Live From Burning Man

Brian Doherty is blogging from Burning Man and the results are up at Wired's web site. From his first dispatch, reporting on the arson of the Man that lit it up way ahead of schedule:

Larry Harvey, Burning Man's co-founder and director, was on a platform in his camp watching the eclipse when he noticed his Man on fire. Once realizing that the fire was under control and no one was apt to be hurt, he says, his immediate reaction was laughter.

The early burn, he said, will help show that the Man itself is "nothing but a wooden doll," and that the event is really about the joint effort of attendees to create it. It will turn this year's Burning Man into a "narrative of community and redemption" as the attendees get to see or assist in the public rebuilding of the statue, he said.

More posts will be up here. Doherty diavlogging about Radicals for Capitalism here.

Comments

[ed]

I'm commenting more out of pity than interest.
That is all.

[Marcvs]

I know "we" are all supposed to see a great libertarian movement in Burning Man, but I know people that go there and they are just middle-class "hippies" with too much time and way too much self-importance.

And I hate me some goddam hippies.

[Warren]

I'm a middle-class hippie with way too much self-importance. I'm not at Burning Man because I don't have the time. I'll tell you this though. A libertarian hippie is very very lonely.

[Johnny D.]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees pretty much nothing of value in Burning Man.

[NoStar]

Brian Doherty will follow Radicals for Capitalism with a book chronicling the spread of STD's during the Summer of Love called This Is Burning, Man!.

[plain clothes]

The fire fighters should have added soap to thoses hoses and washed those dirty hippies down

[Rhywun]

Yeah, Burning Man is most definitely not for me, but hey, whatever floats your boat. The ubiquitous Burning Man threads around this time of year are easy to skip 🙂

[David]

I'm sorry, but whenever I see the words "Burning Man", all I can think of is the movie scene depicted at this Web page:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38141000/jpg/_38141273_wickerman315.jpg

[V]

OMG!!! so far I have read a bunch of garbage from a bunch of folks with nothing on their minds, and nothing to say.

Burning Man is a happening, just that. People come together in a place where people have no business being together, a place that is hostile to them, but they make the best of it, cooperate with eachother, supply eachother with support, thoughtfulness, and then they all have fun in the process. If you have never been, you have no room to talk about it. So, all that hot air up there, so far, speaks volumes of you empty people thinking nothing about something. I think your boss is looking over your shoulders, so, back to the grindstone and back to your nothing existences. Burning Man is probably more fun without you all...

[ed]

Well I guess you told me.

[Scooby]

If there's one thing I hate more than dirty hippies, it's waterheads that go on and on about how much they hate dirty hippies. They stink worse than patchouli-covered b.o.

[Xaaba Zu]

Yeah, what 'V' said! People who work for a living really suck, and stuff!

[Wise Ass]

This Is Boring, Man.

[Z]

Where do you get the idea that people who go to Burning Man don't work for a living?

And if you're not interested in Burning Man, I have a bit of advice for you: ignore it. Everyone will be happier if you do, you most especially.

As for the content of the ACTUAL POST here, I think that's great. I've heard both good and bad things about Larry Harvey; this is one of the good ones. 🙂

[Mike Laursen]

It will turn this year's Burning Man into a "narrative of community and redemption" as the attendees get to see or assist in the public rebuilding of the statue, he said.

That good vibe is a little spoiled by Addis' arrest. I thought part of the spirit of Burning Man is taking a vacation from authority.

[Xaaba Zu]

Hey, Z-man, I was agreeing with W, don't go putting your bad vibes on me.

[Marcvs]

If you have never been, you have no room to talk about it.

If you've never been to war, you have no room to talk about the war in Iraq.

Not fair? No shit.

[P23]

People who haven't been to Burning Man have no clue what they are talking about. Go. Check it out. Then decide.

[Postmodern Sleaze]

"Where do you get the idea that people who go to Burning Man don't work for a living?"

No shit... as a friend who is a burner (and a forensic accountant) once told me, "Burning Man is NOT a poor man's vacation. Between tickets, upkeep and installations, it's very expensive."

Burning Man was started by a bunch of Silicon Valley/Bay Area types, after all, and those are still the sort who flock there. Those sorts are known for many things, but being poor and not working aren't among them, given the housing costs in that part of the country...

[Larnie Fox]

I stopped going to Burning Man after they stopped allowing guns and put up a fence. I have my own problems with it. However ~ it still is the biggest and maybe best art festival in the world. The music and theatre is good too. Huge specatcles. The people that are into it are really into it ~ not as watchers but as doers. That is radical for this TV and megachurch culture. If you're bored by Burning Man, then you bore too easily. What's not boring? NFL? Video Games? Reality TV? Let's open our minds a bit here, my people.

BTW ~ they're more punk and yuppie than hippy.

[Jack]

You Dork, you burned down the Burning man, What a dumb thing to do.
Of course he was built to be set on fire, but not set on fire by you.

You've stolen the thunder from ten thousand people and they know who you are,
and you can't pay them back with your time or your cash no matter how rich you are.

My advice to you would be Run and Hide and do it as long as you live,
cause you cheated all of the Burning Man folks and I doubt they all will forgive.

[Mike Harris]

Lighten up negative folks out there. Open your minds. All the war hype and neocon propaganda seems to be warping a generation of young Americans. America is about freedom and self expression not watching "Survivor" slurping up Clear Net and believing what your present administration tells you. Its about love and creativity man.

[Peabody]

I agree with Larnie. BM was libertarian to the core and I went for years, but it turned, very quickly, into a terrible example of what happens when you equate power with rule-making and 'best interests'. What was once a true oasis of self expression and freedom, had turned into a (rather fabulously bedazzled) police state with over-eager volunteers going berserk on bull-horns if you're seen peeing or ashing a cigarette anywhere in the endless desert dust and 'rangers' chasing down anyone possessing a feather on their person (seriously, apparently they don't think there are enough birds over Black Rock to consider a feather to be actual organic matter). Forget about the community laws, I feel most sorry for the poor deluded fools who think that they are some how safe from actual state and federal laws while they are there! In a real city of 30,000 people you have the Sheriff, State Police, and maybe some local cops... In the mobile Black Rock City of BurningMan, you have every agency ever known to man, and some you've never heard of, creating what is probably the highest ratio of police-to-citizen interactivity of any place they will ever visit on earth! The craziest thing is that all this government presence is probably welcomed by organizers (and an answered prayer from some participants) as there are more genuine accidents and injuries than a half-baked volunteer force could possibly handle (I have seen plane crashes, collapsed water slides with fiberglass splinters entering the foot up to the knee, a slip-and-fall death in our own camp, a woman getting run over by a car, a guy faint and have a seizure while carrying what looked like a 3 year old on his shoulders, etc etc etc etc etc).