Making your own outrageous outfit can be time-consuming, so Prepare for the Playa events make it easy to load up on eye-catching gear you won’t find on the shelves at Old Navy. These flea-markets-on-acid are a chance for burner-based businesses to connect, says Nikki Doran, one of the three Prepare for the Playa organizers, but they’re also educational: Playa U how-to workshops put seasoned burners in touch with newbies to go over everything from shower construction and bike lighting to poi-twirling.

Full Story: Wired

A San Francisco performance artist was sentenced Friday to as many as four years in prison and ordered to pay restitution for the early torching last summer of the signature effigy of the counterculture Burning Man festival.

Paul Addis pleaded guilty in May to one felony count of injury to property stemming from the burning of the 40-foot icon on Aug. 28 – four days earlier than planned. He was ordered to pay $30,000 in restitution.

Full Story: Comcast

(Thanks Bill!)

Senator and presumptive Republican Presidential nominee John McCain has rocked the political world by announcing his intention to bring his campaign to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert this summer, during the counter-cultural art event known as Burning Man.

“While our opponents would callously ignore them, this proud American believes that even temporary cities deserve the attention of the President of the United States,” said McCain senior staffer Mark Dosenberner. “We are proud that Black Rock City will be a stop on the ‘Straight Talk Express’ tour this summer.”

Full Story: Burning Man.

I think this might tip me over to the McCain camp. It shows that he truly values liberty.

(via Robot Wisdom).

Full Story: Art Car Fest.

(via Bernie DeKoven, funsmith).

Full Story: Wired.

Wow, this is a shocker. At around 3 am Tuesday morning at Burning Man 2007, during a rare lunar eclipse, the Burning Man sculpture was set on fire prematurely (it is normally burned on Saturday). The Black Rock City Emergency Services Department was able to put out the fire in time and salvage the sculpture (it had not yet been loaded with fuel or explosives). It is still scheduled for its normal burn on Saturday and they will be working throughout the week to repair any burn damage and re-install the neon.

An arrest has been made in the case.

Full Story: Laughing Squid.

But in an analysis of the organization’s tax filings by Charity Navigator, a New Jersey-based nonprofit watchdog group, the Black Rock Arts Foundation earned an “exceptionally poor” rating. The analyst found errors in reporting, a low revenue-to-grant ratio that showed artists receive on average 27 cents for every $1 spent – less than half the industry standard – and a conflict of interest involving David Best, a local artist best known for his intricate temples that rise at Burning Man.

Sandra Miniutti, an analyst at Charity Navigator who reviewed the filings at the request of The Chronicle, said donors to the foundation should be concerned by its poor practices.

“This is not a financially healthy organization,” Miniutti said. “If I were a donor, I’d think long and hard before I sent money their way.”

Full Story: SF Gate.

Viking Youth Power Hour: Drone on the Range.

G-Spot: The Secret Meeting.

RU Sirius Show: San Francisco Mayoral Candidate Chicken John.

NeoFiles Show: True Mutations Live! at City Lights (Part 1).

RU Sirius Show: Counterculture, Burning Man & Commerce with Larry Harvey.

But Burning Man is rife with the products of corporations, and always has been. And has always had to be. The prepared food items and bottled water we live on out there; the portajohns our wastes go in after eating that food and drinking that water; the tents we sleep in, the pipe and metal domes we lounge under, the clothes we wear, either exotic or normal-all sold to us not for fellow-feeling but by monied interests, usually corporate, who just want our cash. For Burning Man to be truly free of the products of corporate commerce, it would be a zone we could survive in for at most a few hours, and grimly at that.

Full Story: Reason.

Each Burning Man has a different theme, chosen by Harvey. This year’s theme is “The Green Man.” Burning Man, an extravaganza characterized by the consumption of huge quantities of fossil fuel, has discovered environmentalism. It is attempting to offset the 28,000 tons of carbon it estimates the event generates (counting all those flights and long drives for its far-flung attendees), and the organization is belatedly switching to biodiesel generators to provide most of the event’s electricity.

Most controversially, the organization wants to bring as many green-energy companies as possible into what Harvey calls a world’s fair of clean tech. Google (Charts, Fortune 500) is going to help produce an online 3-D search service called Burning Man Earth.

Full Story: Business 2.0.

For those seeking a small, free alternative, Autonomous Mutant Fest starts this weekend. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m going to make it down there this year, but I believe Nick Pell and some other esoZone/Portland Occulture folks will be on hand.

A co-founder of Burning Man, the annual six-day festival of self-expression that culminates in the torching of a 40-foot effigy on the salt flats of northern Nevada, has sued his ex-partners to strip them of ownership of the event’s name and logo and to place the rights to their trademarks in the public domain.

John Law, who helped transform a series of small bonfire parties on a San Francisco beach into a phenomenon that drew more than 39,000 last year, sued Burning Man board members Larry Harvey and Michael Mikel in federal court Tuesday.

Full Story: ABC News.

RU Sirius Show: Manson Family Values.

NeoFiles Show: How Stewart Brand Took Us From Counterculture to Cyberculture.

RU Sirius Show: Is the Immigration Issue a No Brainer?.

Viking Youth: Who Wants To Drive a Veggie Car? (excellent interview with reality show personality Tonya Kay).

And one I missed before, but is a great interview about the evolution and role of Burning Man:

Erik Davis Smokes Crack With the Viking Youth.

RU Sirius Show: Dan The Automator.

NeoFiles Show: 20 Years of Foresight.

RU Sirius Show: The Politics of Transcendence.

NeoFiles Show: Video Blogging for the Peeps.

Viking Youth: The Age of Aquarius.

Sacred Whore: Doing It In Public.

Viking Youth: What the Hell Happened At Burning Man?.

R.U. Sirius Show: Neil Gaiman.

RU Sirius Show: American Hardcore Punk 1980-1986 .

NeoFiles Show #55: Alchemy.

RU Sirius Show: Psychedelic Pop/Metal Band “Turn Me On Dead Man”

NeoFiles Show: BioCommunication Devices

RU Sirius Show: Burning Man Burnout?

R.U. interviews Burning Man founder Larry Harvey on the latest episode of his show.

MP3.

Harvey: Ultimately, yes. I think that our event is necessary and will be for a while yet. Because as we come to see it, it’s an initiation into a larger world. I’ll take a risk by comparing it to the hajj. It is part of Muslim religion. It doesn’t imply terrorism, but people have an obligation to go to Mecca once in their lives and to be inspired. And they march around a big rock. Well, you gotta put something at the center, and they’ve got a big rock, left over from pre-Muslim days. That’s why they go.

Or, it’s like, let’s say, Paris. Go to Paris, see what can be done, not because it will dwarf you, make you feel futile, but because if you have the wit to look — and I think the majority of our people do have that ability, to look beyond the spectacle, and say, “Well, how did you do this?” It’s true, someone just coming for the first time for two days won’t ask that, might not. But if they come the second, the third time, they’ll be asking it, because they themselves are going to have to organize communally with others, to get something done.

Wired News.

I’d never heard of this guy before, but I like this quote about Burning man:

Burning Man is the post-modern continuation of those ancient festivals-it is a miraculous manifestation of the “Archaic Revival” described by Terence McKenna. On an occult level, I almost suspect that Burning Man is creating a model, on the astral plane, for how all human communities will exist in the future. One amazing aspect of Burning Man is how the event penetrates into one’s dream life-after going there, I dreamt about some version of it almost every night for many months afterwards. I know that many people have the same reaction. How could the egalitarian, freedom-oriented, cashless, utopian form of Burning Man be implemented in a more permanent way, or on a larger scale? I have no clue.

Link (via New World Disorder)

I’m sitting in front of a sound stage in the middle of a horse pasture watching robotic kids shift and rotate to electronic music. A computer thumps out crunchy, mechanical melodies over the funky beats oozing from turntables. Neon drawings float under the black light from the plywood dance floor. Off to the side of the stage, a guy sits cross-legged and meditates. I’ve been up since 6:30 in the morning, it’s 2:30 at night now, I’m freezing, and have no plans of going to bed. Fatigue has given way to fascination. I feel great.
Read the rest of this entry »

Autonomous Mutant Fest is, in a way, an attempt to re-create what Burning Man was in the beginning. Personally, what I find attractive about Burning Man is how big it’s gotten. They build an entire city out in the dessert- that’s pretty impressive. Of course, I’ve never been so maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be or maybe it really was cooler in the beginning. At any rate, I plan on attending both Burning Man and AMF next year so we’ll see.
Link.

There was a conference on Permanent Autonomous Zones this past Labor Day weekend (the same time as Burning Man!?). Although the conference is over their website is stuffed with information. Link (via New World Disorder).

It seems Burning Man is no longer the autonomous zone it once was. This year homoerotic art was banned by local authorities, and many people were cited for drugs and other crimes. (link via Random Walks).

Burning Man has wrapped up for the year. Check out Wired News’ coverage Find the whole thing silly? Check out Chillin’ Women (link via Memepool).