First we had Game of Thrones opening their fifth season with an episode named “Burning Man”. Now this…
I can’t wait for the new Mad Max movie, which critics have said is like Burning Man gone wrong.
[Update 4/14/15 5:38pm]
The name of the Game of Thrones episode was “The Wars to Come”. The misinformation came from Forbes, usually a fairly trustworthy source.
Noisey, Vice’s music division, has an amusing look at the different subcultures attached to various festivals. Of course “it’s not a fucking festival” Burning Man gets a mention:
You’re having a mid-life crisis, so you decide to leave the materialistic life you lead as a computer programmer behind and split a thousand dollar trailer (with wifi and air conditioning) with some people who will forever be referred to as your “Burning Man Friends.” You buy a vintage top hat and goggles for the affair, you’ve built a sweet art car for cruising the Playa, and you have a friend named Rainbow who is bringing acid from Mexico. Even though you own a Canon EOS Rebel camera, you use a disposable camera to capture the grittiness that IS Burning Man, and you and your fellow Burners use them as #tbts every Thursday for an entire year.
Burners be like “yeah right, acid doesn’t come from Mexico!”
Some other highlights:
Your dumb friend bought tickets to weekend one instead of weekend two AND RUINED EVERYTHING, so you’ve spent months trying to make the swap. You’re LITERALLY starving yourself to fit into the Free People romper you bought specifically for this occasion—or you’ve spent months doing dumbell bicep curls, barbell bicep curls, hammer bicep curls, and cable bicep curls to fill out that neon Urban tank (SUN’S OUT GUNS OUT, BABY!)—and tell everyone how stoked you are to finally see alt-J. None of your friends knows who alt-J is, and you feel really hip. Hip like a hipster!
Your older brother who works for Google hooked you up with some free tix, and you still think flower crowns are a thing. You haven’t caught on to the fact that San Francisco summers are cold as fuck, so you freeze your ass off in a crochet dress you bought from the H&M Loves Coachella collection. You still think Chromeo is an indie band, and “know a guy” who buried vodka and drugs behind a bush somewhere in Golden Gate Park. You’re also a foodie!
You rode on a branded sailboat to the festival while watching Mikal Cronin perform on the boat for a commercial. You love MGMT, and you Instagram the ferris wheel at the festival using the hashtag #NotCoachella. Your molly kicked in at 6 PM while you were dancing in the “silent disco tent” (that exists because it’s zany) with your fellow tech bros.
You become sexually aggressive when you hear Steve Aoki, and the tape over your nipples is falling off because you sweat more than the average person. Your kandi is majestic. Unfortunately, you peaked on the party bus on the way there.
You are a rapper and you want people to listen to your mixtape, you are a band that thought of a really quirky viral stunt that you can’t wait to pull on Sixth Street, you are a music publicist whose schedule is SO INSANE this week, you are a music writer who is SO OVER South By, you are a brand manager for a deeply uncool household product who heard that SXSW is hip, you are a student at UT who gets how it all works, you are big in the garage rock scene and can remember when this festival was cool, you are Rachel Ray, you are an influencer, you are an #influencer, you are Trae the Truth, you have an app, you are standing in line for Fader Fort, you are certain that you are more important than the other people here, you are a street style blogger, you are a street style icon, you have a college radio show, you are a mid-tier marketing executive at Vevo, you’re an Austin resident just hoping to get out and catch some live music, you are sick of it all and ironically going to PF Chang’s, you just happen to be in town and are unironically going to PF Chang’s, you are someone who’s been coming for years because you love discovering great bands, you are a cultural ambassador for a Scandinavian country, you have a quirky interview show on YouTube, you just lurrrrve breakfast tacos, you can’t believe how cheap beer is here compared to New York, you are hoping to build, you work in social media, you are Wiz Khalifa.
See the full list at Noisey.
Recently, pick-me-up powerhouse Starbucks made the news when CEO Howard Schultz announced that the company had been inspired by Burning Man to make the world a better place. Instead of just serving you a coffee and accepting a tip, their Baristas would engage their customers in a conversation about race. There would be no more “black coffee” or “white chocolate”, just “coffee” and “chocolate”.
#burntogether – or don’t burn at all
Now, it seems, BMOrg have seen the possibility to do something similar to address the other big social issue of our times: Radical Inclusion in Indiana.
“The only thing we sell at Burning Man is coffee”, said Chief Philosophy Officer Larry H. “That makes Burning Man the world’s biggest Starbucks. However, as the city with the smallest percentage of African American citizens in the United States, the conversation about race doesn’t feel like the best one for us to participate in. We looked at the percentages and asked, what are we the biggest city in America in? The answer was obvious: Black Rock City is by far the gayest city in the world”.
This is supported by Burning Man’s official census numbers, which put 16% of citizens as gay, a mere 17% identifying as heterosexual, and the rest in the category of “possibly, depends what drugs I’m on”.
The issue of gay rights has been historically on-mission for the newly minted charity, which recently moved its headquarters from San Francisco’s Tenderloin to the Castro District.
“Ever since Larry Harvey erected his first man in the desert while wearing a cowboy hat, Burning Man has been a flamboyant beacon for freedom in the LGBT world”, said Burning Man’s CEO Marian G. “Our values of Radical Self-Expression and Radical Inclusion are the perfect antidote to the intolerance of the people of Indiana. We welcome all members of the Village People, we have plenty of policemen and firemen with big hoses, feather head-dresses, feather boas, drag queens, and prominent politicians.”
Larry after the first public erection in the desert
Grover got his freak on, wearing a classic Soviet Military Uniform with pink tie and lipstick
This year, LGBT issues will be front and center for all 70,000 Burners arriving in Black Rock City.
“For many years, our dedicated and hardworking gate staff have had to endure discrimination and suffering, by hurtful meanies calling them Gayte, as if that was funny”, said Minister of Propaganda Willy C. “Well, in classic Burning Man style, we have come up with something incredibly brilliant and, not that we would say so ourselves, visionary and world-changing. We’re going to put the Gay back in Gayte!”
Previously, first time visitors to Black Rock City, known as “virgins”, had to exit their vehicle, ring a bell, give a dusty hug to a crusty Burner who may or may not be naked, and then make dust angels. This year’s politically rebellious twist will ensure that all Gayte encounters are same sex-only. Want a hug from that naked dude with his shrivelled dick hanging out? Well, you’d better be a guy. Are you a glamorous sparkle pony in hotpants and pasties? Then Burning Man has a heavily tattooed bull dyke with your name on her pierced lips.
In keeping with the spirit of the protest, all dust angels must now be made face down. Even if you’re Denis Kucinich.
This type of hetero-normative behavior will no longer be tolerated at Burning Man
“Camp Only” rules will now be strictly enforced at Center Camp, so if you’re not camp enough, you won’t be served.
Taking inspiration from a previous successful art installation “Trojan Horse”, this year will see a 100 foot high double-penis condom installation named “Trojan Whores”. This will provide gay inspiration to all Burners, wherever in the carnival they find themselves, as well as educating children about safe sex.
Burning Man Project Director Jimmy T said “this year in solidarity with our beloved gay brothers in Indiana, we are going to change the nature of our camp to Plug Me-n-Play. Our Misters of Merriment will be scooped up into cages at the Folsom Street Fair and trained by our slavemasters to meet all the needs of our guests. For only $17,000 $ $20,000 per room, you can felch a tranny every day for breakfast”.
Larry sees a bright future in exporting Burner values to socially engineer troubled communities:
“The success we expect to have soon when we release this new development, which we have thought of ourselves after inviting the community to share ideas, will enable us to bring about world peace in anti-gay hotspots like Russia and the Middle East”
Brave Burners in San Francisco practicing for the Free Pussy Riot mission to Moscow
