Burning Man?

Seems like something so far past it's original premise that it's like the late 80s/90s Grateful Dead Show with the tie-dye/Shakedown bullshit "comuuuuuuity" dominating whatever the actual scene may have originally been.

But I'm sure for those who go it's still a crazy good party.

Whooo.

place is hot as hell and absolutely crawling with cops and vultures

so yeah; a lot like 90's dead lot

bit if'n you like shiny things, and drugs that mostly have numbers for names; it's ground zero

Ronnie Rondell Jr - who was famously set alight for the front cover of Pink Floyd's iconic Wish You Were Here album cover - has died at the age of 88.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c05e0z9lj3mo

Hope he has fun.  If i ever went, I'd definitely stop by Darrell Lemaire's place outside Reno. 

https://erowid.org/culture/characters/lemaire_darrell/

"Picture this: it’s pre-tech boom San Francisco and the City is overflowing with artists, hippies, and free-thinkers. Into this comes the Cacophony Society, “a randomly gathered network of free spirits united in the pursuit of experiences beyond the pale of mainstream society,” according to Michael Mikel, one of the Cacophony Society’s founders. Influenced by the Dadaists, Surrealists, and Situationists, the Cacophony Society was a proponent of the “free university.” They also had an extensive mailing list and each month they’d invite members to participate in fun and unusual activities – like exploring architecture, putting on plays, or dressing up and having adventures around San Francisco.

Larry Harvey was a member of the Cacophony Society, and in 1988 he invited Michael to attend his first effigy burning at the as yet-unnamed event at Baker Beach. The following year Larry asked Michael to help publicize the solstice gathering through the Cacophony Society’s mailing list, and thus the event became the newly minted “Burning Man” in their newsletter. Attendance shot up to 300."

https://presidio.gov/explore/blog/then-now-burning-man-at-baker-beach
__________________________________________________________________

I was one of those 300 people, as my friend and fellow holographer, Louis Brill, wrote the Cacophony Society newsletter. At Louis's urging, me and my roommates went down to the beach to see some crazy guy burn a statue for summer solstice (at that time I lived on 28th and California, which had easy access to Sea Cliff / Baker Beach). I remember it was cold. The next year I went back to Baker Beach (more people this time) to help tug on a rope and then also helped erect the man on the barge (in the Marina). I never went to the desert.

^ I'm in that 1990 pic

I lived in apartment on the Great Highway in 90. Some friends from out of town were visiting and they went to the Haight, scored some L and came back to our home base. They went on a beach adventure and came back hours later telling tales of a burning man on the beach. They accidentally ended up at burning man dosed to the gills. 

Went just about every year from 99 to 08. Barlow used to go back then and to my knowledge is the only person from the Dead inner circle that went. It's strange that he publicly stated that he stopped going because he was frustrated about all that energy just going into a party and thought it should go into something that would help change the world the exact same criticism leveled at the Dead. Never ran into him.

Went to a 25 year anniversary party of the big camp we built in 2000 over July 4th not out on the playa. 90% of my friend group to this day is connected to building those camps. The thing that makes it different from any other event/concert is that the people that go are also the entertainment. Every other event has a clear line between paid entertainers and paying attendees who come to see the entertainers. Burning Man is the only place that line doesn't exist. It is better to think of it as blank slate where a 100,000 people gather and compete with each other to see who can build the most amazing experience. It can be as simple as bringing home made pickles and driving around and giving them to random strangers or building a full on outdoor night club in the most challenging environment in the desert  and spending $100,000 of your money you raised to bring it to life. My camps budget was $10k way back in the day and what they build out there now dwarfs that. B Man org does sponsor some of the art but almost all of that goes large sculpture artists. 

Still have friends who go every year and it's still exactly the same as when I went only more people. We are obsessed with the idea that once things go on for a while they get co-opted, but that hasn't happened with B Man because all the organizers provide is the layout of where you camp, porto potties (the guy who took that contract in the late 90's is now a retired multimillionaire) and ice (ice sale proceeds go to the school district of the neighboring town). 

What ruins most scenes is once it gets popular it attracts all the wrong people who are just there to get fucked up and or fuck shit up, but those kinds of people become very unhappy very quickly at B Man because the great equalizer is the place it is held which is the most unforgiving environment on the planet. If you don't have your shit together you will have a very unpleasant time since you are camping on dry wall dust on a huge plain that routinely gets 50 mph winds. It's hot in the day and at around 5000 feet cold at night. 

It's a uniquely American story where a cab driver from SF decides to burn an effigy on the beach because his girlfriend broke up with him and turns that into the best party on earth where people fly in from all over to join in. I don't go anymore because it is just too damn much work. My days of cleaning bass bins with a toothbrush for weeks after the event are over, that and it is now the biggest RV rental event in America surpassing the Daytona 500. That mens an RV that cost me $3k to rent 25 years ago (split between six people) now goes for $10k and up. 

Anyway it's the greatest party on earth nothing else like it. 25 Years ago me in the middle.

VERY hot down there right now.   Not a good environment.

An acquaintance on Facebook today. He's a photojournalist but doesn't take his cameras with him. He's been going for many years, keeps going back.

Checking in safe from Burning Man.

Sadly the windstorm caused widespread damage in the city.
The wind was clocked officially at 45 miles/hour, but all agree the gusts were much stronger.
A camp across the street made up of 10-12 popups was turned into a pile of twister metal.
A tall tower at Alternative Energy Zone came down.
Lots of bent poles and torn shade cloth on my ride around the block.
Our camp fared well thanks to long carriage bolt anchors and ratchet straps holding everything down.
No reports of injuries, but my info is limited.

Tough way to launch Burning Man 2025, but we will rebuild!

>>>those kinds of people become very unhappy very quickly at B Man because the great equalizer is the place it is held which is the most unforgiving environment on the planet<<<

kxla with the perspective.

That makes sense. Good post.

>>>The wind was clocked officially at 45 miles/hour,

The picture is from 2000 which was the second worst weather year only to be beat by the great flood a few years ago. Had sustained 60 mph winds. My friend almost flew away like Dorthy trying to hold our very small tarp down. A lot of twisted metal that year. The surrounding mountains were snow capped when the sun finally came out. 

Paul Oakenfold who is an international star DJ played at our camp that year. He was playing his acetate dubplates in the windy rain storm and at one point the needle just went right across the record. He wasn't used to those conditions and after that year we built wind proof booths for the DJ's. 

>>>Understand the reference to the 80's/90's GD scene<<<

Yeah, I think that was a bad analogy.

kxela's post defined the situation in a way that made it pretty clear that I was off-base there. In truth I know very little about the Burning Man experience except for what some friends who were early participants said about how it had changed, with more & more people attending and needing tickets and such.

Imagine that, an absolute conclusion based on limited actual knowledge. Guilty as charged.

I suppose if the late-era Grateful Dead had just played in inhospitable hellscapes maybe the parasitical shitshow wouldn't have developed. Or maybe that's all there would have been.

Either way, it's pretty clear that I don't know shit about what actually goes on out there in the desert every summer, except that it takes a level of dedication to participate that I clearly have never had.

I hope that whatever it is, it carries on for a long time to come.

Had the opportunity to play guitar in the gospel choir band (would have loved it), but the costs, dust, wear and tear were just too much.  So I got hired to drive RV's down to Reno, that then got rented out to Burning Man goers.  We flew back a week later and drove them back to Portland.  I wrote a chorus about it before driving down, everybody was singing it when I arrived for the initial drive, LOL.  Now that i'm in a band again, had to write a bunch of verses.  It's pure twang; 

(I sing it differently now, but it's the same song)

^ "...ok now, second verse, same as the first....."

Surprisingly, there's some good Thai food in Reno midtown... if you are stuck there. And a good breakfast joint, Great Full Gardens.

Just to be clear Lance it is way different than the real early days a few years before my time when there was really no organization and everyone just camped around the man in a haphazard fashion. The founders really never liked the ravers even back then they made the ravers set up miles away from everyone which was no problem because people would just get in their cars and drive out there. That led to someone getting run over in their tent as someone drove back from the rave. Back in those days they also had things like drive by shooting camp where you could shoot at targets as you drove by in your car. 

Then a few years before my time they started laying out the roads in the big U shape with the Man in the middle of the U. That is when it got on the radar of police agencies. At first is was fine but as the years went on everyone wanted their pound of flesh. So you had two counties out there with their sheriffs and then the Feds started going since it's on BLM land. It is a total money shakedown for most people they bust out there. On your way there you have to drive through the reservation and now you have res police pulling people over for no reason and ripping everything out their cars/trucks/rv's looking for drugs. With just a little bit of awareness you can avoid the police. The thing that will get you busted more than anything is weed since it's on Federal land it's illegal and they will bust for that. They also have undercover art cars run by cops that ask people to donate drugs for a ride and then bust them. Sucks but no different than the undercover cop with long hair and tye die that busted me in Providence for an open beer. 

I would say the biggest change since I started going is you have cell coverage out there now which in my opinion sucks. That brought the influencers and also just killed the ability to go out and find random shit like a grand piano with an opera singer at sunrise. Now everyone is on a schedule and texting their friends. 

There is also a very dark side to the event. My friend used to camp with a bunch of paramedics who would stay for a week after the event. They would almost always find dead people who had wandered out into the desert and never made it back to the party and most years someone will run into the giant bon fire of the Man burning that is so big it creates it's own wind tornadoes. When they do that it doesn't leave a body behind to find. Another friend had big 100 person tent that was open to public and someone hung themselves in there, and it has absolutely attracted men who are only there to sexually assault women.  The B Man org does a very good job of keeping all of that out of the press.

Damn.

It sounds like hell on earth to me, but then I think staying anywhere that doesn't have 24-hour room service is sketchy.

I'm soft.

It sure seems like there's a movie in there, either an on-site documentary or a fictional story.

Anybody ever do that?

I haven't been to Burning Man, but I did go to Ranch Rock at Pyramid Lake, which is about 70 miles south of Black Rock City, over Labor Day weekend in 1986, and that was enough psychedelic fun in the high desert for me, thanks. I will say I'm intrigued by BM every year though.

Here are the fire tornadoes 

https://youtu.be/EBkes7WCZDg?si=q75Kio2Hjks3JIYc

I've seen a few that were OK but can't find them now. One that was good took a trust fund lady and a guy from the projects and followed them around, but most of them are just horrible crap filled with woo woo new age idiots talking about the "spiritual" wonderfulness of it all which is just stupid. There is nothing to be learned about the real world by lugging all the shit you need to live for a week out into the desert and then heading back to the real world after the week is over. 

Also you just can't get the scale on film. Things that look huge when you are staging them before you bring them out just look tiny out there. The inner band of the U is 2 miles across at the end points and that entire city is dwarfed by the land scape it is sitting in. 

This helps with the scale:

Day

https://youtu.be/GG-n-kbwB00?si=ifbHrOyg2KAEbBvM

Night

https://youtu.be/3MI8afEsauM?si=uli2oxg1Z2-lK6oe

Anybody ever do that?

Malcolm in the Middle did https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=926616679438247

If I was going, this would be my art car:

Burning Man Wednesday night. Photo by Chris Pietsch

Alan, your art car reminds me of a book I have, Afghan Trucks. It's a beauty.

Nod, I'm happy you heard from your smiling "Extra Son" - that makes things good.

After hearing so much about the current state of Burning Man, I'm a little surprised that there isn't a "rogue" BM happening somewhere else that stays under the radar and is more true to the early ideals.

Or, is there already?

>BM happening somewhere else that stays under the radar

I went to one in 2001? at that Fernwood resort campground in Big Sur. It was a month before BM. I was told it was for the people that organize BM. There wasn't a lot of "art" but it was filled with high level groovy people and great rugs

>>>>Or , is there already? <<<<
The Rainbow Gathering is the event that is more true to the "early ideals" 

>>>Or, is there already?

There is Fourth Julaplaya over the 4th of July every year. No organization, no tickets, and the hot springs are open. It's more like this. There are also regional burns like Unscruz in Santa Cruz https://unscruz.org/ but that is more like a less hectic burningman in county fairground. The have regional burns all over the world. Friend went to one in South Africa. Said it was cool except for the poisonous snakes. 

Starlink Puts the Last Nail in Burning Man’s Coffin

https://gizmodo.com/starlink-puts-the-last-nail-in-burning-mans-coffin-2...

"Whatever embers may still be left burning from the original spirit of Burning Man are holding on for dear life as Silicon Valley tries to put them out for good. The latest dagger delivered to the Bohemia turned billionaire LARPing event comes from above, as Elon Musk’s Starlink is now providing internet connection to those in attendance, according to the Wall Street Journal. A Burning Man regular named Kevin LeVezu, a photographer, runs a camp at the temporary city called iForgot. This year, he’s introduced a new feature at the outpost: WiFi. With a Starlink terminal, he’s set up internet access that requires attendees to offer a sacrifice if they want to use it. According to WSJ, one day, Burners had the option of either taking a shot of whiskey or getting spanked before accessing the internet—a price that was apparently paid frequently

...The reality is that whatever connection Burning Man once had to radical principles of inclusion, self-reliance, and self-expression began rotting away when the Silicon Valley ilk started showing up and co-opting the whole thing, turning it into a luxury event that costs thousands to attend and has created an entire micro-economy around it.."

Strangers Come Together to Deliver Baby Girl at Burning Man

A woman unexpectedly went into labor at the desert festival. Within minutes, a neonatal nurse, an OB-GYN, a pediatric doctor and other attendees filled her camper.

By Alexandra E. Petri

Aug. 29, 2025

Kayla Thompson and her husband, Kasey Thompson, were asleep in their R.V. camper at their first Burning Man festival on Wednesday morning when she awoke in pain. She thought it might be something she ate, or worse, her appendix.

The rain had stopped, but the desert playa that stretched infinitely around their camper was mucky and filled with puddles from a storm that had pummeled the Southwest. Ms. Thompson’s cramping was unrelenting. The couple knew they needed medical help, but they did not anticipate what would happen next: Minutes later, Ms. Thompson was giving birth to their first child, a 3-pound, 9-ounce baby girl, in the bathroom of their camper.

The couple had not been planning for a child and had no idea that Ms. Thompson was pregnant.

“Even the nurses at the hospital were like, ‘You don’t look like you were pregnant at all,’” Ms. Thompson, 37, who works in medical billing, said, adding, “I didn’t have any symptoms.”

After Ms. Thompson delivered the baby, Mr. Thompson ran out of the R.V. and desperately called for help, he said. “I was yelling for anyone to come help us,” Mr. Thompson, 39, who lays tiles, recalled through tears.

Within minutes, a neonatal care nurse, a pediatric doctor and an obstetrician-gynecologist, among other festival attendees from nearby camps, filled their camper. The man who identified himself as an OB-GYN was wearing nothing but his underwear as he helped Ms. Thompson deliver the placenta.

“This should not be happening this way,” Mr. Thompson recalled thinking. He raced around in search of supplies and relied on the community of Burners, many of them strangers from nearby camps, as he and his wife experienced some of the scariest moments of their lives. Had it been an hour earlier or an hour later, Mr. Thompson estimated, the couple would have been stranded at the camp because of the weather.

The Thompsons, who are from Salt Lake City, were among thousands of people who had arrived this week in Black Rock City, a temporary community that pops up each year in the middle of the Black Rock Desert, a driving distance of about 120 miles northeast of Reno, Nev., for the arts and culture festival. They had originally planned to camp in the back of their truck, but Mr. Thompson’s older brother, Jesten, who had attended before, warned them about the desert’s harsh elements and bought a recreational vehicle for them all to stay in together.

As soon as the Thompsons and their crew arrived on Saturday to set up, they were hit with the severe conditions. A seasonal monsoon moving through the area disrupted the opening weekend for the event, which has drawn some 70,000 people in recent years. Dust storms, gusty winds and rains toppled tents, created whiteout conditions, mucked up the desert and briefly shut entry gates.

But things took a more serious turn on Wednesday morning, when Ms. Thompson woke her husband because of her severe pain. Mr. Thompson quickly went to use a portable toilet, and on his way back, his brother met him at the door. “You need to get back there,” he remembered Jesten saying to him. He ran into the camper’s bathroom and could tell from the look on his wife’s face that something was wrong.

Mr. Thompson searched for help. 

Maureen O’Reilly, a 61-year-old nurse from the Bay Area with experience in neonatal critical care, was sitting at her camp next door when she heard about the baby. She immediately taped garbage bags around her shoes to trudge across the mud to the Thompsons’ R.V.

Ms. O’Reilly said that she arrived just as the umbilical cord was being cut. She introduced herself as a nurse and immediately placed the infant on her stomach to provide warmth. Her mind raced as she sat with the small newborn, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but her own body and an old towel to take care of her, she said.
 

“The hardest part was knowing, as a nurse, what can go wrong,” Ms. O’Reilly said. She added, “Having no resources was frightening.”

Ms. O’Reilly asked the campers to turn on the heat as she examined the baby’s mouth and airways, checked her coloring and her posture and monitored her breathing. The baby was small, Ms. O’Reilly said, but she had pink coloring and was crying and breathing well, all good signs. Campers found a heated water bottle to help keep the baby warm. Ms. O’Reilly recalled soothing the newborn, saying, “Come on, baby. It’s OK.”

About 10 to 15 minutes after Mr. Thompson first yelled for help from the R.V., the Black Rock Rangers, a group of event volunteers, arrived in an S.U.V. with a medical team, Mr. Thompson said. The playa’s terrain was too difficult for ambulances to navigate.

The medics drove the baby to a medical tent, and Mr. and Ms. Thompson, along with the OB-GYN in his underwear, followed behind in the back of a random pickup truck, Mr. Thompson said. Once at the tent, the couple were told there was only enough room for the baby to be airlifted to a hospital. Mr. Thompson needed to make a choice: stay with his child and ensure she gets on the Life Flight helicopter, or leave right then to ride with his wife in the ambulance to the hospital in Reno.

“That was the hardest decision of my life,” Mr. Thompson said, crying over the phone. A doctor in the tent assured Mr. Thompson that he would get the baby on the flight, and urged him to go with his wife, he said.

It took them an hour and a half to get off the playa because of the roads, and another two hours from the main road to the hospital in Reno, Mr. Thompson said.

When they arrived, Ms. Thompson was rushed to a room, and Mr. Thompson, wearing his dust-covered Burner clothes, ran to see his daughter in the neonatal intensive care unit. “She was safe and sound, and I was so thrilled,” Mr. Thompson said through tears over the phone. She weighed 3 pounds and 9.6 ounces, and was 16.5 inches long.

The couple were discharged from the hospital on Thursday, Mr. Thompson said. They are staying at a hotel in Reno, while their daughter is gaining her strength in the NICU. All of their belongings are on the playa or back home in Salt Lake City. Lacey Paxman, Mr. Thompson’s sister, started a GoFundMe to help cover medical, lodging and travel expenses as they stay with their daughter and hopefully transfer her to Salt Lake City.
 

“Their world has just been flipped upside down completely,” Ms. Paxman said. She and Mr. Thompson’s parents rushed from Utah to be with them.

As scary as the ordeal was, Mr. Thompson said that he was grateful for the Burners who rushed in to help him and his wife. “That’s what that community is about,” he said. “They will always have such a special place in my heart.”

Mr. Thompson said he and his wife planned to make it back to Black Rock City again one day. Next time, they’ll plan the trip with their daughter.

From "Russian gangstas" to DJs "tweaking on drugs," the EC Twins haven't been having the best first experience at Burning Man.

Will Lavin

August 29, 2025

https://www.complex.com/music/a/will-lavin/burning-man-ec-twins-done-wit...

"We already told you we were playing there, but we didn't make it this morning," they explained, before adding the reason for their absence was because "everybody gets fucked up here" and so scheduling apparently "doesn't work."

They then shared that their DJ set the night before was pushed forward an hour because "the power went out." But not only that, in a hilarious turn of events, they "played for a Russian who came and picked [them] up to drive [them] to [their] gig, and took liquid cocaine."