What it’s like going to Burning Man for the first time

Levi Bernard for Business
Insider

There are three of us, cramped inside a dusty Toyota that’s
packed to the gills along with a triad of busted bicycles hanging
precariously off the back.

We are flanked on every side by travelers who, like us, have
driven several hours to form what has turned out to be a
particularly sluggish caravan into Black Rock City, Nevada.

Miles
from the city’s entrance, I realize I am in no way adequately
prepared. It was only two weeks earlier when I
decided to buy a ticket to Burning Man at the persuasion of my
best friend, Jes. 

“You don’t have to bring anything, dude,” she told me over the
phone. “Just get your ticket. I’ll bring all the stuff.”

At the time, the plan made sense. I would fly from New York to
San Francisco to meet Jes and her girlfriend, Ryan. They would
retrieve me from the airport and we would embark on the six-hour
drive to Burning Man together.

Because nothing is available for purchase at the event itself,
Jes has packed enough camping gear, food, and water for all three
of us. Or so she has promised. My own personal contribution to
our collective efforts is a slim backpack filled with sparkly
bathing suits, a zip-lock bag of costume jewelry, and a
jumbo-sized box of disposable dust masks.

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Like most people who have never
been to Burning Man before, I had, of course, heard of it. I also
had a general approximation of what would occur there, based
largely off of the accounts of people I knew who had gone and
returned as newfound vegans exuding auras of a certain new age
holiness.

Some weird sex stuff would go down,
I imagined. People would take their clothes off. There would be
loud music and large artworks and psychedelics and partying late
into the night. Like Woodstock, but with less shade.

Ask people who have been to Burning
Man what it’s like, and their answer is inevitably the
same. 
“Oh my god,” they
say. “It’s absolutely wild. You really have to see it for
yourself.”

This rapturous response had still
in no way convinced me. Privately, I was
skeptical. What Kool-Aid were they drinking down
there in the middle of the desert?

We’ve been stalled outside the gates for five hours when
it comes to my attention that we have not brought enough
water.

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Bernard for Business Insider

“Fifteen gallons, plus the beer,” Jes tells me from the front
seat. “I think it’s enough for three people.”

It is not enough. Per official Burning Man recommendations,
you’re supposed to bring in at least one and a half gallons per
person, per day. The Nevada desert reaches temperatures of 100
degrees Farenheit or more, making death by dehydration highly
probable. For Jes, Ryan, and myself, we are exactly 21 gallons
short of the recommended minimum. 

Already, Jes has rationed my water intake.

“You should be fine on half a gallon day,” she assures
me. “Just don’t guzzle it down all at once like you’re a
camel.”

It is Jes’s third year at Burning Man and her voice has assumed
an air of seasoned authority. 

I think back longingly to the last convenience store we passed
some hours ago along the congested, two-lane road that led us
into this godforsaken desert. But to turn back now is out of
the question.

A dust storm has swept the desert into an opaque, suffocating
cloud, making it impossible to see even a few feet beyond the
car. The instant we crack a window, the interior of Jes’s RAV4
becomes coated in a layer of dust the size of a small sand
dune. 

We are sandwiched in a restless convoy of revelers. Several
people have set up lawn chairs on the roofs of their RVs, and the
pickup truck behind us is blasting a relentless EDM beat.
Outside, the air smells of mothballs and marijuana. 

Jes and Ryan are wearing goggles. I am wearing a hot pink scuba
mask that’s designed to fit the face of a small child. (“For ages
3 plus!” a label on the plastic package reads brightly.) The
scuba mask was a last-minute purchase made at a CVS in Reno at
Jes’s insistence that I should have some sort of protective
eyewear beyond sunglasses. It is too small for my face, and
covers my nose, making it difficult to breathe. I am intensely
uncomfortable. 

A masked woman taps on the car’s passenger window. 

“Welcome to Burning Man,” she says, warmly. “Would you like to
play Mad Libs to pass the time?”

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By the time we enter the city, it is nearly midnight. 

We are greeted at the floodlit gate by a stocky, bearded man who
kindly invites us to disembark from our vehicle and roll around
in the dirt. “You’re a virgin burner,” he tells me. “It’s
time to embrace the playa.”

It is not my wish to embrace the playa. My hope is to stay clean
for as long as possible, and this plan does not include rolling
around in a pile of dirt even before I pitch my tent. 

“I’ll pass, but thank you very much,” I say. He shoots me a
disappointed look.

“It’s your first time at Burning Man,” he insists. “It’s just a
little dirt.” Already, Jess and Ryan are performing joyful
somersaults in the sand at my feet.

Not wanting to appear a square who isn’t open to the possibility
of some good old-fashioned fun, I concede, and lamely drop to the
ground. I loll around in the dirt for what seems to be the
acceptable minimum amount of time to constitute a full playa
embrace. I stand, completely covered in dust, and start to sneeze
repeatedly. 

“Isn’t it the greatest?” The man asks, smiling gently as he wraps
his arms around me in a warm embrace.”Welcome home.”

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Over the course of my week in Black Rock City, I am welcomed home
hundreds of times by strangers whose eyes are filled, almost
uniformly, with the clear light of loving-kindness and
acceptance. It is like being at a family reunion after coming out
of a coma, except that every member of your family is an
extremely attractive yoga instructor.

One of the people who welcomes me home is the stubble-faced
attendant at the Media Mecca tent, where I’m directed to receive
a media pass. He asks if it’s my first time at Burning Man, and I
tell him that it is. “When you write about Burning Man, make sure
you don’t refer to it as a festival,” he directs me. “This is not
a festival. It is an event.”

This semantic differentiation is stressed to me multiple times by
veteran attendees over the course of the week. The difference in
these two terms, it is largely felt, lies in
the participatory onus placed on Burning Man’s attendees.
This is absolutely not Coachella. To even consider Burning Man
remotely related to that other desert cabal is a sentiment of
deepest insult. We are not passive observers glibly traipsing
through a fairground. As attendees, we are part of the spectacle
itself, members of a temporary community that has sprouted up
along a sinister stretch of earth regularly unfit for human
habitation. 

****

Perhaps the most impressive part of Burning Man is the playa, the
open stretch of desert surrounded by a jagged mountain range that
serves as the backdrop to roving art cars, impromptu dance
parties, and art installations many stories high. 

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The first time we encounter the playa is the night of our arrival
to the city, after we unpack the car by the light of headlamps.
We are on bicycles, wrapped in
advance with LEDs — the only way to avoid collision
along the dark, haphazard route into the city, where traffic laws
are largely open to interpretation.

Teetering forth, we pass darkened campsites, a snail-shaped
car lit by kaleidoscopic bulbs, a hundred or so other pedestrians
and bicyclists, who, like us, have draped themselves in flashing
neon.

And then, the playa comes into view.

It is much bigger than I’d expected, a limitless, psychedelic
wilderness of pulsing neon and throbbing music. Wheeling across
this great expanse are enormous metal piranhas belching flame,
slow-moving magic carpets, and cathedrals whose roofs have been
overtaken by crowds of fist-pumping dancers. 

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“This is f—ing wild,” says Ryan, and she’s right.

We stop in at a bar for shots of whiskey and are then instructed
to walk along a thin, rickety plank fifteen feet above the
ground. We roller skate at a makeshift roller rink along the
esplanade. We dance with an enormous panda. We see a punk rock
band perform.

Time is confused by the fact that, not one, but two moons shine
above the playa. One is art. The other is real. The former is a
convincing, illuminated orb that waxes from crescent to full
again and again. According to this new lunar body, we spend an
entire month on the playa by the time we head back to our tents.

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There is no exchange of cash at Burning Man.

Everything and anything is free. Rickety roadside garment racks
filled with used clothing are marked with signs that read, “Take
what you need!” People are giving away artwork they’ve made,
plastic kazoos, necklaces, bags of candy, stickers, miso-soup,
massages, shots of B12, hair washing, cold brew coffee, three
course meals completed by wine pairings. Everything is
gratis. 

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Our own camp is hosting a small bar, where we’re inviting
passersby to stop in for a swig of whiskey or a sickly sweet
peach punch made with dubious ingredients. A man in a
tatterdemalion business suit stops by for a drink. 

“I’m the Burning Man banker,” he says. “Put your hand inside my
pocket for a gift.”

A red-headed woman reaches into his breast-coat pocket. She digs
around for a moment and then, pulls out a one hundred dollar
bill.

“It’s real, sweetheart,” he says. “Don’t spend it all at once.”

He grins broadly to reveal two rows of yellowed teeth, tucks his
hands into his pockets, and then ambles away.

Despite the lack of physical cash, lavish displays of wealth are
still on full display. It’s difficult, after all, not to
notice the comparative wealth of people who are able to take a
week off of work and spend what has been tallied as an average
cost of $1,500 a piece to achieve an advanced state of wokeness
in the middle of the desert.

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While some of the artworks are cobbled together with the help of
grants and financial aid, other installations on the playa are
rumored to be dreamed up by one-percenters who, like the Medicis
before them, fund gargantuan aesthetic projects.

Some of the art cars are a level of ostentation bordering on
comedy: One monied person’s gaudy fantasy attempting to outdo
another’s. Mammoth vehicles spew balls of flame and beam out
spotlights viewable from miles away, all the while blasting a
continuous, inescapable soundtrack of pounding EDM.

At a corner of the camp close to the playa, identical RVs are
lined neatly in pristine rows, alongside private Port-A-Potties.
They are located a half mile walk from our own ramshackle
quarters filled with weathered tents and tattered shade
structures — a reminder that nearly all
American cities, even temporary ones, are still subject to
economic divide.

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The people who visit Burning Man have come from every conceivable
corner of the earth. They are from Austin and Denver and Brooklyn
and Tampa. They hail from China, Singapore, New Zealand, Japan,
South Africa, France, Germany, and Indonesia. But even despite this geographical diversity, the
crowd is still overwhelming white. 

While the majority of burners appear to be lithe fitness models
in sparkly bootie shorts, a
small portion of attendees are kids in superhero capes,
grandmothers in motorized wheelchairs, and elderly, white-haired
men, some of whom comprise a roaming group of naked Santas.

Anything and everything you could possibly imagine exists here.
At the Healing Foot Wash down the road, you can wash your
neighbor’s feet and hear all about the love of your prospective
savior, Jesus Christ. Just blocks from the Healing Foot Wash,
another camp’s sign announces “Free Abortions!” with the words
“No minors allowed!” scrawled in marker underneath. A ten minute
walk from here is Kindergarten Kamp, an outdoor playground where
toddlers bounce gleefully on a giant trampoline. 

****

Hedonism abounds. 

Everywhere you look, debauchery unfolds. Naked women wielding
leather paddles implore bystanders to pull their pants down for a
spanking. Couples bedecked in feathers and dust masks line up
expectantly outside of the air-conditioned Orgy Dome. At the
nightly Bareoke, a woman strips down as she sings along to the
Spice Girls. 

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Nudity is ubiquitous, and informally enforced in bizarre and
ridiculous ways. Several ramshackle bars require women to bare
their breasts if they wish to drink there. “I had to show my
penis to get a snow cone yesterday,” a man in our camp
confides. 

Of just a small sampling of the activities available are fellatio
contests, something advertised as “p—y massages,” genital
prints made in the “traditional Japanese method,” BDSM play
inside of a dungeon, the Slut Olympics, an activity described as
a “Bubbles and Boobs VIP Party” (“Bring your boobs!”), and a
workshop where you can learn to write erotic poetry in binary
code (010101).

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People, who, in their everyday lives work as scientists or
elementary school teachers or web developers, are passing out
thimbles of absinthe, ladles of vodka-laced punch, and pours of
whiskey. Sobriety is strongly discouraged. As early as 8 a.m.,
tutu-clad men and women armed with bullhorns hail bikers into
their requisite bars for a mimosa or a shot of tequila. “Why be
sober!?” A woman shouts. At one camp’s communal dinner,
LSD-blotted Altoids, magic mushrooms, and MDMA are rationed out
alongside a meal of chili made from a broth of beer. 

By Wednesday, we are subsisting largely off of a diet of warm
Modelos, sardines, and pickles. We are looking haggard. We are
feeling more than a little unhealthy. 

“I think I’m immune to drugs,” a fellow campmate confides. “I’ve
taken so much LSD that it no longer has any effect on me. I took
three hits today and all I want to do is go to bed.”

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Despite the hedonism, the total and complete lack of a single
trash can, the fact that 70,000 people are wandering around a
largely unmonitored desert expanse at deeply questionable degrees
of sobriety, the playa itself is remarkably, exceptionally clean.

In my seven days here, I could count the amount of trash I have
seen on one hand, and can also recount exactly what those items
are: a blue ballpoint pen, a piece of toilet paper, a glow stick,
and a headband. That’s it. This detritus is called MOOP, or
Matter Out of Place, and is intensely, near-manically monitored
by veteran attendees.

When I attempt to run a brush through my ratty, dust-ridden hair
in the middle of the afternoon, a girl from our camp immediately
stops me. 

“Can you go inside your tent and do that?” She asks. “Hair is
technically MOOP.”

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I am surprised to learn that, along with a noticeable police
presence, there are many rules.

We are reminded in a booklet of regulations issued along with our
ticket that drugs including marijuana are technically illegal.
The same DUI laws that govern the state of Nevada are applied to
anyone driving an art car at 5 MPH around the playa. Vehicles,
even ones in the shape of rubber duckies or UFOs, should be
registered and insured. Pee on the playa, and you could be
slapped with a fee of hundreds of dollars. 

If you plan to drink alcohol, you’ll need to bring along your ID.
A few, more lenient bars accept laminated copies of
identification, but most demand the real deal.

Even the Orgy Dome, which I have envisioned as a den of sweaty
carnality so iniquitous it would make the devil blush, has its
own set of rules.

“The Orgy Dome is so boring,” a campmate complains. “First, you
have to hear this long lecture about consent. Then you have to
wait in line forever. And then, once you get in, it’s mostly just
couples laying around. It’s the most organized sex you’ll ever
have in your life.”

“It’s true,” a friend volunteers. “The only good reason to go to
the Orgy Dome is if you want to take a nap.”

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On Thursday, after the sun has set, I hitch a ride with Jes and
Ryan from a man driving an enormous banana to the outer regions
of the desert, called the Deep Playa. There, we have heard, is a
drone show that is about to take place. We arrive at a planar
opening filled with art cars decked out in blinking neon. We
drink absinthe from a mobile bar and take turns pushing each
other on the enormous basket swing that’s attached to its
roof. 

And then, suddenly, hundreds of drones lit up in purple and blue
appear above our heads. They pulse and blossom overhead, moving
in undulating formations to piano music. 

It is beautiful and moving, the sort of artwork that is
impossible to imagine happening anywhere but here, above an alien
flatland of desolate earth and against this particular backdrop
of pitch-black desert sky.

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Burning Man is filled with moments like these, instances of
profundity and depth that you might not have at first expected
from a tutu-ridden desert bacchanal.

Visit the Temple, for instance, and it’s impossible not to be
moved. 

The Temple is located in the center of the playa; an intricate,
wooden spiral, big enough to hold hundreds of people. It’s the
sort of structure that takes months to build. Like The Man, the
stick figure epithet for which the event is named, it too will be
burned to the ground at the end of the week. 

The moment you enter The Temple, the atmosphere shifts. The air
grows suddenly heavy. It is quiet. Inside, visitors have
left mementos of all that they have lost. Stapled to the spiraled
beams are photographs of dead loved ones, notes of regret penned
to ex-lovers, locks of hair. Several wedding dresses hang
overhead. 

A little boy seated on his father’s shoulders asks, “Is this
where we’re leaving mommy?”

People write notes on beams with sharpies. The items left inside
are glimpses into the personal tragedies of strangers. Most are
crying. A woman lies prostrate on the ground. A group of
people chant someone’s name. 

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Images

By Thursday, we are exhausted. 

My personal filthiness has a reached a degree I’ve never
previously experienced. In the course of five days, I have
applied two boxes of wet wipes to my body. I have cleaned my feet
in great secrecy with bottled water so as not to enrage my fellow
campmates by the lavish and non-essential use of our beverage
supply. I have attempted to brush my hair, and accordingly ripped
from my scalp three separate knots of intricate and dusty
tangles. I have experienced multiple bloody noses. I have
been tempted to dispose of wet wipes into the Port-A-Potty, even
though I have been reminded, with nagging persistence, that this
holy receptacle is fit for human waste and one-ply toilet paper
alone. 

I feel as though I haven’t slept in days, even despite the fact
that our camp is located in what is considered one of the quieter
sites at Burning Man. The throbbing EDM music from the perpetual
parade of art cars streaming past at all hours of the night has
rendered the 20 pairs of earplugs I’ve packed entirely
ineffectual.  

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A man from our camp has deserted us for a luxurious hotel room in
Tahoe. Burning Man, he tells us upon departure, is simply too
much. “I think I get it,” he says. “A bunch of people partying in
the desert. How much more of this can people take?”

At the beginning of the week, I might have agreed with
him. But now, while still at Burning Man, I am experiencing
an onset of Burning Man FOMO. I miss out on the sumo wrestling
competition. I never make it to the group wedding that takes
place at sunset. I keep waking up too late to go skydiving.
There’s too much going on. 

But by the end of the week, the loving-kindness which had at
first seemed so refreshing and limitless is beginning to wane.
The heat is getting to us. People are irritable. I am irritable.
Jes and I have a minor disagreement, and I storm away, furious.
Arguments are sprouting up all around us. A married couple
in our camp gets into a shouting match. One of them threatens
divorce.

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The morning after The Man is burned, we gather to eat a pig
that’s being cooked over the remains of its blackened ashes. Just
feet away from where a woman in a black bodice poses for a photo,
her hands filled with the heart and lungs of a dead goat
(really), a thin woman slaps a man in the face and screams, “What
were you doing all night at your pervert party? Where
were you? How can you leave your child like that?“

People holding bullhorns line the dusty streets and shout, “Go
home! Get the f–k out of here! Leave Burning Man and never
come back! What are you still doing here?”

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On Sunday, we re-pack the Toyota, hitching our bicycles to the
rear and strapping bags of trash to the roof. The moment is
bittersweet. It would be difficult to leave Burning Man with
a perspective on life that, if not entirely renewed, is at the
very least refurbished. “I’m gonna change my life, man,” I
overhear a man telling his friend. “I’m gonna quit my job. I’m
gonna lose 20 pounds.” This is the sort of inspirational
zeitgeist that’s in the air.

On our final evening there, as we watch The Man burn amid
towering flames, a friend turns to me.

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“Maybe it’s about death. Or renewal? Or art. But also life?
Definitely society. And self-image,” he ponders, filled with
psychedelic wisdom.

We can still feel the heat from where we stand, far from the
flames, the biggest fire I’ve seen in my life. We are quiet,
then, just taking it in.

 ****

Two weeks later at an investor dinner in New York, I’m chatting
with an entrepreneur who mentions that he and his wife were at
Burning Man this year.

“We’ve gone for four years,” he tells me. “Missing it would be
like not going home at Christmas.”

I ask what he thought about the experience. Did he feel that
Burning Man would still be culturally relevant in upcoming years?

“Well yeah, of course,” he said. “If there’s anything that can
outlive the hype, it’s Burning Man.”