Radical Participation: The Renegade Burn of 2021

Guest post By Troy Phillips on a Super Spreader Event

The Outset  

Disheveled, delayed, and with a developed lens of expectation, I returned to the Playa (or near it) for the eighth time in September of 2021.  “The Playa” used to be a prehistoric lake bed, and now is a sun-blasted alkali flat known as the Blackrock Desert, which hosts a yearly hedonism festival known as Burning Man.  For more on Burning Man, Google it.  I am 37, and I have attended “The Event” intermittently since my early 20s.  Many “Burners”¹ are yearly Pilgrims, but my attendance has spanned an immense swath of time and includes gaps where “Default” World² got heavy and circumstances would not allow.  

When one commits to journey to the desert, it’s as expansive and sometimes as expensive as the Hajj. So "The Event" should be all about planning, right? Roughly speaking, you're being slapped with a $1,500-2,000 price tag and require the adjustment and alignment of work, childcare, school calendar absences, and a host of other massive sacrifices of finance and time in order to depart to this align this magical experience. Even with my relatively short distance to the Black Rock City (>150 miles), the commitments are extensive.  

With dusty tubs in the garage, I scramble to pack and ditch the upgrades I have acquired year over year. The trailer comes into sight.  Why would I? This is only a 2-3 day foray and the trailer is not worth the effort. No need to pack excess water/gas/food that I won't consume.  Outfits will be limited to only what’s necessary. I settle for a tent without a shade structure and then the images of pain light up my mind, serving as a preview of problems to come: torturous levels of sleep deprivation, coupled with aggravating my ailing middle-aged man back. 

I depart. There is only one key principle I'm relying on: don’t go solo and recruit my campmates ASAP.  Burning Man encourages radical self-reliance, but it is much more glorious to ride and feast in the mighty company of one’s bannermen. The best way to Burn on the Playa is among your tribe.  Solo Burners do so at their social and physical peril.³ The possibility of not finding anyone is a tale as old as time, even if you have the right address. There are two camps I'm trying to find, either will do. 

In 2019 our Theme Camp ballooned from 40 members to 169 people.  There was drama and issues with this parabolic growth curve. Specifics are not important, but breakdown duties took 79 people 4 days straight of toiling in the heat to dismantle our camp. The exodus from such labor was welcome, and there was still much work to do repairing a hundred people’s psyches and egos from that journey.  

This year, I pick up two seasoned campmates in Reno. Daylight turns to dusk as I am informed in the car about the furious and ravenous backlash of what we are about to embark on. This is a monstrous magnifying glass placed directly over The Org™.⁴ There is everything to lose for Gate⁵, Department of Public Works, and a host of hyper-inflated egos of "the artist" class. There are the snarky and passive aggressive email chains: “Which font accent and sparkle color will look best on the world's most expensive event ticket?”  The inevitable jokes about the corporatization of Burning Man (meetings on meetings about meetings) emerge. Email hell, volunteers and volun-tolds, the shackles and roles we wish to discard as Burners. The banal inertia of bureaucratic work. The naked, exposed core of craven management is now tragically visible. Lawyers and lawsuits. Bureau of Land Management and power struggles for pieces of the giant pie.  

What a complete and total pile of steaming shit. Not only is there a chink in the armor of The Org™, the shining and heroic knight is naked in the fetal position, superfluous to the soul of the festival.  It's a good thing that the pronoun-concerned nucleus of tech and bureaucracy have been diligent with prepping land mines via keyboard. Buzz words of "unsafe", "germs", and “irresponsibility" rain down from the aristocracy.  They are screeching on every platform available to them in a last-ditch attempt to save grace and justify themselves.  Spoiler alert: these dorks were not missed at the event.  Good riddance and isolate. The brave need their space.   "This will be fun,” I say out loud as we approach Empire, NV and later down that lumpy two-lane road.  

The Arrival

The town of Gerlach feels the same as we see the familiar caravans of pedestrian Burners push past a limited and reasonable number of BLM cars. But wait, something is amiss. Where are the ticket-seeking Wooks?⁶ 

We continue to approach and discuss all options at the 12-mile entrance.  The 12 mile entrance is the standard Burning Man start point from where the rocky washboard meets the endless waiting game and you get to see firsthand how it can take 50-75 people a month to set up 3 miles of dilapidated flags purchased in 1999. Further on is road construction at its finest. 2 people work and 6 people supervise. I'm certain that the $300 roll of flags that marks the road and circles the playa has been re-used every year since 1995. What an racket for the Org, that is legendary ROI.  But hey, Burning Man.Org has a payroll of $14M to keep, plus $5M in contract labor, plus a million-dollar travel budget, plus the bum commune at Fly Ranch.

We skip further ahead past third-world style efficiencies and go to our favorite Playaween and Fourth of Juplaya entrance at 8 mile and 3 mile. It’s dusk.  The wind is moderate and the dust clouds are heavy.  We have a car leading and we follow with a truck on a trailer as we glide blissfully over the smoothest road ever. No washboard, no line. My first Renegade Playa gift to myself is 4 hours of my time back.  The second is not being searched by some ego-heavy, black-dressed goth kids on a power trip reminding you that the Stanford Prison Experiment should become a metaphysical law. Quick aside, can we acknowledge the banality of volunteering to TSA-LARP? 13 minutes and we are at camp.  Pinch me, how could this happen so quickly and efficiently?  

We set up and link up with our friends in camp. We have a cocktail or two and meet new faces and new friends. Our Camp is about 30 people and includes an amazing 2-story art car with a fantastic sound. Our contact within the camp is the DJ slated to play the following night, and a real peach. We eat dinner and fire up the lights on bikes. In the not so far distance we are captivated by The Drone Show. A wild and beautiful improvement in length, quantity, and quality to the archaic versions I witnessed in 2018. You can hear a collective pin drop amidst an awe-stuck collective of 30,000 spellbound Burners. Tone set, we load up the art car and depart. This is an amazing way to set GPS for visual landmarks to return home on foot or bike, but also see the layout and geography. The question on many minds, how disoriented will we be without a man and street signs?⁷ On each street a different colored light pole served as an excellent beacon. 

The Event

It's immediately noticeable that there are larger gaps and more space between camps. We are aware this is a snow globe and not a horseshoe layout. The basic structure is not intuitive.  There is no map from a central planning authority. The details of the venue become conscious understanding amidst the pounding of good beats, smiling faces, and dancing bodies. The stress of driving in and setting up, begins to ebb. I'm never fully there until I'm there. Once I am fully present, the environment envelops me in a euphoric tidal wave of joy. The night goes on. The familiar feels, sights, and sounds of an archetypal Burn are all felt and embraced. Art cars roll and bump, people on bikes cruise, and there is a comforting wash of neon and sound. 

A sunrise was not caught, and we returned to our camp at a reasonable time courtesy of a chilly night. This permitted more daytime activities and camp bonding. Games of compare and contrast are unavoidable, and sanitation becomes central to discussion. It's quickly noticed that about every third camp has privately trailered in a or had a porto-potty dropped in camp. Some camps had up to 3-4. Delightful, thinking about sharing the cost for the non-trailered ground is a no brainer. 

For the amount of money I paid for tickets in the past, it should have meant that I was entitled to splitting a toilet with maybe 3-4 people, NOT the Banglapur India style of quality one has come to expect from this colossal monument to inept government operations. This is the clearest argument that The Org™ has been grossly overcharging and under-delivering municipal services. Hate to fixate on this fact, but what an ongoing crock of shit has been for decades. 

Various Observations

I saw 2 dogs over 3 days. Same philosophy as kids: I would prefer not to see them there. They are not having a good time.  

PSA: Don’t take your kids to Burning Man.  Let go of your misguided illusion you're doing it for them.  It's for you, unless you're really hellbent on explaining what a Shirtcocker is, what is and isn't circumcision, and normalizing the conversation of people that haven’t slept in 2 or 3 days. As a parent, I can assure you your child will not need this skill set until they are at least 14-15 years old minimum, not 6.  

The ratio of New Burners versus the amount of seasoned folk would best be described as 90% experienced with 10% new. I witnessed a couple of newbie (AKA “Virgin”) mistakes, evidenced by a few sightings of Razor Scooters and randomly parked non-lit (or “non-illuminated” for you hype-beasts out there) vehicles in the middle of the Circle Playa event.  No big deal.  Someone is fucking up that doesn't know better. They will soon be informed by someone with the events interest at heart (hint it ain’t from the Org™). they’ll fix it and can't really be blamed. Another win for spontaneous order.   

Motorcycles ripped by during the daytime on the outskirts, at times at pretty decent speeds. Due to the stretched design of the city this was not an issue, and I have no qualms with biker bros. 

BLM (That’s the Bureau of Land Management. They were BLM Before it was cool) were out and working, but in what I would consider to be a perfect ratio. We saw an arrest or two, and a siren or two of local ambulances, police once or twice. Nothing unnerving or out of the ordinary, but also not a dick-stroking parade of government overtime on display for all to enjoy. Law enforcement, or lack thereof, seemed to be a fitting balance.  

There were no water trucks. This didn't change anything whatsoever. Cross that expense of gumming up gears and brake pads in the misconception of helpfulness. More blatant waste. 

The volume of people was delightful, to say the least. A full spectrum of all parts of a flourishing and culturally diverse city. Or at very least, about 85% accurately reflecting a typical BRC. I would say 30,000 people on Playa at once. Granted, people come and go, so overall during the course of time it may have been 40,000, I'm not entirely sure. 

I counted about 15 different languages including Russian, Brazilian, and French. The international airport crowd was in tow. 

The most Annoying Thing I Saw  

The Temple Burn scene was a parody of itself, a mockumentary in motion.  Temple Burn is supposed to be a solemn event.  The Burning of the Man is to Bacchanalia, as the Temple Burn is to Latin Mass.  Not the case this time around.   I made the mistake of getting the art car too close and became trapped by a horde of influencers toting selfie sticks, filming themselves and others eating the proverbial “Eucharist.”   I was aghast at the decadent self-indulgence taken by these people.  Essentially, they are "hangers on", inserting themselves into rites and rituals with the shameless goal of self-promotion, while defending that act as ordained.   “Look at me, followers, I’m doing a cathartic!”  The whole spectacle seemed cheap, hypocritical, and desperate.  Rather than pity these desperate souls, at this stage in my life, and what once may have struck me as sad brings out a high level of indignance and disgust: talentless actors putting on a show for that good Instagram material. Get off your damn phones and get off my lawn.  

The Most Hilarious Thing I Saw  

I witnessed an obese woman clad in white hop on top of the art car, and out of her pocket she pulled out two soaking wet, barbecue-sauce-slathered beef ribs. I was tickled at this, and when my friend and I pointed at them she recoiled and screamed "these are mine!" (insert Chris Farley "Lay off, I’m starving!") We then proceeded to watch her rub her greased up hands all over her white shirt. Later she would visually scan the deck on what to do with this tasty and inconvenient food. She ultimately put those slathery bones in her pockets. 

What was missing: 

Aside from a host of self-important senior organizer’s fart sniffers and multiple sectors of wasteful bureaucratic clowns, you were missing the super-charged Ego camps and art folk. You know, “Let's find money from either our parents and or grants to dick off and dedicate the entire year to this.” Anything, at any costs not to actively participate in “Default”(aka the real world).  To be clear, I love art. If you want to provide art as a side hobby thank you kindly for your contribution. I think you can be a professional artist, if the open market is compensating a living to whatever that artist desires. To anyone being funded through collectives and back door taxes through misappropriated funds, I say pump the brakes and let's truly examine the necessity of that which cannot exist in any open market. To them I'll quote the Big Lebowski and say "Get a job, sir!"  

Anyone who has a career working on Burning Man full-time is nothing short of a politician. Period. Neither the default or BRC world is better for these exploitative leeches who deem themself above all and done under the guise of universal betterment for all. These are malevolent weeds threatening voluntary community everywhere and must be pulled up from the roots.  

Also missing: scores of plug-and-play flat nose diesel pushers with private security. With an exclamation point, I will state that Burning Man is 100% better off without these folks. You don't fully get how bad the problem is and has been, as The Org™ turns a blind eye to creating and protecting a private elite-catered experience to a select (and rapidly growing) Silicon Valley group. Wonder where those paid art endowments and funds are coming from? Tenured large-scale camps and also in tow to a degree as well. 

The professional touring art cars. Another hard pass, and no thank you. Thinking they are God's gift to the Playa, but I would instead liken them to a lit cigarette.  A fleeting moment of joy, and immediately forgotten once finished. There were about 30 cars out there, all sounded amazing. I will make note that the Robot Heart stage-car did have a few regular cars with their headlights on, following them. Hilarious, and their downbeat sunrise-style set at merely 2 am sucked. 

So, there was some stuff missing, but to paraphrase Peter Gibbons of Initech: “I wouldn’t say I missed it.”  No one cares. Literally, no one about the delicate Egos.  

I will still attend “Sanctioned” Burning Man whenever I possibly can, but this was the best Burn ever. If there is a sanctioned burn at the same time as a Renegade Burn, I will be at the latter, and I have a sneaking suspicion I will be joined by 30,000 or more Renegades.

1. Burner: an attendees of Burning Man, and an observer of the 10 Principles Here’s a handy glossary of terms

2. Default= life outside of Burning Man

3. Burning Man, as stated takes place on an inhabitable stretch of flat desert.  There is no water, power or infrastructure.   Everything is brought into or assembled at the event.  Unprepared attendees can get dehydrated, sunburnt, run over, blown over, overdosed, stranded or dead. 

4. This is the 501(c)(3) that runs the festival.

5. These are layers of bureaucracy introduced by the Org to be gatekeepers, sell tickets, and regulate Radical Freedom  

6. Think grungy San Francisco gutter punk kids ranging in age from 16-40, looking for free tickets or drugs,  Shameless human barnacles. 

7. “…Especially on weed.”