“Arcosanti Cairn & Ploy Girl" (From the book "Dementia Blues")
Arcosanti, Cordes Junction, Arizona
Spring, 2009
A circus performer takes a drag off the pipe. Smells like Skunk-Weed to me.
“We’re going to drop Acid tonight,” say the videographer, his voice high with enthusiasm. He sounds like a small child.
“I’ll take pictures of your eyeballs,” I say with no affect at all in my voice.
What I’m really thinking is “Great. Just what I don’t need. To be around people doing drugs. This isn’t my party anyways. I’m just here to shoot the troupe’s performances that are part of the celebration of Soleri’s 90th birthday. Now, all I just want to do is just drive home.”
[I’m a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. Lot of years sober, but it doesn’t matter. Old saying: You hang out at a barbershop long enough, you’re eventually going to get a haircut. And it’s a whole lot more about me than it is about them.]
I make a quick exit from the stoners and walk around Arcosanti for a while, getting my bearings. Almost stepped on a rattler, which was actually kind of fun. The snake and I saw each other at about the same time, so no one got hurt. I hiked to the other side of the canyon, finding its rim full of small stone cairns, presumably made by the visitors and residents of Arcosanti.
Arcosanti is visionary architect Paolo Soleri’s urban experiment in the desert. They were going great guns throughout most of the 1970’s, pouring concrete, building foundries, constructing clay ovens, making living spaces, creating Soleri’s dream of a minimalist city, without cars, that would eventually house over 5000 people, when everything came to a screeching halt one summer night in 1978.
Now this is what I heard from a guy who was there. I hear it just a few hours ago, while waiting in line, in the dark, to get a half-cooked shish-ka-bob. Another guy, who I think is still on Arcosanti’s board of directors, came up at some point and listened, and spoke a little, but didn’t contradict the first guy. We all see the world through our own lens, but this guy’s vision seemed clear to me, and I didn’t sense he had an ax to grind.
The residents of Arcosanti were building their little city but they needed to raise more funds. They had a couple of small music festivals the previous two years, but they didn’t make much money. Then this one guy who lived at Arcosanti, and who had been a bit of a music promoter before he arrived, suggested they do a big festival. Todd Rundgren, Jackson Browne and others would play. The guy I talked with, (let’s call him Roy), seemed skeptical of the plan.
“I thought it was a bad idea at the time,” Roy said.
I think it was the second day of the festival, and many more people showed up then they had prepared for. They had already filled a freshly mowed field with cars and they had no place to put the huge line of autos that were impatiently waiting at the edge of the property. Roy suggested that they just park on the dirt road that led from the Interstate to Arcosanti, but others said to just have them park in a lower field. That field hadn’t been mowed and was high with grass. They parked hundreds of cars there. Time passed. The music played. Then multiple hot mufflers caught the field on fire. And most of the cars burned. No explosions like in the movies. Just acrid smoke, tall flames and melted steel.
“All the Arcosanti residents made a big circle around the burning cars, for many visitors wanted to get back to their cars and get their valuables, but it was just too dangerous. I guess close to a 500 cars burnt that day,” said Roy.
“Little less than that,” said the member of the board.
“Yea, probably so. For months we pulled burned wreaks up that hill,” said Roy, pointing to the east.
“It was horrible. But the worst thing is that it cost us a fortune. For we had insurance for the first parking lot, that one we had mowed,” he continued, “but the bottom lot was not covered by insurance. The community had to pay for all those cars. That’s why you haven’t seen many new buildings at all since then. For over thirty years, all the extra money has been going to settle those debts. It was just a couple years ago, when the last payment was made. Isn’t that right?” said Roy.
The Board Member nodded.
“Wow,” I said. I was completely gob smacked. I had no idea.
“Here’s the irony,” Roy said, “We were trying to build a city without cars and it was the cars that brought us down.”
It’s getting late. The party continues at the Big Vault. I took some pictures of Ploy, a techno band from Tucson and their dancers, and I even swayed some to the boom-boom-boom of the electronic beat, but as I thought hours earlier: This isn’t my party. I’m just a hired gun with a camera. And this is a barbershop of sorts.
I’m sleepy. I’m lying on top of my sleeping bag, inside of the Pathfinder. I’m feel pretty good, actually. It’s been a very interesting night. But tomorrow, I’m not going to hang out with the Arco alumni or with the troupe. I think I’ll go to Coalmine Canyon and hike around with Bozo. Coalmine’s only a couple hours north. And maybe I’ll even hit the Grand Canyon on the way back to Arcosanti. I did commit to shooting tomorrow’s performance, but I didn’t commit to hanging out with the tribes. Like they say in the rooms: Sobriety has to be your number one priority. You don’t have to tell me twice. Ok. Maybe twice, but not three times.
I start to drift off to sleep, listening to the driving techno-beats of Ploy, just over there. Enjoying them from a safe distance. A safe sober distance.
[Addendum: I did get contacted by an 'Arconaut' who corrected me on a few of my facts. According to this source, The Car Fire was paid off after 10 or 15 years, that much construction happened after The Car Fire, and that the blaze was just one of many setbacks. It appears a much greater loss came with the death of Colly Soleri from cancer in 1983. "The power behind the throne'" was how she was described. Bottom line, from my somewhat-sympathetic outsider's viewpoint, is that Arcosanti has never fully live up to its big dream. I have big dreams and the best ones are ones that have come true. I like the ones that I am still striving for, but I really love those dreams that have come to pass. And it's sad that Arco-ville is not Arco-city.]
