Burning Man Pictures–The Salon

Salon!

This is the only picture I have of the Barbie Head. I know. I’m sorry. I will never pimp anything again and then deliver lame goods. I’m sorry. You are just going to have to believe me that I did arrange the other Barbies around The Head and that people made clothes for them and dressed The Head up. No one played with her hair or anything or put makeup on her…they were all too busy playing with each other’s hair and putting makeup on each other, I guess.

See? Don’t they look like they’re having fun? I think they’re deciding what kind of designs they want painted on them. In fact, in the back, sort of on the right in the white shirt is Anna working her henna magic. This woman is very good at what she does. Folks would show off their designs she’d done and I’d think, well, okay, that’s it, she can’t get any better than this. I was wrong about that. Every single time.

Some people needed a little more help than others. This guy looks very happy though.

Chrysa (in the Mardi Gras-bead hat) and a satisfied customer. Yeah, Chrysa was working it with the finely muscled canvases upon which to paint, wouldn’t you say? Also note our friend Scott over there in the corner (wearing the hat), keeping a stern eye on the general proceedings.

Another lovely example of Chrysa’s artistry. Excellent advertising for the salon, to boot.

Sugar scrub. This isn’t the girl who purred, even though she looks as though she may be on the verge of doing so. I didn’t get a picture of Jerry either. Clearly, I was too busy scrubbing feet.

I wasn’t really sure where to put this, but I figured since these two spent pretty much an entire day hennaing each other and doing yoga poses at the salon, it belongs in the salon entry. They were very nice. They came on the last day we were open, and we were pretty tired by this point. The day before had been sort of rough on everyone; we all said later during dinner that Friday was the first day the salon felt like a job. Some folks were pretty demanding and got upset with us when they had to wait for their henna or their scrub or whatever. Some folks made appointments and then wandered off before their names were called, and would come back two hours later wanting to know why they couldn’t be scrubbed right then. That was also the first day we had to deal with a lot of other peoples’ garbage, too, which at Burning Man is no small crime since you have to pack out everything. So. The last day of the salon we decided to just tell people we were tired and say that we would all be taking lots of breaks and that they were welcome to hang out and welcome to decorate each other as much as they wanted. For the most part everyone was very sympathetic and we had the most people ever that day, so I guess it wasn’t a completely unpopular announcement. These two did gorgeous henna work on each other and entertained us all by twisting themselves into a variety of improbable poses.

More folks hanging out. What you can’t see here…is, well, much of anything since it’s a pretty dark picture. Among the many things you can’t see are all the volunteer massage therapists and the List Master…a campmate whose sole responsibility it was to decide who could get what when. It was constantly “Summer Moon! Is there a Summer Moon here for henna? No? Okay, how about a Bill for hair braiding? Do we have a Bill for hair braiding?” You also can’t see the excellent bike valet parking we had (thanks Scott!). Also not pictured: the vinegar foot bath and the confessional, formerly known as the Idea Cave from the last ABL party. What you can see, though, is that there are a lot of people at our salon, most of whom look like they’re enjoying themselves innocently enough. Isn’t that cool?

Picture by Chrysa Rose

Tomorrow: Art! And a couple of pictures of the Man afire.