> Many participants tell me this is the last year the event will be bearable before it "goes commercial."

https://www.sfgate.com/style/article/Communal-art-in-the-des...

FWIW, for a lot of us, the magic is still there. Most of the city exists outside of the shiny Instagram influencers that seem to dominate the narrative. We're still there being gross and building shit for the joy of it with our friends.

(I'm still not used to easy internet access at BRC, he says as he browses HN from his camp)

She and the C-suite for the Burning Man Org make like $300,000 plus. It's not a HUGE amount in San Francisco if you consider tech salaries but I parsed salaries of CEOs of arts organizations in California and she's still easily by far the most highly paid CEO in her field.

They also have a CTO what makes 300k.

https://burningman.org/about-us/what-we-do/financials-public...

Burning Man is a once a year event. Being a c level for that is not comparable to being c level for a lot of other even non profit orgs not to even mention for profit orgs

And we have not included the spouse's income at all (assuming with kids there is a spousal income)

Unless you don't define middle class as the percentile between 25 and 75, then it's markedly above middle class.

Incomes in SF are skewed though because housing costs vary wildly. Some people are below the median income but have rent control or property tax so low that they pay basically nothing for housing.

300k is a lot of money but for someone overseeing an event that size, doesn't seem that extraordinary. In particular given the responsibility for the safety of people.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/nonprofit-ceo-co...

Ex: Healthright 360 has 1600 employees and makes $145 million in revenue and it's CEO is still paid less than her. They provide healthcare and other types of care for people without insurance.

But also, you don't have to buy a house. Median rent, groceries, car payment, etc. in San Jose aren't gonna run you more than like $7k/mo. After taxes on your income you should have about $100k after essentials are all paid for. That's more than enough to basically live whatever life you want.

Not doubting the headline conclusion, but I would have expected a better source than someone who hasn't been to Burning Man in literally 30 years. AFAICT, Burning Man was still very well regarded ~20 years ago, long after this founder stopped attending

Another bit I found peculiar was the mentions of anarchism while seeming to have a rigid idea of what the event should or should not be. It's certainly far less anarchistic today—placements, permits, law enforcement—but it's not exactly anarchism to say it isn't allowed to evolve to fit the scale and culture of the participants.

Law enforcement was probably there because law enforcement said they'd ban the whole event if law enforcement wasn't there. That's how they typically work.

No, it’s not.

I get that your flavor may be, and that’s fine, but your definition is neither the only one or the first.

Does america need more socialism to to help break the back of this oligarchic fascist state fuck yes. Do I want to live in pure socialism, no, no I do not. I will however hold positions further left than I think we are able to achieve simply to help move the overton window back to some fucking sanity.

We stake out these purely moral positions at the extreme poles because we want to move the concept of where the center actually is, we know we cannot achieve some kind of communist/socialist utopia, but you don't win by negotiating with yourself before you are at the table with the adversary.

Or that the man design was done for so long by a close collaborator of Larry’s. And that the man base has been frequently spectacular both on fire and not.

The historical perspective and old photos are great but I’m not much for the conclusion. I would be willing to bet the title and byline are editorialized by the publisher.

You can still go out there with not much, be new and participate and just smile at some famous or not person also on their way back from the Portos.

There is a lot of money involved, no doubt and there is a lot of bullshit too, like art cars that do fundraisers and take volunteer contributions only to remain largely private vessels for a particular crew, a few celebs etc.

And there’s a lot to not like about the org or how art grants are handled, it’s a big system it has the exploits and nepotism that might infect anything scaled and offering power.

But if you go and do not look closely and just give in small ways none of that would likely be visible to you.

You could have the time of your life. Or not. Which I think suggests the opportunity for adventure and chaos still remains at that thing in the desert.

Both things can be true.

Leave No Trace.

I imagine many here feel convicted because they see themselves in Law’s descriptions of the well-heeled elite, and they resent Law for saying they are not transgressive instigators, anarchic fire starters, and autonomous free zone inhabitants.

Y’all. Be comfortable with who you are. Most of us just want good money, an awesome time with cool computer shit to do, and friends and family who love us. It’s okay not to be a revolutionary. What’s not okay is to trick yourself into believing you are one when it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Here’s to the revolutionaries - I get to live a more grounded life because of their willingness to live outside the lines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO_r6ndZRZY&t=1s

>A community effort to construct a 300-mile wall in one week and prevent Burning Man attendees from returning to the Bay Area.

>"I'm asking for your help crowdfunding the most ambitious Burning Man project ever a wall that's built around the entire bay area during the week of Burning Man."

But come on. The world kinda sucks. If a bunch of people want to go to the desert with no cell phone service and just do their thing, why do we care? If some of them need an RV to do it, and they aren't charging others, so what? That's awesome, and life would be better if more people had the ability to do their own flavors of Burning Man.

Seems insane to me to think kids should be at burns.

That's what Sunday School is for.

I lived in SF at the time of the original burns on Baker Beach and heard about them but I was too lame and isolated to ever participate but followed their antics (and the Cacophony Society) from afar.

The universe arranged for me to go ten years ago and I found the experience magical. There's an exhibit that shows how each wave of newcomers has destroyed burning man which I found to be a cheeky take on its evolution.

The kids I saw there were doing kid friendly stuff and them being allowed there was clearly to allow their parents to come without having to leave them behind.

There's plenty to hate about it but in the end it's about people coming together to have a good time, and there's nothing wrong with that.

As for K-12, their hatred is that the public version is competition for their private education which is fully intended to indoctrinate them into their particular flavor of religion.

I'm not saying this to be combative -- it's all publicly stated.

The only combative thing here is using the word "cult" to describe a mainstream religion, and even that is because people get offended by that rendering rather than it not being the case.

Maybe religious people hate public education because it is different programming than they offer?

Most recently I was navigating this wooden maze, lots of tight spaces and odd bends necessary to get through it. Part way through I encountered a bunch of kids who weren't tall enough to get over a ledge (they navigated the rest of the thing with ease). I made myself into stairs for them and they completed it. Later I had an epic foam sword fight with the same bunch. It was super fun.

I've never been to the big burn, so maybe I'm just missing out on the magic of whatever you mean by the "real" burn (although many of the people at my regional say it isn't worth it), but I don't think anything was lost by having the kids around.

Their parents are convinced that it's raising a child in default society that's the more dangerous thing, and after talking with several of them I'm convinced as well.

Seeing pets and children at multi-day festivals is such a vibe-kill for everyone - it feels unreasonable for all personas involved!

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/burnin...

> ...and life would be better if more people had the ability to do their own flavors of Burning Man.

I'm biased and a bit amusingly jaded because I left the US many years ago and have been living overseas for a long time, so take my next paragraph with that context.

Have you been to a Mexican ranchero wedding that lasts several days? Enjoyed a weekend BBQ in a Filipino province? Been invited by a bunch of 60 and 70-somethings in a small town in Vietnam who don't speak English to sing karaoke with them?

Enjoying life doesn't have to be a monumental, once-a-year event, and it shouldn't be.

The pollution that comes from the Burning Man artwork, which is the crux of that article, is less than one plane from JFK to SFO. If we're going to complain about anything, the flights to Burning Man dwarf the actual event. But even then, the week of Burning Man, only 0.03% of travel will be people going to BM.

I get it, 70,000 people in one spot creates trash and pollution. But we all are, every minute of every day. In the grand scheme of things, Burning Man is _not_ the problem.

Why can't everyone just do what they want without us taking it to the extremes? I agree meeting locals is a ton of fun and should be a part of everyone's life. But if a bunch of people want to go to a desert and hang out for a week, and they clean up after themselves, why do you care?

Did you even read the article? It stated very clearly:

> With organizers themselves estimating that Burning Man emits 100,000 tons of carbon every year, it is clear things cannot stay the same on the playa.

100,000 tons total. Please don't cherry-pick one part of the article to make a point.

> ...and they clean up after themselves...

Except, if you actually did the research, you would know that there are lots of reports of trash being dumped in nearby towns, including Reno and Tahoe. It's not the straightforward "they clean up after themselves" you make it out to be.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/07/burning-man-...

https://www.rgj.com/story/life/arts/burning-man/2023/09/06/b...

> Why can't everyone just do what they want without us taking it to the extremes?

Who took anything to an extreme? Most of my comment was pointing out that in much of the world, particularly in places where people have way less, they find a way to enjoy life and have fun without events that have the environmental impact of a Burning Man.

I'm not calling for Burning Man to be banned. But what I think is extreme is the idea that, because the "world kinda sucks", the solution is for people to take a few days out of the year to go into the desert and let loose. Have a monthly BBQ with friends. Sing karaoke on the weekend. Take a hike every Sunday. Those things will contribute way more to a durable enjoyment of life than a Burning Man.

Burning Man is completely discretionary, you need to compute the total discretionary carbon footprint, and then the BM carbon footprint

If we're going down the list of things to get upset about, Burning Man is pretty far down the list.

Let people have fun.

Outside of those few who dedicate themselves to the organization and administration of the event, each burning man is a unique assemblage of thousands of people, different in every way from one year to the next. Except perhaps the location.

Without the different human beings who show up each year, the event would be nothing more than a dust bowl waiting to become a mud pit.

The "soul," if there is one, is the sum total of the expressions those humans bring with them at any given point in time.

Change the humans and you change the expression. So exactly which "soul" does the author long for?

https://www.blurringman.org/blurring-man

I've known this for awhile, since at least 2020. Specifically when they told a documentarian he could film and then threatened litigation if he released his film — after he had already shot it. He had to painstakingly blur literally all Burning Man footage except for the guy he's following around.

Dustin Moskovitz and the like started going and wouldn't dare behave the ordinary peasants, by sleeping in tents, participating in the community, bartering for things.

Heck Zuckerberg took a helicopter there one year.

instead they just threw money at the event so they wouldn't have to do the things that made burning man, burning man.

Worth reading Dustin's personal account of his Burning Man experience: https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/radical-inclusion-vs-radical-self... (bear in mind this was written 13 years ago, I'm not sure Dustin would agree with everything stated, but the broad strokes feel correct.)

That post also explains Zuck's attendance. Zuck is not a Burner, it was a one-off visit encouraged by Dustin. Personally I think it was inconsequential in the long run but good for Zuck to have seen it.

The criticism you're raising about money being thrown at the event is broadly valid, but it does not at all apply to how Dustin approached it, IMO. Dustin did precisely what you are suggesting he didn't - slept in a tent, literally cooked and served grilled cheese sandwiches.

(Context: I was in the camp/village, attended 10 years 2009-2018, back once in 2025, have done a lot of playa art... and I also broadly agree with John Law's take.)

There's an airport there for 30 years - people have been flying airplanes and helicoptors forever.

Rainbow Gathering is barter-based.

The vast majority of the people I knew who flew in weren’t rich like Zuck, they just liked flying. It’s the only way to get a wristband that allows you to come and go at will (i.e. to run logistics for a camp) and avoid exodus if you had to leave that day.

15 years ago no one gave a damn about the rich people going to burning man. They were isolated in their camps. We were much more concerned with keeping our Sparkle Ponies alive.

in the 2000s, there was kind of an interesting tech meets countercultural art thing where a lot of the more interesting tech people would pour their disposable income into interesting burning man art projects (nimby's ddi, jabba's sail barge) but it does seem like in recent years with the real sf affordability crisis that came with internet business actually taking off the creativity went down and the money seeking people showed up. i guess that's also true of sf (and brooklyn) more generally.

it was a fun time. i was a swe intern in the mid 90s and would marvel when the engineering team would disappear to the desert for a week and come back with colored hair. my boss drove a psychedelic school bus to work sometimes. in south of market on 6th street in sf, there was a building that had furniture welded onto the exterior like it had all come to life and was trying to escape the building.

> Name is John Law

Makes sense.

There has been a meme that burning man sucks now and used to be better that entire time.

That doesn't mean the meme is false. It definitely has changed. There's an article in sfgate today that quotes the head of the Death Guild (Thunderdome) camp as saying something like, do people want to carry on the traditions their parents had, or invent their own?

I thought that was a great question. Both are valid paths.

That's daycare for adults, not an experience.

A shocking amount of people

Where are your modern alternative festis or something else? Where is the the modern counter culture? What on earth is a counter culture nowadays?

Its fucking doom scrolling shite that my peers dump on you!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eDriBfoPzsA&t=120s&pp=2AF4kAIB...

From the narrative on Wikipedia, it looks more like she was fired not because she hid the truth, but because she was indeed attending Burning Man and the producers didn't like the idea: "committed to naked drugging in the desert" as opposed to misleading anyone. If she'd told the truth, it'd probably have the same result.

Same thing is happening with Garbicz festival in Poland, arguably Europe's Burning Man equivalent for many.

When you read about people coming to California in the 60s and 70s (and somewhat in the 80s), it had that same magical quality that Burning Man had in the early years and has suffered the same kinds of changes. I wonder what the 2026 equivalent of going to California is now, if such a thing even exists or can exist.

Now the passion is the idea of the startup and a big exit.

Totally different groups of people.

Tech improves and stabilizes. Always will.

Startup ideas back then were actually useful bleeding edge work.

Now it's all git pull and import the world with a languages package manager; no more need to optimize and normalize low level code.

I look at LA and I look at cities in China and it makes LA look like a rural suburb the difference in population density is so vast.

I think this becomes increasingly difficult, because the timelines become so short with almost-instant information desimination, higher inequality and increased mobility for everyone. A place or event can go from underground -> awesome -> gentrified -> 'dead' in a manner of a couple of years now.

I live in a neighborhood that is currently being gentrified; 10 years ago no non-local wanted to live here, 5 years ago, it was the place to be, today young/hip people are beginning to move elsewhere again. Newly rented-out flats are now thrice as expensive as 2020, and you can see in real time how bars and restaurants are replaced with more expensive alternatives. When I compare this with other neighborhoods in Berlin (eg. Bergmannkiez or Kollwitzkiez), the timeline has roughly halfed.

Burns usually are completely different. Yeah Burning Man is super commercial now, but smaller more obscure burns happen all over the world, including Europe. They run on participant preparation and donation, these still embody what Burning Man was originally about

This. The tourist:creator ratio increases until the organization begins to cater to tourists.

The two things Burning Man should have built into its culture were (1) if you don't create personally then you're not welcome (ostensibly, but normalized flying into catered theme camps is so far past the gross line...) & (2) continual mutation (fuck the Principles; burns should each be updating their own every year).

SF got rich and then succumbed to the same human faults they used to mock.

Then the organisers can regroup and start something new.

Rather than the inevitable alternative of morphing in to something unintended, undesired.

Better to reminisce about good old days rather than the decay.

Problem is, the more of them I've seen, the more I am convinced they are nowadays a premeditated long game: have cool people plant the seed, then sell it 10 years later. Same thing with LGBTQ communities attracted/coerced into certain neighborhoods.

That means they were on to something. Congratulations, success!

(Oh well.)

It is swamped with boogie uninteresting characters. When I moved here almost 30 years ago now the locals boasted about having some of the lowest TV ownership rates in the country. Now I walk my dog and see glowing massive TVs in every house.

Bunch of lame college kids from Nowhereville community college Arkansas and Kentucky shirts everywhere; never see Oregon State or UofO anymore cause those grads know the local economy sucks and leverage their degree to get out.

All the local boogie ice cream shops with lines out the door? Venture capital businesses. Not truly local.

Multnomah county population been on the decline since covid lockdown ended. First time a years long depopulation trend has happened in Portland ever.

People outside of Portland find out I live here and trash it for turning into a gentrified snooze fest.

Can't wait to gtfo out of here once my kids are older

“Cool, I’m going to fly in on a private plane”

“No not like that”

https://www.trippingly.net/burning-man-musings/2019/2/1/gree...

Maybe he's right but he'd have to articulate it. It's a relatively authentic and vibrant thing. Maybe not as new or quite as punk, but it's 'something'.

There seems to be a bunch of rules to the event, like the explicit 10 rules of chaos mentioned in the article, but also more implicit rules like "a wooden man must burn".

Fwiw, in the book/movie, the drift of the original spirit of the movement is a central theme, as is the loss of personal control over the evolving movement.

if you want a young thing, go find a young thing

The head of the original man is still preserved by one of the original co-founders and I have personally seen it and touched it.

https://presidio.gov/explore/blog/then-now-burning-man-at-ba...