Kiwi Suspicious Death at Burning Man

Fatalities have become a regular thing at Burning Man; so far this year there have been two (possibly three with a motorcyclist from Reno killed on the roads outside the event), as well as a plane crash which left 3 people injured (1 seriously).

Sheriff’s deputies arrived at the Medical tent to find Shane “Wingman” Billingham, a 33-year old Burner from New Zealand, dead of carbon monoxide poisoning. He was found unresponsive in his vehicle at his camp Beats Boutique. Police are treating the death as suspicious.

From Stuff.co.nz:

Shane Billingham was found dead in a vehicle at the festival, held annually in Nevada, United States, at 6.30pm on Thursday (US time).

The death 33-year-old, from Great Barrier Island, has been deemed suspicious by investigating US authorities.  

The Washoe County Medical Examiner’s Office said a post-mortem found Billingham has “a concentration of carbon monoxide in his blood which would be considered poisonous to human life. Preliminary toxicology showed the presence of controlled substances to be an exacerbating factor”…

A friend of Billingham’s told Stuff the Kiwi was a “great guy” who travelled a lot and dabbled in lots of things, but loved music.
“[He was] just a joy to be around … He was very creative, loved playing and being involved in all types of music.”

A fundraiser started by Billingham’s sister to bring his body home has raised $13,795 from 186 people in 9 hours.

Great Barrier Island is the sixth-largest island in New Zealand, about 100 kilometers from Auckland. Its population is 939.

Wingman was an experienced Burner, having attended in 2014 and 2017:

Wingman at Burning Man in 2017. Source: Facebook

The Reno Gazette-Journal has an update with further details:

A spokesperson for the Burning Man organization said Billingham was discovered unresponsive in his vehicle at his camp, Beats Boutique, at about 6:30 p.m. Thursday. Bystanders immediately began CPR and emergency responders arrived shortly after. Billingham was then transferred to Burning Man’s onsite emergency care center where he was declared dead by an on-duty emergency physician shortly after. 

Steve MacWithey, lead of Beats Boutique camp where Billingham was staying, said Billingham was one of his best friends.

“He was one of the best people I’ve ever known,” MacWithey said, burying his face in his palms as he wept…MacWithey described his friend as a hard worker, a lover of sustainable farming and someone who could always be counted on. Billingham was tall, blonde, handsome and bore a resemblance to Kid Rock, he said.

Makeshift memorial for Shane Billingham at Beats Boutique. Source: Jenny Kane/RGJ

Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen issued a statement about the investigation into the death.

From Radio New Zealand:

Police were investigating the death as “suspicious,” Pershing County Sheriff’s Jerry Allen said in a statement.

“Preliminary toxicology showed the presence of controlled substances to be an exacerbating factor,” he said.

“Quantitative analysis of the toxicology will not be available for a few weeks.”

He said Pershing County Deputies responded to a report of a death at the festival on 29 August (local time).

“The male subject had already been transported to the Rampart medical tent, within the confined area of the festival,” Mr Allen said.

“Coroners were advised by doctors on site they had already declared the male subject deceased. The scene was secured to be investigated and a deputy coroner transported the decedent to the Washoe County Medical Examiner’s Office for autopsy.”

An unconfirmed report suggests that he fell asleep in his car with the air conditioner running, too close to exhaust from a generator.

Source: Facebook

Rest in peace, Wingman. Kua hinga te tōtara i Te Waonui-a-Tāne.


Image: Facebook

BURNILEAKS: 2018 Bureau of Land Management Cost Recovery

Thanks to our source for obtaining this paperwork. Once again, the details of ticket sales are completely redacted. Why is this considered a State Secret?

BLM are expecting their 2018 costs to increase by half a million. BMorg want to know why.

Both the 2017 and 2018 events were oversold by several thousand tickets.

Charts and Tables


Pershing County generates 7,300 cubic yards of waste in a year. Burning Man generates more than that every day.

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BMorg Finally Wakes Up To Culture Disaster: Is It Too Late?

Image: Business Insider, 2015

Ticket prices have gone up to $1400.

To distract us from that, there’s a huge blog post by Burning Man’s CEO Marian Goodell Cultural Course Correcting saying that after listening to several thousand people’s responses to a survey, they’ve learned that some Burners have concerns that Principles like “Radical Self Reliance” seem to be getting left by the wayside as the event catapults to celebrity superstardom.

As CEO of the nonprofit Burning Man Project, I do a lot of listening. People enthusiastically share their Burning Man experiences, ideas, and concerns with me. Lately, participants have been talking about some alarming changes in the culture of Burning Man in Black Rock City, and their speculation as to who and what is causing them…

After Black Rock City 2018, our Communications Team compiled examples of commodification and exploitation of Black Rock City and Burning Man culture. The report is 55 pages long. We’ve been observing some troubling trends for a few years, but this report stunned me.  

We have been sounding the culture alarm here for 7 years now, and so have many other Burners. Finally that message has filtered its way through the self-absorbed BMorg holocracy to the people at the top.

The solution? Keep VIP tickets, but increase their price even further, to $1400. Reduce the number of low-income tickets. Only offer 23,000 tickets (less than 1 in 3) to the general public, while beefing up the Directed Group Sale World’s Biggest Guest List to more than half the total tickets.

Here’s the 2019 ticket distribution.

Even with the price increase and all taxes and fees, it doesn’t get up to last year’s event revenue. Seems to be millions of dollars of stuff that’s not ice or coffee being sold out there, either that or thousands more tickets.

Note that every number is “approximately” and they have now admitted they oversell the festival by perhaps 7,000 tickets a year. So how “approximate” the limitation of 4000 VIP tickets is may never be known: seriously, the government is redacting that information in response to FOIA requests. How many VIP tickets Burning Man sells is a state secret…ponder that.

The camp “Humano” was named and shamed as having too much money and too many women who were both good looking and bored looking at the same time. Tickets to their hotel rooms were going for up to $100,000, and allegedly came with entertainment.

They had the classic “fortress camp” layout, that would have stood out like a sore thumb at Burning Man 1998.

Read the full story at Mashable

A lengthy Reddit thread devoted to Humano features various camp neighbors accusing them of “ruining multiple blocks” with MOOP and leaving trailers in areas zoned for other camps. There are also allegations that Humano’s packages were priced to include the companionship of multiple female models

Mashable was also shown unmet requests for refunds from Humano attendees who paid upwards of $130,000 for a stay in a luxury RV and didn’t get what they bargained for. 

And all this may be just the tip of the iceberg of bad camps. “There are a dozen other camps that have been sent warnings,” Goodell wrote. 


[Source: Mashable]

Burning Man Board members Jim Tananbaum and Chip Conley have previously attracted scrutiny and criticism for their opulent, exclusive, multi-million dollar luxury camps.

See this inside look at a Fancy Camp from 2015.

The #HumanoTheTribe Instagram hashtag sure has some purdy ladies. Maybe banning them is not such a smart idea. If these Instagram models are using Burning Man to promote a product, it’s hard to tell what that is because they’re not wearing very much of anything. I can’t see any brand names. I say comp them all VIP tickets. These pictures explain why Burning Man tickets are worth $1400 more than Marian’s blog post did.