Last week I attended Burning Man with Pnina and her sister Miriam. This was the first time at Burning Man for all of us. It was a pretty amazing experience, difficult to summarize in a post, but here goes…
First off — look at the photos. That’s the best way to get a feel for what goes on there:
The festival is held in Black Rock Desert in Nevada, about 100 miles north of Reno. Incidentally the festival wasn’t always held there — it started on a beach in San Francisco in 1986, but by 1990 it grew too large and it had to relocate. Also BTW it used to be a summer solstice festival so it was also relocated in time to the week before Labor Day. There’s a pretty interesting Burning Man Timeline on the main BM website.
We drove Pnina’s little 4-door Mazda. I’m still amazed we were able to pack everything into the car. You really need to bring *everything* with you because there’s little available for purchase at the festival — only ice and coffee. We brought 25 gallons of water, which took up about half the trunk. Our tent, sleeping bags and sleeping mattresses consumed the other half. And our clothes, food, booze, costumes, and other random stuff were tucked into the back seat and in every imaginable gap. Also, we had three bikes hanging off the trunk. The car has never seen so much weight before and its little 4-cylinder engine felt it — it was difficult to pass those slow-ass RV’s en route.
Incidentally, the drive to BM from Seattle was pretty nice. We stopped at my parents place in Portland. We also went through Crater Lake National Park and passed through a few other forests. The view was pretty constant trees, mountains, and lakes…until we hit the desert.
The Burning Man festival keeps growing from year to year. I don’t know how many people attended this year but it must be over 50,000 people. Check out this photo of “Black Rock City” from above. The city is arranged like a clock, with the man-to-burn in the middle, then a buffer zone of empty desert (”playa”), then concentric arcs of tents and campers reaching from 2 o’clock to 10 o’clock. The temple (which also gets burned) is located at 12 o’clock. And the whole space around the man, the temple, and beyond (north of 12 o’clock) is dotted with art installations. Also, there are people walking, on bicycles, and on “art cars” (AKA mutant vehicles) pretty much everywhere.
We didn’t have a specific place to camp. We showed up late on Tuesday so it was hard to see where we were anyhow. We randomly ended up at 6:20 and Hummer (the arc roads had alphabetical names with the theme of cars).
The place you choose to camp is very important for several reasons. First off, it’s your neighborhood — you’ll end up making friends with the people around you. We got to know Ray and Dave, our immediate next-door neighbors, Casey and Carla, the next neighbors over. More than that, we became close friends with Camp Burner Brown, which was a few doors down and had a much better setup than we did — RV’s, big shade structure, long table, BBQ, etc. Also, your location determines how far you have to go to the porta potties, to center camp, and to the parties. And it determines how easily you can sleep at night (if you choose to sleep that is) — you really can’t get away from the techno beat completely, but it gets louder as you approach 2 and 10 o’clock.
The hottest time of day is shortly before sunset (perhaps 100 degrees) and the coldest time of day is just before sunrise (not quite freezing but not that far). It took us a day to realize that you need to arrange your daily schedule around that. The first day there we spent a good 5-6 hours walking around the playa looking at the various art installations during the hottest part of day. It really drained us. Over the next few days we mostly chilled out at center camp during the hot hours, listening to random performers, meeting random people, learning how to knit (no joke), etc. The best time to go around the playa is in the morning. Unfortunately we never woke up early enough to enjoy that time because we were generally up pretty late partying (a couple of times till sunrise). Also, around 8:30 AM our tent became stiflingly hot. We kept playing this dance where the first person to notice the heat would wake up, remove the rain fly, and open all the windows, then go back to sleep. Later, before leaving the tent, we would close all the windows and put the rain fly back up because you never really know when that big dust storm is going to hit.
Speaking of dust storms, there were two of them in Burning Man 2008. The first one happened on Monday, and fortunately we missed it because we arrived Tuesday night. We heard it was a total “white out”, and that entrance to the festival was halted for a good 5 hours. The people stuck in line on the road must have thought it was pretty shitty, but at least they were in their cars — it was probably worse for the people stranded randomly somewhere in Black Rock City. The second dust storm happened on Saturday, the day the man burns. We experienced this one, and man what an experience. The storm arrived around 1 PM and it didn’t let up until night-time. We tried to take refuge in Center Camp, but there was really no way to get away from the dust. Our hair was saturated and we looked like old folks. At some point Pnina decided she had to use the rest rooms so we braved the winds outside and walked to the porta potties. Then we went to our tent to have some dinner. The wind was so strong that it put a continuous bulge in our tent (though the tent did stay up — thank you rebar!). Also, I’m really not sure how this happened but even though we had all the windows closed and the rain fly up, we still got a 1/3 inch layer of dust in the tent — still blows my mind.
So the storms, the heat, and the cold — those are some of the harsh realities of life in Black Rock City. Also, for us there were no real showers, just baby wipes. But whatever. It’s worth it for all the art, the parties, the performances, and the wonderful people we met.
To see the art you need to get around the playa, and the distances are huge — that’s one thing that definitely surprised me. I don’t think the art pieces need to be quite that far apart so it must be a concious choice by the artist or by the BM organizers. Perhaps the artist likes to see his audience make an effort to see his art; it’s not enough to drive all the way to Burning Man, you also need to hike way out into the desert. Of the three bikes we brought, two broke down the first day. We didn’t bother trying to fix them — it was too clumsy trying to ride and hold up an umbrella (for sun) at the same time, so we ditched our bikes at our camp and spent the week walking. The great thing about walking is that you end up having more conversations with random people along the way. The tough thing is that after a couple of days you’re exhausted. So, one alternative is to hop on an art car — most of them are very cool about letting everyone come aboard. On the other hand, you just don’t know where the art car is going to go. We had a few situations where we hopped on an art car, hoping to see that one art installation way out in the desert, only to have that car turn around and take us further back towards camp. Ugh! 
The art pieces definitely take on a completely different character at night. Or, at least, that’s true for the ones that involve either fire or neon lights or both. But that’s most of them.
I mentioned before that other than ice and coffee, you can’t purchase anything at Burning Man. People often hear that there’s a barter system at Burning Man – you bring stuff to trade with other people. That’s not really true. It’s actually a “gift” system, which is a pay-it-forward concept. We brought extra chap stick (recommended by Matt Longest – thanks Matt!), extra ear plugs, some leftover booze from the wedding, and some random candy. And we gave it to random people along the way. We received booze, food, costumes, necklaces, belly dance lessons, knitting kits with yarn, and hugs – lots of people were big on hugs.
BTW, the candy we brought was occasionally difficult to give away — people were suspicious of what was in it (”it’s just jelly beans, I promise”). Drugs were everywhere. The first night we met this guy Darren at John Cougar Mellen-Camp. He took three mushrooms and went on a huge trip, both figuratively and literally. He ended up somewhere past the The End (which was the last art piece), and eventually he was picked up by the law enforcement people.
But what about the burn? It took place Saturday night after the dust storm subsided. *everyone* crowded around the playa and it was a complete party atmosphere (except for Pnina who by this point was so exhausted that she fell asleep waiting for the fire to start; which caused several people to stop by and ask “is she OK?”). The burn started with fire works. During the fire works, a few plumes of fire got the burning man tower going. I don’t know how long it took — perhaps an hour or two — but eventually the whole burning man tower collapsed, and there was much rejoycing. I’m told that at this point the crowd rushes in towards the ambers, but we were too far to see that.
The man-burn is not the only burn. On Sunday night they burn the temple, and apparently that’s a quiet and spiritual affair. But we were far too exhausted to stay another day. We stayed up all night partying after the man-burn, then we packed up our stuff and headed out.
I’d say that the burn itself is pretty cool, but it’s not the main highlight for the week. Lots of cool things happen all week long and each person at Black Rock City makes their own experience based on which art/camps/people they happen to meet.
Update (Sept 26)
We finally got around to posting Pnina’s photos. Take a look – they’re really good (link above).
