The Fucking Unicorns, Taste the Rainbow, Imagination Machine, Fucking Awesome. Rainbows, sparkles, aerial performances, color, music and dancing; The Fucking Unicorns embody some serious fun. These meditated and organized ‘Corns are a group of Burners from Colorado and California who put on great parties, have really good time and are willingly to gift their ridiculous positive energy back to the community. With a core group of about 25 members and about 75 more satellite crew, the Fucking Unicorns put out a great vibe wherever they go. This writer’s first experience with the Fucking Unicorns and their magic was in 2012 at Apogaea, the Colorado regional burn. My feet still have blisters from dancing. Double rainbows with 7000 programmable LEDs? “Fucking Awesome” is right.

Can you taste it?

Boasting 60% more sparkles, and 75% more magic, The Fucking Unicorns “Taste the Rainbow Party” on February 15th at The Oriental Theater definitely delivered. Boy-Howdy! Great music, great performances, and a radically inclusive theme were just a few things the ‘Corns provided. The party was the group’s second annual fund-raiser dance party. The theme of the party was, appropriately, Roy G. Biv, the rainbow. Instructed to wear a monochromatic outfit, partygoers were to trade items with each other in search of the rainbow. The first 100 colors to prance through the door received an authentic Fucking Unicorns Horn, which was said to come without causing harm to any unicorns in the making. I sure hope that is true, because I was lucky enough to obtain one of these authentic horns, and my Gods, it is a beauty.

The Imagination Machine, the Fucking Unicorns artcar, is built on the three-quarter ton truck affectionately referred to as “Trucky” by the Fucking Unicorns, brings the party wherever it goes.

Trucky needs some love to make it to Apogaea, this year; he needs new suspension new brakes as well as some general mechanical maintenance.

An interview with the Chancellor of Bling, Slim Jim Dandy on who the Corns are, what the kickstarter is all about and the journey to the Playa and to Apogaea:

BAR: For those that don’t know anything about you guys, who are the Unicorns, what are you all about, what is your back-story?

SJD: I came into the group in ’09, [The Fucking Unicorns] it’s a split of Grass Valley kids, which is near Tahoe, CA, and Golden, CO. Two of these people went to college together, they merged and brought their two groups of friends together and they had a couple different names and then one year, based of a shirt that someone was wearing that had two unicorns fucking they said “Hey let’s be Fucking Unicorns”. Since then the group has grown, we’ve really haven’t had much of a presence until we decided we wanted to make an artcar and we started throwing parties and built our artcar and had a big camp at Apogaea last year.

BAR: Ya I was at Apogaea and I danced my ass off at your artcar so I wondered if that was the first time, I hadn’t seen or heard of you guys before that.

SJD: The year before I posted paperboard signs and stakes and wrote Fucking Unicorns this way so that our campmates could find us and a couple people came over an found us and all we had was a pop-up for shade that covered our kitchen and some seats, and they asked “What are you guys doing?” and we said “Nothing”.

But they’ve been around for a while and on the Playa we had our own little camp. We had a lot of people there and we had tarps with our name written on them and some signs out front, but we really didn’t do much.

A couple years before I was there, they had a spot on Esplanade and had a silent disco with wireless headphones and they made a bunch of hoops and horns.

BAR: Do you know what year that was?

SJD: ’07?

BAR: I ran into a silent disco in ’07 and I didn’t have headphones and I thought what the hell is going on?

So how many Unicorns are there?

SJD: There’s 20-25 core in Denver and in Colorado that hang out and see each other on a regular basis. And then there’s extended Unicorns, we had a crew from Santa Fe that camped with us in ’09. If you camp with us once then we consider you to be a Fucking Unicorn in soul, but the core group is 20-25. They are whom we talk to and hang out with any see on a regular basis and plan our parties with. There’s about 100 extended.

BAR: It looks like you took a more serious approach with the Kickstarter video this year than last year, which last year I have to admit I watched over and over just to laugh my ass off. What pushed you in that direction?

SJD: Our Friend Charlie Smith is our videographer and last year we kinda threw it together with a plan to be silly, this year we had two rounds, the first round was the video that came out after the Unicorns party, which included photos and was a little drawn out, and we wanted to liven it up we wanted be concise and to the point. The first time we knew what we wanted to do, but we didn’t have specific needs, then we built the Imagination Machine, we took it to the Playa, we brought it back and things were broken, this time we knew the specific things we were asking for. We need a new clutch, new transmission, some electrical work, and we want to slowly move over to a bigger, better vehicle.



The Fucking Unicorns are very organized, we have board meetings once a month where we focus on our plan and our strategy and we figure out what we want to do and where we want to go with the truck. We look at what we can budget, how much we can raise with our fundraiser parties. Out of that came the plan for a bigger and better truck, and to fix the things that are broken.

BAR: How successful were you guys in 2012? What were the good & the bad? What was memorable?

SJD: 2012 was great, we raised our Kickstarter, and we had our first party. We raised all the money to build the truck. The lights were the most expensive things, and we wanted to have a good truck. We didn’t want to go on the Playa with a rainbow on one side; we wanted it on both sides. We wanted it to be a full rainbow; we didn’t want it to be a short rainbow. We got the boom with the aerial rig off the back, which was awesome, and as you saw at Apogaea it works, but it still was only one side of the truck.

On the way to the Playa we were towing it with a truck, we bought a tow bar to attach to the front of the unicorn truck, we welded connector points on and attached it to the tow truck. We had a break machine that connected to the tow truck, that when we hit the brakes on the tow truck it would push a hydraulic press foot that was like a droid or a robot, that would push a foot down on the brakes of the Unicorn truck.

When we were slowly turning into a parking lot we broke the tow bar, the truck was fine, so we had to drive it the rest of the way. Trucky is an old ass truck and the clutch went out before we even left for the Playa, so we were shifting it using timing, getting the RPMs right and slowly easing the stick into position to shift the gears. Getting it out there we drove it that way the whole way. On the way back we were going about 25mph up the mountain passes which took a long time, it’s an old truck it has wear and tear. We did a lot of work on it last year we put a new radiator in, we put a new thermostat in, and we did some major axle work. It’s like a money pit but an awesome money pit, and it’s slowly getting up to speed to where it’s going to be fine. When we drove it to Apogaea we found out some of the lights were out, break lights, so we had to re-wire them.

BAR: Did you get pulled over?

SJD: No.

BAR: That’s good

SJD: We had a trail car on the way to the Playa as well, after it broke off of the towing car. So, we have a new radiator, the brakes are good, so once we have the transmission and clutch rebuilt, that will be good. The engine is strong. We are going to beef up the suspension. After we do this round of stuff it should be pretty strong, strong enough to get us to the Playa and Apogaea this year.

BAR: Are you taking it to any other regional’s besides Apo?

SJD: Probably not. 99% not, because Apo and the Burn are our main goals, and we don’t want it to break if we drive it somewhere else, and then not be able to get it to the Burn.

BAR: All right. Is there any other information you want to put out there regarding the car? Regarding the Kickstater?

SJD: We have less than 3 days left on the Kickstarter.

BAR: You’re about halfway there?

SJD: We’re at about 2,400 dollars. We’d love to finish it. With everything we do we will just make the Imagination Machine bigger and better. None of the money goes to our camp or our infrastructure, it all goes to the truck.

BAR: Very cool. Thank you, I look forward to seeing the Imagination machine on Playa and at Apo this year.

Help the Imagination Machine make it to Apogaea in Colorado in June, and back Home in the fall!!!

Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1554537122/the-imagination-machine-f-king-unicorn-art-car?ref=live

Last Years Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1554537122/the-f-king-unicorn-art-car?ref=live

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Fucking-Unicorns/151069041679333?fref=ts