(some other Evil Pippi)

Thanks to Evil Pippi, who just spared some time out of her busy day to give Burners.Me an interview. We gleaned some new information on the facts behind the Naughty Krug affair:

What do you think about Punishment or Banishment as response to this?

I’m  a Burner from the Cacophony Society Days, and a CS response to this would be to just prank the hell out of you until you got it. Banishment doesn’t work, it becomes a game of “whack-a-mole”, because they just show up at other camps. Burning Man has gone to that extent before, in ’97 or ’98 with the Capitalist Pigs.

I agree with your comments about some of the vitriol, it has hit a nerve in the Burner community, as you would expect, some of the responses are just over the top. What Burners want to see is a modern-day tar and feathering, and I think what’s happening in the social media is exactly that.

My concern is I don’t want to see advertising agencies taking advantage of this, and trying to pull all kinds of PR stunts this year. 

How long was the mess there for, and did they clean it up themselves?

I saw it late on Friday night, maybe about 4am. There were still candles burning, and some food still visible. They served the dinner party with fine china and crystal glasses, all that had been cleaned up by the caterers. No empty Krug bottles were visible anywhere, but I did see some empty Perrier bottles. [Note: Perrier is owned by Nestlé. Krug is part of Louis Vuitton Möet Hennessy (LVMH). However the Vice President at LVMH for Research and Development is named Eric Perrier]

Was this authorized by Burning Man?

No, definitely not. There is no such thing as a medal from Burning Man, that must have been something created by one of the other camps. Action Girl checked the authorized art installations, and theirs was not one of them. There is no placement record with DPW. Also, their art car was only registered by the DMV for night use, and it was clearly used during the day. People didn’t like the way it looked, the truck was too visible, so they weren’t allowed to use it in day time. Also they got a lot of noise complaints for their sound system. Maid Marian ran into Olivier at South By Southwest and called him out on the noise problems, he was very dismissive.

The bombshell was not dropped publicly until now, due to everyone’s preoccupation with the ticket crisis. With Action Girl leaving, I called her up and asked “what about this” and they agreed to let me post, but I was speaking from my own experience, it was not an official message from Burning Man.

Evil Pippi also provided us with some off-the-record commentary which we will not divulge. However Burners.Me will continue to keep bringing you this story, and our opinions about it, as it develops.