Burning Man, 2023

Forward

For a while I'd been hesitant about filling this out; on one hand I want to share an experience I had that might resonate with others, but on the other hand it feels like this goes against the Immediacy and De-commodification principles of the event. Ultimately I decided to fill this in more; this isn't some massively public youtube-style vlog trying to commodify my experience at Burning Man, I'm a single dude sharing links his personal website to his friends.

Thursday

I came late to the party because of work (mistake to have done that) and since I was going to be meeting a lot of new camp mates I wanted to make an impression so I bought sushi in Reno and kept it on ice for the last hour drive out to the playa.

By the time I had arrived, pretty much all of the attendees were there already so there was close to no line for entrance. I waited at the front of the line for the next round of cars to drive into ticket processing and vehicle inspections.

After making it through the lines and ringing the gong at entrance, I made my way towards the camps around 6:30 & C.

Finding art installations like what's in the next photo was super common. The closer you got to the Man, the higher the density of art/sculptures/interactive things. As you start making your way out into the deep playa, they taper off and you see oddities scattered off on the distant horizon that you need to pedal out to.

Two friends of mine from Canada were getting married at the camp the night I arrived! The ceremony was held inside the common space of the camp and the vows were a good mix of funny and thoughtful.

After the ceremony and a few rounds of drinks and others things, we headed out on our bikes to check out more camps. We found ourselves at a mockup hotel lobby with karaoke. The man behind the desk was really interesting and we talked with him for a REALLY long time.

We ended up on top of their cargo containers at some point and had a great view of the playa.

After some time we biked to the inner-most ring road of the city, The Esplanade. This is the highest trafficked road in Burning Man, as your shortest route from anywhere to anywhere else almost always passes through this ring road at some point.

Because of this being prime real estate, camp placement along The Esplanade is reserved for the largest and most dedicated camps at the burn. One such camp is Brulée, a circus arts camp. The camp is a cube built out of the gigantic scaffolding that make up the aisles at Costco. In the center is a stage with performance artists rotating through. A majority of the acts were partner gymnastics with some element of fire juggling involved. We climbed up the scaffolding to the second story shelving to watch, and saw a man on stage holding an upside-down woman above him, while she was juggling a stick with her feet, while the stick was on fire. Very impressive!

Continuing counterclockwise up of the Esplanade from Brulée, we made our way to Opulent Temple, which supposedly Diplo was going to be performing a set at. When we got to the sound camp, we saw close to a thousand other people there as well, with a scattered perimeter of parked bikes lit up, circling the area. Off to the side of center stage was this group of people spinning fire and poi.

This next image is one of my favorite pictures of the entire burn, because it's very representative of the kind of thing you experience at night when biking through deep playa. Riding off into the dark while high, you hear the distant thumping of several sound camps playing music in the distance. Ahead of you there is one or several dim lights on the horizon, and you decide to venture deeper into the desert to see what they are, like an angler fish drawing in curious creatures from the darkness. The warm wind is moderately blowing, kicking up a slow rolling cloud of dust everywhere you go and as you get closer to the light source you see it's a mobile converted bus, parked like an oasis in vast nothingness around you. You knock on the door with a smile, and are greeted with warm smiles in return. The interior is wooden paneled and decorated to make you feel like you're below deck on a wooden ship.

One of my favorite camps was Golden Guy Alley. I don't have the best photos but this was a mini neighborhood stretched out into a long corridor alley with a few branching side streets, completely filled with small lounges, sake bars, and art galleries. The goal was to replicate the atmosphere of Memory Lane in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

Near the Man, there was this 2 story tall willow tree made of LED cubes. The base color would slowly shift through all the colors of the rainbow, and streaks of complimentary colors would randomly fall through the cubes like rain trickling over leaves. In this photo, the base color was green with accent colors of blue and red trickling down.

Friday

This was the day that the rain was expected to arrive. We'd have some time early in the day after waking up around 11am to enjoy it, but at some point we'd have to hunker down for a bit.

This piece was one of my favorites, it was a giant bison made of driftwood with a guiding lantern the illuminated the night from a distance, and once you approached it there would be a ladder to climb up onto a porch alongside the torso. You could enter into the torso through a decaying wooden door, and inside there was an immaculately done up cottage living room, complete with a rocking chair, wood-burning cast iron fireplace, rugs, and a small chandelier at head level. I regret not getting more pictures of this one!

We crowded into a rented U-haul van and waited out the storm together

I don't have many more stories to show for this day, honestly. Once the rains started, they came down harder than expected throughout the night and we were being instructed over radio by the festival organization to wait it out at camp. We occasionally visited our neighbors to see how they were fairing, but that was the extent of it.

Saturday

With the rain gone and things starting to dry up again, A friend and I decided to check out Esplanade and see how everything fared. The roads were lumpy and uneven, making it difficult to ride bikes over.

Water had pooled in one particular spot around a bar, but most people didn't seem to mind at all.

In the playa was this tower built out of two-by-fours that climbed ~4 stories high. Anyone could freely climb it, but it did feel shaky at the top. You just literally would start climbing on it from the inside, no harnesses or other safety mechanism. Sometimes you'd see people climb it from the outside which felt super unsafe, but really there wasn't anything more safe about doing it on the interior either.

Later on we ran into a few people that set up a hot sake station at an intersection, somewhere around the crossroads of 3:30 & D. The sake flowed through the copper pipe where it would be heated up, then out into whatever cup you had.

I was really impressed by just how much fun we were all having even with the rain and mud. Everyone was just so happy and upbeat, while the few folks with internet connections kept saying how the rest of the country thought we were struggling and stuck. I mean we were stuck technically, but literally 99.9% of everyone had already planned to stay throughout the rainy period anyways so it wasn't like there were shortages of supplies either.

Out in deep playa, there was a train station set up leading to nowhere. The rails emerged out of the desert and receded back into it shortly after. Inside the props and building surrounding the tracks were hidden speakers and sometimes they'd play spatially-correct 3d sound of a train passing by. The artists must have set up microphones around train tracks while a train was passing because the sound was shockingly realistic.

Inside the building was a waiting room and small operator room with an old MS-DOS terminal covered in to-do notes and memos about the train. Every inch of the waiting room was filled with posters, art, furniture, and props from the last 1800's; the attention to detail on this project was insane.

I visited the temple, but didn't take any pictures besides this one from the outside. As you approach it, the crowds energy completely changes and everything becomes silent and pensive. The air practically weighs heavily in your lungs with how somber the mood is inside. The central room is surrounded by a circular ring-shaped pathway with numerous alcoves to maximize the surface area on the walls. Even still, the walls are filled to the brim with stapled on letters addressed to the deceased, memorial posters, sharpie-d notes onto the walls, and sentimental memorabilia. Groups of people sit in silence together in the alcoves and central room in silence, many silently crying. The structure is designed to be burned down the day after the man burns, as a cathartic release. I felt conflicted being in the temple; I had no grief in my heart that merited release. I felt with each letter or open note I saw, I was intruding deeply into some stranger's life.

Later that night after dinner it was time to explore more camps and meet more people. We took off on our bikes and continued exploring the city.

Sunday

Today was the day of the Man burning! People were uncertain if it would happen because of the rain, but ultimately it resumed (one day late). We ate dinner early and headed over to the gathering in time to get a good spot since for some of us, it was our first times seeing the burn.

The perimeter guards set up a half kilometer radius around the man that nobody besides fire crew were allowed to pass. We were able get spots on the ground a few rows of people behind the front, which all things considered was really close!

Watching the man burn was incredible. Not only was it by far the largest bonfire I'd ever seen by far, but it had legitimately the best fireworks show I've ever seen in my life. It's not by video, but here's a recording of it. I vividly remember being told by friends to never look away from the man once the official start time elapses, because there would be a large explosion to signal the start of the man burning. That explosion came after the fireworks, and it was this perfectly round ball of light radiant heat you could feel on your face from a quarter mile away that materialized out of nowhere in an instant. The audible POP! of it hits you delayed and it really drives home the size of the pyrotechnics going on. Here's my video of the man falling down after some time:

As the man and structure he's on burns down to a smoldering hill and the radiant heat begins to border on being tolerable, the guards allow everyone to approach.

A large portion of people begin stripping off their clothes and start to run in a massive circle around the bonfire. I joined in and followed the crowd as it raced around, the heat unbelievably hot. The pile was square in shape and rounding the corners was so hot at times you'd be jumping over the section and people would be on the sidelines with spray bottles of water to help cool you off.

I set my clothes on the ground, but completely lost track of them by the time I was ready to get dressed again and wandered naked for 15 minutes through the hundreds of side lined crowd looking for my clothes pile. Being naked around strangers you'll never see again wasn't as big an issue as how cold it was getting without direct line of sight to the bonfire.

While the fervor of the the main burn was slowing down, all the art cars had been encircling the area, all on full display for the main night, car after car lined up pouring out music and light.

At some point I walked up onto the top floor of an art car built to look like a small church called The House of Bass, where I got this next picture looking out at the ring of other art cars around where the man once burned.

Towards one of the very farthest corners of the outer playa, I saw the very faintest of yellow lights flickering like a candle in the far distance. It was so small that I thought it might be someone's distant headlamp but as it remained motionless I decided to ride towards it. As I got closer, I saw it surrounded by a large dim red glow, and happening upon it I found it was a giant replica of the Fat Man atom bomb acting as a massive combo space heater and sausage grill! It was a father-son duo that built it and hauled it out there. A dozen people were around it, how could I have missed this after so much time exploring out here?

Monday

The following morning we struck down the camp, packed up, and started exodus process. Because I was on a motorcycle, my exit was super easy and fast. I was allowed to lane split through the line all the way back to Reno, and I used a GoPro to show what the line back to the paved road was like.