. not only are they nice :p but you can use them to barter as well
-an extra gas/petrol can (not the kind for spinning fire poi) so you can run the heat in the car or charge cellphones and gps devices
-WATER in the big jugs to minimize trash
-tampons. I started my period on new years eve... :hrmph:

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y236/RomanticWish1/4234885604_29b624f457_b.jpg

but we should definitely meet up at a desert party some time :thumbsup:

Tunicate
01-07-2010, 06:13 AM
I'll bump this just once to see if anyone cares about it, then leave it alone :p

moontribe.org is the website with some info about events including awesome art