Expect hippies to be blaming this on climate change in 3…2…1
Eric Worrall writes: | The Burning Man Festival, a famous Nevada cultural festival, dedicated to sharing, art, self reliance, self expression, burning a big wooden statue, and sky high ticket prices, has reportedly been delayed due to the rain.
According to the report, the festival hopes to open its doors tomorrow.
No doubt this inconvenient delay will give participants an opportunity to practice their self reliance, as they figure out where they will camp for the night, while pondering the possible environmental benefits of not setting fire to that big wooden thing this year.
Or who knows – perhaps the organisers have a plan “B”, which involves splashing a lot of fossil fuel onto the wooden man structure, before striking a match, to ensure all that wet timber lights up.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/burning-man-delayed-gates-closed-because-of-weather-2014-8
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USA Today reported it as:
Burning Man gate shut as surprise rain soaks desert
An unusual rainstorm in the desert north of Reno, Nev. has shut the main entrance to Burning Man, disappointing thousands of would-be attendees to this performance-art festival and rave.
Monday showers turned the Black Rock Desert into “mucky mud,” Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Dan Lopez said. Law enforcement officials were turning back a long line of cars and camping vans.
“With rain attached to (playa dust), people get stuck everywhere,” Lopez said.
Rain in the Black Rock desert happened in 2010 and 2013. Seasonal monsoon patterns, that’s all. No surprise.
It seems to have been re-opened today:
Tickets going for $380 up to $1000 according to the article. That’s some rich hippies.
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Just abbreviate it to BM 20XX. Sort of regular occurence just like a bm.
BTW I don’ t know where Arial font came from, but Helvetica is the original design for easy reading. Times new roman doesn’t bother me though. Most books use serif typefaces…
The people who were rained out of the Burning Man festival can always attend the permanent “Burning Bird” festival at the Bright Source Energy plant at Ivanpah!
not sure why so many are eager to denounce burning man festival goers. seems to me they are just a bunch of fun seekers, with no agenda . I mean how can you seriously dislike someone who likes a good campfire?
Fear not, the greatest festival on Earth ( Glastonbury) was another roaring success. Yes it rained, it was hot, it was cold, but did not snow. Fairly typical Glastonbury week.
And they all lived happily ever after:
“The Worthy Farm cows have been let out of their sheds and back into the fields (pretty much the most exciting thing that ever happens to the herd). Jason Bryant was there to take these great photos for us…”
http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/the-cows-are-back-in-their-fields/
http://cdn.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/gf031bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb.jpg
I think many here, including the OP, aren’t quite getting the point of Burning Man. It’s not a hippie festival. If it were a hippie festival would there be multiple $10k-$100k art installations, some that consume lots of power? It’s more like a gathering of futurist punks (according to one writer). Anyway, I think BM is generally misunderstood.
http://www.burningman.com/press/myths.html#hippie
http://burners.me/2014/08/22/poppycock-its-punks-not-hippies/
I agree, but it shows how this sort of thing can grow and become a caricature of itself.
You can’t go home again.
Oh, and the only reason they banned motor vehicles on the playa during the festival is because in the 90s people were getting run over. A couple of people were killed, IIRC.
Next year could be even better with a (mandated) ethanol tank car load as the flame source.
What a waste…all that corn converted to non-drinkable alcohol…it’s criminal, I tell you.
Ok, if you want the *real* Black Rock Playa experience, drive out there and camp in the middle under either a full moon, or the new moon – when you are the only person(s) out there. Full moon: the brightest moonlit landscape possible. New moon: The best terrestrial stargazing you will find. And the quietude is deafening.
A fun game (not for the faint of heart): Set up your lawn chairs in the pickup bed, bungee the steering wheel in a gentle turn position, let the engine idle in 1st gear, and sit in in the back drinking your beverage of choice while the pickup makes very large slow circles in the dust. (If you bungle it, don’t count on cellphone service or emergency medical help.)
They’re not hippies. Hippies haven’t existed for 40 years now. Burning Man has always been a contrived event for yuppies who were too young for Woodstock, or who missed it because they stayed home and studied.
And it’s not a “monsoon” that rained ’em out. The northern edge of the North American monsoon is waaaaaaaay south of there. Hundreds of miles. It was just plain ol’ rain on the plain.
If it rains enough to “activate” the playa, it would be a disaster for the event. This ain’t “mud” like you see in the old west in films, where it is an inconvenience and sticks on your boots. It quickly becomes a slurry which is like spreading axle grease on concrete, then sprinkling dust on top to disguise it. I’ve unwittingly driven onto the playa in late springtime, when it looked perfectly dry, but just a half inch underneath the dry white crust it was greenish grease. I was very lucky to get back onto terra firma, as I only got a few yards away from the dry edge before realizing my tires were spinning with the slightest touch of the throttle pedal. There have been cases of multiple tow trucks getting stuck trying to extricate a vehicle. if someone barges out there far enough in the wet season, they simply leave the vehicle there until the playa dries out. In early summer volunteers (usually nice old ladies from Gerlach) sit under sun canopies near the main entrances and advise people that the playa is still too treacherous to drive on, even though it looks fine.
Is the Burning Man really a Flaming Hippy?
https://www.google.com/search?q=burning+man+nevada&client=firefox-a&hs=9DQ&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=VjT-U9eDEeKCjALBoIGQCw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAg&biw=911&bih=438
Up to you.
There are two kinds of Gen Xers: those who unconsciously accepted indoctrination from the Boomers and never revisited the process, and those who realized they had been misled by the rediculous, ubiquitous Boomer paradigms, and who have proceeded to re-examine everything they were told by the Baby Boomers.
That would be the GenX Fail Files – easy and you get to go to festivals, and GenX A Listers. A lot of labor with no appreciation, but worth it in every way.
@brians356, watch me be wrong, but I think they’d need a lot more rain to achieve the goal you’re talking about. It’d be pretty funny, though.
jakej,
Yeah, I wasn’t referring to the little squall that dampened them on Monday, just pointing out that a serious thundershower, either on the playa itself, or over one of the adjacent ranges, could really bollix up the works out there. What I described is how it is at the end of a normal winter. Many do not realize that a significant stream, the Quinn River, terminates in the playa, and other smaller seasonal streams as well. But a sudden summer downpour in one of the adjacent ranges could loose a flash flood out onto the playa.
PS There’s a reason late August through September was chosen for Burning Man, as well as the Reno Air Races and the Reno Balloon Races – It’s not only pleasantly warm but also the time of year least likely to feature stormy, wet weather.
I got to Burning Man the day after “Monsoon Monday”. I never heard anyone blame it on climate change, It’s a known thing that it can rain at this time of year at this location, it was just an impressive storm that dumped a lot of water. They had lightning over the playa, actually, and standing water. BMIR (the local low wattage radio station that operates during the event) had a lightning strike on their equipment. I’m told they were back on the air pretty quickly. But lots of people who had big generators for their camps were scrambling to take down the generator & disconnect everything so that a lightning strike in the camp didn’t fry RVs, other vehicles plugged into the generator, or the generator itself. I talked to one person who is quite knowledgeable who was impressed with this as a fairly significant storm. I’m also told by reliable sources the mud was as brian356 mentioned — vehicles blogging down with wheels spinning. Organizers quickly stopped all vehicular movement but I suspect a few folks had to be winched out of the mud.
Burning Man is not generally an eco-warrior kind of place from what I could tell. People are there for art, music, community, partying, lots of reasons, but relatively few eco-warriors if any (I didn’t meet one). They all know the event is generating lots of CO2 and they don’t care. The age range is all over the map. The oldest folks I met would be of the “hippie” generation but don’t come across as overaged hippies. There are families who bring their children and do the event in family friendly ways. Most people seemed responsible enough, they brought food, water (really key in this environment) and shelter for themselves. The campsite is amazingly clean of random trash (called moop).
Gifting is purely voluntary. People give things away. It’s not taxation by another name. I think you could show up with everything you needed and camp and no one would complain unless you were camping with a group that had agreed to do something and you weren’t contributing to the process. The idea works well enough actually. People aren’t expecting to be fed, watered, or sheltered. The gifting is of fun things or experiences. For example, I camped with people who brought things to do, ie, the group had a zip line and gave rides on it. The whole gift thing doesn’t come across as communistic
I’d like to go back to the area at another time & learn more about the climate & geology, as what little I have learned so far was fascinating. I’d also like to go to the event again.
For those who are not aware, The Black Rock Playa was where the current land speed record of 760+ mph was set in 1997 by Andy Green in a turbofan powered vehicle, which also became the first land vehicle to exceed the speed of sound.
There are also a few large annual amateur rocketry meets there, where special FAA permits are granted for rocket flights and record attempts to altitudes well over 60 miles (a flight in 2004 reached 72 miles.)