Tag Archives: europe

Jan 22 2013

Burning Man for World Leaders

solar cartWe know that the Burning Man founders have been spending time in the corridors of power, and the party’s iconography is being incorporated in political advertising campaigns backed by the Koch brothers… but one has to wonder at this latest news: could we get any more mainstream? The Davos World Economic Forum, populated by many members of the secretive Bilderberg Group, has now been described as “Burning Man for Billionaire Bilderbergers” by respected alternative media site, Veterans Today:

What happens in Davos stays in Davos!

Davos is like Congress, the Factory, Scientology, the Mormon Tabernacle, the Bohemian Grove, the “best dinner party in the world,” the financial system, Facebook, Burning Man, boot camp, high school…. Davos is an onion, a layer cake, a Russian doll. Participants are NEVER out of the loop. They are the loop.

Best dinner party in the world? Better than Burning Man’s own Krug extravaganza, as covered in Town and Country magazine?

Layer Cake? That makes me think of Sienna Miller in sexy lingerie…

…but, let’s not make the argument right now about the timeless and invincible power of the pussy, vs the external power of an elite cabal of bankster oligarchs. Back to Davos and the Bilderbergers:

klaus schwabForty-two years ago, a German academic named Klaus Schwab founded this cabal. Now, at seventy-five, he continues to nurture it, with dogged sincerity. Is he the most connected man on the planet?

Around the Congress Hall, they say no one walks faster than Klaus. The only question is… where does Klaus go for his marching orders? And that’s the big secret of Davos.

Some say there is another unseen level of leadership. Some say it’s the Bilderberg group. Whatever it is, it’s providing direction through influence to the worlds movers and shakers providing them a Burning Man-esque cultish experience to enjoy each and every year; a carnival to celebrate and perpetuate the global monetary economic system.

Cult? As in, Cargo Cult? No, not us! A carnival, of sorts…

burn wall streetWe copped some flak last year when after Burning Man, we expressed the opinion that Burn Wall Street sucked, and “irony” was not a sufficient reason to have giant Bank of America logos on the Playa. As the flak from some Burners was counterbalanced from inside knowledge and tips from others, we heard that someone on the board of Directors of JP Morgan Chase had invested $100,000 in the Wall Street Project…presumably to remove JP Morgan while dissing the Chase. One wonders if said director is now present at said Davos Forum.

We’ve also heard rumors that David de Rothschild is a regular at First Camp. Certainly, there are many of the world’s billionaires who’ve been to Burning Man, including the Google Guys and ones you’ve probably never heard of. But now, Davos…and the Bilderbergers? Modelling themselves on Burning Man? Puh-leeeeeeezzze. What is it again that we’re all rebelling against out there in the desert? What are these economic elitists going to gift to the 7 billion people of the world?

In many ways, though, the closed door policy setting of BMOrg, their assumption that everything they do is for our own bloody good, and their weak attempts at community reach-around out, do have many things in common with Davos. Vox populi, anyone?

 

Jan 7 2013

London BRC: Alan McCann’s Brain is Showing

London BRC is an ambitious project that aims to bring London’s most iconic structures to the playa in a symbolic representation of the human brain. When I first heard about it I thought it might be a little too ambitous to be realistic, but I dug around a bit and discovered that the project does enjoy support and participation from some known top players in the burner industrial arts scene in Reno and elsewhere. . . people who can and will, if anyone can.

I met with Alan McCann in Reno over coffee to talk about his vision and how he plans on bringing it into the world. Elizabeth Levine joined us via video conferencing.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: How did you get involved in Burning Man, Alan?

ALAN McCANN: My history with Burning Man is a brief story indeed.

Some friends of mine who I work with in the music industry have been going to Burning Man for nine, maybe ten years. I tour as a live sound engineer with bands, and I’ve been doing that for the last twenty years. When that time of the year rolled ’round, my friend Dave was always breaking away from the tour to go to Burning Man, then rejoining the tour. . . and I couldn’t imagine what he was doing, or what it was about Burning Man, because we spent our lives at festivals.

WTP: How could it be better than the tour, right?

AM: The thought of going to a festival for recreational purposes when we spent our entire working lives at festivals was unusual to me, to say the least.

Early in 2012, I had quite a severe illness in my legs. I went to Australia and got bitten by a spider. Apparently, the bacteria on the spider’s fangs went straight to my legs; I couldn’t walk for a month. I was on my back the whole time, in the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. When I came out of that, I just felt very low, very down.

The rest of the year went by and Burning Man time was coming again, and I told Dave “hey, I don’t really feel like being in England right now, is there anything for me to do here? Do you want me to babysit your house while you’re in the desert?” and Dave said “sure, come on over.”

When I showed up there was a tent, a sleeping bag, a bike, and a ticket waiting for me. Not what I was expecting at all.

WTP: What could you do? You were surrounded. That’s a good friend!

AM: Absolutely!

Obviously I had no idea what to expect, at all. They set up camp, and basically just told me “there’s your bike, we recommend you just take yourself out and see what you see.”

That first day I was out for something like twelve hours, just wandering around, looking at the art pieces. . . and interestingly enough, but I had been told “when you go, you’re not going to believe how different it is from any other festival you’ve been to, because people are going to hug you and talk to you and you’ll meet so many people.”  I didn’t speak to a soul. Absolutely nobody. I was like a ghost on my bicycle riding through it all. . . and I really liked it; it was great.

My friends went off and did the things they usually do, and after three or four days of being quite taken aback by all the artwork I was seeing in this sort of Mad Max world I’d been thrust into, I got off my bike one day and sat on the playa, and suddenly realized that all the stuff that I didn’t want to go back to in the UK was still going to be waiting for me when I went back, even though I was in this escapist world where you could filter out all your real problems. All these issues just came flooding back into my head and threatened to put a huge downer on the rest of the week.

WTP: You suddenly realized that you hadn’t escaped, you’d just gone on vacation.

AM: Exactly.

So I was looking at the floor, at the cracked surface of the playa, and as I looked up and saw all the art pieces, everything I’d been told was going through my head, about how it’s all going to burn, it all has to disappear, and everything has to go back to just the blank canvas of the playa, with nothing left there at all. I thought it was really interesting that all these people who put so much passion and energy and creativity into all these art pieces were quite happy to just burn them after a week, and never see them again.

That thought instantly related to all the problems and issues that I was having in my life, and just my past in general, and I suddenly felt as though I was balancing on this big pile of jagged boxes with sharp edges, and each of the boxes was something in my past that didn’t really need to be there. I realized that I was concentrating more on keeping my balance on this shifting pile of troubles and past experiences than I was on what was going on around me. It occurred to me that if these people at Burning Man could put all that effort and passion into something and then just get rid of it, there was no reason I couldn’t do that with all the baggage of my past, good or bad, and just go back to a blank canvas again.

WTP: Like the monks that make the sand mandalas.

human mandala 2011AM: It was a great message for me to receive, this sort of focus on non-attachment to all these issues and concerns in the back of your head. I mean, your past shapes what you are, but you don’t have to keep going back to it and being held back by it.

When I was sixteen, I was very creative and kept busy all the time, drawing, making things, building things, I loved it. . . but I found that as you get into adult life, that part of your brain gets turned off because you have to do adult stuff. I started a film company and started making experimental films and music videos, and then went straight into the music industry, touring. I just never had a chance to do any of that stuff anymore. . . and it was that part of my brain that just sort of exploded out there on the playa, sitting there and contemplating this vast recently-blank canvas that would soon be blank again. It was like I’d taken some incredible drug that hasn’t been invented yet; all these ideas came flooding into my head.

I felt like nobody would take me seriously, though. I mean, this was my first burn, I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about what I was going to be building out there.

We came back to Reno, and one of my friends was telling me about working on some art cars, and he said he would love to build something out there, something a bit heftier. I didn’t expect him to go for it, but I threw my idea out there, and he leaped at it. It was just the House of Commons at first, but within ten minutes we were fleshing it out, and it evolved into the Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, all the rooms started getting thrown in there. We had a meeting with some other friends and pitched the idea to them, and again I was thinking maybe it was a little too big. . . but they all said yes, fantastic, let’s build it.

Since that moment, I’ve done nothing but work on the project.

WTP: What about you, Elizabeth? How did you get involved with Burning Man?

ELIZABETH LEVINE: I’ve actually never been to Burning Man. I am the virgin burner of the group; Alan and I started dating shortly before he went to Burning Man, and he came here after he got back from Reno with all these ideas flowing. Seeing someone who I care so deeply about so profoundly affected by such a singular experience. . . I mean, he was drawing, he was engaged. We had a whiteboard in the living room; there were pages all over the floor. Things were just pouring out of him every day, and he was happy! Not that he was unhappy before, I just think that he had never had that part of him really awake and alive before he went to Burning Man. I figured, if Burning Man can do that to someone with just one experience, I couldn’t not be involved.

WTP: It’s transformative for a lot of people. You’re coming this year, right?

EL: Oh yeah! I have to make sure everything gets done!

AM: Beth is my “admin angel” as we call her.

EL: My background is that I grew up in New Jersey and Santa Barbara, went to college back East to study English Lit, and moved to Texas about ten years ago. I do college recruting on campuses, and work for the Man (the other Man) at an investment bank. I used to do a lot of charity work in Houston for Alzheimer’s, so I have some background in fundraising and in some of the administrative side of running a big project.

My role, pretty much, is to be the ball-buster.

AM: I’ll vouch for that.

WTP: I’ll keep mine covered. . . welcome to the community! Tell me about the project itself.

AM: Three structures, four segments. The House of Parliament will be eighty feet long, forty feet wide, and thirty-two feet high. It’ll have four floors, with one or two rooms on each floor. . . things like a TV media room, joke room, alehouse, cinema, etc., all kinds of different things to experience. Attached to that will be an open-plan version of the House of Commons, with all the pews, the green leather, Speaker’s chair, and unlike the real House of Commons, a balcony all the way ’round on the inside. I really like the idea of the discussions going on and people sitting ’round, hanging on this balcony, legs dangling down, just having a good time and listening in.

tower-bridgeWTP: The peanut gallery.

AM: Yeah. So we plan on having planned debates; a chalkboard outside spelling out what people can talk about today, and open forums with nothing going on where you can strike up any debate you want.

Attached to the House of Parliament will be the Tower Bridge; fifty-two feet long, thirty-two feet high. The Bridge will open at certain points, at specific times of the day, for health and safety reasons.

WTP: Safety third! Not fourth, not fifth.

AM: So that will open up, and we want art cars to drive through it at certain points of the day. When it’s not open, the whole Bridge will be a platform for live performance artists, or anything you want to do. So you can basically walk out from the House of Commons, straight across the Bridge, straight into the Tower of London, which again, is thirty-two feet high, four floors, full of rooms. The very top of that will be an open-plan viewing platform which is 1600 square feet. And up there will be sofas and tables and chairs so you can dance, chill out, relax, whatever.

I’m also toying with the idea of putting a lift in both buildings. Some people have commented on the website that we should have disabled access. I thought “hmm, that would be quite a cool thing to do.” Especially with the viewing platform where you can just go and sit there and watch everything. I’ve already pretty much drawn out how I’m going to do it. . . it should be pretty easy to do; quarter-ton chain hoists with a motor, perhaps, and a wooden cage that goes up. So I’m toying with the idea of a lift.

EL: Has he told you at all about the rest of the team we’ve brought onboard? That’s one of the things that’s been kind of fascinating to me about the project, is that it’s appealing to long-time burners, and also people who’ve never gone to Burning Man. I was telling Alan, I went to a lunch today full of people who’ve never been, and they were getting online, watching videos, checking things out, and getting excited about something that they might not have touched that could then forever change their lives.

It’s really important to us to have people involved who have been there a long time, and then provide a really open environment for newbies to also get involved, so you kind of have that collaboration between the two. Even in our core group we’ve got some long-time burners, and then we’ve got some people who have always wanted to go, always wanted to get involved, but never really found the opening. . . this gives us a really good opportunity to provide that.

WTP: Have you fleshed out your crew yet, or are you still looking for skilled laborers?

EL: I think at the higher levels we’re doing OK; we’ve got three engineers on board, two structural and one electrical; we’ve got a lead carpenter; we’re about to nail down an on-playa build supervisor, and then a project coordinator in Reno, because someone really needs to be there on the ground doing that. We’re working on fleshing out the PR and fundraising side, which is my end, ’cause from what I understand we’ll need quite a few people to do that, and it’s going to be a full-time job. It needs to be out there in the stratosphere, all the time. We’ve got our art department lined up as far as decorating, and I think we’re currently working on some transportation personnel. Obviously, we’re also going to need a large group of volunteers later on.

WTP: How are you doing your fundraising?

EL: Right now we’re working with Please Fund Us (http://www.pleasefund.us) in the UK. We did a very kind of soft, under-the-radar sort of thing with them, just to kind of get our feet wet and test the waters, find out what kind of swag is popular, and so on. This was right before Kickstarter launched their UK site; since Please Fund Us is sort of the underdog, they really work closely with you. They call us, do conference calls, and give us a lot of hands-on helping.

We filed for non-profit status in Nevada in October, and we applied for fiscal sponsorship from Fractured Atlas (http://www.fracturedatlas.org). A couple of other projects have done that in the past and it was recommended to me as a way of falling under their umbrella and getting tax exemptions on our donations. We’re going to apply for our grants hopefully in the second or third week of January, ’cause I’d like to be early with that, and then the plan is to either launch a Kickstarter or an Indiegogo campaign; I’m kind of weighing the two right now. Kickstarter is very Burning Man heavy, but some of the people doing fundraising for some of the larger projects last year told me they feel safer going big on Indiegogo, because it’s not an all-or-nothing platform, and then doing very intense but localized Kickstarter campaigns, because they feel more confident of getting the full funding. Especially with the Reno crowd, because they tend to come into it kind of late in the game.

WTP: Tell me a little more about the artistic concept of what you’re doing. Why these particular buildings? How do they relate to Burning Man, to the world, to your audience?

AM: Initially, I can’t even tell you why it was the London structures at all; it literally just came into my mind. Once I had the basic idea, it just snowballed very easily and progressively and grew into what it is now.

There are more things I’m building into the structure which sort of accentuate this, but if you look at the two buildings and the bridge, they also could represent the left and right hemispheres of the brain, with the Bridge as the corpus callosum between them.

WTP: So London BRC will have a sort of logical, rational, orderly area, and a sort of crazy, artistic, inventive side?

AM: Yes, that is one of the main things I’m exploring with it. The other thing that is worth mentioning is that even though the title that is going out to the world is “London BRC,” the real title for me is “One of Seven.” My plan is to do another six pieces out there, which all go together. You won’t really see what the whole story is, until you experience number seven.

WTP: It seems like the Pier is doing something similar. I’m not privy to their plans or anything, but they seem to be adding something every year and I’m really looking forward to seeing where they go with that. They’re an incredible crew; the ship they did for 2012 was amazing.

pier 2 2012 ship and pierAM: Oh, yeah! Absolutely perfect!

We’ve actually sorted out a lot of the. . . not failure stories, but what went wrong with other projects. We both felt very early on that if we study these problems, we can address them in our own project before they become an issue. We actually went looking for those “what went wrong” stories, and tried to figure out why it went wrong.

WTP: It’s a wise person who learns from the experiences of others.

AM: My basic premise is, when we get there I want to build the whole thing and hardly have Burning Man know we’re there. I want a very small footprint and no drama whatsoever, sand storms aside, obviously. I want it to go up so smoothly that people just look at it and go “when exactly did you build this?”

WTP: This being One of Seven, I assume you’ve got some overarching message or meaning to it that’s going to reveal itself in the fullness of time?

AM: Note that our crew is called “the Enigma Crew.” When you go into the buildings, no matter how long you spend in there, you won’t see everything there is to see in there, because we won’t let you. There are certain things that will be hidden, and we’ll open rooms and show you things as the week goes on. There’ll be something new to find out every day.

WTP: Sort of the subconscious of the Parliament of the mind. Getting to know thyself.

AM: And getting to know the crew behind the build, as well, in a very personal way. That’s going to be an essential part of what’s inside the buildings.

So hopefully, after the final project, people who are interested in Enigma Crew and what we’re doing will start to figure out where it’s going and why it’s going there. If we do get a chance to follow up London BRC with another project, there will always be clues in one project telling you what the next one will be, and looking back at the previous one as well.

WTP: It sounds like you’re externalizing a human mind, in the long term. . . that’s a complicated, wonderful, but also frightening and dangerous place.

AM: When you look at a piece of art, say a painting, you can either have an emotional response to it, where you go “it makes me really happy,” or really sad, or whatever, and you can take that feeling away. . . or you can go to a piece that maybe isn’t that artistically good, but you look at it and go “Wot? What is that all about?”

WTP: Like Duchamp’s urinal.

AM: We’re putting a lot of visual detail into this thing as well, making it look very very interesting. As an art piece and a sculpture it will be visually quite arresting and hold many things to discover.

WTP: But your goal is mainly to make people think, not just to give them eye candy.

AM: Yes!

WTP: Thanks to both of you, and good luck!

Until their US crowdfunding campaign begins, you can donate to the London BRC project at http://www.pleasefund.us/projects/londonbrc-project

May 21 2012

More social media backlash to Krug, Zoo, Fat Radish, BMOrg…and Burners.Me

Our previous updates post was getting kinda long, so we’ll continue the discussion on this one.

The story has made it to SFGate and also the Huffington Post – now part of AOL.

An Italian magazine has picked up the story (I used Google translate to get the gist of it).

At the official Blog, Burner dag Nation has a response to Zoo Camp’s playing of the forgiveness card:

Papillon Says:
May 17th, 2012 at 11:54 am
“A lot of queen dramas over here. A majority of people here reminded Oli about the spirit of BM but forgetting that forgiving is also part of the spirit.”


(checking 10 principles….) nope – nothing about forgiveness there. You must be thinking of another cult.

We all make mistakes, but an apology means nothing if there is no promise of improved behavior. We take actions and intent and other things into account, not just using the right words.

The 10 principles are not the 10 commandments, they are ideals to strive for, and at times are mutually exclusive. If one persons “Radical self expression” materially infringes on another persons experience, there is a problem. Leaving a mess to blow around all night long is flagrantly against the ethic of LNT, so protestations that the MOOPing pooper makes about radical inclusion and self expression are empty when they are ignoring community responsibility and other principles. In my world, if you can’t be responsible, you don’t deserve the freedoms that we create.

Where does that expectation of cart blanch forgiveness fit in our community? It does not, you have to go find another charismatic leader cult for that. You can’t pay Larry for absolution, however you can change your actions and attitude, and improve your relationships that have been damaged by negative, selfish, and short sighted activity.

We radically include the stranger, and invite them into our community and work to avoid any pre-conceived judgments about the people until we actually interact with them. At that point, if someone is trying to take advantage of our open and trusting community, they can hit the road. Radical inclusion does not mean that we let any abuser run a muck in our community, it means we give every one a chance.

We then turn to radical self reliance and protect our precious community from the scourge of commodification by telling these people what is wrong and demanding change. We do give people a chance to grow, but if they refuse to be responsible to this community, then in my opinion, they are no longer welcome.

Zoo camp has demonstrated disregard for our principles, and now is complaining that we are not following our principles while protecting our community. Classic judeo-christian style diverting and blaming, then expecting full forgiveness for saying “I’m sorry, I have Larry in my heart now, I am saved, and you can trust me now”

Actions speak louder than words – while not being an eye witness to any of this, I do think that Zoo camp and associated groups are treating our community like Disney land, and not respecting the community that we have built.

I love the burn, but I love the burners more!

Joshua pointed out the obvious hypocrisy, one rule for BMOrg and one for everyone else:

I agree 100% with everything that was written in this post. But I think BMorg hardly has clean hands here when it comes to Decommodification and Gifting. I mean, at least the Krug people gave their stuff away instead of selling it. You know what I’m referring to, right? Coffee in center camp? Frickin’ coffee. For Sale. In Center Camp. So, you know, remove the beam from your own eye, BMorg.

Also, did you know that for the low, low price of $500, you can have dinner with David Best and the Temple crew? And for $1000, you can have front-row seating to the Temple burn. Talk about the substitution of consumption for participatory experience, yo.

Bob the Burner says this is turning into a huge Pr WIN for Krug!:

I have several friends who work in marketing departments, and the Krug/Silkstone project is being discussed and circulated as an example of a wildly successful stealth campaign with minimal fallout/brand damage: everyone is talking about Krug and linking to their Facebook page! Choice quote in one department: “What did Burning Man do about it? Nothing. That’s why everyone’s going to try something similar, smarter, and stealthier next year–four of our clients want to discuss plans to infiltrate Burning Man 2012.”

Other than this strongly-worded letter, we’re left to wonder what will discourage other companies from doing something similar next year. The Burning Man organization needs to actively enforce the rules and principles it claims are so important rather than giving tacit approval to ignore them in the form of simply denouncing the Krug/Silkstone campaign.

Zoo Camp, its affiliates, and everyone associated with the plug-and-play camps need to be permanently banned from all future Burning Man events. To do less diminishes respect for the rules and principles upon which Burning Man was founded.

And BM founder Chicken John eloquently expounds on the hypocrisy this affair is highlighting:

The BMorg touts these 10 principles and you people buy it. Then people pay their money to come to the event but do something that you all feel is outside of these principles. So you want them to suffer. Sue them. Burn them. Call them names, cost them money. Use your social capitol to hurt them financially.

Why? Do you only want people who think and behave like you to come to this event? Isn’t this just creating another kind of convention? Isn’t being outside of convention the single factor that we all hold in high regard that makes us a family? Do you really want someone to “get it” the way you “get it” and if they don’t they “don’t get it”?

I say that if you pay your money, you can go to BM and leave garbage around, if it pleases you. I say you can get drunk and puke on people’s art. Be a nucisance. Sing pirate songs loudly and out of tune at the temple burn. You can. That is an option. It has to be, because if it’s not an option then the experiment in unrestricted generosity is invalid. You must choose to live in gratitude and service. You must chose to be cool and tolerant. You are all getting angry at these Krug people. You should feel sorry for them, that the expericence that you hold so dearly had eluded them.

But really what I am reading here is that many of you are doing what they did. You are not seeing the bigger picture. You guys are supposed to turn the Krugs into… well, something else. Something else besides people who wanted photos for their product at BM or whatever. This is a great opportunity, and you all are blowing it. You are trying to Control. You should be using Chaos. You want to ban them? What ever for? Breaking the rule? These people are the ones that NEED people like you to pay attention to them. To invite them to parties. To help build stupid shit.

This thread is totally un-inspiring. Shame on most of you for your gossip and your close-minedness. Do you think that our culture and our event can not survive a few mistakes? That we don’t have systems in place to clean up a little garbage or send out a letter pointing out our photography policy? Do you think that being mean and dismissive to people teaches them a lesson, and makes them nice? Is this your first rodeo?

Krug champaine is a brand just like The Do Lab. Bass Nectar. Opulent Temple. Kinetic Steamworks. Extra Action Marching Band. Booty. Whatever Art Car. People who are popular because of BM throw parties and make hundreds of thousands of dollars. Think of the Sea of Dreams New Years eve event. RV rentals. Why can’t Krug use BM to promote their product if Bass Nectar can? BM has dj’s. BM also has booze. Bass Nectar makes probably $10K to DJ in a big club. The cover of his CD is a photo of him spinning at BM. Why can’t the bottle of champagne be a photo from BM? they are both a product. What about all the clothing design stuff? My pal John Serrigardie makes shade structures. He uses photos of his shade structures at BM to sell them. And he turns a nice profit. No one complains about him. Your argument is thin. To me, anyway.

you have to give people the benifit of the doubt. Maybe you know something. Someone else doesn’t know it. Yet. Leave a little room. And remember that the 10 principles are a load of horseshit spouted to you from a man who lived his life in books, not here in the real world. Nowhere in the 10 principles does it say anything about the most important thing in life, which is what BM is about: making magic moments.

Nothing on this thread is making magic moments. So it’s gossip and crap.

Notice your opinion, then know that that opinion is judgement. Know that judgement is an option, you don’t have to do it. Let it go, and do something better with your time.

We can all do better then this. I have every confidence that we will.

We agree with Chicken John’s sentiments. Well said, sir. Not everyone does though. Burner Linus Minimax attempts an answer:

Because of the ratio between what they’ve contributed to BM vs. how much of what they’ve contributed ends up in the promotional pitch. Seems Krug threw one party, which was only experienced as a ‘gift’ by a handful of burners almost as an afterthought, and it’s fair to presume that Krug’s contribution was entirely anticipatory of its later mediated deployment — nothing occured for its own immediacy, whatever Fun was had is stained by the fact that it only existed to be evoked later as hammy hype. Whatever ‘social capital’ that Krug deposited, they withdrew more. They have no Excuses in the Burning Bank.

Conversely, the EAMB (feat. Dr. Hal) contributed what stands out in my memory as the highlight of ’03′s BRC; if DVDs were for sale, I’d buy one first and wonder whether a line had been crossed later. When I heard about the properly-published-and-pricetagged PissClear book, I didn’t smell sellout or SIN. Did anyone??

We don’t agree with this argument, because it makes someone the arbiter of what commercialization is OK and what isn’t (ie. Communism…or even worse, Crony Capitalism). Our position is laissez-faire capitalism: why even have an argument? Burning Man is a petri dish cultural experiment. It’s fuelled by money. Embrace this, don’t prohibit. Prohibition doesn’t work. If you stop denying that it goes on, you can regulate and yes even tax it. Just put the tax back into the event, eg. use it so the coffees are free, or support more than 15% of the art grant applications.

We copped some flak on Facebook! Apparently a blog that describes itself as “Burning Man commentary” shouldn’t have any opinions:

Sean Mag Aoidh:

It is not your place to tell anyone to stop hating. I read what you provided, along with at least 5 other internet postings and hundreds and hundreds of postings by other Burners and my “informed” choice is to “hate” the more I discover. I can make up my own mind as can any Burner thank you. Burners.Me is just an opinionated blog that likes to refer to Burning Man as a “Party.” I feel confident in saying that most of us steeped in Burning Man culture find it to be a lot more than just a party. I have a hard time taking anything they have to say seriously. I prefer the testimonials, eye witness accounts, and evidence brought forward by my fellow Burners as presented in the link I provided. In that sense I only speak for me, and I’d never tell the community how they are supposed to think as you are.

people lining up to spend money

Opinionated? A Burner? Surely not…if it’s not a party, then we’d like to hear everyone’s opinions about what it is. A Temporary Autonomous Zone? We’ve certainly shared the spiritual side and Larry’s ideas that it’s not just a party in the desert in recent posts. In our opinion, it is one helluva party, the best party in the world by miles. An outdoor camping costume party in an inhospitable part of a beautiful desert. Where nothing is provided for you, there are no trash cans… you have to bring it all with you and take it all out with you. It’s the world’s biggest art festival, with giant interactive pieces that they set fire to, and some of the best DJs, and everywhere you go people just give you stuff. Whatever you need, it manifests. Often instantly, usually unexpectedly. The people you meet there and the experiences you have there can change your life. It’s a party as big as a small city, with wi-fi, kids, grandparents, cops, firefighters and ambulances, a hospital. And sure, there are lots of other elements too. But “absolutely no money ever” is not one of them. That’s just a joke. Clearly money exists at Burning Man, always has, always will. If you can’t see that you’re blind. Open your eyes, it IS a party, people are in high spirits and celebrating, it all costs a lot of money, and it’s awesome! Celebrate those amazing patrons who create Giant Robots and 100-foot high oil platforms and then Burn them for our entertainment, not just for themselves. These people are great, and the huge teams who get paid to work for them are great too. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Embrace commerce, make them get a permit and agree to abide by the rules or be fined. Just like a 5-star hotel would. If you don’t want to see it, then send it over to the other side of the Playa. It’s Fertility 2.0, let’s create 2 worlds. A world of love and a world of hate, perhaps? Both co-existing at the same party? Oh wait, it’s not just a party, it’s a…[please comment]

I guess some Burners are hippies. To them it’s about peace and love and kindless, learning and growing together. These  Zoo people should all volunteer for MOOP patrol next year, and all will be forgiven. Laugh, smile, fuck, play, dance, move on. To other Burners, this is a flagrant violation of the rules. It’s about a community, rules are there to be obeyed, and if you don’t obey them, we’re going to be vicious, and spiteful, and call for your banishment and/or harm or death. And we are people with a mob mentality in an unregulated desert environment, we are there by the tens of thousands, and we have flamethrowers. Another group of Burners are ravers, they are there for the bass and the glowing stuff. I suspect the ravers are more on the “do nothing” side, who gives a shit, there’s dancing to be had!

Whatever Sean might think about this: STOP HATING. Even if that is hippy-like behavior. There’s too much hate in the world already, we need more kindness and forgiveness. Move on to a better future, where any dinner parties on the Playa are going to be way cooler than this cheesy headdress one. If you need them to make amends, then move on from the hate and state your demands. According to our poll about 1/4 say move on, just under 1/2 say banishment, and the rest want some form of donation to The Burning Man Project or BRAF.