Your first year will always be your best year.

I'm older than you Aelric, but people have been saying that since the 90's, when it became a standard story in Wired and Playboy every year.

Sure, they said it when I was there. But there does seem to have been a massive influx of the rich in the pasty 3 or 4 years, more than usual. Billionaires setting up walled camps and more and more of bro culture invading what used to be a nice hippie bullshit gathering. There were always some rave kids, but it's looking more and more like it's ALL rave kids.

Coca-cola doesn't taste the way it used to.

The art installations are still cool, though. And the mutant cars.

And the Coca-Cola thing can be explained by them replacing sugar with high fructose corn syrup!

I guess "rich" is a relative statement, but historically speaking, hippies have always been predominately "rich kids". I don't think it's a change in demographic, so much as it is a change in what the demographic looks like.

Anyways, I think it looks neat! Mad Max Ravers are a lot more interesting to me than desert hippies, and I'd love to go one of these years... only I'd be worried that I'm not cool enough to get in. :( I know Burning Man is big on the arts. Do you think they'd let me in if I brought a bunch of Bob Ross reproduction paintings? Maybe I could offer to do Mad Max Raver style portraits of my fellow festival-goers' fursonas?

My dream is to one day start my own annual juggalo-furry-Burner festival. Instead of the desert, we will hold our festival out in the ocean, atop a series of giant trash barges, all lashed together.

Dressing like Fallout pirates will be encouraged.

They would let you in so long and you bought a ticket, doesn't really matter what else, though they would likely advise you go home if you showed up without a weeks worth of water and food.

There are plenty of people there. Couldn't I just murder and steal to get my food and water?

Cube: It tastes different due to the reptiles controlling government putting their mind control chemicals in it! Google 9/11 truth Rand Paul.

Speaking of Burning Man: hey, IZ! Did you (or anyone you know) spend the Weekend at Burnies? If so, how was it? PoeTV seems pretty split as to whether Burning Man rules, or sucks now, yet nobody seems to have any recent first-hand experience.

I worked gate one year and some hot chick came through in a crappy honda civic. She had one skimpy dress in the trunk. As she had no guns or fireworks I let her in.

Yeah I used to live with a bunch of burners and fest kids, I actually ran into one of them today. She was like "best BM ever" and they've tried to get me to go every year. In their case it's save up a whole bunch of money working a semi-shitty service industry job to go have a spiritual experience, do Ayahuasca etc. not just blow off steam or be part of something that feels like a corporate retreat, and good for them! It's not enough to convince me to go, since I can do that on mondays (until 10PM) at the park by my house (until October)..

What I like is the brief ontological shift that seems to occur when people get home from Black Rock, which tends to run off on all us non-burner types. I'm not really a festival goer; I've been to two in my life: Lollapalooza in '94 when I was 12 and Pitchfork in '07 when I was 25. In either case I went to see the same band, Sonic Youth. And in both cases I got bored and played cards with most of my friends, so it was just hanging out, again until lights out. BM never turns off the lights until the man burns so maybe I'll go next year, or the year after that..

Despite my laments and worries about going back, I still encourage people to go at least once, especially those that think it's fucking bullshit. That's what I did. I thought Burning Man was some fucking rich kid hippie Evergreen Student bullshit that I got enough of by being an evergreen student in Olympia. I only went because I had recently had my heart ripped out by an ex and some friends were going and invited me (dragged me) along in an attempt to make me feel better.

But it was those low expectation (or high expectations to be disappointed) that perhaps saved it for me and made it a great week. Those I went with were the opposite, they expected to have a great time and didn't really have much of a good time (though they went again and had more fun the second and third times). My advise is that those who think it's retarded are the ones more likely to enjoy it.

Maybe that's what I'm trying to gear myself up for, because as more years get in between my visit there and now, I dislike what I see it turning into and the more it resembles what I thought it was before I went. If I get to that same feelings as then, then go, maybe it'll be a great time again. It's all a trick of the mind.

Like it or hate it, everyone should go once, if for no other reason than to confirm your hate.

That's a great way of looking at it, Aelric! I feel the same way about GotJ and Anthrocon; one day, I would like to go to all three, just to try them out.

@Aleric weird! We're like Bizarro Twins. I didn't attend college there but I grew up literally across the street from Reed College, which is Evergreen's Sportsball rival and spiritual sister. So I'd just walk around Renn Faire back when I was a kid, and that was basically like free Burning Man in my mind. This was back before they cracked down on the drugs and didn't have any curfews. Growing up, it was not uncommon for me to see an LSD fueled orgy happening in my parents' back yard, complete with Peacocks that some ALF people released and bred into the residential streets. For the most part I just ate my cheerios, my dad did the crossword and shooed away the students bac to campus, and it was like it wasn't even there, like this happens everywhere in springtime.

And like I said, it's not too hard to find events that are like tiny BMs around the city, but there's curfews and lately cops have been cracking down on the drugs and such because it's shooting fish in a barrel. My heart-ripped-out story was similar, but I just went to SMMR BMMR, which was fun until 2:00AM and a few of my friends got arrested for drugs on the way home. So it might be fun to visit that place without any of those restrictions, but as the old saying goes, you don't want to live there, but the way it's been described to me it's cheaper than a Disneyland vacation.

But Zest Don't Dance!

Fascinating

According to Wikipedia they offer art grants (presumably for materials?), and if you don't have a job, then taking a week off wouldn't be much of an issue. It definitely seems like the sort of indulgence only a financially-secure arts kid could pull off, but I'm sure it would be possible.

It's easy if your are a college student like I was, it's timed right in that week between quitting your summer job and going back to school. And that way, you blow all your summer savings (my total cost for a share in van rental,, gas, food, water and the ticket was about 0 for the whole week. I've had more expensive weeks just surviving.)

It's actually a little easier if you are poor than if you are middle class, because your grants are higher (at least in the state of Washington). I got an extra 00 a year with the State-Need grant because my family made less than ,000 per year. So, once school started, I was usually good and the summer only needed a part time job to get by. Also, I lived pretty fucking minimally back then.

Err, I'm referring to my student grants, not these weirdo burner art grants which sound like communism.