Saturday night I dragged myself to a Burning Man decompression party. It was a huge block party a couple blocks of 3rd street in the DogPatch neighborhood. The music bounced through the buildings reaching me as I turned up 18th on my trusty old bike.

It was a bit of a stretch for me that night, I was tired and was in a somber and solitary mood, but I figured that this would be a good thing to check out if I want to go to burning man next year. I was happy to see that many people had ridden their bikes to the event, I had to seek for a while to find a pole to attach my bike to -- a much too rare experience I feel.

My first impression was that I wished I had dressed up more, my second was that I wish I had come with someone, and third that I would have been ecstatic had I been single. The main event was dancing, there was at least 6 different DJs/stages at various points along the 2 block party. There was a shocking lack of naked people (but i guess this because it is San Francisco weather rather than playa weather ), but a good percentage of the crowd was wearing some get up (or get down if you know what I mean).

The art, was well, the art that I had seen pictures of, and nothing new or particularly interesting struck my fancy, though I'm sure drugs would have made a difference there. The best was the plaster strobe swimming animation. But I'd heard about that before, so it was nothing new.

The crowd reminded me of a mixture of the Castro Halloween festivities and a Dot-com party, somewhat extravagant hedonism, in other words. My particular set of burning man friends had their karaoke glam clam firing up a small crowd of people, particularly when someone was willing to ham it up (the best being a queen song, "i'm just a poor boy from a poor family" can't remember the name ) usually the crowd responded. But I wasn't really in the mood to go there.

Neither was a woman standing near and she starting talking to me in a way that I knew was trouble (for me). It was a nice feeling to be hit upon again, and I admit to some dissappointment when the question of my status as a married man came up.

Yes, it would have been great if I was a single person again. Which makes me sad I did not invite any of my single guy friends (or girls for that matter) not already there.

There was certainly a lot of phermones flying -- not a few people making out and/or doing other things (there were plenty of dark corners).

But all in all, I have to admit, that I was bored. Not having participated or being attached to anything there (outside of my friends who hoved close to the clam), there was no sense of the famed community of burning man (well outside of the girl who gave me hummous crackers, and the one dressed in lots of foam who gave me a hug). I felt a bit sad judging the event so. But there you go.