Burning Man
A performance years in the making became dazzling reality in August at Burning Man, when DJ-producer Mita Gami played with conductor Meir Briskman and an orchestra assembled especially for the occasion.
The hour-and 15-minute performance happened mid-week at Burning Man 2024 on the festival’s famed Mayan Warrior art car, a new version of which made its debut at the event this year after the original was destroyed in a fire in April 2023.
The Israeli conductor came up with the idea for the performance years ago and brought it to Gami, with the pair performing together since 2022 with an electronic/classical fusion show for which Briskman wrote and conducted the orchestral elements, with Gami producing and performing the electronic components.
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For Burning Man, the orchestra was assembled after the pair put a call out to players, with 123 people applying to be in the orchestra and 37 of them ultimately selected to perform. On Instagram, Briskman wrote that the performance came together “after 3 years of work, 1467 phone calls, 4356 emails [and] 5942 WhatsApp messages”
“Our search to find classically trained players that were going to Burning Man began through posting via our instagram stories,” the pair tell Billboard in a joint statement. “The message rapidly spread, and we received an overwhelming number of responses. Despite the limited rehearsal time, we embraced the challenge and turned our dream into a magical reality, delivering a complex performance that flowed effortlessly.”
The performance was managed by Amal Medina, a member of Gami’s management team, a co-talent buyer for Los Angeles-based electronic events company Stranger Than and the talent buyer/events coordinator for Mayan Warrior. Medina helped manage the orchestra and handled logistics such as vetting the musicians, organizing rehearsals in San Francisco and at Burning Man and sourcing equipment and instruments and managing the orchestra. Tal Ohana of Stranger Than helped gather equipment and staging elements for the performance, The Mayan Warrior team worked on onsite and sound and lighting elements.
The performance was well-aligned with the goals of the new edition of Mayan Warrior, with the art car’s founder Pablo Gonzalez Vargas telling Billboard in 2023 that the team was planning to “slowly transition into a more diverse spectrum of musical and cultural performances. The goal over time is to have more live acts with real instruments that can provide new experiences.”
Other performers on Mayan Warrior during Burning Man included Rüfüs du Sol, whose set is also up now.
Watch the Mita Gami & Meir Briskman Orchestra Set exclusively on Billboard.com below:
Attending Burning Man is an investment. There’s the $575-plus needed for a ticket; more for the flight or long drive to Nevada’s remote Black Rock Desert, where the event takes place each August. There’s the money for food, outfits, a bike and the many other supplies needed to survive in the barren setting. Most attendees take time off from work, including a few days on the back end to get home and recover. It’s hot, dusty and often mentally, emotionally and physically draining. A lot of people love it; others say they’d never go, and some simply don’t have the resources to make it happen.
But while the Burning Man Project’s famous mothership event is happening this week (Aug. 26-Sept. 2), another 85 official global Burning Man events, called “Regionals,” have long offered people around the world a chance to Burn more locally. In 2023, 93,000 people attended these global Regionals. There’s Kentucky’s Singe City; Michigan’s Lakes of Fire; and events in Arkansas, Utah, Virginia and approximately 70 other U.S. sites. The biggest Regional, AfrikaBurn, draws roughly 10,000 to Cape Town, South Africa every April. Taiwan’s Turtle Burn launched in 2019. Each July, roughly 400 people gather in the Romanian forest for RoBurn.
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Burning Man 2024 has made headlines for not selling out for the first time in years, with tickets usually very difficult to get. (Sources close to the event estimate that roughly 10,000 tickets went unsold this year, bringing the attendance number down to approximately 70,000.) But while many Burners say the extreme heat of 2022 — when daytime temperatures reached 106 degrees — and the headline-making rain of 2023 are reasons many veteran Burners are taking this year off, Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell also points to the generally soft festival market, and to the Regionals.
“The goal has always been to decentralize this, because Black Rock City was never going to have the capacity,” Goodell says. “And with travel challenges, the cost, the heat — it isn’t for everybody. But when I meet people that tell me, ‘Are you f–king kidding me?’ [in regard to going to Black Rock City], I’m like, ‘Well, where do you live?’”
Goodell and Burning Man Project — the San Francisco-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit that produces Burning Man and supports the global Burning Man community — has been directing Burners to Regionals since 2007, when the first official offshoot launched. Regionals had been germinating since 1997, when representatives for Pershing County, where Burning Man is held, sent organizers a huge bill for county services at the end of the event. Groups of Burners offered to fundraise, including one based in Austin, Texas. The internet had just come online, so Goodell created austin@burningman.com to help facilitate the fundraiser, and the first Regional group was born.
“Then I did New York, Canada and Seattle,” she says. “The internet allowed people to leave Burning Man and say, ‘Where are the other Burners?’”
As it turned out, with the global Burning Man network growing in tandem with the growth of the main event, they were everywhere. Soon, groups of Burners were meeting up across the country, placing glowsticks on bar tables to identify themselves and, in doing so, living out the Burner philosophy that it’s not just an event, but a culture that can exist anywhere.
Argentina’s Fuego Astral
Courtesy of Ignacio Roizman
Ignacio Roizman has traveled to Black Rock City from his home in Buenos Aires, Argentina many times over the years. Wanting to help bring Burner culture back home, he co-organized Argentina’s Regional, Fuego Austral, in 2016, when two groups of Argentinian Burners who’d been gathering for meetups joined forces to put on a multi-day campout.
“It’s very expensive to get from Argentina to the U.S.; you need a visa, you need the supplies,” Roizman says. “It’s basically an economic and logistical challenge.”
The most recent edition of Fuego Austral, in February, brought roughly 1,000 people to a swath of verdant farmland four hours outside of Buenos Aires. Like in Black Rock City, there was art, music and the ritualistic burning of a man made from wood. (In the past, Israel’s Midburn has set fire to both a man and a woman.)
“The biggest difference between Regionals and Black Rock City,” Roizman continues, “is the intimacy you can create in a space where you have 1,000 people instead of 80,000. By the end of the week, everybody knows each other.” Most Fuego Austral attendees have never been to Black Rock City, although Burners from countries like Brazil, Israel and the U.S. have flown in to attend.
Representees from The Org (as Burning Man Project is called in Burner parlance) advise Regionals on how to organize, with a few primary requirements. One is that events start small, with Goodell saying that even 1,000 people is too big for an inaugural year. Organizers need to have gone to Black Rock City at least once. Like Black Rock City, Regionals must allow children.
“We have a team that decides if the intention is in the right direction and if the people are skilled enough to do it,” says Goodell. “We’ve taken permission away when events looked more like a rave.”
Aspiring Regionals must also abide by Burning Man’s 10 Principles, the social guidelines for existing at a Burning Man event; these rules were in fact created in 2004 as a response to the Regionals. When the Regional network was taking shape in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, Goodell put groups on an email thread with late Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey, who answered their questions. Over time, the Principles — which include radical self-reliance and leaving no trace — developed as, Goodell says, “a direct response as to what kind of guidelines would help facilitate a Burning Man event.”
“One of the first questions was, ‘Why can’t we do vending? We want to be a Burning Man event, but we want to sell hot dogs or whatever,’” Goodell recalls. Harvey’s response spurred a discussion that ultimately created the “gifting” and “decommodification” Principles, the latter of which states that “our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising.”
The Org also offers practical support, helping Regionals write press releases or find an attorney if legal advice is needed. They step in if a death happens at a Regional (which has happened a handful of times over the years), provide advice on creating a business entity like an LLC and, Goodell says, “sometimes go in to help with drama.
“Different cultures deal with different problems differently,” she adds. “The folks in Sweden, for instance, lean towards more socialist solutions when making decisions. Parts of the United States might be more hierarchical.”
Argentina’s Fuego Astral
Courtesy of Ignacio Roizman
In a more obvious way, most Regionals look very different than Black Rock City, which is famous for its barren environment. For many, this singular landscape is what makes Burning Man Burning Man.
“We’ve asked ourselves that a lot,” Goodell says of whether the intensity of the desert defines the event. “When I first joined the organization, I asked Larry, ‘Why the Black Rock Desert?’ He said it was a practical thing; that when you’re in nature and forced to reflect on yourself and your role in nature, you can see how small you are. Plus [the environment] makes you band with others for your own survival.”
The philosophy here is thus that Burning Man is not defined by being caked with a layer of dust, but being in the middle of nowhere. (To wit, Spain’s Regional, which takes place in the Monegros Desert, is called Nowhere.)
“Through the evolution of the Regionals, we’ve discovered you really should be as remote as you can, but it can be green rolling hills,” Goodell says. ‘You should not be walking to a store or gas station. To me, that’s more important than the weather being hard.”
A Las Vegas Regional she attended was visible from the road, which, she says, “was a negative.” Miami’s Love Burn, which takes place on the city’s Virginia Key, also has “a lot of challenges” given that attendees can Uber there and stay for a day. Goodell says these shorter experiences are “just not as transformative” as a multi-night event.
But Regional organizers do find ways to build in challenges. Fuego Astral requires attendees to be dropped off at the front gate and then walk across the sprawling site to get to their camp, which makes it so, Roizman says, people “have experienced that sense of overcoming a challenge.”
But while Black Rock City is remote, given that tens of thousands of people arrive there and build a bustling and often very noisy city, it’s not an ideal setting for those who prefer country life.
“Black Rock City has a culture that’s sometimes very urban,” Goodell says. “A lot of people will tell you they’d rather go to Michigan’s Lake of Fire that has 2,500 people instead of 80,000, because they live rural.”
A young Burning Man staffer recently attended Lake of Fire, which happens in Rothbury, Michigan, to help The Org figure out why young people aren’t going to Black Rock City in high numbers. “She feels like the cost is one of the reasons,” says Goodell, who teared up when seeing photos of lights reflecting on a lake at Lakes of Fire in a way that reminded her of Black Rock City. “You don’t have to go to Black Rock City to be touched, create new community, collaborate on art and be together.”
Goodell says for her it’s especially satisfying to see Regionals develop in places like the former Eastern Bloc, where creativity has often been stifled by socio-political circumstances. She says while the Russian and Ukrainian groups are both currently “a bit stunted” because of the war, people from these countries are in attendance this week at Black Rock City. Israel’s Midburn, the second largest Regional after South Africa, typically brings 10,000 people to the desert, but scaled down to about 1,500 this year due to the war. The Thai and South Korean Regionals are produced largely by expats, although Goodell says that “we really would prefer locals produce the Burning Man culture and not the traveling expats.”
The goal with the Regionals is simply to keep growing them. This past April, the European Leadership Summit Gathering happened in Talinn, Estonia and brought 30 staffers and 200 Burners from Europe and beyond together for panels and networking. Estonian Burner and Summit attendee Pille Heido says the experience provided the education and inspiration to “make sure people don’t just focus on that one event in the desert in August, which is great, but make sure there’s other things you can do outside of it as well.”
Goodell says additional funding for Burning Man Project would help spur the Regionals network, with South America and Asia being regions “that could use more encouragement.”
But where this money will come from is, she says, “the 10-million-dollar question.” While Burning Man Project raised $8 million in 2023 through ticket sales and philanthropy, “We’re absolutely at a point where we’re going to need to have a conversation about the longer-term method.” Goodell says a donation model “is the next bridge. Someone who doesn’t go to Back Rock City might still give $250.”
But while that evolution of that issue is yet to be seen, Goodell says Black Rock City being down in population this year is, in a way, a sign of health. “We’re proud of the fact that people are like, ‘I went to my Regional this year, so I’m taking a year or two off.”
Police are investigating the cause of death of a woman who was found unresponsive during the opening weekend of this year’s Burning Man gathering in the Arizona desert. According to the Reno Gazette Journal, the unnamed woman — whose age has also not yet been revealed — was found unresponsive at 11:29 a.m. on Sunday […]
The Mayan Warrior team is rising from the ashes of its destroyed art car, announcing Thursday (Oct. 19), that they’re building a new car to debut at Burning Man 2024.
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This vehicle will have a new design and theme from the original Mayan Warrior (pictured above), and be roughly the same size as this previous model, but reconfigured to function more as a mobile stage for live, multi-disciplinary musical and cultural performances.
“We will slowly transition into a more diverse spectrum of musical and cultural performances,” Mayan Warrior founder Pablo González Vargas tells Billboard. “The goal over time is to have more live acts with real instruments that can provide new experiences.” The new car will host gradually fewer DJs and feature a stage large enough to accommodate bands or a small orchestra.
“This will be an ongoing process of learning and iterating what is best for the community and the culture of Burning Man,” says González Vargas. “We will always be open to suggestions and feedback to make something beautiful that we can all enjoy.”
The original Mayan Warrior art car, one of Burning Man’s biggest and flashiest art cars which hosted sets from artists including DJ Tennis, Damian Lazarus and more, was destroyed in a fire last April while en route to a fundraiser in Punta de Mita, Mexico. This fire resulted in millions of dollars worth of losses.
It also provided the Mexico City-based team the opportunity to reimagine their project, with González Vargas telling Billboard in August that the car’s destruction made him feel “liberated” from a physically and financially-intensive endeavor that over time had grown to be a magnet for melodic techno and massive crowds.
Beyond the evolution in programming, the new project will also mark a shift in how the Mayan Warrior crew raises the money necessary to bring the car to Burning Man, located in northern Nevada’s remote Black Rock Desert.
The number of annual fundraising events the team produces across the U.S. with this new car will shrink from 12 to four, ” to ensure we can put our soul in to it and focus on the health and sleep of our crew,” says González Vargas. (Many Burning Man art cars and camps hold annual fundraisers to raise the money necessary to do a project at the event, with Mayan Warrior’s among the last few years arguably among the largest and most highly produced.)
The group is also considering making information regarding events, camp and foundation finances public, “so everyone can see what’s going on and what it takes to pull this off,” says González Vargas.
Tal Ohana and his Los Angeles-based events company Stranger Than, which has co-produced Mayan Warrior’s North American fundraising events for the last six years, are also now official Mayan Warrior collaborators.
“We’re glad to be a part of the next art car and assist with our resources throughout the rebuilding process,” Ohana tells Billboard. “Stranger Than and I will also continue to implement the values of Burning Man to our ‘outside fundraiser events’ as an eight-year burner, while curating unique experiences for our community in a safe environment.”
The first fundraising events officially for this new car are happening Oct. 28 at Grand Park in Los Angeles and at on Oct. 27-28 at Industry City in Brooklyn.
In August, González Vargas told Billboard that before he and the team could decide on a new design, he first needed to go to Burning Man 2023 to see what inspired him. That inspiration came, he says, when watching a drone show that was designed around a Burning Man art car with a dancer suspended from a crane, all synchronized with light and music.
“It struck me that there is nothing more beautiful than having projects collaborate in the moment to create something that will never exist again,” he says. now. “And at that moment, I decided to continue the project and be part of those special moments. We want to do as many collaborations in the future with this new vehicle.”
At around 4 a.m. last Saturday an unusual thing happened at Burning Man. The event, typically an all-hours hubbub of music, art cars, laughter, weeping, whirring bikes, bass drops and other assorted cacophony went silent.
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The only sound was the rain.
The now infamous near-inch of rain that turned the annual desert gathering into global news as it transformed Nevada’s typically bone-dry Black Rock Desert into a gloopy expanse of thick, slippery mud. Mud that stuck to shoes in three-inch slabs. Mud that made it impossible to peddle a bicycle — Burning Man’s primary mode of transportation — or drive any type of vehicle without getting stuck or, worse, slice ruts in the roads making driving difficult once the ground dried. I’ve been to Burning Man eight times — for fun, for adventure, for work. I’d never seen anything like it.
Hoping to save the roads for the mass exodus of 73,000 people that typically happens on Sunday and Monday, a no-driving order was put in place, and everyone was told to stay off the road to the event’s lone gate. (“PLEASE don‘t be that person,” pled the Wet Playa Guide published on the Burning Man website.) No more Burners were let in, and those already on-site were advised not to leave. Some tried to drive away, and those without four-wheel drive and all terrain tires failed. Some, (yes, famously, like Diplo and Chris Rock), got out on foot, walking the six miles from the event site — a seven square mile swath of flat, expansive desert — to the sole paved road that leads back to civilization. Most of us just put on warmer clothes and adjusted to our new reality.
Burning Man festival
Katie Bain
Rumors swirled that we might all be stuck there for a few extra days, or maybe a week, or possibly longer, if it kept raining. The ground would need 12-24 hours after the last rain to become drivable, we were told. The burning of the man — the event’s namesake ritual that typically happens Saturday night before people start heading home — was postponed, as fire trucks couldn’t get to the structure and the wood was too damp to burn. The shuttle service meant to return 20,000 Burners back to Reno and San Francisco was suspended. We were advised to conserve food, water and fuel. Between public service announcements, Burning Man’s FM radio station played Phil Collins‘ “Another Day in Paradise” and, looking at the flooded tents and Burners with plastic grocery bags duct taped around their shoes, one couldn’t help but laugh. Or cry. Or both.
There’s essentially no cell service at Burning Man. The event is made up of hundreds of camps, small settlements serving as temporary homebases to groups of Burners, and while some have Wi-Fi and Starlink, the Burning Man guidebooks notes that is is “highly discouraged.” Burning Man’s much-touted 10 principles — a sort of ethical guide for how to exist at the event — includes “immediacy,” which is of course hard to achieve when doom scrolling or answering emails on one’s phone.
This forced disconnection with the outside world is a feature, creating a sense of presence by cutting Burners off from what many refer to as “default reality.” But as news about what was going on got out, some information also got back in.
“We’re on the front page of CNN,” a fellow camper told me Sunday morning as we gingerly navigated a plywood walkway laid over the gloop. Thanks to (false) rumors about an outbreak on the playa, we heard “ebola burning man” was trending on fellow Burner Elon Musk’s social media platform recently renamed X. We heard Burning Man 2023 was being called “a national emergency,” that FEMA was coming. When I logged onto Wi-Fi at the tent that sells ice, I got 23 texts from family members, friends and colleagues asking if I was safe. If I was scared. If I was OK. “You picked a great year to skip Burning Man,” texted my dad, who was alarmed to then learn I was actually there.
I was there, and I was OK. Generally, we all were. It’s likely people were having breakdowns in the privacy of their tents and RVs as travel plans changed, workdays were missed, and the next few days of our collective existence became a question mark. But also, uncertainty is exciting, and why go to Burning Man but for an unconventional experience? There was a buzz in the air during the hours and days when we weren’t quite sure what would happen — it was sometimes faced with tears and frustration, and other times laughter, dancing and tequila shots.
Burning Man festival
Katie Bain
Every Burning Man tests the mental, emotional and physical limits of its attendees. This year, tickets were unusually easy to get, with many people skipping this go around after calling 2022 their hardest Burn ever. Last year, temperatures hit around 106 degrees, which in comparison made the rain feel like a reprieve. It also — like the extreme heat the year before — demonstrated that the real emergency is the climate crisis. That point was well emphasized by the climate activists that briefly blocked the road into Burning Man as this year’s event started to protest the private jets that shuttle rich Burners in and out of the event and attendees’ prolific use of single use plastic and generators.
The rain did change a few things. The speed of Black Rock City, as the Burning Man site is called, slowed from the swift clip of the electric bikes zipping around the playa to a walking pace. A few parties, talks and DJ sets were interrupted. Art cars decorated like dragons and spaceships stayed parked at their respective camps. A man at a nearby RV suffered a mild injury when some buried cables got wet. (He received medical help immediately and was ultimately fine.) There was also one death at the event that was unrelated to the weather. People who’d planned to leave early (Burning Man typically ends on Sunday) couldn’t. The event’s airport, the hub for those aforementioned private jets, was closed. But no one went into a panic, and no systems broke down, they just adapted.
Meanwhile, the media portrayed it as a disaster. But it never felt that way on the ground. Maybe people were hoping for it in some perverse way. That’s predictable with anything related to Burning Man, though — it’s an event that’s hard to understand and easy to judge among those who’ve never been.
What most Burners know — and what’s probably lost to the outside world amid the hyperbole of drug use and dusty dancing — is that the event is a major test of self-reliance. Tickets only grant access to the access road in and use of the provided porta-potties. Attendees must bring everything else — their own food, water, shelter, garbage bags, you name it. A “survival guide” is sent to all attendees along with their tickets. All programming is conceived of, paid for and hosted by attendees. Taking care of yourself and others is intrinsic to the experience. So while we may have been stuck there longer than expected, after an extra day or two there was little threat of Burning Man going down in flames — or floods. In short: For most of us, besides the threat of missing an extra day of work, we adapted, and we were fine.
“I’m never worried about Burners,” a Bureau of Land Management officer told me in 2021, during the unofficial rogue Burn, which was organized by attendees after the official event was canceled due to the pandemic. “Burners have their sh– together.”
Oh, did I mention my tent flooded? “Communal effort” is among the 10 principles at Burning Man. A nearby RV adopted us, and later the camp rallied to cook up tacos for 200. Minus the momentary silence, a lot of sound camps didn’t stop playing music, and a lot of people never stopped partying. One DJ launched his Saturday afternoon set with “Purple Rain,” attracting a large crowd — many of them wearing just socks on their feet, and many barefoot — that danced in the mud. Those not keen on dancing dropped in on impromptu workshops teaching relaxation breathing techniques. One camp transformed itself into a medical facility. Around the city I was offered water, Gatorade, mezcal, stuffed animals, a popsicle. More than one person observed that if they’d been watching all this on the news, they’d have been disappointed to miss it.
If viewers at home saw tens of thousands of stranded Burners eating tacos and dancing in mud, would they have stopped laughing at us? Probably not. And’s that’s fine. The outside world makes fun of Burning Man because Burning Man is easy to make fun of — especially when 73,000 of us clad in faux fur jackets and shoes with plastic bags duct taped to them are indefinitely trapped in a remote mud pit. It was funny to the people at home, but it was f—ing hilarious to us.
Burning Man festival
Katie Bain
Eventually the parties and events wound down, and after two more showers on Sunday, the rain stopped too. By then, Burners with burly enough trucks and RVs started making their way out, despite the no driving order. If there was discord at the event, it was between the faction that immediately left and those that stayed behind. With “radical self-reliance” as another Burning Man principle, it’s hard to say there was a real right or wrong.
By Monday afternoon, the sun was out, and the roads were dry and deeply rutted in areas, although even the littlest Hondas and Hyundais were leaving with no problems. (“I will not let Burning Man break me!” a woman driving an RV announced out the window as she slowly departed.) Many camps were partially or fully dissembled by the time the man burned Monday night, when the playa had dried enough so that all the art cars were able to surround the burn site, as is tradition. “If we can burn the Man, we have won,” some longtime Burners recalled the event’s late founder, Larry Harvey, often declaring.
It took me 16 hours to get from camp to Los Angeles on Tuesday. By the time I got home, many of the Burners I follow on Instagram were posting about how this year was their favorite ever.
As of today (Friday, Sept. 8), there’s not much left out there in the desert. People who needed to leave early due to the rain are returning to the event site, where they’ll have until Saturday to take apart their projects, tear down their camps and remove their things (an opportunity specific to this year, given the situation). An email update sent yesterday by the Burning Man organization notes that all but one of the vehicles stuck in the mud within the closure area “have been liberated.”
Burning Man doesn’t have a merch stand. While one typically returns home with a few trinkets, it’s cheesy and very Burner-ish but generally also true to say that the real takeaways are the inspiration and the memories. But the experience, mind-blowing the first time, changes you a little less with each outing. One can become inured to the dragons and the spaceships. The rain brought unique challenges that gave the experience fresh opportunities, new forms of fun and renewed potency. It’s hard to call that a disaster.
The scene at Burning Man 2023 has returned to relative normalcy, with its gate officially opened earlier on Monday (Sept. 4), allowing attendees to leave the event in the remote Nevada desert.
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The event’s roughly 73,000 attendees were previously confined to the site after the event’s ingress/egress gate was closed following several rain showers that turned roads into thick, sticky mud, making them largely impassible.
As of Monday afternoon, the sun was shining over Black Rock City, and attendees who remained were disassembling the hundreds of camps that make up the event. Cars began leaving earlier in the day when the gate road officially opened, although many cars, trucks and RVs made their way out via the gate and a service road over roughly the last 24 hours. Several cars that had gotten stuck in the mud before the roads fully dried were seen around Black Rock City, with tow trucks also on site.
Such road traffic has made many of the streets in Black Rock City deeply rutted, although others remain flat and easier to pass. A volunteer at Burning Man’s official information booth could not advise on how long it’s currently taking for those exiting the event to make it out of the gate, but did say the wait in line could be “extreme.” (Last year, it took many leaving the event upwards of 12 hours to depart.)
The Burning Man airport also resumed service on Monday, with flights currently only traveling to Reno. The Burner Busses that transport attendees to and from Burning Man from cities including Reno and San Francisco also resumed service.
Organizers have opened up WiFi networks so that people can communicate with the outside world, and camps are also sharing passwords to their own networks with others. WiFi coverage doesn’t extend to the entire city, but attendees can walk around and have a pretty good shot of finding it.
The event’s namesake Man will burn Monday night at 9 p.m. The burn was delayed from its traditional Saturday night scheduling due to general wetness and the fact that emergency vehicles like fire trucks could not make it out to the Man structure in the mud. Another large-scale tower structure is also scheduled to burn this evening at midnight, with Burning Man’s temple — where Burners leave mementos of the dead and other heartbreaks — set to burn Tuesday (Sept. 5) at 5 p.m.
Around the site on Monday, groups of campers were heard making plans for bringing their art cars out to watch the Man burn. Bikes, the standard mode of transportation on the typically flat and hard-packed desert playa, are once again in motion. While Burning Man has had a difficult time getting those with electric bikes to abide by the citywide five m.p.h. rule, those with these e-bikes were seen moving quite slowly through the city to avoid being thrown off by the bumpy surface.
The spirit of community that’s core to Burning Man was also witnessed throughout Black Rock City, with many camps sharing leftover provisions — popsicles, pork tenderloin, Gatorade, stuffed animals — with passersby. Some also seemed keen to continue the party, with one remarkably fresh-looking woman remarking, “Oh no, they took the orgy dome down” upon arriving to the site where this structure once stood.
One death was reported at Burning Man, but according to the Associated Press, organizers said the death of a man in his 40s was not related to weather conditions. An investigation is underway, said the sheriff of nearby Pershing County; the man’s name and cause of death has not been provided.
Billboard also heard a confirmed report of an isolated electrocution incident after cables in the ground got wet in the rain. It was reported that the man who experienced this electrocution is in well and stable condition following the accident.
As is normal with the disassembling of Burning Man, Burners will be there for days, likely longer, taking down the rest of their camps and doing their best to ensure that the event’s “leave no trace” ethos is abided by. Sun is predicted for the remainder of the week.
The rain persisted Sunday (Sept. 3) at Burning Man, leaving the event’s roughly 73,000 attendees still confined to the site.
Rain came down hard in Black Rock City, located in the remote Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada, on Sunday around noon and then again around 6 p.m., making it still unclear when attendees will be able to leave. This rain has continued to leave the event at a relative standstill, as it has turned the site’s ground into thick mud that’s nontraversable by car and bike. Authorities issued a no driving order when the rain began on Friday.
Complicating matters, more than 300 cars and RVs are currently stuck at the event’s gate after having attempted to leave. Some have been stuck in the mud on the road for a few hours, and some for roughly two days.
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A volunteer at Burning Man’s official information booth said that tow trucks are not currently coming to the site, and that when the gate does open, priority will be given to those who did not attempt to leave, given the no driving order that was issued.
One death was reported at Burning Man late Saturday.
According to CNN, the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office said it is investigating “a death which occurred during this rain event.” Authorities did not name the person, but noted, “The family has been notified.” On Sunday, the Sheriff’s Office said that the individual was found on the playa and lifesaving procedures to revive them were not successful.
On Sunday, a White House official said President Biden has been briefed on the situation at Burning Man. Administration officials were in contact with state and local officials, the New York Times reports.
Officials are still planning to burn the event’s namesake man structure at 9 p.m. on Monday, with another large-scale art piece to be burned later in the evening and the event’s temple structure to be burned at an as-yet-determined time on Tuesday.
In the city, talk is rising of Burners concerned about getting back to their lives in the outside world. Discussions about how to tend to children, pets and plants has been overheard. “I need to leave!” one woman at the information booth stated. “I’m supposed to go on vacation in Greece this week.”
The event’s airport remains closed. The Burner Bus shuttles to Reno and San Francisco, which transported roughly 20,000 people into the event, are postponed until further notice. Once shuttle service resumes, riders will be organized by departure time, with priority given to those whose departure time has passed.
The .8 inches of rain that fell on Burning Man Friday afternoon (Sept. 1) and early Saturday morning (Sept. 2) have left the event at a relative standstill.
Burning Man officials have closed the event’s gates, making it impossible to enter and exit. All vehicles, other than emergency transport services, have been told to not move. The event’s airport is also currently closed.
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Rain turns the ground of Burning Man, an arid desert playa, into thick, sticky mud, making it difficult for vehicles to move without getting stuck. The forecast in Nevada’s Black Rock City, which is what the temporary city of Burning Man is called, calls for a 60% chance of rain between Saturday afternoon and Sunday at 5 p.m.
An information official at the information tent on-site says that the ground typically needs 12-24 hours after the last rain to become drivable. The source says that their best guess for when the roads may reopen is Monday or Tuesday, depending on the weather over the next 24 hours or so.
Katie Bain
The current population of Black Rock City is roughly 73,000, based on details shared in the city’s information booth. Burners have been advised to conserve food and water in the event that those inside the city will not be able to leave for several days. The ice tent is currently limiting people to buying one bag only.
Approximately 20,000 people arrived to Black Rock City via the Burner Bus, which transports people from cities including San Francisco and Reno. The information authority notes that these busses will return on a first-come, first-served schedule when roads reopen.
Diplo was at Burning Man, but managed to leave — apparently with Chris Rock — and then hitched a ride from a fan. “just walked 5 miles in the mud out of burning man with chris rock and a fan picked us up,” he tweeted Saturday afternoon.
While the man traditionally burns at the event on Saturday night, an information official says that this burn is unlikely to happen today, given the wetness and the fact that emergency vehicles and fire trucks cannot currently drive out to the man structure.
Inside the city, spirits are relatively high. Music is playing from many camps, with dance parties taking place under tents and in the mud itself. Many of the people out walking around the city are barefoot, with others covering their shoes in plastic bags or wearing just socks.
Information is being disseminated to Burners via the city’s pair of radio stations. Burners have also been advised that there will likely be a citywide cheer when the gates reopen.
Billboard will keep reporting from Black Rock City as is possible.
Many things at Burning Man are meant to burn down to the ground. The Mayan Warrior was not one of them.
One of Burning Man’s flashiest and most famous art cars, the Mexico-City based rig had become a nexus of spectacle, vibes and electronic music since debuting on the playa in 2012.
Over the years the car had in tandem become a prestige play for DJs turning out to Burning Man, hosting artists including DJ Tennis, Jan Blomqvist, Damian Lazarus, Bedouin, Carlita, Francesca Lombardo and the Mexico-based talent it focused on promoting. It even had its own theme song.
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Then, this past April 3, it went up in flames. The truck that formed the base of the car (an International 4400) was en route from Guadalajara to Punta Mita, Mexico for a fundraising event, when a back tire caught on fire — a function, organizers say, of the weight of the vehicle, combined with the rough road and the heat of the day.
The fire immediately spread to the rest of the rig, incinerating the many amps, computer consoles and other sundry pieces of equipment that helped make the thing such an attraction. Ten minutes later, it was all gone.
The driver, the only person with the vehicle at the time, was unharmed. While the truck itself was insured, the onboard equipment team had collected over the last decade was not, resulting in millions of dollars worth of losses.
The first person to get the phone call was Mayan Warrior’s Founder, Pablo González Vargas.
“It was sad, but also liberating in a way,” he says, “because it’s a passion that started growing until we were almost, like, a little bit slaves to it.”
Indeed, it cost the Mayan Warrior team — made up of 10 core members year-round and a team of 34 at Burning Man itself — roughly $600,000 to take the car to the playa each year, along with another $300,000 to run the Foundation, which covered its maintenance, storage and other expenses. This tab was covered by the Mayan Warrior’s touring fundraiser events, which brought the car to New York, San Francisco, Austin and beyond, helping cover costs, but also raising eyebrows among those who felt the car had run afoul of Burning Man’s ethos of commercial decommodification.
“We were not in good standing this year,” says González Vargas. “There was backlash from the community of, ‘What are you doing?’ Because people see a picture of people [at a fundraiser] — but to make money in events, we have to surpass 4,000 attendees.”
Gonzalez Vargas adds that the the necessity to make money also put the team in “a never-ending touring situation, so the crew was was tired, and I was tired, and then Burning Man was beginning to say, ‘Hey, you guys are eroding Burning Man principles.’” (He also notes that the Burning Man organization reached out immediately after the fire and were “very supportive.”)
In the wake of the fire, rumors of cartel interference and insurance fraud (“of course not true,” says González Vargas) swirled, while the global Mayan Warrior community mourned the loss. Its absence will certainly be felt at Burning Man 2023, which begins in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert this Sunday, August 27. After that, the team will host one final Mayan Warrior fundraiser this Halloween in Los Angeles.
Here, González Vargas talks about the fire, about how he and the team had perhaps outgrown the project and what they’re planning next.
Maybe the best place to start is to just tell me what happened on the day of the fire.
The car was on its way from Guadalajara, where we had our last fundraiser, to Punta Mita, which is by Puerto Vallarta. Basically an hour before arriving to the destination, the back tire caught on fire. I didn’t know they did that, but later on, I read that the combination of [the rig being] overweight, heat and a rough road — sometimes they catch fire.
In the back of our truck, we have a lot of wood; we have a lot of diesel; we have a lot of propane. So that thing… in a matter of minutes, it was really out of control. We did have fire extinguishers, but they did nothing. The driver luckily got out of the truck, and it just incinerated, in like, 10 minutes.
Oh my god.
The sad part is that we did not have insurance. Of course on Reddit, there’s a lot of people saying that we planned this. Either it was like, a cartel war, or, “Let’s burn it and get the insurance money.” That’s of course not true.
But the reality is that I forgot to to re-pay the insurance after the pandemic — because when the pandemic hit, we were like, “Why are we paying so much money for insurance if everything is just shut down?” I just totally forgot to [put the insurance back on.] The truck base did have insurance, but all the rest of the equipment — zero. So that’s a huge loss for us, because that equipment we have been compounding over 10 years. (Editor’s note: González Vargas adds via email that Mayan Warrior did have liability insurance during all events.)
Mayan Warrior on March 31, 2023
Courtesy of Pablo Gonzalez Vargas
What were you doing when you found out what had happened?
I was arriving to a meditation retreat, to clear my head. I had a lot of questions in my life — my father died a few months earlier, and a lot of things in my life changed. I sold my company. I wanted to clear my head. The day that I arrived to the place, I got the message from the driver with the picture. But I couldn’t see the picture — it was blurry, because they didn’t have any service, because I was in the middle of the desert. Then I called him, and he said, “This is on fire.”
It was very crazy how my intention was to go and clear my head and get things in order in my life, and this thing burns right before.
So what did you do? You’re about to go into this meditation retreat — take me through those first hours of response.
I was about to go back to Mexico City and handle the situation. But I stayed. I said, “I’ll go into this process with this [situation.]” It was kind of sad, but also liberating in a way — because this project, as I told you last time, we do it out of passion. We all do different things in life, like normal work. This is a passion that started growing until we were almost like, a little bit slaves to it — trying to make it work so it was sustainable. I was at a place where I was working on it, instead of enjoying it.
So yeah, I felt liberated. I felt also a blank slate creatively, because the car was 10 years old, so it was a super old design. I didn’t even know what to do with it, in the sense of “should we [keeping doing] it or not?”
The Mayan Warrior at Burning Man
Courtesy of Pablo Gonzalez Vargas
You announced that the car had burned down via Instagram on April 5. What was that day like, in terms of the community response?
I was really surprised, because the response we saw from people is the same feeling I had — a relationship with it as, like, a living being. It gave all of us as a community a lot of good things, good relationships, good moments, a lot of friends all over. It was kind of the hub of the community.
The response of the people was also kind of like as if someone died, not a thing that burned. It was very nice to see the response and what it meant to most of us and to other circles of the community. It was a very emotional week.
There are 3,912 comments on that Instagram post. I read them all, and they’re almost entirely supportive and respectful and sad. It must have at least felt affirming in the sense that the empathy was there.
True, because you have haters on one side. That’s what you really get on normal days. Some people are angry about the cartel thing, or from the angle of “this business and they’re printing money” without understanding what it takes behind the scenes. Which is kind of s–tty.
So the positive response was nice to see, because it’s been so many years of hard work and sacrifices — financially, in time and in our work. It was basically taking three months of the year and doing almost nothing other than this. People don’t understand what it takes to do stuff at Burning Man in general, so so it was reaffirming and nice to see that people actually cared and were supportive.
What was the what’s the size of the core team?
Year-round, the core team is 10. Then when we go to the Burn, we’re at like, 34.
When those 10 people first found out, what was that like?
Very emotional. I cried, because I was very grateful, because this thing gave me so much in my life. And I think the response [among the group] was very similar. Burning Man is a big part of our lives, and when you’re building something at Burning Man, it creates an identity, and that identity becomes a little bit of your identity. So many people on the core team, their identity is very intertwined with Mayan. So this dying is also a part of you. Part of your identity is also kind of dying.
Pablo González Vargas
Courtesy of Pablo Gonzalez Vargas
The sense I’ve gotten from what you’ve announced is that there’s a new concept or art car coming from your crew. Can you tell me about that, what you guys are working on now?
We want to go to Burning Man first, because everything started at Burning Man. We got inspired at Burning Man, so I think that has to happen. We need to feel inspired to do whatever we’re going to do. I think the beautiful cycle of Burning Man is to inspire and to be inspired. That’s the most beautiful thing that happens there.
So we want to go and feel it and see what the next step is, because there are some things we don’t like about the project, and some things we do.
What don’t you like about it?
The amount of work it takes, for one. Also music-wise, electronic music has its own energies that are sometimes not great. When we started this, I was 32. It’s very different, 32 and 45, in terms of what you’re searching for. So are we going to re-do this in the same formula? Do we like it? We have to decide.
One thing I know is that we are never going to stop doing things at Burning Man. That’s for sure. The project will continue at Burning Man. The question is how, and in what genre and in what form? It could be mobile. It could be stationary. What type of music? Maybe it’s more live shows? Maybe we need to dial down the DJ thing, because also that’s affecting the Burning Man demographic in a big way.
I think I know what you mean, but tell me exactly what you mean.
To make the point, I’m going to go to an extreme — which is like, the Afterlife demographic. Which is a young crowd with phones, and it’s less about having a good time and having an experience and more a show than a party. So if go the DJ route, we’re pulling that energy.
I’ve seen the Burn morph more into that in our little space of music. It’s a big city, but in music listeners or music seekers, the demographic has changed over the last six years.
Definitely.
The gradient went more Afterlife, without going fully after Afterlife — but I personally don’t like that. I think live shows are something we might pursue. But it has a complexity, because they’re way more expensive. A DJ is just them and their USB. But if you bring a band, it’s way more difficult.
So we’re trying to figure that out. And also if it’s the same [Mayan Warrior] name, or not. There’s a lot of questions and we want to understand at Burning Man [this year] — What are we vibing? What is the next step?
The Mayan Warrior at Burning Man
Courtesy of Pablo Gonzalez Vargas
In terms of the cultural shift you’re talking about, certain realms of Burning Man have definitely gotten more Instagrammy, more DJ-centric, more mainstage-ish. It’s changed the vibe out there. Did you feel any sort of way about being involved in that shift and in ways catalyzing it?
For sure. There’s no way we’re not involved … we have contributed to that cultural shift, and we need to be aware of that. I think that’s also something to think about. If we keep doing it, how can we — not reverse it — but steer it and do something more into the experience side, and less about an image situation, with talking about Instagram? I would want that.
Financially there is also an issue, for sure. Doing the art car is one of the most irresponsible things I’ve done in my life, financially.
Say more.
I was still renting most of the years [I’ve had the car], because I couldn’t buy an apartment. It basically all went to the art car during the first half of its life. Just because I loved it, and I didn’t care about anything else, and doing a camp and bringing a lot of stuff to the desert costs a lot of money. So I don’t know if I want to do that again. I don’t know if it’s a wise thing to do. Maybe we need to scale down.
In terms of your camp at Burning Man this year, is just a smaller crew? Something pretty basic?
Nothing. Just me, my RV, my bike, my fiancée and that’s it.
I don’t mean to be glib, but that sounds maybe refreshing for you.
For sure.
Is there anything else you’d like to say?
We’re grateful, and we want to still contribute to Burning Man. And we care. We owe a lot to that place, and we want to do it right. We want to do something beautiful, and we hope we can.
Burning Man’s famous Mayan Warrior art car was destroyed in a fire this past April, but that’s not stopping its creators from throwing one final party. On Tuesday (July 18), the Mayan Warrior announced its last ever show: a Halloween party in Los Angeles. The Oct. 28 event is being produced in partnership with Los […]