White Dragon Noodle Bar Brings Blade Runner to I, Robot

A guest post from Burner Cedric. Check out their fundraiser in San Francisco on Friday, August 17: https://www.facebook.com/events/237054556942919/

The White Dragon Noodle Bar, led by a group of Burners from San Francisco, is coming to the playa for the first time in 2018 as part of the Golden Guy Alley camp at 7:15 & Bender.
We are addressing this year’s theme of “I, Robot” by constructing and replicating the White Dragon Noodle Bar from the iconic 1982 movie Blade Runner, in which Harrison Ford’s replicant-chasing cop character enjoys a bowl of noodles for far too short a time before being removed from the scene. We are excited to be honoring the vision and legacy of Larry Harvey and hope that our neighborhood noodle bar, from which we will gift noodle soup and sake, will become a place for community gathering and storytelling.
The vision for this originated when three of the bar founders in 2017, as part of the Hotel California camp, ended up having a drink at one of the original Golden Guy bars, The Pickle and Eggs (a Scotch whiskey bar). After a drink or two, the inspiration came to create an Asian noodle bar, and these formerly non-handy friends ended up with another founding co-collaborator and, in a radically self-reliant way, a lot of paint and sawdust on their hands. The result, we hope, is a pretty damn accurate representation of Blade Runner’s White Dragon bar that will be memorable for all who make their way there or end up there unexpectedly.
Of course, an undertaking like this takes more than just a village of helping hands and some blood, sweat, and tears (of which lots have been shed!). The cost of build materials and transportation has taken us over budget and we are looking for additional donations to help cover expenses. We fully expect to take this project to future Burning Man festivals as well as local burns so that we can spread this gift to more people and more broadly!
We’re grateful for this community and we look forward to interacting with everyone who’s excited about what we’re bringing to life!
Our fundraiser in San Francisco on Friday, August 17: https://www.facebook.com/events/237054556942919/

 

 

RIP Larry Harvey 1948-2018

Larry Harvey passed away after a stroke on 4/28/2018.

Screenshot 2018-05-01 16.23.32

His good friend John Perry Barlow, born in the same year as him (1948), died earlier this year on the 22nd anniversary of his Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace.

According to the official account, Burning Man is in its 33rd year this year.

Rather than a eulogy, we’ve made a tribute to Larry – in his own words.

It’s an amazing thing that he and his collaborators created, that’s for sure. What will happen to the philosophy of Burning Man now, without its Chief Philosopher? Perhaps it will live on through the Ten Principles, but there was a philosophy of Burning Man long before those came out.

We support A Balanced Perspective’s suggestion that The Man this year wear a cowboy hat atop his robot head, in honor of his Creator.

Here’s some of the worldwide media coverage of Larry’s passing:

My Brother Larry: A Photo Essay by Stewart Harvey

Official Burning Man obituary by Stuart Mangrum

Reno Gazette-Journal

NPR

Variety

Hollywood Reporter

New York Times

Washington Post

Fortune

CNBC

CNN

Boing Boing

CNet

WIRED

Tech Crunch

The Guardian

The Independent

The Cut

 

 

 

 

 

 

Burners Building Crypto-Utopia in Puerto Rico

Brock Pierce is perhaps the most famous person in the world of cryptocurrency. He got married at Burning Man, and has much more time for Burners than civilians. He and his friends are living in a Monastery and building a permanent city in Puerto Rico called Sol: a Phoenix rising from the devastation of Hurricane Maria.

See the whole interview with Brock and Tai Lopez here.

The New York Times picked up this story:

SAN JUAN, P.R. — They call what they are building Puertopia. But then someone told them, apparently in all seriousness, that it translates to “eternal boy playground” in Latin. So they are changing the name: They will call it Sol.

Dozens of entrepreneurs, made newly wealthy by blockchain and cryptocurrencies, are heading en masse to Puerto Rico this winter. They are selling their homes and cars in California and establishing residency on the Caribbean island in hopes of avoiding what they see as onerous state and federal taxes on their growing fortunes, some of which now reach into the billions of dollars.

And these men — because they are almost exclusively men — have a plan for what to do with the wealth: They want to build a crypto utopia, a new city where the money is virtual and the contracts are all public, to show the rest of the world what a crypto future could look like. Blockchain, a digital ledger that forms the basis of virtual currencies, has the potential to reinvent society — and the Puertopians want to prove it.

For more than a year, the entrepreneurs had been searching for the best location. After Hurricane Maria decimated Puerto Rico’s infrastructure in September and the price of cryptocurrencies began to soar, they saw an opportunity and felt a sense of urgency.

So this crypto community flocked here to create its paradise. Now the investors are spending their days hunting for property where they could have their own airports and docks. They are taking over hotels and a museum in the capital’s historic section, called Old San Juan. They say they are close to getting the local government to allow them to have the first cryptocurrency bank.

Read the rest at the New York Times.

This sounds like a great use of Burner power.

Why devote a year’s worth of energy to building something that is destroyed in minutes? I mean, don’t get me wrong, that can be fun the first few times you do it. Is that all there is though, the pinnacle of Self-Expression is destruction? What about other values, Civic Responsibility, Communal Effort, Immediacy? We can take all the creative and artistic talent, brainpower, networks, and newly minted crypto capital of the Burner community and use that to do permanent good, helping others in need. Gifting things that make a lasting impact to many.

BMorg might tell you “but that’s what we do, Burners Without Borders”! Unfortunately the most recent financial data we have says that they spent less than $8000 on these projects in 2015 and 2016, years in which they took in more than $80 million.

At this point the chances of Decommodification, Inc and their ever-expanding year-round crew saving the world are pretty slim. They would have to become something they quite clearly are not. Look at Flysalen, 2 years to figure out a vision for that, hundreds of people plotting world domination in the hot tub at Esalen…still nothing.  Burners, on the other hand? We know how to get shit done. We can make the world a better place. Many of us already are, like SHELTERCOIN. Puerto Rico needs our help, there are many other disaster-devastated destinations. Why destroy stuff when you can rebuild homes and restore communities?

Or, we can just do the same hedonistic debauched thing every year in the same way, the only thing changing is ticket prices going up and lines getting longer while the quality of the crowd goes down. Eat, sleep, Burn, repeat, forever and ever and ever…