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What I Did During My Summer Vacation: Burning Man Edition 228

Posted by samzenpus from the first-thing-you-need-to-do dept.
Bennett Haselton writes: "While nothing can really 'prepare' you for your first time at Burning Man, there are a few simple steps that can eliminate a lot of the stress. Unfortunately it can be hard to get information out of the 10-year veterans about how to do things the easy way (some of them probably view the 'easy way' as 'ruining the whole point'). So here's some advice instead from someone who just got back from their first time, and who likes to take the path of least resistance." Keep reading for the rest of Bennett's Burning Man advice.

If you get nothing else out of this article:

  • You can fly to Reno Airport and take the Burner Express shuttle to Burning Man, instead of driving.

  • You can rent a bike from one of the other camps at Burning Man rather than bringing one yourself. (Bringing one might be the easier option if you're driving there, but not if you're flying.)

  • You can pay dues to a camp that will provide food, water, camping space, a place to store your trash (if you didn't know, there are no communal trash dumpsters at Burning Man), sometimes electricity, and sometimes access to a shower, rather than trying to arrange for all of those things yourself.

  • If you just need space for one person to sleep, you can buy and bring a single-occupancy tent. You don't need to build a home-made shade structure out of PVC and tarp.

  • If you have lower-than-average heat tolerance, buy ice from the ice vendors to make your own ice water, and carry a water spray bottle.

These points should be taken in conjunction with a more comprehensive guide to preparing and packing; I'm not writing a full guide to getting ready for Burning Man. These just happen to be the points where I wasted the most time going down the wrong path during preparation, taking advice too literally from the BurningMan.com website and/or grizzled veterans who thought that you honor the event's heritage by doing things the hard way, before realizing there was a much easier option. (I would have liked it, for example, if the Burning Man website had told me you can just rent a bike once you get there, instead of pointing me to a long list of other options that are much more hassle.)

Generally speaking, for more details on how to prepare, you should talk to someone who has been before -- but it's has to be someone who doesn't take themselves too seriously and will give genuinely usable advice. We all know people who give you the kind of advice that you can actually use because it closely corresponds with what people actually do; and we also all know people who give you the kind of advice designed to "make a man out of you" (regardless of gender) by steering you through an ordeal that will make you appreciate how hard they had to work, but which may not actually be useful. Burning Man attracts a disproportionate number of people from the second category, but you need to find and talk to someone from the first group.

In particular, one lesson learned the hard way: Do not ask a male Burning Man veteran how to do something, in front of a girl that they might be trying to have sex with later. Because you'll get an answer designed to impress her, not to help you -- something along the lines of hunting your own deer with a crossbow and then using the bones to construct a tent frame across which you stretch the fresh deer skin for shelter.

All right, I'm exaggerating, but I'm not exaggerating when I say that the first three people I asked about what kind of tent and shade structure I needed to bring, all of them suggested following directions from the Internet about how to build your own from PVC pipe and tarp from Home Depot, or how to build something called a Hexayurt. (Seriously, the Hexayurt sounds like an honest-to-God brilliant idea, but is kind of overkill, and realistically eliminated as an option if you're flying to Burning Man.) Really, you can get buy with a storebought tent.

A few other meta-points about how I got this information:

  • I'm sure some people think that making it "easy" for people to survive at Burning Man will ruin it for the veterans, but I think that the less time you have to worry about practical details (such as your week's food supply running low or your home-made tent blowing over in the wind), the more time you can spend actually participating. I'm writing this because I had a good time, and I'd like to make it easier for other people to go, and once they get there, to have more time to contribute using whatever special skill they happened to bring with them.

  • I'm erring on the side of paying a little bit more money for a little bit less hassle.

  • Notwithstanding the foregoing, I consider these fallback options which cost a little more money but are guaranteed to work -- for example, pre-paying to rent a bicycle at the event. If you know someone who can bring a bicycle for you in their truck, great; but you have to find someone who is driving there, who has room in their truck, who is willing to do you a favor or let you reimburse them, who is not going to flake out and sell their ticket at the last minute, etc. I've always found that when you are looking for cheaper alternatives, it's a lot less stressful if you have a more expensive option you can fall back on, that you know will definitely work if the cheaper options fall through.

So, back to my list:

You can fly to Reno Airport and take the Burner Express shuttle to Burning Man, instead of driving.

Now I did say that most of my "simplifying strategies" were hard to find through the official channels, but this is an exception to that general rule, in that this option actually is promoted prominently on the BurningMan.com website, not least because the Burner Express shuttle service is operated by the corporation that runs Burning Man. The Burner Express shuttle costs $60 each way and runs from the Reno Airport to Burning Man, allowing you to get from the airport to the event without having to rent a car or coordinate a ride. That might sound expensive if you were planning to rideshare from the airport for free, but you also get to bypass a five-hour line of cars waiting to get in to Burning Man through the entrance gate, and bypass another five-hour line again on the way out. That works out to paying about $12 an hour to avoid sitting in a line full of hot cars, which sounds worth it to me. (There is also a Burner Express shuttle that runs from San Francisco to Burning Man.)

The major constraint that this creates is that you have to fit everything you're bringing into two suitcases per person, which is the maximum allowed by Burner Express, unless you pay extra to bring a third suitcase. (That's still plenty of space, but it does rule out things like the hexayurt.) You can use the extra-large luggage allowance to pay to bring a bicycle on the Burner Express bus, but that means you have to somehow get your hands on a bicycle at the beginning of the bus ride. That's not easy, since you would either have to leave Reno Airport, rent a bike somewhere in the city, and bring it back to the airport before the bus leaves -- or else fly with your own bike on the plane to Reno Airport, which is expensive. Which leads to the next simplifying strategy:

You can rent a bike from one of the other camps at Burning Man rather than bringing one yourself.

I rented mine from Playa Bike Repair camp for $200. If I'd reserved it earlier it would have been $150. (I don't know how many camps there are that rent bicycles to burners, but Hammer and Cyclery is at least one other one.)

This was the one point on which I wished the BurningMan.com website had pointed me in the right direction and saved me a lot of aggravating time chasing dead ends, since their website has three separate pages about bikes at Burning Man -- what kind to bring, where to get them, how to transport them, how to return them -- without mentioning the option of renting them from other camps. (This seems like such a big omission, that it made me wonder if part of BurningMan.com shouldn't be organized as a wiki, so that users can submit edits if the organization doesn't have time to maintain it. A link to the bike rental camps, is exactly the kind of thing that probably would have been added to a page about "bicycles at Burning Man", if it had been wikified.)

The Burning Man website does link to places you can rent a bike in Reno -- some of which are much cheaper than the $200 to rent from Playa Bike Repair -- but they were all booked out by the time I started looking a few weeks before the event. Also, if you're flying in to Reno and renting a bike from a shop there, you'd have to figure out how, after you arrive at the airport, you're going to go and pick up the bike to bring it back to the airport before the Burner Express bus leaves. All more reasons why I figured a bike rental camp was much simpler.

You do have to pre-arrange and pre-pay for a rental from a bike rental camp. Playa Bike Repair had no walk-up rentals available at the event, and I doubt the other bike rental camps would either, since they have to know in advance how many bikes to bring with them, based on reservations.

And speaking of Playa Bike Repair camp --

You can pay dues to a camp that will provide food, water, camping space, a place to store your trash (if you didn't know, there are no communal trash dumpsters at Burning Man), and sometimes access to a shower, rather than trying to arrange for all of those things yourself.

"Camps" at Burning Man are groups of campers who often pool their resources so that, for example, one person can drive in with a truck carrying a week's worth of food for everyone, instead of everyone bringing in their own food. Some camps have consisted of the same group of friends for many years and have completely closed their membership, so that even close friends of the existing members can't join. Others outright sell camp memberships to the general public. (My camp was in the middle of the open-ness spectrum; it wasn't open to the public, but two of the campers were guys that I had met a few times, so I got in by paying $200 and doing a share of the camp chores.)

One Burning Man participant, who had done more research than I did on the types of camp memberships that were open to the public, said that they varied widely in the value they offered for the dollar -- some charged up to $300 for almost nothing, while others charged under $100 for everything including food, water, and showers. He said that in order to find a suitable camp, he wrote up a "Burner Resume" describing his skills, and contacted various camps while putting out a request on the Burning Man forums. You might find some sweet deals that way, expanding your options beyond those camps which straightforwardly sell memberships to the public through a shopping cart interface right on their website.

Playa Bike Repair is in fact one camp that sells public memberships and gives you a discount on your loaner bike if you camp with them. (But read the fine print; they also ask you to work four 4-hour shifts (16 hours total) for the camp during the week.)

I can't vouch for any specific camp that has open membership; I'm just saying that as a general strategy, it's probably easier to pay money into a camp that will take care of these details for you, rather than worrying about everything yourself.

If you just need space for one person to sleep, all you need is a single-occupancy tent.

Originally, after reading the Burning Man Survival Guide for 2013, I was under the impression that you needed to bring a shade structure to the desert in addition to your tent. Basically, they recommend a tent to protect you from the elements, and then a separate layer on top of that to cast a shadow over the tent, to prevent overheating. (Obviously, the opaque fabric of the tent already creates "shade" inside, but if the tent is directly in the sun, the air trapped inside the tent will heat up like an oven. So you need a second layer above the tent, to create shade while still allowing the air to circulate between the roof of the tent chamber, and whatever is above it casting the shadow.) And this is where I got a lot of Bear Grylls types telling me how to build my own shade structure out of PVC pipe and tarp.

It's probably simpler than that. Basically:

  • If you're sleeping in a single-occupancy tent and you won't be sleeping in it during the day, a regular camping tent is fine.

  • On the other hand, if you might be sleeping or resting in your tent during the day, you'll likely want a tent that has a built-in shade canopy, or a separate shade structure.

  • In either case, you should anchor it to the ground using rebar, rather than the stakes that come with the tent or the shade structure.

  • But, in neither case do you need to build anything yourself out of PVC and tarp, unless you really want to save money. You can get tents and shade structures at REI or Sports Authority, and I think it's worth it to have one more thing that is built by professionals and that much less likely to have something go wrong with it.

Now here's where I may have gotten away with an easy approach because of my particular circumstances. Originally I brought a 12-foot-square shade structure that I had planned to set up over my tent. But I either caught a cold on the plane to Reno, or was hit with dust allergies as soon as I got to Burning Man (I still don't know which), so I was taking heavy doses of Benadryl every evening. And that meant I was usually out cold by midnight, and that meant I was usually up by 8 am the next morning and well out of my tent before the sun started heating up the trapped air inside. So I didn't even need my shade structure and never set it up.

On the other hand, if you plan on sleeping or resting in your tent during in the day, then you probably need shade. You can buy tents which have an extra layer of fabric separate from the roof of the tent, to let the air circulate while still providing shade, or you can get a separate shade structure. Most experienced burners say that an EZ-UP shade structure is not suitable because it can be too flimsy and likely to blow away in high winds; a burner in your city can help you find a sturdier shade structure that you can buy.

Remember, a flimsy tent or shade structure might merely be crumpled by high winds, so it's up to you if you want to take that chance. A tent or shade structure that is improperly secured, however, creates a hazard to other people, so it's your obligation to other burners to make sure your tent or shade structure stays attached to the ground, whether it crumples or not. That's why you should use rebar instead of the standard stakes which come with the tent (which are too short to anchor securely in the desert sand), and then cover the cops of the rebar with bottlecaps or tennis balls so that people won't impale themselves if they trip and fall onto one of the stakes.

One final note on that: I didn't set up my shade structure, but I did bring an electric fan that I turned on full blast to circulate the air in and out of my tent the one morning that I did sleep in for a bit. If your camp provides electricity to plug in a fan, that may work just a well for you, and be a lot simpler than a separate shade structure.

If you have lower-than-average heat tolerance, buy ice from the ice vendors to make your own ice water, and carry a water spray bottle.

Bags of ice are one of the few things that are sold at Burning Man, by the event organizers. Most days I would go to the ice vendors and buy my own 10-lb bag of crushed ice, bike back to the camp with it in my backpack, and empty it into my plastic water jugs. This got me only about two hours' worth of ice-cold water, before the ice was all melted -- but during the two hottest hours in the middle of the day, I considered it to be well worth it. On my definite packing list for next year: a cooler (small enough to fit in a suitcase) which I can use to store my own private ice supply and make it last all day, and a thermos to carry around ice water and keep it cold for as long as possible. (Almost everyone I saw was drinking lukewarm water from a camelbak or simple water bottle instead of a thermos; I'd gladly spend the extra 10 seconds screwing and unscrewing the thermos, to get ice-cold water instead of room-temperature. Besides, for hydration purposes, cold water is better for you.)

A water spray bottle, besides being a good way to deal with the heat, can also function as an icebreaker -- I didn't bring my own spray bottle, but many times I walked past strangers who said Hi and gave me a nice misting with water, sometimes scented with a flavor like lavender. Surprisingly, given how refreshing the spray bottles are, most people seemed not to have one, so everyone was always happy to see the person who had the spray bottle. Everyone at Burning Man is expected to contribute one way or another, and if you don't know how to juggle flaming chainsaws and you don't have boobs that you can walk around exposing everywhere, carrying around a bottle to mist people with is quite sufficient.

Of course spray bottles are not the only resource you can share for the benefit of the community. Next to every row of porta-potties distributed throughout the city at Burning Man, there was a wooden stake in the ground with two with two hand sanitizer dispensers attached to it, but the dispensers were almost always empty when I tried to use them, so I started carrying around my own hand sanitizer bottle. On my last morning there, since my personal hand sanitizer bottle was still 80% full, and since I had just spent a week snarfing up every piece of free food that was offered to me, I figured the least I could do was to stand by the hand sanitizer post for a few minutes and offer free hand sanitizer to anyone who wanted it, after they discovered that the official dispensers were empty. Nice way to give back to the community and say Hi to a few people, although not a great way to pick up the ladies since you're meeting them in the context of helping them wipe off bacteria from their own shit. Have fun!

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What I Did During My Summer Vacation: Burning Man Edition More

What I Did During My Summer Vacation: Burning Man Edition

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  • i did it twice while in the US Army. two trips to the national training center in the california desert. i hated it. both were pre internet

    it takes like 15 minutes to read the day's newspaper and after that, nothing to do
    the radio stations played the same 10 songs every day, all day

    WTF is so awesome about dumping technology and living like a caveman for a few days? try it for a month.

    i came back and first thing i did was drink, watch TV and listen to music i hadn't listened to for weeks

    • Excellent question. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Monday September 23, 2013 @11:59AM (#44925409)

      And more to the "why do people do things the hard way" theme of TFA, why did Bennett Haselton decide to go Burning Man?

      The "why" of why you go will also determine the "how" of how you do things there.

      There is a HUGE gap between the people who go and construct their art and participate in the gift culture and those who go so that they can say "yeah, I went to Burning Man".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xanie ( 446372 )

        I think he is what is called a "tourist".

        This was my first year as a virgin, and I did a lot of prep before hand. "The Journey" made the destination that much more rich and filled with, as I already had sweat and emotional equity into the thing.

        I couldn't have replaced that for $200 in convenience by paying a camp to do it for me. I learned about building a hexayurt with a could of other virgins and one vet, learned about solar energy, and I learned a lot about myself.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Excellent question. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by curunir ( 98273 ) * on Monday September 23, 2013 @01:38PM (#44926505) Homepage Journal

        Moreover, there are many different Burning Man experiences to be had and I think he had a different one than I've ever had or ever want to have.

        For one, most of the fun happens at night...the day is too hot. I rarely return to my sleeping area before 5am and in those rare occurrences I'm usually not alone. Without a tent with a pretty serious sun shade, sleeping past 7am is almost impossible. I'm not sure how others deal with 2 hours of sleep per night for an entire week, but I can't function that way. I've realized that it's just easier to rent the RV so that I can sleep comfortably until noonish.

        Second, his experience seems far more solitary than mine. I usually bring an outdoor sun shade, but I mostly don't use it. During the days, I tend to go around the event wandering into other camps making friends. It's my favorite part of going there...I love the randomness of not knowing whether I'm walking into a situation where it's clear after 2 minutes that I should leave or I'm going to have a pleasant hour-long conversation or even if it's the start of a serious friendship/relationship. The pleasant hour-long conversation is, by far, the most common, but I've had quite a few of the other two as well.

        Third, I cannot fathom going out there without being sure that I have enough water. Flying into Reno just doesn't seem like an option since I can't bring the 3 5-gallon containers I feel I need for the duration of the event. Also, painting a cheap bike can be fun and make it really easy to identify yours in a crowd of other bikes. It also makes it really hard to steal (either intentionally or unintentionally) if it has a very unique look. Every few years I get a new cheap bike and put my own artistic imprint on it...I'd rather do this instead of renting both because I feel it's more in the spirit of the event and because it's annoying to have to constantly lock up your bike.

        I get the distinct feeling from his post that he went because he was interested in it but basically wanted to blend in and observe. That's fine, but experienced burners will give you advice to based on what you should do to participate, not just watch. Had he followed the advice to build a hexayurt with PVC from home depot, people like me might have spontaneously stopped by to say hello...not so with his single-occupancy tent.

        • Flying into Reno just doesn't seem like an option since I can't bring the 3 5-gallon containers I feel I need for the duration of the event

          Gerlach may be dead, but Reno has plenty of stores. There's an unwritten rules that if you're flying in, your group stops at the grocery store -- which is filled with other awesome Burners. They're generally pretty easy to identify, but not as easy to identify as the playa-dust encrusted passengers on the flight back. As far as other supplies, many Burners pool their

        • I probably should have emphasized that I did spend most of the time actively participating; I did some magic for passers-by and for a few groups of people who invited me back to their camp after they saw me doing some street magic. (And I was living in Charcadia, the village that runs the Charcade, the fire-themed live-action video games, so I put in some volunteer shifts helping to keep those games running.)

          I don't think I had a "solitary" experience. I didn't expect people to stop by my single-occupan
        • I should add: the editors (for the millionth time) changed the title of the article to something that made a lot less sense than my originally submitted title. My original title was:
          Burning Man Made (Slightly) Easier
          They changed it to:
          What I Did During My Summer Vacation: Burning Man Edition
          Giving that title to the article, makes it sound like all I actually did at Burning Man was rent a bike and melt my own ice to make water, which indeed would have been a pretty boring experience. If I had been writ
    • I guess the point is there's nothing there except what people bring to it. No accumulated cruft, of whatever sort.

      (And what they do bring is pretty different than an Army encampment).

    • Re:so why do people go into the desert? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Shoten ( 260439 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @12:49PM (#44925945)

      i did it twice while in the US Army. two trips to the national training center in the california desert. i hated it. both were pre internet

      it takes like 15 minutes to read the day's newspaper and after that, nothing to do
      the radio stations played the same 10 songs every day, all day

      WTF is so awesome about dumping technology and living like a caveman for a few days? try it for a month.

      i came back and first thing i did was drink, watch TV and listen to music i hadn't listened to for weeks

      Burning Man is not like being at the NTC. For one, it's a social event rather than simulated warfare where you're trying to stay "alive" and not get "killed" while trying to "kill" others. (Quotes because, for those of you who aren't familiar, the NTC is a large area where our military does extremely realistic military training using laser-triggered sensors on otherwise extremely real weaponry. Think of it like military hardware configured to fire blanks, with laser tag attachments on them.) Following this logic, pretty much any situation would be boring...going to a shopping mall wouldn't be fun, because instead of shopping or seeing a movie, you'd be just practicing MOUT inside the mall with no ability to do any of the fun things that would otherwise be available to you.

      I get why you'd be bored if you had nothing to do. But at Burning Man, there's a ton to do...starting off with simple socialization. There are tons of people there, each with their own things to talk about. Yes, some of them are total raisincakes...but that can be entertaining too. (I will gloss over the profoundly commonplace nudity, as the entertainment value of that fades after a while.) And in the meanwhile, the absence of contact with the outside world, for the most part, means that you are instead more motivated to look at the immediate community around you. There's art, there's interesting debate, there's a blending of people from many walks of life...and what makes it really neat is that at Burning Man, they have largely shed a lot of the things that would clue you into what they were like in normal life. (Which one of the people with the body paint is the dot-com success who holds several patents, and which is the guy who works at a surf shop?)

      There's music to hear, art to look at, performances to watch...it goes on and on. Not at all like being at the NTC. And it's only for a few days, as you pointed out...if it went on all month, yeah, that'd be a bit much. So what? The same is true of almost anything else. You can't say that something is pointless because it'd be awful if it (insert unrealistic and non-reality-based condition here).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      You did time at Ft. Irwin? I salute you sir.

      I was up there for a rip-roaring 3 days as a contractor, and was bored silly. I have no idea how you managed to do a full stint.

  • . . . without photos of Elon Musk, I stopped reading. Might as well be a Chamber 'O Commerce blurb.

  • How about this? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by realmolo ( 574068 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @11:54AM (#44925331)

    Don't go to "Burning Man".

    "Burning Man" is for pretentious douchebags.

    • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

      by xevioso ( 598654 )

      Be careful about your hipster-hating ways... hating people who want to take a fun vacation in the desert is the latest trend, you know. And following the latest trends might make you...a hipster.

      • Be careful about your hipster-hating ways... hating people who want to take a fun vacation in the desert is the latest trend, you know. And following the latest trends might make you...a hipster.

        Fully agreed! So disappointing to see a backlash against something as a fashion. I'll wager those hating it have never been.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Shoten ( 260439 )

      Don't go to "Burning Man".

      "Burning Man" is for pretentious douchebags.

      That seems a rather ironic thing to say, since you're posting it in response to a guide for how to make it easier for people to attend, in direct contravention to some of the pretension that the OP calls out.

    • Re:How about this? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @01:00PM (#44926081) Journal

      One million percent agree.

      It's an "open" festival for the most "open minded" of counter culture crusaders...who end up forming their own elitist clique of snobbery, grossly ridiculing and excoriating newbs pretty much for "being new" and whose experimentalist outlook really pretty much ends up with smoking weed, not bathing, and convincing women that showing us their tits is "freedom of expression", not simply indulging adolescent male impulses.

      • I met some people like that, but a lot of people who weren't. Part of why I wrote the article is that even for veterans who really do want to make it easy for newbies, the veterans may have been doing it the hard-core way for so long, that they don't even recognize the invisible assumptions that make it hard for newbies to follow their advice. (For example, they might give you packing advice based on the assumption that you're driving there; they might talk to you for five minutes about building a hexayur

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by kolbe ( 320366 )

      ^This. I once opted to attend this and contacted several individuals to offer my services. About 2 months into being part of the planning E-mails I realized just how bass-ackwards the organizers were and backed out of helping them.

      The only people who go to this are those wanting:

      a) Drugs, Art and Music
      b) Drugs and Sex
      c) Drugs, Sex and Music

      Just say no.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mullen ( 14656 )

        Hey, some of go for the "Art, Sex and Music"!

      • Well, I had fun, and I didn't trip on any drugs except Benadryl. I like music and art. I also like sex, but the despite a pretty-even ratio of guys to girls at the event (only 53% male according to http://afterburn.burningman.com/11/census/ [burningman.com] ), the ratio of unattached men to women (i.e. single, or poly, or otherwise available to have sex), is pretty high. So only the tallest and best-looking men (or, if you're an idiot, the "most confident") have much of a shot, so I didn't bother trying very hard. Besid

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Splab ( 574204 )

      Have you actually been there?

      I haven't, but sure as heck is on my bucket list. I attend Roskilde Festival every year, which is kinda the same, except there is a shit load of trash when it's over, but it's about love and having fun - experience things outside your normal comfort zone (chemical toilets, sleeping in a stinky noisy environment, living without your normal convinience things). Trust me, it's good for you, you learn there is an alternative way to view the world, even though you might not share it

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zeio ( 325157 )

      This event is clearly for those with lots of disposable income. The spirit of the thing is lost. Its a orgiastic romp of drugs and supposed freewill which comes at a rather big price tag. This isnt woodstock summer of love, this is designer drugs and hedonism that is rather unappealing to look at. At one point I had some desire to see this spectacle, but it has clearly degraded to the point where it is being attended to by rats like Eric Schmidt, a philandering spying money grubber.

    • Don't go to "Burning Man".

      "Burning Man" is for pretentious douchebags.

      Which camp are you with when you go?

  • Normally... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tocsy ( 2489832 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @11:59AM (#44925407)

    Normally I hate the people who make this comment, but this time it's actually true:

    How is this either a)news for nerds, or b)stuff that matters?

    • Re:Normally... (Score:4, Informative)

      by mcoletti ( 367 ) <mcoletti AT gmail DOT com> on Monday September 23, 2013 @12:13PM (#44925543) Homepage
      I proffer the following syllogism:

      I am a nerd
      I go to burner events
      I have not been to Burning Man
      I want to go to Burning Man
      I found some of the advice useful
      Therefore this was useful news that matters to me, a nerd

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Phylarr ( 981216 )
        By the same logic, news about my cat belongs on Slashdot because I am a nerd and it would matter to me.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mcoletti ( 367 )
          I refuted the claim that *no one* that's a nerd would find this compelling because I provided a ready contradicting data point. I implied that I was likely not alone in this set, and admittedly that was an implication I should have made clearer.

          To wit, given my experience, I've encountered many, many nerds of various flavors at burner events. One example is a guy that made an interactive art piece that he hacked up involving a Kinect, a projector, and image processing software that was a hit. There was a

    • Re:Normally... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by xevioso ( 598654 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @12:15PM (#44925569)

      Because it turns out that a large portion of people who go to Burning Man are in the tech field. Many are from Northern California, and Burning Man is a place where a lot of folks with tech experience come and put their knowledge to use by cobbling together interesting technical devices for fun. It's not just camping in the desert, although it is that at a bare minimum.

    • Hipsters go to Burning Man. A few years ago hipsters thought it would be cool to be nerds. Apparently it has caught on enough now so that there is a loose association between Burning Man and nerds.

      Hipsters ruin everything.

    • Re:Normally... (Score:5, Informative)

      by ForCripeSake ( 932432 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @12:42PM (#44925899)

      Good question!.

      As a nerd I am extremely interested in Burning Man because it is one of the largest non commercial technical and logistical collaborations on the planet. If slashdot's collective boner Re: Makerdom, hacking, 3d-printing is an genuine, then there is no fucking way you shouldn't care about Burning Man unless you are coming from a standpoint of ignorance.

      Mechanical, civil, software, and probably a dozen other fields of engineering are exercised though the creation of art installations, mutant vehicles, A/V LED displays, pyrotechnics, welding/sclupting etc. Things get made PURLEY FOR THE SAKE OF MAKING SOMETHING THAT SOMEONE MIGHT LIKE TO LOOK AT instead of the tedious bullshit someone pays you to make at the 9 to 5. Makers are out in force at Burning Man and related events, and if you think that this is just some hippy bullshit you are parroting the collective "wisdom" of a handful of internet know it alls, or (and I'm sorry if this is the case) you seriously ran with the wrong crowd. I've gained more meaningful and applied technical experience preparing for events like these than many of my formal technical classes have ever offered. Hell, I got to play with Arduinos, Kinects, and picked up some basic EE for free thanks to art grants.

      Yes, there are hippie types. Yes, there are douchebags. Maybe that is true of all events with a population of >40k participants? I am really disappointed at Slashdot's attitude towards events like these because we are using our supposedly vast technical intellect to be dismissive and small towards something that is right up our goddamned alley. We are giving bad advice, plain and simple.

      • "you seriously ran with the wrong crowd"

        Unfortunately this seems to happen way too often. Get to know the people you plan to camp with/share preparatory expenses with.

        My only complaint about BM is that the BLM and friends make a killing overcharging. We need burners in Congress to put a stop to that. Maybe there's a Reservation that would like to rent a dry lake bed.

  • >> While nothing can really 'prepare' you for your first time at Burning Man

    Uh...wasn't Burning Man last month? Why the hell would anyone care NOW?

    • Now's an excellent time to start thinking about next year's.

  • Thanks for the advice (Score:5, Informative)

    by mcoletti ( 367 ) <mcoletti AT gmail DOT com> on Monday September 23, 2013 @12:08PM (#44925499) Homepage
    I've only been to a regional burn, Playa del Fuego, but I realize that's but a shadow of the real thing. (I think of it it as a training camp.) Given the expense and distance of Burning Man, one might look to going to a local regional burn first to get a flavor of the real deal. As a plus, you might befriend folks that are going to Burning Man and be able to camp with them.

    Fortunately I'm already going to heed part of your advice when I do go. I've got a slot available to me with the Irish pub, The Dusty Swan. Seems they're a little short on bagpipers, and I'm all too happy to fulfill that role. And I met the proprietor of The Dusty Swan at Playa del Fuego, so there ya go.

  • tl;dr (Score:2, Funny)

    by neo-mkrey ( 948389 )
    There, I just had to say it, now I feel better, thanks.

  • The building is half the fun (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23, 2013 @12:19PM (#44925623)

    I went to burning man many times before I had kids. My buddies and I like to build things so for us it was fun to build a geodesic dome and try our hand at a fancy evap pond for our camps grey water. If you are going alone then I recommend joining a camp and its ok to pay camp dues as it costs money to bring all of that shit out there but pick your camp for its theme and because you like the idea for the camp and/or the people and not just on the services they provide to you. The whole point is to try to be a part of the camp and not to just be a customer of the camp. So if you like to play bocci find a Bocci camp. You think that the barbie death camp is hilarious try to see if you can camp with them. Or better yet find a artist that needs some help before or during the event (having worked on several large installations myself over the years that I attended I highly recommend it) and volunteer some time (they always need the help). Maximize your chances for making friends as burning man is way more fun with friends.

    Grizzly 11 year veteran out

  • >pay money for services
    >pay money for services
    >pay money for services

    Wait, how is this different than spending a week in the city? I mean, other than the fact that you get to tell people you went to BURNING MAN, of course. I survived in the desert- by paying a lot of money!

    There are still a lot of good campsites in the US. Most of them don't have porta-potties.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pspahn ( 1175617 )

      Precisely my thoughts.

      I know of a particular camp site in Utah that is near the edge of the rim of Canyonlands. If you didn't know it was there you'd never find it unless you went out of your way to look for it. I'd much rather collect a dozen or so friends and plan a week out there for a heckuva lot less money.

  • You 'rented' a bike for $200...? (Score:3)

    by knarf ( 34928 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @12:50PM (#44925951)

    Let me guess: you have an iPhone. Just an assumption, but your actions seem to fit the pattern.

    'Renting' a bike for $200 is... not exactly cost effective. Why did you not buy a bike for that price instead? Donate it to charity if you don't need it afterwards. Why line some unscrupulous bike shark's pockets?

    • They sell bikes at Burning Man for $200? Or perhaps you meant to buy the bike at home and pay several hundred dollars to ship it as close as you could get to burning man and then rent a car to go pick it up and drive it to Burning Man. Or maybe you just like the idea of a thousand mile ride to Burning Man on a sub-$200 bike with all your gear strapped to your back.

      He sounds more like someone with a job than an iPhone (though, to be honest, you do need a job to afford an iPhone so maybe you're onto somethin

    • I'm glad to see that you thoroughly skimmed the summary. The issue raised is the difficulty in getting a bicycle from a bicycle store to the burning man event. It is estimated that the additional cost of transporting a bicycle (compared to the planned mode of transportation: catching a plane then a bus) would exceed $200. This leads to a potential business venture to economically transport bicycles from bicycle shops more efficiently than people could on their own, and then charge them somewhere between wha

  • No, no, just fly in. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @01:00PM (#44926071) Homepage

    No, the way to do Burning Man is to fly in. Burning Man has its own temporary airport, and six charter operators are authorized to use it. If you come in on a charter flight, fly in, or charter your own aircraft, you avoid the traffic jam. Not only that, the airport has its own VIP entrance gate with no line. Send your people on ahead with a truck, so your camp is all set up and operating when you get there. That's the way to do it.

    Consider the advantages of fractional jet ownership.

    • No, the way to do Burning Man is to fly in. Burning Man has its own temporary airport, and six charter operators are authorized to use it. If you come in on a charter flight, fly in, or charter your own aircraft, you avoid the traffic jam. Not only that, the airport has its own VIP entrance gate with no line. Send your people on ahead with a truck, so your camp is all set up and operating when you get there. That's the way to do it.

      You may have been modded funny, but it's not too far from the truth. There is an airport and if you fly in, I think there is s separate gate procedure to getting into the event since the airport is outside. Neither of which has any significant wait compared to driving in. We have a pilot friend that comes down in his airplane every year. We drive down a truck so he has us take down his water and bike. In return, we get plane rides which are well worth it. Plus, all the pilots have their fun too being able t

  • A crossbow?! (Score:4, Funny)

    by doggo ( 34827 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @01:09PM (#44926145) Homepage

    A crossbow?!

    Why don't you just go on down to Home Depot and buy yourself a pre-killed, pre-skinned deer.?! Jiminy H. Cricket toasting over an open fire!

    Crossbows are for wussies. What you want to do, see, is make yourself an atlatl, and atlatl darts. You'll need to knap yourself some obsidian atlatl dart points. While you're knapping the atlatl points you should knap yourself an obsidian skinning blade too. Then after you kill the deer, you can use the antlers and gut to to mount the skinning blade.

    'Course the atlatl darts would be better if you used gut to lash the points to the shafts. But that pre-supposes that you already got a deer... which ideally you should have... by taking a club, ambushing a deer, running it down and beating it to death (be sure to apologize to the deer spirit for taking one of its brothers).

    With all this hide & gut, you've got the makings of a good travois, which you'll need to haul your gear out to the playa, 'cause they ain't no deer on the playa. An if you got a lotta gear, yer gonna need to go and capture you a mustang, and break it, to pull the travois. So, better put that on your to-do list.

  • I think the most important aspect of this article is that people who went to burning man are still talking about burning man.

  • This was a fine article; I'm a long-time burner and I see no problem with your methods (or your posting here!). I can't imagine getting everything I needed into three suitcases; I usually bring a trailer! Hooking up with an existing camp is great advice, also because you've got a built in set of default friends. Hooking up with an art project, like the CORE groups, is even better! Burning Man is best when you become one of the creators, not just one of the consumers.

    With one exception, that is still anc

  • This article confirms what I thought about BM (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GodfatherofSoul ( 174979 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @01:28PM (#44926367)

    It's officially a tourist trap for yuppies. Bike and camping gear rentals???

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tibman ( 623933 )

      If you lived far away or outside the US, what would you suggest? Build a bike from discarded shampoo bottles at the airport?

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @01:34PM (#44926443)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Ignore this article completely (Score:3)

    by ZuchinniOne ( 1617763 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @01:41PM (#44926531)

    If you actually have any interest in Burning Man other than to say "I went" you should disregard pretty much everything this guys says.

    Burning Man is an experience ... not a place you visit. The city is built by the people who go ... INCLUDING YOU. So go with something that you want to share with everyone else! Show people how awesome you are and teach people about things they didn't know.

    You will get out of burning man exactly what you put into it. And if you do what this guy suggests, you sadly won't get much.

    One more note ... the people who go are a VERY diverse group. My camp included a neuroscientist, an astronomer, an author, a person who works at the White House, several business owners, an opera singer, an android developer, and people from Russia, Brasil, Japan, Mexico, and the US.

    The gifts I made to give away were necklaces that I hand carved and polished out of a piece of stromatolite (3.5 billion year old fossilized algae) I bought.

  • "Go to socialize"? I can socialize in a bar or a public park.

    It's evidently not for makers; makers need electricity and tools, unless they're whittling wood.

    Walk around and look at nude people? Is that seriously the point of the exercise?

  • #1 Tip -- don't bother (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Morpeth ( 577066 ) on Monday September 23, 2013 @02:00PM (#44926759)

    The only people I know who go/have gone aren't the kind of people I'd trust... with or for anything. Nobody likes to talk about it, but some really bad sh*t can happen at BM -- especially for women.

    Plus I'm not sure the point of being drunk, high, weird, with 1000s of 'we're cool and fringe' pretentious strangers (yes, I know, gross generalization). If I wanted a good outdoor/camping experience, I'll just go hiking in southern Utah with a few close friends.

  • I love the "mystery" that has been created about camping in the desert.
    The "legitimacy" of "grizzled veterans".
    The "tips and tricks" handed down to only "deserving" virgins/newbies:
    1. Water(check!)
    2. Shade(check!)
    3. Reliable Gear(check!)
    4. Common Sense(I fucking hope so...)

    For those of us who live in or near the desert southwest(Colorado Plateau) and have camped in that terrain for years, listening to "grizzled veterans" discuss a long weekend party in the desert like they're going on a month long backpack tr

  • Back when I was tent camping, my wife and I had (serially) more than one commercially-made, high-quality, camping tent. These were strong synthetic cloth structures that hung from a framework.

    One was a little dome tent with bent fiberglass poles, a couple others were big stand-up tents that hung from aluminum poles that formed hockey-stick shapes that joined at the center.

    All of them had (or had available) a shade cover. This was a shaped cloth structure that went OVER the supports and had bungi-cord fast

  • So I went to burning man solo once (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Here is my experience

    I went to burningman a few years ago. I drove solo from NC to NV. I took a bike and bike rack, a tent and some tarps, and a bunch of water.

    I bought some rebar in St Louis home depot and bent it inside the store to make super tent stakes the way I read on the burningman website.

    I threw a bunch of tarps and a wool blanket over my tent once I camped. You say wtf would you cover your tent with 6 inches of material? Wouldn't it make it hot? Nope in converse it slowed down the heat getti

  • [Eric Cartman]
    Goddamn hippies.
    [/Eric Cartman]

    (Joking, I thought this was an interesting read, though I'm never going to go..)

  • Playa Bike Repair (Score:3)

    by Netsnipe ( 112692 ) <netsnipeNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday September 24, 2013 @02:41AM (#44931899) Homepage
    As one of volunteer bike mechanics (I was the short Chinese guy who spoke with an Aussie accent!) at Playa Bike Repair, let me just say that even though may of us put in long hours at that camp, it was worth the cramped hands. The respect, kudos and love that we got from our fellow Burners was humbling. I rarely had to wait in line for coffee, ice or pancakes whenever I let it be known that I was picking up supplies for our camp or that I was due on shortly for a shift. I reckon that only people who got more respect than us were the EMRs and Rangers.

    And for those questioning the cost of the bike rentals, keep in mind that those rental fees not only paid for the bike transportation, but also for the also the spare parts and oils/lubricants we handed out to fix thousands of bikes throughout the entire week and to keep the generators running to power our air compressors and camp amenities.

    Cheers,
    Andrew

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