How was Burning Man?

Gabriel Contreras
Sep 8, 2018 · 15 min read

Simply put, there’s no answer that can successfully satisfy this question. If you said Burning Man is some sort of festival that celebrates arts, music, and self expression out in the middle of the desert where a bunch of dirty-naked-hippies tripping on acid party around a burning wooden man—you’d only be partly correct!

Sure, I did a lot of activities that were uniquely Burning Man: sunrise bike rides to the trash fence, boarding the land yacht art car to catch Dr. Fresch throw down a nasty G-house set, miraculously finding the Dust City Diner in deep playa to enjoy a 4:00am grilled cheese and coffee, but the sum of those experiences do not equate to the wholistic understanding of what it’s like to go. Personally, going to Burning Man was a culmination of 6 months of research, planning, overpacking, and sleepless nights to go somewhere only two hours north of Reno, Nevada.

If I allow myself to be completely honest for a moment, what got this whole trip started in the first place was my skepticism toward whether or not I was genuinely living my own life. As existential as that question may be, I struggled with, and still do, adjusting to my new post grad life. Even though I have a grown-up job, a steady girlfriend, close friends, and a loving family, extreme loneliness had fallen over me—it felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. When I heard about the unparalleled experiences offered at Burning Man in late 2017, it immediately became my north star.

The Journey Begins

There’s no secrets anymore in the digital age; anything about Burning Man can be found online if you know where to look. Between r/burningman and Youtube, I would get lost for nights on end searching up things like: how to get tickets to Burning Man, showering at Burning Man—finding out you have to bring back the grey water, tips for going to Burning Man with your significant other, best (insert any camping related item) for Burning Man etc. For the uninitiated, Burning Man brings in roughly 70,000 people for a week long festival comprised of attendees, volunteers, medical staff, and law enforcement—so there is some order to the madness. I guarantee that if you spoke to me anytime this year, at some point, I resorted to talking about Burning Man because I was literally eating, breathing, and living it on the daily. No one I knew, absolutely zero, had ever been to Burning Man so I had to carefully put my trip together with the bits and pieces of information that I could find buried across the internet.

Although plenty of sleep was lost the night before tickets went on sale, the process was straightforward and what you’d expect from a ticket cueing service i.e. Ticketmaster or Ticketfly. Between the 4 laptops and 1 cellphone I was using, one eventually struck gold and I was able to check out to the tune of $1,100, which included two tickets and a camping pass. The cost of admission would only be a small drop in the metaphorical money pit bucket that is Burning Man, more on that later. Nevertheless, I was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief—I was in fact going to Burning Man!

The months that followed were spent planning out and accumulating all of the gear required to stand up to a week out in the unforgiving northern Nevada desert. Basically this was shipping a ton of Amazon packages to home base, aka, my mom’s house in Gilroy—thanks mom! I will say that I did go a bit overboard in buying a lot of top-notch gear i.e. Springbar canvas tent, carport shade structure, Yeti cooler and mug, but I figured since I was already borrowing all my camping gear for trips before, it made sense the I start investing in my own. One thing I wasn’t too thrilled about was all the one off items that needed to be bought and would be solely used at Burning Man i.e. costumes and my bike plus all its gear. For a virgin burner, it was literally quite taxing to be spending all of this money on an experience I wasn’t quite sure I’d like or not. If your curious what we had to bring, I modified an existing Burning Man packing list that is shared online via Google Sheets.

No Turning Back

Soon as I clocked out Friday August 24th to start my 2 weeks PTO, it was go time; nothing else mattered but packing up the truck and barreling north towards the front gates of Burning Man. Surprisingly, all of our gear fit nice and cozy in and outside the pickup. Also, since it was just my girlfriend Tessa and I headed up to Black Rock City, we had the luxury of taking our time and not rushing to meet up with a group like we had done in the past for big trips like this.

A full day of shopping and packing later, Tessa and I were ready to start our journey

Even though we said goodbye to my parents and the real world, the ride up did not feel as magical as I thought it would be. Our truck was packed to the brim and we were excited to be on our way but the final 2 lane stretch of highway seamed to lead nowhere and it was hard to picture anything at the end—it felt as though Black Rock City didn’t exist. It wasn’t until we broke off the main road and our tires touched playa did it actually feel like we were going somewhere.

The line to get into Burning Man sometime around 5am

Conditions getting in early on Sunday morning were really rough. We would later find out from our neighbors that only a few hours after we entered Burning Man, the front gate began turning away cars due to the high winds and whiteouts. For context, at this point in our journey I had already been up for a full day straight and it was rounding the 14th hour in the stick-shift pickup that had no AC, which made the downward spiraling weather conditions just icing on the shit cake—things were getting a little tense to say the least. Also, the line didn’t move like any normal line, it pulsed almost every 20 minutes which gave enough time for people to get out of their cars, stretch their legs, and change into their Burning Man costumes. We caught a couple of exhausted drivers passed out at the seat of their vehicle in between these pulses too—pretty hilarious stuff!

Making Contact

As the pulsing continued and the line moved further into the passing whiteout, we made contact with, and were stopped at the front of the line by the foremost representatives of Black Rock City—the Gate, Perimeter, and Exodus crew (GPE for short). Dressed head-to-toe in post-apocalyptic tactical gear, there was no getting further in line without their official clearance; this group was clearly all business. My lack of proper attire i.e tank top, jean shorts, and ray bans made it look like I was a vacationing tourist driving into desert combat somewhere in the middle east.

The GPE crew eventually gave us the clearance we so impatiently wanted to start our slow crawl forward. Visibility was nonexistent and we were freaking out that the cars in front of us would soon become best friends with our front bumper. See the photo above.

Signaling us forward in line, we arrived at the final stop on the way into Burning Man—the greeting station. Our greeter by the name of Cosmo graciously instructed us out of our air-locked dust-free vehicle to meet with him on ground level. We hesitantly told him that this was our first time and his eyes lit up. The speech that followed was an overview about the ethos of Burning Man, the 10 principles, and how everything that happens in Black Rock City is contingent upon receiving consent. Whether it is asking someone if they would like a hug or taking someone’s photograph, it’s the duty for the citizens of Black Rock City to obtain consent before acting. Under this principle, Cosmo then offered us to partake in the virgin ritual that I was dreading so much.

Everyone knows what a snow angel is. Well, at the entrance of Burning Man it’s tradition that virgins embrace the dust by doing a slight rendition of a snow angle. Immediately after, you then flip over on the opposite side to make sure that you’re an evenly breaded piece of dusty human. The last bit of the tradition is ringing a bell and proclaiming at the top of your lungs that “I AM NOW A BURNER”! Hugs were exchanged and we were handed a novel sized book of activities for the week and a map to find a campsite.

The map and activity book we received upon entry

4:00 and Kinoshita

Driving onto the streets of Black Rock City it was immediately apparent that we had enter some bizarre and interesting world. There were traces of normalcy from the real world but everything had a raw, intangible, and authenticly-dusty feel to it. We passed art cars, theme camps, nude bikers all within a few minutes of driving in—everything was quite overwhelming! Taking Cosmo’s advice, we headed for the outskirts of Black Rock City where the chances of getting an open camping spot would be much greater. We settled for a spot at 4 and K, the second to last street on the edge of playa, aka, suburbia.

Getting to know our neighbors was great. Ryan and Kyra were an outdoorsy get-shit-done kind of couple our age that drove all the way from Montreal, Canada. Joey and Evee were a little older than us and were the the epitome of what it means to be van-life nomads in 2018 — kind hearted, resourceful, and full of adventure. Over the week we shared stories, drank together, and went on deep playa adventures; ultimately becoming a close knit group of friends in our short time here at Burning Man:)

On cue with Murphy’s law, set up was a prolonged disaster. High winds made it impossible for Tessa and I to set up our shade structure like we rehearsed in my parent’s back yard. Long hours in the truck were finally taking its toll on us; all we wanted to do was get the fucking thing up and rest for a bit. Luckily, our new neighbors were more than happy to give us a hand. A solid 30 minutes later we finished staking everything down and our temporary home was taking shape. I didn’t know it at the time but this is what makes Burning man so great; you have a plan, it doesn’t turn out the way you want, and you have to just go with it. Letting go of expectations was one of the biggest take aways I experienced while at Burning Man.

What The Actual Fuck

Nothing I read about or watched online could prepare me for this week; it was quite probably the greatest experience I’ve ever had. Every corner I turned there was a new face—or should I say new friend, art installation, or camp calling us in to check out their ongoing activity. In the default world, especially living in the Tenderloin, (San Francisco), my guard is always up and I’m hesitant to talk with anyone on the street, but here at Burning Man those psychological walls melted away. I will admit that it did take a day or so to get used to things but once I did, it felt so right.

There are no spectators at Burning Man; everyone is encouraged to participate and contribute to the community. Some of the coolest experiences that happened were when I would flat-out just say yes.

Love Bus Ball Pit was something that our gang of friends, self proclaimed the 4k lifers—4:00 and Kinoshita, hence the 4k—found on the first day of exploring on Esplanade, which is the inner-most and busiest street at Burning Man. This unsuspecting pink bus was filled to the brim with florescent balls and deck out with synchronized pulsating neon lights. Obviously, we had to stop and check it out. In this make-shift ball pit there were about 15 other dusty burners all having the time of their lives causing havoc in the ball pit; grown-ass men and women were just throwing balls at each other—I felt like a little kid again.

Greg and I were gifted polaroid from a stranger at Tycho’s set

Tycho at the Trash Fence was and event I wanted to do going into Burning Man but completely lost track of until I ran into a stranger named Greg from Boston. We were both stopped on Esplanade; it was 4am and I was headed back to camp and he was off to look for the Dusty Rhino art car where Tycho was playing. In the brief minutes that our bikes were parked I said “fuck it” and joined him on a quest to catch this coveted Burning Man sunrise set. There was a level of serendipity to everything that happened I still can’t get over: he and I both had the same unique black jacket—crazy considering the jacket was a specialty item, we were both camped a block away from each other, and we also had very similar taste in electronic music. Eventually finding the spot out in deep playa that they were playing at, Greg and I jammed out at Tycho’s set, and road back after a long night together. We would link up a couple other times throughout the festival. He was a music producer; Tessa and I even caught one of his sets at a nearby sound camp the next day.

Camp Jorts’ Handstand Workshop was a fun one that Tessa picked out from our 200+ page activity book. She has been practicing handstands for some time now and this workshopped really shed some light on all the prep i.e. partner stretching, warmups, and balance that is needed to perfect this art form. The camp was packed with other burners eager to learn the secrets but as I suspected, you weren’t really going to learn how to handstand in an hour long Burning Man workshop. We did however get a lot of tips that we could take home and practice on our own:)

The Dust City Diner we found out about from our neighbors —Tessa was instantly sold. For only a few nights of the festival exists an elusive 50’s style diner parked out in deep playa that serves grilled cheese and hot coffee, all for free I should remind you—everything at Burning Man is decommodified, minus the ice and beverages sold at center camp. It was hard to believe that we would ever find it because for comparison, Burning Man is 7 square miles across or the equivalent of a 45 minute bike ride end-to-end. As luck would have it, we did end up finding the diner and it was such a surreal feeling. Like, here I am, nearing the end of my night and I get to experience eating a free grilled cheese from an era correct 50’s style diner, sitting across from other burners dressed head to toe in costume, illuminated under the desert sky, all while I order from a grown-ass man dressed as a waitress with a name tag that reads “Bob” — what the actual fuck?!

I wasn’t lying

Burning Man Music

As Tessa repeatedly reminded me, Burning Man is not a music festival. That being said, the music wasn’t the main objective when I started planning this trip but it was something I was defiantly looking toward to. There were going to be great artist by the likes of: Carl Cox, Flume, Diplo, Skrillex, Tokimonsta, Dr. Fresch, Tycho, and Zhu, all sprinkled throughout the festival. Each act that I saw was unlike anything like I’ve ever experienced.

I found Dr. Fresch playing on the Christina land yacht art car, some 3 stories above the playa surface. It was the only art car I boarded all week despite a friend knowing the doorman for the Mayan Warrior. Perched on the top level was a 10x30 section of boat, aka, the poop deck that was reserved for the DJ, his first mate, and all the dusty burners you could fit without going over the railings; this was where I danced away the night and ended up staying for longer than I expected because the vibe was so good.

Zhu’s Santuarty art car set

Tuesday night Zhu was play off in deep playa aboard the Santuary. Cathedral-like in size, the structure felt as though I was staring at a psychedelic replica of the Notre-Dame de Paris. Deep house, Zhu’s flagship sound, complimented the ambiance of the nocturnal playa so well; each beat would get the night going and was like lubricant to my dusty dance moves. It wouldn’t be until later in the week when I would venture across the playa by myself to catch a full Zhu set at the Opulent Temple sound camp. That was nuts in-and-of itself because aside from all the fire dancers and t-rex that had climbed the scaffolding to party on a speaker, there were dozens of art cars radiating the outskirts of the dancefloor—all blowing pryo at one point or another. It was one of the most out of control yet mature crowds I had ever witnessed.

Zhu’s Opulent Temple Set—absolutely nuts!!!

The crem dela crem had to be Skrillex’s Friday night 2am set at none other than the Opulent temple sound camp. I wouldn’t say that Skrillex got me into electronic music, that happened after Snowglobe 2016, but I can remember back to my senior year of high school when I had Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites downloaded onto my iPod Touch. Listening to him live brought back all the feels. I didn’t have my phone on me during his set but I will link out a video I found online that captures the pure nastiness of what it was like to be there in person.

Curtosy of @electricfamily

Final Thoughts

The answer is yes; given the chance, I would go back to Burning Man in a heartbeat. Between the people that I became friends with, the seemingly limitless creative possibilities, and the unadulterated setting that allows you to be your authentic self and have boatloads of fun with complete strangers, there’s nothing that can hold a candle to the experiences that can be had out in Black Rock City.

I distinctly remember a quote that was sharpied onto a piece of art I found while exploring deep playa. It read, “self-expression is rarely ever polished”. It was short but captured immense personal meaning for me. With all the pressures of normal society and how social media is used to push personal agendas, being your authentic self is sometimes lost in translation. I came out to the desert looking for answers to questions like: where do I belong, what do I actually like to do for fun, and can I make new friends?

I ventured off to the Temple late one night and sat at the base of a pillar: mystified, at all the shrines left by fellow burners as a tribute to their friends, family, and pets who have left this world. It was in this moment I realized why Burning Man had resonated so deeply with me. Deep down, I had come out to Black Rock City on a hunch. I was so unhappy with the way my life was unfolding and felt that only the raw unfiltered nature of Burning Man could serve as the catalyst that would strip away all the parts that I hated about myself. I was completely wrong with this assumption. Life, including what happens at Burning Man, is full of dualities or juxtapositions. Happiness without sadness is void of true meaning as is the celebration of the man burn without the solemnness of the temple. If I wished away the disdainful parts of my being in favor for the more joyful ones, I would be depriving myself of genuine happiness.

There’s a saying at Burning Man that when you really need something it manifests or as the saying goes “the playa provides”. I came searching for answers, but instead the playa provided me with more questions. Questions that I know have a revitalized passion to run towards, rather than away. Burning man isn’t for everyone, but it’s uniquely what you make of it—and that’s all someone could ever ask for.

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