COWTOWN CHRONICLES

Thursday, September 18, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Cowtown Chronicles

Planet X

Pop.: 2

Industry: Pottery , painting

Nearest city: Reno-Sparks (pop. about 300,000), 115 miles north

Distance to Las Vegas: 550 miles

Talk of the town:

Well, actually, town's eight miles away in the Gerlach/Empire metropolis (pop. about 600), where there are three bars and a post office but no grocery store. But Planet X, owned by John and Rachel Bogard, is a community unto itself: "way off the grid," solar-powered, industrious.

"We don't have our pulse on the town [of Gerlach]," John says, "because we just got back from Maine." There, they painted lobsters. And now they're making pots to bring to the Candy Dance in Genoa next weekend. After that there's a winter show in Reno and then a show back out at the Planet at Christmastime.

"Then we'll take a sojourn to Planet Mex in Baja," John says.

John started Planet X Pottery in 1974, and now it has three galleries. "We're a big oasis," he says.

But there's a cloud hanging over the planet these days--a dust cloud, that is, complements of the Burning Man festival, held a few weekends ago on the Black Rock Desert. The Man, which sprouted funky and small in 1986 in San Francisco, moved to the desert and exploded in popularity. Now it draws about 40,000 people, who each pay about $200. Now the organizers are trying, without much luck, to get permission to store their "burned-out cars and junk" on the desert year-round. There's also some water rights tussle. During the festival, the reveling hordes trample the fragile desert. "Once they leave, the whole desert lifts up," John says. He doesn't sound like a fan. "They do bring some economy to town," he says, but they mostly bypass his place because it's not on the way. Or maybe they're broke after paying the entry fee. "It's kind of like a high-end refugee camp," John says.

Of course, if they did start coming by Planet X to drop some cash, he wouldn't be displeased. "Anybody can be bought out," he says wryly.--Heidi Walters