​A lot of drama coming out of the Gerlach Regional (aka Burning Man) this past week. If you missed it, a larger, more funded camp was the victim of vandalism. A lot of finger pointing has been made, but the truth is there isn’t any. No arrests have been made, no motive has been released. Everything you hear is speculation.

What isn’t speculation is a vocal portion the burnersphere has jumped on the opportunity to point the finger at those who have more of the one thing that doesn’t buy anything in Black Rock City (except iced
lattes, of course). I’ve seen richer celebrities blamed for everything from ruining the burn to avoiding the exodus. (I’d also like to point out for you that haven’t been to an airport lately that planes wait in line, too.)

I also sat with a guy on the bus coming in from the airport who wouldn’t have been able to experience the burn (his first) any other way. He lived in South Bay five years, had immediately drunk the Kool-Aid and was finally making the journey.

If you’re sitting at home talking about whether Burning Man is inhabited by the proper ratio of rich and poor people – the have and have nots as I’ve heard them called plenty in the last few days – then you’ve completely missed the point.

​Burning Man (and burner culture, which I’ll use synonymously from here out) isn’t about what you have, it’s about what you bring. I’ve seen huge contributions this year from those with very little, and clever, subtler conversations from those who had quite a bit more. Both of which we among my favorite additions to the burn.

Much of the art comes from smaller groups, and even a lot of the bigger art is volunteer based – the majority of those building volunteering. From deep playing pieces to the temple itself, it’s a labor of love.

Many of the biggest camps are out there to create the party. To bring something bigger and better to the burn. One of my favorite things about theme camps, art cars and art pieces is competition to out clever and out do the next piece. To bring the biggest plane, or the lighthouse with the most character.

Burners need only look to their neighbors to set the next bar, which is what we should be doing. This world spends too much time focusing on what we have and what we don’t, lets leave that out of the place where we’re all much closer to equal.

In Black Rock City, or whatever regional you may reside on a given weekend, we’re rich in so many ways that matter so much more – in cleverness, in ideas, in inspiration, in happiness, in love. Remember these are the things that are invaluable even in the places where money exists.

Update: Literally minutes after publishing this, someone got in touch saying he is in touch with the folks who did this, and that they'd be willing to answer questions of mine they felt were worth answering. I've sent the questions over.

Update #2: I was put in touch with someone who claims to have been involved in committing the vandalism, but his brief answers provided me with no assurance that he did it, and no way to confirm it. He claims he was part of the build crew for White Ocean in the past, and he and the others who did what they did were angry at the WO management, as I theorized when writing this post in the first place.

Update #3: White Ocean confirms this article was essentially correct. It was an inside job, not some kind of class warfare.

I put out a widespread call for help (from reddit to eplaya to facebook and more) in figuring this out and getting in touch with the folks that did this so understand why and not just infer their reasons. So far, the closest I've come is someone saying he thinks he knows one of the people that did it, and was going to see if he could get that person to talk to me. I've not heard back yet, and will certainly update this or write a new article if I do.

As a side effect of this though, I've discovered a long list of people who feel aggrieved at White Ocean and its organizers. Some of those people I talked to directly, some I only heard about from others in the know. More about that below.

​As a result of hearing about the string of disgruntled people they've left in their wake, my operating theory, which is not unique, is that the breathless media reports of 'class warfare' are nothing but kind of lazy attempts to fit the actions into a narrative they want to write about.

I haven't seen or heard a single bit of evidence that would point to burners targeting WO because it's a plug n' play. Further, if they wanted to send a message, why not make it clear? This was an organized attack that was clearly thought out ahead of time, and making their message less opaque was as easy as bringing a can of spray paint along. That's like protest vandalism 101. 

Beyond that, I just don't think it likely that the kind of, say, black hat Oakland anarchist that may have once felt compelled to go to these lengths to defend Burning Man's culture is still going, by and large, or would consider 2016 edging-towards-mainstream Burning Man particularly worth defending.

I believe that this was an attack by either contractors (many of whom are/were hardcore burners) that feel jilted by WO or by former campmates upset with either the management of the camp or a another faction in camp.

Let me give you some examples. (I don't think anyone I talked to had anything to do with it - I'm just illustrating a pattern. I should also note that even people who had bad things to say about White Ocean almost always had good things to say too.)

​Darren Edwards

Presumably not his real name, he's a guy who camped with White Ocean in 2015, which was his first burn, but he did so because he had been involved in a VR project that helped White Ocean plan the camp. He volunteered to arrive early and help setup, because good Burner. He posted publicly about his experience. You can read the whole thing a couple comments down in thisreddit thread, but here are some quotes:

"We arrived days early and volunteered to set up. We made immediate friends with those setting up, cleaning, setting up food. They have hired awesome crews." [My note: That includes Thorproductions.com doing at least the soundstage design - which was epic - that year.]

"Then guests started arriving. There was just an evil vibe as soon as that happened. When I found out the place was organized by Russian mafia, I wasn't surprised......We were told to hug anyone we didn't recognize and show them the door."

"We moved onto our next speaker who was a woman that is an artist and a full time employee of the org. She attempted to talk about the 10 principles of burning man and by this time the group wasn't having it. "What can you do at burning man?" "You can be a sex slave!" It was embarrassing to witness."

"There were great people at the camp. Ya, this was the place the San Francisco tech guys bought into, but some were great guys who really wanted to make a connection. I met a Welsh boxer and club owner from New York who was about the most interesting guy I've ever met. We helped a crew of 8 bucketlisters from Texas who were overwhelmed make the event theirs."

"At the same time, there were people who pushed at the food line and getting in line first usually meant waiting a half hour while the goons got their food, drank handles of vodka, and had conversations while the food line was completely stopped. There was bullying(giving out nasty playa names) threats, and fights. The center camp lounge the attendees would toss butts, roaches, or food right on the ground. There were people hired to clean it up."

"A few days in, we were either at other camps or if we were at our camp, we didn't socialize. The crew that assembled the sound camp [Thor Productions] walled themselves in their own camp separate from the white ocean group. I didn't witness fights, but I would have not been surprised had one broken out there, there was a lot of hostility in the camp. I think on Thursday or Friday night, the generator was attacked, diesel was syphoned out and hundreds of gallons drained onto the playa."

Darren and I also chatted briefly privately, and he had this to say about the staff he again highlighted how good the hired help was:
"Second, the staff was top notch. The people that staffed the camp were the best at what they did, from hooking up toilets, keeping it clean, to preparing the food. They did their jobs."

I didn't get a chance to talk to the folks at Thor Productions (had a call set, got cancelled, and we never managed to reconnect), but my understanding from someone who runs a soundcamp and knows Thor & crew well is that Thor Productions is still owed money from White Ocean for that work. (I'm not accusing or even suggesting anyone with Thor's reputable crew was involved, just using it as a datapoint in establishing a pattern.)


Michael "Sweatshop" Eakin

Michael runs, with his crews, kitchens for different camps on the playa, ranging from 50-200 people. The TL;DR is that he says he never got paid what he was owed, and it drove him out of his small business. 

"​I was hired by White Ocean in 2014 to provide kitchen services for their setup and breakdown crew, as well as all the camp attendees. I budgeted out $32,000 for our time, travel food and rental fees.  everything but 5,000 was paid up front and the rest being promised at the end after services rendered​."

"First off, I was promised yurts for me an my crew.  That was not delivered, we all slept in our tents that we luckily brought as back up. "no complaints" but right from the get go they were not providing what was promised."

"In the end, my crew and I provided all the services promised to a smashing degree of success. Even had Paul Oakenfold [big DJ that is part of White Ocean] raving about the quality of food provided and asking to have me come hang out for the night to talk shop."

"Even after all the success and good times, they were still unable to pay me the last $5,000.  I had Timur Sardarov [one of the owners - son of a Russian billionaire] on the phone telling me he would put the money directly into my bank.. sent him my account info.. nothing.. still 2 years later.. nothing...  I had rental fees go to collections.. workers not paid and still angry.  And when all was said and done that amount put my catering company out of business.. When the dust had settled, I am now in debt over $9,000 with late fees, interest rates etc.  and I had to sell my company just to re-coup that money."

"Oh and they won best soundstage and art installation.. got a big medal from Burning man... for real... but the people who built the camp and stage... are not white ocean.. they are hired help.. SO white ocean doesn't feed a bunch of burners or bring this awesome state of the art stage.. they just throw money at people who can bring those things....then they throw their label on it and call it their own."

"Also in regards to disgruntled workers.. I know the year I was there, at least 10-15 people were very unhappy with what was happening.. "

"Promises were made by middle management.. the people that were hired to run things and hire workers.  But once upper management arrived everything changed the way they wanted... so the people that had been onsite for a week building all of this all of a sudden were getting kicked out of yurts and being put on the bottom rung of things."

"There were 2 people in particular that left the camp mid week because of the amount of social abuse they felt they were taking."

"Shit on Monday and Tuesday beginning of the week I was so upset that I was considering jumping in my box truck and taking all the food to a different camp and giving it all away."

"And its all really disappointing in all honesty, cause I really liked Oliver Ripley [with Timur, the co-owner] and Timur didn't seem like a bad guy... it's just that they are on such a different level of living that these are all small time problems to them... they wipe their ass with 5,000 but to me that shut my business down.  They just don't understand that."

"That doesn't change the fact that I still believe that they deserved what happened to their camp this year.  cause they obviously have not gotten any better since I was there 2 years ago."

Other sources

I talked to a couple other people as well - one who camped with White Ocean this year and one who worked for it as part of a crew he asked me not to name. Neither wanted to be identified. The former cited the belief that the Russian mob is involved and the latter just didn't want to be known as someone who might talk badly about those who hire him.

"The jerk factor in this camp was through the roof. Also, lots of people seemed to have barely even heard of Burning Man before coming, they knew so little about it." - the camper.

"The food was incredible though and I found some other burners on my wavelength to hang out with." - the camper

I unfortunately managed to delete the email I was writing to myself when taking notes with the former worker, but his feedback boiled down to being a multiple-year burner who felt he was treated very poorly by some of the management (don't know which ones) and some of the guests, though he did say that he ended up having a great time in off-hours with other of the guests. Like I said, everybody I talked to had at least something positive to say about their time at White Ocean. 

There were a lot of people to potentially talk to, but without any evidence to the contrary, I don't think it's hard to take an educated guess about what happened.

Conclusion

Look, I'll be honest: I don't really like White Ocean as a camp (I don't know the management at all - they might be wonderful people, I have no idea). I don't like plug n' play camps that make it easier for bucket listers who don't give a crap about our community and culture to show up, because every one of those that comes means someone who may be more invested in it can't come. I don't care how rich you are, or how luxuriously you burn. Knock yourself out, though I also don't care how big a soundstage you bring - it doesn't get you a pass from me, at least, on trying to participate in our culture. It is very possible to put on a big, awesome show without resorting to running a hotel for Burners. Look at Opulent Temple for an excellent example there.

Anyway, for the love of dust, act like you give a shit about where you are (hint: it's not a music festival with a VIP section). Put a little work in. Sweat a little. That struggle to get to and live in the Black Rock Desert temporarily is part of the anvil on which our culture was forged and continues to be shaped. Burning Man wouldn't be Burning Man if it was held at a hypothetical Four Seasons resort capable of accommodating 70,000 people. It might be something else wonderful, but it would be something else.

Finally, with my bias out of the way, I think this story is actually pretty boring. Like many people, my first thought on hearing of it was framed by the narrative I kind of want: A community willing to defend its culture, even if I can't condone the specific actions taken here.

But that's just sensationalism unless there's some kind of confirmation. The people I talked to above all said they are aware of many others who are upset with White Ocean.

What's more likely, in light of the trail of upset people WO has left behind: Burners making an amorphous political statement (without even leaving an explicit statement behind), or some pissed off Burners taking personal revenge on people they had a falling out with? Between the upset contractors, the fights within the camp, the bullying, etc it just seems like a camp primed to have a bit of an implosion. 

In other words, it's almost certainly just an intra-camp dispute writ large due to the scale of the camp. Mildly interesting, but that's about it, and barring dramatic new info, I'm done thinking about it. 

P.S. Is the Russian mafia involved in their camp? I don't know, and I don't really care. Maybe? Just because one of the owner's father may be involved in said mob doesn't mean the camp is. Certainly, a lot of people tell me it is, but it seems to be mostly hearsay. I doubt they go around wearing, "I M Russian Mob" nametags.

Bowie was one hell of a rebel, and I'm positive he would have loved Burning Man's combination of outrageous style and music. His death hit me hard - he seemed nigh-immortal in some ways, and he went too soon. I miss his presence in the world, though am glad it's able to live on so strongly through his music.

I was particularly thrilled to get the ok to talk about this because I've also been working on a Bowie tribute using Burning Man footage from this year, and it's complete as well! 

Anyway, hope you enjoy my video tribute to him.

Rest In Peace, Mr. Bowie. You will be missed.

​On another note, thank you to David Best and the entire Temple team for a gorgeous Temple this year. Amazing.

Funny you should ask! Obviously, preppin' for the playa is a lot of work, so it's helpful to have a checklist.

I can offer you a couple:

• My own no-nonsense packing list. It's what I use, and I don't have much else to say about it other than that!
• Stitch's packing list. This is an awesome list, that is incredibly comprehensive, but it's also a little overwhelming for some people. 

You can, of course, find as a load of packing lists around the net, but I don't think you'll really find anything that you can't get out of those two Burning Man packing lists. Enjoy, and let me know if you feel like mine is missing something crucial! 

However, they just released their2014 Annual Report and tax return (form 900) and because 2014 is the first year that the Burning Man event was fully integrated into the Burning Man Project (the 'master' organization under which all activities are undertaken, including putting on the Burning Man event), it's much more interesting than previous years.

​Now we can see how all our ticket money gets spent on That Thing In The Desert. The bad news for the drama seekers out there is that you're going to have to work to find fodder for the fire.

The blog post that accompanies the release of the annual report is a great place to start, but I'm providing some highlights below for those who just want some tidbits.

Highlights:

• $30.7m in revenue, virtually all of which comes from the Burning Man event. 
• $0 in advertising and promotion. Clearly, they don't need to pay people to talk about Burning Man.
• Permits and Fees: $3.6m. (Bureau of Land Management fees, etc).
• Heavy Equipment Rental: $2.4m. ​
• All that poopin' in the portas we do? Costs about a million dollars a year for porta potty service.
• They had around $9.6m in net assets at the end of fiscal 2014.
• They really, really love David Best, having given him $80k for the Burning Man Temple that year, $15k to build a Temple in Northern Ireland, as well as $15k to a filmmaker to partially fund completion of a documentary about David Best's life and work.
• Burning Man Arts gave $1.1 million to artists in the form of direct grants and art support services (heavy equipment, etc).
• The Burning Man Project spent $23m on putting on programming related to Black Rock City, and another $7.6m on management and general expenses of BRC and their off-playa programs. 
• Selected salaries:
  • Larry Harvey (President): $197k
  • Marian Goodell (CEO): $242k
  • Harley Dubois (Director): $179k​
  • These salaries are completely reasonable for the leadership of a non-profit at the scale Burning Man Project is. 
• 83.69% of their total expenses went directly to "program services", meaning things directly contributing to the projects they work on (including the Burning Man event), and excluding management and some other categories of expenses. For non-profits, you typically want this number as high as possible. 83% is actually pretty good. It's not world-class awesome, but it's definitely good. 

I really only have two pieces of criticism based on the form 900. First, I'd like to see more money going to support artists on the playa. 

Second, given that the the Org has been telling us that Regionals are the future (and given the population cap of BM vs. the demand to attend, they're probably right), they don't seem to spend much money supporting them. 

Overall, it's clear the organization has evolved in the right direction in terms of transparency and I think they're to be commended for it!

It's been quite illuminating for me to see how the event has changed over the years, and doing this project has made me have little patience with people who say things like, "Burning Man is ruined - it's changed so much since I started going in 1998." 

Yeah? Well that's exactly what some people who were there in the early days were saying by '98. It's impossible to spend time studying the history of the event without recognizing that change has been a constant with it.  Hope you enjoy!

​1986-1990: The Early Days

​1991-1996: Hypergrowth

​1997-2000: Maturation

2001-2010: Graceful Aging

​2011-2015: Age of Scarcity

Let's get this party started with a slide from Burning Man's "census" data for 2014. I put census in quotes because, as they readily admit, it's a survey whose results are extrapolated to the whole population, rather than a true census where every single participant is individually counted. It's probably not perfectly accurate, but I think it's likely good enough in terms of broad strokes to serve as a factual basis for discussion. (I'll note that I'm going to try to sidestep the fact that latino/hispanic people can be of any race when it comes to the US census, and consider only non-white latino/hispanics for the purpose of latino/hispanic.)

So, as expected, what we see is non-latino white people over-represented compared to the US population's demographics (84% of 2014 Burning Man attendees were US residents) and even more so compared to the global population.  Non-white hispanics (about 18% of the US population) are heavily under-represented and blacks (~12.8% of the US population) are yet more underrepresented.

One interesting thing I find perpetually missing from this 'debate' about racial diversity at Burning Man is people of Asian descent. They are unquestionably a minority in the US (~4.5% of the population) but the discussion around Burning Man never seems to mention them or credit the fact that there are a fair number of Asian minorities at Burning Man. In fact, according to this census, they are slightly over-represented vs. the US population.  If you're looking to attack Burning Man because all minorities aren't equally represented, at least acknowledge that just as there are minority groups who don't attend Burning Man very heavily, there are others who do.

In any case, I'm firmly on the 'side' that says that the lack of representation certain minority groups have at Burning Man is not an indictment of the event.

​There are probably a number of reasons for some minority groups not coming to BM, including in no particular order:

Cost. Blacks and latinos are less well-off as a whole than white and asian people in the US. Taking off and getting to the BRC to spend a week there is a luxury that only people with lots of money and/or free time (it's possible to go to Burning Man very cheaply if you volunteer and get a free ticket) can indulge in. For most people, going to Burning Man ends up being very expensive. I don't see any reason to be concerned about this vis a vis race though, unless we're also going to fret that poorer people can't take trips to Bali or Paris as easily either. I mean, yes, income inequality is fret-worthy but I don't think there's anything about Burning Man that is any different from the rest of the world in that sense.

Camping. Pick 10 camp grounds at random in the US. Go visit them and tell me what races you mostly see camping there and which you don't. Larry Harvey may have said it awkwardly, but there's nothing wrong with the idea that certain cultures like certain activities more than others. 

Group identity. Like it or not, there is a lot of racial clumping in terms of social groups in this country. A lot of white people hang out mainly with white people, a lot of black people hang out mainly with black people, a lot of latinos hang out mainly with other latinos and speak mainly spanish in their communities, etc. I'm not making any justifications or excuses for doing that, nor am I even expressing an opinion about whether it's a good thing or not. But it is a thing, and if you're, say, a black person who prefers the company of other black people, I get how you might look at the sea of often-privileged white people at Burning Man and think, "Not for me." Maybe at a certain point there'll be a critical mass and suddenly someone who previously didn't think it was for them might look at videos of the event and decide that there are enough people like them that they'll feel comfortable there. 

Cultural origins. The founders of Burning Man were all white. The original attendees of Burning Man were pretty much all white. If Burning Man had been founded by a group of black people and was primarily black people for the first few years, I suspect the racial composition of Burning Man would look a lot different today than it does. Origins matter, particularly in light of the aforementioned racial clumping in social groups.

That's it. Nothing earthshattering in this post, because I don't think there's much to talk about. I don't think it's any surprise that different events and activities tend to appeal, for a variety of reasons, to different races (especially where culture and race are somewhat tightly tied together like with many minority groups in America). Is skiing somehow racist because it's mostly white?

What is a shame is anyone believing that any race is going to be less than welcome at Burning Man. Racism is alive and well in America, but either people who are less racist than most go to Burning Man (I want to say that's likely, but that would be effectively patting myself on the back, so is a notion to be treated with suspicion) or the culture of the place just encourages people not to express it. Maybe both.

I think it's the friendliest place on Earth, and while I'm a white man and so have no direct experience with what minorities deal with in America or on the playa, I just don't see the kind of attitudes I see off-the-playa towards different racial groups displayed out there. If nothing else, Burning Man is the type of place to make the closed-minded really uncomfortable, so they likely tend to stay away.

I'm sure other people have different perspectives informed by their experiences on the playa. Would love to hear them in the comments!

I let him know it's as easy as walking up to the bar, smiling, and waiting for someone to offer you something, which they certainly will. So he did. Great!

John started talking to me about what he'd been doing before arriving on the playa. He'd been involved in this program called Honor Flight that flies aging veterans of US wars to Washington D.C. to see the monuments that were built to honor their sacrifices. He spoke about it with great reverence, and talked about he spent 3 straight days as the host of an elderly (obviously) WW2 vet and what a moving experience it was. 

He talked to me about the impressively long line of Harley riders that escorted their group at one point. The conversation evolved and he told me, with excitement, about the guns he got to recently shoot. He told me about how he's from Chicago and is a red meat and potatoes kind of guy. At this point I was thinking, "Huh, doesn't fit the profile of most of the birgins I meet these days. Hope he's going to be ok with all the strange new things out here as it doesn't seem like his scene."

Then he made me feel terrible for judging a book by its cover. John started telling me how he came to Burning Man to try new things, and how in the past 18 hours (his first hours on the playa) he'd gone to his first yoga class ever. How he'd gone to his first tantra class ever. How he had decided to be 100% vegan for the week. How he'd just come from one of the communal washing camps, where he'd washed and been washed. 

I was blown away. This guy, right here, was #doingitright. Hell, he was doing it better than most experienced Burners I know and I started wondering, "What have I done to push my boundaries this Burn? Not as much as John has....." 

It's not about the specific activities he did - it's that they were clearly not within the normal purview of his life, but he was completely open to them. That is a man who knows how to Just Say Yes.

John, if you're reading this, I want you to know that you're the most impressive birgin I've ever met and that you're an inspiration. I hope you had an amazing week and I hope we run into each other next year. Pretty sure you'll be back.

And in a neat coincidence, the first thing I saw when I turned on the tv in my hotel room in Reno post-Burn was....a long special report on the northern Nevada Honor Flight program that John was part of. Got me all teary watching these elderly vets who had given so much seeing the monuments for the first time.