About jet-setters at least, there is little that can be done. Fork the event?
But I'm also extremely sympathetic to the vandals if the stories of bouncers are true. My favorite part of the years that I went was wandering into random camps and starting conversations with strangers. I met a lot of amazing people and still call some of them friends. There was something about Burning Man that allowed people to discard social conventions which keep people separated that was truly magical. If this aspect of the festival has been lost, or is being lost, I can see a lot of people being justifiably angry at the people responsible for that change.
However, the Airport is the way that the people who don't contribute anything to Burning Man get into Burning Man. They need to go back to non-commerical flight only.
There were about 7,000 people there that year, 1998...
(He said, hypocritically, having first gone to Burningman as a result of the '96 Wired article on it...)
Get real, they are ALL jet-setters & rich kids.
It's the red hats vs the blue hats. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0684186/ The haves vs the have mores.
Yes I'm a little bit down on the whole burning man thing.
You want peace & love? Have a solar panel installation party. Plant trees party. Pick up sea trash party.
Not a check out my dreads, tattoo & flashy bicycle party.
You want peace & love? Have a solar panel installation
party. Plant trees party. Pick up sea trash party.
Not a check out my dreads, tattoo & flashy bicycle party.
Did you read it before commenting?
Reading about this Burning Man dilemma, I'm reminded of the People's Front of Judea battling the Campaign for a Free Galilee to the death over who first conceived of the plot to kidnap Pontius Pilate's wife [0].
Human beings will fight over anything.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Life_of_Brian
Quite a harrowing thought.
And as a poor kid growing up, nothing pissed me off in quite the unique and wonderful way as "show and tell" at school.
Some people do this at Burning Man, but it's a good thing they're in the minority. The alternative would not be "awesome" but a horrifying week of crises as naked people died en masse in the dust.
I was thinking perhaps of a hypothetical festival where you show up naked but the festival itself provides everything to everyone equally. Walk in the door and there's 53' trailers full of goodwill-like clothing, tons of raw food ingredients for the cooking, hand tools and wood for building etc. In short, everyone arrives in a new "world" as equals and makes of it what they can. Bonus points for not allowing real names or talk of who you were on the "outside".
Oh crap. I'm kind of describing prison. So umm... like jail but not so sucky.
Or maybe increase the BM entry fee so that fewer of these hooligans can afford to come.
Or perhaps someone should create a new festival that is more exclusive (but exclusive based on personality rather than how rich you are). No boring people who shut themselves in, no pretentious twats, no hooligans. Only creative, interesting people would be invited, and it would be completely free and very relaxed.
There is a huge debate if rich people and their rich people only camps are a good addition to Burning Man. The rule is, your camp can not be closed and if you camp on the main street, Esplanade, you are definitely not a closed camp. Meaning, that anyone can walk in and hangout and you can make new friends or share alcohol and all that. You are suppose to have regular event that welcome outsiders. Esplanade spots are coveted locations and some camps spend years at semi-coveted locations off the Esplanade trying to prove to the Burning Man Org they good enough to be a Esplanade camp.
The problems with rich people camps like White Ocean (The camp that was vandalized) is they tend to be closed, they pay others to cook for them, they did not shop for their food, the camps are full of large RV's, they flew in, they did not build anything and they don't welcome outsiders into their camp. White Ocean pays people to do all their dirty work, include constructing their camp art. Some of the rich people camps are also for profit camps, which is completely against the rules (Not saying White Ocean is).
What makes it worse is there are plenty of stories of people walking by a rich camp while they are having a party and walking in and then bouncers tossing them out. That runs against every thing that Burning Man is and stands for. You can't not have private parties with bouncers and you should not even have bouncers for your camp. There are also a number of stories of people who signed up for work at Burning Man then not getting paid. Which not only is working at Burning Man illegal, so is not paying people who do.
On the flip side of the coin, a lot of the large art projects and major sound camps are sponsored by rich folks since the art project and sound camps can have budgets that are upwards to a million dollars. Ya, no joke. The ugly truth of Burning Man is that it needs rich people but it does not want its culture.
Let me just add, celebrities going to Burning Man is a non-issue. No one gives a fuck who you are off the Playa. No one does. Plus, all of the celebrities wear masks, so you don't even know they are there. You could be standing next to Katy Parry in the coffee line in Center Camp and not even know it. The only issue I see is that someone like Paris Hilton did nothing to get there. She got her assistant to buy a ticket off Stubhub and then flew in on a private jet or helicopter. She did not setup her camp, buy her food or sit in line. She just showed up and she won't add anything to Burning Man.
Edited: $390 + $80 is still cheap considering you are there for 7 - 9 days and you can't see what you see at Burning Man when you are not at Burning Man.
Super flashy art installations and professional quality music acts aren't integral to the burning man core ethos, while radical self-sufficiency is. One might even contend that large-budget things condition people to act as consumers of culture, which is certainly anti-burning-man.
Wealthy people should just build an electric fence around their section, install security cameras and hire guards to patrol the perimeter. Problem solved.
Have a BM2 where the original ethos is more strictly enforced, and see if all the rich people now find BM1 too phony and want to move to BM2 where they can get a more "authentic" experience, then proceed to ruin that with their money for the "artistic class". Or maybe everyone just prefers nicer things. Honestly curious.
-Is whiteocean a plug and play elitist camp - yes absolutely. -are they inclusive? No they are not. -Is burning man's mantra radical inclusion? - Yes.
The jist is burning man has a mantra to radical inclusion and even if white ocean is a plug and play camp or elitist they have to be included. So by logic the act is wrong and I say this as someone who despises them.