Burning Man Storms Montauk
Partyers take over Montauk Yacht Club for wild weekend

By Kate Maier

Russell Drumm Participants go by what they call “burn names.” “Jo,” a partner in a management-consulting firm, lets loose at the Montauk Yacht Club.

(03/15/2007)    When Rich Brown signed up to work a party last weekend at the Montauk Yacht Club in Montauk, he was expecting another typical corporate event: some chicken a la king, a few martinis, and a crowd of middle-aged guests drifting off to bed somewhere around 9 p.m., after a few hours getting down to the electric slide. But by the time his first 18-hour shift ended, somewhere around 6 a.m. Saturday morning, he was well aware that the weekend-long event that had been advertised online as the “Burning Beach Ball Festival” was not exactly that kind of gathering.

    When Mr. Brown returned to work the following evening, he was told he had just missed the “naked swim” at the yacht club’s indoor pool; later that night, he was too busy bartending to watch as the guests burned a 12-foot-tall wooden alien on the field “somewhere between the tennis courts and the villas,” he said.

    According to Mr. Brown, none of the staff that had been hired for the weekend had any idea what they were in for. “We were pretty much shocked,” he said, “. . . by everything they did.”

    Inspired by the Burning Man festival, a weeklong retreat in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada that attracted nearly 35,000 participants last year, the Burning Beach Ball party was thrown and attended by members of a vibrant community of modern-day hippies who stay connected through an elaborate online network. A cousin to the rave movement of the late 1980s and the ’90s, the

The man himself: A wood alien sculpture, above, was torched around 11 p.m. on Saturday.

scene is all about listening to music, creating public artworks (and sometimes destroying them), staying up all night, and, for some, engaging in illicit activities such as group sex or drug use. But no one was pushing drugs on the dance floor of the Yacht Club on Friday night, and most of the sex occurred in bedrooms — although Mr. Brown said that some of those bedroom doors remained open for the entire weekend. “Everybody was in their rooms putting on a show for everybody that walked by,” he said.

    Some of the 300-odd guests who booked every room at the Montauk Yacht Club and the adjacent Snug Harbor Hotel traveled from as far away as San Francisco, Toronto, and Virginia to join with other “burners” at what one participant called a “non-sanctioned regional event.” Most of the guests, it seemed, were from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. And according to Lisa Bryan, Montauk’s marketing director, they were from “all different socioeconomic backgrounds.”

    “We host weddings here that get more out of hand,” said David Hirsch, the club’s general manager. “These people were so nice and so low-key and fun-loving, it was really a pleasure to have them.”

    “No one has ever tried, as far as I know, to do a burning event in a resort hotel,” said Mike Rora of North Shirley, the party’s head promoter. His “burner” name is D.J. MicRage, and this was the first “large-scale” party that he’d organized.

    “A lot of people like Montauk in the winter,” he said of his destination choice. “There’s no one to bother out here.” He said he had gotten the idea months ago while listening to the Rolling Stones’ “Memory Motel,” and had originally attempted to book the party there.

    “I called the Memory to arrange it, and the place was turned off for the season, and it was like, ‘Oh, what a drag,’ ” he said. He finally found an accommodating venue in the Montauk Yacht Club, and the rest is history. “I put it on the Internet, and ‘Boom’ wasn’t even the word.”.

    On Friday night, music was pumping from at least three stages, with a rock band in one room, a black-clad Goth band in the bar, and a D.J. on the main dance floor, where knee-high boots, green and pink hair, and wildly colored leopard-print faux fur costumes were more the norm than jeans and T-shirts.

Russell Drumm Vicki Olds, a magazine editor who came all the way from San Francisco, goes by the name “Shibumi.”

    “My burn name is Jo: letter ‘J,’ letter ‘O,’ ” said a 39-year-old woman with intense, bulging eyes and a pigtailed wig made of black and pink yarn. A London native who now lives in Manhattan, she spoke with a lilting accent as she described her career as a partner in a management-consulting firm. “I have a natural, sensible corporate life, one where no one would know what I do,” she said. But when she went to Burning Man for the first time four years ago, “I discovered the other side of my brain. I started making costumes and wigs, and I started feeling sexy for the first time in forever.”

    She’s been to Burning Man in Nevada for the last four years, and said she tries to go to as many regional events as possible. “For me it’s a spiritual retreat. I don’t go to meet people and do drugs.”

    Vicki Olds, a magazine editor who lives in San Francisco, said she was thrilled that her New York City vacation coincided with the Burning Beach Ball Festival. Her burn name is Shibumi, which she said means “trained state of mind.” She is a “burning-man Earth guardian,” part of the organization that works to sustain the ecosystem at the site of the big festival in Nevada.

    Dr. Dave Nelson, an eye surgeon who lives in Montauk and Manhattan, is near the age of retirement and was a “virgin” on Friday, meaning he had never experienced a burning event before. After a few hours of mixing and mingling, Dr. Nelson was first in line to be blown up inside of one of several human-sized balloons that a partygoer had started inflating with a vacuum. Hours later, Shibumi had shimmied into Dr. Nelson’s bubble, and the two were engaged in passionate conversation.

    Because the party had only been advertised on the group’s Web site, most of Montauk was not aware of what was happening at Montauk until it was already well under way. “You guys don’t have any idea where you landed, this is like a space pod that came in,” said Kevin Dougherty, who had abandoned his usual post at Liar’s Saloon after a phone-call tip-off that there was a bigger party going on nearby.

Another group of locals arrived after picking up a festival-bound hitchhiker, and were surprised and delighted to find “something to do” on a March night in Montauk.

“This isn’t the type of event we typically handle,” admitted Robert Whalen, the facility’s catering manager. “We really don’t know much about it.”

As of noon on Friday, the party’s success or failure was still up in the air. D.J. MicRage had not yet arrived, and someone was scheduled to show up with sound equipment for the five separate dance floors on a 2:30 p.m. train. “We get the feeling that this is going to be pretty low-key,” Mr. Whalen said.

    “We also get the sense that sex is going to be a pretty big part of this thing,” he said, adding that he had been clued in because “they’re giving out sex toys in the gift bags.”

    Despite the staff’s initial apprehension, however, the event went on peacefully. Police responded to one noise disturbance at 4:30 a.m. on Sunday, and the group complied by turning the music down. A few locals were ejected on Saturday after they were unable to produce walk-in tickets, which were priced at $65 for two nights.

    “It was really a fun event,” said Ms. Bryan. “The group was a delight to work with, and very appreciative of the staff and the facility. They cleaned up after themselves, and left the place as nice as it was when they arrived. The locals were more misbehaved,” she noted, “than any of the guests.”

Russell Drumm Fire-juggling and people inside balloons were typical sights.

    In early March, Montauk still feels more like a fishing village than a resort town, and Mr. Hirsch was pleased that the event contributed to the economy of the hamlet. He said that his guests trickled out to the Shagwong and to O’Murphy’s for food during the day; that Rita’s Stables booked eight trail rides from his customers, and that three other hotels had picked up the group’s overflow. He would be happy to host an event like this one in the future. “It was really a ripple effect,” he said, “for the whole town.”

    In a phone interview on Wednesday, D.J. MicRage said he, too, was pleased with the overall vibe of the event. His biggest mistake, he said, was not advertising on the East End. “It wouldn’t take a whole lot of effort next year to make it a more community-level party,” he said, adding that he had not realized until conversing with some locals that Montauk was “the redheaded stepchild of the Hamptons.”

    He would like to set himself up as “an event planner for more Hamptons-based parties,” he continued, to “spice up some of the more elegant stuff.” If all goes as wished, next year’s party will be more inclusive, spreading throughout the hamlet and including “more family-orientated activities during the day, like face-painting.”