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Burning Man

Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/gkousDaJy9GjHFQY7

The single greatest individual moment in my life was when the ball fell in the back of the endzone to end the game, and we beat the Patriots in Super Bowl 52. I don’t think that singular moment of pure euphoria will ever be topped (sorry to my future wife and kids!). I had spent countless years imagining the moment, and to have it finally be realized was beyond anything that I can put into words.

Before this past week, I would say the greatest extended experience of my life, moreso than any traditional vacation I’ve taken, was going to the Desert Trip concert with my dad back in October 2016. I’m a huge Classic Rock nerd, and seeing Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Sir Paul, The Who, and Roger Waters in one weekend was an incredible experience, that was only augmented by the amazing people we met and interacted with during that festival.

For me, one of the best parts about traveling is meeting fellow backpackers in hostels and getting to start from scratch in a new place with like-minded people. Burning Man was basically this same positive atmosphere times infinity. It was a giant (I think it was 20 square miles?) city of 70k like-minded individuals. I’m sure there were some bad apples here and there, but I genuinely don’t think I had a negative interaction with anybody. Ultimately, when going somewhere, I go because I am interested in the place/experience but it is the people that make or break the trip. For example, I really enjoyed my Egypt trip when I went in Feb 2018 (saw Aswan, Luxor, and Cairo), but I didn’t have too many real close personal experiences that week, so it became “just another” vacation. On the flip side, I went to Mexico City for a week back in Oct/Nov of 2016 and while that was a pretty cool city, I made some really good friends (who I am still in touch with!) and that elevated that trip to one of my more favorite vacations. Obviously it’s a different dynamic when traveling with family/friends, but I think that it still applies.

Anyways, long story short, and I do fully realize that there is a pretty significant risk of recency bias here, but I genuinely think that Burning Man was the best overall experience of my life to date. I actually went in with sky high expectations, and it somehow still obliterated those, but in a very different way. There’s a cliched saying that you don’t get the burn you want, but the burn you need. To be honest, I didn’t know what I wanted (just that I was super excited for the total sense of freedom), and I’m not even sure what I ultimately received, but I guess that it was definitely the burn I needed since I actually cried when leaving Burning Man because I was going to miss it so much…the last time I actually cried was when we won the Super Bowl.

I had always been tangentially interested in Burning Man, and looked into it around the end of 2018. The dates lined up perfectly with my retirement plans, and I reached out to a friend of mine from college, Brian, who had done it in the last year to pick his brain on it. For me, the chief appeal was (and still is) the total sense of freedom that you have, where you can basically do what you want, when you want. That’s the primary driver for me to travel – if I had total freedom, I would just bum around the world and see cool shit, so Burning Man was an extension of that desire. He gave me the rundown of the pros and cons, and ultimately sold me on it. I wound up going with two other first timer friends from college, Nick (my tent-mate) and Alex.

Brian was one of the leaders of a camp, Janky As Fuck, so I stayed with them. We were a smaller camp (~25 or so people), primarily from the Denver area with another solid California (LA/SD/SF) contingent. Our camp provided breakfast cereal every morning. First and foremost, the people in the camp were what made me love this experience. It was a very barebones camp in the best way possible, so I was able to “rough it” in the way that I had originally wanted to. There were obviously people I got to know more than others within the camp, but I genuinely enjoyed every single person’s company. Some of my more memorable Burning Man experiences were just hanging out and talking with random campmates, and especially some of the impromptu jam sessions that we had (shoutout to James, Brent, and Ziggy for these!). Also shoutout to Tank, Aaron, and Tink (and Brian!) for being beyond amazing people and amazing camp leads.

On my second to last day on the playa, I met a lady who used the word “whimsical” to describe the experience, and while I think it’s almost futile to describe the Burning Man experience to someone, that word really does encapsulate a lot of the appeal for me. One thing that I quickly realized is that there are 70k reasons for going to Burning Man, and 70k different things that can be taken out of it. Every person has their own story here, so for me, one of the best parts of Burning Man was that it was basically like being a child again. The deep playa had all sorts of cool and funky artwork and sculptures, camps would offer some totally random but amazing things, and there were some super cool mutant vehicles. Whether I was exploring day or night, there was a genuine sense of wonderment and surreality when checking things out. It was honestly a very Dr.Seuss-ian or Salvatore Dali-an atmosphere in the best way possible. It really brings out the kid in you, and I think that’s because of literally exploring and discovering super cool/unique/weird things as you go around. If you can think of it, it exists in Burning Man.

Here are a random collection of highlights that I saw while at Black Rock City. This was all stuff from memory that I jotted down on my bus ride back to SF after Burning Man and I’m sure I forgot some stuff. I also probably saw at most 5-10% (and that is incredibly generous) of what there is to see at Burning Man.

  • A bunch of us went out for my friend Alana’s 25th birthday and bounced around a few soundcamps (basically like nightclub equivalents). Around 2am, my friend Greg and I left early to head back to sleep. We got sidetracked by a LED volleyball court, and began to play around there. We then recruited random Burners who were walking/biking by and wound up playing for over an hour, and only got back to the camp closer to 3:30 or 4am. For me this is the ultimate Burning Man story since it was both so much fun and so incredibly random.
  • I only had one all nighter (old age/retirement…) but it was great. Went with my friend Brent to a late night Miso bar around 2/3am, and then hung out at this super janky and amazing dive bar called Nasty’s for a bit (he drank out of a dusty clown shoe). Went back to the camp and then recruited a few other friends – Kim, Alana, Martha, and James – to go to the soundcamps. At sunrise we made it to this gorgeous amphitheater that had been built out in the playa, and afterwards saw this cool sculpture of a giant metallic man and woman holding hands with the sun right behind it. Alana, Kim, Brent and I then spent the next few hours walking and exploring the playa until going back to camp around 10am. It really was a magical night…I wound up falling asleep in one of my many Christmas shirts, curled up in a ball in a small net chair that you sink into. I thus got the playa name of “Christmas Fetus”.
  • The Thunderdome. Saw this on my first night, and it was basically Mad Max in real life. Climbing up 20 feet in the air on a cage to view a crazy punk/metal fight from above was beyond surreal
  • Biking through sandstorms. This was super awesome and just an exhilarating experience. Whenever I was in the deep playa and saw a storm approaching, I would book it and beeline towards the storm, goggles and face mask be damned. On a side note, I grew quite attached to my shemagh (middle eastern military scarf) that I wore all week. I genuinely think that no matter who you are, you look better after a week in the playa…the dust and dirt makes everyone look grittier and more bad-ass.
  • Related to that, just talking to random Burners while biking around the playa/the camp areas. As I mentioned above, everyone is super open and there’s no real sense of judgement/people worrying about what others think, so it’s a crazy positive environment and just very enjoyable to kick back and talk to complete strangers
  • Nightime playa exploring was also really cool. To quote Meatloaf, seeing everything lit up took the words right out of my mouth. There were Pacman ghost vehicles, a giant octopus vehicle that shot fire out of its’ 8 tentacles, 4 mouths, and the top of his head (this was my favorite mutant vehicle by far), and just seeing all the other vehicles, art pieces, people and bikes lit up was exhilarating.
  • One memorable experience while biking through a duststorm was seeing a hot dog cart appear out of nowhere. The guy was blasting Led Zeppelin and serving fresh hot dogs, and it was just an amazing and surreal experience to see him pop up out of the blue
  • This super weird fish/frog/amphibian head that you climb up a ladder to sit in. Brian, Greg, and I spent a solid 30+ minutes just hanging out here, and then Greg and I liked it so much that we took Brent back there the next day.
  • We were right next to an Australian camp called Tetrix that served Busch beers (!!!). I would go every day to grab a few and befriended some of the Aussies there…Aussies are the best.
  • I woke up at 8am one morning and intended to go on a bike ride to the playa, but James, Kim, and Conner just got back from a night out so we went out and I helped extend their night by a few hours.
  • James always yelling “It’s Modelo Time, Foo”. I now adore Modelos (but not as much as Busch!).
  • Got a couple of cool playa gifts that I kept throughout. A girl I met while looking at one of the art pieces on my 2nd day gave me my first, which was a slap on unicorn and clouds bracelet. I kept this until the very end before gifting it to Nick. I also got a gift from an older man that was a pin that said “Happy Burn Day” (pun on Happy Birthday)
  • Nick got me a gift of On The Road by Jack Kerouac that he gave right before leaving which was a really, really cool gift
  • A ton of the soundcamps just played EDM music, but I did hear some super cool EDM remixes of classic rock (Rolling Stones, Dire Straits, Steely Dan, The Police, even some Johnny Cash)
  • Going with Greg and Dan to a trampoline (!!!) camp. However, we went at 3pm and were gassed and sweaty after jumping around and bouncing off the trampolines and walls.
  • I went windboarding and scraped my arm. Like windsurfing but with a skateboard. It was really fun but also pretty exhausting.
  • Seeing this super trippy dome video called Samskara with Nick.
  • Exploring the esplanade (the inner avenue of the camps) with Nick and Alex on my first night on Playa. One of the cooler things we did was this motion/sound camp that would play music based off how you moved your hands through these portals they set up.
  • The camp across from us had this event where they dunked your head in ice water for 10 seconds, lifted you up and slapped you, and then sprayed bagged Rose wine in your mouth. I’ve never felt more alive before
  • There was a legit Boeing 747 that a camp had set up
  • Seeing the clear night sky. Combined with all the night lights of Black Rock City, it was quite the sight
  • The folly – this was a super intricate wooden mansion that was built as a fake mermaid residence/museum. The attention to detail here was simply staggering
  • Winning a bet with Nick after beating him in a giant Connect Four game and tackling him in the Playa dust while he was shirtless
  • On the 2nd to last morning (Sunday) a lot of camps were winding up. I returned a lost phone to the Lost and Found camp and was starving while biking back to our camp. I somehow stumbled on a camp literally a 2 minute bike ride from mine that was serving fresh pizza. The playa always delivers
  • There was a house that was built in a 1930s style, and was supposed to be transported to the playa by the Wizard of Oz hurricane. It was like a smaller scale Folly, and again, the attention to detail here was incredible.
  • There was a camp that served Mac n Cheese, alcohol, and had a bouncy castle. Best of all three worlds
  • Greg, Dan and I found a camp that had hammocks and cushions to relax on while people sang karaoke
  • A super cool elephant that was built with scrap metals found outside a desert as a part of a Girl Scout project
  • There was a deli that served hugs in the playa, and random Burners could set up and wear the apron that was there.
  • There was a legit tree house (with fake tree) that was built in the playa
  • A house that was built on stilts
  • A trippy ring-shaped thing that you laid down under and would put on a light show at night while playing classical music
  • And last but not least, the Man and Temple burns. The Man burn was like a massive party, while the Temple burn was a very somber event. Walking through the Temple itself was a very sobering and powerful experience.

This is not to mention the cool things I did but invariably forgot about, or the cool things I wanted to see but missed (camp that served cucumber water and cucumber martinis, a Disney singalong, seeing a philharmonic orchestra, etc.). Not to mention the countless amazing things that happened but I was not aware of.

So that was a super long schpiel, but yea, go to Burning Man because it is the absolute best thing that you will ever do. I will 100% be back next year.