…is the title of the latest movie about Burning Man, which has been launched on iTunes in HD for $12.99 – a standard definition version for $9.99 is out next week.

They set up this photo booth on the Playa, and asked Burners to stop in and explain what they thought the meaning of life was. Some Burners used the opportunity to do drugs and have sex…of course.

Here’s an interview with film-maker Julie Pifher:

“I had this idea six years ago. I was in film school at the time and learning about the meaning of life in a philosophy class and thinking about that in terms of my own life. And then I got to talking with a friend of mine, and we were saying wouldn’t this be cool to go to this thing, I wonder what it’s like, it must be so cool. And then I thought, that would be such a cool thing to ask these people, who are really out there, really open-minded, really just kind of different from your everyday — or who are in a different environment than your everyday — what they think the meaning of life is.”

Pifher had never been to Burning Man before she went to film her documentary. In addition to a traditional crew armed with two cameras conducting interviews, they set up a special booth designed to capture the Burners at their most unguarded and honest.

“We built this big photo booth, soundproof booth, in the middle of the desert, and it had a motion sensored camera, so every time someone came into the booth, it recorded them. There were questions on the walls, just some things to point them in the right direction. We had hundreds of people throughout the week come into that booth and be really honest. In one clip, somebody is crying; in another, people are just laughing and having a good time. Somebody had sex in our booth; some people definitely did drugs in the booth.“

The wild costumes and uninhibited behavior in the trailer are enough to reaffirm beliefs that Burning Man is nothing more than a big hippie party in the desert. But Pifher had an instinct that people who voluntarily trek into the middle of the desert to commune might have a perspective worth exploring, and her hunch was right.

“I saw this festival as a microcosm of life; it’s born anew each year, and you live it, and then they burn it down, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and then they rebuild it next year. So in that week, you can almost sort of experience a lifetime. I think that a lot of people go there looking for transformative change. They’re looking for an escape from their life because modern-day life is such a grind, and that’s not really natural. We’re put in this box and people go there to step outside that box and experience something different.”

So, what — according to the free love, communal living Burners — is the meaning of life? What else?

“Love. I think that the strongest answers, the most common answer, the one we received the most, and the most succinct is love. It’s all just kind of part of living, and it is that part of life that keeps us going. It definitely tested my answer. Part of love is loving yourself and loving others, and so for me, this documentary really tested my skills as an artist and as a human being. Dream big, do big things, ’cause that’s love, it’s all love, and it gives you purpose.”

The 2008 documentary “Confessions of a Burning Man” is also available for purchase or rental on iTunes.

by Whatsblem the Pro

Image copyright MCMXXXIV by Paramount Productions, Inc., obviously

Caveat Magister has been a fixture over at the Org’s official web site for years. His thoughtful, thought-provoking articles written for the Burning Blog are often justifiably praised for great eloquence, depth, and sincerity. I have long suspected that in spite of our obvious differences, the Magister and I might be capable of a good, productive meeting of the minds; we are, after all, opposite numbers of a sort, and might be expected to simply butt heads and lock horns by those who think our stances are just poses. When I heard that he was stepping down from some of his duties serving the Org, I took the opportunity to make that meeting happen. As it turns out, there’s quite a lot that we agree on.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: Madge, does this mean you won’t be writing the Burning Blog anymore?

CAVEAT MAGISTER: I’m not actually leaving the Burning Blog. What I left was a leadership role (volunteer coordinator) with the media team. I held that for about exactly six years, and it was almost entirely behind-the-scenes work. But I’ll still be writing for the blog – and in fact they’re keen for me to do more writing. Which, sure, as long as I have the time.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: How did you first stumble upon Burning Man, and how did it change your life?

CAVEAT MAGISTER: The first part of that question’s easy. I didn’t stumble upon Burning Man: my artist friend Sondra Carr stumbled upon Burning Man and then spent the next three years saying “you HAVE to see this!” Eventually she got a grant for a project, and I helped her with some of the pre-playa work on it. Going to Burning Man wasn’t part of the plan for me at that point, but then a couple members of her crew dropped out, and she had comp tickets, and she offered me one along with a spot at her camp, and the timing worked out because I was going to be on the West Coast anyway. So I got into a car share with two complete strangers from Craigslist, drove out from San Francisco, and arrived at BRC in the middle of the night with no clue where I was supposed to pitch my tent. As one does. You can pretty much fill the rest in like a Mad Lib.

The second part’s hard.

There’s no question that Burning Man has changed my life, but I’m not sure how to untangle it from a bunch of other changes. I moved to SF, I got a new job, and then another one, I met new people, I got involved in this and that . . . and I went to Burning Man. And a while later I volunteered for Burning Man. I don’t really know how to say “These changes are Burning Man” and “these changes aren’t.”

I know a lot of people who have come to Burning Man and – boom – that was it. Their minds opened, the doors of perception blew off their hinges, and their lives were transformed. I’ve seen it happen over and over. But it didn’t happen to me. I had a lot of very cool, very hilarious, very amazing things happen to me at my first burn – and every burn since then – but I’ve never had that moment.

The closest I think I’ve come was leaving 2011′s Burn: I left a little early because I heard on the radio that there was no wait for exodus, and I wanted a piece of that. So I threw everything in my rental car, drove out through the gate and onto the highway. . . and suddenly remembered the rest of my life. For the whole week I had completely forgotten all the non-Burning Man details of who I was and what I did and where I lived. So I had left Burning Man not even really conscious of the fact that I was going back to San Francisco – I just knew that I was going to leave (because that’s part of the process) and didn’t want to be stuck in traffic. For a whole week I’d left my life at the gate and just lived my desert identity. And then, as I left, it all came back to me. Overwhelming me. “Oh, right, that’s who I am. I have a job and an apartment.” It was a bizarre, breathtaking, moment.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: How did you get involved with the Org, and with being a featured writer on their blog?

CAVEAT MAGISTER: There’s a story with how I got involved with the Org, and I included it in the middle of a post saying goodbye to Action Girl. Take a look.

It’s all accurate, except that I’ve since learned that Termeh Yeghiazarian was also instrumental in pulling my name from the big pile. I’m very grateful.

A couple of things to emphasize about all this:

I wasn’t an insider in any way at the time. I didn’t know anybody who worked for Burning Man, or was a Burning Man artist (aside from my friend in Colorado who got me to the Burn in the first place). I didn’t even know anybody on the team I was volunteer coordinating for.

While I wouldn’t have applied to volunteer for Burning Man if I hadn’t believed in it in some way, I didn’t volunteer because I believed in Burning Man. I was trying to make friends in a new city, and they seemed like interesting people who did fun things.

In a way that was a colossal failure, because it really did take them a year and a half to get back to me.

So why did I get the job, given that I didn’t know anyone or have any experience with Burning Man beyond attending the event? There are two reasons, one of which I think is great the other of which I think is a problem.

One reason is: that I made Andie and Termeh laugh. When they looked at my volunteer survey, they laughed out loud, and went to tell other people “Check out this awesome survey!” That was the ball game right there. They were determined to find something to have me do, and it just so happened that they needed a VC and that I seemed good with people. And actually I think this is a surprisingly good way of choosing volunteers for Burning Man: if somebody’s application excites you, if it makes you laugh, if it gives you a human reaction rather than a cost/benefit analysis – get that person on the team.

It usually pans out really well.

The other reason is that I was competing against an artificially small pool of potential volunteers: Burning Man really likes to fill positions like this with people who live in the SF Bay Area. Which I now did. I understand why they want to do this. You get a lot out of face-to-face meetings. But I think it’s a mistake: Burning Man “happens” more and more around the world, and key people are increasingly operating at a distance. This is a strength, and more room should be made at the volunteer leadership level to accommodate it.

And that’s how it happened.

Writing for the Burning Blog has nothing to do with the VC position, but I came to do it as a result of that position. I did a lot of writing on the Media Mecca list and periodically we would talk amongst ourselves about Burning Man issues, and at one point about three years ago (ish?) we got into an intense discussion about plug-n-play camps. I wrote a long response as part of that discussion, and Will Chase (who is on the Media Mecca list) said something to the effect of “Hey, that’s really good! Would you mind if I post it to the Burning Blog?”

And I said “No problem, let me just clean it up a little.”

I sent him a cleaned up version. . . and nothing happened (it’s kind of a trend in my experience with Burning Man asking me to do stuff). The piece was never run. But it did get Action Girl thinking “Hey, Caveat could make a really good contributor to the Burning Blog!” And so a couple months later she asked if that was something I wanted to do.

I said “Maybe.”

She and I sat down to talk about it over coffee, and I said “Listen, it’s a great offer, I really appreciate it. But I need to make sure you understand: I’ve seen what’s usually on the Burning Blog, and I’m not going to do that. That’s not how I’ll have my fun. And while you know me, and know I’m easy to work with, this isn’t going to be worth it if I’m not saying something interesting. So I’m going to try to push boundaries on this, and take my own approach, and not care at all about fitting in with what the blog is otherwise like. I want to make sure you’re comfortable with that, because if you’re not and you give me the keys to the kingdom anyway it’ll be a disaster. So if that’s not what you want then it’s better we don’t do this. But if it is, great.”

And she said. “That’s what we want. Go for it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yep.”

A couple weeks later, I wrote my first post. It’s been going for about two years.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: In what specific ways would you say you’ve pushed those boundaries?

CAVEAT MAGISTER: I once got a hostile e-mail from a guy I don’t know who’s part of the build crew, who wanted to know why I spend so much time being ‘negative’ about Burning Man when the point of the blog should be to get people fired up and excited. I didn’t think it was a fair critique – I think it’s pretty obvious how much I love Burning Man – but it was an honest critique. He wanted a blog that existed to rally the troops, and felt hurt by the fact that I was always going off track.

I have nothing against getting people excited. Somebody should get people excited! But it’s not what I do. There was nothing interesting to me about saying “Yay Burning Man!” and leaving it at that. I’m not that guy. Andie knew that.

Instead, I’m the guy on the blog who asks “Is Burning Man a White People Thing?” I’m the guy who asked “Does wearing a utilikilt and fuzzy boots make you more ‘authentic?’” I’m the guy who suggested that academia and Burning Man have fundamental incompatibilities, and who said “It’s Okay to be Miserable at Burning Man.”

I don’t deserve credit for originality – I imagine every Burner who’s been to the event a few years had had all of these thoughts. But there wasn’t content like that on the Burning Blog when I came on board. It didn’t seem to be something we talked about, especially when other people were watching.

When I looked at the Burning Blog, I saw a lot of great articles every year about the city being put up (John Curley, if I may say so, is Amazing); and about what art projects were going to be featured; and announcements of Burning Man policies; and, of course, lots of tales from the playa.

And it all has a place, and would be missed if it weren’t on the Burning Blog. People want to read it.

But, to me, it wasn’t challenging. It was an attempt to appreciate Burning Man (“Yay!”), but not to grab on to it with both fists, or flirt with it, or interrogate it, and see what happened. Or even understand it on a deeper level. Much in the same way that a blog on the. . . I dunno. . . Nestle website would feature a lot of great information about Nestle and about calorie content and good recipes, but could never be mistaken for a community of people passionate about chocolate having an engaged conversation, I felt like the Burning Blog had all kinds of great information about Burning Man but couldn’t be mistaken for a community of people passionate about Burning Man having an engaged conversation.

The blog for Burning Man wasn’t “Burning Man.” I’d say it still isn’t, that’s a really tall order, but what I wanted to do was move it closer.

That meant not playing it safe.

There are kinds of bold statements, hard questions, and penetrating insights you can only have if you’re willing to take risks. I was given one of the biggest microphones in Burning Man culture, and I wanted to use it to say something interesting, which meant taking risks. Maybe part of the reason we have such a hard time talking about Burning Man is that we don’t take these risks when we talk about it. Out in the desert, we’re pretty good at taking risks. In our “literature”? Not so much. We don’t risk offending, we don’t call each other out on our shit, we don’t propose the kind of ideas that, in being proven wrong, would still advance thought. We just sit around radically including each other. Which is wonderful, as far as it goes – but I want to go farther.

We also laugh at each other behind our backs a lot. I want to laugh at our fronts a lot. I’ve seen what we’re wearing.

So what I was telling AG was: I’m actually going to go for it. And that’s what I’ve tried to do: to put ideas forward that are worth arguing about, in the service of greater clarity and insight. My first post (“Burning Man isn’t the Happiest Therapists Office on Earth”) expressed the clear statement that “Burning Man isn’t benign” – something I feel is an obvious truth that we don’t talk about very much. It’s so basic to the experience and yet it’s not in any of the promotional materials or even many of the stories that we tell each other. Other subjects have been trying to have conversations about aspects of Burning Man that I feel like we live but don’t talk about.

And, to be clear, it’s hard for people – especially employees – to take these kinds of rhetorical risks in a public forum. Employees kinda can’t: anything they say runs the risk of becoming an official Burning Man statement (even if they’re not a spokesperson: they’re on the blog, right?), and it’s very hard to walk those kinds of things back when someone on staff says it. But me? I’m a volunteer. It’s easy to disavow something a volunteer says: it’s easy to say “everybody’s entitled to an opinion, he doesn’t speak for us” when the person involved isn’t on your payroll.

So I had an opportunity. And I felt like anything other than content that was good enough to be risky was a waste of it.

It’s for others to decide if I’ve succeeded or not. Or even whether it was needed. But that’s what I was going for – and still am. I don’t want to offend Larry or Marion or a guy who gives his sweat to put the fence up, but I want to write something good enough to be worth having an argument about. That means that maybe this week is the week I piss somebody off.

Does that make sense? Does it answer the question?

Man do I sound serious. If it lightens the mood a little, I also like saying “fuck” on the internet a lot. And not even to offend people. Just because.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO:

Yes, that makes quite a bit of sense, and answers several questions.

I think you and I are alike in some important ways. It suits me better to go a little deeper in criticizing the Org, but then I’m not beholden to them for anything, especially not my ‘microphone’ as you called it. I’m sure I take a much dimmer view of them and their history than you do — you ask penetrating questions about the culture and our place/participation in it, and I ask penetrating questions about the Org’s actions and intent — but in essence, we’re doing much the same thing.

Clearly you get some hate mail from time to time. Do you get a lot of hostility and negativity from people for your writing? I know that my articles tend to really polarize people; that’s fine, it’s what I aim for. I get hate mail, and people talking nonsense about me when they don’t really know the facts, but I also get unexpected greeting cards in the mail with checks in them, and bottles of good Scotch presented to me out of the blue, and entrée to events that would cost me a lot of money otherwise. The perks are nice, but it takes a thick hide to suffer the slings and arrows.

CAVEAT MAGISTER: I am, indeed, completely beholden to the Org for the platform I have – and at a very low level I’ve been working with the Org for six years. I think you’re spot on in thinking that I do have a higher opinion of it than you do, but also that the kind of approach we take in our different spheres is quite close.

That said, people really assume I’m an Org insider in a way that just isn’t true. Although in some ways it might be getting more true. People used to come up to me all the time and ask what the Org was thinking about such-and-such or what they were going to do about a situation (tickets, for example), and I’d try to tell them: “I don’t go to those meetings. I’m not in those rooms. Nobody tells me anything that you don’t hear.” They wouldn’t believe me.

Then, by accident, I hit on the magic words: “I’ve never even MET Larry Harvey!” And somehow, when people heard that, they suddenly believed I wasn’t such an insider. It’s like a switch got flipped: “Oh, well, if he’s never met Larry . . .”

It was a really useful thing to say. It’s no longer true, though. I have since met Larry, and had several lengthy conversations with him. But what do we talk about? Ideas, concepts, sociology, psychology, mythology, political theory, history. It’s probably no longer entirely true that I don’t have any real insider information, but the broader point still stands: I’m not in those meetings, I’m not in any way a part of Burning Man’s governance, and nobody consults me about anything. Why would they?

(By the same token, I’d never suggest they’re beyond critique – “I love Burning Man therefore I must be loyal to the Org” isn’t a formulation I could ever endorse. But while I’m not going to pretend they’re infallible, you’re absolutely right that I’m not covering a “governance” beat on their blog. That just wouldn’t work on any level).

I mention all that in part because I think the reactions to me and my work that I encounter have everything to do with the perception that I’m with the Org. It casts a kind of halo around me, at least at the macro level, that people definitely react to.

At the macro level, a lot of people who don’t separate “Burning Man” from its organizers just think I’m part of the package, so they get enthusiastic about me by default . . . which is exactly the kind of thing that bugs me. It’s the exact opposite of judging me by my work or the content of my ideas. But at least they like me.

I get a relatively free pass from people who object to the Org to the extent that they understand that I don’t have a vote. People who actually know something about Burning Man and have objections generally know I’m not what they’re mad about. Most of the hostility I encounter at this level comes from people who object to the Org and don’t understand it well enough to know that I’m just a guy on a blog. It doesn’t happen often, but, like I said: it has led to some weird conversations.

But in general, I get a far more “generically positive” reaction than anything else. Nobody’s ever sent me Scotch, though. And why would they? It’s not like I built the blog (although, for the record, big single malt man).

Most of the really negative reactions I’ve gotten have come at the micro level – in response to specific pieces.

The instances that immediately come to mind are my contention that Burning Man doesn’t have a literary culture, the idea that vandalizing art isn’t art, and . . . oddly . . . my account of the war I started at Burning Man between BMIR and the Monticello theme camp. A fair number of people jumped down my throat about that one because there’s no room for war at Burning Man, what with it being a center of positivity and all. Which . . . argh. Actually that’s another one: I periodically put forward the idea that people who think of Burning Man as holding exclusively progressive political values are seriously mistaken. Which they are – but they really don’t like to hear it. They have a lot invested in the idea that only people with their political views could ever get anything out of Burning Man.

But by far the piece that generated the most heat for me personally was the piece about academia and Burning Man. A lot of people took that as an affront, or believed that it exposed me as an enemy of reason, or as someone who has no experience with academia.

In fact, from what I’ve heard (and, again, I’m in no position to verify), that was my most controversial piece within Burning Man too. That several staff members were upset and unhappy with that one, and suggested that maybe something should be done.

The story as I’ve heard it is that Marian, under whose purview the blog ultimately falls, put her foot down and said absolutely not. That they were free to write responses as individuals if they wanted, but that to interfere with what I was writing would break the system. I’m grateful for that, but she’s not wrong: I can write the way I do exactly because they leave me alone to do it.

Which, for the record, they do – and have been great about. I don’t get edited. I have complete access to write, post, and publish my own stuff. Nobody reviews it in advance. Nobody’s ever asked me to change a line.

They have, in the . . . hundreds? . . . of pieces I’ve written for them, asked me to remove exactly one. That was my response to the champagne incident (I won’t mention the brand), and was admittedly over the top. I suggested that if a brand like that wanted to come to Burning Man, we could “burn their brand,” and then included a history of the champagne, with photo shopped pictures of it being served at a concentration camp and a Russian gulag and a North Korean missile test, and a line about how it was the choice of pedophiles everywhere. It sounds funnier now than, in hind sight, it actually was. I got an email pretty quickly saying that Burning Man was in the middle of negotiations with the champagne company about how to handle the situation, and that this really wasn’t helpful, and would I mind taking it down? I did, and in hindsight am genuinely okay with the decision – mostly because I re-read the piece a month later and wasn’t happy with it. I was just too angry to be the kind of funny I was aiming for.

All of which is to say that I’ve found the experience to be well worth it, and overwhelmingly positive – but yeah, it sets me up as a target and people take shots and I have to live with that. Some of them strike me as really unfair, but hey, it’s the internet, you know? If I can’t take people saying mean things about me, I can always write a diary.

Incidentally, I really appreciated your insistence on sneaking into the Agents of Chaos show even though you had a ticket. Damn right.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: What are your thoughts on Burning Man’s future?

CAVEAT MAGISTER: It’s so obvious, answering your questions, that I’m a blogger. I can’t shut up.

I don’t have a short, pithy answer about the future of Burning Man. I don’t have a clear prediction, or an Old Testament style warning. But here are some scattered thoughts that have come up frequently.

It’s striking to me how little sense of unity there is not just surrounding what the future of Burning Man will be, but what the future of Burning Man should be. Around the time of the Burning Man Project launch I published a blog asking: what would “success” for Burning Man be in this context? When we say we want to change the world, what would that look like? It was stunning to me how many people responded (both in the comments and directly to me) that the best thing for Burning Man was not to try to change the world at all, and just to keep putting on a great event, so hopefully they’ll just do that.

Which is a fine idea, a perfectly defensible thought; but the art car’s out of the DMV on this one. A Burning Man non-profit has already been created explicitly to changing the world. It’s a thing: a fact on the ground. And I’m not sure if these people just didn’t want to acknowledge it, or actually didn’t know about it (which seems hard for me to believe if they were readers of the Burning Blog), but I would say a significant number of the responses I got wanted to talk about a hypothetical “Burning Man” that in no way took actual events or realities into account. Which. . . I’m not sure what to make of that.

But we’re not a united people, and past a certain point (the 5,000 person mark? The 10,000 person mark?) haven’t been in a while. I don’t mean the obvious disagreements between the “it was better in the 90s” Burners and the Org, or the Paul Addis supporters and the Org: though obviously. I mean there’s a lack of unity involving people who are only vaguely aware of all that stuff, and don’t care all that much.

And that’s okay. I’m not bothered by that. In fact, I think that’s a virtue in many ways. The people who don’t care so much about our back story are our future. Burning Man’s ability to appeal to a wide variety of people with diverse perspectives and interests is a strength. The question is not “are we letting too many of ‘those kinds of people’ in,” but “can we be more diverse?”

The answer is “not yet,” but we’re showing a remarkable capacity to extend ourselves and appeal to people with whom the SF-based “core” members of Burning Man have little in common. And good for us: Burning Man wins if we’re having more fun than anybody else, are good for people, and anybody can join. Burning Man loses to the extent any of these things aren’t true.

I know a lot of people want Burning Man to become a political movement. I think that’s a terrible idea – probably one of the single most self-destructive ideas we could engage in. A political movement immediately closes the doors of inclusivity by asking “are you voting with us or against us?” Burning Man, as an engine of possibility, can’t have that kind of litmus test. One of our biggest strengths is that we don’t have to share politics. Our vitality as a cultural movement is tied to our willingness to transcend politics.

Which doesn’t mean we can’t tackle big problems – but it does mean we have to focus on tackling them rather than trying to convince our elected officials to do so. Self-reliance counts here.

A lot of people want Burning Man to become a spiritual movement, too. I find Burning Man’s emergence as a major spiritual movement to be. . . in this order. . . overblown, bizarre, and fascinating. But there’s no question it’s a major part of our future.

A TV documentary was recently mentioned at a Media team meeting that’s planning to film at Burning Man along with other major spiritual pilgrimage sites like. . . Mecca.

Which. . . COME ON! Seriously? No, absolutely not. Just on the sheer numbers alone: one is a 1400-year-old pilgrimage site that a billion people visit as part of one of the world’s dominant faiths – a faith that preserved the works of Aristotle for posterity, made major advances in Mathematics, and has had a massive impact on global architecture, literature, and science.

The other is a 26-year-old party that attracts 50,000 odd people, many of whom are DJs.

Give Burning Man a good 1000 years and then, yeah, we can have this conversation. But right now it’s crazy to even be talking about them in the same breath. And I say that as someone who loves Burning Man – who has had what I would argue are meaningful spiritual experiences at Burning Man. But this is nuts.

Yet I can’t deny that this is really happening. We’ve all seen anecdotally that many people are coming to Burning Man who see it as a spiritual center, and I can tell you that a ton of people volunteer whose primary connection to Burning Man is (so they think) a spiritual one. Is this Burning Man’s future? To go from the home of the drive-by shooting range to the home of morning yoga and New Age Dharma Talks? How does that happen?

I honestly don’t know.

I’ve gone on record as saying that I don’t believe Burning Man can ever replace religion (nor should it) and I stand by that. But there is a way in which Burning Man is a receptacle of a deep hunger for meaning in Western industrial life. Again, that’s not a bad thing – and in fact is part of Burning Man’s success. But I admit the eagerness with which Burning Man is seen in some quarters as comparable to any major world religion gives me serious pause: the eagerness with which Western seekers (and Western media) takes up this storyline strikes me as having much more to do with cultural narcissism than with Burning Man’s actual spiritual qualities. But by the same token Burning Man doesn’t have to be Mecca, or the Vatican, or Bodh Gaya, to change lives. People’s experiences here are legitimate, and they come back because they’re genuinely moved. I think right now Burning Man is simultaneously the hip new spiritual supermarket (to borrow a phrase from Chogyum Trungpa) and something more substantive. I think there’s a lot at stake in which way this goes – but I honestly have no idea what the right move is.

I don’t have anything to add to the mountain of web pages that have been published about how the future of Burning Man is the Regionals, except to say “right on.” What I don’t think is fully appreciated is the degree to which this means an influx of diverse peoples and ideas that are desperately needed if Burning Man is to become the global movement it. . . kind of. . . aspires to be, and how much these people will bring their own traditions, cultures, arts, and ideas for fun with them. Burning Man’s future is to change. If you want, we could make up a cool metaphor about how fire is constantly changing yet always the same. That seems like the sort of thing that would go over big.

In many ways I guess I would say that Burning Man’s disunity is its strength. Burning Man’s future is tied to its ability to reach beyond its base, beyond San Francisco and California and New York. To the extent the regionals grow, and achieve unique identities – are not pale imitations of Burning Man – Burning Man thrives. To the extent they don’t, to the extent Burning Man becomes a place where these kinds of people go and do these kinds of things because they believe this sort of stuff, it’s in trouble.

I’ll say it again: Burning Man wins if we’re having more fun than anybody else, it’s good for people who are involved, and anybody can join. Burning Man loses to the extent any of these things are’t true.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: You make some very good points there, but I think it’s vital to distinguish between Burning-Man-the-event, and Burning-Man-the-corporation, in order to have a meaningful discussion of what Burning Man’s future is. It’s also important for people to know and understand where we came from, and how we got here.

As for Burning-Man-the-event, what we’ve got now is terrific as far as an arts festival or a party goes. That’s valuable to me, and the community that has grown up around it is chock full of interesting trailblazers with big brains. . . but as you’ve highlighted, it’s also full of willfully ignorant people with shuttered minds and a massively overblown sense of the sacred. I think the last thing the world needs is a new religion; it’s long past time that we listened up to Mr. Nietzsche and put our toddler toys away. At this late date, God isn’t just dead, He’s fossilized, like an ichthyosaur skeleton. It seems a terrible shame to me that Burning Man — even if it really is a new religion — isn’t something much better and much more important than it ist; I think it was better and more important for a short time, long ago, but has long since succumbed to the same type of predators that have been running the music industry for decades.

Some people believe that the Org has deliberately courted a certain type of person who is susceptible to magical thinking, because people who are that easily awed and so ready to drink any reasonably tasty kool-aid they’re offered are much easier to herd than a rabble of anarchists and Cacophonists. . . and let me just be very clear and say that I personally am convinced that the people who sit on the Board are mainly concerned with making money and not much else, despite the titanic volumes of hot air they put out to the contrary.

I keep hearing the words of George Santayana in my head; that quote that everyone is familiar with but almost nobody actually pays heed to: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We can walk out into the desert, draw a line in the sand, hop over it and say we’re in another world now, but if we don’t keep in mind all the things we’re trying to leave behind, if we aren’t mindful of the myriad assumptions and blinders that we’re prone to making and wearing, if we don’t give a thought to the way that corporate cultures have evolved precisely to co-opt and exploit our most creative urges, then crossing that line in the sand is just loudly inviting opportunists to exploit us for their own gain. We started with Hakim Bey as our guiding light, but have rapidly sunk back into the outer darkness we thought we were escaping. Instead of Hakim Bey, we’ve got the product of an unspeakable ménage-à-deux between Heaven’s Gate and the Koch Brothers. We’ve been persuaded and convinced by bloodsuckers that we have far too much blood in us and that their presence is absolutely vital to whatever it is we’re trying to accomplish as a culture. It’s still a great party, and the art is wonderful, but the freedom and otherliness that it once had has become entirely illusory. The persistence of that illusion is no doubt a comfort to many, but it’s also the biggest threat we face as a culture.

I think you and I agree that when we talk about changing the world, we have to bear in mind that we don’t have our own house in order. All the talk we hear about the Burning Man Project ignores that, because when you’re at the top of the pile and your real interests are corporate in nature (i.e., making money), the actual viability of the culture you’re promoting doesn’t signify nearly as much as your bottom line does. It’s like all the blather you hear about the American military “protecting our freedom” and “spreading democracy” when (A) what they’re really engaged in is conquest for profit; (B) our freedom was never in jeopardy, except from the people who tell us that imperialist military adventurism is protecting it; (C) they’ve already succeeded in taking most of our freedom away anyway, and in destroying the democracy they’re supposedly spreading. All they’re really spreading is manure. For such people to talk about “changing the world” is a nasty joke; they will promise you freedom and give you chains; they will promise you abundance, and take everything from you. A fat, malodorous turd in every pot, that’s what you typically get from people who tell you they’re out to change the world. . . and both the turd and the pot will sport corporate logos, and come with abusive end-user license agreements.

CAVEAT MAGISTER: I once had a friend named Bill, a great guy. The story goes (I wasn’t around) that in 1970 he followed a girl to the Ozark Mountains and joined a back to the land commune. Must have been some girl.

I met him almost 30 years later. The commune hadn’t lasted, but he’d married the girl and they’d stuck around and when everyone else had moved away they’d kind of inherited all the land. To my knowledge it’s where they still live today.

I visited his homestead. . . gorgeous, I can’t tell you how amazing the Ozards are. . . and I asked him, brashly, impertinently: “Do you think the back to the land movement actually accomplished anything? I mean, can you point to one thing that’s different today because of that movement?”

“Sure!” he said. “They sell granola at Wal-Mart.”

I didn’t get it. “So?”

“So they sell granola at Wal-Mart!” he said. “Back when I started, you have to understand that everything we did was supposed to be crazy. Dangerous. UnAmerican. We were out on the fringe. And back then we were the only people talking about food that was closer to nature. Now, they sell granola at Wal-Mart! And organic food! And pesticide free produce! Can you think of a bigger appropriation? It turns out that a lot of our good ideas had their biggest impact, way more of an impact than we ever imagined possible, after they got accepted by the mainstream. So sure, we didn’t last. But our biggest success turned out to be getting appropriated.”

I’m reminded of that when I hear arguments about the dilution of Burning Man’s culture. It’s not a simple issue. Appropriation can actually go both ways. Because however much we have moved away from the guiding light of Hakim Bey, the only reason I ever heard of Hakim Bey is that Burning Man moved so far.

How far is too far? I don’t know. But I do know that it would be ungrateful of me to say that Burning Man should move just far enough so that I could hear about it, show up, and get inside, but no further. That doesn’t seem right at all.

Nor do I think it should move just far enough to appeal to people “like” me. That’s a recipe for quick obsolescence. No, the people we most want to reach. . . that any movement most wants to reach. . . are the ordinary citizens, for all their flaws and imperfections and idiocies. And guess what? They’re inspired by Burning Man.

That’s a good thing. Even if they’re just coming for the party. Even though they haven’t had to take a multiple choice test about Burning Man’s history and influences. One way to look at this process is that Burning Man is getting “watered down.” It’s not untrue. But if we’re truly open to everyone, if we’re truly inclusive, we have to understand that the institution and culture will themselves change to reflect the people we’re reaching. We are absolutely free, even called upon, to argue in favor of changes we like and against changes we don’t – and we are invited to live those principle and show by example how sound our reasons are. But the fact that someone was at Burning Man 15 years ago doesn’t protect them from being offended or upset or challenged this year. Burning Man will change, because the only organizations that don’t are the ones that are about to die. Or to kill.

When I think of the lessons of history for Burning Man, the lesson that comes to me is that connecting with the larger culture is a virtue. The fact that the larger culture is so absurdly commercial is unfortunate, but it’s a fact: any movement that can’t swim through those waters is going to drown. Without rising to the defense of the Board (I have no idea what their motives are), I will say that the executives of every arts organization I’ve ever encountered were all focused on money. The San Francisco opera won’t leave me alone; the neighborhood arts groups wants me to “buy” a tile that my name will go on; public radio stations that I already pay for with my tax dollars hold pledge drives twice a year; the small theater company I frequent sells me a ticket, then asks me to Facebook and Tweet my friends, and then hits me up for a donation. My film producer friend is on Indiegogo right now, seeking fiscal support for his vision.

Is this because arts and art groups (along with social welfare groups) attract money loving bloodsuckers? Or does it say something about what it takes to do art and social welfare on anything more than a private scale in the world?

Frankly Burning Man is the least aggressive fundraiser for an organization of its kind I’ve ever encountered. Maybe that will change with the non-profit; maybe I’m just being fooled by people who are better at this than me. You could be entirely right. (I have friends who say you are.) But the dirty secret of the arts world is art and money are conjoined twins. We don’t like to talk about it because a group of 19th century romantics decided there was something dirty about making a living: that the bourgeois sensibility is locked in eternal war with art. But like most dichotomies, it’s as false as it is simple. Most of those particular romantics had family money. They were not the descendants of Dr. Johnson, who labored in penury for nine years to produce his magnum opus: they were the children of merchants and aristocrats who were rebelling against their parents. They were able to condemn people for making a living precisely because they didn’t have to. Our whole attitude to art and money was largely set by people who held us in contempt.

Dr. Johnson, incidentally, later said that “Nobody but a blockhead ever wrote except for the money.” So obviously he didn’t feel that nine years of impoverished toil were their own reward, or even particularly good for the soul.

To the extent that you want to argue that Burning Man isn’t really a radical zone of anti-commerce, I’ll agree with you in the abstract: but on the level most of us live our lives, to go out and spend a week surrounded by people and not pay for anything is actually a hugely anti-commercial act. Most of us never get anywhere near that in the rest of our lives. And I’ll grant you that this says more about the sad state of our culture than it does about Burning Man per see, but, it’s not nothing. For most of us, it’s huge. For the people we most want to reach, it’s enormous: it opens the door to the idea that we can live differently far more than any number of lectures would.

But the point is that people have to make the decision to move away from commerce in their lives – to hold that there are things beyond financial value – for themselves. They can’t be pushed or talked into it. What works best is for them to experience what that’s like, and take it up from there when and if they’re ready. And to create that experience, Burning Man has to be concerned with financial realities. It has to be fiscally functional. I don’t hold that against them. Precisely because I try to learn from history.

The people who could do what you and I seem to want – run an art and service organization with little thought for money – have historically been monastics. Monasteries. . . Dominican, Franciscan, Cistercian, Zen, Tibetan. . . have lasted for hundreds of years and combined artistic expression (chant and paintings and calligraphy, and more) with public service and vows of poverty. And they’re awesome. I have the utmost respect for monasteries and monastics as transmitters of art and culture.

But obviously they were (and are) attached to strong religious orders – exactly the thing that neither of us wants Burning Man to become. So we’re at a quandary, wanting to get behavior that comes with monasticism without any of the ethos that inspires it. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know if Burners want to be that. It’s all very much a work in progress.

In some ways this seems to me to be the struggle of the post-modern society: how do we get responsible communal behavior out of people who are fully emancipated?

Burning Man hasn’t answered that question, but I think it’s one of the many areas it helps illuminate – and better than most I’ve seen.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: Granola at Wal-Mart — if you’re into granola — is certainly some kind of progress, but it sure isn’t a revolution. I mean, the granola’s there, but Wal-Mart is still there too, and so is the military-industrial complex that Smedley Butler and Eisenhower warned us about. Changing the world by outliving the older people whose taste in consumer goods don’t match yours seems like pretty weak sauce; is that really an accomplishment? ‘Twas ever thus, for every new generation in the consumerist world!

Let’s note, too, that we’re talking about a kind of change that is only possible in a society glutted with abundance and well-laden with the stolen and bloody fruits of empire; there must be a thousand grim little principalities in which you eat whatever the hell is available, and it’s probably the same stuff your great-great-great-great-grandparents ate, and there’s probably not enough of it.

But I’m not being fair to you. You specifically asked your friend Bill what the back-to-the-land movement accomplished, not what all the political unrest of the ’60s got done. In that much smaller context, granola at Wal-Mart seems like a pretty decent little victory, for Americans and other Wal-Mart shoppers. . . but it’s irrelevant — or worse — to the Third World (is there quinoa in your granola?). As an example of sweeping positive change, it’s a bar that is set miles too low.

Maybe I’m still not being entirely fair. Your point was that the back-to-the-land movement’s greatest achievement came as a direct product of the movement being co-opted, not that it was an achievement that represented any real change for the better.

I think as contemporary First World people we find it pretty easy to settle for less than we had in the past, because most of the compromises we’re forced to make still work out to be insanely good deals for us. We’d all still vastly prefer to be the brokest, most homeless and nameless person in America than the anointed Pope-King of some famine-stricken tribe of desperately malnourished refugees being hunted down and slaughtered by child soldiers, so we tend to accept the subversion of our ideals for profit relatively cheerfully. . . like, it’s not that hard to tighten your belt a little when your ribs and your spine are total strangers to each other.

We see examples of that all time; Obamacare blithely accepted as a reasonable substitute for the single-payer option, for instance. It’s a shameful national failure that values profits over people, but it still beats having no hospitals or healthcare options at all and being chronically undernourished, like one person in eight on this planet. The price of gasoline is another; it may seem outrageously high when you consider the price of a barrel of oil in the UAE, but most of us can still afford to drive when we really need to, and gas is still cheap here compared to the prices you see in some parts of the world.

Note that Turks and Brazilians, who live on thinner margins than we do, take to the streets instead of doing the Yanqui thing, which is muttering and bitching and tossing down another tall cold one and lighting up the night with the glow of our TV sets instead of going out and tossing a brick through a bank window, or setting fire to a police car.

That’s what I see with Burning Man: an anarchic utopia a la Hakim Bey that has already been destroyed by people seeking to profit from it, but whose ruins and crumbs are still so much better than the world outside of it that not many people see fit to call foul. I’d probably feel the same if well-populated autonomous zones were a more available, um, commodity. . . but they’re not, they’re rare and precious, so the theft and destruction of one seems like a major crime to me even if we do get ice cream and cake as a consolation prize.

I could walk out alone into the desert and get all kinds of freaky all by myself, but that’s not any kind of movement and it wouldn’t be nearly as fun or as meaningful or as significant as doing it with fifty or sixty thousand of my closest friends. . . and therein lies the heart of my reasons for being as hostile to the Org as I typically am: Burning Man the Temporary Autonomous Zone cannot be retrieved; it is lost. . . but if burner consciousness can be raised to the point that most of us begin to clearly recognize the difference between what Burning Man is and what it was before it was co-opted, then we can increase the autonomy in all our lives, every day, and we can make that freaky walk into the desert together in total freedom, without being moth-hypnotized by the compromised light of Larry Harvey’s corporate-sponsored effigy. We can’t save Burning Man, but we can save burner culture!

You cite other non-profit organizations as being focused on money, but the Burning Man Org is not non-profit, not yet, and maybe not ever. They certainly have been dragging their feet about making that promised transition. Even if they do, it will be an illusion as a transition, because it won’t mean they won’t be turning a profit; mostly it’ll mean that they’ll get huge tax breaks and more access to donations, and will get to enhance their prestige by invoking the powerfully deceptive mumbo-jumbo of “non-profit organization.” They’ll still be able to pay themselves obscenely large salaries, and it’s the salaries of Board members that make the difference between an organization that is focused on money for the sake of fulfilling its mission statement, and an organization that is focused on money as an end unto itself. When the Board of the San Francisco Opera start paying themselves millions and spending only a fraction of their organization’s donated income on producing opera, get back to me about how they’re just like the Burning Man Org.

Just for the record, I’m not one of those people who thinks money is evil, and I see nothing wrong with making a living, even in the non-profit arts sector. What I see something wrong with is co-opting what other people do, trumpeting it as your own work, and making a living off that, especially when doing so destroys what was best about the thing you’re co-opting. The Org constantly, consistently takes credit for Burning Man as though Larry and a handful of his friends built it all with their own hands, when the reality is that 99% of it has been built by non-Org people just trying to reach that now-fictional Autonomous Zone they were promised, and paying for the privilege!

Even the Ten Principles, to a large degree, were transplanted whole from Cacophony Society ethics. . . but for every burner who knows that, there must be fifty or a hundred who have never even heard of Cacophony, and think the Ten Principles are sacred laws that sprang directly from the godlike brow of our Dear Leader. By failing to separate “Burning Man” from “the Org” in some of your comments, you’ve managed to strongly underscore the false reality the Org has created, in which they get credit for everything.

At this point I should probably play my own Devil’s Advocate and say that I can’t fault the people on the Board for what they’ve done as much as I’d like to. Given access to tens of millions of dollars, most people would immediately be corrupted, and would immediately start spinning justifications for their corrupt behavior. To point the finger at the members of the Board and cry out “J’ACCUSE!” is to hold them to a higher standard than is truly reasonable; it’s denouncing them for being ordinary people and not heroes. However, their non-heroic behavior has destroyed something fragile, unique, and terribly valuable, so although what they’ve done is just nothing, zero, zilch, zip, nada when compared with, say, what the Nazis did, the excuses and the support base that make it all possible are the same; the scariest thing about the Nazis is that they were human beings, not monsters, and the same is true of the Org. . . so while of course it’s absurd and over-the-top to compare the Org with the Nazis, there’s still this truth to be gleaned from the comparison: what we must fight against if we want to build our bold new utopia is what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil.” The enemies of utopia aren’t heartless, fanged horrors sprung from the depths of Hell; the enemies of utopia are mediocre minds and weak wills that take the path of least resistance or succumb to the temptations of personal gain at the expense of the community. . . because that’s all it takes to bring Heaven crashing down around our ears, and keep it down. We can’t expect the people running things to be heroes, but heroes are what we absolutely need.

CAVEAT MAGISTER: At this point we’re not really talking about Burning Man, we’re talking about politics. And I have not yet begun to get wordy!

You want a revolution, and while I agree that a revolution is absolutely justified (they usually are), I am deeply suspicious of revolutions, no matter how justified.

I’m positively Burkean in my observation that the customs and protections of a civil society are incredibly fragile and easily broken, and nearly impossible to rebuild once damaged. Barbarism is never far from the door, always closer than we think, and so the attempt to build a better tomorrow by tearing down the culture of yesterday is far, far, more likely to destroy progress already made than it is to advance us closer to a humane future.

The French Revolution led to the Reign of Terror; the Taiping Rebelling led to 50 million dead; the Russian Revolution lead to Stalin and Gulags and famine; the Maoist revolution in China led first to the horrors of the Great Leap Forward, and then to the horrors of the Cultural Revolution … which still can’t be safely spoken of in China. The Cuban revolution led to 50 years of dictatorship and political prisons under one man. The Iranian revolution led to the absolute control of religious fanatics over every aspect of daily life. And so on, and so on.
All of those revolutions were completely justified. There’s no question. It’s just that none of them achieved their stated aims, and instead they generally turned out as bad or worse than the thing they revolted against.

There are, absolutely, markers you can put in the other column. The American Revolution turned out pretty well. The Indian revolution against the British was a clear overall win. The Velvet Revolution, certainly. But it’s pretty slim pickings compared to the long line of occasions when, far from serving the interests of the oppressed, the revolutions they fought took on the characteristics of the thing they fought against. Revolutions generally eat their parents and their children in the same gulp.

(The American labor and Civil Rights movements, incidentally, don’t belong on either list: they weren’t revolutions because they weren’t trying to tear down the system. They were trying to get equal access to the system, and improve it. Its fringe elements were revolutionary – advocating the overthrowing of American culture – but most of the movement wanted a piece of the pie, not to rebuild the pie. I would say the same thing about the recent struggle for marriage equity: “give us access to a legimate institution in order to secure its legitimacy by making it more just” is far different from “tear down the institution.”)

When you say “The enemies of utopia aren’t heartless, fanged horrors sprung from the depths of Hell; the enemies of utopia are mediocre minds and weak wills that take the path of least resistance or succumb to the temptations of personal gain at the expense of the community,” I agree with you. Wholeheartedly. But those people are most empowered in the midst of a revolution, when the customs, traditions, and authorities that kept their weakness in check are broken on an alter of righteousness that they were never following anyway. The path of least resistance is always set lower in a revolution.

This has nothing to do with Burning Man.

But I think it does bear on the context in which we see Burning Man: to the extent you want it to be the harbinger of a revolution, I don’t. Once again, you called it: we in the first world really do have so much to lose, even if I’m horrified at how readily we’re letting some of it go. (Insert Benjamin Franklin quote here)

I’m thrilled if Burning Man leads to incremental changes in human behavior; I’m ecstatic if it inspires people to make their city block more sustainable; to the extent they recognize the value of non-commoditized space and events, I’m glad. To the extent it creates a personal transformation that turns someone away from the banality of evil and towards a more conscious life, I bow to them and the personal journey they’ve made.

This may seem too little, too late – and I’m sympathetic to that view. We don’t have time for incremental change. But nothing else usually works. “Worse change faster” isn’t a slogan I’ll march to. So I’m not the least bit bothered if Burning Man is an agent of incremental cultural improvements, rather than revolutionary transformations.

But those are some of my political views, which have nothing to do with the question of what Burning Man is or isn’t, and how it actually relates to the world. Indeed, I’m particularly of the opinion that for all the good it may do in the world, Burning Man isn’t fundamentally something instrumental. It is not politics by other means. The very nature of possibility and freedom that it embodies suffers when it’s yoked too tightly to an outside agenda.

As to the Org … it’s absolutely not the culture. Nor is it the leader of the culture, though a lot of people look to them for guidance. (Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes because they just haven’t really thought this through, sometimes because they’re social climbers.) And to the extent anyone mistakes them for the embodiment or leadership of Burner culture, I’ll disagree with them. But as to the question of how the Org acted back in the day… I wasn’t there. I mean, I know people I love and respect who feel as you do, and people I love and respect who don’t … and I wasn’t there. I have no clue what I would have thought, or my expectations would have been, in the heat of the 1990s when the event was expanding exponentially and everything seemed both possible and on the brink of collapse. I have no idea what I would have thought in those moments.

I came later, after the Org was a settled fact and the 10 Principles were codified, and I have heard many oral histories and conflicting accounts from people whose struggle that was, and damned if I know. Is it an easy way out to take a pass? Sure, but unless and until my experience gives me insight (or I’m able to hear a truly definitive account), I’m taking that pass. I have a moral duty to stand up for people I see being wronged, and to stand beside my friends if the world takes up arms against them. I don’t think I have a moral duty to take a stand on an issue that I honestly don’t know what to think about. I really don’t know what a radical Burkean intellectual with an attraction to decadence does in that particular crucible.
What pains me about the answers I’ve given you is that there’s so little whimsy in them: they strongly suggest I take myself very seriously. Now I think to some extent you’ve brought that out in me by asking the questions that I wanted to rise to, and I can’t regret that. The truth is that I very rarely get a chance to talk on this level about this kind of thing with someone who’s willing to call bullshit. I took the opportunity.

But at some level, if I really had the courage of my convictions, when you asked how Burning Man changed me I would have sent you a long rambling story about the time I was really high on E and manifested a bicycle to take me to Opulent Temple (which is the only place I go at Burning Man because it’s got the biggest lights), and how unfair it was that the Sheriff’s office said I stole the bicycle, because obviously they’re just not spiritual enough, and that’s how I found my calling in life: liberating police vehicles. Let them manifest their own goddamn wheels! Give me back my bicycle!

Deep down, I fear I blew it by not saying that.

I also should have found a way to put product placement of some kind in every paragraph. “Burning Man is NOTHING like Mecca! At best, it’s like the refreshing sensation of an icy cold Coca-Cola!” “Revolutions eat their children, much in the same way children eat Skittles. Man can they taste that rainbow!”

Dammit! I bow my head in shame.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: This exchange is getting pretty long, and it’s never, ever going to end if I start talking politics with you. . . so in answer to your skeptical pessimism regarding revolution, there’s just one little word I want to throw at you: Iceland!

It’s good that you and I can have a meeting of the minds like this, and I do appreciate your participation. . . I look forward to seeing you on the playa.

Whatsblem the Pro recently published a very interesting discussion with Official Burning Man blogger (Burning Man Official Blogger? Burning Man Blog Official?) Caveat Magister. One aspect of the discussion was the way art and money have always been intertwined, in some ways it is a symbiotic relationship.

The most successful way the art world has dealt with this throughout history seems to be the Patronage model. The wealthy patron provides the artists with room, board, and materials, usually in a space that lets them get away from the conventional world to focus on their art. The Patronage model has always existed at Burning Man – if you follow Whatsblem’s icthyosaur link you can read about one such anonymous donor who by creating the Generator in Reno is enabling other Burners with a collaborative space, not just their own tribe. In San Francisco, some of the Burners I know have recently “crowdsourced patronage” with [freespace], an experiment in temporary zones that hit its Indiegogo fundraising goal and appears to have been successful.

It is the Patronage model that is most hurt by the BMOrg’s heavy handed “Do Not Use The Words Burning Man” and “we own your photos not you and we will charge magazines to publish them” approach, especially in 2013 when we live in this brave new world of crowdsourcing, social networking, and the sharing economy. “Snapchat” and “you voluntarily assign copy rights to us implicit in your ticket purchase”, are two alien dialects that may possibly never be translated into a common communication. Just as BMOrg are starting to really crack the whip and get the leash out on destroying any members of their community who dare to use photos of themselves or their camps at Burning Man – even the dinosaur content industry, which fought against the Internet for more than a decade, is now adopting the “all you can eat” inclusive, sharing economy models of Pandora, Netflix, Soundcloud, Instagram, Facebook, Hulu. Ten years ago, these guys were thinking like BMOrg are today. In ten years time, they will all be trying to figure out how to be more like Snapchat – which is a truly new business model, one that captures the zeitgeist. Snapchat away all you want, if the photos are temporary how can BMOrg ever catch you?

In the meantime, any Burners who want to attend Burning Man have BMOrg to deal with. They’re struggling to catch up with the 2000′s, when people could take pictures from a cellphone. They only recently decided they should try to own YouTube. Patronage? That’s a model of the arts from the Rennaissance. That would be too hard, too complicated.

“We are going to have a photo shoot in front of your art car, and we are going to make $150,000 from it, and you can not mention on your Art Car’s web site that it is going to be at Burning Man from Aug 26-Sep 2, and you can not include a 12 second YouTube video of your art car at Burning Man”…wow. Just wow. It’s reverse patronage – the artists make the art and pay for it, and the Patrón collects all the cash. And then doesn’t even just starve the artist by collecting the cash – punishes them too. Makes it as hard as they can for the artist to sell their art anywhere else, to try to make a living from the tens of thousands of people who love enjoying their work for free at Burning Man after they had to raise money themselves just to get it there and take it away. BMOrg: “You can’t claim that you painted this painting at my house. It’s my house and I make the rules!” – Burner Artist “but you just made $150,000 selling photos of people at your house in front of my painting. Can’t I even show people a photo of my painting?” 

Some people were amazed to learn that they couldn’t use photos of their camp for camp fundraisers, or couldn’t have any other references to Burning Man. Others were amazed that this was even an issue, saying “so what? These are the rules, why can’t you obey them”?

In the last week, a recent case has been brought to my attention. This case clearly shows the way BMOrg enforces these policies – robotic, like Nazis. “you’re breaking our rules, take it down”. It also highlights how arbitrary this process is – as I will show you, in trying to protect a trademark for an arts festival, and their right to monetize all images, they arrogantly assume that they own “anything” that remotely looks like “their” festival, wherever in the world it happens. What are the trademark looks of their festival? It’s a statue of a man on some kind of base, and some street signs. Other than that, it’s the stuff that we bring and display that creates the “Burning Man look”. This story is a classic case study of the unfairness of Burning Man’s approach to this issue – do they really feel that their income stream is threatened? Sadly, this is a case where there really seems to be no reason – other than “we make the rules and we tell you what to do”. If there is a reason, the overwhelming amount of good they are rejecting by judging generous behavior to be “bad” because of rules being interpreted in word and not spirit – is a crying shame. “Throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. This tale shows how the organizational structure that is at the top of this pyramid, has changed from “hey, we’ll give you guys a sandpit, you bring your toys, and let others play with them too, everyone will want to play in the sandpit because it has the best toys and people share them”… to “if you ever brought your toy to the sandpit, that’s ours forever and we’ll make as much money from it as we want, and we’ll try to stop you playing with your toys outside the sandpit”.

Welcome to the Unfortunately Not Curious Case of the Fish Tank.

A motorcycle at Burning Man? That’s against the rules! Oh, you didn’t get the memo? It’s called the Constitution of the United States of America, you should read it. Burning Man does not own United States Government parks. The Bureau of Land Management looks after 264 million acres of them. Can you park your art car amongst those acres, without having to pay a fee to Burning Man? Of course. Land of the free, home of the brave! Take a gun, there might be bears. What about on the national day of independence? Surely you have to pay a fee to Burning Man then? You’re on Federal land, with a vehicle that you once took to Burning Man! Again, no. It’s a free country, which means you don’t have to give money to Burning Man for things that have nothing to do with Burning Man… photo by Burnersxxx copyright(c) Burners.Me 2012 All Rights Reserved. This photo may be used by anyone for any reason including to make money; except for Black Rock City LLC or any of their agents or to make money for the Burning Man organization or any of its subsidiaries at any time for any purpose, whether commerical, personal, or charitable.

I first met the Fish Tank at 2010′s Burning Man, Metropolis. It liked to park outside my RV with its killer sound system blasting away while the operators took a day time nap. I loved it! And we were at 10 & J, so about as far away from disturbing the neighbors as you can get and still be in Black Rock City. I was camped with Villains and Vixens who joined the larger umbrella of Overkill. This was the first time I had been in an organized camp – organized in the sense that there were wristbands for meals served twice a day, a chef cooking for 100 people, a sound system inside a 100-foot authentic Mongolian yurt, camp workers in hexayurts, high rollers in Mega-RVs, hot masseuses on staff, live improv shows every night. That’s right, the kind of camp that haters like to hate – the dreaded “plug and play camping”. You know, as in “I got a low income ticket and I rode around on art cars for free all week. I didn’t buy one drink, people kept handing me them for free. Oh, but I hate those people in RVs, they just stay in them the whole time and never contribute anything to the party, they’re not real Burners”. A common attitude amongst the Burnier-than-thous, which completely misses the point that no people on low income tickets are bringing art cars to Burning Man or putting down their credit card for an open bar for 70,000 people. And we know the guys at the gate collecting $25 million+ aren’t either.

Radical self-reliance, or Safety Third?

The stated reason for Burnier-than-thous to be against Plug-n-Play camping is it’s not radically self reliant. But if you’re standing in line waiting for your chance at a stinky portapotty, and watching gorgeous supermodels going in and out of a rockstar bus with air conditioned marble bathrooms…is there maybe a teensy weensy bit of jealousy that could be the real factor? No? You’re just a hater, and it’s them that’s in the wrong? They are so radically self-reliant that if they need the bathroom or a shower they can have one, and you are so reliant on The Man that you have to stand in line for a stinky portapotty that you hope’s gonna have some paper in it. It’s easy to hate the guy driving past you in the Lamborghini, until you are that guy.

Let’s say that you think there’s some potential danger involved in the 16-hour plus trek back through Exodus, Reno, the mountain passes and the congested freeways of San Francisco at the end of Labor Day weekend. There are 30,000 vehicles taking pretty much the same trip at the same time, and many most are being driven by people who’ve been partying their ass off for a week in an environment where whatever you want will manifest and it’s free, and sleep is difficult due to noise, heat, dust, or FOMO. So let’s say you want to do the sensible thing – get someone to be the designated driver. Well that sucks at Burning Man, not everyone is going to put their hand up and volunteer to be that – especially if it’s not their RV.

So, deals get cut, people get paid, maybe they get a ticket and a place to stay, maybe someone kicks in for their camp dues. Which in most cases, are splitting the expenses of the camp amongst the people who camp there, not lining peoples’ pockets. And someone is hired as the driver. That person looks after the RV, keeps it tidy, keeps strays out, meets with the honey wagon and the water truck if they can flag them down.

To me, this is not only reasonable, it is sensible. If you could afford it, you’d be crazy not to do it. Lives are on the line, and the danger factor is massively amplified compared to normal driving. The statistics support this. To many Burners though, what I have just described is anathema. The worst evil in Burning Man. Rich people in RVs with camps with staff. How dare someone pay someone to go to Burning Man! Burning Man is about Decommodification and Gifting!

What about the sparkle pony who gets a free ticket, a place to stay in the RV, even a flight out there? What does she have to do to the RV owner before she is considered a whore? Sexual acts? Nudity? Just accepting the gift?

Where do you draw the line? This is a question we keep asking on this blog, and we try to highlight where lines are being drawn by BMOrg that are not fair, and detrimental to the event. And not just BMOrg, certain factions in the Burner community too. Often though, the Burners who are “line drawers” or “Burnier-than-thous” parroting the company line, are not independent spokespeople but part of factions or groups within the bigger group. BMOrg, the Theme setter, the Petri Dish controller. Memes are spread through tribes and then get accepted as unassailable truths. The Org is so vast and nebulous with its volunteers and friends and contractors, it’s become harder to tell anymore who’s a “BMOrg Burner” (aka Kool-Aid drinker) and who’s a civilian with no dog in the fight  - other than to just enjoy the party. Many of the people critical to our posts on this blog have later come out to admit they work for the BMOrg. Fair enough, we welcome criticism, and if we dish it out we need to be able to take it. We enjoy the party, but we’re not there now, so this is a more appropriate time for criticism. We call them out when they deserve it.

The idea of “don’t use the words Burning Man” and “don’t use photos of your camp” for camp fundraisers, was just so extreme for me that I believe it is a line drawn that BMOrg needs to retreat back behind. Or, just loosen the reins a bit. What is it they’re afraid of?

As far as I can deduct, BMOrg’s primary concern driving this is that others will be misrepresenting the values of their brand “Burning Man”, and that this will therefore lower the value of the brand – by reducing the maximum amount of money they can get licensing it. They make royalties from people selling movies about Burning Man. They charge $150,000 to magazines to print photos of the event. Who the photographers are, and who they work for, is not really relevant. There are many professional photographers at Burning Man, there are many amateurs too. In writing this blog, I very frequently go to images.google.com and type “Burning Man”. There’s a lot of them. In fact, Burning Man is such a visually wonderful interactive spectacle, that I would be surprised if there are many people who went there and didn’t take at least one photo. Especially now that pretty much any mobile phone is a camera, not even smartphones.

BMOrg’s stated reason for having to own every photo, video, and other type of recording ever taken at their event, is so that they can protect the privacy of participants. Which they don’t seem to be all that effective at, given how many images are floating around the Internet for free, often containing partial or full nudity.

Another reason, which seems more likely given the way this organization operates, is that they want to own as much of the IP of the event as they can, so that only they can make money from it. This “no-one can profit from Burning Man but us” idea is wrapped in ideology and the (Cargo) Cult-ish 10 Principles. The shrink-wrapped packaging seduces you that this is a party where everything is free, it’s not about money. It’s about being yourself, expressing and sharing yourself, giving to others. In reality though, their IP ownership policy has more in common with Citizen Kane or how Rupert Murdoch has run his business for the last 60 years. It’s the Mickey Mouse model – as in this is what Disney, a massive owner of content, does. We own the content, only we make money licensing the content, if you use the content and try to make money from it that’s piracy and we’ll sue.

Hollywood has spawned a whole industry, a whole economy. Hollywood is an ecosystem, with a symbiotic relationship between all the participants. When Hollywood is winning, all the people working in Hollywood are winning. More interesting projects, more jobs, more opportunities, more people. It’s a good example because we can also see how when Hollywood is hurting, that hurts many of the people in it too. We saw this in 2008 with the 3-month long Screenwriter’s strike. You’d think that there are so many scripts sitting in filing cabinets in Hollywood that they could punch them out for years without ever hiring another writer again, but no, this was a major disruption to the industry. Actors seemed to be the ones hurt most, and people who made their living renting equipment to the different productions. The catering companies. The people owning the studios, they were all fine; but the broader ecosystem was doing it tough.

Burning Man is like a backwards Hollywood. Flip the model on its ass. All the theme camps, all the art cars, all the actors, all the costumes – that all belongs to one pyramid-shaped entity. Not the one who paid for it. The one that you paid. The Man that you worship. You paid them for the privilege of owning whatever spectacle you chose to create for them. Who’s them? BMOrg. In Hollywood, an actor can come from nothing, achieve rapid success, and then reach the ladder down to where they came from to elevate others. Like Mark Wahlberg’s tale in Entourage, David Bowie playing Andy Warhol in the true life tale of Jean-Michel Basquiat, or Good Will Hunting wunder-kid Ben Affleck who is now a Director and chooses actors to get jobs in his movies.

In Burning Man’s view of how this economy should work, we Burners pay BMOrg’s salaries and expenses, and we pay them a profit to put in their pockets every year, and in addition we pay all our own expenses, we pay to create the art, we bring large amounts of supplies and give them away for free, they own it all, and if we ever want to use photos or the name of the party we created, we better stop. That’s theirs.

Fallen Angel, Basquiat 1981

In Burning Man, you bring the best costume? BMOrg will put it in photo shoots and make money. Bring a cool art car? BMOrg will put it in photo shoots and make money. Put the same photo on your web site where you try to raise funds to support the art car? BMOrg will send you cease-and-desist letters, escalating in tone, until they’re ready to sue and take even more of your money.

Think I’m over-stating it? I’m understating it. And when I say “make money from photo shoots”, each single one is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Recently we discussed their IP policies in the context of theme camps: Do Not Use the Words Burning Man. The policy applies beyond camp placement, anyone who buys a ticket is assumed by their legal department to have consented to it. So this is really about anyone using any photos from Burning Man in any way that is not clearly “personal use” (or “fair use”).

An art car is sometimes built and owned by one person. Just like an art project. Usually though, it’s a team effort. And this is one of the great things about Burning Man. In Whatsblem’s recent interview with Caveat Magister, they talk about the way the LA Burner orientation is to build a garden together. They get it – bringing us together in a [free|space] of fun and play, is why we all go to this party. Likewise, usually it is a team effort to put a camp together. For larger camps, someone has to pay to rent the generators, or the port-a-potty, or buy the supplies. Usually a few people chip in, or maybe everyone in the camp pays a fixed fee to cover the budget. A large camp budget is hundreds of thousands of dollars – a major camp on Esplanade, maybe $350,000. I would name them but I wouldn’t want to Dis them…those are some of my peeps…

How big is a large camp? 50+? 100+? The camp I was in last year had about 260 people. 70% virgins. I won’t be doing that again. This year I have 20 close friends who all want to camp together, with a varying amount we can afford to spend per day. We all understand to stay somewhere costs money every day. And we want some luxuries, and luxuries cost extra. Some in the camp can afford more than others. Everyone has to chip money in, including some people we’ve never met, friends of friends. We have people coming from more than 10 countries, and even from the US everyone is coming from totally different places with totally different logistical issues.

We need systems to communicate with each other. Packing lists. A location. Walkie-talkies, GPS. Bikes. Sound system, booze. Barbecue, ways to cook. Water, tons of it. We use the Internet to co-ordinate, the latest technologies. Those of the camp with experience, share theirs with the rest of our friends on our facebook group.

But sooner or later, inevitably, money has to be spent for the camp. And money has to be collected for the camp.

And here’s where the complications begin. Money means spending. Spending means credit cards. Credit cards require bank accounts.

Do you pick one person, to be “the Bank” like when we played Monopoly as kids – everyone gives all the money to them, everyone trusts them to do the right thing, and everything goes through their personal account?
What about for an art car, where multiple people maybe from different States might be driving it, multiple people have kicked money into it and feel like part-owners. Who’s going to get the insurance policy? Who’s it going to be registered with at the DMV (the real one, if it’s street legal)?

What if it’s in the Macy’s parade in New York and Macy’s wants to take a photo of it? Who owns the rights? The person who drove it to New York, the person who built it, Macy’s? Macy’s wants to know. Lawyers get consulted.

This problem, of how more than one person can own a thing, was solved about a thousand years ago. The invention was called a Corporation. Corporations have come so far, that they are now recognized as persons by the Courts. Although they have special rights that make them even more powerful than persons, due to the fact that they’re not acutally a person. For example, you can’t jail a corporation. And theoretically it can live forever.

So many artists and camps use this simple and widely accepted technique, common in the world of business and insurance and bank accounts, to manage the annual expenses involved with attending this event. What name is the bank account in? Do we have a Paypal account? How do we get the funds from Kickstarter or Indiegogo – or Art Grants? Shall we get a Square so we can take credit cards at our fundraiser? All of this is made quite simple by having an LLC (which means Limited Liability Corporation). It provides a legal structure so that if I kicked in $5000 for a sound system on an art car, and then someone else was driving the art car and someone jumped off it and hurt themselves, that person wouldn’t be able to come directly at me for being responsible. I just kicked some money into the company for the sound system. The company can have insurance to protect everyone.

Shouldn’t these companies be non-profits, if they want to go to Burning Man? Isn’t an LLC something that’s for profit? Well, technically yes. But you need to understand that things aren’t as simple as that in this country. You can’t just decide to start a company and decide to call it a non-profit so that you never have to pay tax. That’s not how the IRS works. You’ve got to apply to them for permission. In the last couple of years we started Reallocate.org and went through this process – it took 18 months, a lot of paperwork, and the pro bono contributions of a pretty big law firm. And this is for a legitimate charity, nothing to do with Burning Man, a philanthropic start-up.

It’s not practical to go through this process just so that you can get insurance and raise funds on an art car. And even if you did, it’s highly doubtful the IRS is going to just rubber stamp approve it. “Oh, you have an art car? OK, you never have to pay tax again then”. Having said that, I’m aware of a number of theme camps or art projects that do have a registered 501(c)3 charity – this year’s Control Tower springs immediately to mind.

Control Tower is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the purposes of Control Tower must be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

Just because something is a corporation, does not mean it’s trying to make money. Corporations can be holding structures, ownership structures, insurable entities. Just because the structure of a corporation is not that of a tax-exempt non-profit, does not automatically mean that it is trying to profit.

Which brings us to FishTankLLC.com . A company founded by Burner Dr Andy from New Jersey, a highly respected orthopedic surgeon who in his spare time teaches at the world’s top medical colleges, and help kids in the developing world, low income kids, and kids with special needs. In the US he puts hours every week into doing this. Andy is a Merry Prankster from the old school, he loves Burning Man, he loves fun, he designed his art cars to be very open and accessible. He completely gets the true spirit of Burning Man, openness and inclusion and gifting. Everyone involved in Fish Tank go out of their way to respect Burning Man’s rules. If you see Fish Tank on the Playa, hop on for a ride, or dance away next to us! Just don’t jump off.

This company was not founded on a grand vision of taking over the world with half-tank, half-fish mobile sound systems. It was founded on a much more practical basis: the need to manage the logistics and expenses of moving these art cars around the country to various events, one of which is Burning Man.

“Wait a minute – did he just say various events?” - yup. That’s right, although this might be hard to believe for some Burgins, Burning Man did not invent art cars, and is not the only place you can see them. Like mega-art car Robot Heart, Fish Tank has operations on both coasts. And between the two vehicles, Angler Fish and Fighting Fish, they have been to:

- Electric Daisy Carnival (Las Vegas)

- Free Form Festival (New Jersey)

- Art Basel (Miami)

- Houston Art Car Parade

- Hot August Nights (Reno)

- Halloween Parade (New York)

- BUKU (New Orleans)

Some people at these events recognize the Fish Tank from Burning Man. But the vast majority have no idea what Burning Man is, even in the art car world. I would challenge you to name any other Art Car you’ve seen at Burning Man, that has been to more events outside the Playa than the Fish Tanks. It’s not easy to get to these things from Point A to Point B, it’s expensive, it’s not profitable. $3/mile minimum. Without patronage it would not happen. The more art cars go to events away from Burning Man, the more people want to go to Burning Man to see all the art cars.

Wherever Fish Tank goes, it draws a crowd. This is in Reno, most of these kids knew about Burning Man but almost none had been. They didn’t realize there was so much stuff like this there:

In fact, people love the Fish Tank so much, that when Vogue magazine wanted to do a story about Burning Man, out of all the 500+ art cars available, they wanted to feature the Fish Tank. Which of course the friendly and accomodating owners of Fish Tank helped them out with. “Sure, we’ll stay here and not do anything else until your photographers are finished. Sure, I’ll move from my seat so I’m not blocking your shot. Sure, I’ll get off my own art car so that you can take it over and pose on it”. It’s a party, it’s a city, we’re gifting, whatever we can do to help out Black Rock City, we do.

In the past, Fish Tank has been asked to provide a “taxi service” for everyone from BMOrg to DPW to Alex Grey, helping people get across the Playa. It has transported the sick and wounded to the Medical Center, on many occasions. With the added bonus that the owner is a highly skilled surgeon, who I’ve seen provide plenty of free medical assistance at the party. If you’re a doctor, you swear to the Hippocratic Oath, which says if you see someone who needs your help, you help them. You don’t swear to the oath that says “if someone is sick in front of me, I will only let  the official Burning Man medical team help them”. It doesn’t work like that. Someone’s injured, you help them immediately, you radio for assistance, someone comes out on a quad bike, it’s often easier for the art car to take them over to the Medical Center than the quad bike. Or, someone passes out on the art car, you check their breathing and heartbeat, you take them to the medical center. You maybe even stay there with them for a bit to make sure they’re OK. This type of help doesn’t just get provided on the odd occasion by Fish Tank. It’s part of what Fish Tank is all about – leading by example, and representing a higher standard of civil behavior towards one another. Helping, caring, sharing, giving. Keep it nice and keep it happy, don’t rock the boat, don’t make waves, don’t piss people off. Calm, mellow, happy. Just create smiles – miles and miles of smiles.

Every year, the Fish Tank does an “art tour” of the Playa for mobility challenged or other special needs Burners. BMOrg themselves don’t put on anything like this to make the Burn easier for these people. Without Fish Tank doing this, they’d get nothing. They’d be lucky if they got approved to get a Segway or a golf cart.

So what does Fish Tank get, in return for both everything they’ve given at Burning Man, and for promoting the art cars of Burning Man to literally millions of people around the country? Without ever directly promoting Burning Man, without even using the words Burning Man – they don’t need to, they’re bigger than Burning Man. Burning Man is just one of the ponds that these Fish Tanks go to swim in. It’s the one with the most rules and restrictions, but they go out of their way to obey and respect them.

What do they get?

Well, they certainly didn’t get any money from Vogue. The $150,000 for the photo shoot went straight into the coffers of BMOrg (minus, we hope, the 3% cut the BLM takes of any money anyone makes on the Playa).

And, they didn’t get much support from Burning Man’s on site operations crew, the Department of Public Works. Last year Fish Tank couldn’t trade an entire keg of beer for the right to use their on-Playa fuel station. Only “special” art cars that had been given the secret handshake could do that. Later we found out that a keg is a miniscule, insignificant quantity of beer compared to the amount that camps like Distrikt were gifting them. But should they really have to beg? Fish Tank brought hundreds of gallons of extra fuel, and churned through a lot of it when they helped out the handicapped, and emergency situations with injured Burners. Who decides what’s fair, and what’s just plain mean? Shouldn’t Fish Tank at least get a gas top-up after that ride? It’s not like they’re trying to steal gas for free, they’d be happy to pay.

Nope, basically all they get is one big slap in the face. A “fuck you very much”. From DPW, from the BMOrg, from the Haters and the Enforcers and the Bullies.

Let’s start with the letter:

From: Nathan Aaron Heller 
To: “info@fishtankllc.com“ 
Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2013 8:59 PM
Subject: Use of Images Obtained at Burning Man

Greetings to you at Fishtank LLC,

My name is Nathan Heller, and I am from Burning Man’s Intellectual Property Team.

I hope this email finds you very well.

It appears you have been to the Burning Man event, and therefore you may know we take two principles very seriously: Decommodification and Gifting. We do not allow commercial use of images obtained at the Burning Man event without our prior permission. 

It was recently brought to our attention that your website is using images obtained at the Burning Man event. 

We really appreciate your efforts in reaching out to and informing the broader Burning Man community about your amazing art cars and your services, but we must ask that you please make the following changes at your soonest convenience:

We see images obtained at the Burning Man event are included on these pages of your website:

http://www.fishtankllc.com/events.html

http://www.fishtankllc.com/mobile-art.html

We also see a video with footage obtained at the Burning Man event is included on this page of your website:

http://www.fishtankllc.com/press.html

Perhaps you are unaware, non-personal use of images and video obtained at the Burning Man event is prohibited without prior written permission from the Burning Man Organization. We define “non-personal” as beyond friends and family. Guided by protecting the principles of Decommodification and Gifting, we also prohibit third party commercial use of images and video obtained at the event without our prior written permission, and we cannot permit these uses. This information is found in the Terms and Conditions for entry into Burning Man, on the back of the Burning Man ticket, in the Survival Guide mailed to all participants, and on our website. You can read the Terms and Conditions here:

http://tickets2.burningman.com/info.php?i=2386

We really appreciate your art and year-round outreach to the broader community, but we must ask that you please remove all uses of images and video obtained at the Burning Man event from your website, and please notify me once you have made the changes.

Please let me know if you have any questions, and I look forward to hearing from you at your soonest convenience.

You can read more on Burning Man’s approach to intellectual property here:

http://www.burningman.com/press/trademarks.html

Best Regards,

Nathan

___________

Nathan Heller
Burning Man Intellectual Property Team
nathan@burningman.com

“Brought to our attention” – ie some burnier-than-thou thought that snitching makes the world a better place. “Dear Burning Man. I would like to bring to your attention, that this art car says it is going to be at Burning Man. AND, they have a 12-second YouTube video at their site that appears to be from Burning Man. Yours truly, Anonymous”. ALERT ALERT! MAYDAY! Call in the SWAT team!

What’s the issue? Well, Fishtank, LLC has had money contributed to it by a number of people over the years. They formed an LLC to better keep track of the various contributions, which are in the tens of thousands from multiple people. It needs annual maintenance and the logistical expense of moving an art car like this around the country is quite high. They can keep finding more backers to gift money in, or the existing owners have to keep pouring money into it. It’s kind of like a boat, in this regard. Once you get it, you have to keep spending money on it whether you use it or not, and the more you use it, the more money you need to spend on it.

In the world of boats, most familiar to the people involved with FishTank, a standard model for this is Chartering. Which the Fish Tank does not do. We know of other Art Cars which are available for rent at certain events, such as the Lady Bugs from Brooklyn. But that doesn’t work, the FishTank is for fun, the owners want to be with it when it’s at all these events. The people who might want to rent it for Burning Man, are probably already on it and putting money into its expenses and upgrades.

What about selling tickets? That is completely against the open nature and design of the Fish Tank.  And against the Burner principles of Radical Inclusion and Decommodification. What about something like Tiki Island did – for a certain level of Kickstarter funding, you get seats for 2 people on an evening cruise. It’s possible, but just another form of ticket selling – and borderline a commercial use of the vehicle on the Playa.

So you’re left with fundraiser events and Kickstarter. And you can’t use any photos of the art car at Burning Man in any of them. No matter who took them. If there’s video of your art car on YouTube that someone else took, you can’t embed that in your site. Maybe, you can’t even link to it. People just have to take your word for it that the Art Car has been to TTITD.

Fish Tank wanted to be a bit different. If a corporate wants to use it for a big event or a photo shoot off Playa, they can book the whole thing to be at the event. It’s not like renting a car – this is a mobile art installation that has to be shipped cross-country, driven correctly, and maintained in a state of operation. If you’ve got the money, you can rent the Fish Tank, they’ll get it to you and drive you around. The ultimate limo.

But it’s not like they can do 3 of these events a week. Given the logistics, at best they would probably only get a few events per year. Which would pay for themselves and promote the Fish Tank further, but would also cause wear and tear on the vehicles and probably not leave them with enough profit to cover the storage cost and profit-forbidden Burning Man sharing.

Which left them with one other idea. They wanted to sell their own line of merchandise. This would be something they could do at any event they went to (except Burning Man). Often, after the parade is over, the Fish Tank stops, but people still mill around. Why not sell them a T-Shirt, or some quick-dry swim trunks?

None of these t-shirts mention Burning Man. None of these t-shirts have photos taken at Burning Man. They don’t even have a photo of the Fish Tank. So, how is it that Burning Man is being exploited by Fish Tank? How is Fish Tank hurting Burning Man, and what is the economic impact of that hurt? Anyone can go to YouTube and type “burning man fish tank” and see a hundred videos…but put a single one of those videos on your page, all of a sudden you’re attacking Gifting and Commodification, you’re exploiting Burning Man for your greedy personal commercial gain. YouTube, who sells ads while we’re watching videos, would seem to be the one who is actually doing this, actually making the money.

What did the Fish Tank do that was so bad in the eyes of Burning Man that they wanted to send their legal department on the offensive?

Well, let’s take a look. I will use screenshots because they may well change their web site to comply with Burning Man.

SCHEDULED APPEARANCES

2. Use of the words “Burning Man” or “Black Rock City”

Now, a word about words.  You may use the term “Burning Man” or “Black Rock City” as part of descriptive text, but do not use these words as the central adjective (or only adjective).   Burning Man does not want people confused about who is sponsoring or producing the event.  See the examples below.

 

Totally OK:

 

“A Fundraiser for Camp Forgotten Monsters at Burning Man.” Or

“A Fundraiser for the John Frum Institute Art Project at Burning Man,”

 

Not OK:

 

“Burning Man Fundraiser for Camp Forgotten Monsters.” or

“Burning Man Fundraiser for the John Frum Institute Art Project.”

 

Nuanced, but different. Two Fundraisers doing art events.

Reasonable enough, right? But irrelevant. Fishtank is not using the words Burning Man to promote a fundraiser, or an event that could be mistaken for some kind of association with Burning Man. It is using the words Burning Man to promote Burning Man! It is clearly saying that they will be at two upcoming festivals, one in Reno, and one Burning Man. They don’t claim to own Burning Man. No-one could possibly be confused about what this page says. The use of the words Burning Man is in the context of describing Burning Man. And, PS, they’re offering to gift rides for free to every single person who goes to that party. What’s in it for them? How is Fish Tank making money from this?

There’s got to be more to it than that. Well, not really. Let’s go to the next violations Nathan has pointed out:

Look familiar? Maybe, because you’re seen the Angler Fish Fish Tank at Burning Man. And you’ve seen Rob Buchholtz’s sculpture Wish, the high tech flower trees at  Burning Man. But this photo was taken at Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas. If an art piece was displayed at Burning Man once, does Burning Man deserve to get money any time that art piece is used away from Burning Man? Does Burning Man own any rights to photographs of things taken outside of Burning Man, if they were once at Burning Man?

Absolutely not. I would hope, not even for Honorarium Grant recipients – although I have to say, if it turned out that in order to get the grant you had to sign an even more onerous contract transferring the ownership of your art to Burning Man, it would not surprise me.

If you look at the photo above, it’s pretty easy to tell it’s not Burning Man. What are all those people doing wearing normal clothes? What are all the market stall tents in the background? You would think that in the circumstances (those being, not actually looking at the photo you are saying is a problem) BMOrg would open with the benefit of the doubt – “hey, we were wondering, are these photos from Burning Man, or something else”? But no, we don’t get reasonable doubt here. We don’t get innocent until proven guilty. We get “assume we’re in the right and you’re in the wrong because we’re BMOrg”.

Seriously. The guy didn’t even look at the photo. Look at it yourself and it’s clear.

Now, if these people were being disrespectful to Burning Man’s ownership policies, there would be photos all over this site of Fish Tank at Burning Man. There are none. Why is that? Surely that is because they are complying, not violating. But BMOrg doesn’t give them credit for this. It’s all or nothing – we’ll punish you for the 1%, not thank you for the 99%. No exceptions – except for the exceptions. Like, the Temple builder David Best. Nothing against David, I appreciate his art. But he was selling dinner with him at Burning Man for $1000 a pop. He certainly uses the words Burning Man to promote his career as a commercial artist, it would be hard for any major Burning Man artist not to. They should be able to.

Look at this a different way. What makes you think this photo is anything to do with Burning Man? It’s the art car, right?

We wrote about taking the Fish Tank to the Playa last July in this article: Shhhh…don’t mention Juplaya. I didn’t just write the article, I wrote the check to the logistics guys and bought the fuel. That stuff ain’t cheap…but it sure is fun. Guess what: if you go to the Black Rock Desert at other times of the year than Burning Man, it also can get dusty. And if you bring an Art Car with you , it might look like Burning Man. Especially if it’s a famous art car associated with Burning Man from Vogue magazine. But that doesn’t mean Burning Man owns it. Their permit for the commercial rights to the Playa is only for a small period of the year, anyone can show up at any time the rest of the year with art installations, art cars, theme camps, and take all the photos they want of it. They don’t even have to give BLM a cut, if it’s not an organized event.

So, what else? Well, this next one Fishtankllc is not disputing. Sure, they can take it down from their site – in fact I just checked, they already have. They can’t take it down from YouTube, it’s not theirs. The video belongs to whoever posted it, according to YouTube (part of Google). But is this really hurting Burning  Man?

Burning Man is going to make at least $25 million at the gate this year. This 12 second video – which really is illustrating the capacity of this art car to transport multiple people at any type of event – says nothing about Burning Man, doesn’t link the Fish Tank to Burning Man, and is clearly not confusing to anyone interested in the trademark “BURNING MAN” for Arts Festivals featuring some music. FishtankLLC are not throwing any such events.

Fish Tank took the link to this video down, but it is still there. On YouTube. Along with thousands of others. And, guess what? YOUTUBE IS MAKING MONEY OFF THEM. Here’s the most popular video, at 4.3 million views since last year someone is cashing in big time on all the hoop-la:

What is the problem Burning Man? Why is it OK for Google (which owns YouTube) to make tons of money out of Burning Man videos, and not OK for Fish Tank to link to 12 seconds of video hosted at that site, that doesn’t contain advertising of any sort, and really does not say anything or confuse anyone about Burning Man? They’re not showing the Man, they’re not showing any significant art work, they’re showing the Art Car they made and paid to take to your party and drive your guests around in.

Is it because you like to pick on the weak, but are afraid to pick on the real violators of your policies because that might be a tougher fight?

The more they force themselves out of the fund-raising process of the tribes, the more they will make themselves irrelevant to Burner culture. Embrace and extend, or resist and #fail.

I’m sad to say, I suspect there is some link between my past contributions to the expenses of this particular art car, their generosity in inviting me to off-Playa events with them that I covered on this blog, my recent post critical of the BMOrg’s IP policies…and this out of the blue attack from BMOrg accusing them of not understanding Gifting or Decommodification. Outrageous and unjustified charges, all Fish Tank can do is comply, there is no Ombudsman, no process of arbitration, no appeal. What’s fair, and what’s just, that never comes into the equation. It’s unfair and unjust for BMOrg to attack Fish Tank for using photos that have nothing to do with Burning Man. It’s unfair and unjust that Vogue does a photo shoot at Burning Man and features the vehicle, and Burning Man gets paid $150,000 by Vogue for photo shoots on the Playa, while the Fish Tank can’t even get a gas refill after driving handicapped kids around all day. But the greatest injustice of all, is that after everything Fish Tank has ever done for Burning Man, all it takes to incur the wrath of the BMOrg and being immediately accused of “being ignorant of and violating 2 of the sacred 10 principles” by the paid IP enforcer goons of the BMOrg…is linking to a 12 second YouTube video and providing the name and dates of the party.

If you don’t draw the line at this, then there is no line any more. Justice is over, tyranny has begun, we all mean nothing and must obey at all costs. “No spectators! You must participate so that we can monetize your radical self-expression! Content is king, the more unique the content you create for us at your expense and gift to our commercial organization to license it, the more we will be king! Do not use videos of Burning Man, unless you’re Google, then please make all the money you can from them so you can buy us!”

In 1985, anarchist writer Hakim Bey wrote a book called “T.A.Z. – Temporary Autonomous Zones, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism”. You can read it here for free, and the author encourages you to pirate it and quote freely from it.

Terrorism? Isn’t that bad? Aren’t we supposed to call the government up if we suspect anyone is indulging in some type of terrorism?

Not if it’s poetry. Not if it’s words. Not if it’s peaceful, non-violent protest. At least that’s how America used to be, when Presidents and their Executioners were kept in check by 2 other branches of government, and all 3 were ruled by a 250-year old documented called The Constitution Of The United States of America. It protects our rights to free speech, to get together in groups, and to practice whatever religion we believe in. The essence of a free country.

These days, whistleblowers get hunted to the ends of the earth like Edward Snowden, imprisoned and tortured without trial like Bradley Manning, journalists critical of the regime die in mysterious fiery car crashes like Michael Hastings. We have a young President elected on a populist platform of hope, change, ending war and Guantanamo Bay…who instead signs orders in the dead of night on New Years Eve that let him bypass the governmental and military structure, ignore the Geneva Conventions and murder, kidnap, and torture anyone at any time – no trial, no recourse, no appeal, not even any disclosure. He doesn’t have to explain his reasoning on this to anyone, since he is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and America is now being ruled under martial law. This is closer to a fascist dictatorship than a free democratic society.

Happy Independence Day, America!

George Orwell was a contemporary of Aldous Huxley, who was a French teacher at Britain’s most elite boarding school Eton when Orwell was studying there, before Huxley went to Hollywood in 1937. They predicted the rise of this technocratic globalist society, where national sovereignty would be eroded by illogical propaganda, and everyone would be in service of The Man.

Orwell said “if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face…forever”. Huxley wrote a letter to Orwell shortly after 1984′s publication, contrasting their different visions of the future:

In the letter Huxley began by echoing the positive reviews for 1984, telling Orwell ‘how fine and how profoundly important the book is’.

Going on to focus on the differences between their predictions, however, Huxley wrote: ‘The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it.

 

‘Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful.

‘My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World.’ 

The letter was written at Huxley’s California home in October 1949, a few months after the release of Orwell’s book.

They key point in both, of course, being that the ruling oligarchy would decide our future, and we would just have to accept it; through a combination of rules and drugs, we would be made to accept it, even want it. A bit like Burning Man?

Hakim Bey offered us a different solution. Instead of inheriting the government our ruling elites want us to, via political campaigns fuelled by their unlimited corporate coffers…Bey says that we can jam the culture, mess with it, highlight its unworkability…so that we may evolve to better forms of government. Just like science, where repeated experiments lead to improved understanding and breakthrough solutions, the organization of human beings needs experimentation to evolve.

Bey’s thoughts found a receptive audience in the 80′s and 90′s, in the creative chaotic anarchy that was the Cacophony Society. Their expedition to the desert, could be given a higher purpose, by naming it a TAZ. Burning Man was now a civic exercise, not disobedience, an experiment in trying to find other authority structures and symbols for the people to be obedient to. Bey’s book covers many of the elements that Burning Man is built on, including music, art, mysticism and black magic, post-apocalyptic living, boycotting pop culture, even good old S & M. Here’s a brief summary of the concept from Bey

THE TAZ AS A CONSCIOUS radical tactic will emerge under certain conditions:

1. Psychological liberation. That is, we must realize (make real) the moments and spaces in which freedom is not only possible but actual. We must know in what ways we are genuinely oppressed, and also in what ways we are self- repressed or ensnared in a fantasy in which ideas oppress us. WORK, for example, is a far more actual source of misery for most of us than legislative politics. Alienation is far more dangerous for us than toothless outdated dying ideologies. Mental addiction to “ideals”–which in fact turn out to be mere projections of our resentment and sensations of victimization–will never further our project. The TAZ is not a harbinger of some pie-in-the-sky Social Utopia to which we must sacrifice our lives that our children’s children may breathe a bit of free air. The TAZ must be the scene of our present autonomy, but it can only exist on the condition that we already know ourselves as free beings.

    

2. The counter-Net must expand. At present it reflects more abstraction than actuality. Zines and BBSs exchange information, which is part of the necessary groundwork of the TAZ, but very little of this information relates to concrete goods and services necessary for the autonomous life. We do not live in CyberSpace; to dream that we do is to fall into CyberGnosis, the false transcendence of the body. The TAZ is a physical place and we are either in it or not. All the senses must be involved. The Web is like a new sense in some ways, but it must be added to the others– the others must not be subtracted from it, as in some horrible parody of the mystic trance. Without the Web, the full realization of the TAZ-complex would be impossible. But the Web is not the end in itself. It’s a weapon.

    

3. The apparatus of Control–the “State”–must (or so we must assume) continue to deliquesce and petrify simultaneously, must progress on its present course in which hysterical rigidity comes more and more to mask a vacuity, an abyss of power. As power “disappears,” our will to power must be disappearance.

We’ve already dealt with the question of whether the TAZ can be viewed “merely” as a work of art. But you will also demand to know whether it is more than a poor rat-hole in the Babylon of Information, or rather a maze of tunnels, more and more connected, but devoted only to the economic dead-end of piratical parasitism? I’ll answer that I’d rather be a rat in the wall than a rat in the cage–but I’ll also insist that the TAZ transcends these categories.

A world in which the TAZ succeeded in putting down roots might resemble the world envisioned by “P.M.” in his fantasy novel bolo’bolo. Perhaps the TAZ is a “proto-bolo.” But inasmuch as the TAZ exists now, it stands for much more than the mundanity of negativity or countercultural drop-out- ism. We’ve mentioned the festal aspect of the moment which is unControlled, and which adheres in spontaneous self- ordering, however brief. It is “epiphanic”–a peak experience on the social as well as individual scale.

Liberation is realized in struggle–this is the essence of Nietzsche’s “self-overcoming.” The present thesis might also take for a sign Nietzsche’s wandering. It is the precursor of the drift, in the Situ sense of the derive and Lyotard’s definition of driftwork. We can foresee a whole new geography, a kind of pilgrimage-map in which holy sites are replaced by peak experiences and TAZs: a real science of psychotopography, perhaps to be called “geo-autonomy” or “anarchomancy.”

The TAZ involves a kind of ferality, a growth from tameness to wild(er)ness, a “return” which is also a step forward. It also demands a “yoga” of chaos, a project of “higher” orderings (of consciousness or simply of life) which are approached by “surfing the wave-front of chaos,” of complex dynamism. The TAZ is an art of life in continual rising up, wild but gentle–a seducer not a rapist, a smuggler rather than a bloody pirate, a dancer not an eschatologist.

Let us admit that we have attended parties where for one brief night a republic of gratified desires was attained. Shall we not confess that the politics of that night have more reality and force for us than those of, say, the entire U.S. Government? Some of the “parties” we’ve mentioned lasted for two or three years. Is this something worth imagining, worth fighting for? Let us study invisibility, webworking, psychic nomadism–and who knows what we might attain?

–Spring Equinox, 1990

Today Burning Man is a permanent fixture on the international party scene – an annual “leave no trace” event that takes over the same spot for 3 months a year, leaves permanent traces, owns 4 ranches and buildings nearby where their vehicles and equipment are stored. Burning Man has been commodified by the BMOrg’s massive international marketing blitz, featured in everything from Malcolm in the Middle and South Park to Town and Country and Popular Mechanics. It’s almost a household name. Time magazine listed it as one of the world’s “Great Places of History: Civilization’s 100 Most Important Sites“.  If there is a spectrum with “temporary” at one end and “permanent” at the other, then the Burning Man pendulum is swung very far towards the permanent end. The amount of rules required to operate a 70,000+ person city and a $25 million+ business, full of kids and the elderly as well as people who can be “radically self-reliant”, mean that it is less an experiment in Temporary Autonomous Zones and more an experiment in crowd-funding Web-based businesses.

The concept of the TAZ is no less potent, and in fact the success of Burning Man demonstrates its potential.

[freespace] founder Mike “Zuck” Zuckerman

[freespace] was born around an opportunity to rent a 14,000 square foot warehouse in the heart of San Francisco, for a month for $1. What could be done in a month? What could be done for free? Could something like this make a difference?

This week I went to check out [freespace], which is a non-profit project of Reallocate. It’s located at 1131 Mission St, between 7th and 8th, about a block away from BMOrgHQ. These days they’re trying to rebrand the Tenderloin as SOMA or Mid-Market, but it’s still the Tenderloin, folks. Anyone can go and check it out, it’s free and open to all.

I wanted to see just what could be accomplished in a month, starting from nothing. I’m pleased to report that it has been a success beyond anyone’s expectations. They started an Indiegogo project to raise enough funds so that they could stay, and they raised more than their goal of $25,000. Now they’re [free|space] 2.0, Month 1 was “can we do something”, Month 2 is “how do we turn this into something we can grow in other places”. There are already talks going on with people wanting to create [freespace]s in Miami, Berlin, London, Toronto, Detroit, even on NASA campuses.

[freespace] have modelled themselves on Burning Man’s 10 Principles, and that has led to some interesting situations. Founder Mike Zuckerman is a consummate diplomat and a dedicated environmentalist and Burner. He organized our camp’s MOOP team last year (score: Green).

Burning Man shows the use of Art as a unifying layer in the community. Even if the art is subversive or of poor quality, if you don’t like its messages or the way it looks, we’re all experiencing it together as a shared feature of our environment. [freespace] started with art, approaching our friends at the Ian Ross Gallery on 4th and Brannan, who share a commitment to improving the cityscape through art:

artist Ian Ross

Ian Ross Gallery is an interactive space where artists and the public can interface to learn and grow together by sharing the rich creativity of San Francisco. Ian Ross intends to create a visual highlight of the city’s landscape, where visitors and locals alike will travel out of their way to see the 250 long mural that wraps around the exterior of the building. Ross plans to work in the space, offer workshops for the community and patrons, include live painting during each show, and always offer the public a unique and dynamic experience unlike any other in the world.  We plan to share the work of other emerging artists who we believe will have a positive impact on San Francisco and its art scene. 

the Buddha statue at the end radiates love and compassion throughout the [space]

What sort of things have been done in the space? They created a free bicycle program, people donate their own bikes, people can borrow the bikes to get around, others are there with the tools and expertise to fix them up. Contrast this with San Francisco’s city bike sharing program, where each bicycle costs $10,000. A guy who used to work for Apple walked past, said “what’s this?”, and moved in to create an IP-addressable Blinky Lights project. There are a couple of start-ups in there, including one based around off-grid living and simple smart houses. People come in to play ping-pong, or 3D Twister. Classes get taught, like yoga and acro-yoga. A garden has been planted outside, including a mobile bicycle park. They pedal it around the city every week, with girls sitting in the park handing out free flowers to everyone. As well as civic hacking, a Burning Man burner hack took place there, a food hack-a-thon was held. The project gave otherwise unemployed people, something to do and a community to do it in.

One of the challenges they faced, was not everyone who walked through the door had their best intentions at heart. “Radical inclusion” doesn’t have to mean homeless people throwing up on themselves in the corner. Mike Zuckerman and has team have used a very San Francisco, and very Burner, approach to dealing with these people – helping them see that maybe this was not the best space they’re in, since their vibe was different from everyone around them. This was most necessary when [freespace] got occupied by the #occupy people – militant, angry, and looking down their nose at the others who were helping out. “That’s not my mess, why should I pick it up”. Some of them were asked to leave, and of course anyone being asked to leave is going to be unhappy about it; but some of them later came back, apologized, and started helping out. They “got it”. If just one person can change their attitude about life from negative to positive, then [freespace] has been a worthwhile civic endeavor.

Startup House, 5th and Harrison – gone already

It has also generated a lot of press coverage, as one of the few things actually happening in the city’s start-up scene in 2013.

SF Chronicle’s “Underground Legend” Broke-ass Stuart

Laughing Squid

Visual News

When Burning Man moved to their new offices in 2011, and announced their move to create a new non-profit called The Burning Man Project to save the Earth with Burning Man values, I wondered how they would do it. How could Burning Man, with just a few artworks, transform the seedy mid-Market Tenderloin area into a safe and inspiring place like Black Rock City.

The jury’s still out on that, it’s been a couple of years so far and the closest thing we have to show for it is their participation in Oakland’s temporary pop-up community project, Peralta Junction. I’m not sure if this was seen as a huge success for Oakland, but I do know that many of the other participants resented Burning Man coming in, contributing relatively little but making a lot of noise in the press, co-opting their efforts. No doubt BMOrg workers will accuse us of yet another BMOrg bash, but I truly am giving them the benefit of the doubt. I wish they had other projects I could write about and give them credit for. It’s not my fault that they don’t – don’t shoot the messenger. Instead, wonder where all your dollars are going, and what all those people are doing the 51 weeks of the year when the party’s not on.

[freespace] in a month have done what Burning Man have been talking about for years. It is a fantastic concept, it’s great to see ugly being turned into beauty in the city’s run down areas. Congratulations to everyone behind it, I’m very much looking forward to watching [free|space] 2.0 develop this month and telling the story of what happens to this now.

this portable park is bicycle-powered, with a solar panel for the safety lights

3d Twister – the circles are Velcro

yup, that’ a slide. Up-cycled from some tubing

The latest craze amongst the kiddies seems to be smoking Ayahuasca, a shamanic plant derived from DMT. Neo-counter-culture luminaries like Daniel Pinchbeck advocate it, it’s supposed to be a life changing experience. It’s the new form of eco-tourism.

It is the female version of the plant, the male version “Ibogaine” has an 84% efficacy in curing addiction of any type – even heroin. That makes it the #1 solution in the world for curing drug addiction, out of any treatment known to humanity. At least, according to the doctor who spoke about it at the Envision festival this year. It works even though it is banned in the US and some other countries – maybe it is banned because it does work? Do they really want us cured of addiction and mental illness, or hooked on even more pills with even more side-effects as “treatment”?

Ayahuasca is apparently a more feminine, sensual, healing trip, more psychotherapic soothing than in your face battling against your demons.

Sounds like a wonder plant, huh? Well, don’t blame the plant, don’t blame Mother Nature: human nature has taken over, some hucksters, charlatans and criminals got involved, and now people are dying. From Men’s Journal:

Kyle Nolan spent the summer of 2011 talking up a documentary called ‘Stepping Into the Fire,’ about the mind-expanding potential of ayahuasca. The film tells the story of a hard-driving derivatives trader and ex-Marine named Roberto Velez, who, in his words, turned his back on the “greed, power, and vice” of Wall Street after taking ayahuasca with a Peruvian shaman. The film is a slick promotion for the hallucinogenic tea that’s widely embraced as a spirit cure, and for the Shimbre Shamanic Center, the ayahuasca lodge Velez built for his guru, a potbellied medicine man called Master Mancoluto. The film’s message is that we Westerners have lost our way and that the ayahuasca brew (which is illegal in the United States because it contains the psychedelic compound DMT) can set us straight.

Last August, 18-year-old Nolan left his California home and boarded a plane to the Amazon for a 10-day, $1,200 stay at Shimbre in Peru’s Amazon basin with Mancoluto – who is pitched in Shimbre’s promotional materials as a man to help ayahuasca recruits “open their minds to deeper realities, develop their intuitive capabilities, and unlock untapped potential.” But when Nolan – who was neither “flaky” nor “unreliable,” says his father, Sean – didn’t show up on his return flight home, his mother, Ingeborg Oswald, and his triplet sister, Marion, went to Peru to find him. Initially, Mancoluto, whose real name is José Pineda Vargas, told them Kyle had packed his bags and walked off without a word. The shaman even joined Oswald on television pleading for help in finding her son, but the police in Peru remained suspicious. Under pressure, Mancoluto admitted that Nolan had died after an ayahuasca session and that his body had been buried at the edge of the property. The official cause of death has not yet been determined.

Pilgrims like Nolan are flocking to the Amazon in search of ayahuasca, either to expand their spiritual horizons or to cure alcoholism, depression, and even cancer, but what many of them find is a nightmare. Still, the airport in Iquitos is buzzing with ayahuasca tourism. Vans from shamanic lodges pick up psychedelic pilgrims from around the world, while taxi drivers peddle access to Indian medicine men. “It reminds me of how they sell cocaine and marijuana in Amsterdam,” one local said. “Here, it’s shamans and ayahuasca.”

Read more: http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/the-dark-side-of-ayahuasca-20130215#ixzz2YUqz87t8

I’ve never tried Ayahuasca, so I can’t advise you one way or the other. But I recommend not trying to buy coke from a stranger in Amsterdam. You’d be better to go to the supermarket and get yourself a large box of laundry powder and shove that up your nose. So I’ve been told…

How good is this drug? So good that 18 year old kids will pay $1200 (plus the cost to travel to the other side of the world) to go do it. Now that’s exotic. I struggle to get my friends in Laguna Beach to go to Newport Beach.

Ayahuasca is turning into a new craze, and the charlatans are coming out. Be careful out there, kiddies!

Deaths like Nolan’s are uncommon, but reports of molestation, rape, and negligence at the hands of predatory and inept shamans are not. In the past few years alone, a young German woman was allegedly raped and beaten by two men who had administered ayahuasca to her, two French citizens died while staying at ayahuasca lodges, and stories persist about unwanted sexual advances and people losing their marbles after being given overly potent doses. The age of ayahuasca as purely a medicinal, consciousness-raising pursuit seems like a quaint and distant past.

…One unofficial stat floating around Iquitos says the number of arriving pilgrims has grown fivefold in two years. Roger Rumrrill, a journalist who has written 25 books on the Amazon region, including several on shamanism, told me there’s “a corresponding boom in charlatans – in fake shamans, who are targeting foreigners.”

Few experts blame the concoction itself. Alan Shoemaker, who organizes an annual shamanism conference in Iquitos, says, “Ayahuasca is one of the sacred power plants and is completely nonaddictive, has been used for literally thousands of years for healing and divination purposes . . . and dying from overdose is virtually impossible.”

Still, no one monitors the medicine men, their claims, or their credentials. No one is making sure they screen patients for, say, heart problems, although ayahuasca is known to boost pulse rates and blood pressure. (When French citizen Celine René Margarite Briset died from a heart attack after taking ayahuasca in the Amazonian city of Yurimaguas in 2011, it was reported she had a preexisting heart condition.) And though many prospective ayahuasca-takers – people likely to have been prescribed antidepressants – struggle with addiction and depression, few shamans know or care to ask about antidepressants like Prozac, which can be deadly when mixed with ayahuasca. Reports suggested that a clash of meds killed 39-year-old Frenchman Fabrice Champion, who died a few months after Briset in an Iquitos-based lodge called Espiritu de Anaconda (which had already experienced one death and has since changed its name to Anaconda Cosmica). No one has been charged in either case.

Nor is anyone monitoring the growing number of lodges offering to train foreigners to make and serve the potentially deadly brew. Rumrrill scoffs at the idea. “People study for years to become a shaman,” he said. “You can’t become one in a few weeks….It’s a public health threat.” Disciples of ayahuasca insist that a shaman’s job is to control the movements of evil spirits in and out of the passengers, which in layman’s terms means keeping people from losing their shit. An Argentine tourist at the same lodge where Briset died reportedly stabbed himself in the chest after drinking too much of the tea. I met a passenger whose face was covered in thick scabs I assumed were symptoms of an illness for which he was being treated. It turns out he’d scraped the skin off himself during an understatedly “rough night with the medicine.” Because of ayahuasca’s power to plow through the psyche, many lodges screen patients for bipolar disorders or schizophrenia. But one local tour guide told me about a seeker who failed to disclose that he was schizophrenic. He drank ayahuasca and was later arrested – naked and crazed – in a public plaza. Critics worry that apprentice programs are churning out ayahuasqueros who are incapable of handling such cases.

Common are stories of female tourists who, under ayahuasca’s stupor, have faced sexual predators posing as healers. A nurse from Seattle says she booked a stay at a lodge run by a gringo shaman two hours outside Iquitos. When she slipped into ayahuasca’s trademark “state of hyper-suggestibility,” things got weird. “He placed his hands on my breast and groin and was talking a lot of shit to me,” she recalls. “I couldn’t talk. I was very weak.” She said she couldn’t confront the shaman. During the next session, he became verbally abusive. Fearing he might hurt her, she snuck off to the river, a tributary of the Amazon, late that night and swam away. She was lucky. In 2010, a 23-year-old German woman traveled to a tiny village called Barrio Florida for three nights of ayahuasca ceremonies. She ended up raped and brutally beaten by a “shaman” and his accomplice, who were both arrested. Last November, a Slovakian woman filed charges against a shaman, claiming she’d been raped during a ceremony at a lodge in Peru.

For another perspective, here’s what the banned TED talks have to say on it (hint: if you want to increase demand for something, ban it). Apparently, no-one’s doing psychedelics for fun…

It fixes weed? No way. It helps you realize that getting stoned 16 hours a day is over-use? By taking you to Hell, and the judgement hall of Osiris? No way! Sounds like an amazing breakthrough message from the gods. Otherwise, how would you be able to figure it out?

Angel trumpets is another matter. Leave that shit alone. Deadly fucking nightshade, that’s some Borgias shit. I tried it once, so I’m no expert. The benefits did not outweigh the risks – I felt the same way about salvia divinorum, which people have lost their minds from. Be very, very careful with most of these plants – what is the point of poisoning yourself? There really is no point, no matter how good you think the high is going to be. Make sure you know your half wasted pseudo shaman better than a taxi driver, before you entrust the care of your soul to them…or better still, take the time to find an authentic one. It will be pretty easy to tell, seek the blessed energy you feel radiating from a real person.

Even more troubling than ayahuasca is toé, a “witchcraft plant” that’s a member of the nightshade family. Also called Brugmansia, or angel’s trumpet, toé is known for its hallucinogenic powers. Skilled shamans use it in tiny amounts, but around Iquitos, people say irresponsible shamans dose foreigners with it to give them the Disneyland light shows they’ve come to expect. But there are downsides, to say the least. “Toé,” warns one reputable Iquitos lodge, “is potentially very dangerous, and excessive use can cause permanent mental impairment. Deaths are not uncommon from miscalculated dosages.” I heard horror stories. One ayahuasca tourist said, “Toé is a heavy, dark plant that’s associated with witchcraft for a reason: You can’t say no. Toé makes you go crazy. Some master shamans use it in small quantities, but it takes years to work with the plants. There’s nothing good to come out of it.”

Another visitor, an engineer from Washington, D.C., blames toé for his recent ayahuasca misadventure. He learned about ayahuasca on the internet and booked a multinight stay at one of the region’s most popular lodges. By the second night, he felt something was amiss. “When the shaman passed me the cup that night, he said, ‘We’re going to put you back together.’ I knew something was wrong. It was unbelievably strong.” The man says it hit him like a wave. “All around me, people started moaning. Then the yells and screaming started. Soon, I realized that medics were coming in and out of the hut, attending to people, trying to calm them down.” He angrily told me he was sure, based on hearing the bad trips of others who’d been given the substance, they had given him toé. “Ayahuasca,” he says, “should come with a warning label.”

Kyle’s father, Sean, suspects toé may have played a part in his son’s death, but he says he’s still raising the money he needs to get a California coroner to release the autopsy report. Mancoluto couldn’t be reached for comment, but his former benefactor, the securities trader Roberto Velez, now regrets his involvement with Mancoluto. “The man was evil and dangerous,” he says, “and the whole world needs to know so that no one ever seeks him again.” Some of Mancoluto’s former patients believe his brews included toé and have taken to the internet, claiming his practices were haphazard. (He allegedly sat in a tower overseeing his patients telepathically as they staggered through the forest.) One blog reports seeing a client “wandering out of the jungle, onto the road, talking to people who weren’t there, waving down cars, smoking imaginary cigarettes, and his eyes actually changed color, all of which indicated a high quantity of Brugmansia in Mancoluto’s brew.”

Shoemaker says that even though the majority of ayahuasca trips are positive and safe, things have gotten out of hand. “Misdosing with toé doesn’t make you a witch,” he says. “It makes you a criminal.” Velez, whose inspirational ayahuasca story was the focus of the film that sparked Kyle Nolan’s interest, is no longer an advocate. “It’s of life-and-death importance,” he warns, “that people don’t get involved with shamans they don’t know. I don’t know if anyone should trust a stranger with their soul.”

by Whatsblem the Pro

Architect Ken Rose and IAM volunteers hard at work

[Whatsblem the Pro is embedded in the International Arts Megacrew for the building of THE CONTROL TOWER, a sixty-foot “cargo cult” version of an FAA control tower, equipped with lasers and flame effects and other interactive features. This series of articles begins with The Poor Man's Burning Man: Part One, and shows you how you can attend Burning Man even if you don't sleep on a giant pile of money at night.]

Work on the Control Tower continues to go smoothly as the necessary materials and tools show up. This last couple of weeks has seen the real work beginning with the arrival of the actual bamboo members that will make up the load-bearing part of the Tower.

Bamboo is incredibly strong, and can stand in for steel in many applications. It can splinter and break, though, especially at the ends of these long poles the crew is working with. They’ve been busy embedding steel joints into each piece to allow them to be joined together, and cementing them in place with an expanding foam poured into small holes in the shafts. The tendency to splinter is being dealt with by capping the ends of the thirty-foot segments with fiberglass.

Expert help with all of this has arrived in the person of Gerard Minakawa, an artist/designer from Southern California whose company, Bamboo DNA, specializes in sculpture and architecture built from bamboo. I asked Gerard to tell me about building with bamboo.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: So Gerard. . . what’s so great about bamboo?

GERARD MINAKAWA: Where do I start? There are so many amazing things. It’s so versatile, it’s had so many different uses since humans first started working with building materials. People in Asia and South America are pretty familiar with how useful it is.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: I was in China for five years and noticed that even on huge skyscrapers, when there’s a building project, they’re using bamboo scaffolding.

GERARD MINAKAWA: Yeah! It’s just so friendly and easy to work with. There’s so much you can do with it. It’s both very strong, and very flexible, which I’ve always regarded as its two most redeeming characteristics. That combination of strength and flexibility is hard to match.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: And it’s so light!

GERARD MINAKAWA: Yes, it can be very light, too. It’s a good thing these cylinders are hollow, though, because if they were solid they’d be extremely heavy.

The variety we’re using for the Control Tower is called Guadua angustifolia, commonly known as just ‘guadua.’ It’s native to South America, to the Amazon. Most people think that all bamboos of any significance come from Asia, but actually the one I’ve found to be the most useful, the best to work with in construction, art, and design is this species. Brazilians and Colombians work with it a lot; it’s my number-one choice.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: How does it compare with steel, structurally?

GERARD MINAKAWA: The five-inch poles we’re using here are comparable to two and three-eighths inch diameter tube steel, in terms of compression strength, with a lot smaller carbon footprint.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: You’re actually sequestering carbon by using bamboo, rather than releasing a ton of it into the atmosphere by manufacturing steel.

GERARD MINAKAWA: Right. . . and none of these poles are older than six years, from the time that they’re harvested, so from the time they start shooting to the time you turn it into something like a Control Tower, you’re looking at six years.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: These will shoot later?

GERARD MINAKAWA: It grows from a network of roots, called rhizomes, so cutting down a bamboo pole in the forest doesn’t mean you have to reseed it.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: I’ve heard that some species grow so fast you can hear them.

GERARD MINAKAWA: I’ve never heard it, but some species grow as much as a meter per day, so you can definitely watch it grow.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: But only if you’ve got plenty of Whip-Its handy, to get into that jaw-dropped state.

GERARD MINAKAWA: It would take quite a bit of patience. If you filmed a time-lapse, though, it would be really amazing.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: How long have you been doing this?

GERARD MINAKAWA: I’ve been building with bamboo for about twelve years now. It’s a lot of fun to build with. . . never a dull moment!

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: So, today you’re filling it with polyurethane foam to anchor the steel joints inside each piece?

GERARD MINAKAWA: Yes. This is the trickiest part; we need to splice poles together to make sixty-foot members. You can’t import sixty-foot long poles; you just can’t ship them at that length. . . so to get the length we need, we’re putting in a steel ‘bone’ that’s held in place inside each pole with structural foam. The two halves of each resulting sixty-foot pole will come apart, to be locked together again later, so there’s a little bit of modularity in the structure. . . pre-fabrication, for ease of reassembly later on, when the Tower gets to the playa. After Burning Man they want to be able to dissassemble and reassemble this for other events, so we’re making a fairly large compromise by using steel and foam instead of just bamboo alone.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: I guess there must be some challenges whenever you start getting into any kind of composite construction.

GERARD MINAKAWA: Sure. The materials industry has a way to go. On the bright side, when we do the reinforcement lashings for this, we’ll be using a bio-resin that’s linseed based as a replacement for the typical polyester resin. That cures in the sun; it’s a biological resin and non-toxic. The finish will also be an atypically non-toxic finish, so I’m happy about all of that.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: Tell me about Bamboo DNA.

GERARD MINAKAWA: Bamboo DNA is a company I started as an import and wholesale company; I guess I was trying to take the safe route and do what everyone else was doing, but I ended up getting mostly commissions, and asked to do festivals and design stuff. I was trained as a designer; I just wasn’t really seeing how it would be possible to create a business centered solely around bamboo design and building. . . but that’s how it’s ended up! Now that’s what Bamboo DNA does year-round, all the time: design and build bamboo structures. I tried to do something more generic, and a niche customer base found my niche business and turned it into something unique. I couldn’t be happier, and it gives me many chances to help awareness of bamboo and other ecologically-friendly materials grow.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: Thanks, I’ll let you get back to it.

Meanwhile, I’ve been trying not to fall apart while fulfilling all my own commitments, getting some artwork done of my own, and suffering head colds in the recent heatwave. I’ve had a good bit of luck with getting all kinds of donations coming in from supportive local businesses, from a forklift to a fleet of bicycles to lumber to the gourmet beer the crew sold at one of their fundraisers. I feel a little like James Garner in THE GREAT ESCAPE: the Scrounger, pulling necessaries out of thin air so that we can all leave the Nazis and their shitty POW camp behind for a better life on our own. Hopefully the tunnel won’t collapse on us before we all get through!

Morale remains high, especially after hours when the overhead lights go down and the bold shirt-bearers of the IAM rise to meet it.

We’re the ignorant natives, and they’re John Frum. Or, at least, the flying saucer is. That’s what it’s all about this year with Cargo Cult – my favorite theme ever, I’m hoping when we get there in just over a month, it’s gonna be Burning Man meets the islands meets even more spaceships than usual.

Recently, Burning Man Founders Larry Harvey and Marian Goodell were in Paris for the Le Web conference. At a public meeting at La Dame de Canton, organized by the French Burners association, they give an entertaining and revealing interview. The French audience want to know about the links between Burning Man, hallucinogens, the tech industry, and the “hippy intelligentsia” of California:

Let me summarize some of the things I found interesting.

Marian’s comment that “when the company started to create the culture, not the Burners, we had to start a new non-profit structure for control“. I absolutely agree, as we’ve been saying from the start, Burners create the party, not BMOrg. It’s our culture, not Black Rock City, LLC’s. If it develops and changes in the future, it will be because we create and invent and play and paint and take it there. Bureaucracies don’t foster innovation.

This is a great message to hear from the real leadership of Burning Man. I think this is a clever move on their part, and it gives me hope for the future. The future of Burning Man might not be merely a linear extension of the current trajectory: more people, more rules, more bureaucracy, more petty politics, and, of course, ever-increasing ticket prices. Maybe a fresh new team can create a “Burning Man 2.0″ from the interplay between the Burning Man Project and the Regionals that Marian hopes will someday be bigger than the Black Rock City event. Something that preserves the essential elements of this culture that we all love, and lets us consider a reset of some of the things that have overshot too much in one particular direction… so that the “good” Burning Man is the one that grows and spreads around the world, without some of the dead weight.

When asked “how did you come up with the 10 Principles?“, Larry’s answer is not at all about the event – his answer is about how to organize Burners into smaller, collaborative groups, when they go back to their lives outside Burning Man. “In the Burning Man community, people aren’t eager to follow what’s told to them by authority…and history since then has convinced us that the 10 Principles describe those actions by which we manifest which we want…”

“…people will go home and they won’t want to stop being the way they were there, they’ll want to do something together with a purpose, with something transcendant at the center, with all these values…be your own app. We’re not going to feed you the app. We’ll just help everybody work together”…that is, unless your purpose is working together to put on a fundraiser for your camp, in which case you’d better make damn sure you don’t use the words Burning Man or use any photos that look like they could be from the event.

Larry says, “I was doing Burning Man well before the project”. I would talk the teachers into letting me do things with others, recruit people to make scenery, do something subversive in the projects, then explain to the adults so that they would see that…in that sense I’ve wished for Burning Man since I can remember, I just didn’t know what it was…We never think about competition – if it’s like us, then it is us“

I find Larry’s comments insightful. They see themselves as social engineers. OK, so they’re throwing a party for a week, 60,000 people are coming, they have to cultivate a pleasant cultural experience for those people, in exchange for their $400. Right? Well, no. All they do for that, in terms of social engineering, is come up with a theme every year. We do the rest. Larry and Marian have their eyes on the big prize: our hearts and minds. Their interest is in engineering our social lives in the other 51 weeks when we’re in the rest of the world away from the Playa. We are all like little apps in the iPhone  Google Play store. What app we want to be when we go back to the world as different people with our lives changed forever, is up to us. When we go back to Meatspace, we can create world history, through the creativity and collaboration Burning Man has taught us. They can help everybody think more alike towards each other, and change the way money is used in the world.

I don’t know about you guys, but when I get home from Burning Man and see my credit card statement for all that shit I bought on the way up – all that gas, grass, Goose and glowsticks – I’m all too aware of how money is used in the Default world. Reality comes back with a thud.

When they start talking about tech, the claims start to become, well, eyebrow-raising to say the least. Burning Man and Google are similar, “We and Sergei both started in garages at the same time“. And then Google put some photos of Burning Man in their lobby, and “they began piling up, depopulating Silicon Valley “. Oh please. He thinks the boom in Class A real estate in San Francisco since the market crash of 2008, is related to Burning Man moving their HQ from SOMA to Central Market. Burning Man went to a party in the desert, and got a permit from the government. Then they sold tickets to their event, and promoted it through magazines like Wired, TV shows like Malcolm in the Middle, and word of mouth around the tiny 7 x 7 mile patch called San Francisco that is the second richest city in America. I mean, good on them for their success, but it’s not exactly Nikola Tesla. Or Burner Elon Musk.

Google invented a crucial, revolutionary technology, a patented algorithm that was a breakthrough in computer science; they made some radical early stage decisions on how to grow and scale that turned out to be prescient, and gave them a significant competitive advantage; then they executed flawlessly to build an incredible business that has disrupted hundreds of industries, enabled thousands of others, and made $55 billion in accumulated profits. One of the most successful and valuable companies in the history of the world. BMOrg struggles to even count the take at the gate, getting it wrong by more than a million dollars, after nearly 30 years of throwing parties.

And then…just when you think Larry Harvey’s already drawing a pretty long bow, to associate this desert dance party with either the founding of Google or the mass migration of the tech industry north of Palo Alto…then he compares Burning Man to the Internet itself. “Burning Man’s like the Internet, because they’re both new frontiers”. Of course, although they’re alike, the Internet comes out second in Mr Harvey’s Weltanschauung.

Sounds like they’re on some good charlie in Paris, if you ask me. Some of that Fashion week shit, you know the stuff where you’re Bono and you wear rose-tinted sunglasses and all of a sudden you think you’re bigger than the Pope. Nice work if you can get it!

Down the rabbit hole we go once more, dear friends!

Today the BLM announced on their website that a permit for 68,000 people good for the next four annual Burning Man events has been issued.

Winnemucca, Nev.–The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Winnemucca District, Black Rock Field Office, has issued a multi-year Special Recreation Permit (SRP) to Black Rock City (BRC), LLC authorizing the annual Burning Man event through 2016, contingent upon annual reviews showing BRC’s compliance with the terms and stipulations of the permit. This year the Burning Man event will be held on the Black Rock Playa from Aug. 26 through Sept. 2.

This year, the BRC is required to keep the maximum population from exceeding 68,000 people during the event. The BLM is also requiring BRC to comply with 13 standard stipulations, which are common to all SRPs, and 48 special stipulations specific to the Burning Man event. The special stipulations relate to matters such as event set-up, signage, security, public safety, resource management, debris removal, fee calculation and payment, and event take-down and clean-up.

“Our priorities in managing this permit continue to be the protection and conservation of natural and cultural resources, as well as the safety for all participants and staffs,” said BLM’s Winnemucca District Manager, Gene Seidlitz. “I feel confident the permit addresses these priorities.”

The “Burning Man 2012-2016 Special Recreation Permit Environmental Assessment” (EA) analyzes a participant population level from 58,000 to 70,000 as well as public access, traffic control, resource management, dust abatement, fire management, event security and public safety, event setup and signage, runway and aircraft, sanitary facilities, and event take down and clean-up.

The Burning Man event has taken place on public lands on the Black Rock Desert Playa every year but one since 1990. Last year more than 53,000 people traveled to the remote desert location to participate. The operations associated with the event occupy about 4,400 acres of public land for a seven week period starting with fencing the site perimeter the second week of August and concluding in late September with the final site cleanup. The major activities are confined to several weeks in late August and early September associated with final setup, the actual event, and the initial phases of cleanup. During this period, Black Rock City becomes one of the largest cities in Nevada.

The SRP Decision and associated National Environmental Policy Act documents are available for viewing at http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en/fo/wfo/blm_information/nepa0.html and upon request from the BLM Winnemucca District Office, 5100 East Winnemucca Boulevard, Winnemucca, NV 89445-2921, during regular business hours 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, except for federal holidays.

The BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public land, the most of any Federal agency. This land, known as the National System of Public Lands, is primarily located in 12 Western states, including Alaska. The BLM also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. The BLM’s multiple-use mission is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. In Fiscal Year 2012, activities on public lands generated $4.6 billion in revenue, much of which was shared with the States where the activities occurred. In addition, public lands contributed more than $112 billion to the U.S. economy and helped support more than 500,000 jobs.

I had a chance over lunch to look through the 13 page decision issued by the Bureau of Land Management. Basically, last year they were considering a permit increase to near 70,000 over 5 years. In 2011 they got busted letting more people in than their permit allowed, and so last year’s permit was a temporary, one-time-only Special Use Permit. BMOrg behaved well, official population count was below the permit level, and the increased tickets got through.

In the meantime, Pershing County has been trying to muscle in on the Burning Man action. First, they’re trying to increase their fees, from around $140,000 to more like $800,000. Burning Man didn’t like this, so they sued them. Pershing fought back, Burning Man appealed, both sides claimed small victories along the way – with the most recent one going to Burning Man. BMOrg went to Washington and to the Nevada State assembly, and got the law changed in a way that (seemingly) would give BLM control. This seemed like it would be good for BMOrg, although we called the outcome as unpredictable when we covered it.

Well, a couple of clauses in the fine print of the permit suggest that this maybe wasn’t a great result for BMOrg at all. If anything, trying to go around Pershing County to the State and the Feds has only served to piss Pershing County off, and give them a tighter grip on the festival than they had before.

Yes, it seems, Pershing County might have us by the balls.

22. BRC shall complete formal agreements with all affected parties, including Pershing County Sheriff’s Department, Washoe County Sheriff’s Department, Nevada Department of Public Safety-Nevada Highway Patrol, and Nevada Department of Health and Human Safety, for the purpose of addressing concerns and impacts associated with social services (e.g., law enforcement and emergency medical services and physical infrastructure, transportation systems, and human waste disposal). 

 Written evidence of these agreements showing compliance with this stipulation must be provided to the BLM by BRC 15 days prior to the start of the event 

Right now, it is 33 days until the gates open. So Burning Man has basically 2 weeks to get an agreement – in writing – from the Pershing County Sheriff’s department (and the other 4 local agencies as well), saying they’re happy with everything.

Not only that, any co-ordination for people injured or killed has to go through Pershing as well. Which seems strange since the deaths in the past have been declared in Reno, most likely Washoe hospital.

28. In cooperation with emergency services providers and law enforcement agencies, BRC shall, within a reasonable time after learning of them, notify the BLM and appropriate agencies of all accidents related to the event that occur before, during, and after the event, that result in death or personal injury requiring hospitalization. Accident reports involving death or injury will be coordinated with the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office and the BLM. 

We hope that behind the scenes everyone is frantically working to patch things up with the locals. Because, as outsiders, the latest information we have is from June 2013:

ENO, Nev. (AP) — Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval has signed into law a bill that streamlines the permitting process for the Burning Man festival and other events on federal land.

The new law gives counties the right to opt out of state permitting requirements for events held on federal land that already undergo a comprehensive federal permitting process.

Pershing County commissioners earlier passed a resolution exempting Burning Man from county permitting requirements.

Burning Man spokesman Ray Allen calls the new law “a huge victory” for the festival. He says it “ensures local permitting requirements won’t infringe upon the First Amendment rights of Burning Man participants.”

I’m not so sure that is the case. I guess it depends on how much pressure there is on the Pershing County Sheriff’s department to sign off in writing, no later than August 11. If they don’t sign, then our rights would be pretty freaking infringed.

Going back to what Pershing County is claiming in the courtroom,

Pershing County argues that despite the event being on federal land, the local jurisdiction has authority over policing and judicial actions and the county should be compensated for the resources expended.

So, the local jurisdiction cops are still in control – in fact now they are the primary go-to point if anything goes wrong. Even if someone dies or gets injured in another county, they have to be informed. And the judge is still in control, none of this affects him in any way. He will still be imposing “discouraging” sentences on any Burners brought before his court room. And he doesn’t like the event, remember:

…Commenting that Burning Man “purveys titillation,” he made the following additional statements:

a. “I’m very concerned about what the community standards are becoming in this 
community. When they first came, everyone was shocked. Now, we’ve 
accepted them and now we’re embracing them, because what? They bring 
money to the community? Something’s wrong with that.”

b. “This isn’t a place for young people under eighteen to be, under any 
circumstances. That’s my opinion.”

c. “You want to see what a lawless culture, built like 49ers and Deadheads and 
Cyber Punks leads to? National Magazine, I would say it in two words, ‘Penn 
State.’”

d. The laws of the state and the laws of this county apply to Burning Man as much 
as they do to the city limits of Lovelock, and what’s described in this article, if 
people were to do it here, they would be in jail, in prison.”

e. “[T]he idea that they can self-regulate and have their own policemen and carry 
out their own regulations is ludicrous. It is people here, county officials, who 
have absolute duty to enforce the laws. You took an oath, as did law 
enforcement, to uphold the laws and constitutions of this state. That includes 
lewdness around children and the other things that have occurred.

The BLM, of course, also still have us by the balls. But they seem much more inclined to gently caress said balls…provided they get their cut, that is. They want 25% up front – maybe $300,000 in cold hard cash – and the rest when the event is over. And they’re being quite clear, when they say “their cut”, they mean all the money. Ice sales, coffee sales, RV rentals, RV services. Donations and corporate sponsorships. “Other”, eg. movies and photo shoots. BLM get 3% of it all. That’s probably an extra half a million bucks to them over the next 4 years, over what they would have got anyway if the population had been frozen.

The BLM shall collect a commercial use fee from BRC for the use of public lands for the event. The fee, as set by regulation 43 C.F.R. § 2930, will be equal to 3% of the adjusted gross income derived from the use authorized under the SRP. Payment equal to at least 25% of the estimated commercial use fees (3% of estimated gross receipts) must be received by the BLM prior to the start of the event. 

Determination of gross income will be based on all payments received by BRC and its employees or agents for goods or services provided in connection with commercial activities authorized by the SRP. 

This includes, but is not limited to, ticket sales, coffee and ice sales, fees associated with outside services and private donations received by BRC for management of the event on public lands. 

One piece of good news is the BLM’s continued efforts to keep the indigenous Paiute people in the money loop, by encouraging them to run trash collection depots. Let’s turn a problem we make (trash), into a solution for them to a problem we didn’t make (economic hardship).

To reduce impacts to the Pyramid Lake Paiute reservation located along the access routes, BRC shall coordinate with the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. BRC shall work with the Pyramid Lake Tribe in developing the applicant’s plan to increase public awareness and educational campaigns about Leave No Trace® on tribal land, including for example, signage on roads, Public Service Announcements on BMIR, blog-posts, etc. Also, BRC shall continue to support and promote tribal enterprises that are setup to collect participant trash and recycling for a fee, which also helps with economic benefits of the Region. 

Filed under: News Tagged: 2011, 2012, 2013, BLM, bmorg, city, commerce, complaints, cops, drugs, environment, event, festival, man, news, Party, press, rules, tickets

Burning Man and Black Rock Arts Foundation Director Chris Bently’s estranged ex-wife has been found dead by a process server sent to deliver an eviction notice in her home town. The information we have is Mr Bently, whom the Bently Reserve (the converted Federal reserve building used for many Burning Man functions) is named after, is currently in London. Our condolences go out to the family and friends of Amber Marie Bently.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/jul/24/us-obit-amber-bently/

GARDNERVILLE — Sheriff’s deputies are investigating the death of a San Francisco businesswoman, jewelry designer and socialite whose body was found last week in her Nevada apartment.

Authorities on Wednesday said Amber Marie Bently’s body was discovered Friday by a process server who went to deliver an eviction notice. No one had reported her missing and it appeared that she had been dead for several weeks, Douglas County sheriff’s Sgt. Pat Brooks said.

Bently, 34, was married to businessman Christopher Bently, CEO of Bently Holdings, a property management company with offices in Minden, Nev., and San Francisco.

The two were active in the San Francisco social scene and enthusiasts of the annual Burning Man festival, held annually around Labor Day on Nevada’s Black Rock Desert north of Reno. About four years ago, the couple was featured as the “new kids on the block” on the San Francisco Social Diary website when they threw a pajama party at their posh Nob Hill penthouse.

Brooks said that there was no evidence of criminal activity or foul play. An autopsy didn’t pinpoint a cause of death and toxicology reports are pending — a process that could take six to eight weeks.

Deputies described Bently as Christopher Bently’s estranged wife and said she lived alone in the apartment in Gardnerville, a town of about 6,000 located 16 miles south of Carson City. The couple was married for at least 10 years, according to published reports. It’s unknown whether they had divorced.

Christopher Bently heads several companies founded by his late father, Donald Bently, an engineer, philanthropist and businessman who died in October at the age of 87.

The elder Bently founded Bently Scientific Co. in the garage of his Berkeley, Calif., home in 1956. He renamed it Bently Nevada Corp. and moved it to Minden in 1961. By the time he sold that company to GE Energy in 2002, the company had 2,000 employees worldwide and offices in 42 counties.

He founded other companies as well, including Bently Pressurized Bearing Co., Bently Agrowdynamics and Bently Biofuels. The Bently name is associated with expansive land holdings in Douglas County’s scenic Carson Valley.

The couple restored the former Federal Reserve Bank in downtown San Francisco and renamed it the Bently Reserve. In 2009, a collection of her jewelry designs was exhibited at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

Christopher Bently also serves on the advisory board of the Black Rock Arts Foundation as well as the Burning Man Project.

Amber Marie Bently, photo SF Chronicle, Liz Hafalia

Tomas McCabe, executive director Black Rock Arts Foundation, said foundation members were “devastated” to hear of Amber Bently’s death.

“She was a super, outgoing, very creative person,” he told the Associated Press by telephone. “She was always joyful. She made amazing jewelry and beautiful stuff.”

A man who answered the phone at Bently Holdings in Minden said the company would have no comment

We’ll be updating this story as more information comes in. One piece we have, still unconfirmed but certainly explicable, is that her dogs were also found dead at the scene. It appears the story broke this morning, but when found she had been dead for weeks. Here’s 5 Things You Need to Know :

San Fran Socialite Whose CEO Hubby Helped Run Burning Man Was Dead for WEEKS Before Being Discovered posted2 hours agoby Brad Michelson Heavy.com 1 Share (Getty Images) Amber Marie Bently, a 35-year-old San Francisco socialite and jewelry designer, has been found dead in an apartment in Gardnerville, Nevada. Here’s what you should know.

1. She Appeared To Have Been Dead For Several Weeks (Getty)

According to a KTVU report, Amber’s body was discovered in an apartment in Gardnerville, Nevada, on Friday (July 19) by a process server who went to deliver an eviction notice at an apartment on High School Street. It is not clear is the eviction notice was for her or for a neighbor nearby. The Douglas County Sheriff’s Department said it appeared she had been dead for several weeks. She was not reported missing. Amber lived alone in the apartment.

2. The Autopsy Was Inconclusive (Getty)

According to Douglas County Sheriff’s Sgt. Pat Brooks, “There was no evidence of criminal activity or foul play.” He also said that the autopsy was inconclusive on the cause of death. Toxicology reports are pending.

3. She Was Married to the CEO of Bently Holdings (Image courtesy of http://bentlyholdings.com/) Amber Marie Bently was married to Christopher Bently, CEO of the sustainable development company Bently Holdings. According to his bio on the company website, “He is an avid environmentalist who insists on nothing less than exemplary green operating fundamentals in every one of Bently Holdings’s properties.” The company has not made a comment on Amber’s passing.

4. Amber Marie Bently Was A Jewelry Designer (Image courtesy of http://bentlyholdings.com/) One of Amber’s claims to fame was her high-end jewelry that she often sold at big events in San Francisco. Prices for her hand-made, one-of-a-kind pieces ranged from $500 to $6,500. In 2009, a collection of her jewelry designs was exhibited at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. The website for Amber’s jewelry has been taken down.

5. The Bently Couple Were Burning Man Enthusiasts (Image courtesy of Facebook) The couple were enthusiasts for the Burning Man music festival that takes place annually in Black Rock Desert in Nevada. They love it so much that Christopher Bently serves on the board of directors of the Burning Man Project, which is responsible for upholding the values described in the Ten Principles of Burning Man. Although the couple were not living with each other at the time of Amber’s death, it is unclear whether they were divorced.

Read more at: http://www.heavy.com/news/2013/07/amber-marie-bently-dead-rip/

She was found dead last Friday:

On Friday, 07/19/13, at approximately 4:30 pm, Investigators of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office responded to an apartment in the 1200 block of High School St, in Gardnerville, reference a death investigation.

Information revealed that a civil process server had gone to the location to serve an eviction, and had discovered a deceased person inside the residence.

The decedent, later identified as 34 year-old Amber Marie Bently, rented and resided alone in the apartment. It appears Bently was deceased inside the apartment for several weeks.

No evidence of criminal activity or foul play was discovered. Cause of death is pending.

The investigation continues.

Here’s a link to their 2009 Pyjama Party, their debut on the Nob Hill scene. They wanted to throw a party to blend their society friends together with their Burner friends, and Pyjamas seemed like a common denominator:

Lounging in our PJs

A bio on Mrs Bently from a Fashion show she did with her jewellery line:

Amber Marie Bently launched her eponymous collection of couture jewelry after immersing herself in the fine art of jewelry craftsmanship at the renowned Revere Academy in San Francisco. Her dedication to forwarding environmental conservation and sustainable style inspired her to create jewelry handcrafted from 18 karat recycled gold and responsibly sourced gemstones. Her environmentalism, global travel, and lifelong interest in Eastern history and culture have together influenced her design of one-of-a-kind pieces that are unique in today’s marketplace. She has traveled extensively throughout India, and draws many of her design ideas from these experiences.

Amber Marie is a well-known contributor to conservation causes, serving on the board of nonprofit environmental organizations such as Global Green USA, Forest Ethics, and PRBO Conservation Science. She is a San Francisco style icon often featured on the red carpet of the city’s galas, and actively promotes green fashion among San Francisco’s style leaders.

An interview with the couple from 2007, when they opened a spa in Union Square:

[Update 2:34am PST 7/25/13 - Daily Mail UK has some new details. Another fact first posted at Burners.Me turns out to be true, Chris Bently is in London. Not sure if he spoke with the Daily Mail directly. It is so sad that no-one found this girl for so long, just an absolute tragedy]

A cause of death has not yet been determined and the results of a toxicology test could take up to eight weeks to arrive.

Douglas County Sheriff’s office said Mrs Bently had been living alone in the apartment where her body was found in Gardnerville, outside Carson City.  

Mrs Bently, who had separated from her husband last year after being married for about ten years, was well known for her parties and the couple’s building renovations in San Francisco. 

The couple, who supported environmental charities, also supported the Burning Man arts festival, which is held in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, near Reno. 

After they separated last year Mrs Bently swapped their Nob Hill penthouse and Stinson Beach home for a place in Sausalito before moving to an apartment in Gardnerville, where she had been raised, according to SF Gate. 

Mr Bently, who is currently in London, said they had not divorced and described his wife as ‘a wonderful human being who contributed so much to San Francisco’.

He added: ‘She was greatly loved by family and friends, and we feel her loss deeply.’

So, here’s the key facts:

they were legally married, separated in 2012 but not yet divorced, she had been living alone in a rented apartment, she was about to be evicted in the town she grew up in, estranged in rural Nevada; when the body was found, he was in London. She had not been reported missing.

Those are the essential facts compiled from what the press coverage from mainstream publications says. It sounds like Gardnerville is a very remote part of one of the most remote states. The press story is spreading around the world, but each one seems to have the same information…we’ve been working on it to bring you anything fresh, I think the Daily Mail got a direct interview with Mr Bently.

I’ve been to Carson City, it doesn’t seem like the place where this type of thing occurs. Although I was amazed at the size of the RV storage facility, right next to the prison. We’ve told some stories on this blog before that suggest it is still the Wild, Wild West out there in some parts of Nevada.

Amber seems like she was a lovely and generous person, and a creative and talented designer, a huge loss to the Burner community. What a sad way to end up. Here is 15 Minutes with Amber Marie Bently

It also seems like Mrs Bently went out of her way to apply her creative energies towards positive causes, having been inspired by Burning Man:

In a sign of her generous nature to environmental charities, in September 2007, Mrs Bently flew Tippi Hedren to San Francisco for a fundraising event. A portion of the money raised by selling Mrs Bently’s hand-crafted jewellery was donated to the actress’s Roar Foundation. 

The designer created her gold pieces, inset with crystals and stones, in the basement of their Nob Hill home. 

She told SF Luxe in 2007 that her interest in design had come about after she made bead necklaces with her husband to wear at the Burning Man festival. 

‘We kept going back to the bead store, and I kept making jewellery. And finally I’m like “I’ve got to start selling these because I have too much,’ she said. 

 

Mrs Bently added that she was drawn to the healing properties of rocks, adding: ‘I wear a lot of rubies because I feel in balancing the chakras you are more creative and you are more open to a creative outlook.’

Her one-off jewellery pieces, which she sold in stores and at charity functions in San Francisco, reached prices of between $500 to $6,500, according to Heavy.com.

As well as environmental charities, Mrs Bently supported the Dress for Success program that helps provide women with suitable outfits to wear for job interviews in 2008, according to the San Francisco Sentinel. 

…The couple’s love of art and spirituality led them on several trips to India, Indonesia and Thailand. After returning from one trip, where she learned about the Ayurveda healing practices, Mrs Bently opened a spa in the city.
more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2377473/San-Francisco-socialite-Burning-Man-festival-supporter-dead-apartment-weeks.html#ixzz2a35d3YRx 

Burner Mike Zuckerman started the Temporary Autonomous Zone known as [freespace] in June this year, based on Burning Man’s Principles of Radical Inclusion, Gifting, Decommodification, Radical Self-Reliance, Radical Self-Expression, Communal Effort, Participation, Immediacy, and Civic Responsibility. Notice anything missing? Leave No Trace®, a registered trademark of the US Department of Agriculture, and a movement that in itself contains 7 Principles.

[freespace] wants to leave a trace. When they move their Temporary Autonomous Zone to other places, the building, the vacant lot next door, and the neighborhood around them will be in a better condition than when they arrived. MOOP in this case is art, gardens, opportunities, connections, inspiration. The trace [freespace] leaves might not be there forever, but as it lingers it still brings benefits even when [freespace] is gone – or is no longer free.

Can the Ten Principles apply in the Default World? That’s what the Burning Man Project was supposed to do. While they still ponder that question, in the meantime it took Zuck and the team from Reallocate just over 6 weeks to Get Shit Done in a big way. What did he do? Hacked the National Day of Civic Hacking. What did it lead to? Being summoned to the White House, and heralded as a “Champion of Change”.

The National Day of Civic Hacking was actually two days, June 1 and 2 (a weekend). 95 events took place in 83 cities across America, from Palo Alto (where 5,000 people showed up) to Maine to Kalamazoo. More than 11,000 citizens, 21 Federal Government agencies, 6 state agencies, and numerous towns and counties came together for what Nick Skytland of NASA called the largest mass collaboration in history. The value of the time volunteered to the community over a 48-hour period has been estimated at $11 million.

Hacking the hack itself, taking a day that went for 48 hours and turning into a project that continues to bring benefits to the community months later, got the attention of those at the very top. [freespace] are now collaborating with NASA, UNICEF and the government to look at where they can take this concept next, in America and around the world.

Out of 95 different civic hacking projects, [freespace] was one of only 2 the White House chose to highlight in their presentation. [freespace] is at 51:00. [freespace] has transformed the community, earning a letter of commendation from Mayor Ed Lee’s office and leaving a trace that transforms ugly into pretty.

Will we see the President at Burning Man next? We have Playa Force One ready for him…

Playa Force One – photo by Tomas Loewy

by Whatsblem the Pro

Johnny and Shuggie Otis in the KFOX studios c. 1956

As most people know if they’ve even heard of Burning Man, ‘radical inclusion‘ is a core value of burners across the cultural spectrum. It’s an oft-misunderstood value, though, and doesn’t mean people will necessarily love or even like you; it just means they’ll recognize your own stake in the culture and your place at the party, though not necessarily at their bar drinking their liquor. It’s not about phony respect or phony love; it’s about being OK with other people being themselves, even if you don’t much like who they are as individuals. Also, it’s RADICAL inclusion, not total inclusion, and there are certainly limits beyond which there is little or no tolerance. Rightfully so; we don’t radically include rapists, or people who commit assault, or murderers, like the one who showed up at the DPW ranch looking for work one year after slaughtering an acquaintance out on the highway nearby, and ended up getting handed over to the police.

I want to step outside of Burning Man for a moment, though, and present a shining example of radical inclusion that didn’t call itself radical inclusion and has nothing to do with Burning Man, burner culture, or burner history.

Last night a man named Shuggie Otis and his band played for free in a park in Reno, and the place was packed with people having a good time.

Shuggie plays Wingfield Park, Reno – PHOTO: Andy Barron/RGJ

I don’t want to cast Shuggie in anyone’s shadow; he’s a huge talent in his own right who has played on a million records you’ve heard, alongside a ton of big name musicians, for decades. He played bass on Zappa’s “Peaches en Regalia.” His song “Strawberry Letter #23” is one of the most-sampled records in history. What really draws me to Shuggie, though, is that his father was the amazing Johnny Otis, and I know that apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Johnny Otis is a bit old school and you might not recognize his name if you’re under forty, but I bet you’ve heard his monster 1958 hit “Willie and the Hand Jive” once or twice in your life if you’re over twenty-five, and his musical influence has been so far-reaching as to be absolutely unavoidable. He was a huge star in his day, with his own record label, a nightclub in Watts, and long-running musical variety shows on TV and the radio featuring guest musicians we’d consider ‘A’-list in retrospect, but who were often unknowns at the time. He discovered Big Mama Thornton and Jackie Wilson, and introduced them to America. He co-wrote “Hound Dog,” with Lieber & Stoller, a song that Elvis Presley took to the hoop, and both produced and played drums on the original recording of that song by Big Mama Thornton. He produced and promoted records by Little Richard, Johnny Ace, Etta James, Hank Ballard, Esther Phillips, and the great Little Walter, among many others.

Johnny Otis clearly cared about advancing his art; he took grand chances with his career for the sake of being himself; he wasn’t just skinnin’ and grinnin’ for the cameras. He brought out a lot of new black talent and unleashed it like a revolutionary weapon of radical inclusion on the youth of pre-Civil Rights America. On the side, he recorded a wide range of his own music that included outings so funky they were literally X-rated, like the album he and his band — featuring young Shuggie — recorded as “Snatch and the Poontangs.” Check out the mind-funkingly dirty bluesman’s brag that is the track “Two-Time Slim” sometime, and you’ll know Johnny Otis was the real deal.

The thing most people don’t know about Johnny Otis: he was the son of Greek immigrants, born John Veliotes, and he was white. His family lived in black neighborhoods in the ghetto when he was a kid, and his environment led him to decide while still a young man that “if our society dictated that one had to be black or white, I would be black.” He resolved to present himself to the world as a black man, and live his life and conduct his affairs accordingly. His parents weren’t happy about it, but the African-American community of the time embraced and accepted him enthusiastically, and naturally his wife, Phyllis Otis, was a black woman. Johnny Otis made being black something that, for the first time in American history, a man might choose of his own accord as preferable, given his druthers, rather than the false mark of shame and inferiority it was before he set his example.

Doing the same today would be pretentious and precious and would understandably inspire more eye-rolling than racial harmony; declaring himself black long before the Civil Rights movement got off the ground, though, took prodigious iron balls and a real commitment to solidarity with oppressed people, and to identification with his own roots as a ghetto kid, regardless of skin color. More to the point, it took a deep dedication to what we burners call “radical inclusion.” Johnny Otis was an unsung hero of Civil Rights. . . and he knew, as Dr. King taught us later, that Civil Rights are not a handout from oppressor to oppressed; Civil Rights are for everyone, everywhere, equally, not just for one race or another. Thus, Johnny Otis was a shining example of our own subculture’s most fundamental core value. He may have met a man he didn’t like from time to time, but he clearly wasn’t at all prone to denying people their rightful place in the world over superficialities, and he did us all many significant services by crossing all those lines he crossed, by standing up for what was right, and by being perfectly himself in absolute disregard of the labels applied to him — and everyone else — at birth. We lost a real American hero with an epic amount of heart in January of 2012, when Johnny Otis died at the age of ninety, his lady Phyllis still at his side after seventy years of marriage.

The show last night was delightfully energetic, deliciously soulful, and smile-inducingly expressive of a deep and shared inner joy. I got a chance to hang out with Shuggie and his brothers backstage for about half an hour while the roadies were breaking down their equipment, and as one might expect from the sons of such a high-minded and talented man, it turns out the Otis brothers are extremely friendly and genuine on top of being hugely accomplished musicians. I wish I hadn’t had such short notice about the show, or I’d have put together a nice after-party for the band, Reno style. These guys may not know it, but they would fit right in if they ever came out to Burning Man.

Keep it sweet, Shuggie. You and your family will always have friends and admirers in Reno, and in Black Rock City.

Johnny Otis presents Shuggie and Frank Zappa on his radio show, c. 1970

A memorial service this weekend for the estranged former wife of Burning Man Project Director Christopher Bently was attended by more than 300 people. From the Minden-Gardnerville/Carson Valley Record Courier:

Bently spoke lovingly of his wife, and acknowledged her bouts with mental illness in the past few years.

“Amber was the most incredible person I every met,” he said. “She was my soul mate. Illness took her from me, but she battled and persisted through all of it.”

Bently said he learned his most valuable life lessons from Amber.

The death is under investigation, although it is not being treated as suspicious.

Authorities said Amber Marie Bently’s body was discovered July 19 by a process server who went to deliver an eviction notice. No one had reported her missing and it appeared that she had been dead for several weeks, Douglas County sheriff’s Sgt. Pat Brooks said…there was no evidence of criminal activity or foul play. An autopsy didn’t pinpoint a cause of death and toxicology reports are pending — a process that could take six to eight weeks.

Deputies described Ms. Bently as Christopher Bently’s estranged wife and said she lived alone in the apartment in Gardnerville, a town of about 6,000 located 16 miles south of Carson City. The couple was married for at least 10 years, according to published reports. It’s unknown whether they had divorced.

Members of the deceased’s family have come out publicly describing the late Mrs Bently as suffering from bipolar disorder, before she passed away they had her committed twice to mental institutions, her mother was attempting to establish a guardianship over her estate.

There were, in fact, missing person reports filed on her. She had a severe mental illness and was resistant to treatment for years. She had been trying to evade family members for months due to her delusions. She had been committed by her family twice. If the blame lies anywhere, it’s in the mental health system, for releasing a person who has a history of self destructive and dangerous behavior. Her family was pursuing a guardianship and had private investigators looking for her. I know her personally and she was a lovely person and her presence was infectious. She was truly one-of-a-kind and the very thing that made her amazing was also her downfall…

…She had a terrible illness that has claimed many lives. I will not let the general consensus be that she was uncared for, however, because she very much was. Her mother lived and breathed for the hope of this guardianship. She was consumed with worry about where her daughter might be. We witnessed it first hand, and saw the truth. I am HER family member, not her husband’s, so obviously my support would lie with her, and it does. It makes me sad that someone who has cared for her and loved her for so very long is being suspected of doing something terrible to hurt her. He did the best he could with the cards he was dealt.

In other coverage, Mr Bently acknowledged that the divorce had not yet been finalized. Although Mr Bently spoke lovingly of his wife at the service, they have been separated since 2012.  Mr Bently’s father passed away late last year, after a long and succcessful career in which he created a company with more than 2000 people, in partnership with GE Energy.

Bently, 34, was married to businessman Christopher Bently, CEO of Bently Holdings, a property management company with offices in Minden, Nev., and San Francisco.

Christopher Bently heads several companies founded by his late father, Donald Bently, an engineer, philanthropist and businessman who died in October at the age of 87.

The elder Bently founded Bently Scientific Company in the garage of his Berkeley, Calif., home in 1956. He renamed it Bently Nevada Corp. and moved it to Minden in 1961. By the time he sold that company to GE Energy in 2002, the company had 2,000 employees worldwide and offices in 42 counties.

There has been Internet speculation that Mr Bently now lives in the United Kingdom with another woman. A commenter called Smith said this on our web site:

Enlighten us. Are you saying Chris didn’t have a judgment against him for domestic violence? Well, he did. Are you saying the money wasn’t cut off, despite her being evicted for nonpayment of rent twice in the last few months? Maybe, in your high and mighty way, despite not offering any refuting facts, you contend with the statement that Chris was halfway across the world with his new girl, who is coincidentally the new director of the new entity “Bently Foundation”? Well, he issued a statement on Amber’s death from London. Maybe you never say anybody else she made miserable. Well, bipolar people make everybody miserable. Just walk around the tenderloin if you have any doubt.

Many comments on this case have been removed from SFGate, the web site of the San Francisco Chronicle, prompting one commenter to say:

Lot of postings got remove from this article … I’m guessing someone with connections called someone at the Chronicle to put on a muzzle on questions and speculation …. and to get this article off the front page … 

Someone’s been hard at work trying to suppress the obvious questions from the postings … ask the wrong question, get deleted … it’s like speech suppression in Russia on SFGate …

At the service, the pastor referred the congregation of more than 300 family members and friends to the story of King Solomon, and said we may never be able to understand the meaning of her passing.

Borgman said it was human nature to seek meaning in Amber’s death.

“Grasping the purpose and meaning of life as mere mortals is a different story,” he said.

From the Scriptures, Borgman referenced King Solomon “who shows not every question is answered. He recognized that God is the beginning, middle and end, and that there is redemption in a life that doesn’t make sense very often.”

Borgman said faith and Scripture teach that life is not just a collection of random acts.

“There is meaning and purpose under One who says I am the Alpha and the Omega. It doesn’t mean that Amber’s death all of a sudden makes perfect sense. The comfort comes not in knowing the hows and whys. It comes in knowing the Who,” Borgman said.

Amber’s parents, her grandmother and her four siblings contributed memories of her to an obituary distributed at the memorial.

“She was taken from this life in June 2013 far too early for us,” her parents said. “However, the One who numbers our days and knows our thoughts from afar knew the right time for her to leave us.”

Her grandmother, Ruth Barnett, said, “She was always a ray of sunshine with a loving and caring spirit. Praise God for all the precious memories that will always be treasured.”

Her father thanked the congregation for its support.

“We want you to know we cherish your prayers and have been warmed by your hugs, and cards and calls. We thank the family of Grace Community. You have servants’ hearts.”

The family recalled her fondly:

Born to Mark and Sherry Barnett on June 20, 1979, Mrs. Bently graduated from Douglas High School in 1997.

She married Chris Bently on Sept. 9, 2001.

“Our family was raised in the foothills of the Pine Nut Mountains,” brother Abram Barnett said of his sister in her obituary. “We had very few neighbors, and even fewer children near us, so we relied on each other. Amber’s imagination and creativity could only be described as gifted. We spent hours amongst the sagebrush living as kings and queens; as swashbucklers and knights; or as scallywags and dragonslayers. She made our home come alive and gave us everlasting memories of a childhood well wasted on misbegotten adventures.”

Sister Ashley Touchin said Amber was everything a little sister could want.

“Amber was an amazing woman full of life and energy,” Touchin said. “She never let anything hold her back. She always wanted me to be ‘fabulous’ with her, and always had time to be fun and silly with me, and that is something I will never forget.”

Brother Aaron remembered her as a student and artist.

“I remember she was a model student, one who grew into a talented and aspiring artist drawing inspiration from the world around her,” he said. “I remember her on her wedding day, and how every bit of her childhood dreams culminated in that day, and I was struck by how happy she was. I can still see her smile, and how it lit up the room.”

Coworkers Brady Frey and Talitha Hillman said she was well-known for her support of conservationist causes.

“She was a much-admired businesswoman and philanthropist whose dedication to forwarding environmental conservation and sustainable style inspired her to create her own jewelry line and promote eco-friendly fashion.”

Mrs. Bently is survived by her husband Chris; parents Mark and Sherry Barnett; siblings Aaron, Arik, Abram and Ashley; grandparents Ruth Barnett, and Norm and Lou Short; sisters-in-law Amber and Linda Barnett; brother-in-law T.J. Touchin, several uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews.

In lieu of flowers, family members are asking that donations be made in her name to City of Refuge, P.O. Box 2663, Gardnerville, NV, 89410.

Filed under: News Tagged: 2013, cops, news, press, scandal

by Whatsblem the Pro

NO BICYCLE FOR YOU

Back in March, we gave you a rundown of options for obtaining a playa-suitable bicycle. Topping that list was Reno’s Kiwanis Bike Program; unfortunately, information has come to light that prompts us to withdraw our recommendation of that organization in favor of the other options listed in our March article.

We’re sorry to report that you should also be warned away from Rat’s Bikes, a service frequently promoted in the Jack Rabbit Speaks newsletter put out by the Burning Man Org.

We don’t have any negative reports from people using Kiwanis’ playa bike program, so you might be safe giving them your money for that (if they even have any left); we have confirmed, however, that they are not trustworthy enough to do business with on a verbal contract basis; instead of fulfilling their end of the bargain, they seem to do nearly as much back-pedaling as pedaling. Caveat emptor!

When Kiwanis recently moved to a new space and needed the old place cleaned up so they could get their deposit back, a three-way deal was struck to get their old space thoroughly cleaned in exchange for a dozen or more bicycles, to be donated to a community center for community use. Volunteers showed up and did the job, and Kiwanis got their deposit back. They made every visible sign of being happy with the work performed, to the point of gushing all over everyone concerned about it. . . but when it came time to collect the bicycles, they suddenly decided to change the deal and act as though nobody should be surprised by that. The community center that was supposed to get a dozen or more bikes got one instead. Stay classy, Kiwanis Bike Program.

Rat’s Bikes, meanwhile, a one-man operation that may be connected with the Kiwanis Bike Program, has simply vanished into thin air after collecting funds from more than a few burners. We don’t know where Rat is or what’s going on, and it’s possible that he’s in some kind of truly dire straits that makes this excusable. . . but in any case, Rat should no longer be considered a reliable resource for burners seeking bikes. We hope Rat’s OK, even though him being OK would mean that he’s some kind of thief, and that some kind of thief has been enjoying free promotion from the Burning Man Org.

As always, do your due diligence before forking over your hard-earned cash, no matter what you’re buying; this is particularly important when you’re buying tickets from someone other than the Org themselves, at any price. You don’t want to end up on the playa with no bicycle after paying for one, and you sure don’t want to show up at Gate with a ticket bearing an invalidated serial number.

Ride tough!

by Whatsblem the Pro

Burner Photographer Peter Gordon — PHOTO: Dave Earl

Peter Gordon is a well-respected playa photographer who has won a slew of accolades for his work, especially in his native Ireland and in the broader world of European fine art photography. Peter is perhaps best known among burners for his work documenting the 2011 Temple of Transition, and his latest project will bring that work to the coffee table and the world. Thus spake the photographer himself:

“The book is called Life and Death – The Temple, and it’s the first time there has ever been a specific photography project on the Temple. The story is told through the Temple of Transition, but the work is about more than an individual Temple. It’s about the concept, it’s about our need to grieve, our need for companionship. It’s about life and death, as expressed through the Temple. The idea is to give a genuine photographic document of the Temple experience. So far the work is going down really well with a host of awards for some of the sweeping wide angle images.

“It’s going to be a hardback coffee table finish printed here in Ireland. An interview of David Best by James ‘Irish’ Horkan (of the International Arts Megacrew, the team that built the Temple of Transition) will serve as the foreword for the book. I’m hoping to launch the project in late September with an exhibition in Ireland, and then take it to the U.S. on tour.”

There’s just one little fly in Peter Gordon’s ointment, and you can help: he needs to identify burners in several photographs intended for the book, so that he can ask them for permission to use their images commercially.

Do you know any of the people in these photos? If you do, please ask them to contact Peter Gordon either by e-mail, or via Facebook.

Do you know these people?

Do you know these people?

Do you know this person?

Do you know this person?

Do you know this person?

Do you know these people?

Do you know these people?

Do you know these people?

In August of 2013, I asked Peter Gordon for some background on his work. This was his response:

“My first love as a photographer was landscape photography. What really got me hooked was hanging out in the Wicklow mountains, just south of Dublin, watching the Sun go down or waiting for it to come up. You could say I got a little obsessed; so much so that I spent the next five years rambling around Wicklow shooting with an old film camera on a 6×7 format. I managed to create a book and exhibition around my experience, called Wild Garden. I had exhibited in a range of shows before but this was my first big body of work in terms of something that I felt was really complete, and also as something that got great media coverage and generated a successful exhibition.

“I’ve done other landscape projects since, and I’m still crazy for the great outdoors. I’ve always had a love for both documentary photography and Burning Man, so it seemed logical to try and merge those two loves at some point. Life and Death – the Temple became my first major documentary photography project.

“After mixing things up with my style a bit at the end of 2011, I started to get lots of great recognition for my work, both in terms of landscape and the documentary imagery I had created at Burning Man. I managed to win Irish and European Professional Photographer of the Year which was really amazing.
I’m incredibly excited to try and put this Temple book and exhibition together; I think the work tells a genuinely interesting story. I’d love to see it travel from Ireland to the U.S. and beyond.

“I won’t be able to make it out to the desert this year, but can’t wait to come back in 2014 to soak up the atmosphere and make some fresh imagery.”

by Whatsblem the Pro

The Critical Snitch Parade? — PHOTO: Getty Images

In the wake of what seems to be the beginning of a serious police crackdown on Burning Man, rumors of a general strike have been quietly spreading among the workers and volunteers out in the Black Rock desert early to build the festival’s infrastructure. Whatsblem the Pro interviews a cabal of DPW workers who wish to remain anonymous, other than to identify themselves as members of a group known as Reform In Our Time (RIOT):

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: Tell me about your group. Why is it called RIOT?

RIOT SPOKESPERSON: Not because we’re trying to start a riot, if that’s what you’re wondering. RIOT is a quiet organization of people who feel that there are certain issues at Burning Man that need to be addressed. The name is meant to convey our sense of outrage and urgency; when there’s a problem that doesn’t really need to be solved right away, you can work within the system. When you need change immediately, you might have to kick harder than that! You can’t wait for it, you have to make it happen, right now.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: “In Our Time?”

RIOT SPOKESPERSON: Yes. Some things are just not acceptable, and if we believe in what we’re doing, we shouldn’t just continue to let those things happen. . . we shouldn’t take it, and we shouldn’t walk away from it. We should demand change, and if our demands are not taken seriously, we should enforce change.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: You want change? What changes are you looking for?

RIOT SPOKESPERSON: Our demands are simple: We want law enforcement excluded.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: You want to kick the police out of Burning Man?

RIOT SPOKESPERSON: People at Burning Man have each other to rely on, and they have Black Rock Rangers. We don’t need outside law enforcement, and we can call them in if we do.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: I’m not sure the various agencies involved would be willing to give up the annual infusions of cash they get from Burning Man without a struggle.

RIOT SPOKESPERSON: You’re right, it’s all about money in the end. We could find a different way to pay the powers that be, though. A way that doesn’t involve filling our city with police officers from other cities when there’s no emergency.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: Would the basic deal with local law enforcement need to change at all, if they stayed just outside Black Rock City and only entered when called in for a specific purpose?

RIOT SPOKESPERSON: That would work. The problem is a huge growth in outside law enforcement officers invading the playa, not the money it costs. We would really appreciate them if they stayed outside and only came in when we really wanted them to.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: What about radical inclusion?

RIOT SPOKESPERSON: Of cops? (laughs)
If the cops would leave their badges and guns at home and just be burners like everyone else in BRC, we’d welcome them just like we welcome anyone else. We’d even build them a Donut Camp!  We’re not against cops necessarily, we just don’t want outsiders doing law enforcement in our city. We have everything we need to take care of it ourselves without any outside help!

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: You said something earlier about also wanting DPW to be paid. You want them to have a union?

RIOT SPOKESPERSON: We want DPW to have a union if DPW wants to have a union. It’s hard to say how much support there might be for that. It isn’t a new idea and it may not be the direction we want to go in. Paying DPW volunteers would be a step in the right direction, though.

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: A lot of people seem to think that volunteerism is sort of part of it all. . . and of course, some DPW people do get paid.

RIOT SPOKESPERSON: They should all be paid. Even if it’s just minimum wage, they should all be paid. DPW workers volunteer to work long hard hours under very harsh conditions, and many of them turn their backs on perfectly good jobs to go to BRC and do that. They have to spend money just to get to Burning Man. That’s enough volunteerism all by itself. Making them work for free on top of what it costs them to drop everything and come to the desert is just unreasonable, especially when paying them a modest wage would still make them the most cost-effective work force on Earth! Making them work for free and then turning an army of cops loose on the playa to harass and bully them? That has to be addressed, as soon as humanly possible!
Really, the main problem we see right now is law enforcement, and everything else takes a backseat to that. We believe the Org has the economic leverage to deal with the current situation, so we want to see our concerns regarding law enforcement taken seriously, and we want something done. If we can’t get that. . .

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: That’s my next question. . . if you can’t get the Org to pay attention, how does RIOT intend to make them?

RIOT SPOKESPERSON: To start, as a show of strength and solidarity, we intend to stage a general strike, to prove that we mean business. On the Friday of the event, at dusk, those of us not doing jobs that are absolutely critical to safety will stop working, lay down our tools, and refuse to continue until the police leave the city. We call on all our sisters and brothers to spread the word and honor the strike. Friday at dusk, without violence, we take our city back!

WHATSBLEM THE PRO: Good luck!

Black Rock City’s amusing and informative broadsheet Piss Clear is now known as BRC Weekly. They’ll be bringing 25,000 hard copies out to the Playa this year, great to read over a paid coffee at Center Camp, or while you’re waiting in the ice line. And you never know, this broadsheet might just literally save your ass in a portapotty one day.

BRCWeekly2013_ext

BRCWeekly2013_int

Our compendium of Cargo Cult cyberspace coverage begins with this gem from Bloomberg – who seem to be having a bit of a love affair with Burning Man at the moment. Maybe last year’s Burn Wall Street really did help get Wall Street’s attention?

“We’re airlifting in the challah again,” said Steven Gluckstern, as he stood chatting recently with a few people. “Enough for 2,500 people,” he added casually, taking a sip of his cocktail.

A siege on the Upper West Side?

Burning Man, actually. It was to be the fifth year at the festival in the Nevada desert for Gluckstern, a venture capitalist and chairman of Mortgage Resolution Partners, and his wife, Judy. Every August, about 40,000 people pay $380 to attend the weeklong celebration of countercultural art, music, sexuality and lifestyles. The festival operates on a barter system, and each camp is expected to offer entertainment, food or some other service. The Glucksterns’ camp, now numbering a little more than 90 people, offers French toast. Hence the challah.

…Reached for further comment a few days later at his house in San Francisco, Gluckstern, 62, explains how he came to be an impassioned ringmaster for what the Burning Man crowd calls French Toast Thursdays. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the line to the Glucksterns’ tent is long enough that it can be seen from space. Last year, a satellite photograph of the festival showed a thousand people lined up for breakfast. 

When they say “seen from space”, I’m pretty sure they’re talking about high resolution satellite imagery, not an astronaut peering out the window of the Space Station…or my former guest Sir Richard Branson (White Kinght Too, Space Ship 2, Eve)’s or Burner Elon Musk (Grasshopper and Dragon) ‘s latest Spaceships . From space these days, they can probably see exactly what strain of weed that is you’re smoking while you wait in the massive line.

1000 people in line for French Toast? What is this, England? Mecca? Miami? In San Francisco, you can’t even get 1000 homeless to line up for the soup kitchen. At least in Vegas, you can comp your way past the line. I mean, I love French Toast, but I’m not standing in line behind 1000 people for anything at Burning Man. Well, except maybe the gate. This year Camp Hot Mayo threw an Irish Car Bomb party at 4:20 (location: 9:15 & Holy), it was well attended and had deep lines for the cocktails. Too much for me and my neighboring Fucken Prawn Distrikt 9 camp-mates, who preferred to help themselves to cold beers from the fridge and watch the line from air-conditioned comfort (Burner-than-thous, let the bashing commence!)
Anyway, we’re small time. Air conditioning and refrigerated beers, woo. We obviously can’t be Burners. But what about these guys?

The couple’s involvement began four and a half years ago, when they were invited by their daughter to take part in her honeymoon, which was held at Burning Man. “We rolled in that first year with a camp of about 20 people,” says Gluckstern. “We decided we would purchase a simple set of things to make a misting tent, which wasn’t very successful.”

OK, so, weddings at Burning Man, I kinda get it. Like, for Rockstar Librarian, that’s dope. If I were ever to get married, it’s about the only way I could think of where I could get most of my Burner friends in a single hyper-focused place at one time, and also most of my family and last remaining hold-out friends and Juno Reactor and Jamé Forbes and Subsqwad to be there at Burning Man at the same time.

But, isn’t a honeymoon supposed to be a romantic one on one with the newlyweds? Not, Orgy Camp and Comfort and Joy and Critical Tits? To each their own. For this particular VC, his daughter’s honeymoon, inspired him to take the SACRED PRINCIPLE OF GIFTING to another level. French Toast? How can that be Commodification? It’s just feeding the hipsters… (BTW, of all Larry’s 2004 “ten principles to rule them all”, Gifting has been the least popular in our Burner poll, neck and neck to be Biggest Loser with Civic Reponsibility…)

As he wandered the festival, Gluckstern noticed lots of camps serving pancakes. The old analytic skills kicked in. “That was too easy,” he recalls. “It’s a mix, and you add water.” Sensing an opportunity, Gluckstern decided to raise the stakes. “It would be much more of a challenge to do French toast,” he says. “You need fresh milk, fresh half and half, fresh eggs… “

A challenge it was. “The first thing is you have to find 100 loaves of challah,” he says. “We have to commission to have them made from a place in Berkeley. One of our colleagues has his own small private plane, so we organized a challah airlift.”

Then, as they say, if you want to feed a hipster, you have to pre-break a few eggs. “Two thousand pieces of French toast is around 1,000 eggs,” Gluckstern says. “How are you going to bring in 1,000 eggs without breaking them?” He spoke to a friend in the catering business, who recommended that he buy the eggs pre-broken, and managed to find a dairy in Reno that would sell him 72 quarts of pre- broken eggs and 32 quarts of half and half.

“Then we also figured, ‘Well, hey. We’d better use real maple syrup, too,” says Gluckstern. “So we had our airlift pilot track down five-gallon buckets of grade A maple syrup.” Other ingredients, like cinnamon and butter, don’t need to be purchased on such a massive scale. 

Using private planes to fly in maple syrup? Now that’s extravagant. Extravagant enough to get Bloomberg to cover your VC firm, using Burning Man as the hook to differentiate you from the thousands of other VC firms out there – some of whom also have representatives at Burning Man looking to cut deals (I know this for a fact including having watched a $15 million one go down right outside my RV a couple of years ago, as well as having met others of these Burner VCs).

The quality of these privately-airlifted French Toast ingredients is so amazing, that everyone will line up? Or maybe Burners are just hungry and can’t be fucked cooking.

Perhaps this is the reason for thousands of people to wait in line:

“The reason everyone says this is the best French toast they ever had is that for most of the people who’ve come in, they’ve generally eaten no dairy and no sugar by the end of the week. Their bodies just condition themselves to granola,” he says. “Then all of a sudden you’ve got a piece of French toast and it’s hot and it’s full of butter and eggs and your body releases endorphins. People literally become ecstatic.”

It seems that French toast is the new drug recycling. Expensive food logistics for them, greater bang for the buck for Burners.

Gluckerstern sounds interested in other French techniques beyond the toasting…

he likes the challenge, yes. And he likes the change of scene.

“We have five doctors in our camp, four of whom are ER doctors and the other’s a psychiatrist,” Gluckstern says. “As a coincidence, they all happen to be extremely handsome young gay men. Hanging out with these people is not what a 60-year-old businessman gets to do every day.”

“Now we’re making a separate foray into the world of ice cream. We’re building a vehicle … one of my responsibilities is the electrical system on it,” Gluckstern says, with the relish one might take in plotting a bond trade. “Last year we went out into the desert with ice cream sandwiches. They were incredibly successful but they ran out quickly. What we needed to do was have a much larger system, so we essentially built a covered wagon with freezers built in.”

So, who is this guy, winning over the hearts and minds of Burners with exotic breakfast foods, desserts, and handsome gay doctors?

Oh, no-one special, just another Burner: albeit one accused of having a bad reputation, who likes to hang out with young San Francisco hipsters in the Mission, and is using the controversial “Eminent Domain” laws to underwrite struggling cities to seize peoples’ homes for real estate developers.

“The broad category of property that we are taking about here is intangible property, and there has never been any question that intangible property can be taken,” Hockett explains. He cites examples of eminent domain being used to seize railroad stock and municipal revenue bonds. Of course, cities must demonstrate that taking private property accomplishes a public good, and the benefits of seizing underwater mortgages are somewhat speculative. But so was the public benefit of seizing homes in New London, Connecticut, to make way for a Pfizer research facility—a use of eminent domain that the Supreme Court approved in its controversial 2005 Kelo v. New London ruling.

According to the Chronicle, these people are protesting in support of Gluckstern’s plan  (photo: SF Chronicle)

Gluckstern wants to win so much, to him it’s war. Just like beating pancakes with French Toast.

We are not going to stop fighting. In a real war you get killed, but in this war, my partners and I believe this is the right thing for people and we will fight to the finish, whatever that means.”

His war sees him taking on the Rockefellers, the Mellons, and PIMCO, the world’s largest bond fund:

Trustees Pacific Investment Management, known as Pimco, BlackRock and Bank of New York Mellon are seeking a court order blocking Richmond and Mortgage Resolution Partners of San Francisco from using eminent domain to purchase mortgages of homeowners whose properties are underwater.

The city’s plan is unconstitutional, according to complaints filed by mortgage-bond trustees in federal court in San Francisco. The trustees, including Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank, were directed to take the action by investors in the debt, said John Ertman, a partner at Ropes & Gray.

“Mortgage Resolution Partners is threatening to seriously harm average Americans, including public pension members, other retirees and individual savers, through a brazen scheme to abuse government powers for its own profit,”

Former SF Mayor and current California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, believed to be a Burner and known to be a champion of the homeless and disadvantaged, is not a fan:

“I know what threats are. I know what bullying looks like. And I didn’t like it coming from the folks that I helped bail out,” Newsom tells me at the Balboa Café, his white tablecloth restaurant in San Francisco’s Marina District. He goes on to convey his feelings towards Wall Street with an expletive, adding, “You can quote me on that.” Then he changes his mind and asks that I not. He ribs his press aide for not reining him in. “But I feel that way,” he adds. “I have a visceral reaction.”

When you’re chomping down on that ecstatic French Toast, standing in line admiring the hunky gay doctors on call to prescribe whatever pharmaceuticals are needed to accompany your Playa pancakes…think about all that went into that. To pay private planes to fly around getting maple syrup for you.

Burning Man continues to get lots of coverage in the mainstream global financial press. This one in Business Insider was published while we were out on the Playa. Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.

The freedom-loving hippie “burners” attending the Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, Nev. this week may believe they’re communing in a happy cocoon with no laws.

In reality, undercover federal agents from all over the West are swarming the “temporary community” as they do every year and busting people for doing or selling drugs, local attorney and former cop Arnold Brock tells Business Insider. These agents do whatever they can to fit in at the 50,000-person festival, which Brock called a “unique event” that’s kind of like Woodstock.

“Last year we had an undercover agent dressed up as catwoman,” Brock says. “They will do whatever they do to … ferret out what they are considering criminal activity.”

Brock has an entire page on his website devoted to the “Burning-Man Related Arrests” that can happen to out-of-towners attending the festival. The festival goers might have their guard down and could be easy targets.

“It is a tremendous opportunity for undercover agents to go have a little fun and work a limited geographic area,” Brock says. “And that is exactly what they do.”

In some cases, Brock says, federal agents will even follow vehicles involved in larger drug deals from out of state and bust them once they arrive at Burning Man. Last year, 350 people were arrested there, according to the Reno Gazette.

Some burners have accused the cops of being overzealous in recent years. Festival attendees have complained about undercover female agents explicitly asking male burners for drugs as well as drug dogs brazenly roaming the camps, the Associated Press reported back in 2010.

Federal officials, however, said Burning Man needs to be policed.

“I don’t want my guys to be party poopers, but we have a job to do,” Mark Pirtle, special agent in charge for the Bureau of Land Management, told the AP. “[Festival goers] are not bad people, but they like to use drugs.“

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/federal-agents-swarming-burning-man-2013-8#ixzz2eGeyHDc2

UPDATE: Reno news KRNV Ask Joe: How many crimes occur at Burning Man ?

See video here: http://nevadastatepersonnelwatch.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/2013-burning-man-police-state-on-the-playa-state-fed-law-enforcement-law-enforcement-1-officer-to-every-1000-participants/

Question:
Patty Gordon wrote in saying she has heard there are many serious crimes committed at Burning Man and she wants to know if that’s true ?

Answer:
Patty, Pershing County is considered the lead law enforcement agency when it comes to Burning Man. I checked with Sheriff Machado in Pershing County. He did not have complete numbers but I did a get partial list. There are 50 investigative cases which are now open and being investigated. Machado says the crimes reported at burning man this year included open and gross lewdness, twelve sexual assaults, battery and various property crimes and DUI. A total of 15 people were taken to jail. Keep in mind there are more than 60,000 people up there for burning man, but there clearly are crimes being committed during the festival.

Over at the official Burning Man blog, John “Halcyon” Styn has shared a post about radical inclusion. I haven’t always been a fan of his style in the past, Burning Man is not the Care Bears after all, but in this case I can put aside possible past pink hair prejudice because I like this message. He addresses the celebrity factor which has always been there, but strangely this year seems to be an issue for some Burnier-than-Thous.

Like me, Halcyon’s first burn started on the Thursday, 1998.

My first burn was in 1998. I showed up Thursday afternoon, late in the week. I avoided most responsibilities and did very little to help with the camp breakdown. I took much more than I gave. I bet a veteran would have considered me a tourist.

But it changed me. I started to learn more about the event. I started to learn more about myself.

I learned what my gifts were.
I learned to start listening for, and listening to that voice that steered me towards my Joy.

It changed my life. It changed my world. It changed my burn.

So when I hear that Zuckerburg helicoptered in, or that P. Diddy was seen at Robot Heart, do I worry that “Burning Man is over?”

The opposite, actually.

Burning Man changes people. When it changes people who have control over significant resources, that bodes well for the planet. I want every CEO and Prince to experience the Playa. I want them to dance on an art car, be gifted pancakes and say what P. Diddy said upon returning from the dust: “#BurningMan Words cannot explain! I’ll never be the same”

This is not a silly idea. More and more I have been asked to speak to business people about the value of Burning Man ideals. They may not even know that they are BM ideals, but they know that being in alignment with integrity and purpose is important. After long careers where the bottom line was everything, they know, deep down, that it isn’t enough.

When I was recruited for my current job, it was based on videos I did about Burning man. The CEO told me, “We are are group of people who have had successful careers. We have built our empires…but now we want to build our legacy.”

So bring on the ravers, frat-boys, tourists & elitists. As each one of us gets in tune with who we truly are, it benefits us all. As each cell gets healthy, it advances the health of the entire body.

We’ve built an empire of dust…now we build our legacy.

The reason this is a big deal, is that Sean “P.Diddy” Combs is one of the world’s most powerful and prominent tastemakers. The richest person in Hip-Hop, he commands an audience of hundreds of millions of fans around the world, far more than little old Burning Man (or Burners.Me). Like, this guy is too big for Coachella. He’s probably one of the most famous people on the entire planet, who could do anything he wants at any time. For someone like that to express that he had a “life changing experience” at Burning Man, shows us there really is something very unique and special and precious here. Something that could be harmed if Burnier-than-Thous start hating too much on celebrities.

Everything we hear about Burner Sean is that he nailed it on his first burn, he was a consummate Burner helping out his neighbor’s flat tire with an air compressor, bringing Playa gifts for his camp mates, and rocking it hard at Robot Heart and Pink Mammoth. The Daily Mail has some positive coverage. I know where he camped and some more personal stories but this is not TMZ, we welcome Diddy to the Burner community and he should be able to get down as he sees fit without it being a big deal to anyone. He’s one of us, makes me want to buy his tracks even more than I already did. We do hear that he wants to bring a major sound system next year and as old skool ravers we welcome that. I predict a Diddy and Daft Punk track, he invented the remix after all.

all the information we have is that Diddy was a great Burner

there’s a story attached to this glove. Here’s Diddy’s actual tweet:

#BurningMan Words cannot explain! I’ll never be the same. Do u see the glove?

And here’s the story behind the glove (and Robot Heart medallion), from Melody at Instagram:

Other celebrities spotted this year? Oscar winner Susan Sarandon (rocking it with blinky lights), Stacey Keibler (famous for dating George Clooney), Seth Rogen (who said “now I’m off to Burning Man” to Andy Sandberg at the end of the roast of James Franco). I’m sure there are many, many more, and trust me – the harsh environment of Burning Man is a great leveller for celebrities. It’s still dusty. Their RV might be on the other side of the Playa, and they might have to use a portapotty. It might be gnarly and out of paper and water, maybe it’s really hot and they’re thirsty and there’s a dust storm. None of those things care who you are.

The Daily Swarm proclaimed this as the Death of Burning Man.

Diddy has confirmed what many critics have been saying for the past few years: Burning Man is dead. Ok, maybe that’s being a little dramatic for a psychonautic retreat for yuppies, but now that the revered gathering has officially become fashionable on a Coachella level it may be time for someone else to step up. Of course, Diddy claimed he had a life-changing experience like any virgin Burner would, but damn if this doesn’t just take the dusty wind out of our sails.

Also, it seems as though Burning Man attire has taken on a noticeably calculated level of “weirdness” in recent years. There was a time when Burner fashion was completely nerdy in aMad Max sort of way, but now it looks as though it’s more of a farce. And at the same time, there are still those out there rocking the goggles and raging at Robot Heart (though, Diddy is noticeably rocking a necklace featuring the installation’s logo) like it’s 2002. There’s still the hardcore contingent, but we predict some impending questions of identity in Burning Man’s future.

We disagree. It’s really nothing new. We’ve had plenty of celebs before, and we’ll have plenty more in the future. We’re all Burners together, and celebrities are people too. Bring it on! When else do they get to truly express themselves as people, away from their jobs and the machine they’re all a part of to get paid enough that they can afford Burning Man?

I like Halcyon’s question, about what legacy are we leaving – “our job is to be stewards of that magic, to keep re-aligning it with that integrity, to hold that integrity within ourselves as this magic starts to become part of popular culture“.

P.Diddy’s girlfriend Cassie poses in front of the couple’s Pilatus PC-12, a sweet ride to the Playa

Cassie riding on her phat bike

Stacy Keibler poses by Marco Cochrane’s Truth and Beauty

Kudos to whoever thought to create “Diddy Goes to Burning Man”, a new Tumblr site along the lines of Burning Man Problems.

Diddy arriving at Burning Man

Diddy finds out his camp is nearly out of water

Diddy rides in his first art car

Playa haters get away! It’s all about the Ben-J’s.

I just wanna hear good music…