Anybody want to share, never been myself, but I’m fascinated by it!
Travelled 6000 miles in 2007 on a mission to get there for my birthday. Only decided to go on the monday night. Jumped a plane from London to San Francisco on the Wednesday morning. Picked up the last RV on the west coast Thursday lunchtime. Got properly caught in Bay Area labour weekend exodus traffic and ended up hammering that 29’ beast through the desert night to make the 11.00pm cut off for tickets on the door.
Two lithe, tanned, topless cowgirls in nubuck, suede loin cloths stood me up on a frame. A large tubular bell hung down against my old boy which they struck soundly with a stick so the vibrations rang out and purred against my nethers.
"Welcome to Burning Man " they said…“You’re going to have a great time…”
They were right. I made it through the gate on the stroke of midnight at the start of my birthday and waved goodbye to myself for four days.
This was my birthday present…
Wow… we’re going.
Don’t know when, but stories and photography moments like yours convinced me. I also read a lot of bad stories and that’s the beauty of social experiments; it all depends on you and your attitude.
Anybody else? Hate it or love it?
(And are more people thinking about going?)
There were definitely a few counter-ethos, cliquey, up- themselves camps where the vibe was less than welcoming… but you just dust yourself down and move on.
There are plenty more wild, beautiful, open hearted freaks roaming the playa who just want to help their brethren get down. Just follow your instincts and you will find your people .
You will obviously read your Survival Manual as avidly as your OT manual so you will know that it is HOT and DRY out there. You need to have plenty of water on the RV and a camelbak is a good idea for your daytime explorations. Carry some bicycles with you but make sure they’re cheap and ask someone to keep an eye on them for you when you take a leak…otherwise chances are they will not be there when you come out.
When you do go, another tip is to plan your exit in good time. Even heading out slightly early as we did, it took 3 hours just to get back to the road. Afterwards, you might want to head out to Lake Tahoe and jump in those cool waters to wash the desert out of you and reacclimatise slowly with the outside world.
If you hire an RV make sure you wrap all the upholstery in plastic and be meticulous about cleaning it up before you take it back. They will use any pretext to keep the special Burning Man deposit you have to pay. We spent a day going over it inside with a fine toothcomb (the playa dust gets everywhere) at Lake Tahoe and then swung by a mexican truck wash on the way back to the Oakland drop- off.
Also make sure you clean the black water tank out twice, allowing yourself a drive of some miles in between for the residue to shake itself through. This wasn’t stipulated in the hire manual and, although it was hilarious in hindsight , dumping a gallon of liquid shit on the RV lot on our return (removing the drain cap is the last thing you have to do after parking up and before handing it over ) from an otherwise immaculate truck was just the sort of excuse they needed to hold back some of my deposit…
i went in 2007 also. it was fun to do once. 90% of the music is awful but i expected that… as i have friends who’ve gone numerous times who said “don’t go for the music… go for the art, the people… the experience etc” i’m so glad i had that advice or i would’ve gotten my hopes up for the music.
it’s fun to ride around on the playa on a bike and goof off and meet people and power through some dust storms etc.
i blogged about it on em411 back then… here’s a link to it but i think some of the pics/video links are dead.
http://www.em411.com/show/blog/3768/1
flickr set of pics… some NSFW
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dayjob111/sets/72157601934615882/
video of the giant fireball… propane fueled shot into the air by several compressed air tanks or something like that
Thanks for that ignatius! Your report is a really great read and an eye opener. I also enjoy that everything I read about burning man has equal parts negativity and euphoria, I like that. This adventure goes on my to-do list.
I’ve been to the US last year for the first time and I enjoyed the road and the people so much that if we go to burning man, I must combine it with a roadtrip and that takes time and planning and days off I haven’t got in the near future. Stay off the eurocrack children and see the world!