Log into the Burning Man site today, if you’re still chasing a ticket. The last 1000 extra tickets are being flogged off by BMOrg on Friday August 3, but to have a chance to buy them on Friday, you need to get in the queue today. You can only buy 1, and it will be linked to your name and ID at Will Call. Remember when they couldn’t do that?

You must sign up beforehand to have access to the limited sale, and you can ONLY sign up during a twelve hour window on August 1 from 10am to 10pm PST — that’s TOMORROW [Today – Ed.]– so, get ready! These tickets are non-transferrable, Will Call only, and yes, they will go FAST. More information and sign up on our tickets page.

Why do it this way? Because BMOrg just can’t bring themselves to sell tickets by phone and their web site, like every other event on earth. Why merely have one simple ticket sale, when instead you can have a strange queueing system on one day, followed by a mysterious ticket allocation system on another? Presumably there is some type of logic, benefit, or reason behind this system design, including the flip-flop of policy to now welcome ID-linked tickets: however that is Top Secret BMOrg stuff and not to be shared with the likes of us Burners. All we get told is “it’s a simple issue of capacity”. Yeah, right. No-one in Silicon Valley knows how to design an e-commerce web site that can process 1000 transactions in a day.

BTW STEP tickets are still going out too, and will be until August 7. Apparently everyone on STEP is going to get a ticket, and according to BMOrg only 1% of tickets (ie 600) have been sold on the secondary market – simply amazing for such a sold out event, that so many Burners who won a highly prized ticket in the lottery didn’t actually want to go to Burning Man, and didn’t want to make $1000+  selling their tickets: instead, they wanted to launder recycle their tickets at their expense.

Of course, just because an official of BMOrg says something, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth – or even something vaguely resembling the truth. Make up your own mind if you find their “everything’s roses and STEP worked out great” fantasy scenario more believable than our skeptical, “where there’s smoke there’s fire” opinions.

Today is also your last day for a chance to win a ticket with the Fish Tank, so get your best fish face on or vote for your favorite now.

photo of Fish Tank in 2010 Dust Storm by Peter Ruprecht