1 part Hedonism, 2 parts Propane
Published September 7th, 2007 in A day in the lifeIf you’ve been wondering where the Underpants have been all this time, they’ve been on fire. I went to Burning Man last week, along with Big Brother, OG and Mo (AKA, the Witty Comment All-Stars, minus starting point guard Wonder Woman, who has a thing against a week without showering.) For those of you who don’t know what Burning Man is, let me try and describe it:
Imagine a small city, 40,000 people large, in the middle of a desert. Perhaps they’re nomads, judging from the tents, RV’s, and portable domes made from pipes. They are peaceful and cooperative despite the harsh environment: in-between the 100-degree heat and zero-visibility dust storms, they share their resources and walk around naked, dirty, and unashamed. (Although they seem to recognize the importance of defending themselves, because in the horizon is what looks like a tremendously large trebuchet constructed out of industrial steel.)
Then the sun goes down, and a whole new crowd comes out. The guys wear outlandish costumes, and the women have somehow become exponentially sexier by putting ON clothes. (Tight, shiny articles of clothing that were apparently made during war-time fabric shortages.)
If the daytime atmosphere is peace, generosity, community and environmentalism, at night that sentiment becomes “Fuck that; let’s light shit on fire.” Anything that can be accessorized by flame is done so. I saw people with fuel tanks in backpacks and open flame six inches over their heads…bike riding. I saw a chick with a flame thrower…on stilts. Dance parties rage all night long as computer-controlled flames blast in intricately timed patterns. Buses roam the playa; most are randomly armored and feature large propane jets wherever they could be strapped on, but some are more artistic, retrofitted to look like giant animals (with jet-based self-defense mechanisms), or the inside of a boudoir, albeit one that’s very well-lit and would never pass safety inspections.
Oh yeah, and that trebuchet? It’s throwing cars a couple hundred feet, for the same reason a dog licks its balls. Because it motherfucking CAN.
It might sound a bit like Mad Max, and it ought to; there’s actually a camp that builds a Thunderdome every year, where people dangle precariously to watch two people in bungee harnesses fight with clubs. If you’ve ever wanted to see your office’s IT guy get kicked in the face by a chick in a tutu and combat boots, Burning Man is your best opportunity.
For a whole week, you spend each night dancing, you barely eat, and you sleep two or three hours a night because that’s how much time you have between sunrise and the point where it gets so hot that your teeth are sweating. Yet you keep going, drawing energy from the people around you, the frenetic beat of music, the surreal environment, and the shitload of energy drinks you consume every evening*. By the end of the week your body, mind and soul are spent, and you’ve probably lost five pounds. In other words, it’s like a marathon without all the tedious jogging.
All in all, it’s not quite my mom’s worst nightmare, but the only thing that’s missing is a camp where I could run the 200m hurdles with a pair of scissors in each hand.
There are pictures to come and many awesome things to describe. Perhaps I’ll intersperse upcoming posts with them, but in the meantime, I’ve got some serious business to discuss, and at this point my Burning Man intro is so long I’ll have to put it in a different post entirely. Expect another post to come post haste.
The Underpants are back, baby! (and significantly dirtier than when we left)
*It’s possible that just people in relationships need the caffeine – single people could be fueled by the hope of oral sex. It certainly helps me get through the work day…
I have wanted to attend Burning Man for over 10 years based on the all the stories, the pictures, and the very notion of a “100% participant-sponsored, participant-created event,” an “experiment in temporary community.” It seems like it would be like walking through a dream or some euphoric fantasy.
However, there is one glaring inconsistency that ALWAYS turns me off to the whole idea: If the event relies on hundreds of volunteers, and requires participants to bring their own food, supplies, art, and music, then why does it cost an average of $222 to attend?
40,000 people @ $222 is 8.88 million dollars. Where does that go? To security? I don’t even think Nevada’s nuclear power plants spend that much on 5 days of security. Where does it all go?
This article from the SF Gate begins to shed some light on the matter, and the answers aren’t pretty:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/19/BURNING.TMP&tsp=1
A history lesson: the paramount communal festival of the last 50 years is without question 1969’s Woodstock Music and Art Fair. But the only reason it ended up with 500,000 people and became such an iconic event is because the promoters eventually decided to break down the fences and let everyone in for free. And even so, most kids in the tri-state area couldn’t make it up to the farm that weekend because they couldn’t get off work.
Now… given that I’ve gained a reputation as an insufferable cynic, contrarian, and curmudgeon over the years, this may just seem like player-hating sour grapes, but I will remain skeptical of any event that still employs the same 40-year-old “I’m OK, you’re OK” flower power rhetoric while quietly raking in millions of dollars. For all of the neo-Marxist righteousness implied by the “sharing,” “respect,” “freedom,” “cooperation,” and other buzzwords of Burning Man, it is nothing more than a grand-scale showcase for idle trust-afarians to put on funny outfits, imbibe exotic substances, and desperately clamber for attention.
You want to create some temporary community? Leave the feather boa and body paint at home next Labor Day and give your $222 to the cashier at Target so she can go camping with her family. Pay it forward, starchild…
That said, I sincerely hope you had a fantasic time. Despite all of my rantings, it does sound like tremendous fun.
You are right. You should not go.
Although, how do you rectify your claims about the festival “raking in millions” when the publicly available financials for the Burningman LLC show that after operating expenses, a few moderately paid full time employees and sustaining a modest contingency fund the remaining millions are given away entirely as art grants for next years event? One pretty painting in a museum might cost 10 million dollars, but 10 million dollars worth of materials that are utilized by thousands of seriously manic mother fuckers is another sight entirely. No one who has ever been says “Where did my 225$ go?” 40′ foot purple giraffes with fire shooting out of their ass aren’t free.
Also, where does your “I’m ok, You’re ok” characterization of burningman rhetoric come from? Did you read the part of Z’s post where he describes how people bounce around on bungie chords in a dome and beat the shit out of each other with clubs while thousands of onlookers scream for blood? You’re ok….provided you knock the teeth out of that fat guy in a Jedi costume.
Any arguement about how the event is pointless, superflous, “for idle trustafarians” or just “people clambering for attention” is essentially identical to the standard off-the-shelf arguement against art and art-funding in general. Yes, burningman, and art in general, are all those things you mentioned, but I still like both. It’s pretty easy to argue that any kind of arts funding is pointless, useless or just money for people who are clambering for attention, but I still enjoy funding all kinds of art because I feel it enriches lives. However, Jesse Helms would agree with you 100%. Personally, I’m glad that a portion of my taxes go towards teaching kids about art and music and I’m glad that a portion of my burningman ticket price goes towards hurling flaming pianos 200 feet. Personally, I prefer flaming piano tosses to concertos. Art serves no real purpose other than the pleasure it generates for the beholder, neither does burningman, so why don’t you go opine at a bunch of jerk faces at the Opera who paid way more than 225$ for their tickets
Also, feather boas aren’t allowed at burningman.
Don’t go.
Ferris: Cameron, what have you seen today?
Cameron: Nothing good.
Ferris: Nothing – wha – what do you mean nothing good? We’ve seen everything good. We’ve seen the whole city! We went to a museum; we saw priceless works of art! We ate pancreas!
Sorry TripleB-Rob, but you remind me of Cameron. Burning Man was straight up fun. I paid about 200 bucks to go. I would pay 4 times that to go again next year. Totally ranked high on my cool-ass-experience-o-meter.
Why did I go to burning man? For the experience. Period. End of story. And I was not disappointed.
I saw a full lunar eclipse while on the back of a tandem bike in the middle of a desert. I heard great music, danced my ass off – literally, and met some pretty cool people that lead at least part of their lives to the beat of a different drum. I saw a double rainbow. I shared drinks with people I will likely never see again. I ran into people that a few years earlier I thought I would never see again. I didn’t shower the entire time. I almost got dreads. I handed out homemade French fries to total strangers at 3am amidst mayhem and madness. I saw the dawning of a new day almost every night. While wandering in the desert I thought, fuckin’ eh I’m hungry. Only to have SuperZ lead us with his nose 1/2 mile into the middle of nowhere to a guy making 100% all beef hotdogs. I experienced my first dust storm. I laughed until I cried at absolutely nothing. I sweated my ass off. I used a portapoddy for 6 days straight and never once had to stand in some bodily fluid in order to use it, and always found TP in them. I bonded with some amigos I don’t see nearly enough and then came home bummed because I live so far away from them. I spent an entire night following a man on acid dressed in a bathrobe for about 10 miles as he bounced from one blinking light on the horizon to another. I roller-skated. I rubbed and was rubbed. I saw 2000lb’s of propane go off all at once in a giant mushroom cloud. My eyebrows were singed. I saw fuckin’ awesome art. I saw the best belly dancer on the planet. My skin aged 10 years in 5 days. I saw one of the few places that actually seemed to be a real “temple.” I’m sad I didn’t get to see it burned. I saw monkeys climbing, people dangling, and begged for more. For some reason I craved bacon. I was involved in more bike wrecks in 5 days than in the rest of my life combined. And and and and and…. now I sound like some spastic schitzo-kid that can’t complete a single thought.
Big Brother & Erica can attest I’ve always identified with Cameron from FBDO, so… your intuitive powers are quite acute, mo. :-)
Listen– I’m genuinely glad everybody had a good time, and I don’t doubt that there are some spectacular things to see up there. I *love* reading these stories, and really would like to have the experience sometime. I’m not bullshitting or being sarcastic about that. I simply have a problem with the way that these people either waste or skim money, and then pretend that this is some utopia outside the bounds of capitalism.
OG, have you read the Chronicle article I cited above? They don’t donate the “remaining millions” to artists. The total funds raised from ‘01-’05 were $296K, of which only $82K went to grants. And numerous accounting errors have been found in their reports. I guarantee you that if this operation were run competently, tickets would be $100 or less, allowing even more people to afford the experience.
FYI, the “I’m OK, you’re OK” rhetoric is all over http://www.burningman.com and I even quoted some of it above. There’s a lot of smug, high-minded righteousness there that just doesn’t add up.
And finally, OG, don’t lecture me about the nature of art or compare me to Jesse Helms. I’ve been voting Democratic and supporting fine and folk art since you were in little league. And not once have I doubted the value of the installations at Burning Man. This has nothing to do with your tax dollars; it’s about your *admission* dollars. With such a small trickle of the money going back to the artists, it’s like paying a cover to a BYOB potluck. But if that’s how you roll, then God bless ya… Have a good time. PT Barnum would be proud.
(And Z, don’t wig out about this. Most bloggers would kill to generate comments like these).
On your mark! Get set…..
Point #1: If somebody can’t afford the ticket all they have to do is volunteer for a day or so and they are in for the week for free. How is that for utopia?
I don’t know about OG, but I read the article and I don’t trust that author any farther than I can throw him. I’m not familiar with the SFGate, but they could have done a better job being objective.
Point #2: There are two ways to pile up cash. Make more of it. Spend less of it. This guy lived in the same shithole apartment for 22 years. Is it beyond belief that he could have actually saved his money by not spending it to redecorate his apartment every two years?
Point #3: He declined to say how much his artifact cost. In other words that jackass reporter doesn’t know what he paid. My guess is the guy that started burning man has traveled. And I know I can get you a genuine Buddha head hand carved that is beautiful and as big as I am for about $600 bucks before the bargaining ever begins in Bali. (How you like all those B’s?) How much do most new couches cost? Oh right… at least a grand.
Point #4: My grandmother’s advice on dating – “If a man has a big house, lots of nice things, and a fancy car, you know one of two things. He is either rich, or up to his eyeballs in debt.” This guy could have finally signed on for one of those credit cards that keep coming in the mail.
Point #5: In multiple places this reporter tries to rag on BM for how little it actually spends on art relative to what other organizations do. I’m sorry, but other organizations don’t organize weeklong events for 40,000 participants in the middle of the damned desert. I have a feeling there are some serious differences in the program costs for burning man vs. “other similar charity organizations ex: New York Foundation for the Arts.” Talk about apples and oranges. I’m sure BM could have probably given a great deal more money to artist if they had only emptied the portapoddies once a day instead of every 6 hours, but thanks… I’ll take one less giant metal carved thing so I can worry less about contracting some jacked-up hippy poop disease.
In other words, that reporter sucks ass. Dance little puppets! Dance!! We don’t know a damned thing about that man’s financial standing, where his money came from, or if he is in fact loaded. Just because a man finally decides to make his shithole apartment livable does not mean that he couldn’t afford to do so years ago or that he is stealing. And in that article there is no explanation of ALL of the cost breakdown. Maybe, just maybe, that other money is being spent on something perfectly reasonable.
Point #5: I don’t want a bunch of MBA’s and attorney’s running burning man. I don’t want the place to have a big ass staff on the payroll. You shouldn’t need a graduate degree, bling-bling resume, or know the secret handshake to be intimately involved with burning man behind the scenes. That is the whole point. With that comes a little bit of sacrifice. Volunteers, unless Mormon and going on their mission trip, are sometimes not the most efficient lot. Mistakes are made. Loose ends are never tied-up. Money can be “wasted” paying salaries that don’t need to be there just as easily. A staff of 30 isn’t wasteful or absurd.
Point #6: Exactly how is it not “100% participant-sponsored, participant-created event,” an “experiment in temporary community.”
I will give you the energy trade-showish thing under the man was not cool and a bad judgment call. I doubt they will make that mistake again though. Really it would have been just fine if those companies had made their own little camps, scratched off their labels, and just set up classes on whatever the hell it is that they made and donated without throwing some brand names around. I mean hell, nobody freaked at the camp giving away the women’s pee-funnel and I’m sure somebody out there sells those things for a profit.
I could go on and on and on. But what it comes down to though is simple. The crowd is the show. The desert is the stage. And every time you look in a new direction that is the curtain going up. When you are there you really want to be apart of that show, or at least I did. Half the time we were tooling around I was trying to think of something really cool to make next year even better and not just for myself, you know… for the little people. Unfortunately all the heat and sensory overload kept any of this little person’s thoughts much deeper than “Look! Shiny!!!” to a minimum.
I will now get off my soapbox and shut down Pandora’s box.
Night, boys.
Right now I feel like the secular, skeptical asshole insulting the Pope in front of a few devout Catholics on their way home from a profoundly moving mass.
Whatevs. Mo, here are a few comments and counterpoints:
1. http://www.sfgate.com is the web site for the San Francisco Chronicle.
2. Regarding Point #1: Unfortunately, volunteering for a does *not* get you a free week pass (http://www.burningman.com/participate/volunteer_faq.html#h). Instead, the site says that volunteering is a reward in and of itself.
3. Regarding Points #2-4: It seems much of your objection with the SFGate article stems from its first paragraph, wherein Justin Berton implies (without any proof) that BM founder Larry Harvey has embezzled money in order to redecorate his apartment. I admit that this is a cheap shot and rather shoddy journalism, but the article doesn’t end there. Berton goes on to raise some very troubling issues that frankly nobody here has been able to address yet.
4. Regarding Point #5A: Be careful not to confuse the 2 BM organizations: The Black Rock Arts Foundation (which supports the arts) and Black Rock City LLC (which organizes the actual event in the desert). The former gives only 27 cents on the dollar to artists, and CAN be compared to other non-profits with similar mission statements, apples to apples. The latter seems to specialize in burning money as well as the Man, as evidenced by its latest “Afterburn” report (http://afterburn.burningman.com/06/financial_chart.html). My favorite is the $420K paid for honoraria (???). And OG, I can’t seem to find the “remaining millions” donated to the arts. Can you help me out?
5. Regarding Point #5B: Black Rock City LLC spends $2.2 million on payroll alone. That is not for a “big ass staff,” but neither is it for volunteers. That is a small staff of people paying themselves quite handsomely and passing the costs off to you. “Not the most efficient lot” indeed.
6. Regarding Point #6: I’m not arguing that non-participants sponsor BM; I’m saying that participants sponsor it WAY TOO MUCH. If it’s 100% participant-created, then what else do participants need to sponsor besides bare logistical costs and the Man itself?
I don’t mean to be the Grinch Who Stole Burning Man here. I’m just asking you to think a little bit about the realities behind it now that you’re back on Planet Earth. If it is 100% participant-driven, maybe we could petition BM management to run its operations more efficiently so that more people could come up. We *could* do this, you know, because you’re right: the crowd is the show. The people are what make this thing run. We need to make it even better, because right now, there may not be any bling past the gate, but you sure need some to get in, don’t you?
I actually like the fact that it isn’t free, or even much cheaper. I was there last year, and 40k people are plenty. Much more and the insanity would have been overwhelming.
Nearly $1mill for BLM fees? wow, it sounds like the government is taking their cut too. There is no way that the weekly rental fees for that wasteland come to that much.
I’m going to go again, but I’m going to have to really build something that makes people go wow, and I don’t have that yet, but it may employ a windmill and flywheel for propulsion and of course flame throwers.
Rest assured I am neither catholic nor trying to save your soul. I really just think that article was more inflammatory than informational, and not just in the first couple of paragraphs. In multiple places the writer makes an implication or some half-assed statement and then completely fails to fill it out. I don’t care if you are writing about Burning Man or how to best scramble eggs. That gets my hackles up.
I have a question for you, or anyone for that matter, regarding this 27 cents on the dollar thing. Please forgive my ignorance on this point, but are they saying that for every dollar the artist spends of his own money, BRAF gives the artist about 27 cents? Or that 27 cents of every dollar that comes out of BRAF goes to artists, and the other 73 cents go elsewhere? There is a big difference in those numbers, the implications behind them, and the questions that they raise. I’m not being a jackass. I really am asking.
Pokey, if you work on that project on this side of the pond and need a decent worker bee… pick me. I’d be super happy. And I know this is completely unreasonable, but I was really into magnets as a kid. I think it would be super fun to do something with giant electromagnets. I have a thousand completely unrealistic ideas. Granted we might kill a couple of people with pace-makers, but ….
Wow. Let me just say…wow.
If I may stupidly add my two cents: Burning Man is a really awesome concert/dance party; not much more. It’s nice that while people are there they tend to share a lot of food, beer and genetalia, but I disagree with anyone that feels that Burning Man contributes to the greater good. You can’t have a “Green Man”, when the entire week is an homage to the burning of fossil fuels.
Frankly, I think that if someone is putting on a huge concert in the desert and wants to make money off of it, then more power to them. But it should be transparently so, and I agree with Rob that the organizations behind Burning Man and many of the attendees (particularly the older ones reliving the 60’s) try and project that BM is a faux-utopian, “I’m okay and you’re okay” society, and that to make money off of Burning Man would be despicable. After all, you’re not allowed to sell anything there, right? So if the LLC and its staff are making money, I think that’s their right, but there is some hypocrisy there.
Mo, if the BRAF is giving 27 cents on the dollar, it means 73 cents of every dollar they earn is being spent elsewhere, and not going to the artists. That definitely has the ring of shenanigans to it.
To avoid rambling further, I think the organization behind Burning Man wants to make money, just like I think the people going to it want to get high, get laid, and see shit on fire. All of which are perfectly good reasons. Anyone who says differently is just trying to rationalize it.
That being said, Rob, paying money for hedonism does not make one a “trustafarian” (though I think you knew that was a bit theatrical). I think that most of the people there spend a lot of the year saving and planning so they can attend, just like other people save up all month so they can afford a ticket to a Beastie Boys show.
Hopefully that made sense. All I know is I go away for a weekend and I come back to find my Underpants aflame. Don’t forget people, we’re all united in our desire for blowjobs and grilled cheese sandwiches.
Enter the raisonneur! This is why you run this thing. And you’re right– I *was* kind of being dramatic when I talked about the trustafarians. It’s fun to say “trustafarian.”
I still wonder why I would have to pay Larry Harvey & Co. to see other people’s art installations. It’s like selling tickets to Coachella, not hiring any bands, and telling all the ticketholders to bring their own guitars & amps.
But oh well. I’ve said what I need to say.
You are a kind and just moderator, z.
OK you literate people. I looked up raisonneur AND trustafarian and neither were at merriam websters online. Raisonneur I later found as meaning one fond of arguing.
I did want to say that I found BM (Burning Man, and not bowel movement) to be a place where non-Californians could live a bit of nuttyness.
The 24-yr-old hacky-sacker who calls you “brah” and sublets his $800K condo so he can follow Dave Matthews around the country in his high-end Subaru is a…
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trustafarian.
And I meant “raisonneur” in a “wisest character in the whole play”/”guy who speaks for the author” kind of way.
I read that article when it first came out but I didn’t mention it in my reply becasue it is totally irrelevant. It is a horribly written article where the author is either ignorant of, or intentionally blurs the important distinction between the Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF), and the Burningman Orginization (BORG). The BRAF is an auxilliary art funding charity that was started and funded by the BORG to facillitate art outside of the burningman event. BRAF funding does not generally go to the art at burningman itself. It is kind of a “spread the weirdness” propaganda wing of the BORG. It’s the Communist International to the BORG’s Kremlin. Here is a link to the projects that the BRAF has funded:
http://www.blackrockarts.org/projects
Notice that most of that shit is not at Burningman. Some of the BRAF projects end up at burningman after their installation lifetime is up in the real world, but the vast majority of burningman art is not funded by the BRAF. The big daddy art grants for the 20,000 pound propane explosions, tanker truck semi sculptures and all the truly outrageous only-at-burningman shit come directly from the BORG. The author of that article attempts to discredit the BORG by citing the limp dick funding done by the BRAF, despite the fact that BRAF funding has nothing to do with what is physcially at the burningman event. No one who has ever been to burningman comes away saying “I feel cheated, what did my 250$ go towards?”
Why are you trying so hard to rain on a parade you have never even been to and know nothing about? I think it would be cooler if you spent your time perfecting the jetting for the fire cannon that shoots out of your giant giraffe’s ass. Although, I understand how the whole idea can be a little frightening, I mean, once you put up that freak flag, next thing you know it might be flying too high, and then you are in a yurt wearing a panda costume and blowing all comers…like Z did.
z, i’m not united in your desire for blowjobs.
No, but you play a starring role…
You’re right, I don’t know why I even bother. Why spend even a second wondering where my money is going as long as there’s pretty, pretty fire? It’s fun being bourgeois.