Not Burning Man

September 3, 2023 9:31 AM

Massive rainstorms in Nevada have deluged the dry lakebed that has served as the site of Black Rock City, the pop up home for the Burning Man festival.

The result of the rainstorm has been to reduce the ground to a muddy quagmire, causing a ban on vehicle travel at the site which has crippled the festival's sanitation and supply infrastructure, as well as forcing departing attendees to have to hike 5 miles in thick mud to a paved lot to catch a shuttle bus. Unsurprisingly, this has also led to the famous burning for which the event takes its name to also be delayed.

Previously in the week, climate activist group Seven Circles had blocked the inbound road in protest, leading to police ramming through the blockade with a vehicle and making arrests.

posted by NoxAeternum (354 comments total)

You must be psychic. I was just this moment wondering whether Mefi's ManInSuit had made it to the festival and how they were faring.
posted by mochapickle at 9:35 AM on September 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

Police are investigating a death with limited additional info, too.
posted by glaucon at 9:35 AM on September 3, 2023

Yeah, we're talking about maybe 50,000 people at the END of their stay during which they were bringing in all their own food and water. So there is rationing going on, and I hope nothing too Mad Max-ish going to happen. With more rains predicted for today, Sunday, and Monday being the traditional grand exodus day, this is truly a pretty dire situation in a lot of ways.
posted by hippybear at 9:38 AM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

My nightmare is being surrounded by thousands of creative types who are in some sort of costume
posted by Czjewel at 9:42 AM on September 3, 2023 [52 favorites]

Well that was some completely unnecessary and disproportionate police violence in that climate protest arrest video.
posted by eviemath at 9:45 AM on September 3, 2023 [26 favorites]

Well that was some completely unnecessary and disproportionate police violence in that climate protest arrest video.

Yeah, though I’m broadly sympathetic to the various artists and hippies that heave been trying to keep the thing going in the face of a takeover by coked up venture capital goons I’m pretty sure that move cursed it for all time.
posted by Artw at 9:50 AM on September 3, 2023 [31 favorites]

Well that was some completely unnecessary and disproportionate police violence in that climate protest arrest video.

The police having been called by the attendees of the festival, who also tried to forcibly move the protesters.

Considering the fact that the festival this year also includes a private plane you can ride to join the Mile High Club, I'm not surprised that these rich kids pretending to be crunchy hippies for a week were angry at people pointing out their hypocrisy. As far as I'm concerned, the weather is karmic justice. Sorry about your soggy tents, Burners.
posted by fight or flight at 9:50 AM on September 3, 2023 [84 favorites]

pavement, so humbly ignorable, yet so critical when you need it.

"But soon, as they pushed west, the roads started deteriorating. When it rained, the vehicles got stuck in soft spots on the roads, up to their hubs, and the men had to push them out. Outside of Lexington, the roads got so slippery that trucks started sliding into ditches by the side of the road. "

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/in-1919-dwight-d-eisenhower-suffered-through-historys-worst-cross-country-road-trip
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:54 AM on September 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

Burning Man used to seem like it would be fun but slightly terrifying and now it seems like it would be completely terrifying and not fun at all. And that's even without the rain.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:55 AM on September 3, 2023 [63 favorites]

I read of people reporting 2 inches of water in their tents. I know not everybody’s in tents, but for those who are… I wonder how they will get any sleep. Even if you don’t like burners, there are actual humans our there, many of whom are not coke-fueled tech bros, who are facing serious challenges over the next 72hrs.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 9:57 AM on September 3, 2023 [59 favorites]

Between cool-kid excitement and schadenfreude, I expect a lot of the reports are exaggerated. But alkaline mud is no fun.
posted by clew at 9:59 AM on September 3, 2023 [13 favorites]

Even if you don’t like burners, there are actual humans our there, many of whom are not coke-fueled tech bros, who are facing serious challenges over the next 72hrs.

People who knew there was a forecast for severe rainfall for the area, and yet no planning was done to prepare for. It's a shitshow out there with serious challenges, yes, but it's a shitshow of their own making - which just so happens to be the point Seven Circles were making.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:03 AM on September 3, 2023 [25 favorites]

Eliminating private jets (one of the protesters' demands) seems like such a simple and effective thing for Burning Man to do. That they haven't done so is just shitty, and very revealing.

Apparently the cops gave the environmental protesters 30 seconds to move, and then *before* the 30 seconds were up the genius cop in the truck lost his brain, smashed through the barricade and pulled his gun, stupidly escalating instead of, you know, quickly and quietly arresting the folks protesting. Completely over-the-top.

Also, ew: a private plane you can ride to join the Mile High Club
posted by mediareport at 10:04 AM on September 3, 2023 [40 favorites]

I've wondered why people are being told to conserve water-- surely burners are capable of collecting rain water.

Otherwise, this is an awful thing, and my sympathies go to the people trapped there.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:06 AM on September 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I’ve got a friend out there who I hope is okay - they are a long time veteran and very much not of the RV camp so this is not going to be their first utter shit show and I’m sure they’re going to be alright.
posted by Artw at 10:06 AM on September 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

So in the fuck plane do you have to do it in the lavatory like real mile-highers
posted by fluttering hellfire at 10:08 AM on September 3, 2023 [12 favorites]

i thought the fuck plane was orthogonal to the chastity manifold
posted by lalochezia at 10:12 AM on September 3, 2023 [59 favorites]

I'm sure lots of people are going to go for easy jokes and eye rolling, but it's pretty serious, given just how many people are out there. I was a bit bummed that I had to leave a few days early for a family event, but I just missed the rain by hours. Burners are pretty resourceful and friendly and I'm sure that many of those that are stuck there will have a grand old time meeting the neighbors and sharing supplies and passing the time, but imagine you showed up on tuesday or so with, for example, a 100% safety margin of some medication you need..

50k+ people is a lot, and includes children and older folks. Imagining this is all a bunch of rich white hippies getting what they deserve (which I have read all over the internet) is inaccurate and also cruel.

Not that I'm accusing anyone in this thread of doing so, I just looked at some social media (my first mistake) while killing time and then saw this thread.
posted by thedaniel at 10:16 AM on September 3, 2023 [89 favorites]

Anyway, here's the BM org's survival guide for the current situation which details not only the situation but what they are doing to mitigate chaos
posted by thedaniel at 10:18 AM on September 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Oh you can safely accuse some in this thread of doing so.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 10:19 AM on September 3, 2023 [10 favorites]

The CBC article on this includes this quote:

Mike Jed, a festivalgoer, and fellow campers made a bucket toilet so people didn't have to trudge as often through the mud to reach the portable toilets.

"If it really turns into a disaster, well, no one is going to have sympathy for us," Jed said. "I mean, it's Burning Man."
posted by jacquilynne at 10:19 AM on September 3, 2023 [17 favorites]

My son's roommate went to Burning Man, and invited my son to go. With like a day's notice, so my son said no thanks. Instead he went camping up in the Sierra's somewhere. He has likely had some rain to deal with as well. But not a 50,000 people kind of shitshow that BM has turned into.

Hope the burners will make it all work out.
posted by Windopaene at 10:33 AM on September 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

I have a bunch of friends out there, none of whom are coked-out tech bros (not anymore anyway lol) they have been posting photos and the conditions are absolutely insane. I went a bunch back in the day, with some of these people. I would find it hard to believe or imagine that things could get this bad, after many years experience. it's nearly inconceivable. I hope everyone gets out safely.

also, so those people who hiked out? so they just left all their stuff? and who is supposed to deal with that now?

Burning Man was such an amazing experience but I think I may be leaning towards sympathy for Seven Circles at this point...
posted by supermedusa at 10:36 AM on September 3, 2023 [14 favorites]

also, so those people who hiked out? so they just left all their stuff? and who is supposed to deal with that now?

I have a friend-of-a-friend out there and she reported on her social media she saw people just dumping their stuff before heading out. The MOOP map this year is just going to be a block of red.
posted by fight or flight at 10:40 AM on September 3, 2023 [19 favorites]

also, so those people who hiked out? so they just left all their stuff? and who is supposed to deal with that now?

There’s some speculation that they may have fucked up BMs ability to get a permit for future years. Thanks, Chris Rock!

(Or “thanks, Chris Rock” slightly less sarcastically depending on how you feel about BMs continued existence, I guess)
posted by Artw at 10:42 AM on September 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

There's amazing creativity that goes in to so much of Burning Man. The other side of it is the very wealthy for whom it seems like a cool playground. Private jets are just wrong, fuck flights, really? in the summer that seems to be the tipping point when people are finally getting the immediacy of Climate Crisis.

I hope they are able to stay as safe as possible.
posted by theora55 at 10:48 AM on September 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

I don't really understand why everyone is talking like this is a hugely grave situation. It seems like most people leave Sunday night or Monday morning and that they are hoping to reopen the road Monday night. Do most people going really plan to exhaust 100% of their supplies by the time they leave? That seems foolish...
posted by rikschell at 10:53 AM on September 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

I was hoping there would be a post here; I'm feeling all kinds of ways. Sure, I grinned at first. It probably did certain corporate lawyers a world of good to go on a six-mile hike through the mud. Certainly other corporate lawyers pay lots of money to climb mountains, which is worse.

The reaction online reminds me of the reaction to the submarine disaster, but ... there are workers out there, there are innocent people like supermedusa's friends. Maybe BM shouldn't happen out there anymore. And I don't trust the wealthy to take the right lesson from this. They won't be more open to the arguments of climate protestors; they'll be hoarding wealth faster to finish their remote compounds.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:55 AM on September 3, 2023 [14 favorites]

As first world problems go, this is certainly one of them.
posted by signal at 10:58 AM on September 3, 2023 [27 favorites]

I suppose those that stay behind can divvy up the discarded goods of those who have hiked out. Chris Rock probably brought some pretty nice food...
posted by supermedusa at 10:59 AM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don't quite understand why this is so dire because it seems like a bunch of people camping in the rain who can't choose to stop camping in the rain. I was camping in a tent during recent Nova Scotia floods (and also unable to not be camping any longer due to road conditions) and it was not fun (well it was lots of fun, but not the part with the camping in the tent in the bad rains), but it wasn't some sort of emergency.

This does seem to be some sort of emergency. Given that, can't they be evacuated by the military or something? It seems like if there were a natural disaster outside the US with this many mostly-americans there, the US would send planes and take them out right?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:07 AM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

The "I just hiked out" stories from famous people are an excellent distillation of the affluent privilege that's been warping the Burning Man event culture for a long time.

The event demands that all participants practice "radical self-reliance"; ensuring that you are going to be ready to handle any conditions and not become someone else's problem. Generally this means bringing all the gear and supplies you need, though it can also mean paying top dollar for a bespoke event experience, with staff showing up early and staying late to put in the effort for monied VIP attendees to fly in on private planes with little more than the shirts on their backs and do all the partying with none of the effort.

But that's not everyone; just one end of the spectrum. The opposite end is the shoeless "miracle ticket" hippies who hitchhike in with literally nothing (not even a ticket) and hang around begging for goodwill and hoping someone will have a spare ticket handy (or just trying to sneak in). I've always had a bone to pick with these types since their plan explicitly disregards the main rule for being able to care for yourself.

In the middle are thousands of regular folks, mostly genuinely cool folks, who are there for an annual vacation. Maybe bring some art, maybe take some drugs, but always up for having a good time.

Everyone deserves to make it home safe.

Also, FYI, there are local Burning Man regional events that happen all over the world. Not everyone has the money or means to make it to the desert. Anyone who likes the idea of Burning Man but are turned off by the poser-douche energy would do themselves a favor by getting a ticket and dropping in on one.
posted by neuracnu at 11:09 AM on September 3, 2023 [46 favorites]

I don't have strong opinions one way or another towards BM. I have only known one guy some 20 years ago that went and really enjoyed it. He was a hippie-trending athletic cis masculine dude who was generally a good person, and not a coked-out Silicon Valley bro at all.

But aren't harsh conditions part and parcel of the core BM mystique and experience? I don't want anyone to die or get injured out there. I know intense dry heat is usually the tough part, but there's a reason it's out in the middle of nowhere.
posted by SoberHighland at 11:12 AM on September 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

can't they be evacuated by the military or something?

I think this hasn't risen to the level where a military evacuation is needed. This is still at the 'stay put, be smart, and wait it out' level. Sure, people are not as comfortable as they could be, but you know... play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
posted by elwoodwiles at 11:12 AM on September 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

I've been through a rainstorm at Burning Man before. It wasn't as bad as this and we basically couldn't move off our camp. The mud attracts more mud; if you walk a few steps you're suddenly wearing heavy moon boots of mud. The water evaporating also made things absolutely frigid; the temperature dropped to about 34 degrees the first night (.5C), which is a lot colder than we were prepared for. We were close enough to the porta potties that we didn't need to use a bucket toilet (as we discovered by the end of the week, a little too close for normal Playa living).

I also helped lead a large camp for a couple of years, and had to deal with people leaving behind large amounts of stuff. I went in a pickup my last year just so I could help haul stuff out. That was when conditions were great. In this case it is going to be a disaster.

It also seems to have come on a lot faster than anticipated. A friend of mine who has been going for decades knows when to leave. When the rain hit she was on the road out – but she wasn't yet on pavement. Lucky for her, she got to pavement before it got very bad. Another experienced Burner friend of mine is still stuck there.

I also suspect that even though Gate is closed, lots of people are going to try to pull out anyway, which will make it even worse. The Burner Express depot (the bus to and from the Burn) is closed, so hiking to pavement isn't even an option.

I just looked at the weather radar. While they are trying to sound optimistic on BMIR, I suspect people are going to be stuck there until Tuesday.

When I saw that there was rain just before the opening, I was feeling FOMO, because rain at that time can lead to a low-dust, clement-weather year. Now I am feeling GIMO (Glad I'm Missing Out).
posted by rednikki at 11:12 AM on September 3, 2023 [20 favorites]

i thought the fuck plane was orthogonal to the chastity manifold

Chastity Manifold is my playa name
posted by thivaia at 11:14 AM on September 3, 2023 [21 favorites]

It seems like if there were a natural disaster outside the US with this many mostly-americans there, the US would send planes and take them out right?

Probably not. Fifty thousand people is a lot of people and infrastructure is minimal. The logistical challenge of trying to move tens of thousands of people in around 48 hours would be huge. It's not like you can just scare up a couple hundred 747 flights over to BM.

If this is treated as needing a disaster relief response dropping in food and supplies is probably easier to manage?
posted by mark k at 11:17 AM on September 3, 2023 [9 favorites]

I just had a long comment typed out that I lost. But mostly: Most people there should be okay to stay safely a few extra days until the roads dry out, though many will miss flights and/or be late to their jobs. There are often extra supplies to go around, and there's a well-honed system to get help to people who are having genuine emergencies. My husband (a longtime Burner) is there and reports that he's fine and his camp is in good spirits.

BMIR Radio is a good place to listen for updates.
posted by lisa g at 11:19 AM on September 3, 2023 [17 favorites]

"in line for the fuck plane" in my new prepositional phrase
posted by MonsieurPEB at 11:19 AM on September 3, 2023 [14 favorites]

As is so often the case these days, I’m just sorry J.G. Ballard isn’t here to see this.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:26 AM on September 3, 2023 [35 favorites]

The only thing I would expect to be majorly dicey is the portapotty situation. I saw a rumor on Reddit that they were going to try to run the pump trucks once before the next wave of rain, I hope that works out.
posted by rivenwanderer at 11:44 AM on September 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yeah, when you have 50,000 people together in a place for several days and you can't empty the port-a-potties, that's when things really go to shit.
posted by hippybear at 11:49 AM on September 3, 2023 [13 favorites]

Are all the regionals actual gonnahappen things? I looked at the one in the UK and although it has dates (14-18 Septermber 2023) it only has 'Powys, Wales, UK' as its location, which seems a bit vague considering that it's less than a fortnight away. Most entries in the list have "Hot new content coming soon" as their description, which exudes "website under construction" energy.
posted by BCMagee at 11:54 AM on September 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

I'm not surprised that these rich kids pretending to be crunchy hippies for a week were angry at people pointing out their hypocrisy.

Sounds like, at least for some people, Burning Man might end up being more like Fyre Fest.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:56 AM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Burning Man, Fyre Fest> When I start a remote festival, I'm going to name it something like "Heavy Weather" or "Hard Times Ahoy" so as to jook fate. I mean, obviously I don't expect marketing to be a breeze...
posted by BCMagee at 12:05 PM on September 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Looking forward to attending BCMagee's Nasty Brutish and Short Fest next year!
posted by taz at 12:15 PM on September 3, 2023 [37 favorites]

@BCMagee - The BM regional website generally isn't great at staying up-to-date, but it's a reasonable jumping off point to get you the next info you want.

It sounds like the one you're referring to is the UK Microburn. I don't know much about that one, but the website appears to be here with tickets for sale. You'll need to sign up for a membership, which appears to be just setting up an account.

Some of these events, especially the smaller ones, won't post the specific address on the website. That info gets shared after you purchase a ticket. Pretty much every regional is volunteer-run, so there's rarely funds available for hired security to keep gate crashers out. Some security thru obscurity gets leveraged.

If it seems a bit weird and shady, congrats, you're experiencing legitimate burner culture. :)
posted by neuracnu at 12:16 PM on September 3, 2023 [9 favorites]

that's funny, taz.
posted by j_curiouser at 12:17 PM on September 3, 2023

I’m a bit confused about the sex plane. They aren’t actually landing a private jet on the playa, right? Assumedly, participants would have to head over to whichever airport the plane is at. But, I thought you were kind-of softly forbidden from leaving and returning to the site once you got there.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:17 PM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

As first world problems go, this is certainly one of them.

This is the most first world of all first world problems.

On the one hand, I have sympathy for anyone trying to sleep in a soggy, mud-filled tent. Camping in the rain sucks anyway, and then here you are in a vast mud field with overflowing porta potties. Nice.

But on the other hand, Burning Man has become such a gross spectacle of consumption and waste (like the piles of bicycles that get left every year, and private planes) that I wouldn't feel sorry at all if the outcome was for them to lose their use permit for the area.
posted by Dip Flash at 12:17 PM on September 3, 2023 [27 favorites]

The opposite end is the shoeless "miracle ticket" hippies who hitchhike in with literally nothing (not even a ticket) and hang around begging for goodwill and hoping someone will have a spare ticket handy (or just trying to sneak in). I've always had a bone to pick with these types since their plan explicitly disregards the main rule for being able to care for yourself.

I haven't been to one in well over a decade, but at the Rainbow Gatherings we'd call these people "Drainbows".
posted by hippybear at 12:20 PM on September 3, 2023 [34 favorites]

When I start a remote festival, I'm going to name it something like "Heavy Weather" or "Hard Times Ahoy" so as to jook fate.


legionellapalooza
posted by logicpunk at 12:22 PM on September 3, 2023 [43 favorites]

on the other hand, maybe (rich) burners will be triggered to do something about climate change when their recreational-fun options are narrowed by flooding, incineration, or other existential crises
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:24 PM on September 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Major Moxy Babylon , roadside BBQ examines the event from a local POV ,
Rollerderby philosophy ride along.
posted by hortense at 12:26 PM on September 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

a couple of my good friends went, I really hope they're ok.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 12:27 PM on September 3, 2023 [14 favorites]

If they don't manage to clean up all the crap afterwards (and even if they do), BM organizers may well have some sharp conversations with BLM. Being able to go means complying with all the terms of the permit, and the requirements of the Environmental Assessment.

If the baseline environmental conditions have changed (i.e., unusual climate conditions causing rainstorms causing more environmental damage as a result of the event), then the BLM may need to re-open the environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act.

It will be interesting to watch this after the event is over and everyone goes home.
posted by suelac at 12:32 PM on September 3, 2023 [16 favorites]

There is an annual camping event at West Point for Scouts. It's run by the cadets, and a few years back they also got absolutely soaked. Some campers stayed and other bugged out. I skipped that year (thanks be to God) but even with a crowd comprised of thousands of Scouts, led by West Pointers, there were still huge tangles of abandoned gear and crowds of miserable people and flooded biffys and people with nothing to eat.

I don't mind a good Nelson.gif laugh, but I only have sympathy for these folks.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:41 PM on September 3, 2023 [18 favorites]

Ever since BM really got big, I can't think about it without just this gurgle of emergency management dread in my gut. SO many people, SO isolated, and while the coked-up tech bro contingent is certainly a thing it also attracts an awful lot of Delicate Souls and Naïve Scenesters who just assume that the event wouldn't be happening if it wasn't safe, and also have the same philosophy about whatever substances are available and any form of preparedness because they think it's what they see on Instagram where the resort hotels are presumably just out of frame.

I hope nobody dies, and that nobody is seriously injured. I also hope this is the end of the event before the final one IS the one where people die and are seriously injured.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:42 PM on September 3, 2023 [18 favorites]

They aren’t actually landing a private jet on the playa, right?

Probably not a jet, no, but prop planes? Definitely.
posted by aneel at 12:43 PM on September 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

Dip Flash: "As first world problems go, this is certainly one of them.

This is the most first world of all first world problems. "

Yes, not only does it affect very first-world people, but the root cause of the problem, our current Climate Collapse, was caused by the first world in the first place, so double whammy.
posted by signal at 12:45 PM on September 3, 2023 [11 favorites]

Chastity Manifold is my playa name

Sci Fi Author - I invented the Chastity Manifold as a cautionary tale.

Coked Out Tech bros - hold my coke.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:46 PM on September 3, 2023 [13 favorites]

Apparently the cops gave the environmental protesters 30 seconds to move, and then *before* the 30 seconds were up the genius cop in the truck lost his brain, smashed through the barricade and pulled his gun, stupidly escalating instead of, you know, quickly and quietly arresting the folks protesting. Completely over-the-top.

This was Tribal Police, not Nevada Police as some outlets have mistakenly said. Supposedly that officer is being investigated for brandishing his gun.

And as pro-cimate and pro-protestor as I am, you do not block rural roads, ever. Roads are the lifeline for these communities.The Pyramid Lake Paiute reservation has 2500 people living on 475,000 acres and the highway is vital for access. People's livelihoods and lives depend on it: for school buses, for jobs that require lots of driving (not just commuting), for emergency access. This was a poor choice when Burning Man already causes lots of issues for the local people who need to get around. That can be planned around somewhat, and lots of money goes into the local economy from burners. Not so from climate activists blocking the road- even if what those climate activists are saying was completely true. Don't block rural roads or rural gates, ever.
posted by oneirodynia at 12:47 PM on September 3, 2023 [44 favorites]

Right now the priority should be on getting everyone safely out of the site. Once that’s finished I think there is going to have to be a serious reconsideration of the way this festival is managed and organized from a safety, sanitation and transport perspective. The festival is over the site’s capacity to handle the crowds. The state should not have issued the permits for this and the organizers needed more professional assistance with the contingency planning.
posted by interogative mood at 12:50 PM on September 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

I hope nobody dies, and that nobody is seriously injured. I also hope this is the end of the event before the final one IS the one where people die and are seriously injured.

The first event I went to in 1996 people died and were seriously injured. It's why ever since then you can't drive cars or bring firearms. While I tend to think it's time for Burning Man to end I'm not sure what events will take to make that happen, though losing the permit due to being unable to clean the playa is extremely likely this year.

And unfortunately there are unconfirmed reports that someone died at this year's event trying to start a generator in the wet conditions.
posted by oneirodynia at 12:52 PM on September 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

Lotta fellows would reflect that these are mostly the same social classes who would murk a cop on camera before they'd let supportive or even affordable housing be built anywhere near their homes.

People near my house live in tents in the mud and ice and snow and killing heat and they don't have porta potties or a cozy home to return to either, but we aren't debating how to get them out. (And let me tell you, an encampment in late winter, when it's mud and ice and snow and trash all churned up together and nowhere to put the tents but on top of it - it's a real bad scene, and whisking people out of there to Red Cross-organized shelter would be fan-fucking-tastic.)

If any mefites or mefite adjacent people go to Burning Man or do Burning Man like activities and this sort of situation bothers you, I hope it will move you to take some meaningful action for unhoused people whose situation is much, much worse, far less their fault and utterly uncushioned by the wealth and approbation that attends those at Burning Man.
posted by Frowner at 12:55 PM on September 3, 2023 [96 favorites]

My first was 96 also. Two deaths. And plenty more in the years that followed. Accidents suicides overdoses. The playa is a dangerous place.
posted by supermedusa at 12:56 PM on September 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

METAFILTER: I’m a bit confused about the sex plane.
posted by philip-random at 1:07 PM on September 3, 2023 [24 favorites]

Yeah, I would never go to Burning Man myself, so not my type of scene, but I know someone who has been going for a very long time including regional burns, and one person that went to their first regional burns this year. Neither of them are what I would describe as coked out tech bros. One is a glassblower who packs a full set of tools in and spends a lot of time showing off his art. I don't know why they go, I don't get the appeal, but I do know it is one of the places you can go and be openly polyamorus and queer and not be judged for it, so I'm sure some people go for that.
posted by Canageek at 1:16 PM on September 3, 2023 [15 favorites]

This is the second event that I've been following that had unusually inclement weather affect it.

Earlier this year, heavy rains interrupted Wacken Open Air, a huge metal festival and camping extravaganza that happens nearly every year outside of Wacken, in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. After the initial crowds entered, people were prevented from entering the grounds, and refunds were issued.
posted by spinifex23 at 1:21 PM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

@neuracnu thanks, that makes a lot of sense. The microburn site contains photos from 2019 with geolocation info putting 2019's event a bit north of Rhayader, which is one of the prettier areas in Wales.
posted by BCMagee at 1:22 PM on September 3, 2023

I hope this particular event is shut down permanently. Smaller scale like 5K or less you can have much the same vibe but there so much less damage and risk. It’s okay for BM to be over. That’s the cycle of the world. Make a new thing.
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:24 PM on September 3, 2023 [19 favorites]

BMIR-FM is reporting there will be no burning of objects tonight, unlike what was planned. No man.
posted by blob at 1:31 PM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Lotta fellows would reflect that these are mostly the same social classes

“mostly” is a dubious word to use when you’re talking about tens of thousands of people, though obviously it has trended that way over time
posted by atoxyl at 1:31 PM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Maybe the first year the Burning Man can't be Burned is the signal that it's all done.
posted by hippybear at 1:35 PM on September 3, 2023 [20 favorites]

We will not be high roaded by some person with an internet connection because we are concerned about an unfolding catastrophe at an art festival where 10,000 or more people are in immediate peril just because we did not fully acknowledge the experience and existence of homeless and under housed people around the world, the people whose houses are being destroyed by Russian missiles in Ukraine or the countless other examples of human suffering in this world. You can assume that your fellow Metafilter participants are fully read up on these and other tragedies and if you would like to talk about feel free to make your own post.

Apologies for not simply flagging and moving on.
posted by interogative mood at 1:37 PM on September 3, 2023 [41 favorites]

Considering the fact that the festival this year also includes a private plane you can ride to join the Mile High Club, I'm not surprised that these rich kids pretending to be crunchy hippies for a week were angry at people pointing out their hypocrisy. As far as I'm concerned, the weather is karmic justice. Sorry about your soggy tents, Burners.

It's astonishing how much ugliness even the mention of Burning Man can bring out of people. It's definitely not all rich kids, though the rich kids have been doing their best to take it over and, fortunately, not entirely succeeding. You might as well wish disaster on anyone who saves up to take a road trip or a vacation. If you have this sort of attitude, it may be time to do a wellness check on your sense of compassion for people who might be facing some hardships like losing paychecks or jobs, having medical emergencies that can't be addressed, running out of medications, that sort of thing.

Yeah, people should know the risks and what they may be in for and some Burners can be insufferable because it's all they want to talk about but I don't get where this level of schadenfreude and vitriol comes from
posted by treepour at 1:39 PM on September 3, 2023 [27 favorites]

The schadenfreude here seems... pretty awful to me, really. This is not a "first world problem". A first world problem is "My Starbucks is closed for the day and now I have to go to another Starbucks three more blocks away". This is tens of thousands of people stranded in a desert during summer without hope of making it out for days, all the while in unsanitary, dangerous, and worsening conditions, with food running out.
posted by Flunkie at 1:51 PM on September 3, 2023 [24 favorites]

Probably not a jet, no, but prop planes? Definitely.

Thanks for that clarification. Allowing private plane rides in and out, and more plane rides just so people can fuck in them, remain very revealing garbage moves from Burning Man's organizers.
posted by mediareport at 1:59 PM on September 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

I haven't been to BM in, huh, fifteen years now, but even way back when I remember loving it but thinking how wasteful it was, and how great it would be if the attendees had put the same amount of effort and finance into making a permanent community with fixed infrastructure, instead of a circus tent that has to get torn up every year. I mean, you can get undeveloped land in the middle of nowhere for a song, even now. Maybe someone will take up that idea after this.
posted by phooky at 2:09 PM on September 3, 2023 [15 favorites]

Maybe the first year the Burning Man can't be Burned is the signal that it's all done.


It’s okay, they have an extra man-burn saved up from 2007, when it burned twice (thanks to arson)
posted by aubilenon at 2:11 PM on September 3, 2023 [11 favorites]

@phooky the org actually owns a big chunk of land nearby, I imagine if they ever can’t get a permit from the blm that’s the next step? Who knows
posted by thedaniel at 2:16 PM on September 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

When you voluntarily go do something that obviously could turn into a miserable time, and then it turns into a miserable time, you deserve the schadenfreude you get. And also schadenfreude and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

If you pay attention to the things search and rescue people say, a common theme is that the people getting rescued have made not one, not two, but a whole series of dumbass decisions, and the SAR people definitely noticed, and also rescued them anyway. I get the sense that the schadenfreude is part of the motivation for doing SAR for some people.

I am laughing at the burners and also hoping the situation doesn't get worse.
posted by surlyben at 2:17 PM on September 3, 2023 [44 favorites]

Don't block rural roads or rural gates, ever

I'm not picking a side here, but it's interesting that mefi often comes out in favor of protests in streets generally. Obviously there's an argument that for some rural places the alternative transport route is severely inconvenient, maybe even off-road. BUT, the point of protest is leveraging inconvenience to attract attention to an issue.

In both a rural case and protests that cause gridlock of urban roadways there are human costs (up to and including loss of life for both). Why the special case for rural ones?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 2:24 PM on September 3, 2023 [16 favorites]

surlyben: I am laughing at the burners and also hoping the situation doesn't get worse.

Given my experience with surly people with a dark sense of humor in the BM community doing public service, infrastructure, and safety work -- I find this comment delightfully eponisterical
posted by treepour at 2:26 PM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

on the other hand, maybe (rich) burners will be triggered to do something about climate change when their recreational-fun options are narrowed by flooding, incineration, or other existential crises

More likely they’re getting ready for their Immortan Joe era.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 2:44 PM on September 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

>the point of protest is leveraging inconvenience to attract attention to an issue

when traveling up through Nevada to Montana last year, on the road from Wells, NV to Twin Falls ID there was a jack-knife that stopped traffic for about a half an hour. Looking at the map I was rather surprised to see there were NO side-roads for like 100 miles . . . back-tracking to the east would take 240 miles, and to the west through McDermott would have been +700 miles to Twin Falls.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:04 PM on September 3, 2023 [22 favorites]

Reminder, most environmental protesting will get treated as terrorism (and reported as such), particularly if it obstructs infrastructure, or rich people, or business as usual. All the other environmental protesting get's ignored. There is no 3rd narrative: terrorists at worst, purposeless annoying assholes at least, and everything else is a non-story.

I'm not prepared to judge how many Burning Man attendee's are rich assholes vs free living innocent people but the entire future is collateral damage so if even one Rich assholes [Redacted ]in the mud, its better justice than the DOJ could accomplished during the great recession or Enron or BOA, or AIG or Silicon Valley Bank etc.

Rain baby, rain!
posted by AnchoriteOfPalgrave at 3:09 PM on September 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

In both a rural case and protests that cause gridlock of urban roadways there are human costs (up to and including loss of life for both). Why the special case for rural ones?

I thought it was pretty clear in my original comment: in rural areas it may be the only road. There are no sidewalks, no bike paths, no light rail, no other options for school buses or ambulances, or wheelchairs, or even EMTs with a stretcher. You can't just go another way or use another mode of transportation. For kids that ride a bus for a couple hours to school each way, or people whose jobs it is driving a water truck to people all over the reservation, or people who need to get an elderly relative to Reno for medical treatment, or large animal vets on their way to treat someone's colicky horse (a life threatening issue if not treated quickly), or firefighters heading to a wildfire, having to sit in manufactured stoppages- that you already spent lots of time on the road to get to, long past any chance to take a different route- isn't something easily mitigated.

Yes, stopping traffic in urban areas can also have consequences that can be life threatening. But the chances of having options- to go around, to walk half a block, to have a sidewalk to wheel things down, to catch a bus, or to call someone else to help- simply don't exist miles from nowhere. This is the area we're discussing. This is what it looks like from the road. This is a wide open country where you have to long distances to get to a nearest neighbor, or gas station, or grocery store. Never mind that in this particular instance the average income of the people in the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe is $11,837 per year and they can ill afford to lose work hours- arguably one of the least affecting consequences of having roads blocked. I don't even understand why this has to be explained.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:14 PM on September 3, 2023 [51 favorites]

I've been going to the playa off and on for almost 40 years, mostly to fly rockets, but also as a burner.

People land planes on the playa regularly - the NOTAM that tells planes to stay away because of rockets, seems to draw them in like flies - landing on the playa is hard, largely because there are few clues as to your height, sometimes people forget important stuff
posted by mbo at 3:15 PM on September 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Mire Festival
posted by the duck by the oboe at 3:16 PM on September 3, 2023 [17 favorites]

Plant seeds, see what happens.
posted by parmanparman at 3:17 PM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Sounds like, at least for some people, Burning Man might end up being more like Fyre Fest.

I've seen Fyre, I've seen rain...
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:21 PM on September 3, 2023 [13 favorites]

how great it would be if the attendees had put the same amount of effort and finance into making a permanent community with fixed infrastructure, instead of a circus tent that has to get torn up every year. I mean, you can get undeveloped land in the middle of nowhere for a song, even now. Maybe someone will take up that idea after this.

Peoria.
posted by anshuman at 3:22 PM on September 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

/ BURNING MAN
/ "BLACK ROCK CITY" LMAO
/ HEAR ME
/ UR IN UR DEATH SPIRAL
/ & U DID NOT REPENT 2 UR WEATHER LORDS
posted by ob1quixote at 3:22 PM on September 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

As is so often the case these days, I’m just sorry J.G. Ballard isn’t here to see this.

I've always thought Hunter S. Thompson could have really brought something to our understanding of BM.

BM also always reminds me of the "we are all individuals!" gag in Life of Brian and you couldn't pay me enough money to go myself, and I've spent some quality time in the Nevada desert in summer, but of course I hope everyone is ok and the situation resolves soon.
posted by spitbull at 3:23 PM on September 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

BLM will never shut this down, too many rich Burners who would whine all day ling about it.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 3:28 PM on September 3, 2023

I suspect that the BLM is deeply conflicted here, on one hand BM is a huge cash cow for them and the surrounding communities, on the other they're responsible for the stewardship of the playa and its surrounds - they've been doing a lot of work cleaning up the space over the past 40 years, when I first started going out there there was generations of junk, everything from old cars to the remains of covered wagons, most of that's gone now (except for the stuff declared 'historic'), they've done a really good job (we used to fill the truck up every time we went out, it all adds up over time)
posted by mbo at 3:36 PM on September 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

how great it would be if the attendees had put the same amount of effort and finance into making a permanent community with fixed infrastructure, instead of a circus tent that has to get torn up every year.

The vibe with a transient community where nothing lasts more than a week is totally different than that centred around permanent infrastructure.
posted by Mitheral at 3:41 PM on September 3, 2023 [10 favorites]

I've wondered why people are being told to conserve water-- surely burners are capable of collecting rain water.

Only if they have buckets to catch it in. Given the sanitation situation scooping it off the ground would not be a good idea.

I don't really understand why everyone is talking like this is a hugely grave situation. It seems like most people leave Sunday night or Monday morning and that they are hoping to reopen the road Monday night.

Well, other than the sanitation issue (can't get the pump trucks in) there is also the fact that a rainstorm that happened today can just as easily happen again tomorrow, at which point you will have tens of thousands people stranded with dwindling supplies. Believe me when I tell you that the folks on the playa are aware of it.

“Every society is three meals away from chaos” -- Vladimir Lenin
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:48 PM on September 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

I suspect that the BLM is deeply conflicted here

I suspect that, more so than other federal agencies, BLM is subject to a lot of local political pressure: their HQ was forcibly relocated from DC to western Colorado under Trump; they work hand-in-hand with the fossil fuels/mining industries; and their enabling legislation does not prioritize environmental protection or conservation, but "multi-use".

The offices they have are widely dispersed and their staff is vulnerable to local pressure (political and otherwise).

So they would have to be really convinced it was worth the political heartache to deny the permit in the future; in all likelihood they will increase the requirements, but not too much. Big Tech owns a fair number of Congressional Representatives, and no federal agency wants to answer to Congress about issues which are discretionary.
posted by suelac at 3:50 PM on September 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Maybe the first year the Burning Man can't be Burned is the signal that it's all done.

Smoldering Man
posted by chavenet at 3:51 PM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Why can't they burn the man? What issues will this exacerbate?
posted by Windopaene at 3:59 PM on September 3, 2023

Also the "road" they are talking about opening is the stretch of desert to the blacktop. When it rains out there typically the top 6 inches get wet, and if you try and drive it comes up and fills your wheel wells and you big down really fast.

'96 or '96 we were flying rockets out there, BM was on at the same time up North of us (not at the current spot, and with no fence around it) we were invited over for the burn and they seemed to call down the weather gods - there was a rain/wind storm and lightning (for a couple of hours) - we drove back to our spot, I picked up maybe 40lb of mud in my truck's wheel wells, one street car got enough that it went rock hard and wore his tires down to the belts. Lots of burners packed up (tents were being blown away) and headed out - they went in all directions, lots got lost.

Normally though if you get stuck in rain (much more than that) out there the recommended thing to do is to stop your vehicle and wait it out, don't dig yourself a hole - when the sun comes out and the wind comes up a bit the playa dries pretty quickly, in summer it's only the top few inches that are wet.

But remember in the winter it's an actual lake, some summers parts of the lake persist, and the wind can blow it around
posted by mbo at 4:00 PM on September 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

I suspect that, more so than other federal agencies, BLM is subject to a lot of local political pressure: their HQ was forcibly relocated from DC to western Colorado under Trump

Biden reversed this.
posted by kickingtheground at 4:01 PM on September 3, 2023 [10 favorites]

→ the BM org's survival guide for the current situation

As one far outside the Burning Man culture, this reads far too much like an excerpt from a George Saunders story. One of his stories set in a decaying theme park where everyone has to obey the (always capitalized) Rules or die. Or maybe it was one of his even less jolly ones.
posted by scruss at 4:10 PM on September 3, 2023

Just to help people get a handle on the sanitation situation:

A human averages just over 1/4 pounds (128 grams) of excrement per day, so the fifty thousand people on the playa are producing 14000 pounds (6350 kg) of crap per day. With the mobility issues in the mud they're not spreading it out over a wide area.

Those same people are producing 15850 gallons of (60000 liters) of urine per day and given how often people pee it's unlikely they're slogging over to the porta-potty every time. Despite what you may have heard urine is not sterile.

Diseases spread very quickly in environments like that. There's a reason that waste management is one of the primary traits of any civilization.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 4:12 PM on September 3, 2023 [34 favorites]

Let's keep a sense of proportion. This isn't the Donner party. This is more like a lot of holiday travelers stuck at airports due to flight cancellations caused by bad weather.
posted by SPrintF at 4:21 PM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I have heard from my friend out there, she says she's ok, the situation isn't great, but the people in her camp are amazing. I hope she gets out alright.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 4:22 PM on September 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

Airports have working toilets, fresh water, food, medical assistance, communication.... so, no. Not agreeing with you at all.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:30 PM on September 3, 2023 [25 favorites]

Don't block rural roads or rural gates, ever.

A counterexample.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 4:36 PM on September 3, 2023 [10 favorites]

I'm very very interested in how the BORG is going to handle cleanup (moop removal) this year. Once that mud (which is more like clay) sets, anything left behind and embedded in it is going to be rather challenging to get out. And the BLM is very insistent the playa be left as it was found. A lot of effort goes into cleanup with many volunteers remaining a month after the festival to ensure it gets done. I can only imagine this year's going to take a lot more effort and a lot more time.

I also hear they're going to torch the man tonight regardless. Easier than figuring how to take it out. But again, it means a lot of debris from the burn is likely to wind up embedded in playa mud, despite the presence of an oversized burn platform under the man to prevent scarring.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 4:41 PM on September 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

Nothing is as bad as it's made out to be.
Wonderhussy briefly checks in from Black Rock. City.
posted by hortense at 4:41 PM on September 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

The irony of spending weeks of extra labor (with its own plumbing and food/water challenges and logistic and financial costs) to try to make it look like nothing happened there is just staggering to me, who has never left any trace at Burning Man in my life, nor will I, entirely by default. I guess all the fuel burned in the setup, existence, breakdown, and cleanup drifts away and does not count as trace-leaving.
posted by Earthtopus at 5:00 PM on September 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

Probably not a jet, no, but prop planes?

People most certainly fly jets out there. There's a guy on YouTube who flies a PC-24 for a charter outfit who has ferried some folks to Burning Man the last couple of years.
posted by wierdo at 5:05 PM on September 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

I guess all the fuel burned in the setup, existence, breakdown, and cleanup drifts away and does not count as trace-leaving.

Ignoring the externalities is much of what BM and its model of 'radical self-reliance' has been about for many years. And this includes the culture of volunteerism which provides an enormous amount of uncompensated labor to stage it.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 5:12 PM on September 3, 2023 [30 favorites]

Let's keep a sense of proportion. This isn't the Donner party. This is more like a lot of holiday travelers stuck at airports due to flight cancellations caused by bad weather.

Aside from the very real chance of hypothermia from being soaking wet in 50 degree temps (it's not that low, but when you're wet it's low enough) and the threat of only having overflowing portapotties for bathrooms, sure- it is just like being stuck in the airport.
posted by oneirodynia at 5:23 PM on September 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

This isn't the Donner party.

Another tagline for the ages.
posted by y2karl at 5:24 PM on September 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

This seems like it would be good practice for the National Guard and FEMA.
posted by interogative mood at 5:27 PM on September 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Per weirdo's comment above, here's a video from a guy who flies passengers in a PC-24 jet to Burning Man, multiple times per day.
posted by mediareport at 5:30 PM on September 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

This isn't the Donner party.

Another tagline for the ages.


This ain't no Donner party
This ain't no disco
This ain't no foolin' around

I'll let myself out....

(And yeah this situation seems at least slightly more serious than being stuck overnight at an airport).
posted by gtrwolf at 5:34 PM on September 3, 2023 [10 favorites]

I'm not prepared to judge how many Burning Man attendee's are rich assholes vs free living innocent people but the entire future is collateral damage so if even one Rich assholes [Redacted ]in the mud, its better justice than the DOJ could accomplished during the great recession or Enron or BOA, or AIG or Silicon Valley Bank etc.

Rain baby, rain!

You know there are children there, right? People who've saved up all year or maybe more to make it happen? Elderly people? But sure, let's hope some folks [Redacted] because a few rich people go there. If it gets just one of them (which it won't -- it's generally not the rich who perish in situations like this), it totally makes up for the injustices of the last several decades and any collateral damage is totally justified. That's seriously what you're proposing?
posted by treepour at 5:40 PM on September 3, 2023 [11 favorites]

Drone footage

Looks like the lake is forming to the north west - it's normal when it rains for the edges of the playa to become impassable because of all the water coming down from the hills - the middle will likely dry out first, the people there will wonder why they'e not allowed to leave
posted by mbo at 5:54 PM on September 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Las Vegas has also had terrible flash floods this weekend. While Burning Man is getting a lot of attention this is a regional weather disaster in the making. More about the situation in Vegas from the New York Times
posted by interogative mood at 6:07 PM on September 3, 2023 [9 favorites]

Diseases spread very quickly in environments like that.

Funny you should mention that.

There have been reports of a contagious disease floating around the grounds. This is not horrendously unusual for an unsanitary, muddy environment; a possible bacterial outbreak amongst attendees at this year's Tough Mudder is a quite recent example.

But this is the year 2023, and the Internet and social media are what they are, so stories have been splashed all over Twixxer in particular about how there is a dangerous Ebola/Marburg outbreak at Burning Man and the authorities are quarantining-by-force all attendees. Some are calling it a dry run for COVID lockdowns meant to ensure Joe Biden's reelection (as you think "Now, how would that possibly...", just smile and nod), while others helpfully noted that Ebola is in the same single-strand RNA viral class as COVID and thus should be fully curable via ivermectin and zinc.

This is safely ignorable on all counts. The last time that a debilitating disorder threatening the well-being of millions attended Burning Man, its name was Grover Norquist.
posted by delfin at 6:12 PM on September 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

The last time that a debilitating disorder threatening the well-being of millions attended Burning Man, its name was Grover Norquist.

Seth Meyers will be calling once the strike ends.
posted by hippybear at 6:17 PM on September 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

You know there are children there, right? People who've saved up all year or maybe more to make it happen? Elderly people?

Wait, people bring children to Burning Man?

Full disclosure: I know almost nothing about Burning Man. From what I can gather, it's some artsy festival in the desert where rich white people can cosplay as hippies and walk around naked. But from the coverage on the news, it looks really bad. And not at all the kind of place that would be any kind of fun for children.

I'm sympathetic to the people who are suffering through some rather dire conditions and I hope everyone gets out OK, but I'm also furious at the whole idea of this all. The organizers can't absolve themselves of their ethical failings by simply spouting phrases like "radical self-reliance". If they build an attractive (to some people) festival that brings in 80,000 people to the desert (a fucking desert) they can't act all surprised when other people show up without enough food or water or medicine. The larger the event, the more imperative it is to think over every possible issue and to have contingency plans in place. Jesus, even for a picnic play date with the neighbor kids I always have a plan for rain because, you know, sometimes it fucking rains.

That is to say: people who hold festival on lake bed are surprised when lake comes back. Cue up the surprised Pikachu face, I suppose.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 6:24 PM on September 3, 2023 [20 favorites]

And also schadenfreude and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

I apologize that I haven't quite caught up with the thread yet but this is the best summary of how I feel about the whole situation. I've been through some adventur-y, wilderness experiences in desert and antarctic and everything in between; given and gotten help in countless numbers. I don't think anyone on the playa right now can escape being judged for their lack of foresight and preparation. But who among us has been perfect? Burning Man has always been too organized for my taste but I can't deny I like the arty stuff sometimes. Maybe we can rescue the poor fucks who didn't prepare properly and give them a good lesson for next year, when they organize a better event that's more prepared for the inevitable problems.
posted by traveler_ at 6:45 PM on September 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

hundreds of people live in Las Vegas' underground storm sewer network. Non-profit Shine A Light that helps people living in the storm sewers swept the 600 miles of tunnels yesterday warning and assisting residents.
posted by Mitheral at 6:46 PM on September 3, 2023 [27 favorites]

We took our kids there 3 times, ages ~7-12 - people treat them really well and the whole thing is a visual feast, lots of cool stuff to take them to see and do. We don't have a problem with nudity, and those few things that were just a too bit adult were easily dealt with pointing the other way "hey look over there" because there was always something more interesting over there.

There is a "kids camp" - families camping together with kids, which we visited friends at, but we always camped with our own mob.

The last time we were moving back to NZ and went to the Burn and never came back, driving east, giving away our truck, shipping our camping gear, paring down to a suitcase each to start a 4 month 'geography lesson' to fill in the gap between the school years in the different hemispheres
posted by mbo at 6:51 PM on September 3, 2023 [42 favorites]

If we'd been trapped in this with the kids we would have started sleeping in the back of the truck, we always took more food and water than we needed, could have happily stayed long enough for the playa to dry out - not everyone out there is unprepared, and those that are are probably helping their neighbours.
posted by mbo at 6:54 PM on September 3, 2023 [13 favorites]

I’m a bit confused about the sex plane.

Tail number N5818B
https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N5818B/history

BM establishes a 'dirt' runway , 88nv. Last flight plan was filed Sept 1 8am. I expect all birds are grounded until the runway emerges again
posted by eustatic at 7:02 PM on September 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Someone please tell me Elon’s ridiculous Las Vegas loop was swamped in the flooding.
posted by interogative mood at 7:10 PM on September 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

I’m a bit confused about the sex plane.

Tail number N5818B
https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N5818B/history

Color me surprised that they didn't go with tail number "318008."
posted by Dip Flash at 7:27 PM on September 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Full disclosure: I know almost nothing about Burning Man

And yet somehow you're still pontificating about it?
posted by dnash at 7:47 PM on September 3, 2023 [18 favorites]

Color me surprised that they didn't go with tail number "318008."

Because there are rules for how tail numbers work, so that would not be valid. That said, you can have fun with tail numbers within the rules, as James May has demonstrated in the past.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:57 PM on September 3, 2023

Seth Meyers will be calling once the strike ends.

Damn, man. You could've just made a rimshot noise or something instead of sticking the knife that deep. ;)
posted by delfin at 8:19 PM on September 3, 2023

"President Biden has been briefed on the situation"

"Mr. President… intelligence indicates Center Camp has entered failed state status, and an unidentified terrorist faction has seized control of the Thunderdome. Port-a-potty systems are approaching criticality. I’m afraid the residents of Blackrock City may be forced to… *sigh*… pee on the playa."

Seriously though, hoping everyone makes it out safely.
posted by mikeand1 at 8:26 PM on September 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

>>I’m a bit confused about the sex plane.
>Tail number N5818B
>https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N5818B/history

That does not seem ideal...
posted by Tenuki at 8:47 PM on September 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

But this is the year 2023, and the Internet and social media are what they are, so stories have been splashed all over Twixxer in particular about how there is a dangerous Ebola/Marburg outbreak at Burning Man and the authorities are quarantining-by-force all attendees. Some are calling it a dry run for COVID lockdowns meant to ensure Joe Biden's reelection

I am somewhat disappointed that the Jewish space lasers are not involved yet.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:49 PM on September 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Hey, people! Don't hate the playa!
posted by SPrintF at 8:59 PM on September 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

Black Rock City is 3950 feet in elevation if they were just willing to settle for the kilometer high club.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:18 PM on September 3, 2023 [9 favorites]

We don't hate the playa, we hate the game.
posted by sibboleth at 9:18 PM on September 3, 2023 [21 favorites]

But this is the year 2023, and the Internet and social media are what they are, so stories have been splashed all over Twixxer in particular about how there is a dangerous Ebola/Marburg outbreak at Burning Man and the authorities are quarantining-by-force all attendees.

As far as I know this “rumor” originated with Brace “formerly known as PissPigGrandad” Belden - the lefty Twitter shitposter, podcast host, and onetime YPG volunteer. Needless to say he was 100 percent fucking with people.
posted by atoxyl at 9:38 PM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

If they don't manage to clean up all the crap afterwards (and even if they do), BM organizers may well have some sharp conversations with BLM.

I admit I was thrown for a second until I realized, “Oh. That BLM.”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:53 PM on September 3, 2023 [13 favorites]

I am somewhat disappointed that the Jewish space lasers are not involved yet.

That's how they changed the weather!
posted by ryanrs at 10:01 PM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

That is to say: people who hold festival on lake bed are surprised when lake comes back.


No, they aren't. Attendees are specifically warned that anything can happen, including floods. Attendees are responsible for dealing with their own survival and comfort. It's been over 15 years since I last went, and I can tell you that heavy rain and mud is not out of the ordinary. It is particularly bad this year, however.

Even in the best of years, it's not an easy place to be. The playa is always a harsh environment. The even itself is extremely difficult to describe. I don't think I've ever seen words that really convey the experience. I always said it was like a mix of Mos Eisley Spaceport, the Thunderdome, and the City Museum in St. Louis.

Obnoxious tech bros were a part of the scene before the first time I ever attended over 20 years ago. But I never actually met one. It did seem to draw mostly from the SF Bay area. But the people I met there and liked to hang with over several burns were tradespeople from the Reno/Sparks area who were also involved with E Clampus Vitus.

And yes, the several years I went, my kids were with me. They always seemed to have a ball.
posted by 2N2222 at 10:25 PM on September 3, 2023 [19 favorites]

This is the kind of thing the dearly departed Website Formerly Known as Twitter seemed to be designed for, both in the schadenfreude/humor and breaking new/emergency update senses. Ah well.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:26 PM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I went to Burning Man in college and I have much sympathy for everyone dealing with a horrible, trapped, potentially unhealthy/unsanitary mess there. A friend of mine used to work there until she got hit in the head by an errant 12 foot dome that could not withstand 70 mph wind. I'm not sure if she ever went back since (she at least skipped a few years but I only hear from her occasionally since she moved) but man, I hope she's not there now.

I was asked this weekend why I don't want to go on vacation any more. Honestly, between covid and climate change I'm kinda afraid to.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:38 PM on September 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

All this media attention, someone should've organized the world's largest naked mud hug, or muddy orgy, or something else muddy which'll freak out the normies. If significant rainfall becomes a more common occurrence, then maybe this could be planned for future years?
posted by jeffburdges at 1:42 AM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Reddit seems to do a decent job of replacing
Twitter for my social media info dump. For example /r/BurningMan
posted by interogative mood at 2:59 AM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Anyone know why the attendance at flood/mud BM was reported at 50K for a while, but now it's said to have 70K people?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:01 AM on September 4, 2023

Thanks for all of the pontificating, indignant posts from people with no clue about Burning Man.

It's been amusing.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 4:47 AM on September 4, 2023 [6 favorites]

Anyone know why the attendance at flood/mud BM was reported at 50K for a while, but now it's said to have 70K people?

As far as I can tell total attendance was 70K but the number of people left out on the playa right now is around 50K.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:28 AM on September 4, 2023

I've now seen FB post from three people who are there saying basically, it kind of sucks but the people are all great, we're getting by. (None of them are rich tech bros.)
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:55 AM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have known a couple of folks who have gone to Burning Man. None of them were rich tech bros. One was a teacher who went with her partner to have a good time, others were artists and weirdos who were just attracted to that sort of vibe.

In conclusion, Burning Man is a land of muddy contrasts.
posted by Kitteh at 6:01 AM on September 4, 2023 [6 favorites]

Reddit seems to do a decent job of replacing
Twitter for my social media info dump. For example /r/BurningMan

One of the posts shows a rental RV sunk to the frame in the mud. That's going to suck to deal with, both to get unstuck and when returning the vehicle.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:36 AM on September 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

Wow. Like, logistically, how would someone even dislodge that thing? If they wait until the ground dries, wouldn't it just be cement?

Years ago, we drove a toyota highlander through about 20 miles of thick mud, never to the frame, and even with the most aggressive car washing we never quite got all of the mud out of the chassis.
posted by mochapickle at 6:44 AM on September 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

So I read this:

The event demands that all participants practice "radical self-reliance"; ensuring that you are going to be ready to handle any conditions and not become someone else's problem.

and this:

A lot of effort goes into cleanup with many volunteers remaining a month after the festival to ensure it gets done. I can only imagine this year's going to take a lot more effort and a lot more time.

and was struck by the idea that Burning Man is Walden, but for extroverts.

And hey, I can see how that's an attractive idea, just like I can see how cruises are an attractive idea to a lot of people too.

The thing is some things just don't scale. Just like we call out cruises for environmental damage, and we call out cruise lines that that don't provide adequate and safe accommodations for their customers, we can call out the Burning Man organizers for their lack of planning. You can't set up a small town in the wilderness and not provide a better waste disposal system than porta-johns and not expect problems. If you can't get a better system set up you need to reconsider the 70,000 people part, or the middle of the desert part. And I have approximately no time for the idea that that many people can be there and then leave the place unchanged. That's just a fantasy, and not how people or ecosystems work.

At the end of the day, the organizers definitely should do some hard thinking to do about the actual nature of their event and its impact on the land where it takes place. And hopefully the participants will do the same, because as much as it sucks right now for the individuals, they all hold a bit of the responsibility for their choices to continue going. That's just as true for the folks that save up all year for this as it is for the folks who save up all year for a cruise.
posted by Gygesringtone at 6:48 AM on September 4, 2023 [34 favorites]

At the end of the day, the organizers definitely should do some hard thinking to do about the actual nature of their event and its impact on the land where it takes place


Yeah, they should. JFC thousands of pages have been written about BM's impact, and the organization, black rock rangers, BLM, burner volunteer groups and others have had conferences about it and made logistics and impact plans for the decades it's been running.

But sure, just opine "well they should think about it!"
posted by lalochezia at 6:56 AM on September 4, 2023 [20 favorites]

Favorited for "Walden for extroverts".
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:01 AM on September 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

Yeah, they should. JFC thousands of pages have been written about BM's impact, and the organization, black rock rangers, BLM, burner volunteer groups and others have had conferences about it and made logistics and impact plans for the decades it's been running.

I mean, I didn't say they should do some hard thinking about how to run the event, I said "actual nature of their event and its impact on the land where it takes place," because 70,000 people is a lot different than 49,000 from 15 years ago, or the 1,000 from 30 years.

"Leave No Trace" doesn't scale. I mean, if even everyone was only 100 pounds that 70,000,000 pounds of biomass in the area that wasn't there before. Not to mention all their equipment, food, water, etc. That's too much mass not to have an effect on the playa. And yeah, deserts are deserts, but they're still ecosystems, they're still part of the broader earth. Kicking up however much dust trucking in and out is going to have an effect down wind.
posted by Gygesringtone at 7:36 AM on September 4, 2023 [21 favorites]

JFC thousands of pages have been written about BM's impact, and the organization, black rock rangers, BLM, burner volunteer groups and others have had conferences about it and made logistics and impact plans for the decades it's been running.

Which isn't actually an argument against the point being made, because the festival is always going to be biased towards its own continuence - which is going to in turn bias them towards avoiding the big questions about its very existence. As was pointed out, the actual scalability of "leave no trace" is a big one, given the massive footprint of Black Rock City, further exacerbated by its transient nature introducing added inefficiencies and problems with the infrastructure needed.

Just because they have "thought about it" in the context of how to execute their principles doesn't mean that they have actually thought about those principles, what they actually mean, and if they can honestly meet them anymore. And that is a really big ask to make, because it's asking them to honestly consider if they can continue! But the thing is, it's not an unfair ask, either.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:50 AM on September 4, 2023 [33 favorites]

Wow. Like, logistically, how would someone even dislodge that thing? If they wait until the ground dries, wouldn't it just be cement?

They are going to be paying $$$$ to a tow company with big equipment, and probably recovering the RV separately from the big-ass Uhaul trailer that they got stuck as well. The local companies would know what to do with that soil; I'm wondering if they would use buckets of water to soften spots where they need to dig? And, in that Reddit thread, people are saying that the late charge from the RV rental place is $25/hr or $600/day, plus cleaning, so potentially big bills that way, too.

There are a few companies that do remote vehicle recoveries that post videos on YouTube (e.g. Matt's Off Road), which are fun to watch and offer plenty of schadenfreude for the situations people get into.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:22 AM on September 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

I really dislike the assumption that "desert" is synonymous with "empty." Deserts are rich ecosystems. The deserts near Black Rock provide the habitats to foxes, antelopes, squirrels, kangaroo rats, lizards, badgers, snacks, shrimp, etc. It's not a blank canvas to paint on.
posted by tofu_crouton at 8:28 AM on September 4, 2023 [48 favorites]

Anyone know why the attendance at flood/mud BM was reported at 50K for a while, but now it's said to have 70K people?

Ten years from now we'll have all been at Burning Man 2023, just like we were all at Woodstock
posted by chavenet at 8:49 AM on September 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

Ten years from now we'll have all been at Burning Man 2023, just like we were all at Woodstock

Ha, I was saying to my friend last night -- the one I was camping with during the Nova Scotia floods -- that in a couple of years we should start telling people we were at Burning Man '23 since we basically were*.

*Yes, the floods and the ankle-deep mud and the portapotties and people doing art (through the worst of it, guys in the tent next door singing, playing guitar and fiddle. Could barely hear them over the rain and they were like 10 feet away), but camping with 3000 people not 50,000 and while we couldn't leave and just go to a hotel for safety/road-condition reasons (washouts, not mud), there was pavement much closer....but details, schmetails...what I tell my grandchildren is between me and me.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:22 AM on September 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

Their own guidelines say that you should avoid digging holes more than 3 cubic feet. Any bigger leaves a permanent scar on the playa, even after refilling. So, leave no trace is going to be difficult to pull off this year with all the ruts and compaction. Plus, once it dries out, the trash clean up is going to be so difficult with everything encased or buried in re-hardened dirt.

Its nice to say they have been planning and organizing for decades but after all that, is their rain plan for 70,000 people really "shelter in place and poop in buckets"?

At this scale its impossible to distinguish between Burning Man and the idiots who tear up national forest trails with ATVs and dirt bikes.
posted by being_quiet at 9:37 AM on September 4, 2023 [23 favorites]

Wow. Like, logistically, how would someone even dislodge that thing? If they wait until the ground dries, wouldn't it just be cement?

Rig and access mats (heavy timbers bolted together to make stable platforms) to avoid making things worse. Heavy haul and medium duty tow trucks to perform the extraction. Hydrovacs (like a shop vac sized to mount on a tridem truck) to free the undercarriage with minimum damage to the ground and the unit).

All that stuff is very expensive though. Like the cheapest heavy wreaker or hydrovac is going to be at least $300/hr starting when they leave their yard. Probably only worth it if there are several heavy vehicles in need of recovery.

There are other more fiddly ways, some labour intensive, that would also work like hand digging and jacking it up on cribbing and then filling the holes underneath and lowering it back down. Probably wouldn't take a couple guys more than a week to do. Would depend on a bit on how level you need to leave the site. If you can leave spoil piles stacked up because they'll self level once flooded that saves a lot of time and effort.

And if you are resigned to the unit being a write off you can set a good anchor and just yank it out (maybe soften the ground first with water).

Might also be able to pick it up with a boom truck or HIAB (truck mounted cranes) after softening the ground and set it back down someplace dry (or on a lowbed trailer).

IDK what sort of weight the ground will support when dry; that makes a lot of difference when you start considering heavy machinery. There are trailer mounted hydro vacs that can be pulled with a dually pick up though I've never seen one.

Whatever the approach I hope they have some sort of insurance coverage 'cause it ain't going to be cheap.
posted by Mitheral at 10:23 AM on September 4, 2023 [9 favorites]

something else muddy which'll freak out the normies

Neal Katyal was at this year's event. I think it's safe to say that the bourgeois are not just inside the building, they're ensconced in the penthouse.
posted by praemunire at 10:56 AM on September 4, 2023 [9 favorites]

At this scale its impossible to distinguish between Burning Man and the idiots who tear up national forest trails with ATVs and dirt bikes.

Which people who are into that do, lots of times on BLM lands, without any feelings of remorse or compunctions to not do those things.
posted by Windopaene at 11:02 AM on September 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'll be going go Black Rock in 2 weeks. I go every mid-late September for rocketry. This year will be my ~18th time. I have seen all kinds of crazy weather including serious mud, although not as bad as this. One time it had rained on our rocketry site just an hour or so before my arrival and my truck and trailer stuck in the mud about 100 meters short of my intended camp site. I slept in the driver's seat for one night. The next day I had to chisel mud out of all my wheel wells with a screwdriver.

The current event serves as a reminder to bring extra food and water and be physically and mentally prepared to hunker down.
posted by neuron at 11:21 AM on September 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

Tail number N5818B
https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N5818B/history

About half of those flights are 11 or 12 minutes. That's some speedy sex-planing.

Also, tail number, amirite?
posted by kirkaracha at 11:30 AM on September 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

I really dislike the assumption that "desert" is synonymous with "empty." Deserts are rich ecosystems. The deserts near Black Rock provide the habitats to foxes, antelopes, squirrels, kangaroo rats, lizards, badgers, snacks, shrimp, etc. It's not a blank canvas to paint on.

Adjacent to the comment above re: ATVs etc and the ecological damage done by BM, there's a project in development to run a water pipeline from a desalination plant in Mexico to housing developments in Arizona. Ignoring the damage that desalination brine does to water ecosystems, the pipeline — if constructed — would run through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a UNESCO site, which has been designated a biosphere reserve. As with Burning Man and Black Rock, people think these deserts are dead and ripe for economic development, but these lands are in fact teeming with life.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:53 AM on September 4, 2023 [8 favorites]

At the end of the day, the organizers definitely should do some hard thinking to do about the actual nature of their event and its impact on the land where it takes place.

Yeah, they should. JFC thousands of pages have been written about BM's impact, and the organization, black rock rangers, BLM, burner volunteer groups and others have had conferences about it and made logistics and impact plans for the decades it's been running.

Yeah, they should. Because when you start thinking about an annual arts and music event involving tens of thousands of people, congratulations! You've invented fairs! And when you start thinking about a good place to hold these annual fairs, congratulations! You've invented fairgrounds!

Oh wait, we already have hundreds of fairgrounds all over the USA that are not located on lake beds.

Yes, public lands are public. And I can think of some great uses for these public lands, such as the rocketry events mentioned upthread. It makes perfect sense to do this large-scale rocketry in a vast open space that's far away from towns and roads and utilities and power lines and other people.

It makes no sense to do this large-scale art fair in a vast open space that's far away from towns and roads and utilities and power lines and other people.

Fairgrounds, people. Look it up.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 12:07 PM on September 4, 2023 [13 favorites]

>It makes no sense to do this

not a burner but it's my understanding that it's pretty anarchic / libertarian / Bartertown-ey there in the scheme of things, people letting their hair down so-to-speak.

this legal laxity limits the possible venues for this sort of thing . . .
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 12:21 PM on September 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

I think that the difference in law enforcement from being on federal land made a big(ger) difference when the event was less Robot Heart and more Drive-by Shooting Range.
posted by rhizome at 12:21 PM on September 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

>stuck in the mud about 100 meters short of my intended camp

"4WD just means you get stuck further up the trail . . . "
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 12:23 PM on September 4, 2023 [6 favorites]

Fairgrounds, people. Look it up.

Or maybe even something like a decommissioned air force base. Good road transport links (rather than one rural dirt road), an airstrip for your premium festival goers, lots of space for pitching tents and setting up porta-potties, large hangars for shelter if the weather is bad, and a brownfield site that won't require a whole lot of environmental remediation once the burning and rocket-firing and spewing out of all the garbage have been done. Plus you've already got a test case on running an even bigger event at the site and should be able to learn from that experience about maybe how to avoid everything going all Lord of the Flies again.
posted by hangashore at 12:55 PM on September 4, 2023 [15 favorites]

From reports on the ground things do not particular seem to have turned all Lord of the Flies. Probably helps that Neal Katyal and all the richies fucked off as soon as the going got hard.
posted by Artw at 1:12 PM on September 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

Between cool-kid excitement and schadenfreude, I expect a lot of the reports are exaggerated. But alkaline mud is no fun.
posted by clew at 9:59 AM on September 3

I had a burner friend in college. If I had ever entertained the idea of attending, that ended quickly after hearing her describe the phenomenon of "playa foot." Her multi-step process for preventing it involved, iirc, multiple layers of socks, vaseline, boots, and possibly plastic wrap? I'm sparing a thought for the 100,000 burning feet out there.
posted by doift at 1:20 PM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

I honestly don't understand the Katyal hate here. He's a wealthy lawyer, but aside from his defense of Ashcroft he seems to have done a lot of good things with his lawyer skills, including establishing the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act and the Affordable Care Act. He also argued the case that kept the Independent State Legislature theory from becoming entrenched as real.
posted by hippybear at 1:35 PM on September 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Drive-by Shooting Range

1994. Here's the relevant historical document for reference.

The mid-90s editions of BM also included propane-tank skeet shooting and being greeted at the gate by dudes with AK-47s. There was lot more firearms and bang!bang in those early years. And a lot more burning stuff. To wit...

In 1996, a sizable installation/performance piece called HELCO, was famously constructed and then burnt to the ground the night before the Man. (This was back when the Man was burnt on Sundays, leaving Saturday night for things like the opera.)
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 1:38 PM on September 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

> I honestly don't understand the Katyal hate here

Prominent Anti-Trump Attorney Asks the Supreme Court to Let Companies off the Hook for Child Slavery

is this the card you're looking for
posted by user92371 at 1:39 PM on September 4, 2023 [14 favorites]

It's not a blank canvas to paint on.

Or in this case, to poop on.
posted by slogger at 1:44 PM on September 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

Also the whole supporting of the nominations of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. No hero points for being "anti-Trump" when you've enabled and endorsed the part of his legacy that will probably do the most long term damage to your country.
posted by hangashore at 1:49 PM on September 4, 2023 [9 favorites]

is this the card you're looking for

Well, he lost that one on technicalities. Lawyers take cases their paid for. I'm glad he was there for the major cases he won.
posted by hippybear at 1:49 PM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

We’ve been getting some of the same rain here in Utah that went over Nevada and Burning Man. It is was some of the heaviest rain I’ve seen in Utah last night - so I can see why it was no joke out at BM. The same rain gave the Wasatch and Unita Mountains near us their first snowfall of the season overnight. Come on Winter, let’s just skip Autumn.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 1:49 PM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

He's a wealthy lawyer, but

I say this as a lawyer: no lawyer becomes a wealthy lawyer by doing even mostly good. Mildly liberal lawyers leveraging their time in a Democratic administration to get even bigger paychecks as corporate shills are a particularly distasteful example.

Lawyers take cases their paid for.

When you are already well-off, the onus on you becomes even stronger not to take morally reprehensible clients in civil cases. There is no obligation to take on anyone who shows up in your office waving a checkbook. It does help pay for the luxury trips to Burning Man, though.

But...moral issues aside...when former solicitors general start turning up at your bohemian event, it is boho no mo.
posted by praemunire at 2:09 PM on September 4, 2023 [20 favorites]

Yeah, they should. Because when you start thinking about an annual arts and music event involving tens of thousands of people, congratulations! You've invented fairs! And when you start thinking about a good place to hold these annual fairs, congratulations! You've invented fairgrounds!

Look, we believed you when you said you knew almost nothing about Burning Man. You don't have to keep trying to convince us.

Burning Man is not a bunch of neatly arranged booths, provided by the management, a schedule of booked acts on various stages, and a place to be safe and dry if it rains. I love art galleries, concerts, ren faires, and circus shows, but Burning Man is none of those.

Burning Man is participatory in a way that those are not. Its principles erase the line between performer and audience, between organizer and visitor. At its best, it's an exercise in building something: infrastructure, an art project, a community. It's an exercise in sharing something: your skills, your creativity, your presence. It's an exercise in discovering something about who you are when you're not constrained by your day-to-day life, when you're challenged by something well outside of your comfort zone, and then bringing that back with you.

We can talk about (are talking about) whether it succeeds at living up to its principles. But asking why it doesn't do the things that it is a reaction against just misses the point.
posted by aneel at 2:14 PM on September 4, 2023 [27 favorites]

To aneel, your description makes me hate it all the more.

But you're right, I know almost nothing about Burning Man and I understand it even less. I suppose it rings some people's bells, and I grudgingly accept that I'll just never get that.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 2:27 PM on September 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

I can both concur that having a more stable base for a festival might be a good idea, and yet BM is anarchic/maybe less legal and that could also have some issues.

Mostly it will be interesting to see what happens this year when Leave No Trace kinda can't happen so well, I suppose.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:31 PM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

It definitely has some “place to do stuff you can’t do too close to civilization” roots.

(I don’t know that the take that maybe it’s simply grown too big now to remain compatible with the original intent and nominal principles is unfair, though)
posted by atoxyl at 2:39 PM on September 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

Drive by shooting range / Abandoned Air Base

It's worth noting that the playa was a WW2 bombing and strafing range, the upper playa was bombed while the BM site was for aircraft practising strafing - you still find lots of ammo, some live, on the lake bed. Even into the 90s we'd see B52s practising low level runs, below the level of the mountains, back then we used to not be allowed to fly rockets out there weekends when there was no moon because the ANG got the airspace.

Scariest thing that ever happened to me out there was when some of the rocket guys invited some of the ANG friends with F4 Phantoms to come out and give us a show, I was LCO (the person pressing the button to launch rockets, responsible to make sure there's no hazards in the air) - we didn't see these guys coming, they came in over the playa at a few 100 ft and pulled vertical over us - it was really cool ..... except that I had 3-4 rockets in the air under chutes and they flew right through them, could easily have ingested one and fallen on the crowd. We wrote the politest possible letter to the head of the local ANG thanking them for the show and explaining the issue and asking them to NEVER do that again.
posted by mbo at 2:40 PM on September 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

I am somewhat disappointed that the Jewish space lasers are not involved yet.

Catturd: Once the Ebola-Covid has run its course, the Jewish space lasers will be used to incinerate all evidence

Elon Musk: Hmm, interesting
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:14 PM on September 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

oneirodynia it seems to me to be a case of two rights making a wrong.
posted by lapolla at 3:25 PM on September 4, 2023

I suppose it rings some people's bells, and I grudgingly accept that I'll just never get that.

That's fine. It's not right for everyone. There's a temptation, especially strong with people who've just come back from their first Burn, to be evangelical about Burning Man. To say things like "it's a life-changing experience and everyone should do it!" But that is not true. Not everyone should do it. Lots of people would hate it if they did.
posted by aneel at 3:30 PM on September 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

For what it's worth, some of us think the best part of fairs is the participatory part. Farmers and 4h kids and local artists and artisans, yes! Carnivals and concerts, meh.
posted by surlyben at 3:31 PM on September 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

I was talking with a woman I didn't know. She was very enthusiastic about Burning Man. I said I didn't like heat, loud noise, or the risk of being raped that she mentioned. She said that was why I should go. What could she possibly have been thinking.

****

I may be displaying ignorance, but it seems to me that if anyone knows how to do sanitation for a temporary 70K town, it would be the US military. I can believe it wouldn't be a good fit for Burning Man, though.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:00 PM on September 4, 2023

Farmers and 4h kids and local artists and artisans, yes!

Yes! That's awesome! My experience with county fairs, state fairs, and the like has been limited to going to see the cute animals, cheer on the mutton bustin', and be amazed by the quilts, not to be a participant like that. The "Participation" principle of Burning Man pushes everyone to be the farmers/4h kids/local artists and artisans. Again, we can talk about whether that principle is upheld, or whether lots of people are going as spectators.

[Caveat: While I'm finding myself defending Burning Man, it's been years since I've been to Black Rock City. It got too big for me. I got bored with the "survival" and "self-reliance" aspects, and the huge amounts of money that get poured into it. I've been more involved in recent years in smaller offshoot events with more emphasis on volunteering and community.]
posted by aneel at 4:44 PM on September 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

About half of those flights are 11 or 12 minutes. That's some speedy sex-planing.

Got a feeling inside (can’t sex-plane),
It’s a certain kind (can’t sex-plane)
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:52 PM on September 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

I've been to Burning Man ten times with my first being in 2002 which I'm guessing probably puts me in the top 5% of people in this thread who have direct knowledge of what Burning Man is like. Here are a bunch of my thoughts on a bunch of the subjects being discussed in no particular order.

The Safety of People Currently on the Playa: Anyone currently having a bad time on the playa was given ample opportunity to make better choices. There is a Survival Guide that is sent out every year with each ticket purchased through the BORG. I currently checked mine from 2018 (the last year I was in attendance) and it clearly lists extra food, extra water, warm clothes and an emergency toilet as required items for each attendee to pack. This is hardly the first year that rain has shut down the road from the highway to Black Rock City; I had friends whose car was not allowed to be moved for 24 hours in I think 2014 while everyone waited for the playa to dry out. These events are known quantities and anyone ill prepared for them is ill prepared for them because they did not listen to the clear instructions that were provided to all participants.

Coked Out Tech Bros: Coked out tech bros are one of the best things about Burning Man because they mostly stay sequestered in their little enclaves but they also want everyone to see their cool shit (and admittedly they do have some amazingly cool shit). In my ten years at Burning Man I have never had a single encounter with a tech bro (coked out or otherwise) but I have drunk their liquor and played with their toys.

Hippies: The actual most annoying people at Burning Man are the people who will corner you while you're trying to enjoy some silent stargazing to talk about "energy" or call themselves "healers" despite their lack of any formal medical training or whatever other fucking woo they can't stop talking about. Just the worst, but you can usually avoid them.

That Protest: So there's one thing that pretty much every veteran Burner will agree on and that is you should not test the Paiute. They do not have any patience remaining for our nonsense and if you feel like you can get away with disrespecting their community by for example breaking the speed limit they are more than happy to disabuse you of that notion. Whatever my thoughts might be on the cops in general I am not going to try to lecture the Paiute on how they should have responded to anyone blocking several thousand outsiders from getting off their sovereign land as quickly as feasibly possible.

People Walking Off the Playa: Statistically, some percentage of people doing this are probably assholes who left their gear behind. That's true of any group of people; I was just down at the local beach and I saw several parties leaving piles of trash behind and by all appearances those parties were neither rich nor white nor affiliated with the tech industry. But we shouldn't jump to conclusions for the majority of people walking out of the event. The last year I attended I drove the truck for a group that carried gear for over fifty people. We left no gear behind but it any or all of those fifty people (excepting my assistant driver and me, I guess) had walked out of the event early it wouldn't have been a problem because we had organized for our camp's gear to travel separately. This is a common strategy for Burners.

The Whiteness: Physician, heal thy fucking self. You are on MetaFilter. I have been to ten Burning Man events and roughly as many MetaFilter meetups and Burning Man is like the Universal Zulu Nation compared to this place. Jesus.

Kids: I personally don't think kids should be allowed at Burning Man but that's more for the protection of the event than it is for the protection of the kids. My suspicion is that kids at Burning Man are safer than they are in their own home neighborhoods just because people tend to look out for them and the 5 MPH speed limit is pretty strictly enforced. For what it's worth, while I don't like them being there I have to admit that when I see them they universally seem to be having a great time.

Money: The first year I attended Burning Man my annual salary was a little over $13,000. The second year I attended Burning Man my annual salary was a little over $12,000. During zero of my ten years attending has my salary been over $70,000. I do not have and have never received any trust fund money nor do I have a meaningful financial cushion. Every year I have attended Burning Man I purchased a ticket for someone who had never attended before. As vacations go it's not terribly expensive, particularly if you're already someone who already has outdoor hobbies. The vast majority of Burning Man attendees I have met are lower middle class, just like basically everywhere else. I fully understand and respect the choice of people who don't want to go (we should all feel good about choosing not to do things that don't sound like they're right for us) but the idea that it's some sort of exclusive retreat that's only accessible to the rich is absurd. If you want to go you can probably go, excluding people with the geographical difficulties that are true of any destination vacation.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 4:53 PM on September 4, 2023 [66 favorites]

he Whiteness: Physician, heal thy fucking self. You are on MetaFilter. I have been to ten Burning Man events and roughly as many MetaFilter meetups and Burning Man is like the Universal Zulu Nation compared to this place. Jesus.

There's the best burn in Burning Man, right there.

I may be displaying ignorance, but it seems to me that if anyone knows how to do sanitation for a temporary 70K town, it would be the US military. I can believe it wouldn't be a good fit for Burning Man, though.

There really isn't any other option than portapotties. But also, this directly gets at the conflict between the "radical self-reliance" mythos and the reality that a large percentage of attendees are completely reliant on the daily cleaning of more than a thousand portapotties. The people who are attending just aren't really that self-reliant, and it shows whenever the services are interrupted.

Regarding the tech bros, from the outside it sure looks like a primary dynamic that has developed at the core of the business model for the event is tens of thousands of regular people spending their vacation days and savings to provide unpaid entertainment for the richer attendees.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:32 PM on September 4, 2023 [8 favorites]

Hahahah, my mom called today worrying about the people at Burning Man. "Where do they get food?" "They have to bring their own, Mom!" "What about the toilets?" "They have Porta-Potties there, some people bring their own toilets."

They'll probably be fine if they've prepared well enough, same as any other Burning Man.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:54 PM on September 4, 2023

a primary dynamic that has developed at the core of the business model for the event is tens of thousands of regular people spending their vacation days and savings to provide unpaid entertainment for the richer attendees.


I've certainly spent my vacation days and savings to provide unpaid entertainment for other attendees; I've been 14 times (though not recently) and nearly all of those have been as part of some camp/project. But nothing is targeted at the richer attendees, people just do stuff for everyone, and well I guess some richer people enjoy it too; I have absolutely no clue about the economic status of who it is that's solving the Burning Man Puzzle Hunt or kneeling in front of the Snack Food Glory Hole.
posted by aubilenon at 6:05 PM on September 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

The dried lake bed is going to be alright. The vehicles can be towed out, the ruts can be smoothed over, the trash picked up. The BM volunteer community has shown themselves to be pretty well organized and have dealt with problems in the past. This isn’t a pristine wilderness, it is a dusty bit of usually dried up lake bed that has been used and abused for over a century. In the vast wilderness and other public lands that we have in the American West we have the room for Burning Man.

It is very impressive that 50-70k people can come together like this and construct a city scale anarchist collective for a week.
posted by interogative mood at 6:13 PM on September 4, 2023 [8 favorites]

Will the ruts be smoothed over? The land will be absolutely destroyed and I hate that this event happens in a delicate ecosystem at all. I don't buy the "dried lake bed" stuff. I'm going to be following any news of cleanup, please share here if you know of moves in this arena.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:17 PM on September 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Mostly it will be interesting to see what happens this year when Leave No Trace kinda can't happen so well, I suppose.

People will step up and get it taken care of. Calls for assistance will go out across the vast network of communities that the event consists of. They'll be mostly volunteers and they will really care and put their everything into it. Almost none of them will be the techbros, influencers, or celebrities that the event is so vilified for in popular culture. I think that's one aspect of Burning Man that's really hard to get across to people who haven't been a part of it in some way
posted by treepour at 6:30 PM on September 4, 2023 [8 favorites]

Burning Man organizers said they began to let traffic flow out of the main road around 2 p.m. local time — even as they continued to ask revellers to delay their exit to Tuesday to ease traffic.

As of Monday afternoon, they said about 64,000 people remained at the festival site.
posted by Canageek at 6:33 PM on September 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

People will step up and get it taken care of.

Not at all confident of this. I really want to believe but...
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:40 PM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Regarding the tech bros, from the outside it sure looks like a primary dynamic that has developed at the core of the business model for the event is tens of thousands of regular people spending their vacation days and savings to provide unpaid entertainment for the richer attendees.

Calling it “unpaid entertainment” seems like precisely missing the point. I guess a framing of the question more congruent with the spirit of the thing might be “do the rich people contribute and participate as equals (and what effect does it have on the event when they don’t)?”
posted by atoxyl at 6:54 PM on September 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Will the ruts be smoothed over?

Yes, most likely, at least to the satisfaction of the BLM, which allows the use of the playa contingent on the restoration after the event.

The land will be absolutely destroyed and I hate that this event happens in a delicate ecosystem at all. I don't buy the "dried lake bed" stuff.


You don't buy the "dried lake bed" stuff? What is there to buy? Are there Black Rock Desert truthers out there now?

It's kind of amazing the concern over the state of the playa by people who've never been, and have no intention of ever going. It's been used for a wide variety of things for many, many years before Burning Man. Do you folks think the desert has been unmolested before all these tech bros decided to have a big quagmire out there? It's been the place of government and civilian use for longer than most, if not all, of us have been alive, for things that have been much more destructive. Military exercise, land speed racing, explosive testing, rocketry, mining, etc. It's not even the first dry lake bed to be subject to such activity. I grew up near one that had people doing all kinds of crazy shit, and still does. Edwards AFB location, also close to where I grew up, was chosen specifically because it's mostly dry lake bed.

It's one thing to say, "I don't think I'd like it". "I don't approve". "Sounds miserable". Mentally flag it and move on. It's another thing entirely to pull reasons out of your ass in the attempt to strengthen your argument in opposition to the event.
posted by 2N2222 at 7:05 PM on September 4, 2023 [18 favorites]

>Military exercise

including, in Nevada's case, 1,012 nuclear warhead tests
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:10 PM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Is there a link on the environmental impact of Burning Man? I searched the thread, but I may have missed it. My naive assumption is that it's not a terrible place for an event like that, in terms of being able to recover quickly to a "natural" state, and in terms of actual impact on local critters and plant life, but I'd be happy to have that assumption ruined.

There is always a tension between the environmental impact of using public lands, and the potential benefits of allowing use. I think that the National Parks idea of letting people in to see the wonders of nature in order to create the political will to preserve the wonders is a good idea. With that in mind, letting a bunch of hippies and coked up tech bros throw a festival in Black Rock Desert might actually be a good thing for Black Rock Desert? In this thread I see ex and current burners who care about the place way more than I ever would. They are proud of the Leave No Trace ethos of Burning Man, and the environmental cleanup that has taken place over the last 40 years, and why not?
posted by surlyben at 7:11 PM on September 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's been the place of government and civilian use for longer than most, if not all, of us have been alive, for things that have been much more destructive. Military exercise, land speed racing, explosive testing, rocketry, mining, etc.

All that sounds shitty too.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:14 PM on September 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

As someone with decades of experience doing rocketry out there I have to say that the BLM are exacting stewards of the place - we always tried to take out more stuff than we left there (and mostly did until the place got really clean) - people had been leaving crap out there for centuries - to the point where some people's crap (remains of covered wagons, Native American living sites) becomes protected - we dragged old cars, tires, all sorts of stuff, off for the BLM. It's a place that the people who go there a lot treasure and want to look after.

BM wont be back if they don't clean up to the BLM's satisfaction - but given that, as I mentioned above an actual wet water lake forms almost every winter on the playa it moves around the playa dust and smooths it out mostly (but not completely) leaving it relatively pristine - BM do work to clean stuff up, ending with them effectively running harrows over the site to smooth it all down - there will be more work this year, but it's not an insurmountable problem
posted by mbo at 7:28 PM on September 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

surlyben, here's a link to an EIS that I believe is for the current permit period:

https://eplanning.blm.gov/public_projects/nepa/93518/175007/212561/Burning_Man_Event_SRP-Final_EIS_Vol1.pdf
posted by the Real Dan at 7:28 PM on September 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

I think the Black Rock City playa is not quite the same environment from some other places. I'm thinking of Arches Nation Park and surrounding areas where we know the crust on the soil is full of living organisms, and if you walk on it, it kills it. Which would lead to the ecosystem falling apart.

I don't think this playa has known ecosystems like this. Maybe we will find crazy fungal/biotic ecosystems here. Maybe we have already. There probably is. But it is completely unseen, so no one pays it much mind.

Does the playa bloom after rains and/or lake appearing? I'm guessing not.

AND, we are talking about BLM land. For my lifetime BLM has been about:
1) Allowing mining.
2) Allowing cattle grazing
3) Allowing ATV/4WD action.
4) Horses!
5) Hunting!

I haven't had anything but bad thoughts about the BLM since the early 80's. Oh, what a dumb thing to say... "I was anti-BLM before it was cool" lol
posted by Windopaene at 7:28 PM on September 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Since I mentioned the Rainbow Gatherings upthread, I thought I'd chime in and say, at least back in the good days and probably continuing today, that event is run with with a lot of planning. An advance team will go in weeks ahead of time and create spring heads that draw water away from the source so it can be accessed without being corrupted. They will designate major gathering areas and try to develop a loose concept of how the gathering might, key word might, develop as people move in.

After the event, crews will remain behind making sure to destroy all traces. Any remaining hints of structure or fire rings will be dispersed, trails created during the event will be dug up, native grass seed and tree seedlings are often donated to be planted as the departure becomes complete.

Often within just a few years there is no trace of there maybe having been 20,000 people camping there for a couple of weeks, creating a tiny village in the wilderness.
posted by hippybear at 7:34 PM on September 4, 2023 [8 favorites]

The playa does have only one indigenous life form that I know of (never actually seen one) - a shrimp that only comes out when the playa floods - it really is pretty inhospitable to life because it is so alkaline.

There are scorpions and lizards around the edges, but visitors are discouraged from spending time there because of the archaeology (it's where you are more likely to get bogged down anyway)
posted by mbo at 7:35 PM on September 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Black rock desert’s lake bed is part of what was once one of the largest lakes in North America as recently as 9,000 years ago Lake Lanhotan covered large portions of Nevada and stretched into Oregon and California.
posted by interogative mood at 8:04 PM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't buy the "dried lake bed" stuff.

Wait, does this mean you believe the playa is, in fact, not a playa?

(All playas, by definition, are dry lake beds. According to the BLM, “The [Black Rock Desert] playa is a remnant of the former lakebed of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan (Adams and Sada 2010).”)
posted by mbrubeck at 8:06 PM on September 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

I really dislike the assumption that "desert" is synonymous with "empty." Deserts are rich ecosystems. The deserts near Black Rock provide the habitats to foxes, antelopes, squirrels, kangaroo rats, lizards, badgers, snacks, shrimp, etc. It's not a blank canvas to paint on.

The event takes place on a playa in a desert- a (usually at this time) dry ancient lakebed that is under water all winter. It's extremely unusual to see any kind of life out there in August- I remember the occasional dragonfly or mantis. There are no ants, no worms, no lizards, no mammals, no birds. There is no desert crust, there are no plants. There is no real soil structure- just layers of dry alkaline clay particles from the lake that existed 15,000 years ago. The water table is about 15 meters below the surface. The surface can change depending on freeze-thaw events as the playa dries out in the spring, from hard and fairly packed down to deep and powdery.

Burning Man has definitely had an impact- in spite of the trash fence and the weeks spent cleaning after the event, you can find bits of stuff sometimes. And the roads, holes, and other disturbances of the surface can remain even if smoothed immediately afterward. There's definitely traces left, but it's hard to determine whether this adversely affects any life in the region (you used to be able to see ghostly images of previous locations of the event on satellite view). What is probably far more damaging is the off road vehicle that do not limit themselves to the playa, but head out into the surrounding dunes- which are ostensibly closed, but rarely patrolled.
posted by oneirodynia at 8:26 PM on September 4, 2023 [8 favorites]

Lake Missoula used to be a thing as well. Until it wasn't.

Great Salt lake is now disappearing. Salton Sea is drying up. We can't even blame the playa on climate change as it's been that way for a long time. Geology is crazy.
posted by Windopaene at 8:28 PM on September 4, 2023

...running harrows over the site to smooth it all down...

I know at one point they were dragging chain link fencing over the site as the final step in smoothing, a process that takes weeks. The amateur rocket launches occur 2-3 weeks after BM and are down wind of it, which isn't great.

...you should not test the Paiute

Last year en route to Black Rock from SE Oregon I passed through the tiny Summer Lake Paiute reservation (this is an extremely remote road). At either end of the reservation road there is a big stern sign informing you that you absolutely must not stop in the reservation. At the time I felt a very strong vibe of do_not_fuck_around_here which I obeyed.
posted by neuron at 8:29 PM on September 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

I meant to say that I otherwise agree- deserts are not "empty" and the fact that the BLM is allowing mining, solar farms, and off-roading (to name just a few things) to destroy habitat is fucking infuriating. But the playa is not that.
posted by oneirodynia at 8:37 PM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

There are no ants, no worms, no lizards, no mammals, no birds.

Full disclosure: In 2014 I encountered a couple of kangaroo rats out in the deep playa, which surprised the heck out of me. No idea how they survived out there.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 8:42 PM on September 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

At either end of the reservation road there is a big stern sign informing you that you absolutely must not stop in the reservation. At the time I felt a very strong vibe of do_not_fuck_around_here which I obeyed.

In my experience this is generally true (and for good reason) but I also don’t want to give the impression that the Paiute are antagonistic. They are serious about their community’s safety and they’re also pragmatic about what that means.

If you ever do find yourself driving across the reservation and you see the Oasis 29 Fry Bread Taco stand set up I promise you it is one of the most delicious things you will have the pleasure of eating and the woman who runs it is really kind and funny. I have posted elsewhere that stopping at Oasis 29 is my favorite part of going to Burning Man and that might not be an exaggeration.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 8:54 PM on September 4, 2023 [9 favorites]

a lotta trouble and a long damned way to go to get stuck in traffic.



I can always find empathy for somebody stuck in fucking traffic
posted by philip-random at 9:07 PM on September 4, 2023

A slight derail: my favorite playa is the Racetrack.
posted by SPrintF at 9:18 PM on September 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Neuron: we (Aeropac) used to regularly hold a launch at Labour weekend until the mid 90s when Burning Man got too big for it too be safe - this was before BM moved itself inside the trash fence, and attendees used to drive all over the playa, stopping downrange to watch the rockets without wondering why no one was launching .....
posted by mbo at 9:28 PM on September 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

The Salton Sea is a recent human made thing — the result of fucking around with the Colorado river and accidentally flooding it.

The end of Lake Missoula, the Great Salt Lake and the playa of Lake Lohatan of which Black Rock is just a small part are the result of non-human induced climate change.

Lake Missoula was formed by a massive ice dam the ice age that eventually collapsed as the climate warmed in a series of catastrophic floods that created the scab lands of eastern Washington State.

The Great Salt Lake is all that is left of Lake Bonneville which was very similar to Lake Lohatan in size and scale.
Both of these lakes were fed by the ice sheets and the lower evaporation rates from the cooler climate. As they are in basins with no outlet to the ocean under those conditions water accumulated and filled them.
posted by interogative mood at 9:37 PM on September 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Lake Tahoe and the Truckee river these days empty into Pyramid lake which used to (ice age times) empty into Smoke Creek which in turn emptied into Blackrock - these days water from Tahoe stops at Pyramid lake
posted by mbo at 9:42 PM on September 4, 2023

I think the Great Salt Lake's recent failing has been because of human-induced climate change/water diversion, etc.

But Lake Missoula was just the end of the ice age, and shit happens. (Lots of water, which does, things)
posted by Windopaene at 9:56 PM on September 4, 2023

one more lane oughta fix it
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:25 AM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's worth looking at the satellite photo from here that parking lot eventually becomes a single lane for the last bit off the playa to the road
posted by mbo at 3:04 AM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

depending on how you feel about BMs continued existence, I guess

I wish it had stopped 20 years ago. I’m increasingly against large gatherings anywhere without infrastructure to support them. Big festivals are stupid and shit like this is one reason.
posted by aspersioncast at 5:06 AM on September 5, 2023 [6 favorites]

It sounds like actually the extent of this calamity has been overstated in the initial reports and what actually what happened was pretty minor. The death is not being attributed to the weather event according to the local police.
posted by interogative mood at 6:32 AM on September 5, 2023 [10 favorites]

I think I'm still allowed to be concerned about large amounts of human excrement and urine all over the playa, so I will be. Hope it turns out OK, but I am not on the side of this event continuing here. Fairgrounds seem completely adequate for large gatherings.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:52 AM on September 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

The County Fairgrounds showed up pretty early on maps of my city.

Wonder what the reaction of the residents of 1890 would be seeing “the playa” now…
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:00 AM on September 5, 2023

Yesterday's One Wheel tour of the playa, oh the humanity!!! One inch of rain, peoples brain falls out.
posted by hortense at 9:37 AM on September 5, 2023

I think I'm still allowed to be concerned about large amounts of human excrement and urine all over the playa

Hey, that's fertilizer.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:00 AM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

It absolutely is not.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:37 AM on September 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

Man, there are some seriously awful and/or uninformed comments in this thread.

And I'm usually one of the first to criticize the size, scale and impact of Burning Man as well as easily noted hypocrisy between stated values (The Ten Principles) and actual practices on the ground.

But you know what? For all of Burning Man's impact and even one time use objects and plastics and all of that, it's still less impact than, say the Superbowl, or all of the yearly impacts of the NFL season. Or the MLB, or NBA.

Or any given world tour of a major musical artist like Taylor Swift.

Major sporting and music events barely even try to apply concepts like personal responsibility or leave no trace and can easily exceed Burning Man's total attendance in a single concert, big game or an event and they do that over and over again, flying and trucking millions of pounds of gear around and doing it over and over again for months on end, and it's not like pollution and trash doesn't also impact the cities that people actually live in or that cities aren't also ecologically sensitive.

I've lived around major event venues and stadiums and the amount of trash left over after a major concert or football game is absolutely incredible, not to mention all of the increased traffic, traffic jams and pollution from motor vehicles. Or people peeing and puking all over the city.

If you're really that concerned about the environmental impact of Burning Man you better not be a sports fan, or go to large concerts. Or even watch TV or movies in the safety of your own home because producing content is also very high impact. Or go camping in nature or take plane flights for work or vacations or basically do anything frivolous or joyful at all that isn't essential for a bare minimal subsistence.

And it's not like the people who attend these more acceptable, mainstream events regularly get inspired by those events to do something more with themselves or try to help other people when they get home, which is something I'm definitely comfortable asserting that happens more frequently with people who do attend Burning Man.

There's a ton of "public good" type efforts involved with the main event at Black Rock City as well as the group camps and regional, local events all over the world.

There's projects that repair, recycle and donate bikes abandoned at Burning Man and dedicated collection points for them in Gerlach and Reno. The food banks in the area get flooded with leftover non-perishable food. There's people who bring art and skills to their local communities.

One of my housemates is there this year and was involved in helping make some of the art that was installed in the base of the Man. She's very poor and works her ass off all year long doing stagecraft and rigging work. Even in the very hippy, crunchy small town where I live she's probably the most frugal, most environmentally conscious person I know. She avoids single use plastic like the plague and I've seen her wash and reuse a single plastic bag dozens and dozens of times. She composts every scrap of food waste. The car she takes to Burning Man is basically her house the rest of the year when she's working for events. The camping gear she uses out there is the same camping gear she uses the rest of the year.

What little that she actually buys specifically for Burning Man is basically just food and water and some thrifted clothes that she sews and modifies herself into costumes, and I have to say they're pretty fantastic and incredibly creative and unusual. It's sometimes like living with someone who hitchhiked here from space who makes their own kombucha and can do crazy dance moves like 10 minute yoga handstands all while being a really chill and mindful housemate.

Are there rich people and assholes at Burning Man? Are there people who don't get it and they're just there for the hedonism? Oh hell yes there are. But that's true everywhere, and that's been true of Burning Man all along. The first Google Doodle was a Burning Man logo because Larry and Sergey went and it was their "out of office" notification.

My main contention isn't that Burning Man should cease to be. It's that it's not enough and it should be happening in cities all over the world every month so everyone can participate in it and themselves because Burning Man is a celebration of life while at the same time accepting the impermanence of it and all things, including death and ones own mortality and impermanence.

I've been to some of the larger regionals and "decompressions" as they are called that are much more open to the public and the sheer joy and creativity is absolutely infectious. Watching working class families with kids walking around seeing cool giant robots or sculptures using flame as art like some kind of weirdo county fair is absolutely amazing because it shows and shares that there's a lot more to life than rote consumerism. Or that not all art needs to have a deeper meanings and it's ok for it to just be fun, or pretty, or outright silly.

The things that everyone loves to hate about Burning Man are actually inside you and all around you. It's us and all around us and we're all part of it, mired every day in our own personal institutionalized playa mud.
posted by loquacious at 11:10 AM on September 5, 2023 [32 favorites]

I went in 1996, and it was great! (slightly shocked at how many years ago that is)
Recently found my ticket while packing up my apartment.
posted by Glinn at 12:24 PM on September 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

I think I'm still allowed to be concerned about large amounts of human excrement and urine all over the playa, so I will be.

This probably happen less than you're thinking it did for a number of reasons.

Having your own primary, emergency or back up toilets is a required part of preparation. Most camps have at a minimum dedicated emergency buckets. Or their own composting/chemical toilets. Or toilets on RVs with blackwater tanks. There's also larger camps that hire their own banks of portables and have them serviced.

The portapotties aren't the default or primary places for human waste - they're actually the backups and there for people moving around away from their own camps and toilets, and they are all over the place, often even in the deep playa out around the larger art installations.

The portables also ended up getting serviced and pumped as soon as they were able and servicing trucks were exempt from the "no driving" lockdown and considered part of emergency support to the shelter in place order. As soon as they could move they were out there cleaning and servicing the portables.

But another reason why defecating happening on the playa happens a lot less than you'd think it might is because you'd be shamed by almost everyone else out there because of how culturally forbidden it is. Like you're not really allowed to even just randomly whizz out on the deep playa. People who have small bladders or issues tend to carry a piss jug for emergencies when they can't get to a portable.

It's gross and weird, but the culture is such that everyone would rather see someone out in the open taking a leak in their portable jug than on the ground, and they have no weird shame or hangups about the concept of a piss jug.

You're not even allowed to dump gray water from washing dishes or people on the playa. Camps are supposed to set up graywater tanks and evaporation pools. If you go to any given camp of more than like 3 people there's usually a kiddy pool set up somewhere sunny and out of the way so the (usually) intense heat and sun will evaporate it, and then they haul out the remaining solids and dust.

Are there people who don't follow these rules? Are there accidents? Sure. But I bet there's way, way less pee (or poop) on the ground at BM than there are at any given concert or sporting event of a similar size. Or look at the issues of pet waste in runoff around any major city.
posted by loquacious at 12:49 PM on September 5, 2023 [10 favorites]

Also, if anyone is curious about what it actually looks like out there right now, the live webcam is still up and running, though the frame rate is tanked right now for some reason.

It should be running through to tonight when they burn the temple, and possibly until sunrise Wed morning.

I've been watching these webcasts for a number of years and this is weirdly one of the cleanest and shiniest looking post burn Black Rock City views I've ever scene because all the cars and camps that stayed in place and heeded the shelter in place order had everything above ground level get a free bath.

Cleanup work is already happening rapidly.

The MOOP problem is going to be worse this year, but they're already calling up extra reserves of volunteers, people who didn't even attend are heading out to help clean after it clears out more and they're stepping up their leave no trace game in response to all the attention.

Something else to know is that they create a MOOP-map every year and reference it against camp placement. Camps that are problems don't get invited back or get "punished" with worse placements or smaller camps or denied group camp applications entirely.

There's this weird hierarchy that happens that you see reflected in the layout and organization that is less about money or how many musical acts or other so-called "default world" metrics but how well run their camps are and how on point they are about practicing LNT and providing infrastructure and services to the people around them.
posted by loquacious at 1:02 PM on September 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

Can folks actually drive RVs into Black Rock City? Or are those a ways away from it, (in terms of the blackwater usage)?
posted by Windopaene at 1:38 PM on September 5, 2023

>>I think I'm still allowed to be concerned about large amounts of human excrement and urine all over the playa

>Hey, that's fertilizer.

It absolutely is not.

I’m curious why you say that? Nightsoil has been around a very long time.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:51 PM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I would suggest when nothing is growing there, it isn't going to be uptaken as a fertilizer. It's just going to be toxic waste. Which will then dry out and blow away to wherever is downwind. Not ideal.
posted by Windopaene at 1:58 PM on September 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

But you know what? For all of Burning Man's impact and even one time use objects and plastics and all of that, it's still less impact than, say the Superbowl, or all of the yearly impacts of the NFL season. Or the MLB, or NBA.

In this thread, we're talking about Burning Man.
posted by tiny frying pan at 3:17 PM on September 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

The Salton Sea is a recent human made thing — the result of fucking around with the Colorado river and accidentally flooding it.

And yet it is also occupying an ancient lake bed.
posted by LionIndex at 3:28 PM on September 5, 2023

I'm pretty sure (paraphrased) "I'd like to come into this thread, in which multiple people have commented with concern about friends or loved ones, to express my wish that the situation will be exacerbated in the hopes that it causes some sort of coyly redacted harm to Bad People" still wins for antisocial commentary, but I also have to give (not paraphrased ) "I don't buy the 'dried lake bed' stuff" points here for sheer inexplicability.
posted by eponym at 4:10 PM on September 5, 2023 [9 favorites]

What I don't buy is hand waving by people saying this mess and this event is no big deal environmentally and safety-wise. I believe it is a big deal.

That's it.

Those who want to keep being insulting about my phrasing can, of course. I don't know why that's considered so cool here but it is the internet.

🤷
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:24 PM on September 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

Three-Eyed "Dinosaur Shrimp" Are Waking Up At Burning Man
posted by Artw at 4:36 PM on September 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

If you're really that concerned about the environmental impact of Burning Man you better not be a sports fan, or go to large concerts

I’m not, and don’t.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:39 PM on September 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm not trying to be insulting, but I have read every post of yours in this thread trying to figure it out, and yet I still am not convinced that I understand what you even mean by "I don't buy the 'dried lake bed' stuff". Do you mean you don't believe that it is on the site of an erstwhile lake? If so, why not?

If that's not what you mean, though... what do you mean?

Again, I'm not trying to be insulting. I have been curious about what you meant since you first posted it.
posted by Flunkie at 4:41 PM on September 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

If you're really that concerned about the environmental impact of Burning Man you better not be a sports fan, or go to large concerts

I don't either. Do I still get to have a say, or no?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:41 PM on September 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

FWIW, I thought the meaning of "I don't buy the 'dried lake bed' stuff" was pretty clear.

"Dried lake bed stuff" == the view that because the playa in question is [a particular kind of] dried lake bed, therefore it is (IIUC) completely without any sort of ecological significance that we need to be concerned about; that it's basically nature's version of a giant Wal-Mart parking lot.

"I don't buy the 'dried lake bed' stuff" == "I don't buy the idea that this land is just a blank slate that we don't need to worry about our impact on."

There are knowledgeable people here who I understand to be all-in on the dried lake bed stuff (as defined hereinabove), and I don't know enough to say that they're wrong. But it does seem a little implausible that, after all the other places that were held out as empty and valueless wastelands and for which that turned out to be a complete lie (polar regions, abyssal plains, deserts in general, etc.), this one spot that just happens to be the site of a festival that is very popular among people who want to feel good about themselves would be the one place on earth that people can fuck up without having any reason to feel remorse about the consequences.
posted by Not A Thing at 5:07 PM on September 5, 2023 [9 favorites]

Ah, thank you. I was being snottier than necessary, for which I genuinely apologize, but for what it's worth, I wasn't trying to nitpick phrasing. "Stuff" is a pretty all-encompassing word and I truly had no idea how to read that comment beyond "I don't believe that the dried lake bed is actually a dried lake bed."
posted by eponym at 5:25 PM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

It didn't just happen by accident. It was selected because of of what it is and it's previous use for all sorts of human activity including weapons range. The Burning man site is more natural than it was when Burns first started in no small part because of the actions of Burning Man participants.
posted by Mitheral at 5:27 PM on September 5, 2023 [7 favorites]

The question of the "dried lake bed stuff" or "what is the environmental impact of burning man?" is an answerable question. Or at least it is a question where an attempt has been made to answer it in the Environmental Impact Statement linked by the Real Dan above. It's a long boring read, but my sense after skimming it is that the impact is relatively small and there are ongoing mitigation efforts.

I didn't see any "Burning Man threatens endangered Playa shrimp!" types of impacts.
posted by surlyben at 5:45 PM on September 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

There is a 174 Environmental Impact Review that was part of the Burning Man Permit application it you want to get into the details. Why throw out blanket statements when there are lots of details.
posted by interogative mood at 5:47 PM on September 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

I think the review was linked above, but thanks for linking it again.

Interesting to note even in the preamble (page 3) that the org wanted to have already scaled to a higher 100,000-person cap by last year (its Alternatives A and C) instead of being constrained to its ongoing permit for 80,000. I wonder what the org is doing with all of its income if it thinks it needs to expand but cannot spend money on the labor to bring things back to its own standard of "no trace".
posted by Earthtopus at 6:35 PM on September 5, 2023

"Private vendors hired by BRC would provide dust abatement along designated routes and streets within the Event site, as warranted by weather and playa surface conditions. Water would be transported via water tanker trucks from Fly Ranch, a private property owned by BRC. Dust-abatement trucks would operate from the day the perimeter fence is established through site cleanup, as needed. For reference, the 2017 Event utilized 14 water tanker trucks transporting approximately 16.5 million gallons of water to the Event site for dust abatement." (section 2-4, p.40/174)
posted by Earthtopus at 6:43 PM on September 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

The Burning man site is more natural than it was when Burns first started in no small part because of the actions of Burning Man participants.
posted by Mitheral at 5:27 PM

which is a reason why the festival should be moved to another site like the site was in the past
posted by eustatic at 7:38 PM on September 5, 2023

As thousands of people left the Burning Man festival in the remote Nevada desert, a local sheriff complained that they were “lashing out at each other” and leaving behind an unusually large amount of trash, including vehicles abandoned in the mud...Sheriff Jerry Allen of Pershing County, Nevada, where the festival is held every year, said that while attendees usually leave large amounts of trash “into Reno and points beyond,” the mess this year was worse...He said that Burning Man organizers were responsible for removing the debris, which in the past has been dumped at businesses along the exit route, overwhelming them.
posted by praemunire at 7:44 PM on September 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

A standard piece of Rainbow wisdom is that you carry your waste back to where you came from to dispose of it, and you don't fill up dumpsters and trash cans on your way out.

This was rarely heeded, but it was a part of the things they put out for their participants.

I'm not at all surprised that the BRC waste is burdensome to the communities that surround it. I wish it wasn't.

Humans generate way too much waste. I think there are probably indigenous groups all around the globe who don't do that, but they aren't holding annual tech art festivals, either.
posted by hippybear at 7:51 PM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm sure all the stuck vehicles will get hauled off, but there have been article s for years about the communities on the roads out there who are mad about the mountains of trash people dump off. It 's an ongoing point of friction.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:54 PM on September 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

What I don't buy is hand waving by people saying this mess and this event is no big deal environmentally and safety-wise.


That's because it really isn't. Especially considering the size, location and duration of the event, it's not the big deal you seem to think it is. You can believe what you want. But you've consistently been unable to back up your beliefs with much of anything substantive, and dug in your heels regardless. By all means, tell the BLM how to do their jobs. BM has been playing by the rules and seems to be committed to the long term preservation of Black Rock Desert. Yet, you wave it away, with some weird concern trolling that makes little sense, refusing to accept that the event is pretty highly coordinated with the proper federal and local authorities to take place on a yearly basis.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:33 PM on September 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

The event permit includes 29 days of planned post event cleanup. I think it is crazy that the BM organization thinks this site can sustain any more people.
posted by interogative mood at 8:40 PM on September 5, 2023

It didn't just happen by accident. It was selected because of of what it is and it's previous use for all sorts of human activity including weapons range.

You're interfering with the "coked-up tech bros" narrative.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:42 PM on September 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

"Event Cleanup
Being a Leave No Trace® event, there would be no trash cans or trash collection in Black Rock City. Participants and BRC would be responsible for picking up and disposing of trash from the Event." (p.41/174)

The org's efforts towards growing the festival to 100k seems to imply they think this scales indefinitely in the desert, no? That "®" and the "would be"s are particularly pernicious-seeming bits of text.
posted by Earthtopus at 9:03 PM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

anyway, most of what I want to say about Burning Man is how ensconced in an uber-American ethos of "you can't tell me how much gasoline to burn getting somewhere or what I can burn once I get there" it is and to wonder what it might look like if "radical inclusion" didn't include navigating to a remote old weapons testing center with alkali dust you had to ship water in to spray to keep it out of folks' lungs, and all in a specifically-chosen spot that previous generations used as a destruction palimpsest so it's OK to keep doing it to.
posted by Earthtopus at 9:09 PM on September 5, 2023 [6 favorites]

I have to think it's possible that the sheriff saying the participants leave large amounts of trash "into" Reno and beyond is another way of saying they deliver a year's worth of business to local recyclers and scavengers. We'll see what the post-mortem says.
posted by rhizome at 10:30 PM on September 5, 2023

Status report from someone who just got home:

There was no Ebola outbreak.

The national guard never showed up.

Contrary to some snarky comments I've read here, the weather report for the week of the burn was perfectly dry and mild conditions, following an inch or so of rain that ended August 22nd that postponed entry for Work Access Pass holders (build crews) by about 12 hours. While weather reports deteriorated later that week, please keep in mind over 10,000 people were already on site by that time.

While portos didn't didn't serviced for 36 hours or so, I've seen much worse at regional music festivals.

People whose tents got wet inside were lent cots or mattresses to get up off the ground. Others were given places inside trailers and RVs by complete strangers.

There was no lack of fresh water. There was certainly no lack of food. Out camp was shouting out onto the playa with megaphones yesterday trying to give away pounds of freshly smoked brisket and gallon jugs of milk.

Some people got stuck on the other side of the playa when the rain started and their bikes got bogged down. Many slept on couches in ours and other camp's cafe/lounges and were given warm blankets. Others just got adopted into camps with total strangers until it was safe to walk around.

Many people discovered the joys of peeing in a bottle to avoid a 200M walk through wet concrete.

In the entire 11 days there I witnessed a single incident of voices raised in anger. It was a couple being cranky with each other.

The death that occurred was reported to people on-site as having been an electrocution related to the rain. I'm unsure why it's being reported as mysterious. A single death among 80,000 people over a week is statistically typical. In such outrageous conditions, I think it's remarkable.

The man burned Monday night (plus another art piece). People were out celebrating. Art cars were lit up and blasting music. People were elated and joyful to finally get to experience the ritual that represents the event.

Cleanup was messy. I'm not even sure how a lot of the moop that's surely left behind can even be counted or measured to be mapped since it's underneath an inch or more of now baked clay. A lot of material and flooring intended to have dust beaten off of it is unsalvageable and caked

Besides some vehicles that risked leaving early Monday without good traction and 4wd (despite the warnings) exodus as of Monday night was extremely orderly, uneventful and relatively fast. Exodus times immediately after the Monday night burns were 4-6h. Tuesday morning exodus was a shockingly fast 2-3h.

Ultimately, a couple days had a lot of activities curtailed by the mud. The burn was postponed 2 days. I left only 24 hours after I had intended. Things were messy. Most burners are incredibly adaptive, resilient, generous, understanding and tolerant even in the face of what's reported to be a once-in-a-century weather event. My own experience was turned from complete disaster to a wonderful experience by a complete stranger, and I'll bet 10,000 other people did as well. I learned a crow-bar is a decent tool to remove clay from my boots. This was my first Burning Man and it was pretty neat despite the chaos.
posted by WaylandSmith at 1:46 AM on September 6, 2023 [32 favorites]

Not everyone should do it.

Isn't that the whole point of having it in a remote place that is very expensive to get to and stay at

If this was held close to a major city it would be overrun with the "wrong kind" of people.
posted by spitbull at 3:33 AM on September 6, 2023

There's a Guardian opinion piece about rich people at Burning Man. I agreed with parts of it and didn't with others, but was fascinated to learn that among the attendees this year was Grover Norquist, who loves the event.

Of Burning Man’s affinity for his own rightwing politics, Norquist has said: “There’s no government that organizes this. That’s what happens when nobody tells you what to do. You just figure it out. So Burning Man is a refutation of the argument that the state has a place in nature.”
posted by Dip Flash at 7:02 AM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

As usual Grover seems completely ignorant of the fact that the government makes this whole event possible. Without public lands and all the public safety regulations, the tax payer funded roads that get them to the playa, etc — without those things there is no burning man.
posted by interogative mood at 7:22 AM on September 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

As usual Grover seems completely ignorant of the fact that the government makes this whole event possible. Without public lands and all the public safety regulations, the tax payer funded roads that get them to the playa, etc — without those things there is no burning man

By the same logic my ability to walk over to my friend's house is only possible due to the government, because I'm forced to walk on city roads to get there.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:05 AM on September 6, 2023

Are you walking on your own two feet, or using a series of highways that required large scale infrastructure projects to build? Are you using a vehicle whose safety measures only exist because of regulation?
posted by tofu_crouton at 8:23 AM on September 6, 2023

Irrelevant! Even if Burning Man isn't made possible by government, examples of not needing government do not refute that we sometimes need government.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:27 AM on September 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

Isn't that the whole point of having it in a remote place that is very expensive to get to and stay at

If this was held close to a major city it would be overrun with the "wrong kind" of people.

I don't know how many times I can explain that it isn't particularly expensive to get to and stay at. I live in the second-largest city in the US and I am five hundred miles from where Burning Man is held. When I go to Burning Man I spend about $1,000 to attend. That covers my ticket, my transportation, my food, everything, for a nine day vacation. By vacation standards that is absurdly cheap.

Burning Man is a two-hour drive from the second-largest city in Nevada and that city was designed from the ground up to support a large number of tourists passing through it; getting to Burning Man is not difficult.

There are not a lot of major metropolitan areas that are interested in having 70,000 people tent camping on their back porch, particularly if the event doesn't allow commercial vending. Of those cities there is an even smaller subset where the area immediately outside the city limits is one where it would not be wildly irresponsible to allow people to burn a giant effigy or walk around shooting flame throwers or set up a fire tornado generator. Now narrow that down further by only including the cities where the cost of land is low enough that it wouldn't be prohibitively expensive to have the storage facilities needed to keep large equipment necessary to set up for the event every year. There aren't a lot of places that fit the bill.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 9:20 AM on September 6, 2023 [8 favorites]

From social media it appears that there is a real concern among the community that the site was left in such a bad state and so many people ignored the leave no trace rules that the event might lose its permit. There seems to be a campaign underway to recruit more volunteers and raise money so they can meet the cleanup requirements specified in the permit.
posted by interogative mood at 10:11 AM on September 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't know how many times I can explain that it isn't particularly expensive to get to and stay at.

It seems clear that this is one of those things where "explaining more and better" is a fool's errand; people are not here to be convinced.

(Though I guess for the folks on the thread maintaining that they never travel, never attend large festivals or organized gatherings, never go to an event at a sports arena, 1000 bucks for the whole affair might well sound pretty ridiculous. Meanwhile I'm thinking, that's what it cost my cousin to go to ONE taylor swift show lol.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:16 AM on September 6, 2023 [8 favorites]

When I go to Burning Man I spend about $1,000 to attend. That covers my ticket, my transportation, my food, everything, for a nine day vacation. By vacation standards that is absurdly cheap.

I mean, where I'm sitting $1,000 is still $1,000 that I don't have, especially not once I factor in taking off a week from work. It doesn't matter how well that stacks up against the other sorts of things I can't afford to spend a grand on. So, maybe you know, that $1,000 and 9 day cost that is no biggie for you is exactly the level of cost that's keeping "the wrong sort" away.
posted by Gygesringtone at 10:42 AM on September 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

So... all things should be free? I don't really know what you're trying to say here.
posted by sagc at 10:45 AM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm trying to say that $1,000 being "not particularly expensive" is a personal statement not a universal truth.

I'm trying to say that it could true that both a) $1,000 is relatively cheap for a vacation and b)a $1,000 cost can serve as a barrier to keep people out.

I'm trying to say that rather than assume folks just don't get it, maybe consider that folks are in different circumstances. Even folks on Metafilter.
posted by Gygesringtone at 10:58 AM on September 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

I've never been to Burning Man. Maybe if I'd be born ten years later and/or lived a little closer to the Nevada desert. I do have a few friends who've been regulars in the past, including one guy who always showed a month early to help with set up, so I've got at least a sense of what might constitute the "wrong kind" of person at Burning Man.

Simply put, it's someone who expects to pay some money for an experience and then be taken care of. Nothing particularly wrong with this attitude. I have it every time I check into a motel. Just don't bring it to Burning Man. You won't be good for the experiment in progress. It won't be good for you.

Are there tech bro assholes running wild being dicks? Maybe. The people I've discussed it with haven't really mentioned it. They're more focused on the cool adventure they had, the freedom to be strange for a few days, the cool people they met (the "right kind"?), the art, the community.
posted by philip-random at 11:10 AM on September 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

Are you walking on your own two feet, or using a series of highways that required large scale infrastructure projects to build? Are you using a vehicle whose safety measures only exist because of regulation

I have no idea how to respond to this. It’s like a religious person who sees god in everything and doesn’t believe that humans can live and create without him.

The government is not a deity. It is not all controlling and all providing. Individuals can form communities, make rules, make artifacts, all of this without governments.

Governments are a useful tool and that’s all. You, yes you, can spread your wings and create things better and beyond what its book of laws permits.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:24 AM on September 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

If this was held close to a major city it would be overrun with the "wrong kind" of people.

To me, the most important part of Burning Man is the community aspect of it. Because it's a hassle to get in and out, once you're there, you've got to settle down, set up camp, and stay for a while. To me, the "wrong kind" of people that would show up if it were near a city, are people who are just dropping in for a couple hours as tourists, to see the art and spectacle without needing to spend the time it takes to begin to understand and participate in the community.

I am also extremely skeptical of the notion that Burning Man would be less expensive to attend if it were closer to a big city.
posted by aubilenon at 11:26 AM on September 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

When I go to Burning Man I spend about $1,000 to attend. That covers my ticket, my transportation, my food, everything, for a nine day vacation. By vacation standards that is absurdly cheap.

It's awesome that it can be done so cheap, and your experience sounds really good, probably about what I would want if I attended. However, there's no way that $1000 represents the average cost of total attendance. Just look at the sheer number of RVs alone (owned or rented), and then all over you see tractor trailers parked as part of the walled compound camps -- those aren't cheap to have hauled in or hauled out.

The government is not a deity. It is not all controlling and all providing. Individuals can form communities, make rules, make artifacts, all of this without governments.

Sure, but Burning Man is an event happening on federal land . (Specifically, it is located on lands that are only federally-owned because the government forcibly took them away from their previous Native inhabitants.) Like it or not, government is at the table. The event brings in $40 million-plus a year in ticket sales alone; if they wanted, they could buy a huge-ass piece of property and avoid dealing with the BLM. But then they'd own all the liability, versus all the advantages of locating an event on public lands. It's a deliberate trade-off and so far it's been worth it to the organizers.
posted by Dip Flash at 11:49 AM on September 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

They bought a big ass ranch nearby where stuff is stored for future use.
FlyGyser Ranch fly by..
Isn't Burning Man is an example of good government?
Perfecting the Union , We the people , Folks participating in anticipation of an evolved experience next time, an invitation to play.
a .
posted by hortense at 1:08 PM on September 6, 2023

The NYT has an article about the trash situation, with photos and descriptions of both problems and all the work that is being done, and interesting tidbits about people who have found ways to profit from all the waste:

A cottage industry of roadside garbage haulers has sprung up along the 120-mile drive back to Reno. On the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation, Marc Lowery, a tribal member, set up orange dumpsters and charged $5 apiece for each kitchen-size bag of trash he accepted. He said he could make as much as $25,000 from the festival’s garbage.

Campers leave behind “a ridiculous amount” of usable gear, he said, including bicycles, tents, and even barbecues. Much of it can be salvaged or donated, he said. And this year, he added, people are also dumping a furniture showroom’s worth of muddy, waterlogged carpets and couches.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:18 PM on September 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

interesting tidbits about people who have found ways to profit from all the waste

I'm glad for these people, but, my God, what a wasteful mindset, to happily toss a ton of perfectly usable gear. I assume this year there's a lot of stuff that got ruined and there's no helping it, but geez.

I'm sympathetic to folks attached to the memory of a different event 20 years ago, but the whole thing feels pretty grotesque now. Circle of life, I guess.
posted by praemunire at 5:09 PM on September 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

Just look at the sheer number of RVs alone (owned or rented), and then all over you see tractor trailers parked as part of the walled compound camps -- those aren't cheap to have hauled in or hauled out.

Burning Man is expensive, but I assume regular Burners (like my friend who used to go) probably invest in stuff like rebar and RV's and whatever else. It's less easy if you are starting from scratch or not in a camp or with a pack of people, which is why I only did it the one time since I don't have those people assets any more. I think when I went tickets were $100 and easy to get, these days, hahahahahahah noooooooo. It's a pretty hardcore camping trip when you have to pack all your shit in and out, can't really go get anything else if you need it, you're hours away from any other resources, etc. But on the other hand, you can walk around with no pants and put on giant art exhibits, so there's that.

I wouldn't be against going again, but I'd definitely need to sponge off others who have more of a clue on camping (again) like I did the one time, so I haven't really tried to return. My work also has work retreat during that week so I'm not sure if I'd be allowed to go anyway. I do not think it is a cheap vacation, for sure.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:11 PM on September 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

yeeesh to both the idea that 1k isn't a huge sum of money and the way that burners seem to be fine with leaving piles of garbage at random towns on the drive home.
posted by zymil at 5:12 PM on September 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I assume regular Burners (like my friend who used to go) probably invest in stuff like rebar and RV's and whatever else

Potentially naive question:

Rebar? Like, for making reinforced concrete? Why?
posted by Flunkie at 7:01 PM on September 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Rebar? Like, for making reinforced concrete? Why?

It gets very windy there sometimes, and the ground is very dry and crumbly at the top, so regular tent stakes don't always do the job. I have definitely seen a dust devil with a tent in it. And often folks want to stake down a big piece of shade cloth or a guy wire or something more demanding. Rebar, ideally bent into a candy cane or horseshoe, which you can do with just a couple of lengths of pipe, hammered into into the ground, holds stuff down pretty good. However, it is a lot of work to get it into the ground, and then to extract it when striking camp.

Basically it's the cheapest way to get kinda chunky metal sticks, and the ridges help grip the ground
posted by aubilenon at 7:10 PM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

In the past Home Depots in the Bay Area would sell out of short lengths of rebar the weeks before TTITD
posted by mbo at 7:55 PM on September 6, 2023

I'm glad for these people, but, my God, what a wasteful mindset, to happily toss a ton of perfectly usable gear. I assume this year there's a lot of stuff that got ruined and there's no helping it, but geez.

The "pack it in, pack it out" rules are effectively pushing that externality onto communities up and down the highways. ("Mostly" because some people haul their trash all the way home and then impose those costs there.) The genuinely "no impact" approach would be to bring in enough dumpsters to handle all the waste locally and then haul it to an identified landfill with adequate capacity. But that costs money; having people haul junk out and then dump it (legally or illegally) doesn't have a direct cost to the event. The reality is that "stuff" is cheap and the average attendee can afford to buy and discard.

The waste generated is really impressive; there aren't any shortage of past photographs or articles about it. It's been a huge issue of contention with communities, many far away from the event, over the years. (Not all those bicycles go to the landfill, but none of those were worth it for someone to bring home).
posted by Dip Flash at 8:09 PM on September 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

needs some sort of reverse-Bethselamin solution
posted by Flunkie at 8:20 PM on September 6, 2023

Over the last few years rebar has been mostly replaced with lag screws (12" or longer). They are much easier to place and remove and do not create a hazard. I walked into one of the only pieces of rebar in my entire camp and ended up with a 10" gash down my leg (thankfully superficial). There had been a plastic safety cap on the top of it which must have gotten kicked off of it.
posted by WaylandSmith at 9:00 PM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Lag screws are great, but they chew through batteries on your drill real fast and unless you have some rig to recharge them they're not really practical.

If you bend your rebar in a candycane and hammer it in until it touches the ground, then it's a lot less likely to cut anyone. It's still a tripping hazard tho, and so is the line tied to it, even if the stake is completely buried.
posted by aubilenon at 9:03 PM on September 6, 2023

I made it to Reno tonight. The situation was way overblown by the media and a bunch of people who didn't think straight (in part because of said media). No one was going to run out of food or water because the community as a whole takes care of each other. The biggest risk was if people had a medical emergency and EMS couldn't reach them. It was a genuine annoyance for people with tight travel schedules.

As far as I'm concerned, the weather is karmic justice. Sorry about your soggy tents, Burners.

It stayed dry, thanks. Nothing fancy, just a basic $100 Coleman.

This was something like my 15th Burning Man and 40th Burn, so I've met and rubbed elbows with quite a few people on the playa, including the rich (which you may or may not classify me as, depending on your threshold). At least from my perspective, schadenfreude assholes like you are about as insufferable as most of them are.

The very rich are a tiny minority of Burners so you're close to shitting on people based on a straw man. Whereas you're unfortunately a pretty good representation of Metafilter because there's little the site seems to like more than heaping scorn on whatever their personal pet peeve is.

Want to know what most people did? They asked their neighbors if they needed food, water, medications, etc. A lot of people who had Starlinks with password protection opened them for access so people could contact loved ones or start rearranging travel plans. At least some of the portapotties got cleaned during the worst of it but most people did what they could to reduce the load on them to help make sure they didn't overflow.

You want to get pissy about calling the cops on protesters blocking the road? Suppose you're going to whatever your vacation of choice is and there's a single road that goes there. You get stuck behind a protest. It's 95 degrees, the sun is intense, and there's no shade to be had. There's no bathrooms for miles. You likely have limited food and water. And the trip involves driving 6+ hours from the nearest city. You can't even give up and safely turn around and go back.

Please quantify exactly how long you would be willing to wait on the protest to end.

I go to Burning Man because I get to spend a week or two with a way above average level of openness and generosity, having great conversations with artists, scientists, engineers, musicians, philosophers, etc., seeing art that's virtually impossible to see anywhere else because of the size and scope of it (look up this year's Chapel of Babel), and making my own art that again is virtually impossible to do anywhere else.

But I deserve "karmic justice" because you heard about a few rich idiots who also go. Your favorite hobby has rich assholes that are into it too, you know.
posted by Candleman at 2:06 AM on September 7, 2023 [22 favorites]

I know almost nothing about Burning Man.

....

That is to say: people who hold festival on lake bed are surprised when lake comes back. Cue up the surprised Pikachu face, I suppose.

Gods, give me the self confidence of an ignorant Mefite pontificating.

The Great Basin, which the Black Rock Desert is part of, was a Pleistocene epoch lake, which is to say the Ice Age. Suggesting that people should plan on it becoming a lake again is kind of like saying the Boy Scouts should always prepare for a potential mastodon attack, because they lived in North America around the same time.

While it's true that there is a wet season there, it's during the spring, which is why events aren't typically held there during that time. It receives around 8 inches of rain a year - it's very usual for any location to get 10% of its annual precipitation in a day.
posted by Candleman at 2:37 AM on September 7, 2023 [13 favorites]

I'm going to try to remember to downgrade reports of disaster on the media. Even real disasters get exaggerated. 9/11 was first reported as 20K dead rather than the actual 2K. Katrina was reported as there being so much pollution that the floodwater would be seriously toxic.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:45 AM on September 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

I was discounting this story in real time since a few days of being incommunicado wasn't going to cause any critical shortages as long as people conserved & shared.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:42 AM on September 7, 2023

You want to get pissy about calling the cops on protesters blocking the road?

I'm with you on a lot of your comment, Candleman (only been once back in the 90s and it was an amazing, messy, marvelous experience), but folks weren't being pissy about someone calling the cops to clear the road. They *were* rightly pissy about the asshole cop with no patience (or brains, apparently) who rammed the barrier as the 30 seconds the protesters had been given were still counting down and then immediately drew his gun and aimed it at unarmed people.

He needs help, and deserves all the outrage directed at him.
posted by mediareport at 10:52 AM on September 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

They *were* rightly pissy about the asshole cop with no patience (or brains, apparently) who rammed the barrier as the 30 seconds the protesters had been given were still counting down and then immediately drew his gun and aimed it at unarmed people.

As noted above and in the article linked to in the specific comment I was replying to, the ramming incident happened on Paiute land. You go traipsing into sovereign land and fuck up things for both Burners and but more importantly the Paiutes, ignore commands to desist, you win stupid prizes. If you go do a disruptive protest in lets say Somalia, Russia, or Pakistan and expect the rights you have in the US to protect you, you're going to have a bad time.

And @fight or flight's specific complaint was:

The police having been called by the attendees of the festival, who also tried to forcibly move the protesters.

Trust me, the Paiutes are extremely aware of what goes on during the key traffic times for Burning Man (go 30mph in the 25 speed limit zone to find out). They didn't show up because some people called 911, they showed up because some dumbasses decided to block a key road in a small and poor town. I agree that the trooper's actions were inappropriate but they were decidedly not caused by Burners.

A smarter set of protesters would have done it a few miles past Gerlach, where their US rights would have applied and their impact to non-Burners would have been minimized. As it is, they accomplished basically 0 of their goals while costing themselves a bunch of money. Smart.
posted by Candleman at 12:25 PM on September 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

The ramming video didn't seem totally terrible to me, relative to its overall genre of cops acting badly. But I've gotta say, "It went better than it would have gone in Somalia" is... something.
posted by Flunkie at 1:27 PM on September 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

As noted above and in the article linked to in the specific comment I was replying to, the ramming incident happened on Paiute land. You go traipsing into sovereign land and fuck up things for both Burners and but more importantly the Paiutes, ignore commands to desist, you win stupid prizes. If you go do a disruptive protest in lets say Somalia, Russia, or Pakistan and expect the rights you have in the US to protect you, you're going to have a bad time.

Comparing the Paiute (Pyramid Lake Paiute specifically, I believe) to failed and/or repressive states like Somalia and Russia seems needlessly pejorative. Nor does someone lose "their US rights" while on tribal lands, though like you say many people have very unhappy realizations that disrespecting tribal laws and tribal law enforcement is usually a dumb move with real consequences. Federal laws still apply; it is just local and state jurisdictions that don't have say on sovereign land.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:47 PM on September 7, 2023 [7 favorites]

I'm trying to say that it could true that both a) $1,000 is relatively cheap for a vacation and b)a $1,000 cost can serve as a barrier to keep people out.

I don't think anyone is trying to present burning man as an affordable experience for literally every person. It's just that it is also not unreachable to all but the most extremely wealthy. If a person is otherwise going on vacations that involve hotels, flights, or large events, they're probably not economically excluded from Burning Man.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:34 PM on September 7, 2023 [12 favorites]

But I've gotta say, "It went better than it would have gone in Somalia" is... something.

Allow me to introduce you to the concept of the farce. It's the use of exaggeration for humorous effect. (In case you miss it, this is what's know as deadpan or perhaps sarcasm.)

And that's not what I said; I stated that expecting US rights to protect you outside of the US proper can go poorly. If you want a different example, if I were to see you on the streets of the US, I could take a picture of you legally and even publish it, as long as I didn't use it for certain types of commercial work. But in France, I could get in trouble for doing so. Happier with the first world example?

Nor does someone lose "their US rights" while on tribal lands

It's a little more nuanced than that.

Federal laws still apply; it is just local and state jurisdictions that don't have say on sovereign land.

I'm unaware of any Federal law that allows blockading a road, rather, quite the opposite.

Anyway, rather than nitpicking on this stupid derail, perhaps stick to the core fact that a Metafilter poster said that because a few people called the cops (in a way that likely had 0 impact on what happened) the entire event deserves a flood? There's a reason I'd rather be trapped in a muddy camp with the average burner rather than the average Metafilter poster.
posted by Candleman at 3:37 PM on September 7, 2023 [4 favorites]

On the scale of attainable experiences in life, it sounds like Burning Man is below the threshold of Disney and above attending a NFL game in terms of cost. I’m surprised at the low crossover of Metafilter members and Burners.
posted by interogative mood at 3:42 PM on September 7, 2023

I agree that the trooper's actions were inappropriate

Cool, we agree on the "core fact" for me, anyway. That cop was *way* out of control; I hope he gets the training he needs, and soon.

but they were decidedly not caused by Burners.

You've cited exactly one comment here that says that, and used that comment to paint the entire site with a sorta obnoxious and insulting brush. If modeling how much better as humans Burners are than Mefites is your goal here, it's not working. I mean, I get that you're on an angry roll here, partly justified, so I'll glide out of your way now.

interrogative mood: I’m surprised at the low crossover of Metafilter members and Burners.

There's always been lots of overlap between the 2 groups, always been some folks here who love making snide offhand dismissals of Burning Man, and always been folks who take a few comments in a thread to tar everyone reading or posting in that thread.

*shrug* What are ya gonna do?
posted by mediareport at 3:58 PM on September 7, 2023

Guess we'll just have to burn it all down.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 4:02 PM on September 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Pro-tip - you can use the number of favorites to get a feel for the site sentiment. What's more telling is that the people making snarky comments about the event almost entirely have never been and almost everyone who has been has a moderate to soft touch.

But tell you what, you get back from an arduous experience where you spent days helping friends and strangers get through a rough situation and see somebody telling you that you deserve it (with close to 100 favorites, the third most popular comment) and tell me what a wonderful community this is.
posted by Candleman at 4:12 PM on September 7, 2023 [7 favorites]

Allow me to introduce you to the concept of the farce. It's the use of exaggeration for humorous effect.

lol hilarious
posted by Flunkie at 4:45 PM on September 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Comparing tribal reservations to Russia or Somalia or Pakistan is definitely a farce, but maybe not in the way that was intended.
posted by zymil at 5:18 PM on September 7, 2023

I'm the one who said, "I know almost nothing about Burning Man and I understand it even less".

From what I do understand, though, here's what bothers me the most, and I do think this criticism is valid. Starting with Candleman's description, this was "... an arduous experience where you spent days helping friends and strangers get through a rough situation ..." and from earlier in the thread, someone else wrote that "... It's been over 15 years since I last went, and I can tell you that heavy rain and mud is not out of the ordinary. It is particularly bad this year, however."

My complaint is this: It is fundamentally unfair and dishonest for the organizers to set up a festival in the middle of a inhospitable and hazardous desert, charge people hundreds of dollars for attendance, and then just gesture vaguely to some 10-point mission statement that includes "radical self-reliance" when in fact a lot of people find themselves cold, wet, hungry, and miserable thanks to a not-entirely-unexpected sequence of natural events. (This was not at the level of an ice-age mastodon showing up at a boy scout camp, but rather at the level of a heavy rain storm happening in September instead of in March).

It is a testimony to the innate generosity of the human spirit, especially in times of crisis, that in fact most people, like Candleman and others in this thread, did indeed pitch in and provide food and clothing and shelter. Thank goodness for them.

But shame on the organizers, for implicitly relying on this unpaid emotional and physical labor from their own paying customers to help keep the festival from becoming a total shitshow, and then doing it again the next year. And again.

Or do I again have this all wrong? Is this part of the show? Are the burners paying money so that they can place themselves in situations of physical risk and challenge, leading to a forced sense of community against a series of inhospitable events? Because that's sounding more like a cross between an ultramarathon and an initiation ritual.

So I guess what I'm saying is, don't be too shocked when the rest of us (ignorant, uninformed) people present you with both concerned outrage and grim schadenfreude when people who go to a festival in a lake bed end up trapped in mud and forced to help out friends and strangers, because it does seem like that's exactly what you paid for, thanks to some twisted vision of the Burning Man organizers.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 5:39 PM on September 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

I stated that expecting US rights to protect you outside of the US proper can go poorly.

This is a true statement, but irrelevant for events that occur within the United States. The tribal sovereign nations are basically overlays on federal jurisdiction -- within those boundaries a new set of rules applies, but you are still on US soil. It's not the same as going to France or Mexico at all. Interacting with tribal law enforcement can be a huge shock to people who have been used to getting a lot of deference from local police their whole lives.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:50 PM on September 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Here's what happened during Burning Man 2023 as told by Wonderhussy.
posted by hortense at 6:16 PM on September 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

Or do I again have this all wrong? Is this part of the show? Are the burners paying money so that they can place themselves in situations of physical risk and challenge, leading to a forced sense of community against a series of inhospitable events?

I think it is part of the experience. Like, I have a burner friend who was telling me about something called "playa foot" which is a painful interaction between the alkali flat and bare feet that sounded absolutely awful, but also, she seemed delighted by the experience. See also, type II fun.

Re: telling people they deserve it... When I go camping, and everything gets rainy and it's cold and miserable (which happens sometimes even with good forecasting), I expect my friends to laugh at me, and it's fine. I chose to do the thing, and I knew about the possible consequences. It's fine.

I dunno. I was definitely feeling some schadenfreude, because how can I not. It looked like a giant camping trip gone horribly awry. That's never not funny! But it's a schadenfreude that existed with some empathy, too.
posted by surlyben at 7:30 PM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

playa foot is essentially alkali dusk getting caught in cracks in your feet, stopping them from healing - I used to get it if I went out to the playa more than a few times a year - it's easily dealt with by soaking your feet in a dilute vinegar solution to neutralise the alkali
posted by mbo at 7:53 PM on September 7, 2023

Watching Wonderhussy's video convinced me of what I suspected. This whole story was a big old nothingburger.

Looks like it was wetter than usual. Some of the tourists and newbies probably freaked out. As happens every year. When it rains. Or when it's a whiteout. Or whatever. Veteran Burners took it all in stride and had an overall good time.

Frankly, the ones coming off worst have been some of the commenters in this thread expressing so much misplaced concern and outrage. And particularly the misplaced schadenfreude. Really, how much schadenfreude can you really have for a whole lotta people having an enjoyable experience?

Seriously, watch that Wonderhussy video of Burning Man 2023, if you're really interested in a non bullshitty view of the event. It jibes pretty well with the experience I had the last time I attended almost 20 years ago.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:23 PM on September 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

Frankly, the ones coming off worst have been some of the commenters in this thread expressing so much misplaced concern

Yes, mea culpa. I'm the worst. But I've learned my lesson, and I will never again express concern for humans.
posted by Flunkie at 9:36 PM on September 7, 2023

Yes, mea culpa. I'm the worst. But I've learned my lesson, and I will never again express concern for humans.


Aww, don't get all pissy now. The big question is how many folks can admit that the cause for concern was kinda overblown?
posted by 2N2222 at 9:43 PM on September 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

That's the big question? OK then:

It worked out OK. Congratulations, you apparently win internet points at the cost of all the suckers like me who hear that 70,000 people are unexpectedly stuck in a desert and are concerned that the fact that it might work out OK doesn't necessarily imply that it will work out OK. And as this is the big question, that's gotta be a whole lotta internet points. You should definitely gloat more; you deserve it for nailing the big question.
posted by Flunkie at 10:01 PM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Metafilter has definitely swayed me over to the side of burning Metafilter down here.
posted by Artw at 10:51 PM on September 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

You forgot the :
posted by y2karl at 12:29 AM on September 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

maybe the real man that burned was the friendships we lost along the way
posted by glonous keming at 4:21 AM on September 8, 2023 [9 favorites]

Mod note: Please be considerate and respectful and allow others to express themselves without snarking at them. Let's move on from this derail and continue discussing the post, not fellow community members.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:33 AM on September 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

The protest was done in such poor taste : using your BFFL's wedding ceremony to make your proposal to your new Tinder match.
I saw the barricade go down after the struggles with people who attempted to remove it earlier was shocked, but a little while later I was watching a high-speed chase and saw what the CHP does to reckless drivers yikes! Guns and dogs!
Tribal police honeybadger.
posted by hortense at 1:14 PM on September 8, 2023

in other big-festivals-laid-low-by-extreme-weather news, the Blue Ridge Rock Festival in VA (50k estimated attendees) was hit with thunderstorms and hail yesterday, destroying camp sites and exposing the (imo chronic) lack of planning on the part of the organizers for anything other than bluebird conditions.

basically, storms came, they stopped the shows, ordered everyone to either shelter at their campsite or take the shuttles back to their cars. the shuttles wear absolutely insufficient to evacuate 40k-50k people in a short time. people had to endure hail, storms, rain while standing in the open waiting in line for hours. this following extreme heat conditions earlier in the day leading to lots of heat casualties among the attendees and event staff. allegedly they had but two water station: one for general admission and one for VIP admission, and they were also insufficient.

here's one news station's gallery of campsite damage and here's a big post of reports from social media from loudwire
posted by glonous keming at 6:51 PM on September 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don't either. Do I still get to have a say, or no?

Not to flog the dead sparkle pony, but the whole point of my counterpoint and going to bat in defense of Burning Man about environmental impacts in particular (which is super rare for me) is that it's actually a lot less impact than many other commonly accepted hobbies, entertainment and practices.

Any given single NASCAR race likely burns more fossil fuels and has way more carbon impact than Burning Man even when you include things like burnt wood structures, fire art and pyrotechnics, single use plastics and all ground transportation to get everything out there and home again.

Even if we compare apples to apples with global air travel of Burning Man happening once a year and one large NASCAR race and all of its logistics and air freight the single large NASCAR race is still likely more carbon impact.

Note: I am pulling guesses and opinions right out of my ass without citations but I've done enough homework about the real world carbon impacts of various kinds of large events and I'm pretty confident that the Daytona 500 event has a much higher total carbon impact from the attendees and main event than Burning Man does, and it's not just about the fuel used on the track.

I'm usually arguing about this from the other side of the trash fence and pissed off about how much impact Burning Man does actually have, because, yes, it's definitely not zero or carbon neutral - and part of the reason I usually take that side of the debate is because of how often it is that attendees conveniently or willfully ignore what impacts it does have that go far above and beyond just not leaving MOOP on the playa and that of all the people who should get this, I would hope it was burners.

But all that being said? Burning Man is a drop in the not necessarily proverbial shit bucket of pastimes and entertainment people can choose to partake in, and much larger and worthier targets.

Global air travel for tourism and business. Cruise ships. Any given large theme park with daily attendance numbers that exceed Burning Man's once a year event. Even consuming streaming media online or in theaters has major amounts of carbon impact from production on through to delivery.

I would not be at all surprised that a single major A-list feature action film has more of a carbon and waste impact than Burning Man's yearly event when you tally it up, and there are hundreds if not thousands of major movie productions per year these days when you look at the global industry.

I also wouldn't be surprised if a single major AAA video game has a larger impact than Burning Man from production to delivery and then end use by consumers, and that's before tallying the impact of consoles and desktop gaming rigs.

The only real reason I have any beef at all with Burning Man's total impact is really about how inaccessible it is and how I think it should be distributed more and happening more frequently in the same participatory way in more locations because of how sadly rare those kinds of decommodified experiences of immediacy really are in our modern world, because decommodification isn't just for art weirdos and hipsters at Burning Man.
posted by loquacious at 7:14 PM on September 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

Also - and putting this in a separate comment for clarity - regarding the LNT and MOOP problem this year due to mud (and sparkle panic ponies):

Yep, it's extra, extra bad this year. And a huge part of it is due to - in the local burner vernacular - spectators and so-called sparkle ponies (people who treat the event like it's a normal music festival and that they should be catered to and arrive unprepared to be self reliant) just noping the fuck out and not practicing LNT as mandated as part of the agreement and terms of admission.

Yep, if they don't clean it up to BLMs satisfaction their permit for next year is in jeopardy. This has always been true.

But I'm pretty sure they're going to pull it off. I'm seeing a lot of signs online there's a ton of people going out there to help with it and stepping up, including a lot of people who didn't even go to the event this year.

Ask yourself if you've ever even heard about someone taking time off from work and traveling into the middle of nowhere on their own dime to help clean up after not attending Bonaroo, or Ultra, or Coachella.

For all of its ills Burning Man is an incredibly unique and unusual thing and the world would be arguably worse off and less interesting without it.
posted by loquacious at 7:26 PM on September 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

I appreciate the contributions of Burning Man attendees to this thread, especially by correcting some really bad perceptions of who was attending and what the actual situation was like. Hopefully we can all learn from this and be a little more compassionate in the future, rather than rushing in with hot takes, snark and schadenfrued.
posted by interogative mood at 9:36 AM on September 9, 2023 [12 favorites]

we used to have a government in my region that had a talent for making a mess of things on the PR front. Their spokespeople confidently felt they knew what they were talking about. They usually didn't. A local journalist eventually tagged them "the ready fire aim gang" and it stuck.

Unfortunately, I think there's been a pile of ready-fire-aim in this thread. I'm not looking for public apologies and mea culpas, just a little more thoughtfulness in future.
posted by philip-random at 12:11 PM on September 9, 2023

Cory Doctorow: Burning Man Is Always a Challenge, but Burners Like Me Know This Time Is Different
posted by Artw at 5:50 PM on September 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

Re: telling people they deserve it... When I go camping, and everything gets rainy and it's cold and miserable (which happens sometimes even with good forecasting), I expect my friends to laugh at me, and it's fine. I chose to do the thing, and I knew about the possible consequences. It's fine.

Again, any location getting 10% of the yearly rain in a single day is going to cause massive problems. Do you shit on Boy Scouts trapped by unseasonal flash floods?

Are the burners paying money so that they can place themselves in situations of physical risk and challenge

Yes. Part of the innate part of the experience is that you're deliberately putting yourself into an environment where you have to take effort to not die at pretty much every point during the day. Yes, this is a position of privilege, and one that I think most attendees are aware of. And, frankly, can benefit from. The average burner is not rich, by a conventional definition but is solidly middle class. A little adversary is a good thing, IMO.

If you want to go to a Burn and not take a risk, you can go to Love Burn in Miami where (if you're so inclined) you can Uber in and out of the site to a 5 star hotel or get Door Dash to deliver a sushi dinner when you get peckish. Burning Man is unique from almost all of the affiliated events (other than AfrikaBurn and maybe a few others) in that it's a hard environment to survive in and that's a big part of the point. But you can lust after lightly dressed hippy chicks and isn't that the real burn experience?

I kayak in class 4 rapids. This has a way higher chance of killing me and/or requiring people to risk their lives to rescue me than Burning Man does. Just my biking on the street increases my risk factor more than Burning Man.

this following extreme heat conditions earlier in the day leading to lots of heat casualties among the attendees and event staff. allegedly they had but two water station: one for general admission and one for VIP admission, and they were also insufficient.

Just going to state this - if you go to 99% of the camps at Burning Man, even when there's not a weather event going on, and say you need water, they're going to get it to you and whatever else you might need. It is different than almost any other festival.

Metafilter has definitely swayed me over to the side of burning Metafilter down here.

Indeed. I'm out for a while if not permanently. Good job illustrating the bullshit hatred towards basically everyone that Metafilter has come to embody. (not you @Artw but the other people in the thread)
posted by Candleman at 10:07 AM on September 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

everyone!
posted by glonous keming at 10:16 AM on September 10, 2023

Again, any location getting 10% of the yearly rain in a single day is going to cause massive problems. Do you shit on Boy Scouts trapped by unseasonal flash floods?

Having a bad time while camping is inevitable if you do it enough. I wouldn't say that laughing at someone getting their turn to embrace the suck is in any way "shitting" on them. It's really more of a "I know what that is like," empathy kind of thing from me.

But, uh, okay, are the Boy Scouts just trapped for a day or two without any harm, or are they being swept away in the flood? The former is always funny, and the latter is only funny in an "I guess they weren't prepared" dark humor kind of way.
posted by surlyben at 2:26 PM on September 10, 2023

Just got around to watching that Wonderhussy video and it's great for the way she describes how the stress of the rain and mud really helped her get over her disillusionment with the event after over a dozen trips, esp since 1) it cleared out the influencers and spectators and 2) cleared the air of the dust that had been giving her playa lung. If you're pressed for time, it kicks in after about 8 min, with especially fun moments at 23:30 (the mournful tube player) and 25:30, when it finally gets dry enough for her to wear her electric vagina without worrying about shorting out.

Perfect encapsulation (well, ok, her mini-rant about the flak she took for cultural appropriation when she wore a niqab someone gave her in a previous year may not be for everyone, but I didn't mind that).
posted by mediareport at 2:49 PM on September 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

We haven't had a thread on the massive organizational failure that unfolded on the Saemangeum during this year's World Scout Jamboree, but I would be surprised if such a thread were to go any better than this one.
posted by Not A Thing at 3:01 PM on September 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

Scouts are children, and it is the explicit legal responsibility of scout camp leaders to ensure campers’ safety; with any low-impact or leave no trace goals having to be more explicitly centrally coordinated. Some major differences from Burning Man in attendees and overall structure. It’s also the case that the Boy Scouts organization has historically promoted a particularly white, Christian, conservative ideal of boyhood and manhood, but past discussions involving kids here on Metafilter have tended to be pretty reasonable for not blaming kids for adults’ power structures.
posted by eviemath at 4:33 PM on September 10, 2023

I think the Boy Scouts continually act like shits. Girl Scouts seem to be OK.

This feels a lot like FIFA, who what do whatever they can to pull in cash, either to "legitimate" things or just to the grift.

Capitalism Uber Alles. Cash is what it is important. Ugh.

Why can't we be better than this?
posted by Windopaene at 5:13 PM on September 10, 2023

Burning Man operates as a non profit global organization ,
posted by hortense at 4:16 PM on September 14, 2023

Burning Man operates as a non profit global organization

Well I definitely think they're less money-motivated than the NFL, which is also is a non-profit. That's a pretty low bar, though.
posted by aubilenon at 4:28 PM on September 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

Sanctuary - Burning Man Sunrise 2023
posted by philip-random at 11:20 PM on September 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

Update on Playa Restoration.

https://journal.burningman.org/2023/09/black-rock-city/leaving-no-trace/checking-in-on-playa-restoration/
posted by loquacious at 2:59 AM on September 17, 2023 [6 favorites]

Neighborly visit reveals the million dollar deposit that the organization paid the BLM pending clean up.
posted by hortense at 1:43 PM on September 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

I highly recommend the video hortense linked. I've never seen aerial footage like that this soon after Burning Man, and it's fascinating to see the outline of Black Rock City.

The mud and ruts are a problem but it will probably resolve itself this winter. It's not anywhere near as bad as what happens when someone goes mudding in a lifted 4x4 on a wet dry lakebed. I've seen ruts like that all over the deserts of the Mojave on unprotected dry lake beds where they're 2-3 feet deep and it does take years for them to smooth out again.
posted by loquacious at 5:17 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's again time for Bohemian Grove v Burning Man comparisons everyone
posted by jeffburdges at 10:36 PM on September 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

I think that photograph is Clarence Thomas with Ken Burns and David Koch at Bo Ho Grove not Harlan Crow,
posted by hortense at 7:10 PM on September 23, 2023