American Festivals Project

SpeedWeek on the Bonneville Salt Flats comments [6]

The next time you get into your car, grab the steering wheel and give a good look at the speedometer. Let your eyes travel up from zero, climbing double digit numbers that are so familiar. But keep going. Don’t stop at 80. Don’t stop at 90 or 100. Notice if your palms are getting sweaty or if you start to twitch in your seat. Is this unfamiliar territory…staring at the notch for 120 or 140mph? Think to yourself, what is the fastest I have ever driven this vehicle? Scale your eyes back to the fastest you’ve ever pushed that needle, and then think about that brief exhilirating moment, as quick as it may have been. Ask yourself why didn’t you go faster than that? How long did you sustain that top speed? Why didn’t you drive further? Now, if I told you there’s a place as flat as a sheet of college-ruled paper, where there are no cops, no traffic signals, no turns, no intersections, no on-coming traffic, and no speed-limit, would you push that accelerator as far as it could go for as long as you could? Of course you would. And that could only mean you were in one special place–the Bonneville Salt Flats in western Utah.

Utah is known for radical religious piety. And the shores of the Great Salt Lake seem to be where there’s the best action. To the east, there’s Salt Lake City, the Mormon temple, and one out of every two persons who believe in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To the west, on the ancient western shore of Lake Bonneville, where the briny water has totally evaporated, there’s another kind of fantacism, another object of devotion, where 1 out of every 1 persons is a believer. Service doesn’t meet every week, and not everyone follows the same scriptures. But they share the same faith; faith in the divinity of…Speed! For the past 61 years they’ve all been coming here to this sacred house of worship where the ground is as white as the clouds of heaven to push their earthly extremes in pursuit of the holy.

The world land speed record is exactly as it sounds: the record for the fastest achievement by any wheeled vehicle on land. The current record holder is a 47yr old British navy pilot named Andy Green, who achieved supersonic speed of 763mph in Utah in 1997, and who is now working on breaking the 1,000mph barrier. Speedweek, however, is not when Andy Green and his ultra-rare competition push speeds that top the sound barrier. We got a tip that the land speed record attempts happen privately, on a date later in the summer. Instead, Speedweek is the annual gathering of the tribe, where speed devotees make an annual pilgrimage to the fastest racetrack in the world and put their best effort against history. There is no head-to-head racing, there is no stopwatch. (There is also no best costume award or recognition for cheapest looking girlfriend.) Drivers are racing against history–the historical speed precedent set for that engine class. The attention is purely on getting the cars to run at top speed. Everything else is secondary. If Sturgis left us short on horsepower, we found all the RPM’s we could handle in the desolate, otherworldly, evaporated ruins of the Great Salt Lake Basin.

Andrew begins sewing on the AFP portable studio backdrop made of 2×4′s, oversized bed sheets, and rope.

Our first model in the studio, Joshua Burke and his modified RX-7 purple dragon

We quickly abandoned the studio backdrop for obvious reasons.

The intensity of the ultraviolet rays reflecting off the ground is so intense that the AFP broke out in an itchy rash type of sun poisoning called Polymorphic Light Eruption.

There are three courses at Bonneville: the long-course, the short-course, and the special course. Each of them are essentially a straight line marked by black paint. The long-course is for the fastest of the entrants with 5 miles of speed guns and 3 official miles of room to slow down and turn out. The short course and special course only track speeds for the first 3 miles so this is the more common course for motorcycles and cars not trying to break records. For each, there is one starting line and no preset order to lineup, it’s a first come first served system and the wait is usually an hour or more. This is where spectators can get up close to the cars and if there is a social scene during the day, this is the closest thing to it. But the mood and vibe around the starting line is respectful, even subdued. Certainly, the heat and extreme sunlight reflecting off the white ground has everyone rationing their energy output. More to the point though, there is a shared understanding for the danger of each ride and the potential for a fatal crash or engine blowing incident that would erase everything. With an invisible gust of wind, a sticky spot in the salt, an improper mix of fuel and air, or any other unforeseen variable, so much can go wrong in a hurry. Towards 6pm on our second day at Bonneville, a 46yr old driver from California, who was sitting in for his dad, passed the 5mile marker and then unexpectantly began cartwheeling down the track. When all the pieces finally fell to the ground, it looked like a bomb had exploded under the chassis. There’s a photograph and story in the Salt Lake Tribue. The photo below is what we saw when we arrived on the scene. It was the only photograph we got before we were run out under some very tense circumstances. The driver was reported dead on the way to the hospital, though it’s unlikely he survived the crash.

Death is not a common outcome for any of the festivals and competitions the AFP has covered. Injuries yes, but fatalities no. Buckraoos get bucked, gymnasts sprain a wrist, snake catchers get bit, hipsters get too drunk, lumberjacks get splinters, breyerfans get hysterical, but that’s been the extent of it so far. Perhaps this is the reason Speedweek felt the least like a party. To be sure, the scene is loose and there’s plenty of good times coming out of Bonneville. But there is a precision and underlying focus on exactitude that dominates the culture of the salt flats racing. Bonneville is a break from all the other distractions. It’s a time to concentrate purely on your car. It’s a week of adjusting and studying and listening and head-scratching and readjusting and trying again and again. There is an internal discipline that seems self govern and regulate the pulse of Speedweek. There is too much at stake to goof around and be bothered by corporate giveaway parties and mid-day raffles. Think of Bonneville more as a mad scientist laboratory and Speedweek as less of a festival and more of a rite of passage. It is a place where there is no finish in sight. A place for endless tinkering and trial. And ultimately a place where limits are set only by the failure of imagination.

Speedweek was one of the most far-out events we experienced in our year on the road. Many thanks to Catherine Dee who tipped us off to this awesome event and offered the extra bed in Wendover. Thanks to Josh Burke for giving us the inside scoop on Bonneville history and letting the AFP tag along in the push vehicle. Thanks also to the Dripps team from Cville for welcoming us into their operation. We also owe a big thanks to all the drivers who let us photograph them at the end of their race, against the saltscape background, as they waited for the push vehicles to chase them down and haul them back so they could do it all over again.

Charlottesville’s fastest faculty!

Bonneville Speed Week from American Festivals Project on Vimeo.

Posted by andrew, posted on 10/06/2009 at 7:41pm. Bookmark this post | post a comment

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally — Sturgis, SD comments [2]

DSC_7307 (1)

South Dakota is not a heavily populated state. In fact, it’s one of the least populous states in the union, ranking 46 out of 51 (including Washington DC). The biggest city in South Dakota is Sioux Falls, which at 155,000 persons ranks 150th on the list of biggest cities in the USA (this is 54x smaller than #1 NYC). But there are a lot of people in this country that love motorcycles, and every first week of August a whole heck of a lot them ride out to the land of Mt. Rushmore and George Custer to gawk, strut, rev, ride, and revel. In 2000, the attendance of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was so large that it equaled roughly the size of the 15th largest US city, Austin, TX (twice the size of Minneapolis, MN for perspective) with 754,844 persons. For 2009, the numbers wouldn’t be quite so high, although lewd t-shirt sales were probably at an all-time best as this year marked the 69th anniversary of the Black Hills Rally. If there’s one thing a journalist needs when heading into Sturgis, it’s a sense of humor. And while the AFP was not prepared for the likes of Sturgis, by the end, we were pretty sure that Sturgis was one of the silliest gatherings we could possibly have attended.

Don’t worry, the silly aspect was a shock to us too. Especially after we tried crashing the Hells Angels summer reunion ride the week before in Duluth, MN and were basically told we’d get our lights knocked out if we didn’t scram. “We don’t come to your family reunions and take pictures of your girlfriends” was one of the more amicable responses we got in Duluth. It’s exactly that rebel spirit and outlaw culture that seems so quintessentially American that we wanted to photograph and capture. If America stands for anything it’s freedom, and nothing embodies the symbol of American freedom quite like a motorcycle being ridden across the open prairie by a wind-hardened, leather-skinned, gristle-faced working class dude. Bikers are our modern-day cowboys. In an era where the horse has been replaced by the combustion engine, these are the people who ride in the saddle, wear leather chaps, feel the air against their face, and sacrifice comfort and expediency for the pursuit of a more wholesome and pure experience. Picture the alternative: an overworked disheveled computer programmer zoned out in iPod land squeezed into a packed-to-the-gills rush-hour subway train. That’s not an image likely to be adopted to symbolize a country that values courage, fortitude, patriotism, liberty, and freedom. For better or for worse, rebel archetypes in America are still an important part of our national identity.

But it’s hard being a rebel all the time. The yard needs mowing. The kids need a ride back and forth from soccer, tennis, football, ballet, french lessons, therapy, and sleepovers. The 9-5 grind wears you out so bad that you’re too tired to get much done on the weekend. Car payments. House payments. Insurance payments. Where can a person go to cut loose from all these obligations and really let their hair down? What kind of place will finally let a person go wild?

Enter Sturgis. It’s basically anything goes for two solid weeks in Sturgis around the time of the rally. All the beer, boobs, butts, brats, bros, and bacchanalia you can handle. It’s Easy Rider by day and Mad Max by night. Ride hard. Party hard. It’s where weekend warriors come to recharge their batteries for a full solid year. And it’s living proof that America still has some of that old stock left in it, that frontier DNA is still churning.

Or you could hang around a few days and come around to the inevitable but sad conclusion that Sturgis is, for the most part, a giant costume party. And the theme every year, again and again, is “rebel outlaw.” So don’t even bother to walk out your tent flap or hotel lobby unless some part of your body is adorned with black leather, a skull on flames, an eagle, a Harley logo, a cross, barbed wire, the words “freedom” or “hell” written somewhere. And of course, bear all your tattoos. Make sure your shirt doesn’t have sleeves. Don’t be bashful about showing off chest hair. Sunglasses are a must. Jeans are encouraged. Jeans with black leather chaps over them are celebrated. And some kind of hat or bandanna is totally accepted. If you don’t have any, not to worry, there are about 4,127 different t-shirt and vendor stands happily standing by ready to sell you all of your regalia needs.

Discoveries are good. Epiphanies are better. And the only way we could stick it out in Sturgis was to accept that we had been duped. We had shown up to photograph something pure and found it absolutely watered down and generic and commercialized. But we were just as guilty as our fellow costumers in seeking out that classic American archetype. We were in pursuit of exactly the kind of thing that everyone else was there to find. Everyone wanted to rub elbows with the ghosts of freedom: physical, moral, aesthetic, and even emotional liberation. That Bud Light, Harley Davidson, State Farm, Pepsi, Jack Daniels, Aerosmith, and a huge economic engine was there to facilitate the entire operation only reinforced how distant we are from our rebel forebears. And with that epiphany we saw Sturgis for what it was and photographed it as it should be photographed…as a humorous and funny and outlandish anomaly. So enjoy the pictures. They aren’t in our normal style. If there’s one photographer who excels in these situations it is British photographer Martin Parr and he was an inspiration for sure.

Lastly, it should be said that everything written above is a generalization. This was our main take-away from the event–our overall impression. We know for sure that not everyone who attended Sturgis fits this characterization. The Hells Angels do go to Sturgis every year. The Bandidos too. And for plenty, riding motorcycles is an everyday affair and even a major social influence on their lives. In particular, we spent the better part of our last day with the Royal Ras from Albuquerque, NM, a rastafarian motorcycle club. We followed behind them on the way to Mt. Rushmore and hung out with them in their hotel room. We wanted to meet and ride with a club and break away from the pageantry of the main strip. They were newcomers to Sturgis just like we were. Where we had come to Sturgis seeking out an American subculture, they had come to purely for their love of riding motorcycles. It reminded us of the true reason why hundreds of thousandths of riders descend on Sturgis every year. Despite the costume party, may Sturgis live long, and live hard. Many thanks to the guys and gal from Royal Ras for sharing their time and insights with us.

Posted by andrew, posted on 09/28/2009 at 4:23pm. Bookmark this post | post a comment

Pine Ridge Pow Wow comments [17]

There are probably plenty of folks out there who would debate whether South Dakota is part of the “West.” The Rockies don’t run through it. It’s name doesn’t conjure up an image of cowboys. It’s basically on the same longitudinal coordinates as Nebraska. And Nebraska is not the “West.” Right? But South Dakota — it feels Western. You can sense that something is on the other side. The state is like a dinner bell, telling you to wash up for a supper of hearty mountains and quenching rivers. And when the corn fields end at the precipice leading into the badlands it becomes all too clear that the stitching on the national hem has busted loose. “Be prepared for the unfamiliar,” it should say, because that’s what you get a few hundred miles past the Missouri River when unrivaled kitsch meets sacred native lands.

Ross demonstrates the inverted back-flip at the Boys and Girls Club for the photo workshop students.

The world’s tallest prairie dog statue. A giant angry smoke breathing T-Rex. Cups of coffee for a nickel. Wild buffalo herds. Moon-like topography. Expansive grasslands. Chinese tourists. Fleets of RVs. Indian reservations. All of it becomes a big jumble of gaping contrasts around the Black Hills of South Dakota. And in no place was this more evident than in Pine Ridge, in the southwest corner of South Dakota, on one of the poorest Indian reservations in the country.

Pine Ridge is a community that knows poverty unlike almost any other zip code in America, not to mention diabetes, teenage pregnanacy, gang violence, and alcoholism. In the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, Pine Ridge stands out as a great exception. Running water and electricity are absent from a huge number of homes. Families are broken as frequently as windows. And in twenty years, one woman told us nothing had changed except for the new Subway. So it was with a certain degree of trepidation that we arrived on the “res.” Being two young white males from Virginia with big cameras around our neck, we knew we would stick out. And we did. But it led to one of the greatest experiences of the trip.

Ben Smith at the end of our epic weekend.

As it turned out, where we entered as isolated strangers, we left invigorated by new friendships, the warmth of the people at Pine Ridge, and the intimate tour of the traditions of the Oglalla tribe. In a single day, we participated in a sweat lodge ritual, viewed a sundance ceremony, witnessed the wildest display of horse races, and photographed the evening session of the Pow Wow. We owe tremendous gratitude to Ben and Diane Smith who offered their front yard to two young homeless strangers and then showed us a day we will never forget. Thanks also to James Rhodes whose idea it was for us come to Pine Ridge to join him in photographing the Pow Wow.

As you’ll see in this post, we diverged a little from our customary documentary style approach to dabble in portraiture. It would have been too painful to leave Pine Ridge without portraits of these men and women in beautiful “regalia.” So on a hot too-sunny-to-get-good-pictures afternoon, we pulled in participants after they finished a competition and asked them to stand for us. We’re thrilled with the results from our makeshift studio. And it also gave us a chance to meet and talk with lots of different people who had traveled from different states to compete. In fact, the entire element of competition was something we hadn’t forseen. But we weren’t surprised; prize money is a common theme among the events we attend. Just like at the rodeo or the Lumberjack games, Pow Wows offer prize money for different categories, and so most participants are moving week to week to a new location on the circuit. And the tug of tradition and family heritage is an equally important aspect along with the money. But just like so many other festivals we’ve covered, it’s unclear if prize money will be enough to keep these traditions alive. On the Pine Ridge reservation, fewer and fewer of the younger generation are speaking Lakota. Basketball is far more popular year round than native dancing. And traditional garb is worn far more infrequently than contemporary urban labels. In an era of surging wealth for Indian communities who are distancing from their past and profiting from casinos and natural resource extraction, it’s unclear how Pine Ridge will evolve and transform, if ever. For the time being, it is a community close to its history, and struggling, just as the rest of the US does, with how to hold onto the past as it moves into a new and unpredictable future.

Pine Ridge Pow Wow from American Festivals Project on Vimeo.

Posted by Ross, posted on 09/04/2009 at 1:48am. Bookmark this post | post a comment

Looking for the AFP? comments [1]

Friends,

We’ve been in the woods and on the road too much to post. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy! Good stuff is on the way. Even though we are driving back East, we still have five more big posts to share with you from the West. On the list is a pow-wow from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the Sturgis motorcycle rally, the Bonneville salt flats Speed Week, “Our Lady of the Rock” Virgin Mary experience in the Mohave Desert, and the San Francisco Drag King competition! Stay tuned!

Posted by Ross, posted on 08/25/2009 at 6:45pm. Bookmark this post | post a comment

Proctor Speedway, Minnesota comments [0]

The windy roads of America led the AFP to the unlikely location of Proctor, Minnesota for a Sunday night speedway race. We’ve been thinking of shooting a racing event for some time now, and the opportunity presented itself when we visited relatives in Duluth, MN. The Proctor Speedway sits in a valley on the same site of the local fairgrounds. The track is dirt and the facilities are basic. It was just how we wanted it. Small and raw.

Here are ten photos from our night. Five color frames from Ross, and five black and white from Andrew.