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Life Lessons From Burning Man
Maya Zuckerman, “cultural hacker”, has shared 13 Life Lessons from 13 Years at Burning Man. From Huffington Post: The dust has finally settled after my thirteenth year at TTITD, “That Thing In the...
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Burning Man Spawns New Age Festivals
The New York Times has a story by Julia Allison on The Progeny of Burning Man. There are other ways to get a transformational experience than going to Black Rock City, and not every EDM festival is...
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First We Take Manhattan
“Die Religion … ist das Opium des Volkes” – Karl Marx If there’s one thing Burning Man founder Larry Harvey can do, it’s wax lyrical. The New Yorker brings us a tale of how he went there and did...
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Creating God In The Digital Age [Updates]
We’re building an artificial god. A digitally constructed consciousness simulator, with sensors absorbing all the world’s data, monitoring and tracking our every move, connected to hundreds of acres of...
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Ello is AfrikaBurn, Twitter is Burning Man
Afrika Burn 2014. Photo: Jonx Pillemer The UK’s Telegraph has an article comparing Burning Man with the rise of the social media network Ello (I’m @zos). It seems social media has become full of...
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Social Alchemist Seeks Sherpa for Startup Shenanigans
This year, just before Burning Man, the New York Times published an expose on rich people trying to one-up each other at Burning Man with luxury camps and paid employees. They featured an interview...
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“I’m Up For A Sherpa Myself”
CBS News did a video story on “Silicon Valley Elite Accused of Ruining Burning Man”. Larry insists that they’re not, that people have been saying “Burning Man is ruined” since the beginning, and in...
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“Like Rome Before The Fall” [Update]
The Balinese-style Ohm Kar, from Laguna Beach, debuted at Caravansary. photo: Herald Sun The Herald Sun is a daily tabloid newspaper in my old hometown of Melbourne, Australia. It’s the Aussie...
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Burning Man’s Gift Economy and its Effect on Mainstream Society
Festpop has an article by Karli Jaenike about how Burning Man is changing the world. I’m re-blogging it here so we can then discuss it. Emphasis ours. re-blogged from FestPop It’s no secret that most...
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Poker Like A Rockstar
Just when you thought the Burning Man virus couldn’t infect any more mainstream vertical markets, we get World Series of Poker/World Poker Tour champion Antonio Esfandiari (aka @magicantonio) writing...
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Wharton Business School Uses Burning Man as Case Study
Not sure if it’s worth going into six figures of student loan debt, if this is the kind of education you’re going to get. They think “The Man” is a camp! How can a non-profit festival based on Gifting...
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Blazed and Confused: the Simpsons Aftermath
The Simpsons broke burningman.com, just from its East Coast showing. It’s been down for at least 3 hours now: kind of surprising that BMOrg didn’t have someone working Sunday night in anticipation...
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Charity Versus Tax-Free
image: Bearman/Flickr (Creative Commons) In the comments to our BMOrg Hath Spoken article, Burner Cooter raised an interesting point. This is a slight tangent but the deal with the non profit status is...
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Burning Man Hacked!
image from WIRED The news of hackers exploiting a “back door” in BMOrg’s new ticketing system broke last week on Reddit. We covered it last Wednesday in Ticket Hell. Now, the story has been picked up...
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Lie, Cheat, and Steal Your Way To Burning Man
Image: Simon Davison/Flickr (Creative Commons) “Usually people are hacking to steal things…these people were hacking just to get a chance to spend $400 to get a ticket” 89.3 KPCC radio did an interview...
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What Comes Next?
Image: Livin-Lively/Flickr (Creative Commons) Burning Man is dead, proclaims the San Francisco Chronicle. Grover Norquist and some hackers killed it. So, what comes next? Apparently, low tech partying...
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From Canvas Cubes to Containers
Business Insider has yet another “the rich are taking over Burning Man” story, this time focusing on a company that will deliver a ready-made “Container Camp” for you on the Playa. Who needs Radical...
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It’s Hip To Be Square
Another interview from Grover Norquist, in what looks like a summertime ski lift. The Grove is now a “Burning Man aficionado” after attending once by private plane and staying up til 2:30am on a...
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People Freaking Out Over FBI Surveillance of Burning Man
Image: Beverly & Pack/Flickr (Creative Commons) Earlier in the year, VICE news published a story When the DEA Went to Burning Man, Shit Got Redacted about the DEA’s activities at Burning Man, based...
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2015 Celebrity Sightings
Some Burners will go “who cares”…but if you type “Burning Man” into Google and set time to “past 24 hours” under Search Tools, you will see that this is the main story being discussed on the Internet...
View ArticleDesert Spirits Get Naked
The Guardian brings us an amazing shot, taken at Burning Man 2013. Usually, photographer Spencer Tunick’s subjects are naked en masse. Last year, for the clothing-optional festival Burning Man, he...
View Article2014: Year of the Silk Road
This year’s theme is “Caravansary“. It’s meant to evoke traditions of the Middle East, silk pillows and teeming marketplaces in caravan oases on the great Silk Road of Asia Minor. The original Silk...
View ArticleBurning Man Project Exports Culture to…San Mateo
As we just mentioned in our earlier Amber Lyon post, if you’re looking to the official Burning Man site for news, good luck to you. They’re running on Burning Man time, not Twitter time. They told you...
View ArticleJim Carrey, the Queen of Diamonds and the Maharishi
Funnyman and Hollywood A-lister Jim Carrey has named Burning Man in a recent Commencement Address to MUM: The Maharishi University of Management (who honored him with a doctorate) The context is after...
View ArticleMidburn: Beyond Sold Out
Last weekend, Israeli Burners threw a party billed as “the first Burning Man Regional Event in the Middle East”. Prior to the event, it seemed to be sold out at 2000 tickets, but there wasn’t enough...
View ArticleMaster Chef: Burning Man
The Huffington Post has published a story from Saveur about The Epic Food Scene at Burning Man: …food was at the heart of this French Quarter: The Santopalato Supper Club featured a different chef’s...
View ArticleDMT-LALEO-K9-ER
Dennis Romero at the LA Weekly brings us this story, of a police rescue that turned psychedelic. Metin Sanli/Flickr It’s not everyday that Los Angeles police officers get a whiff of a rare psychedelic...
View ArticleBurner Community Processes Its Greatest Tragedy
As Utah Burners return from Element11, more information is coming out about Saturday night’s horrific public suicide. If you’ve had enough of this story, and would like to move on, it’s as easy as not...
View ArticleSo Ridiculous It’s Cool
The Atlantic has a story about a giant brain made out of steel, that will be hooked up to a Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine. Parts of the brain will light up, to “teach us” how brains work. Now if...
View ArticleSusan Sarandon Talks Burning Man, Bowie and Brownies
Last year my Burgin sister and I watched the Cargo Cult burn from on top of BalanceVille, an art car sleigh that raises 52 feet in the air with a scissor lift. Next to us, with a small blinky light in...
View ArticlePolitical Influx Has Press All A Twitter
Last year we had the celebrity invasion, with a big deal made about big names like P.Diddy, Susan Sarandon, and General Wesley Clark attending Burning Man. Will this be the year of the Political...
View ArticleVICE On Grover
Republican party politician mover and shaker Grover Norquist announced in a tweet last week that he was one of the celebrities going to Burning Man this year. The response has been surprising, with...
View ArticleSatanists With Guns
Satanists? Maybe Burners are Satanists? Before you jump to the comments to say “I’m sick of all the negativity, why is this blog hating on Burning Man, etc. etc.”…please understand that it’s not me...
View ArticleFun For All The Family?
At NPR, Audie Cornish and Will Stone from Reno Public Radio have a segment on parents who bring their kids to Burning Man. I am posting the transcript on my non-commercial blog so I can personally...
View ArticleFlower Crowns Light Before Kanye Flop
Beyonce and Jay-Z have been in town, chilling at the St Regis in the Presidential Suite. Definitely a Burner friendly hotel, for those who can afford it – $30,000 per night for J, B, and their child...
View ArticleWhere Does Your Ticket Money Go?
The Reno-Gazette Journal pretends to answer this question, by pointing to a “new announcement today” from BMOrg analyzing this very topic. How was this announced, and to whom? It seems it only made it...
View ArticleWeird-o-nomics [Updates]
The Atlantic has a long story “The Wonderful, Weird Economy of Burning Man”. They highlight the annual event’s impact on the surrounding area. In recent years, the airport has taken to displaying...
View ArticleBurning Man Jumps the Shark
Today’s headline in the SF Bay Guardian: Burning Man jumps the shark How a high-minded countercultural experiment ended up on everyone’s bucket list 08.19.14 | Steven T. Jones Steven Jones (Scribe)...
View ArticleHow To Save the World
Caveat Magister has written a long piece at SF Weekly entitled “Out of the Wilderness. The future of Burning Man isn’t in the desert. It’s everywhere else”. You’ll have to read through more than 5500...
View Article$2 million camps: Gentrification of Burning Man (NYT)
The New York Times published a story by Nick Bilton today (it will be in the print edition Thursday) about Burning Man. They referenced our story about Private Concierge services. A few different...
View ArticleHuffPo vs NYT – Mainstream Media Battles Over Burners
The Huffington Post has responded to the New York Times article about Burning Man yesterday. It’s amusing to see Huffington Post pretending that they are on the side of the “counter culture”. They must...
View ArticleBurners.Me interview on KGO Radio
San Francisco’s KGO news radio interviewed me today about the anti-rich, anti-tech, and dare we say, anti-Burning Man sentiment that seems to be sweeping the media this week. I should have recorded the...
View ArticlePoppycock! It’s Punks, not Hippies
Chris Taylor at Mashable has responded to this week’s press that Burning Man has jumped the shark and rich people are one-upping each other with $25,000/head camps and sherpas. In Chris’s opinion,...
View Article2014 BRC Weekly
Black Rock City’s daily paper used to be called Piss Clear, with new editions coming out daily on Playa (you could pick them up at Center Camp). It’s now known as the BRC Weekly. The 2014 issue is now...
View Article2014 Black Rock Beacon
Piss Clear BRC Weekly is not the only news-sheet on the Playa. There’s also the Black Rock Bacon Beacon:
View ArticleCosmo: Burning Man Erection Contests Are Really Hard
Tom Anderson at Cosmopolitan brings us a “deep behind the scenes” look at what goes on at Burning Man’s Slut Garden camp. From Cosmopolitan: “The first boner to rise gets the prize,” says Brad McCray...
View ArticleBRB: A History of Deaths
The Black Rock Beacon has published this history: Compiled by Mitch, Rockstar and Brandon Before this year, there were at least six deaths in Black Rock City. An additional number of Burners passed...
View Article“Brigadoon, the Louvre, Petra”
It seems Grover Norquist had an eye-opening Burning Man experience. He penned an op-ed for the Guardian about it: It is a larger version of … what? Woodstock? That was a bunch of teenagers coming to...
View ArticleOUTBREAK? Burners Warned of Virus Risk
They say bad luck comes in threes. This year Burning Man faced an unprecedented closure on Monday and Tuesday, followed by an unfortunately fatal art car accident on Thursday. It seemed like Burning...
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