Red Pass Dry Lake: Proto-Burning Man

From photo batch review, May 2026. Red Pass dry lake near Baker, California, early 1990s.

I think this was mostly my idea. We took several vehicles out to Red Pass dry lake near Baker — that flat, alkaline expanse in the Mojave that looks like someone flattened the world. We brought a keg of Guinness. Chris brought a case of Tomales Bay oysters.

At night, military helicopters circled us. We made them jealous.

Everyone brought drums. We had a full drum circle.

At some point Minsoo started chanting: “Juice, juice, orange juice…”

I think of this as my great contribution to what would later be called “Doof” history — the term for the kind of communal desert event that evolved, in San Diego and Southern California, into something related to Burning Man. We weren’t doing Burning Man yet; Burning Man was a small beach event in San Francisco that I wouldn’t find out about for a few more years. But the elements were there: the dry lake, the keg, the drums, the helicopters, the chanting.