DELIVERY AVAILABLE Box and mattress VALLEY-WIDE Walter from p 14 Bunk-Bed-Frame with mattress $ $ 309 529 2pc sectional Choice of fabrics 4pc bedroom set 5 drawer chest $ 639 $ 439 T-$119 F-$139 Q-$169 K- $289 Twin Mattress w/ 6” Foam $ 7995 $ 139 CHESTs Starting from sustainable and be able to thrive going forward,” Strawn says, “But we haven’t forgotten about Burning Man.” After all, it’s where it all began for Walter Productions. The Origins of Walter the Bus Strawn first attended Burning Man in 2007 with his wife, Mary, and their two daughters after learning about the event years before. What they encountered at the festival — from gorgeous large-scale art pieces and roaming art cars called “mutant vehicles” to the vibrantly costumed char- acters occupying the Black Rock Desert playa — inspired them. “We were all just blown away by the scale of everything and the amazing art there,” he says. “We had this wild experi- ence of taking our kids to Burning Man, and that planted the seed that we were going to go back.” And he wanted to create a mutant vehicle to bring with them. Art cars are nothing new. Mobile art $ 139 CALL FOR PRICING mon-THU: 9AM - 7PM fri: 9AM - 7PM sat: 9AM - 6PM sun: 10AM - 5PM 3330 w Van Buren St • Phoenix • 602-272-0034 (NE Corner of 35th Ave & Van Buren) *prices are subject 16 WESTSIDEFURNITURE.COM pieces have been a staple of the festival since the ’90s. Outside of the playa, the practice of turning a car into a drivable canvas goes back to the 1960s, when hippies painted their rides or Latinos created lowrider culture. Locally, you could see art cars at First Friday, including the Burner-owned Bunny Van — a vintage pickup resembling a giant rabbit’s head. True to the Burner principle of partici- pating rather than spectating, Strawn wanted to create a gigantic mutant vehicle of his own. He already knew where to get the chassis. Years prior, he’d stumbled upon a 1963 Walter Motor Truck Company airport crash truck at a heavy machinery graveyard inside the Gold King Mine in Jerome while attending a gathering of Volkswagen bus enthusiasts. It was used at Luke Air Force Base decades ago and had seen better days, but Strawn thought it was the perfect raw material. “It was old, broken down, left for dead, but it was a monster. Just this huge thing,” Walter Productions Mona Lisa at the Walter Where?House. he says. “It had a lot of potential to become a mutant vehicle.” Strawn traded his 1979 Volkswagen Westfalia Camper with the crash truck’s owner for the 30-foot-long rescue vehicle and eventually had it moved to the Valley. He recruited longtime friend Rob Larson, a vehicle engineering safety consultant, to build what became Walter the Bus. The two assembled a motley crew of friends, mechanics, artists, and fabricators to work on the project over the next year and a half. “It was all these people, some profes- sionals, some just friends who knew how to fabricate or knew sound, knew lighting, knew electronics. And if they didn’t know how to do something, they learned as we went along,” Strawn says. “We all just started hanging out together and creating this thing.” The art car debuted at Burning Man in 2009 with a crew of 15 to 20 people at the first version of Camp Walter. Strawn says the bus was a “work in progress” that looked “more like a single-cab pickup.” “We built it as far as we could [and] assembled some of the final pieces on playa,” he says. “People loved it and we just had a blast driving him around. I think it really solidified the commitment of that very small core team to make him better.” They kept making improvements, adding a full roof, more LEDs, and bamboo flooring by 2010. Walter the Bus started making appearances throughout Arizona, including the APS Electric Light Parade along Central Avenue and the Buses by the Bridge event in Lake Havasu City. Strawn and the Walter crew were bit by the art car bug, and created Big Red in 2012. It was also a hit. Ruvi Wijesuriya, an ambassador for Walter Productions and a longtime Burner, remembers being impressed by the art cars. “I saw these giant vehicles out on the playa and had no idea they originated in Phoenix,” he says. “It was just incredible. The fact it was done by ordinary people like me with day jobs and >> p 18 SEPT 1ST–SEPT 7TH, 2022 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com
