[Insert "Phew... don't go in there" joke here]
But yeah seriously don't go in there.
Black Rock City Underwater:
It's Friday afternoon. I'm in the shade around a table surrounded by campmates, neighbors, and friends both old and new. We're eating, sharing drinks, and having fun in the middle of nowhere. I'm thinking about the rest of my plans. The things I want to see that day. The parties I want to go to at night.
Then rain starts to spit.
Then the skies open.
Torrential downpour sends all attendees scurrying back to their tents, RV's, and shelters. The rain continued to come down in sheets off and on from late afternoon through the night. I think I spent close to 10 hours in my tent just trying to sleep the rain away.
When everyone emerged the next morning our acrid barren landscape had turned into a world covered in muck. Mud so thick it threatened to rip the shoes off your feet with each step. We assessed the damage, and realized that the rest of the weekend was going to be very, very different.
Welcome Home.
Preface:
On a positive note all the mud did make it easier to fight The Predator. Arnold would be proud.
*Schwarzenegger Voice* BLM shut down the gate! Go! Go Now!
Get Elon Musk to the CHOPPAH!
There was a long road for me to get to the point where I was ankle deep in what felt like kindergarten paste. I planned to take a workcation tour of the west coast visiting: LA, San Francisco, Reno, and finally Black Rock. While I've never really seen myself living on that shore, I still wanted to explore the opposite coast, and possibly look into establishing a presence there in some form. I figured if Burning Man was going to be a thing for me in at least the near future I should look into: possible storage solutions, vehicle parking, RVs owning vs renting, equipment rentals, etc.
Unfortunately none of that planning happened as my cat Jacob passed away the month before, and between work and other duties I didn't have the focus to put together the details of this trip. So like everything else in life I just had to push through and roll with it. More details of my pre-Burning Man part of the trip in this write up here.
Since 2020 I've had to deal with the death of: both my cats, a childhood friend, and my father. The hits just keep coming, so last year was a time of deep depressive mourning for me. This year despite Jacob's death I wanted to celebrate life. His life. My life. The lives of the people I've recently lost. The lives of the friends I've literally had for decades that made my west coast trip possible.
Regardless of what mother nature's plans were this was my goal.
Pilgrimage:
The gate opens at 12:01 on Sunday. Last year left Reno at 8:00PM, but due to ticket sales I guessed that might be too early this round so I left at 9:00PM instead. Both departures were perfectly timed and I got through the gate in about an hour and a half.
I camp out in the open/free camping area. Which means I don't have a fixed address going in. Gold rush, first come/first serve rules apply. Since I was first on the scene it was my job to secure the campsite. My campmates and I agreed on a general address beforehand based on a couple of factors. But there really wasn't an issue locking down where we wanted to stay.
I have to say that as the week wore on we were all surprised by the amount of unclaimed space there was still around us. Usually by this time you're negotiating boundaries with other camps to make sure you don't step on each other's toes. Not as much foot traffic either as random visitors to camp were less frequent this year.
Community:
One morning this young dude rolled by our camp looking like a lost puppy. Barely even a shirt on his back. We took him in, slathered him in sunscreen, gave him some water, and asked what his deal was. Now this is a tale as old as time out here.
"Me and my friends got excited as soon as we arrived at camp at night. We went out to see the [Man/Temple] and I got separated from my group. Now I don't remember my address or where we were staying."
Your phone is barely functional by the time you get out here. Which makes all of our modern modes of communication basically moot. It requires some forethought, but if a member of your party gets lost you can go to the Playa Info station adjacent to Center Camp, and leave word that if "so and so" comes asking please give them this address. That said not everyone anticipates this scenario ahead of time, and even walkie-talkies become iffy when 70K+ people are all trying to use the same damn frequency.
My man had to walk up and down the entire free camping area looking for his friends, which is a good chunk of the map to cover. I hope he found his friends.
Center Camp Kinda Sucks Now:
I needed a break late in the night. I'd been on my bike all day, and knew I should have slept more. So, I turned into Center Camp. A neutral place at the heart of the city where you could usually grab a cup of coffee to perk up, and check out some low key art. Since they decided to discontinue coffee sales a year ago, I thought at the very least this would still be a chill place to recover.
Nope.
Center Camp was awful. From what I could tell from the frantic Stage Manager they were obligated to provide entertainment 24/7. No matter how terrible. Has it always been like this and I never noticed?
This is dumb.
This used to be a cafe. Just let me relax surrounded by art. You're only rambling to fill dead air. At one point because a musician failed to show up at their assigned hour the Stage Manager just handed a microphone to a small child and let them wail on it while everyone else in attendance was just trying to relax on stained couches. Can you imagine trying to walk through what is essentially a lounge with art, and instead of gently piped in calming music, you get pure loaded high pitched gibberish generated by a small child that's just been told to go to town with a significantly loud auditory system? Sure it gathered a crowd, but for the wrong reasons.
Then when they had musicians finally show up their attitude was: "I'm the second coming of Dave Matthews. I brought this shitty guitar out into the desert especially for you, so I'm basically doing you a favor. Now here's my 8 hour set that's only slightly less annoying than the toddler screaming jam session we just had".
I know I'm being harsh. Usually I'm all for self-expression, but turn this thing into an abandoned bean bag filled hotel lobby and be done with it. The place should be a haunted Marriot. It still has a function. e.g. when folks needed to band together after the storm to get people organized to get out. Fine. But this "art for the sake of art" do or die 24/7 entertainment crap is both unattainable and obnoxious.
The Temple:
The Temple is a nondenominational place of mourning where you can let go of what you've lost. Despite the gorgeous architecture, and lattice work I didn't get a lot of pictures inside namely because it's like bringing a camera into a church, and regardless of my Atheism I find it disrespectful outside of a tour of the Vatican. This year's temple design was meant to be inspired by an upside down desert flower, and was truly stunning.
So naturally I drew an angry cat.
I hate to say it, but I regret not being able to share and achieve the catharsis of watching this whole thing burn down. It robbed me of a much needed release, and made the final journey of my trip unfortunately seem anticlimactic.
Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated:
It's somewhere around 3AM. It's been raining since the evening, but now there's a lull in the storm. Now mind you the only time this place is ever quiet is when The Temple burns, and even then there's usually at least one asshole in a distant art car blaring dubstep that didn't get the memo. But this was QUIET. At 3AM I should still be hearing that *Untz Untz Untz* bass of somebody's nearby sound camp. Living in a closely packed city I've adapted myself to constant noise to the point where I forgo earplugs. I actually can't sleep in total silence anymore like Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny which is probably why I woke up.
I could see my surrounding solar powered Christmas lights through my tent, but they looked weird somehow. I opened up my flap to find that there was basically an inch deep moat around my tent and the lights were actually underwater. Even with a mushy ground, between the industrial tarp I laid down, and the new 4 season tent, absolutely no water was making it through. Because otherwise at that point my air mattress would have turned into a flotation device.
Morning came and while we were trying to get used to this new goopy alien landscape a friend from a neighboring camp that had Starlink internet access came over and said: "Look what's trending on Twitter/X: Burning Man and Ebola".
Shit.
It was at this point that I decided I should probably try to get some messages out.
I wandered a bit, and did that idiotic thing where you raise your phone over your head because that couple extra feet of distance to the heavens is going to make all the difference. I had heard rumors of temporary cell towers being erected which could have been bullshit (along with the deployment of the National Guard), but I had to see if I could rub two bars together in order to get a signal. It constantly wavered between a bar or two and SOS. Eventually I was able to get a number of messages in/out explaining that the rumors of my demise were greatly exaggerated. I was safe. Messy, but safe.
At this point they had shut down the gate entry/exit as well as the airport. No word on resuming travel. The estimate that people stuck to was that (weather permitting) it takes at least 12 hours for the playa to fully dry out and become safe to drive on. There was talk of another storm predicted for Monday. So I knew that if it didn't divert and miss us we'd be screwed for at least the better part of another day. I feared pushing my exit plans into late Tuesday/Wednesday, and forcing me to: reschedule flights, pay extra days on the car rental at a rate of $80/day, and take more time off from work.
Some people became anxious that they couldn't get out.
Some people became outraged that they wouldn't be let out.
Some people were stupid and thought they could navigate an RV through 6+ inches of clay.
Most people just really made the best of it.
The air of anxiety was valid as many only plan to stay [X] number of days and therefore only bring a little more than [X] amount of food and water. I also felt bad for the weekend warriors. These folks probably showed up Friday morning using a cheap ticket discounted from a scalper, and were barely settling into camp before god decided to just piss on everything. I can just imagine some poor bastard barely got his tent stakes into the ground before the skies opened up and they regretted their life choices.
A lot of information was spread via word of mouth. Much of it conflicting. Imagine playing a giant game of telephone with 70K+ muddy people.
Why Burning Man doesn't have the equivalent of an emergency broadcast system is beyond me. I want one boring AM/FM station that just regurgitates vital information on a loop. Weather. Exit/Entry gate time estimates. Special announcements from law enforcement. Maybe some information around scheduled art burns. That's it. Am I missing something here? I can't tell you how frustrating it is to turn on the radio desperate for info, and I get some Kirkland brand Howard Stern interviewing someone I don't care about, regarding some bullshit art piece that's probably caked in mud or underwater right now. Then after I listen that crap you get a 20 second sound bite telling you to shelter in place and urging RV owners not to be assholes.
This is a huge failure for the organization.
That said this wasn't the Fyre Festival 2.0 that some in the media portrayed it to be. Once I eventually made it back to civilization I got a huge kick out of two things: Joe Biden had to be made aware of the situation, and InfoWars accused us of making some sort of pagan sacrifice that earned us god's wrath.
Guy in a black suit wearing an earpiece: Sir, thousands of hippies are trapped at Burning Man.
President Biden: What's a Burning Man, and do we need to put him out?
I think that at any other event things would have gone from 0 to Lord of the Flies really fast. Or as Chris Rock suggested people would be eyeballing their plumpest campmate, and checking to see if they brought enough hot sauce and ketchup packets. But this community of weirdos came together as best they could to make the remainder of the stay more tolerable. Personally I don't trust anyone who tries to play this off as "the best year ever". They're about as full of it as my sneakers were of mud. But regardless of the fog of war it wasn't nearly as bad or crazy as the news suspected.
My eBike got Lost/Stolen:
There is a certain amount of elitism that comes with this event. Lots of people expect you to experience BM the same way they do when in fact everyone should be making their own experience based on their comfort level. e.g. If you're in a comfy RV with A/C you're looked down upon by those who bought a tent at Walmart for $30 bucks right before showing up. Now eBikes are the new RV.
Here are some facts:
- With pedal assist (you're still pedaling but the motor is giving you an extra nudge) ebikes are a game changer in terms of not being completely drained at the end of the week after traversing the city and it's clock-like layout. I had friends camped on opposite sides of the city, and it would have been absolutely exhausting to bounce back and forth between them with out help.
- A friend with a similar bike helped me program it to cap my speed at 5mph, which is the standard limit for travel on playa. Yes there is an air of lawlessness, but you can still get ticketed out here for being a jerk. Normally first gear lurches you close to ~10mph with one rotation of the pedal.
- If no one was around and I'm in a barren wasteland I admit I would occasionally open it up to higher speeds even though I didn't really use the throttle (which involves no pedaling, just pure laziness) .
- BM banned my category of eBike because it can reach speeds just shy of 30mph. But they instituted a "Just don't be a dick about it" policy a few weeks before the event.
- eBikes are in high demand right now which makes them obviously greater targets for theft.
I thought I should walk my bike to the shipping container ahead of time because it was pretty much useless at that point anyway. What I should have done is waited, then thrown the bike untouched by the mud into my van and drive it down there after everything dried.
Nope, I was an idiot.
Trying to drag my bike through the mud was like that child traumatizing scene in The Never Ending Story where Atreyu tries to save Artax from the Swamp of Eternal Sadness. You know the one.
The rear wheel with the motor locked up despite my best efforts to keep it dry and relatively mud free during the storm. The front wheel and it's fender was churning mud like a child's Play-Doh factory. Eventually a nearby camp took pity on me and helped me lock up the bike, and said I could come back to dig it out later, or grab a battery to try and get it moving again.
I turned around bikeless to go back to camp, but with out the bike to steady me I was wobbling like Jack Sparrow after 3 pints of rum. Pretty sure I fell at least a few times, and after falling on my ass enough I decided to go back and try to just lug the bike back to camp.
I knew the general address of the camp I left my bike at. But as I went up and down the street I noticed it wasn't generally there. After some more wobbly escapades I had to ask myself how much was this worth to me? My feet hurt, and I'm about one really good fall away from breaking something.
I did try to hunt for it again, but I had to cut my losses. At least I stripped it of all it's lights and batteries. The batteries alone run around $300-$500.
Environmental Reckoning?
Sure I recycle, but I'm not the biggest tree hugger out there. But when a monsoon comes to the desert you know something is not right. How they hell does a climate change denier shrug off a hurricane crossing California into Nevada? How do you explain that it's normal for a desert to literally gain an entire month's worth of rain in one night? It's like the ancient dried lakebed was fighting to become a lake again.
While this event is a "leave no trace" affair it by no means is good for the environment. In fact at this point I figure the environment is trying to find new and exciting ways to kill us since we've been doing the same to it for years. My opinion is that Burning Man's goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030 is a bit of a well meaning hippie pipe dream. Especially when the organization is killing geothermal projects in the area via local politics. Everyone wants clean energy, but put up: a windmill, a geothermal well, or a solar panel farm, and suddenly they're all NIMBY. Lawmaker or homeowner shorthand for "Not In My BackYard". It's the same way everyone wants good cell service, but at the same time keep those huge ass towers away from my real estate.
Let me point out the problem here. Say you're an artist that cares about the Earth. So rather than buying new materials for your sculpture you use recycled wooden pallets and other found materials. I think that's great. Now we're going to take that eco-friendly masterpiece, put it on a big ol' diesel freight truck, drive it out 200 miles in the middle of nowhere, get a construction crane operator to actually assemble the thing, hook it to a gas generator to power the lights on it (all art has to be visible at night), and finally burn it all down at the end of the week essentially shoving your environmentally friendly sculpture's carbon emissions down nature's throat.
This is the equivalent of ordering 5 Big Macs, and then pointing to your Diet Coke saying: "I'm trying to be mindful of my caloric intake".
Now does that mean you say "fuck it" next time and build your sculpture entirely out of car tires dipped in hot tar, wrapped in asbestos, and painted with the finest lead-based pigments? No. Because I understand every bit helps. Just don't pat yourself on the back too hard.
I'll admit there's still plenty of environmentally conscious things you could do out there, and the community helps. I once attended a Zoom meeting with Burners that took the time to explain: how solar panels work, their limitations, and how to build your own rig. It was incredibly educational and now I own a fully solar camping kitchen.
The Man I Didn't Get to See Burn:
Unfortunately I needed to get out of Dodge early on Monday. By that time neither The Man or The Temple were still in any shape to be set ablaze as they were still soaked. But the design this year in my opinion was immaculate. I really loved the huge honeycomb hive towering layout.
Random Musings:
Anybody see where I put my cup last night? No I wasn't drunk. I only had one glass of wine guys come on.
I mean sure... nail gun shooting range set in a place with copious amounts of drugs and alcohol, 200 miles away from the closest hospital? What could possibly go wrong?
This is El Pulpo Magnifico, next in line of the fiery mechanical octopus cars since El Pulpo Mechanico retired about 2 years ago. There's no joke here. I just thought it important to explain this beast. It's famous enough to be lampooned on an episode of The Simpsons.
Little did anyone suspect a pirate ship would come in handy later.
This random guy pulled up on his bike next to me while we were moving and just says "Oh perfect timing!" then tosses this bracelet to me which I immediately caught. Cute trick. You got me there. My hands are not normally this sunburned.
This place does not pussy-foot around with it's drinks... I mean just look at that huge vat of pickle juice they give you with a shot of their homemade whiskey.
In an odd piece of coincidence I met the owner/creator of this shark car while in a bar on Venice Beach a couple weeks before.
Obviously one of my favorites. I mean just look at the scale of this damn thing.
I can't remember the name of this steam boat from a nearby camp. I just kept calling it "Proud Mary" and they tolerated me. Their camp would frequently have live Billy Joel style piano performances.
This group is called the Lamplighters. There's something around a 100 of them, and their job is to hang over 1,000 kerosene lamps along the main roads. These are your only streetlights. I hung out with their camp once when I heard them playing Dropkick Murphy songs, because I'm required by law to introduce myself that I'm from Boston at that point.
When disaster struck everyone was walking around in their fashionable "Air
Playas". I suspect Nike is going to follow this hip new soggy trend.
Yeah, I've got Hobbit feet from years of barefoot running. I already gave up on shoes even before the rain. Then the ground ate my boots when I even tried.
These were our neighbors from New Orleans if you could guess it.
Mom: He's just not right for you!
Her: Mom this isn't a phase! We're in love!
This looks like Camp Broken Clavicle.
Sometimes I don't even know what I'm looking at. There's got to be a reason an icecream truck has boobs, but at the same I'm both intrigued and terrified to ask.
These celestial sculptures were absolutely uncanny. Like this was some NASA level shit.
The second time I went to Burning Man I got so disoriented one night I had to make sure this place actually existed once I got home and could actually Google some images...
I spent a week in San Francisco just before coming to Burning Man, and I'm ashamed to say this is still the closest I've been to The Golden Gate Bridge.
Nothing that happened to me this year has deterred me from going back. That said, I think "going back" might look a lot different next time. This was an extraordinarily expensive year for me even before I got to the wastelands and catastrophe struck. So I've changed my mindset from "I need to invest in having more of an independant presence on the West Coast." to "How can I make this a regular thing right now with out either killing myself, or costing an arm and a leg in the future?"
