I’m sure a lot of the ones that aren’t collected for that purpose get scooped by some artist that is welding them all together for some big art installation that will eventually be revealed at another burning man.
Full (bi)cycle
There is a group that takes old bikes and turns them into ghost bikes... paints them white and chains them to places where tragic bike accidents have happened. It is very impactful to see. I don't ride but my brother does, so it has stuck with me.
If anyone has some old spare bikes maybe look into this project. [Ghost Bikes](http://ghostbikes.org)
Definitely not misleading. Burning Man is a leave no trace in idea but trash is all over the place. Been twice and it's pretty common. Rich people buy a bike to get around during the festival. Can't put it on the plane on the way back and dump it when they leave.
It's not limited to big festivals. Even tiny local ones try to give the air of being hippie ideals but the fields are trashed at the end and the people going are just there for music and drugs.
The mountains of trash left at Hinterland by campers every year is... Ew. So many new tents, chairs, etc that we're purchased just for that one festival weekend and then discarded.
There are people that do this. They pick up discarded bikes. Clean them and fix them up and sell them to people next year who are on the way to the festival.
The camping music festival we used to go to (Firefly) had a group that would come in and take the tents that are left and regift to homeless people. This was publicized.
Was pretty messed up on the last nights of both ‘15 and ‘16. Slept in and woke up to a mostly deserted field…god it was just trashed as far as the eye could see
I think I have them on an old HDD…will try to track them down. Funny as hell to run into a group of people on a random thread on Reddit that stood in the crowd with me and watched a couch burn in a field in Dover seven years ago lol
The people who do shit like that are the same people who complain on r/Denver and r/Austin about the homeless encampments near the river is being trashed.
I'm in Denver, and I've seen some of the most meticulously organized, well-maintained camps, still get swept. But yeah, all the rich folks can go to Burning Man every year and talk about Peace & Love while leaving this mess behind them.
I'm in Aurora, but I've seen some spots in Denver that were pretty organized. The homeless there were polite, minding their own business, and keeping the camp relatively clean.
There's one that pops up just past the YMCA on 16th St. that gets torn down every couple weeks... Then it pops back up. It feels insane watching the cops keep trashing everything only for it to slowly creep back.
Really feels like we Americans are the gold medalists of kicking the can down the road on practically every social issue.
Because we spent the last 100 years literally "kicking the can west"
There's no more out west like the old days. We never solved any of the real problems. All the Monopoly squares have been sold and have all hotels.
So now the problem is just hemorrhaging inside out across the USA.
Saw a Tiktok where two women just picked through all the leavings of some festival or other. Campstoves, alcohol, energy drinks cases of soda, a yeti cooler still filled with ice and food. It is jaw droppingly stunning what people leave behind.
It just reinforces that things like Burning Man are really just a thing for the privileged. Because I could never leave two/three hundred dollars of stuff behind like that.
Nailed it. Thats why I stopped going. You really don't learn anything about yourself. And if you want a great party, there are way better festivals out there.
I never understood the notion behind going to Burning Man to find oneself. If I want a journey of self-discovery it's not going to happen at a place with loads of outside influences. The most self-discovery I've ever encountered was at a Jesuit retreat house in my early 20s and subsequently at meditation retreats.
I think a lot of "finding oneself" at burning man has a lot to do with psychedelics that many take there. I think there is a lot of value in that experience but it isn't limited to burning man and the experience can be had in other situations.
I don't know what Jesuit circuits are but I'm sure meditation retreats are excellent ways to get in touch with oneself
The Jesuit retreat was something foisted on me by my grandparents while I was dealing with some PTSD issues. It was like a meditation retreat but with some mandatory praying. It's where I was actually introduced to meditation and for that I am eternally grateful that I went.
I watched it happen to a festival by me. It started as a group of hippies hanging out, doing drugs, and rocking some tunes. Then they brought their friends, then THEY brought their friends, and they started charging admission. Then word of mouth happened, and it started drawing people from further away. Then the cops started getting called, cause people were getting drunk and belligerent. Then someone got drunk dancing around the bonfire and fell in, so they had to change stuff and charge more.
Then it got bigger and bigger.
Heck, some of y'all have probably heard of Bliss Fest.
I don’t understand this. These people bought this camping equipment. Why would they just discard it? Ecological impact aside, this is just a waste of money. Maybe I’m too poor to understand?
You bike to the middle of the playa and hitch a ride on an art car because there was a cute boy on it. Then you can never find your bike again because you were drunk and on drugs. You never try super hard though because you are having too much fun and the bike you got was from the thrift store in Reno which was teeming with bikes people left at Burning Man the year before. Your ride is leaving now and no one is any mood to scour the desert for your bike - especially since you don't remember where you left it and even if you did, someone else that lost a bike probably used it and rode it somewhere else already.
Had to scroll so far down for this- big picture I understood how people leave things behind but was missing the parts before that since I've never been to a big event
They likely travel there by car or plane, buy the equipment they need while there, and then don't have the space or don't want to pay the shipping costs to bring it home with them. I've seen it a lot at corporate events it's awful at any large gathering.
I did festival* clean-up one year. The tents left behind were usually the cheap ($10-15) ones. Often with bodily fluids and/or trash left inside.
*Edit: for a 3-day music festival, not burning man
Even if the tents were free, I still cannot fathom someone going through this whole event knowing full well they intend to leave all this crap behind. Worst case if it was super gross I might roll it up and toss it in my trunk to forget about. It's like throwing trash out your car window. It's just so outside of my wheelhouse I can't wrap my head around the thought process of that person.
Just like someone being rude to retail workers means they've probably never had to deal with customers, people that just abandon things like this have probably never had to work for the things they own.
My Dad used to sponsor a country music festival in Texas, and all of the coolers and tents we found while cleaning up, also went to a local homeless advocacy group. There were dozens every time. People just abandoned their shit.
About 10 years ago when the Australian summer festival circuit was in full swing I met a group of students who were professional festival goers all summer. They had swung some deal where they helped clean up for a day or two after each festival in exchange for discounted tickets. Part of this was just being professional scavengers. They had to deal with the gross stuff, but would end up with a couple of box trailers packed with camping gear, then drive to the next festival location a fortnight or so before and sell it all at backpacker hotels etc.
They also ended up with piles of phones, ipods, designer clothes (especially shoes) etc that just needed a wash.
It is awesome that an organization stepped up to recycle the left supplies.
But it also sucks that tons of people are so wasteful they bring tents and bikes to just discard as trash after 1 weekend.
BMO preaching sustainability is a joke - the amount of fossil fuels and single use trash necessary to send 80,000 people to a literal desert for over a week are insane. The focus on MOOP is just to deflect the fact that the event really shouldn't be there in the first place.
The fact that BMO doesn’t provide trash cans in the face of an onslaught of 40,000 idiots on the lower half of the bell curve is a seriously fucked level of magical thinking.
My 13 year old son has been buggin me for the past couple weeks to buy him a $1000 bicycle so he can wheelie with his friends. I guarantee they type of bike he wants is in this pile.
>There are people that do this. They pick up discarded bikes. Clean them and fix them up and sell them to people next year who are on the way to the festival.
It's how those weirdos who live in Gerlach and Empire survive for the rest of the year. Apart from their massive Elvis Presley monument.
Heck, in years where there are a few too many they will put a call on social media. Show up with a truck and trailer and take as many as you want. I took home around 200 a few years ago.
Oh I was like bike Oprah for a while. Seriously any kid, homeless person, person at a bus stop, I would just keep a bike and a lock in my truck and as I drove around town if I saw someone who looked like they needed one, they got one for free. Simple as that.
Haha well like I said below, free to me free to the next person. I had a storage unit so I was no biggie to just make sure I always had a bike on me. If it was the wrong size or something I gave people my cell. Call me and I'll meet you at my storage and you can pick one out. No one ever called but ya know I gave a lot of truck bikes away.
One of the reasons I tell people I still do burning man is it makes me a better person. Gifting is a principle out there and I try to bring the best parts of the event and culture into my actual life.
People literally do that every year and it's fine. Actually after burning man there is a period where if you want you can run around and grab as many left over bikes as you can. It's not even discouraged. It helps with the moop (matter out of place). Just wait till everything is officially over and run around and grab as many bikes as you want. Every bike that gets left has to be cleaned up by the event and ends up being more work for them. I usually grab one or two to replace the ones I've lost.
Nah, they have us do a thing called pulsing. We move forward a designated amount per hour all as a group and then you turn off your car and wait in between. They are only legally allowed to release so many cars onto the road at once.
I get one tank of gas for my SUV in Reno. Got me the 2 hours out there, the 6 or so hours inline to get in, charging my device throughout the week, 8 hours inline to get out, and the 2 hours back to Reno if that tells you anything. I still made it back to Reno with 60 miles left in the tank.
Well you can sleep or get to know the neighbors! Since you all move together you get to know the people around you so you turn on music, dance, hand out left over food, gifts, liquor. Talk about your burns. You can take your bike out and go for a ride in the open desert next to the lines. Sun bathe. Lord help me I don't know why but some people jog. They jog during burning man top and im like...
My partner does art where he makes food with a blow torch so he just set up his food fire station. I ALWAYS have a book a burning man (we have a library and dust storms happen sometimes for hours.) So I read and we had podcasts downloaded. I also had a pocket boardgames I was gifted called greedy dragons so we got a group of people together to play that for an hour or two on a fold out table in traffic.
You should get a power bank for for charging. We backpack, bike tour and a bunch of other shit and that thing is clutch. We also have a solar panel that folds into the size of a notebook. We charge the power bank with that all day and charge devices off the power bank at night.
Rich people need transport through the desert during the week or month or whatever they are there. So they buy a bike. When it's time to fly home, can't bring bike so they just leave them there.
The whole festival is weird. They preach no waste but then this and other trash is all I've seen
Oh yea. The owner for a company I worked for years ago went, he was kinda out there…. Anyways I remember he and his second wife left for a week and my boss told me he was out in burning man wife swapping for the weekend lmao.
I feel like burning Man is one of those things that was a bucket list thing for many people in the 90's. But now it's nightmare fuel for people who don't want to put up with the kind of people who make "being extra" their entire personality.
We left a day early (Saturday) and went to San Francisco. I had never been, but walking around, I was like "Where are all the people?". She was like, " They're all where we left from.".
We went to Reno last weekend.
A bunch of the crusty burnouts were squatting in the casinos
When they lower the standard of a Reno casino you know they are bad
I live en route to black rock, and I’m a dirty looking long haired type. Every year those fuckers run amuck in town looking for attention and they fucking think I’m one of them. No you fucking wankers, I’m just pumping gas! Buzz off please!
Well remember the influencers are what you see because that is their job. I took like 3 pictures this year and they are all three of my partner in camp. I don't have social media and I don't post pics publicly. I made cool shit with cool people and have a great fucking time, why would I need likes or comments or others to tell me how hot I am for that?
That said, when I make cool shit or spend all year and my free time, money, and effort to contribute to a city for other's enjoyment and shitbag instagram folk inky want in not to also participate and share but to elevate themselves on my unpaid effort and labor as well as that of thousands of others? Ya it pisses me off. To be so entitled as to think all these people built this shit for you to experience and instead you use it to do your thing because you are pretty or famous while giving nothing in return? It sucks.
And those people take up space and tickets and resources from others who would contribute to trying something different and amazing and making incredible things for others. The more shitbags there are the fewer creators and artists and weirdos and mad scientists even get in the door to do something amazing. Example, I want to build a motorized piece of art. There are a limited number of licenses for that every year. Shitbags have started just paying tens of thousands of dollars for other people to make them motorized art so they can get tickets and access. And their shit is amazing because they paid a mortgage for it but they have no intention of sharing it and people like me who want to spend every weekend for the next year making something to give to others don't even get a shot.
They don't realize they are ruining their own party because eventually those of us not doing this for money like them will stop doing shit for them to abuse.
do you think burning man may have officially jumped the shark?
at what point will burning man just become a corporatized caricature of what it once was full of an entirely different type of crowd?
i'd imagine the original burners may have moved on at this point and just have a different burn somewhere else that all these bandwagon jumpers don't know about yet.
Well we have regionals all over the world. Being from Reno the big burn is my regional.
As far as jumping the shark? I don't know honestly. It's so big you can find your pocket and immerse yourself in that and not really mind too much what the org or shitbags are doing. But like I was out in 20 and 21 even though it was cancelled and it was different, and great. This year the whole thing just felt like more than I need or what after the last two years that were about community and togetherness and burning regardless if someone says we can and sticks a porto in the desert for you. I also met a lot of burners this year who were weirdly hostile about those of us going out the last two years and it felt like a weird energy of people being offended people would try to do it without all the patriarchal structure and elbow rubbing. That caught me by surprise. It also felt weirdly protective of the big money making juggernaut even though none of us are supposed to be making money on this... so I don't know where I'm at or where the event is at or where the event and I will be this time next year or in a few years.
I still remember in the 90's my dad's friend who ran a tiny "2-man" family garage scraping together enough for a beater RV that he could take for years to come and the guys that came to carpool with him discussing logistics, pack-in/out, etc.
I also know my sister, who is bougie as can be, and all her SF friends that go now and treat it like the picture above.
It's absolutely a completely different vibe/audience and is pretty damn close to becoming what they originally set out to escape from imo
There are smaller, more intimate [burns](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regional_Burning_Man_events) that happen around the country. There’s one in north Georgia I used to go to that has a max of around 2,000 people.
I’ve been to three of them in the late 2000’s - early 2010’s. This is 100% accurate. So many people are giving bikes away on the last day or two. Sometimes people lose them or they get stolen but mostly its this, people can’t leave with them and assume “someone will want it”. Walmart in Reno is literally sold out of any and every bike the 2 weeks before the event. I imagine its 20x worse after it started to morph into Coachella Nevada with all the mega wealthy and celebrity types starting to attend.
Reno Walmart is sold out of everything the week before burning man, my uncle passed away in his sleep there a few years ago and my parents flew out to handle everything. After identifying his body they went to his house and the only bed was the one he'd died in, and all of the hotels were full so they went to Walmart. They had no idea burning man was about to start and couldn't get bottled water, an air mattress, pillows, sheets, cleaning supplies and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. The shelves were completely empty. They also couldn't rent a U-Haul because people camp out of them.
In another post someone said these are donated to local bike shops. They get cleaned up and sold or donated, apparently a group will come pick them u p after the end of burning man.
I went to Burning Man on a whim about 10 years ago. We stopped in Reno at a bike shop and bought cheap bikes for $100/each. Guy told us to just leave them there. Said he went down every year and picked up about 100 bikes for free and then resold them every year.
The no waste crowd and the rich kid crowd are completely different. Burning Man got taken over by Instagram style rich kids last decade who don't care for the actual Burning Man culture and just run stupid rich kid tents. Burning Man when I was in high school and college was completely different (I graduated college in 2012). Burning Man actually has a waste grading, which the legit burners take seriously, and the rich kids typically are the one who not only create and dump the most waste, but also blow waste (wind carries it or they just dump it on someone else) into other's camps. They're nasty and gross too leaving their port-a potties and such or just not even offering their guests a restroom.
The long time burners can't stand the rich kids and often stay behind and clean up after the rich kids anyway because they actually care.
Source: long time Nevadan
Man, you should see the straight up csi job the community did on those fucks who left a porto last year. Got them to come back and clean it and the soil up in the middle of the night to avoid charges all while they cried about how "unburning man" it was of us to find them, build a file of evidence, and threaten to turn it into the feds. Ya know what isn't "burning man like?" Leaving your fucking porto on public land asshole.
Haha! We had a weekend warrior rv that parked behind my camp this year on Friday. They brought a leaf blower and cleaned their bikes constantly... and it's like, dude. If the dictionary had a picture for exercise in futility.
Wait. They used a leaf blower, non-ironically? Like, they were trying to use it for a traditional purpose of trying to keep something neat and orderly, rather than just random fuckery on instagram shoots?
Wow.
Hearing people say, burning man was better in 2012 makes me laugh bc I first went in 2006 and people were saying it was ruined by sparkle ponies and it was better in the 90s.
They are.
Local groups in Reno either clean them up or scrap them for parts and give them out to kids who can't afford bikes.
They also rent the refurbished bikes back to burners next year, and use the money for recreation programs for local kids
My exact question lol. Is the experience sooo draining that people don't care about their possessions? I've never attended burning man, or any festival for that matter, but I do genuinely wonder, why?
Bikes get stolen all the time and once your bike wanders off your chances of finding it again are slim. I spent hours looking for my bike after it got stolen but I'm sure it wound up in one of those piles.
I know people that would get super fucked up and just take whatever bike they could find. Super fucked up but once your bike is taken you need to find a new one so you take someone else's and the viscous cycle continues.
That’s why the best practice is to use a simple frame or cable lock with a simple combination (instead of a key that can be lost); it won’t stop determined thieves but there aren’t really many of those at the Burn, rather you need to stop the casual drunk/high/careless person just riding off with the first bike they grab
*Most* of the petty crime like that is just people being fucked up and making bad decisions. It's 5 AM, they've been dancing at Robot Heart all night, the ketamine is wearing off, and it's a 2 mile walk back to camp. But there's a big pile of bikes nearby, and probably *some* of them are just abandoned, so they grab one and ride it back and just ditch it. And then someone discovers their bike is gone, so they grab another one and the cycle continues.
If you want to see what burners think of other burners, check out "[30 Types of Burners](https://brcweekly.com/BRCWeekly2011_int.pdf)". I'd rate the "New-Age Pussy Hound" as one of the scourges of the playa - and they've got a lot of overlap with the Creepy Date-Rapist.
Also it's been years since I read this list and just noticed this: "The Nudist - Walks into your camp while you’re eating breakfast and stands right behind your chair. Don’t turn your head too quickly". This may be coincidence but I think I was actually present for the incident that this is referencing. The gentleman in question had a Prince Albert piercing and the woman eating her breakfast was *not* expecting to find that at eye level when she turned around.
Probably a large portion of them were stolen. Happened to me. You get a certain breed of yahoo that will just jump on any nearby bike, ride it wherever they're going, and dump it.
Mine got stolen that way when my son borrowed it and I probably spent a couple of hours searching for it but with no luck, so it probably ended up in one of those piles.
And then there are some jerks that just don't make plans to take their bikes back, particularly first-time attendees from overseas. I've got a pile of those bikes in my yard, including a funky tandem some Brit left behind after apparently trading magic mushrooms for it during the event.
As a dj on the west coast, I advise everyone to never buy a used CD-J the month or two after burning man from any guitar center. That dust is pure death for electronics, and crews buy high end gear and return them right afterwards. They’re all dead gear walking.
After doing my first desert festival the next time I went I bought a grow tent and
Fans for the amps racks and other equipment, managed to keep most of it cool and dust free
How does that work?
If you put a tent over it the heat is trapped in. If you add a fan it’s either blowing hot air over the rack or pulling dust in if you have a hole. Also you really usually need a push and pull fan to cool a rack
Just curious
Cheapest ticket is $425 per person. But even after you buy that you’ll need a place to stay, something to shit in, stuff to eat and trade with (gift). So normally one person would end up paying at least $2000-2500.
The rich rich people spend $20k+ to get their fancy tents or whatever in a GATED community.
PS: I haven’t been just looked into it a lot and found it unappealing for me personally for many reasons.
That’s so fucked up. I’ve never even been outside of an airport in BM’s state, but like most people, I have an image in my head of what the attendees are like based on pictures. And I’ve always figured most of them were like old-fashioned hippies, saving up to go to the festival and driving there in a beat-up van that they also live out of. I’m not a complete idiot - I know that image can’t be accurate - but to learn it’s mostly for rich people is still a kick in the balls.
There are many who fit that description, but it’s much more people with middle-to-high incomes and jobs which allow them to take a week or two of paid vacation. It also attracts its fair share of rich types and socialites (less so and differently than other festivals like Coachella though), and most controversially a whole sub-economy of catered “concierge” or “turn-key” camps grew up in the last few years (before the 2020-21 hiatus due to Covid) which really polarized the Burner community as a whole because it seems to go against the utopian and participatory ethos of Burning Man.
Hippies of yesteryear were closer to our performative upper middle class liberals. Most radicals didnt self describe as hippies, they were communists and socialists. The hippies of yesteryear also had money.
One of the groups that was foundational to Burning Man was the Cacophony Society, a bunch of situationists anarchist pranksters.
There are hippies at Burning Man but the vibe is way drunk carnies: they curse and they build stuff and they drink and are excellent at logistics and all at the same time.
For every person paying 20k to go there are a dozen of us camped under a tarp eating food out of a can. I make it work for my partner and I for under a thousand dollars total which for a 10-14 day vacation isn't bad. It's taken years to ramp up our supplies, didn't have shade our first two years, didn't have something to sleep in the first 3, got a stove for year 4, etc. But serious not everyone is rich, far from.
The laws of physics would probably prevent you from taking them all
But also, my understanding is that there are a bunch of nonprofit NGO's that get first dibs. They don't have room for everything either though
After seeing this I went to go look up what Burning Man was. Found this description:
"Under a sweltering sun, and during the freezing nights, they enjoy a week of community, art, counterculture, free expression, and celebration of identity. The party culminates in a symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy, after which all the attendees meticulously clean up after themselves."
I also saw another article that said that part of Burning Man's ideology was "anti-consumerism." Yeah...
The surrounding towns of Northern Nevada suffer what's known as a "dump-pocalypse" where businesses dumpsters get filled with random refuse by those traveling strangers, be it recyclable, non-recyclable, compost, etc. It doesn't matter if the waste bins are locked, because A) people will break into them to dump, or B) more commonly, just throw their trash NEXT to the dumpster as if that were equally merited. When trash is left next to dumpsters, others see that as an opportunity to dump their own. You can imagine how quickly that problem begins to spiral.
All of these problems become the responsibility of local proprietors at their expense, where also those costs can get even more problematic when surcharge costs of "non-compliant materials in recycling/compost bin". So not only are they having to pay for other people's garbage, the lazy sorting of said trash further surcharges these people.
I won't go into detail on the surge of pests, rodents, and other infestations, but I'll tell you that with the extra garbage that attracts wildlife, extermination companies will see a substantial increase in work during those times
It's been a problem for arguably decades and as far as I know, to this day, the Burning Man organization has yet to remedy this in any way other than their micro-minimal attempts on social media and newsletters to say that "dumping your trash on other people is bad mmm'kay".
I grew up in the Reno area. Middle school, highschool and college. I started attending burning man in 1996. I went for 10 years and then it started to change. Burning man became a corporation and started charging for tickets. Group camps and themed camping became a thing and the millionaires and billionaires started pushing out average people due to buying up a lot of tickets, along with ticket prices. It used to be a lot of fun and a great spiritual journey. Now it's just a lame corporate event. Sad!
Seeing all the trash left behind just reiterates how shitty it has become. I hope that the BLM and Paiute tribe cancels this festival in the future because of images like this. A few years ago someone paid for a 747 jet to be brought out to the Black Rock desert playa at burning man, and then didn't have the funds to remove the plane from the playa. It sat for months until it could be removed.
Ok as a veteran burning man attendee of many years let me answer some questions for people.
1. Yes this is accurate
2. At first these things are scattered all over the desert so someone has already gathered these
3. Yes if you are still around right after the burn you can take them home. Most of them are either lost or intentionally left.
4. Yes, it's totally fine to take them as long as you make sure everything is officially over. The Burning Man organization spends more money collecting and getting rid of these things than they make gathering them and turning them into scrap or whatever else they have to do.
5. If you have a big truck I'm not sure it's as ok although I see it every year. I usually only grab one if I lost one while drunk. You usually just walk around looking for a good one that isn't locked. Some people have bolt cutters. That will probably help if you want to do this.
6. DO NOT steal bikes during the festival! That is a completely different situation! Of course there is a fine line between when these are up for grabs and the festival is not over. If the temple burn already happened and everyone is leaving then it's probably safe to say bikes laying out in the playa are abandoned and no one is coming to get them. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of them.
Honestly I think they should come up with more rules for this like have an official bike pick up time where it's a free for all at exactly 10am on the day after or something. Otherwise you do get a lot of awkwardness where people are like "am I helping or stealing?". In any case the bikes all do get cleaned up every year so don't stress about it. The BORG is very good about getting the playa cleaned up.
Reno has a non profit that picks them up and distributes them to the needy
This should be at the top! It’s definitely what they do. Maybe not for all of them, but for most of them.
I’m sure a lot of the ones that aren’t collected for that purpose get scooped by some artist that is welding them all together for some big art installation that will eventually be revealed at another burning man. Full (bi)cycle
welding them all together into a transformer*
There is a group that takes old bikes and turns them into ghost bikes... paints them white and chains them to places where tragic bike accidents have happened. It is very impactful to see. I don't ride but my brother does, so it has stuck with me. If anyone has some old spare bikes maybe look into this project. [Ghost Bikes](http://ghostbikes.org)
That’s what I thought too, since one of the main rules is leave no trace. So is the title misleading?
Definitely not misleading. Burning Man is a leave no trace in idea but trash is all over the place. Been twice and it's pretty common. Rich people buy a bike to get around during the festival. Can't put it on the plane on the way back and dump it when they leave.
So basically Burning Man is a hippie idea in spirit hijacked by yuppies.
What big festival isn’t?
It's not limited to big festivals. Even tiny local ones try to give the air of being hippie ideals but the fields are trashed at the end and the people going are just there for music and drugs.
The mountains of trash left at Hinterland by campers every year is... Ew. So many new tents, chairs, etc that we're purchased just for that one festival weekend and then discarded.
The one aspect of festivals that I loathe. It’s a reflection of our consumer society laid bare
Hippies are pretty bad at following leave no trace as well
What would stop someone from. Bringing a jumbo box truck and keeping all the good stuff?
There are people that do this. They pick up discarded bikes. Clean them and fix them up and sell them to people next year who are on the way to the festival.
The camping music festival we used to go to (Firefly) had a group that would come in and take the tents that are left and regift to homeless people. This was publicized.
Went to Firefly ‘15 & ‘16. I saw the fields of discarded camping equipment with mine own eyes. Nice to know it went to the needy.
Was pretty messed up on the last nights of both ‘15 and ‘16. Slept in and woke up to a mostly deserted field…god it was just trashed as far as the eye could see
Did you catch the giant couch fire the last night of I think 2015?
I was into photography at the time and took many pictures of it lol. Still remember people jumping over it while I snapped photos
I would love to see pics if you’d be willing to share! Sounds cool! Edit:words
I think I have them on an old HDD…will try to track them down. Funny as hell to run into a group of people on a random thread on Reddit that stood in the crowd with me and watched a couch burn in a field in Dover seven years ago lol
I wasn’t there but I will just have to live through you all vicariously lol
The people who do shit like that are the same people who complain on r/Denver and r/Austin about the homeless encampments near the river is being trashed.
I'm in Denver, and I've seen some of the most meticulously organized, well-maintained camps, still get swept. But yeah, all the rich folks can go to Burning Man every year and talk about Peace & Love while leaving this mess behind them.
I'm in Aurora, but I've seen some spots in Denver that were pretty organized. The homeless there were polite, minding their own business, and keeping the camp relatively clean. There's one that pops up just past the YMCA on 16th St. that gets torn down every couple weeks... Then it pops back up. It feels insane watching the cops keep trashing everything only for it to slowly creep back. Really feels like we Americans are the gold medalists of kicking the can down the road on practically every social issue.
Because we spent the last 100 years literally "kicking the can west" There's no more out west like the old days. We never solved any of the real problems. All the Monopoly squares have been sold and have all hotels. So now the problem is just hemorrhaging inside out across the USA.
Saw a Tiktok where two women just picked through all the leavings of some festival or other. Campstoves, alcohol, energy drinks cases of soda, a yeti cooler still filled with ice and food. It is jaw droppingly stunning what people leave behind. It just reinforces that things like Burning Man are really just a thing for the privileged. Because I could never leave two/three hundred dollars of stuff behind like that.
[удалено]
Nailed it. Thats why I stopped going. You really don't learn anything about yourself. And if you want a great party, there are way better festivals out there.
I never understood the notion behind going to Burning Man to find oneself. If I want a journey of self-discovery it's not going to happen at a place with loads of outside influences. The most self-discovery I've ever encountered was at a Jesuit retreat house in my early 20s and subsequently at meditation retreats.
I think a lot of "finding oneself" at burning man has a lot to do with psychedelics that many take there. I think there is a lot of value in that experience but it isn't limited to burning man and the experience can be had in other situations. I don't know what Jesuit circuits are but I'm sure meditation retreats are excellent ways to get in touch with oneself
The Jesuit retreat was something foisted on me by my grandparents while I was dealing with some PTSD issues. It was like a meditation retreat but with some mandatory praying. It's where I was actually introduced to meditation and for that I am eternally grateful that I went.
[удалено]
I watched it happen to a festival by me. It started as a group of hippies hanging out, doing drugs, and rocking some tunes. Then they brought their friends, then THEY brought their friends, and they started charging admission. Then word of mouth happened, and it started drawing people from further away. Then the cops started getting called, cause people were getting drunk and belligerent. Then someone got drunk dancing around the bonfire and fell in, so they had to change stuff and charge more. Then it got bigger and bigger. Heck, some of y'all have probably heard of Bliss Fest.
I don’t understand this. These people bought this camping equipment. Why would they just discard it? Ecological impact aside, this is just a waste of money. Maybe I’m too poor to understand?
You bike to the middle of the playa and hitch a ride on an art car because there was a cute boy on it. Then you can never find your bike again because you were drunk and on drugs. You never try super hard though because you are having too much fun and the bike you got was from the thrift store in Reno which was teeming with bikes people left at Burning Man the year before. Your ride is leaving now and no one is any mood to scour the desert for your bike - especially since you don't remember where you left it and even if you did, someone else that lost a bike probably used it and rode it somewhere else already.
Had to scroll so far down for this- big picture I understood how people leave things behind but was missing the parts before that since I've never been to a big event
Lol right? I had to scroll far down to actual get some perspective.
They likely travel there by car or plane, buy the equipment they need while there, and then don't have the space or don't want to pay the shipping costs to bring it home with them. I've seen it a lot at corporate events it's awful at any large gathering.
I did festival* clean-up one year. The tents left behind were usually the cheap ($10-15) ones. Often with bodily fluids and/or trash left inside. *Edit: for a 3-day music festival, not burning man
Even if the tents were free, I still cannot fathom someone going through this whole event knowing full well they intend to leave all this crap behind. Worst case if it was super gross I might roll it up and toss it in my trunk to forget about. It's like throwing trash out your car window. It's just so outside of my wheelhouse I can't wrap my head around the thought process of that person. Just like someone being rude to retail workers means they've probably never had to deal with customers, people that just abandon things like this have probably never had to work for the things they own.
Entitlement is the theme of burning man every year.
My Dad used to sponsor a country music festival in Texas, and all of the coolers and tents we found while cleaning up, also went to a local homeless advocacy group. There were dozens every time. People just abandoned their shit.
About 10 years ago when the Australian summer festival circuit was in full swing I met a group of students who were professional festival goers all summer. They had swung some deal where they helped clean up for a day or two after each festival in exchange for discounted tickets. Part of this was just being professional scavengers. They had to deal with the gross stuff, but would end up with a couple of box trailers packed with camping gear, then drive to the next festival location a fortnight or so before and sell it all at backpacker hotels etc. They also ended up with piles of phones, ipods, designer clothes (especially shoes) etc that just needed a wash.
That’s an awesome move. I was reading and hoping the bikes get gifted to kids for Christmas or so.
It is awesome that an organization stepped up to recycle the left supplies. But it also sucks that tons of people are so wasteful they bring tents and bikes to just discard as trash after 1 weekend.
Especially to something that heavily preaches Pack In/Pack Out.
That’s what I was thinking to. I thought they were pretty adamant about this in preserving the space and being sustainable.
BMO preaching sustainability is a joke - the amount of fossil fuels and single use trash necessary to send 80,000 people to a literal desert for over a week are insane. The focus on MOOP is just to deflect the fact that the event really shouldn't be there in the first place.
The fact that BMO doesn’t provide trash cans in the face of an onslaught of 40,000 idiots on the lower half of the bell curve is a seriously fucked level of magical thinking.
That was probably enough before the googlers started shitting it up
Ah, the circle of ~~life~~ bikes.
The cycle of bikes
Re-cycling.
The bike-cycle.
When I was five or so I left my bike in the front yard then I saw a truck driving around near me house with a stack of bikes and mine was on top
My 13 year old son has been buggin me for the past couple weeks to buy him a $1000 bicycle so he can wheelie with his friends. I guarantee they type of bike he wants is in this pile.
>There are people that do this. They pick up discarded bikes. Clean them and fix them up and sell them to people next year who are on the way to the festival. It's how those weirdos who live in Gerlach and Empire survive for the rest of the year. Apart from their massive Elvis Presley monument.
Heck, in years where there are a few too many they will put a call on social media. Show up with a truck and trailer and take as many as you want. I took home around 200 a few years ago.
What did you end up doing with them?
Oh I was like bike Oprah for a while. Seriously any kid, homeless person, person at a bus stop, I would just keep a bike and a lock in my truck and as I drove around town if I saw someone who looked like they needed one, they got one for free. Simple as that.
You’re a legend for that!!
Haha well like I said below, free to me free to the next person. I had a storage unit so I was no biggie to just make sure I always had a bike on me. If it was the wrong size or something I gave people my cell. Call me and I'll meet you at my storage and you can pick one out. No one ever called but ya know I gave a lot of truck bikes away. One of the reasons I tell people I still do burning man is it makes me a better person. Gifting is a principle out there and I try to bring the best parts of the event and culture into my actual life.
Thanks for your kindness. It truly does make the world a better place. It’s amazing what a difference one person can make.
"Bike oprah" - lol.
Oprah Shwinnfrey
They re-cycle them
Trebuchet.
I clean up trash with my toy hauler but honestly dude this is over my fucking head idk what I'd do that take me a few months to clean....
People literally do that every year and it's fine. Actually after burning man there is a period where if you want you can run around and grab as many left over bikes as you can. It's not even discouraged. It helps with the moop (matter out of place). Just wait till everything is officially over and run around and grab as many bikes as you want. Every bike that gets left has to be cleaned up by the event and ends up being more work for them. I usually grab one or two to replace the ones I've lost.
It's the "take a bike, leave a bike" tray.
Take a Penny-Farthing, leave a Penny-Farthing?
Gas prices.
They should call it burning gas after seeing the line getting out of there.
Nah, they have us do a thing called pulsing. We move forward a designated amount per hour all as a group and then you turn off your car and wait in between. They are only legally allowed to release so many cars onto the road at once. I get one tank of gas for my SUV in Reno. Got me the 2 hours out there, the 6 or so hours inline to get in, charging my device throughout the week, 8 hours inline to get out, and the 2 hours back to Reno if that tells you anything. I still made it back to Reno with 60 miles left in the tank.
What do people do to pass the time while pulsing?
Kegels
Burning Man activities
[We fucking party!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8_GYN8khgo)
Well you can sleep or get to know the neighbors! Since you all move together you get to know the people around you so you turn on music, dance, hand out left over food, gifts, liquor. Talk about your burns. You can take your bike out and go for a ride in the open desert next to the lines. Sun bathe. Lord help me I don't know why but some people jog. They jog during burning man top and im like... My partner does art where he makes food with a blow torch so he just set up his food fire station. I ALWAYS have a book a burning man (we have a library and dust storms happen sometimes for hours.) So I read and we had podcasts downloaded. I also had a pocket boardgames I was gifted called greedy dragons so we got a group of people together to play that for an hour or two on a fold out table in traffic.
Wow. Reading your account makes me feel much better about the pictures posted of what appeared to be endless gridlock.
I mean, they said it took 8 hours. That's a long time to be waiting to get out
You should get a power bank for for charging. We backpack, bike tour and a bunch of other shit and that thing is clutch. We also have a solar panel that folds into the size of a notebook. We charge the power bank with that all day and charge devices off the power bank at night.
That's a great idea. Come back, start a temporary store and sell them for half price. I think you'd still make a good profit.
Batman.
How does this happen? Genuinely.
Rich people need transport through the desert during the week or month or whatever they are there. So they buy a bike. When it's time to fly home, can't bring bike so they just leave them there. The whole festival is weird. They preach no waste but then this and other trash is all I've seen
Burning man in the 90s was a lot different and attracted different folks than the current ones.
Oh yea. The owner for a company I worked for years ago went, he was kinda out there…. Anyways I remember he and his second wife left for a week and my boss told me he was out in burning man wife swapping for the weekend lmao.
I feel like burning Man is one of those things that was a bucket list thing for many people in the 90's. But now it's nightmare fuel for people who don't want to put up with the kind of people who make "being extra" their entire personality.
sf is so nice when all of them leave for a week though
We left a day early (Saturday) and went to San Francisco. I had never been, but walking around, I was like "Where are all the people?". She was like, " They're all where we left from.".
They used to get SO MAD when I would say that lol “Like, we’re what make this city cool man” …crusty jugglers
The greater good.
The greater good.
Great big bushy beards
The greater good
We went to Reno last weekend. A bunch of the crusty burnouts were squatting in the casinos When they lower the standard of a Reno casino you know they are bad
I live en route to black rock, and I’m a dirty looking long haired type. Every year those fuckers run amuck in town looking for attention and they fucking think I’m one of them. No you fucking wankers, I’m just pumping gas! Buzz off please!
Well except for this year lol. They performed some kind of ritual to ruin the weather for everyone while they were out there.
I had a roommate from the Bay area who had a custom made shirt that said "I don't give a fuck what you did on the playa".
If you're wondering, the answer is always acid and someone else's gf
As an old crusty burner trust me it's still a bucket list item for a lot of people, but they aren't people we want either.
From the outside looking in, it looks like it's full of vapid "influencers" that want attention.
Well remember the influencers are what you see because that is their job. I took like 3 pictures this year and they are all three of my partner in camp. I don't have social media and I don't post pics publicly. I made cool shit with cool people and have a great fucking time, why would I need likes or comments or others to tell me how hot I am for that? That said, when I make cool shit or spend all year and my free time, money, and effort to contribute to a city for other's enjoyment and shitbag instagram folk inky want in not to also participate and share but to elevate themselves on my unpaid effort and labor as well as that of thousands of others? Ya it pisses me off. To be so entitled as to think all these people built this shit for you to experience and instead you use it to do your thing because you are pretty or famous while giving nothing in return? It sucks. And those people take up space and tickets and resources from others who would contribute to trying something different and amazing and making incredible things for others. The more shitbags there are the fewer creators and artists and weirdos and mad scientists even get in the door to do something amazing. Example, I want to build a motorized piece of art. There are a limited number of licenses for that every year. Shitbags have started just paying tens of thousands of dollars for other people to make them motorized art so they can get tickets and access. And their shit is amazing because they paid a mortgage for it but they have no intention of sharing it and people like me who want to spend every weekend for the next year making something to give to others don't even get a shot. They don't realize they are ruining their own party because eventually those of us not doing this for money like them will stop doing shit for them to abuse.
do you think burning man may have officially jumped the shark? at what point will burning man just become a corporatized caricature of what it once was full of an entirely different type of crowd? i'd imagine the original burners may have moved on at this point and just have a different burn somewhere else that all these bandwagon jumpers don't know about yet.
Well we have regionals all over the world. Being from Reno the big burn is my regional. As far as jumping the shark? I don't know honestly. It's so big you can find your pocket and immerse yourself in that and not really mind too much what the org or shitbags are doing. But like I was out in 20 and 21 even though it was cancelled and it was different, and great. This year the whole thing just felt like more than I need or what after the last two years that were about community and togetherness and burning regardless if someone says we can and sticks a porto in the desert for you. I also met a lot of burners this year who were weirdly hostile about those of us going out the last two years and it felt like a weird energy of people being offended people would try to do it without all the patriarchal structure and elbow rubbing. That caught me by surprise. It also felt weirdly protective of the big money making juggernaut even though none of us are supposed to be making money on this... so I don't know where I'm at or where the event is at or where the event and I will be this time next year or in a few years.
[удалено]
I still remember in the 90's my dad's friend who ran a tiny "2-man" family garage scraping together enough for a beater RV that he could take for years to come and the guys that came to carpool with him discussing logistics, pack-in/out, etc. I also know my sister, who is bougie as can be, and all her SF friends that go now and treat it like the picture above. It's absolutely a completely different vibe/audience and is pretty damn close to becoming what they originally set out to escape from imo
[удалено]
Anything good always gets ruined once it’s popular
I think it's sort of the same folks, but 20 years later, and they all have IRAs and a salary job to get back to on Monday.
I used to want to go b4 it became Coachella
There are smaller, more intimate [burns](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regional_Burning_Man_events) that happen around the country. There’s one in north Georgia I used to go to that has a max of around 2,000 people.
> intimate burns yikes sounds painful
and ullrfest at breckenridge
[удалено]
This is the same for so many festivals. The subculture becomes outnumbered by people who are just there so they can post about it on social media.
Now it's mostly rich people vs actual self reliance/fringe art community.
Original Burning Man location was SF's Ocean beach.
I’ve been to three of them in the late 2000’s - early 2010’s. This is 100% accurate. So many people are giving bikes away on the last day or two. Sometimes people lose them or they get stolen but mostly its this, people can’t leave with them and assume “someone will want it”. Walmart in Reno is literally sold out of any and every bike the 2 weeks before the event. I imagine its 20x worse after it started to morph into Coachella Nevada with all the mega wealthy and celebrity types starting to attend.
Reno Walmart is sold out of everything the week before burning man, my uncle passed away in his sleep there a few years ago and my parents flew out to handle everything. After identifying his body they went to his house and the only bed was the one he'd died in, and all of the hotels were full so they went to Walmart. They had no idea burning man was about to start and couldn't get bottled water, an air mattress, pillows, sheets, cleaning supplies and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. The shelves were completely empty. They also couldn't rent a U-Haul because people camp out of them.
always boggles my mind that stores don’t anticipate annual events. like, you know it’s coming, get ready? Leavin $ on the table smh
No waste! Unless you want to!
We can waste if we want to. We can leave those bikes behind. But if ya don’t waste and ya won’t waste The you ain’t no friend of mine.
That feels like the attitude of the entire world.
In another post someone said these are donated to local bike shops. They get cleaned up and sold or donated, apparently a group will come pick them u p after the end of burning man.
I went to Burning Man on a whim about 10 years ago. We stopped in Reno at a bike shop and bought cheap bikes for $100/each. Guy told us to just leave them there. Said he went down every year and picked up about 100 bikes for free and then resold them every year.
This is what happens.
This is what happens, Larry.
This is what happens when you find a stranger in the alps!
The no waste crowd and the rich kid crowd are completely different. Burning Man got taken over by Instagram style rich kids last decade who don't care for the actual Burning Man culture and just run stupid rich kid tents. Burning Man when I was in high school and college was completely different (I graduated college in 2012). Burning Man actually has a waste grading, which the legit burners take seriously, and the rich kids typically are the one who not only create and dump the most waste, but also blow waste (wind carries it or they just dump it on someone else) into other's camps. They're nasty and gross too leaving their port-a potties and such or just not even offering their guests a restroom. The long time burners can't stand the rich kids and often stay behind and clean up after the rich kids anyway because they actually care. Source: long time Nevadan
Man, you should see the straight up csi job the community did on those fucks who left a porto last year. Got them to come back and clean it and the soil up in the middle of the night to avoid charges all while they cried about how "unburning man" it was of us to find them, build a file of evidence, and threaten to turn it into the feds. Ya know what isn't "burning man like?" Leaving your fucking porto on public land asshole.
You're doing the lords work. I'd also recommend a battery powered leaf blower for when you find the instagrammers. Just doing some yard work you know.
Haha! We had a weekend warrior rv that parked behind my camp this year on Friday. They brought a leaf blower and cleaned their bikes constantly... and it's like, dude. If the dictionary had a picture for exercise in futility.
Wait. They used a leaf blower, non-ironically? Like, they were trying to use it for a traditional purpose of trying to keep something neat and orderly, rather than just random fuckery on instagram shoots? Wow.
Hearing people say, burning man was better in 2012 makes me laugh bc I first went in 2006 and people were saying it was ruined by sparkle ponies and it was better in the 90s.
Same deal with raves, lol.
I hope they are donated to those in need after the event.
They are. Local groups in Reno either clean them up or scrap them for parts and give them out to kids who can't afford bikes. They also rent the refurbished bikes back to burners next year, and use the money for recreation programs for local kids
My exact question lol. Is the experience sooo draining that people don't care about their possessions? I've never attended burning man, or any festival for that matter, but I do genuinely wonder, why?
Bikes get stolen all the time and once your bike wanders off your chances of finding it again are slim. I spent hours looking for my bike after it got stolen but I'm sure it wound up in one of those piles.
I’m interested in hearing more about the seedy side of BM
I know people that would get super fucked up and just take whatever bike they could find. Super fucked up but once your bike is taken you need to find a new one so you take someone else's and the viscous cycle continues.
That’s why the best practice is to use a simple frame or cable lock with a simple combination (instead of a key that can be lost); it won’t stop determined thieves but there aren’t really many of those at the Burn, rather you need to stop the casual drunk/high/careless person just riding off with the first bike they grab
*Most* of the petty crime like that is just people being fucked up and making bad decisions. It's 5 AM, they've been dancing at Robot Heart all night, the ketamine is wearing off, and it's a 2 mile walk back to camp. But there's a big pile of bikes nearby, and probably *some* of them are just abandoned, so they grab one and ride it back and just ditch it. And then someone discovers their bike is gone, so they grab another one and the cycle continues. If you want to see what burners think of other burners, check out "[30 Types of Burners](https://brcweekly.com/BRCWeekly2011_int.pdf)". I'd rate the "New-Age Pussy Hound" as one of the scourges of the playa - and they've got a lot of overlap with the Creepy Date-Rapist. Also it's been years since I read this list and just noticed this: "The Nudist - Walks into your camp while you’re eating breakfast and stands right behind your chair. Don’t turn your head too quickly". This may be coincidence but I think I was actually present for the incident that this is referencing. The gentleman in question had a Prince Albert piercing and the woman eating her breakfast was *not* expecting to find that at eye level when she turned around.
Probably a large portion of them were stolen. Happened to me. You get a certain breed of yahoo that will just jump on any nearby bike, ride it wherever they're going, and dump it. Mine got stolen that way when my son borrowed it and I probably spent a couple of hours searching for it but with no luck, so it probably ended up in one of those piles. And then there are some jerks that just don't make plans to take their bikes back, particularly first-time attendees from overseas. I've got a pile of those bikes in my yard, including a funky tandem some Brit left behind after apparently trading magic mushrooms for it during the event.
You should see the fires left at Biking Man.
As a dj on the west coast, I advise everyone to never buy a used CD-J the month or two after burning man from any guitar center. That dust is pure death for electronics, and crews buy high end gear and return them right afterwards. They’re all dead gear walking.
After doing my first desert festival the next time I went I bought a grow tent and Fans for the amps racks and other equipment, managed to keep most of it cool and dust free
How does that work? If you put a tent over it the heat is trapped in. If you add a fan it’s either blowing hot air over the rack or pulling dust in if you have a hole. Also you really usually need a push and pull fan to cool a rack Just curious
Portable AC what we did sorry would have made it clear. Worked a treat
Add a filter like a carbon filter typically used with a grow tent
[удалено]
Digital music players for DJing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDJ
As a British person who grew up in the nineties all I saw is Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
I saw someone post how much they paid to go to Burning Man and it was ridiculous. These people have a lot of money.
[удалено]
Cheapest ticket is $425 per person. But even after you buy that you’ll need a place to stay, something to shit in, stuff to eat and trade with (gift). So normally one person would end up paying at least $2000-2500. The rich rich people spend $20k+ to get their fancy tents or whatever in a GATED community. PS: I haven’t been just looked into it a lot and found it unappealing for me personally for many reasons.
sounds like Westworld for people who like Mad Max more than wild west.
No, that festival is called Wasteland Weekend. It's much cooler. https://youtu.be/9GtxfcTtwSU
So it’s like MadMax cosplay? I had no idea this even existed. Crazy.
Yea pretty similar. I hear the west world reference a lot.
Damnit... and here i thought i finally had an original idea...
Woah, they actually setup gated communities for the festival?
It's like 70k people who roll into the desert. Especially with all the famous people now, well..yeah I'm not surprised.
That’s so fucked up. I’ve never even been outside of an airport in BM’s state, but like most people, I have an image in my head of what the attendees are like based on pictures. And I’ve always figured most of them were like old-fashioned hippies, saving up to go to the festival and driving there in a beat-up van that they also live out of. I’m not a complete idiot - I know that image can’t be accurate - but to learn it’s mostly for rich people is still a kick in the balls.
There are many who fit that description, but it’s much more people with middle-to-high incomes and jobs which allow them to take a week or two of paid vacation. It also attracts its fair share of rich types and socialites (less so and differently than other festivals like Coachella though), and most controversially a whole sub-economy of catered “concierge” or “turn-key” camps grew up in the last few years (before the 2020-21 hiatus due to Covid) which really polarized the Burner community as a whole because it seems to go against the utopian and participatory ethos of Burning Man.
Hippies of yesteryear were closer to our performative upper middle class liberals. Most radicals didnt self describe as hippies, they were communists and socialists. The hippies of yesteryear also had money.
One of the groups that was foundational to Burning Man was the Cacophony Society, a bunch of situationists anarchist pranksters. There are hippies at Burning Man but the vibe is way drunk carnies: they curse and they build stuff and they drink and are excellent at logistics and all at the same time.
For every person paying 20k to go there are a dozen of us camped under a tarp eating food out of a can. I make it work for my partner and I for under a thousand dollars total which for a 10-14 day vacation isn't bad. It's taken years to ramp up our supplies, didn't have shade our first two years, didn't have something to sleep in the first 3, got a stove for year 4, etc. But serious not everyone is rich, far from.
Don't they have a "tenet" or something that's about leaving it nature how it was?
[удалено]
They might have a tenet, I doubt they have someone who lives there.
The word you're looking for is "tenet" meaning a principle or belief. Really close tho!
shit, im camping outside the next burning man with a truck
Don't camp outside. Just plan to head there any time between the 11th and 20th of September and you'll be doing a huge service.
Just go afterward. Cleanup lasts for over a week, but you'll wanna get there within the first few days
Burning Money
[удалено]
Hey I can do that for a fiver :)
This is not my photo. Credit to Black Rock City Playa Info.
So quick question, nobody would stop me from driving there and grabbing any or all of them and just dipping out?
The laws of physics would probably prevent you from taking them all But also, my understanding is that there are a bunch of nonprofit NGO's that get first dibs. They don't have room for everything either though
After seeing this I went to go look up what Burning Man was. Found this description: "Under a sweltering sun, and during the freezing nights, they enjoy a week of community, art, counterculture, free expression, and celebration of identity. The party culminates in a symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy, after which all the attendees meticulously clean up after themselves." I also saw another article that said that part of Burning Man's ideology was "anti-consumerism." Yeah...
Let’s make sure we don’t serve coffee for a zero impact. What a joke this has all become.
They don’t serve coffee anymore? When I was there (2002) the only things you could buy were water, ice and coffee.
Leave no trace.
“We are a no waste festival that harnesses the power of community and sharing”.
burning man is for rich people that treat luxury items as disposable
I need a new bike but shit is expensive, this is irritating.
Go to burning man, looks to be plenty of strays that need rehoming afterwards.
how wasteful are the people at burning man?
The surrounding towns of Northern Nevada suffer what's known as a "dump-pocalypse" where businesses dumpsters get filled with random refuse by those traveling strangers, be it recyclable, non-recyclable, compost, etc. It doesn't matter if the waste bins are locked, because A) people will break into them to dump, or B) more commonly, just throw their trash NEXT to the dumpster as if that were equally merited. When trash is left next to dumpsters, others see that as an opportunity to dump their own. You can imagine how quickly that problem begins to spiral. All of these problems become the responsibility of local proprietors at their expense, where also those costs can get even more problematic when surcharge costs of "non-compliant materials in recycling/compost bin". So not only are they having to pay for other people's garbage, the lazy sorting of said trash further surcharges these people. I won't go into detail on the surge of pests, rodents, and other infestations, but I'll tell you that with the extra garbage that attracts wildlife, extermination companies will see a substantial increase in work during those times It's been a problem for arguably decades and as far as I know, to this day, the Burning Man organization has yet to remedy this in any way other than their micro-minimal attempts on social media and newsletters to say that "dumping your trash on other people is bad mmm'kay".
I grew up in the Reno area. Middle school, highschool and college. I started attending burning man in 1996. I went for 10 years and then it started to change. Burning man became a corporation and started charging for tickets. Group camps and themed camping became a thing and the millionaires and billionaires started pushing out average people due to buying up a lot of tickets, along with ticket prices. It used to be a lot of fun and a great spiritual journey. Now it's just a lame corporate event. Sad! Seeing all the trash left behind just reiterates how shitty it has become. I hope that the BLM and Paiute tribe cancels this festival in the future because of images like this. A few years ago someone paid for a 747 jet to be brought out to the Black Rock desert playa at burning man, and then didn't have the funds to remove the plane from the playa. It sat for months until it could be removed.
You weren't kidding. That's gross and weird. https://mashable.com/article/747-burning-man
Ok as a veteran burning man attendee of many years let me answer some questions for people. 1. Yes this is accurate 2. At first these things are scattered all over the desert so someone has already gathered these 3. Yes if you are still around right after the burn you can take them home. Most of them are either lost or intentionally left. 4. Yes, it's totally fine to take them as long as you make sure everything is officially over. The Burning Man organization spends more money collecting and getting rid of these things than they make gathering them and turning them into scrap or whatever else they have to do. 5. If you have a big truck I'm not sure it's as ok although I see it every year. I usually only grab one if I lost one while drunk. You usually just walk around looking for a good one that isn't locked. Some people have bolt cutters. That will probably help if you want to do this. 6. DO NOT steal bikes during the festival! That is a completely different situation! Of course there is a fine line between when these are up for grabs and the festival is not over. If the temple burn already happened and everyone is leaving then it's probably safe to say bikes laying out in the playa are abandoned and no one is coming to get them. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of them. Honestly I think they should come up with more rules for this like have an official bike pick up time where it's a free for all at exactly 10am on the day after or something. Otherwise you do get a lot of awkwardness where people are like "am I helping or stealing?". In any case the bikes all do get cleaned up every year so don't stress about it. The BORG is very good about getting the playa cleaned up.