From the Reno Gazette Journal comes this great story about an Art Project designed as a tribute to wildlife injured in the BP oil spill, which now takes pride of place on the artist’s balcony.
A 21-foot-wide, 8-foot-tall Pelican perches on the deck of a home in northwest Reno, looking as if it were about to take flight over North McCarran Boulevard.
The mammoth waterfowl is not a nuclear mutation, but a leftover piece of Burning Man artwork that a Reno woman and her family made as a statement about the suffering that birds and other wildlife endured from the 2010 BP oil spill along the Gulf Coast.
Darla Fink and her husband, David Whitmus, built the pelican with the help of Fink’s sisters and mother-in-law.
“The theme of last year’s Burning Man was Rite of Passage, so I called this Flight of Passage,” said Fink, the student services director for Job Corps.
The pelican’s wings were made out of recycled 20-ounce plastic water bottles that were ironed as flat as possible, attached to chicken wire, and then the entire thing was spray painted black.
“Plastic water bottles are horrible for birds, and the caps from the bottles get caught in their stomachs,” she said. “You find these water bottles all over the oceans and beaches.”
The black pelican’s neck and head were made out of faux fur and the underpinning of the sculpture was made of reclaimed rebar welded together, Fink said.
“The significance of it being black was really to represent that famous image of the oil-covered pelican trying to pull itself out of the water after the BP oil spill,” she said.
By the time the Burning Man arts and counterculture gathering had ended last Labor Day, the sculpture had morphed into a statement about how quickly the damage done to wildlife has been forgotten, Fink said.
“So, at Burning Man, here was this big black pelican rising out of the playa. But when the week was over, the dust of the playa had turned it white,” she said. “So, it was obscured, just like the memory of all the wildlife that was destroyed by that oil spill.”
The pelican now sits, its mouth open as if to swallow passing clouds, on the deck of the Fink’s home off North McCarran Boulevard between Seventh Street and Kings Row.
Fink is considering selling the sculpture to someone interested in Burning Man memorabilia and using the money to finance her and her husband’s next Burner art project, or giving all or some of the funds to a wildlife organization.
It seems like we’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest, with members of BMOrg feeling “besmirched” by our speculation that something more has gone wrong with the ticket lottery than simple ineptocracy could explain.
While I enjoy the Burning Man party, and appreciate the efforts of both the organizers and the participants to put it on, I don’t always buy every single party line that ever comes out of BMOrg. For example “this is not about money”, when there’s $20 million plus at stake. Or “this is about radical inclusion”, when they’re running the World’s Biggest Guest list.
We’re not making accusations about anyone in particular. However, we’re not the only ones who think something is not right with the ticket lottery process. It’s not Burners.Me that’s fucking up Burning Man.
So, let’s review all the pieces of information, which in our opinion, suggest something untoward is going on – then please vote your own opinion at the end of this post.
The evidence is circumstantial, only because that’s all we can do: speculate. Only a few people know the truth, and they’re not talking, or if they are, they’re denying it til they turn blue in the face.
#1. Burning Man is changing from an LLC to a non-profit. There has been a clause in the LLC agreement, which restricts any of the 6 founders from pulling out more than $20,000. Over the next 3 years, as part of the transition, they will be cashing out of the LLC, and handing things over to the non-profit.
An earlier agreement stated that each member of the LLC would only receive “sole compensation for many years of service, a golden parachute of $20,000”. But the board members all agreed to an out of court settlement in which each member of the board would receive undisclosed sums.
Marian Goodell, board member and head of communication, addressed concerns about the lack of transparency with this statement: “When you’re in the middle of a storm, if you’re going to explain all of how you got there, and how you’re going to get out, it often sets more panic among the survivors than if you just sail the boat out of the darkness.
Is it just a coincidence, that the first year the founders want to cash out, they change the system? Not only that, they change it to a radically new one that screws the community around but appears to maximize ticket value?
#2. Some of the original founders are disgruntled by these moves, and have openly said that they will be scalping every ticket they can get their hands on: “why shouldn’t we cash in like Larry is?” This week we saw a high-level resignation of a key BMOrg player.
#3. There was not a problem looking for a solution. Last year, tickets sold out for the first time ever – just over a month before the event. This year, numbers have increased from 50,000 to 58,000. If they had just maintained the status quo, maybe it would have sold out again – so what? Events on a first-come, first-serve basis sell out all the time. There does not seem to be a compelling reason for the change in the ticketing system.
#4. When BMOrg first outlined plans for a ticket lottery, the Burner community voiced their disapproval. Many accurately predicted that it would be a debacle, and play into the hands of scalpers. BMOrg ignored this, and are still ignoring it.
#5. BMorg had an early release of tickets, in December, for $420. Why would the earliest tickets have the highest price? Who would pay almost double for a ticket? There were obviously some insiders, who had information about how scarce (and therefore valuable) tickets were going to be.
#6. BMOrg implemented a survey, asking people how many times they’ve been to Burning Man. The details of this have not been shared with the community. What did they do with this information? Did your answers to questions in the survey, have any bearing on whether or not you won tickets? How many applied for high-price tickets, versus low and mid price? A Burner created their own survey, with more than 1600 responses – it is quite enlightening.
#7. 40% of applications for tickets were from newbies. This would presumably include all scalpers. Someone had to make a decision about this 40% – or are we supposed to believe that the lottery was purely random, and the answers to the questions didn’t affect your chances in any way? Choosing 40% to newbies, is the same as saying that 20,000 of last years Burners can’t go.
#8. After the ticket lottery, only a minority of Burners had tickets. Most theme camps only got 20-30% of the tickets they were chasing. I know hundreds of Burners, but I don’t know anyone who won tickets in the lottery, although I know some hot girls who got tickets offered to them by winners shortly after. Our poll shows 40% in the same position. If 40% of tickets were for newbies, then 60% should have gone to Burners.
The numbers don’t add up – there seem to be 20-30% of the tickets that went neither to Burners, or newbies.
#9. BMOrg’s first response was to point the finger at the Burner community, for getting friends and family to order more tickets than they needed. If this was actually true, we would have seen way more than 1% of tickets getting washed through STEP.
#10. BMOrg’s next response was to plead ignorance, and blame it on a Dr Seuss themed viral video. This doesn’t make sense to me, given the MASSIVE amount of media coverage Burning Man has received over 25 years. Books, films, Vogue, Autoweek, the New York Times, Malcolm in the Middle, Workaholics. Do you really believe that none of these could bring Burning Man to the attention of people who would like to go, compared to a single YouTube video? What about all the other YouTube Burning Man videos, with far more hits in aggregate?
#11. BMOrg’s next response was to cancel the release of 10,000 secondary tickets, thus ensuring that NO-ONE could get tickets except through scalpers and STEP – unless they were on the guest list. BMOrg ignored all calls for some kind of transparency to be attached to this process. The tickets supposedly went to theme camps, but who got them is still a mystery.
#12. Burning Man sold 58,000 tickets before the permit has been approved. They were obviously very confident in the 58,000 number. Now that the tickets are sold, what do they have to lose? Why not go to the BLM and ask for 60,000? 62,000? All the calculations have been done, they show that the event can easily grow to 70,000 without major changes. Why prefer “slow growth“, if that means a “swiss cheese effect” decimating the community? This opportunity seems to be COMPLETELY RULED OUT by anyone to do with BMOrg, even though there is extensive data in the Environmental Impact Assessment about the population cap increase, local newspapers are interpreting the EA as “increase to 70,000“, and the BLM is saying “there have been very few objections to the permit increase to 70,000″. It’s easy to tell us “you’re stupid, didn’t you even read the report, it says growth over 5 years”. Yeah, I read it, I linked to it, I quoted it. But if you have the Feds saying “we would approve 70,000”, isn’t it worth a try to get some more tickets out there? Would it really be that hard to just ask?
#13. Despite the crisis, and repeated calls to link IDs to tickets, BMOrg refused. The excuse was “it would be too difficult to implement” and “it would be against gifting”. I don’t buy either of those excuses – other festivals do it all the time, all round the world; and why couldn’t I specify what ID I wanted to associate with each ticket I bought? They already send people into your vehicle, checking for stowaways. How hard would it be to ask people to produce IDs during these inspections? To me, it seems not hard at all.
#14. The argument that scalpers got a lot of tickets just by entering the lottery like everyone else, doesn’t make sense. They would have to make 3+ entries for every ticket they won. Each entry would have to be from a different address and credit card number. This would create a huge risk that they ended up with ALL of the tickets to the party – if the scalpers did not know in advance what the lottery application vs. allocation rate would be. They would be risking a huge amount of capital, for an unknown potential gain. The amount of time this would take would require large teams of people, entering and filling in the survey. Each application took minutes to complete, the lottery was only open for 2 weeks. These false entries would be easy to detect, since there would not be a large variety of IP addresses hitting the servers.
#15. We (and many others) have been speculating on these matters publicly since the start of February. When did BMOrg come and comment on the speculation? As soon as the price of tickets on the secondary market looked like it was going to drop below $1000.
Burner Raftin has prepared this useful graph of Stubhub prices. Our post More Ice, More Exodus, More Tickets was published on March 19. April 13 is when Will Chase posted in the comments that they would not try to get any more people to the Playa this year.
You could over look any one, or two of all the above points, as coincidence, incompetence, bad luck, or all of the above. Take all fifteen together, and it shows what we believe to be a consistent pattern. Lack of transparency, lack of care about the Burner community who has made the party what it is today, and decisions that play perfectly into the hands of scalpers.
What do you think? Where there’s smoke there’s fire? Or does everything seem completely kosher and above board?
Bobzilla, who speaks with the authority of BMOrg, has raised some objections to our claims in the comments on this post.
What you are failing to understand is that *all* the statements made by BLM, etc are in the context of “over five years”. Nowhere does anyone say, we can do 70K right now. Its right in front of you and several people have pointed it out.
Any response to your baseless accusation that the senior decision makers in the BMOrg are making money on the side via the secondary market?” How do you back that up? Any evidence? Hmmmmm?
We refer readers to our earlier 4-part series discussing the ticket situation, where we outline potential scenarios in some detail. In particular part II – money is a powerful motivator, and there is a lot of money involved here.
Something is not quite right about this whole situation – and it is not just me with this feeling, 75% of voters also think something is up. Do I have evidence? No, I’m not the cops, and this is not a court of law. What powers do I have to gather evidence? Should I subpoena people? It’s just a party!
There is only circumstantial evidence – the bizarre lack of tickets among the Burner community, with only 40% of newbies and 30% of Burners getting tickets; and as of today, around 40% of Burners not knowing ANYONE who got tickets in the lottery; and the series of decisions where BMOrg ignored the community’s wishes and instead did the perfect thing for scalpers every chance they had.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt broke up with Steve Jobs at Burning Man 2007
This could be sheer incompetence, and I explore that and other possibilities too. But in that case, the incompetence is truly outstanding, given the consultation with game theorists and others. If incompetence is the answer, then BMOrg should own up to it : “we fucked up, we don’t know what we’re doing, we didn’t mean to decimate the Burner community, please help”. The Burner community is kind of useful, for example they invented Google.
Instead, in each case, BMOrg’s excuse is “it’s all too hard”. For example: “It’s too hard to grow to 70,000, even though the EA describes exactly how, that’s supposed to be in 5 years, it’s too hard to see what BLM would think if we ask to accelerate it”. “It’s too hard to associate ID’s with tickets, even though much bigger festivals do it all the time”. Etc.
It may not be high level insiders, gaming the system. BMOrg might have been hacked, and not even know it. Without any evidence-gathering capability, all we can do is raise some scenarios and discuss them. We have tried to be even-handed in exploring all possibilities, but unfortunately BMOrg keeps favoring scalpers over the community. Despite their pleas, actions speak louder than words.
We suggest BMOrg have a detailed look through the survey and ticket lottery results, and find out exactly how scalpers did or didn’t get tickets, and how veteran Burners got turned away ; if that’s too much work, Burners.Me would be happy to arrange an analyst to take a look through the data, and review the database cleansing and ticket lottery allocation algorithms.
The mammoth waterfowl is not a nuclear mutation, but a leftover piece of Burning Man artwork that a Reno woman and her family made as a statement about the suffering that birds and other wildlife endured from the 2010 BP oil spill along the Gulf Coast.
The black pelican’s neck and head were made out of faux fur and the underpinning of the sculpture was made of reclaimed rebar welded together, Fink said.
