This site has some of the best Burning Man 2003 content that I’ve found so far…video and photos from 2003 and also past years.
Hmmmm. 20,000 characters or less? Tall order, that.
Firstly, let me say that my favorite pseudonym for a BM ticket was “bookmark of the apocalypse”.
Secondly, I will disagree with two of the above statements regarding convenience and Satan/Hell. More on this below.
Burningman is the Conclave, the annual gathering of the tribes. It’s New Years and Christmas and Thanksgiving all rolled into one, a special and meaningful week of Holy Days for those who have decided to chose their family, values and beliefs rather than just inheriting them.
Burningman is an exercise in the ephemeral. It’s also an exercise in recycling: reserve, reuse, recycle applies to a lot of stuff. Some stuff you get rid of, some stuff you keep.
To the outside conservative Christian Eye, I think burning man looks EXACTLY like Sodom and Gomorrah. Those are not my values, and I don’t really care, but I think that many could say that it is, and from their viewpoint, they would be right.
I enjoyed the openness and friendliness of the few people I met. I know many who have formed solid and lasting friendships and romances based on shared experiences at Burningman, and I think that is a valuable thing. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who are long time burners, some are or have been senior staff. Yet this was my virgin voyage, as I’ve spent years not going.
There was big great art. I particularly enjoyed the giant smashed chandelier and the giant slabs of granite suspended in an artful feat of engineering. I enjoyed the thousands of fire dancers working together prior to the burning of the man.
I thought that I was prepared, and yet, I was not. I did not have a wonderful time. I had an okay time, it felt an awful lot like camping with friends, in a camping city. Nothing blew my mind. I feel gypped for having a mediocre experience and I think it was me who did it. So I’m experiencing a bit of self-loathing at the moment.
I didn’t appreciate the way that the men with camcorders along the route of Critical Tits made me feel like I was providing a cameo role in “My Own Private Girls Gone Wild”. Likewise, I thought that too many camps featured too much of an emphasis on genitalia viewing. Specifically I am thinking of the Titty Bar, and the Genitalia Photography studio. I often went nude or topless, esp first thing in the morning when I donned nothing more than hat and flipflops and hurriedly biked off to the porta potties. I like nudity, but much of the sex related stuff was so blase and unartfully done that it was offensive in its predictability.
Likewise, I was unenthused by the massive quantities of RVs. I would have loved to have seen creative shelters in their lieu. They seemed like a cop-out. (I had tent & shade structure). I regret that I didn’t get to see any of Zenster’s stuff. I guess one of my many mistakes was spending too much time wandering the back streets and not enough time in the theme camps. Anyhow, the mass of RVs and pedestrian stuff are what made me think that BM is entirely convenient, esp if you solve the problem of gettting/being there by throwing money at it.
The actual burns didn’t do much for me, except that I felt perplexed by the mass horde of people screaming and hollering in delight. Big fires terrify me, as they remind me viscerally of the evils of war. My emotional reaction was mostly regret at letting go and the temporariness of it all and the totality of the destructive power of fire. I need a personal phoenix.
/hijack/
Zenster : Quasimodem’s been up to a bit of mischief in your absence:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=207131
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=207663
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=208833
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=209409
It will take you awhile to read these threads, but I guarantee laughs (and donuts.)
We are actively seeking brillinant recruits, by the way.
/end hijack/
Or brilliant recruits, whichever spelling you prefer. Heh.
[Drooling Homer Simpson]
1000 LEDs …laaahhllll
[/Drooling Homer Simpson]
One of these days I hope to have the money to cross the continent and buy a ticket.
Hee! Fun-nee.
Welcome back.
Sounds like it was a load of fun.
I felt like I was there, only not sweating to death.
This alone, combined with Zenster’s fabulous report make me want to go there. With an RV loaded with AC. ( I’m a wussy.)
White Ink, thank you so much for sharing your own impressions about Burning Man. I’m glad to say that we are in violent agreement about what’s been said of this event. As a first time attendee, I easily may have carried away skewed perceptions. I’m fortunate that many people in our camp were long time participants who knew the ropes rather well. I encountered examples of bad attitude at the event on the order of once a day, that’s all. You mention having participated in Critical Tit and feeling uncomfortable. I can understand how (I presume you are) a woman who practices nudity might might be fixed in the sights of men with less gallant intentions. As a male, the tables are rather turned on me.
Your own choice of installations coincides rather well with my own. Here’s a sampling of ones that wouldn’t fit into the OP:
[ul]Motorized sofas: One of my favorite methods of conveyence, this ubiquitous vehicle provided a nice surreal touch. People would glide by on fully motorized and cushioned couches sipping drinks and making conversation. Rest assured, there were also those rugged individuals who fabricated fully mobile recliners as well. Nearly any sort of seating was rendered self-propelled if at all possible.
The Fallen Chandelier: Out at one edge of the completely unoccupied playa was a wrought iron chandelier. Some of the bulbs were intentionally fractured to create an impression of precipitous descent. Carried along in its entirety is the plaster ceiling medallion and some accompanying lathwork as well. Look carefully at the linked photo. Notice a small object planted into the ground under the arc of the lefthand lumiere that rests on the desert floor? This is one of those ordinary solar powered nightlights for your outdoor walkways. The entire artwork piece is over thirty feet in diameter and nearly twenty feet tall. It is as if the rambunctious celestial monkey deity Hanuman got loose at God’s cocktail party and managed to tug free the lighting fixture, only to have it come crashing to earth in Black Rock City. I considered this to be one of the single finest static displays shown at the entire event.
The Hand of God: This twenty foot tall, hand-shaped metal sculpture was capable of ejecting columns of flame hundreds of feet into the sky. This was not merely some sort of reworked flamethrower. The artist carefully figured out how to release hundreds of cubic feet worth of gas vapor before igniting it. A gigantic plume of barely ignited fuel would soar skyward and convert from a roiling cloudy mass into a ball or pillar of fire. Other jets on the five fingers would release a towering gyser of flame straight from the nozzle. From over one hundred feet away, the heat was so intense you were often tempted to cover your face. Here is a daytime picture of the hand.[/ul]
I’ll provide some links to The Temple of Honor in a while. I also think I’ve come up with an installation theme that could really pay off. As to the motorized sofas, my own would include a full coffee table with classic Natn’l Geo and Life mags stapled onto it, a fully operational lava lamp and to crown the full poly deep cushion neon orange straight arm couch, a UV velvet Elvis behind it. Other inspirations include importing a truckload of sod and having a “picnic on the grass” replete with wicker hampers, barbecues and lawn darts. Don’t get me started talking about the cooking, that’s for another post.
Zennie, you have pie? 
Q
Well, Quasi, my kitchen didn’t serve pie but people were stunned when I trotted out the cinnamon bread French toast made with double-yolked eggs topped by Vermont dark amber pure maple syrup (crispy fried bacon on the side). Another night saw Mexican style carnitas soft tacos, complete with freshly made Spanish rice and refried beans. Special thanks to the Green Gorilla Lounge for kick starting the blueberry pancake breakfast. Some guests had promised to return the next day with a large sack of pancake mix. I specifically mentioned “noon” (as in when the sun is up and all shadows disappear) which, to them obviously, meant a few hours after they awoke. They showed up around 2:00PM towards the end of brunch.
As mentioned in the OP, the biggest problem with cooking was trying to do so while the sun remained in the sky. Imagine slaving over a hot stove while the air temperature is hovering near 100°F. Sort of knocks the starch outta your shorts in a New York minute. Within one hour after sunrise, your tent turns into an oversized toaster oven. On one cloudy day, nearly everyone slept until past noon because we were missing the signal to wake up (i.e., internal temperature > 100°F). People were amazed to be fed wholesome food instead of instant oatmeal. The Sonic Runway clan repeatedly mentioned how the food service saved their lives. These poor sots would be out struggling with wiring faults until sundown robbed them of light and stagger back into camp starving. I was ready for them with fresh pasta or hot dogs. Whatever it took to keep things going. I’m happy to say that I have a Sonic runway T-shirt to prove it.
Some really ordinary every day items made life infinitely more bearable out in the desert. Simple suggestions like bringing a three gallon water-only hand pumped chemical sprayer system saved gallons of water for washing up hands and pots in the camp kitchen. It was ideal for rinsing out your hair when it became salt encrusted. At Burning Man, you are not allowed to dump out any waste water onto the playa. The mud factor would quickly turn the Playa into a giant bog. You have to provide evaporation pools (kiddy waders or tarp lined pans) and wire racks to dehydrate solid waste. Last year, idiots were throwing left over chicken carcasses into the portable toilets. The pumper trucks’ filters were clogging more often in one week than they would all year.
One of the most ingenious concepts was to bring all of your drinking water in the form of already frozen small plastic bottled water. You get nearly the same coolant value as you do buying crushed ice before the event and then paying $2.[sup]00[/sup] per bag once it melts. More than anything, merely by paying the electrical cost of freezing all those little bottles of water, you then drink them off as they melt. You cannot imagine the relief that freshly melted ice water provides until your parched throat has felt like five miles of chemically pretreated and hammered [insert colorful scatological reference >here<]. Having a huge supply of conveniently half-melted portable water bottles gave even the rank beginner like myself no excuse for not carrying out some spare liquids when leaving camp (aside from those already on board). Remaining properly hydrated is the only way to survive long enough to see the entire event. Fail to do so and you can be staring kidney failure in the face. The lethargy from dehydration can take the creases out of your trousers in a big hurry.
Here we also come to something rather important about Burning Man. This is a policy adopted from another ecological organization and it is called, “Leave No Trace.” It is practiced incredibly well from what I saw. Similar to the northern California music festival I cooked at, the vast majority of cigarette smokers scrupulously collected their extinguished smoking matter and literally never littered. There was also a prohibition on outdoor urination and I saw it violated only once. The Leave No Trace policy is especially rigorous when it’s time to pack up. You must scour your camp site for every last little wrapper and piece of garbage that’s been blown into your camp from elsewhere. No excuses are permitted and it is stunning to see the Playa quickly revert back to barren wasteland after having been occupied by tens of thousands of people just a day before. Such is the magic of Burning Man.
I’ll check in later to describe the Big Burn™.
I would have said that’s impossible, but you would know ?
With a casual mention of the Monkey King, Zenster becomes even cooler.
Welcome back!
Zenster,
I found that many folks cooked extravagently on the playa. The head of my compound made posole ( a new mexican treat) for 20 on Saturday night and Corned Beef & cabbage for 30 on Sunday night.
My personal favorite was the guy several tents down who had a mighty urn of coffee every morning.
An acquaintance of mine worked on the giant chandelier. She said the person who conceived it based it on a norse myth story. Basically, Loki, the Norse god of mischief impregnated a goddess and she was none too pleased about it and started chasing him around the heavens. He zigged and zagged trying to escape her and leapt into a chandelier hoping to get away. The goddess leapt up after him, and their combined weight tore the chandelier from the ceiling crashing down to the earth below.
My favorite conveyance was a golf cart that had been rigged to look like a magic carpet. It was quite comfy, carried six. I also liked the look of the ill fated Barcar.
The head of my compound also had an artcar that had a pool table mounted on it. He parked it at Newt’s Bar for a while and lowered the table and people played pool. I’d kind of like to rig a flatbed in some way so that I could have a “pool car II” but towing water, but I’m not sure how to deal with the issues of sanitation and playa mud filtration. Alternatively, I’d like to somehow rig a slip N slide to run at night with quinine in the tubes and a black light and strobe aimed at the slip N slide (since quinine fluoresces). Again, sanitation & filtration issues are a problem.
I’d also like to do a giant blue bar serving only blue drinks and have the inside be like a giant fishbowl. I like blue drinks.
In addition to freezing your water bottles (I like frozen 2-liter bottles as they thaw slower), I like to freeze juice boxes since they are small enough not to rupture and there’s something really enthralling about popping open a slushy juice box on a hot day. Best to strip off all the mini straws at home though.
One thing I learned for next year is when you buy your dry ice, bring your cooler inside the store sos it doesn’t evaporate halfway to gone on the short walk through the parking lot.
sigh
I was amazed with all of the food being passed around at Burning Man while I was there.
There was a group of professional fishermen from the Seattle area, who had driven a freezer truck full of freshly caught fish to the event. They had a fullblown kitchen set up and pretty much passed out amazing fish dishes and cocktails to passerby for the entire week.
Another group, the Blacksmith’s camp, had set up a complete metalworking shop next to their quite sizable camp. They had welders, grinders, cutting torches, and all manner of fabrication equipment set up. There was a really sweet "bar car’ at the event which could accomodate 40 or so people as it drove around serving drinks. Apparently, a few too many people had gotten on board one night and the axle gave way under the strain. The next morning I see this bar car pulled into the Blacksmith’s camp and there are 5 or 6 people working to repair it. They repaired countless other vehicles and implements throughout the week. I was really impressed by that. As if this wasn’t enough, I was walking by their camp on the next to last night, and one of them motions for me to join them. They had three GIANT barbeque grills fired up and were cooking piles of steaks, ribs, chicken, brats, etc. They sat me up the the bar, built me a cocktail of my choosing, and then served me a massive plate of the above mentioned items. Needless to say, my food supply, or should I say, my GOOD food supply was nearing its end. I was completely blown away by this type of generosity. Apparently, they had been feeding and entertaining passerby like this for the entire event. SIMPLY FOR THE JOY OF DOING IT! I offered them all some of my stash of press-on tattoo’s and you would have thought that they felt they were getting the better end of the deal.
Generosity on this scale is simply rare to encounter in regular life. When camping, I find most people to be a bit stand offish, many campers in normal situations tend not to want much to do with other groups. Not so at Burning Man. EVERY camp want’s you to come in and enjoy THEIR hospitality. It was a very surreal feeling, as I have never encountered anything like this ever before, and it was on an unbelievably MASSIVE scale! Hundreds and hundreds of camps. Hundreds of bars and clubs. Countless thousands of people wandering around and all too happy to meet you.
I took a few large pieces of my metal art with me and arranged with one of the organizers to hang it in the main tent. Unfortunately I had forgotten to bring some grabber screws to hang it with. They said no problem, there is a camp over yonder called Hardware Camp. I wandered over and here is this giant military tent chock full of all manner of hardware type items. I mention what I am doing and the guy throws me a whole box of grabber screws, “That oughtta do ya” he says. I tell him I only need about ten. He tells me "Oh, hang on to 'em and pass 'em on to someone who needs them. I asked him if he had a screwdriver and he hands me a cordless drill and says, "If you want to, bring it back, if you really need it, just bring it back at the end of the week. UNBELIEVABLE!
We had a small group of people camping nearby us who had been unable to find their friends who were supposedly taking care of all the food arrangements. The friends never did show. Another neighbor dropped by our camp and alerted us the their situation. Naturally, we prepared extra so they could share our meals with us. It was truly amazing how well the community took care of these people. They had more meals brought to them than they could possibly eat and were truly humbled by what might have ordinarlily been a very bad experience.
I have never forgotten the myriad of selfless giving that I experienced, and it was so powerful to be a part of that it truly and forever changed me as a person. That event taught me more about myself and about the basic goodness and spirit of human nature than I had learned throughout my prior lifetime. And it wasn’t something subtle that slowly seeped into your consciousness. No… It assaulted you full force the minute you entered Black Rock City, smacked you up in the face and left you canterwauling, struggling to find a familiar frame of reference for bearing. My first twenty-four hours of Burning Man were of reeling within a strange world where nothing was what it seemed and everyone was more than what you expected. You didn’t just MEET people at Burning Man, you shared something undefinable with them. Simply seeing the look of wonder and awe on another burners face could somehow connect you with them. Words did not need to be spoken for the bond to be created. I’m not sure I can adequately describe this to anyone. You have to experience it first hand to really appreciate it. The first several days I was in such a state of culture shock that my mind would be reeling so fast that I found it hard to speak coherently. It really did discombobulate me for awhile. I spoke with many other first time burners who could totally relate to this feeling.
If any of you here reading this, have any interest in attending Burning Man, I urge you to do so. It will re-invigorate your life with creativity. It will fill you with joy and wonder at what the creativity of the human mind can achieve. It will connect you to your fellow man in a way which you may have never experienced. Yes, it could be summed up as a gigantic party in the desert, but I tell you, if you are open to the experience it has much, much more to offer you. It is the sort of place where you can be free to discover or re-invent yourself. Where you can lose yourself in a sea of swirling others. It is a world straight from your dreams, and returning from it can be compared to a dream. As if it slowly fades from your mind until you can only rember a few scant details, feelings, emotions. And yet, it is with you wherever you go.
SkyBum, thank you for a moving and excellent post. Those who have not attended cannot possibly imagine the camraderie a person experiences the moment they walk in the door.
I just received an email with a link to an excellent [gallery](http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/swijegun/slideshow?&.dir=/Burning+Man+2003&
.src=ph&.view=t
) that shows both our own camp and many other great images of Burning Man.
When I get back later tonight, I’ll be posting some links to a movie about Burning Man that has recently opened in San Francisco and will be showing around the country.
Dear JB,
I know that you died a few months ago but I just wanted mention that people are still thinking of you. Remember one of the last meals we cooked together? I made some guacamole and a batch of Philippine sinigang soup and you created some of your usual wacky appetizers. I asked you for some salt and you got out this little bag of crystallized sea salt. I asked you about it and you mentioned how it cost $16.[sup]00[/sup] a pound. Remember me shouting out, “What! Is this salt evaporated from the water Jesus walked on?”
I just wanted to let you know that I saved the little tin of that salt you gave me back then. I brought that salt with me for hundreds of miles to Burning Man. I mixed some of it (not all, I’m a selfish b@stard) into a batch of the cinnamon bread French toast that everyone went crazy over. I promise that only pure Vermont maple syrup was poured onto each slice, my friend. The bakery even kicked down a couple of extra loaves when I mentioned why I was buying almost a half dozen of them.
I want you to know that you haven’t disappeared from the hearts of people who cared about you. I thought you might like to know that something from your kitchen helped feed a lot of loving people. I’m pretty sure that you never made it to Burning Man yourself, but please rest assured that your spirit was fully alive there, on one blazing day last month. People loved the French toast and we all still love you and miss you very much.
Every week I see someone on a street corner who looks like you. I look back again and you are gone, replaced by some stranger.
Typing Through Tears,
Zenster