2016: DaVinci's Workshop
Population: ~70k.
Ticket Cost: $390, $990, $1200
Vehicle Pass: $80
Ticket Cost: $390, $990, $1200
Vehicle Pass: $80
2016 was a year marked by truly excellent weather after the dismal weather in 2015. I'd say it was the best year since 2011 in that regards - while there were a lot of mid-day deep-playa dust storms, nighttime was largely (not entirely of course) clear and beautiful. The playa conditions were also hard and flat, which made for incredibly good biking.
2016 was also a year marked by a whole lot of controversy. To begin with, the Man was relatively small, and while it was supposed to rotate, it never actually did and was missing its head for part of the week. I'd imagine that was pretty disappointing to the hard-working Man crew, but rotate or not, it still burned.
Around the Man this year was what I thought was the best plaza I've ever seen around it. The highlight, for me, were the Iron Monkeys, a Seattle-based metalworking collective who built a blacksmith shop - the Piazza di Ferro - and spent the week teaching burners the craft of blacksmithing. How cool is that? For whatever reason though, some irredeemable assholes decided to vandalize their blacksmithing shop. Anvils pulled from their stands, the stands knocked over, walls almost pulled down, and to add insult to injury, the vandals pissed all over everything. This is not ok. You can read about it from the point of view of one of the Iron Monkeys here. What's really baffling about this is a lack of discernable motive. This wasn't just some drunk idiots kicking things as they went by. This was an organized attempt to completely an intentionally vandalize a specific installation. Very sad. |
No mention of vandalism at Burning Man 2016 would be complete without talking about the White Ocean incident. In short, White Ocean - a giant plug n' play camp of the most odious kind that also provides one of Burning Man's largest sound camps - was vandalized, and the media went crazy with completely unfounded stories centered on class warfare. I dug into it with this article, interviewed a number of former contractors for White Ocean - most of whom were disgruntled - and concluded that it was not class warfare, but was an inside revenge job, which White Ocean itself later confirmed.
The last bit of controversy or negative news that bears mentioning was the collapse of a multi-story steel and canvas structure at the Lost Hotel camp, which resulted in 6 injuries and one person evacuated to the hospital in Reno. According to reddit user 'homeinhollywood' whose husband was among the injured, someone suggested everybody pile onto the balcony for a group shot, which overloaded the structure.
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The Art
Enough of the negative! 2016 was an excellent year in ways other than merely the weather and playa conditions. For instance, the art! If you love big art (and I do) this was a pretty incredible year. First, there was David Best's Temple, which he says is his last. I absolutely loved it!
Mr. Best's Temple is the opening scene to my 2016 video, which is a tribute to the late, great David Bowie. I think it's my best Burning Man video work yet, but your mileage may vary! Check it out below:
Mr. Best's Temple is the opening scene to my 2016 video, which is a tribute to the late, great David Bowie. I think it's my best Burning Man video work yet, but your mileage may vary! Check it out below:
Then we've got the Lighthouse, my personal favorite art installation from 2016, from father and son duo Jonny and Max Poyton:
There was the dual pyramid Veil of Catacombs from Dan Sullivan and his crew - one of the biggest pieces ever at Burning Man. Though it never got fully completed it made for one heck of an incredible burn:
And of course, the Space Whale, from the Pier Group and Android Jones:
Fly Ranch
I also wanted to talk about the Fly Ranch purchase. In 2016, some wealthy Burners donated $6.5 million so that Burning Man could buy the 3800 acre Fly Ranch. Although this served as the site of the (much-smaller) event in 1997, folks at all levels of the Burning Man organization I spoke to say that not only is there no plan to hold Burning Man at Fly Ranch, but that it's completely unsuitable for today's event.
I had a chance to visit Fly Ranch during this year's Burn, and wrote about it here if you'd like more extensive pictures and thoughts about it. How will Fly Ranch serve the needs of the Burning Man community? |
That remains to be seen, but one reason (out of a host of reasons) the property was purchased is to give Burning Man first-right-of-refusal on the adjacent and much larger Hualapai playa, which is on the Bureau of Public Land's disposal list, and which is large enough to hold Burning Man, albeit with the trash fence likely right up against the mountains. Although it wouldn't be an ideal situation, it could serve as an escape route to private land (assuming the Burning Man Project does acquire it) in case of a refusal by the BLM to grant us the permit to have the event for whatever reason in the future.
I took this during the 2016 Burn. Those clouds of dust across the hills in the background? That's Black Rock City.
2017: Radical Ritual
Population: ~70k.
Ticket Cost: $425, $990, $1200
Vehicle Pass: $80
Sometimes it's difficult to categorize a year by any single criteria. Not this year. If you were at Burning Man 2017, likely the first thing that comes to mind is the heat. It was hot. Off the charts hot, and by most accounts the hottest year ever in Black Rock City. People were recording temperatures as high as 118 near the surface of the playa. The heat was omnipresent during the day, and almost everybody felt it weighing them down. The nights, on the other hand....wow! I've never been able to go out at night in just a t-shirt and shorts before. Very, very comfortable temps. Also a distinct lack of dust storms during burn week, with one notable exception.
I think many people will vividly remember the crazy storm that rolled in Tuesday afternoon of burn week. This was my 8th year on the playa, so it's not as if I haven't seen storms before. However, this one had an incredibly well-defined front such that it looked like a haboob out of Mad Max or something. Very apropos! On the downside, it knocked down quite a few camps' infrastructure as it hit hard and fast.
Ticket Cost: $425, $990, $1200
Vehicle Pass: $80
Sometimes it's difficult to categorize a year by any single criteria. Not this year. If you were at Burning Man 2017, likely the first thing that comes to mind is the heat. It was hot. Off the charts hot, and by most accounts the hottest year ever in Black Rock City. People were recording temperatures as high as 118 near the surface of the playa. The heat was omnipresent during the day, and almost everybody felt it weighing them down. The nights, on the other hand....wow! I've never been able to go out at night in just a t-shirt and shorts before. Very, very comfortable temps. Also a distinct lack of dust storms during burn week, with one notable exception.
I think many people will vividly remember the crazy storm that rolled in Tuesday afternoon of burn week. This was my 8th year on the playa, so it's not as if I haven't seen storms before. However, this one had an incredibly well-defined front such that it looked like a haboob out of Mad Max or something. Very apropos! On the downside, it knocked down quite a few camps' infrastructure as it hit hard and fast.
2017 also saw a tragedy that was much-discussed in the Burner community. Aaron Joel Mitchell, 41, died after running into the fire during the Man burn, and dying a short term thereafter of his injuries. We still don't know why he did it, and it seems likely we never will.
Burning Man's culture problem arguably continued to increase, with more people livestreaming and instagramming from the event, and as evidenced by the thousands of bikes that got left behind this year (of course, not everyone leaves their bikes behind intentionally).
I've also heard through the grapevine of multiple issues with art vandalism again, as with last year. |
The Art
By far my favorite art on the playa this year was the Tree of Ténéré. This incredible piece was an organic-looking, climbable large tree with 10s of thousands of individually-addressable LEDs. Just watch the video. It was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen on the playa.
See you on the playa in 2018. Come by Friendgasm, the camp I organize, for one of our parties! -- Dr. Yes
2018: I, Robot
Population: ~80k.
Ticket Cost: $425, $990, $1200
Vehicle Pass: $80
Ticket Cost: $425, $990, $1200
Vehicle Pass: $80
2018 was a year marked by a number of notable events as well as fantastic weather. Seriously, the weather! While it was dusty AF during at least the second half of build week, as well as opening day and at least one night, the weather was generally gorgeous. Not too hot, not too cold - it felt like we were being rewarded after enduring last year's intense, mind-numbing and crotch-soaking heat.
Unfortunately, we lost Larry Harvey this year. I didn't know the man, so I can't say much about him personally, but I'm grateful to him for spawning Burning Man. There are pictures of Larry all over the internet (not to mention in some of the early years entries in this here history you're reading), but here's my favorite tribute to him, from Zac Cirivello.
This Year's Pre-Burn Freakout
It seems as if there's always something burners freak out about prior to leaving for the playa, like the insects in 2015. This year it was law enforcement pulling people over in Nixon, on route 447, which is on the way to Burning Man for most burners. Despite initial doubts by some burners, this was very real. The camp next to my camp saw 12 of 28 people pulled over when they arrived during build week, for instance, though the action died down %-wise as more and more burners began arriving.
As it turns out, this was an operation that originated with Secretary of the Interior Zinke. Back in the spring of this year, he had ordered a crackdown on opioids on Native American reservations, with traffic stop stings conducted in Arizona, Wisconsin, New Mexico, and elsewhere, with Bureau of Indian Affairs K9 units (who were heavily present in Nixon) working with tribal authorities and others. There are press releases trumpeting their work in other states here and here. Whether they happened to be on tribal land in Nixon at Burning Man time to target Burners, or whether this was a coincidence....well, you decide, though I think the likely answer is fairly obvious.
As it turns out, this was an operation that originated with Secretary of the Interior Zinke. Back in the spring of this year, he had ordered a crackdown on opioids on Native American reservations, with traffic stop stings conducted in Arizona, Wisconsin, New Mexico, and elsewhere, with Bureau of Indian Affairs K9 units (who were heavily present in Nixon) working with tribal authorities and others. There are press releases trumpeting their work in other states here and here. Whether they happened to be on tribal land in Nixon at Burning Man time to target Burners, or whether this was a coincidence....well, you decide, though I think the likely answer is fairly obvious.
Ticket and Access Problems
Burning Man ran into some problems with tickets and access this year. Notably, during build week, some volunteers who had been promised a ticket were showing up at the gate only to be told there was no ticket and they'd need to go home.
In a further unfortunate development, the Org oversold the tickets (which they've do regularly these days...it just didn't work out this time) and was forced by the BLM (the federal Bureau of Land Management, which manages the land Burning Man uses) on Thursday of burn week to hold people at gate until others had left, as they weren't allowed to have more than 70,000 event participants on playa at one time, and more than 70,000 tickets had been sold. This notably happened before, in 2014. However, since mostly only weekenders were affected, nobody really cares. 😉
Speaking of tickets, they continue to be harder and harder to obtain via the non-DGS (Directed Group Sale...the tickets made available to theme camps in good standing) routes. This year, for instance, I saw almost nobody offering tickets in the last couple weeks leading up to the burn. Lots of requests, but no offers. Typically, I'm able to help a number of people find tickets in August, but this year, no such luck. Further, the prices on Stubhub (one of the primary secondary markets for BM tickets) were several hundred dollars higher two weeks out from the burn than usual. It all points to a continuing increase in demand to attend the event. In my opinion, this makes it even more crucial that the Org do what it can to support the burners who are actually building the city, which is reflected in the increased number of DGS tickets available this year, I think - they moved 5000 tickets out of the main sale and into the DGS sale.
Not everyone agrees this increasing allocation of tickets to theme camps is a good thing, but I think that ultimately the Org has a choice between selling tickets to people in the main sale, who are unaccountable in terms of providing anything back to the city and can't be vetted, or selling tickets to theme camp members where, at least in theory, those people are working to help build a camp that gives back to the city, and whose contribution can, again in theory, be vetted.
That said, I saw a number of camps this year with excess DGS tickets that they were offering to whoever would pay camp dues and join their camp. Personally, I don't think DGS tickets should be an enticement to join a camp that year. If a camp needs to use DGS tickets to recruit new members, perhaps that camp should consider scaling back its ambitions.
In a further unfortunate development, the Org oversold the tickets (which they've do regularly these days...it just didn't work out this time) and was forced by the BLM (the federal Bureau of Land Management, which manages the land Burning Man uses) on Thursday of burn week to hold people at gate until others had left, as they weren't allowed to have more than 70,000 event participants on playa at one time, and more than 70,000 tickets had been sold. This notably happened before, in 2014. However, since mostly only weekenders were affected, nobody really cares. 😉
Speaking of tickets, they continue to be harder and harder to obtain via the non-DGS (Directed Group Sale...the tickets made available to theme camps in good standing) routes. This year, for instance, I saw almost nobody offering tickets in the last couple weeks leading up to the burn. Lots of requests, but no offers. Typically, I'm able to help a number of people find tickets in August, but this year, no such luck. Further, the prices on Stubhub (one of the primary secondary markets for BM tickets) were several hundred dollars higher two weeks out from the burn than usual. It all points to a continuing increase in demand to attend the event. In my opinion, this makes it even more crucial that the Org do what it can to support the burners who are actually building the city, which is reflected in the increased number of DGS tickets available this year, I think - they moved 5000 tickets out of the main sale and into the DGS sale.
Not everyone agrees this increasing allocation of tickets to theme camps is a good thing, but I think that ultimately the Org has a choice between selling tickets to people in the main sale, who are unaccountable in terms of providing anything back to the city and can't be vetted, or selling tickets to theme camp members where, at least in theory, those people are working to help build a camp that gives back to the city, and whose contribution can, again in theory, be vetted.
That said, I saw a number of camps this year with excess DGS tickets that they were offering to whoever would pay camp dues and join their camp. Personally, I don't think DGS tickets should be an enticement to join a camp that year. If a camp needs to use DGS tickets to recruit new members, perhaps that camp should consider scaling back its ambitions.
Robots EverywhereMany (most?) years, the "theme" for the year, as handed down from the Org, is....difficult to do anything with. "Radical Ritual" or "Fertility 2.0" or "Caravansary" - almost everyone just ignores the theme in because of the ephemerality of them. This year, though, "I, Robot" really gave participants something to latch onto, and latch they did! There were robots EVERYWHERE. Big robots, small robots, human robots, robot sheep, and much more. It was kind of awesome actually. In my 9 years of being on the playa, it's the only year the theme has made a noticeable impact to me.
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The Art
I thought this was a great year for art out there! Some of my favorite pieces included Galaxia (the Temple this year), the Hexatron (forest of LED spires), the drone swarm, the fake moon, Baba Yaga's hut, and the trains, despite the fact that the latter's "trainwreck" was pretty underwhelming. Pics and video below!
First is a longer video I made, compiling various footage of Burning Man I took with footage of my campmates. The videos below that are all art piece-specific. Enjoy!
First is a longer video I made, compiling various footage of Burning Man I took with footage of my campmates. The videos below that are all art piece-specific. Enjoy!
Weirdout Wednesday
This year, my camp - Friendgasm - kicked off what we hope to spread as a new annual tradition at Burning Man, ala Tutu Tuesday, but broader and more imaginative. You can read all about it here, but the upshot is that we want to help keep Burning Man weird, as I know a lot of attendees do, and push back, culturally, against the people for whom Burning Man is all about being "cool" for their Instagrams and whatnot. What we did this year for it was put on adult diapers and go rock out at Duck Pond and Distrikt, photobombing Instamodels trying to get clean pictures of themselves.
That's it for this year, which I count as my best out of 9 years at Burning Man. See you in the dust in 2019!
2019: Metamorphosis
Population: ~80k.
Ticket Cost: $425, $990, $1400
Vehicle Pass: $100
Ticket Cost: $425, $990, $1400
Vehicle Pass: $100
2019 was at least as notable for what almost happened as for what did happen - some potentially onerous measures that Burning Man was in danger of having to accept from the Bureau of Land Management (the federal organization that manages the Black Rock Desert and whose permit is required to hold Burning Man). As part of Burning Man's application for a 10 year permit, the BLM proposed a number of new and, to say the least, controversial things, such as surrounding Black Rock City with concrete jersey barriers, putting trash bins on the exodus route, that the Burning Man Project would have to pay for road maintenance on route 447 (the highway most Burners take to get to the event), and that a private security force be hired to screen all vehicles for weapons and drugs.
After a series of public hearings and no doubt more than a little backroom diplomacy between the Org and the BLM, the decisions on most of those proposed measures were delayed until 2020, with the final outcome unknown as of this writing.
After a series of public hearings and no doubt more than a little backroom diplomacy between the Org and the BLM, the decisions on most of those proposed measures were delayed until 2020, with the final outcome unknown as of this writing.
The run-up to 2019 also saw a public letter from Marian Goodell, the Org's CEO, acknowledging that Burning Man is in need of some cultural course correction. That this is needed is probably not news to most Burners, but it was great to see the culture's degradation recognized at the highest level of the Org. There's a whole process taking place within the Org right now that involves ten working groups working on ten different areas of Burning Man culture composed of a wide variety of Burners, to try and collaboratively figure some of the issues out.
Finally, Level, the new head placer, put out a public letter explaining that we're at a turning point for Placement. There was a massive increase in applications for placed camps this year, and while they were going to continue to place every camp that met placement's criteria, next year (2021 hopefully) is going to necessarily see changes to the process.
A bunch of things happened at the event that would normally be notable happened, but I'm writing this in Covid-19 times and in the wake of George Floyd's murder by police. I'm having a hard time feeling like things that happened at past Burning Mans matter all that much right now, so I'll just skip to some photos and videos.
The Temple, by Geordie Van Der Bosch. Video by Jamen Percy.
Wings of Glory, by Adrian Landon. Video: Matt Mihaly
My main Burning Man 2019 video. There's some beautiful drone footage from Jamen Percy in it!
I rewrote the lyrics to "We Didn't Start The Fire" to trace Burning Man's history, had a singer record it, and put together historical pictures and footage to match the song.
2020: The End?
Population: 0
Burning Man was cancelled due to Covid-19 this year.
Since gathering in the Black Rock Desert won't be possible, the Org put together Kindling, a collection of virtual experiences and events that various Burners are creating.
The Org is also relying on community donations to keep it alive, as not holding the event wiped out most of their revenue for the year.
Marian Goodell, the Org's CEO, has both publicly and private said that the relationship with the Bureau of Land Management was at a very bad place when Covid-19 hit, and that there's a real chance that they won't be able to work with the BLM (the agency, not the movement) in the future, which would mean not holding the event on the playa any more.
Burning Man may be back in 2021, and it may not. Covid-19 could potentially prevent it from happening, and a frayed relationship with the Bureau of Land Management could prevent it from happening in the form we're accustomed to.
Burning Man was cancelled due to Covid-19 this year.
Since gathering in the Black Rock Desert won't be possible, the Org put together Kindling, a collection of virtual experiences and events that various Burners are creating.
The Org is also relying on community donations to keep it alive, as not holding the event wiped out most of their revenue for the year.
Marian Goodell, the Org's CEO, has both publicly and private said that the relationship with the Bureau of Land Management was at a very bad place when Covid-19 hit, and that there's a real chance that they won't be able to work with the BLM (the agency, not the movement) in the future, which would mean not holding the event on the playa any more.
Burning Man may be back in 2021, and it may not. Covid-19 could potentially prevent it from happening, and a frayed relationship with the Bureau of Land Management could prevent it from happening in the form we're accustomed to.
I hope to see you all in the dust again.