Got back from my first Burning Man earlier this week. Some thoughts about it:

Art

People say that Burning Man has lots of "art". The word "art" doesn't cut it as a description. Black Rock City felt, to me, like Earth's only spiritport city. The city proper is mundane and organized, despite many anomalies. You'd never mistake it for a "normal" city, but it's not too far from the midpoint between an uncovered bazaar in the desert, and Deep Space Nine.

Photo credit: Chayna Girling on Flickr

The playa outside of the street "grid", though, is like a spirit vessel harbor. There are massive moving mutant vehicles, huge otherworldly "sculptures" that feel like living beings, ghostly wandering tea shops, drone swarms bearing messages, intricate meaning-laden towers, swarms of humans dancing mindlessly to leviathan heartbeats. It's shockingly dense with mindfruit. Last month it was emptiest desert. Next month it will again be emptiest desert.

I didn't take any drugs while there; nonetheless I found the experience totally overwhelming.

Photo credit: Duncan Rawlinson on Flickr

Culture

Burning Man's culture is diverse. I've heard there are 70,000 people present.

I observed some burner archetypes:

• "Old hand": 50-70, Someone who's been coming since like 1995. Friendly, chill.
• "Euro raver": 30-50, usually from Europe, goes to lots of rave-y events and loves the playa art. Friendly.
• "Influencer": 20-35, takes a bunch of selfies, always looks shiny. Seem to disappear if the weather is bad. Less friendly.
• "Techie": 25-45, probably lives a pretty active lifestyle within the confines of a career as a programmer. Friendly but also a bit aloof.
• "Kinkster": 35-50, here for sex stuff, of which there's plenty. Friendly (not in a gross way). Friendly (also in a gross way).
• "Radical leftist": 20-35, here for political reasons. Anticapitalist, social/environmental justice. Mostly wants to do things that are advancing their cause. Not actively friendly, but not actively unfriendly unless you do something objectionable.

Not everyone fits one of these stereotypes, but many do, and lots fit several. I'm sure there are dozens more archetypes; this was my first burn, and the second half was dampened a bit (literally).

In some respects, I felt very at home there. In others, very alienated.

There are 10 "principles", allegedly set down as a description of the community rather than a normative requirement: Radical Inclusion, Gifting, Decommodification, Radical Self-reliance, Radical Self-expression, Communal Effort, Civic Responsibility, Leaving No Trace, Participation, and Immediacy.

Most of these principles resonated extremely strongly with me. Several of them are something like "the best parts of Scouting": Radical self-reliance, civic responsibility, leaving no trace. And others are something like "fuck judgmentalness", which is an ethic I love: Radical inclusion, radical self-expression.

Some of the principles strike me as "interesting", without feeling like I fully understand or endorse them. Gift-giving and Decommodification are examples. I like the idea of building "weird" economies, on top of human values other than resource acquisition; I first came across this idea in the book Why Not Socialism?, and the idea has stuck with me.

But there's something kind of ironic about the tens of millions of dollars that got spent in the "default world" economy, in order to allow this brief glimpse at a thing that probably wouldn't work if scaled up, at least not naively. From outside, Burning Man looks a lot like one of the biggest consumption-festivals in the world. Nobody farms in black rock city. I don't think I saw anyone making things that people were likely to use in their "default world" lives. Certainly people take experiences and ideas back with them, and I'm sure that the value of that is huge. But some part of me wants to be like "call me when you can reach a critical production temperature, and can bring material gifts back for everyone else." I wonder what a cross between Burning Man and the Oneida Community would look like.

And some of the values feel like they kind of "don't parse", for me. I'm not sure what they actually mean, or what they're there for: Immediacy and Participation, in particular, don't grab me, despite seeming to be some of the most central principles for others.

Preparations

I loved the challenge of getting ready on short notice. I camped solo with a friend, not with an established camp. This was awesome because it let me try lots of fun stuff.

We opted to sleep on an air mattress in the back of my car, originally because this would let us better control the air quality in the sleeping area (as my car is relatively airtight, compared to a tent). I modified a car cover to put some MERV-16 filter fabric over the windows, so that they could be rolled down to give us some ventilation without letting in too much dust. Then I bought a ridiculous number of magnets, which I used to securely fasten the car cover to the car's body. This worked great; I was initially worried that the magnets might not be strong enough, but in the end I used something like 100 strong magnets and I think none of them came loose. Sleeping in the car was also the right call given that it ended up raining. I would not have wanted to be stuck camping in a tent on top of a foot of wet modeling clay.

We used aluminum netting for our shade structure, staked to the ground with U-shaped rebar. This also worked great, though if I do it again I'll want to ensure that the shade is high up enough to stand up properly underneath.

I borrowed some nice solar panels from my housemate, and bought a big AGM battery and inverter to connect them to. When it got wet out, I was honestly a little afraid of this equipment, but we disconnected everything and put it into a watertight plastic bin before the rain started.

I had hoped to set up a radio link to the Burning Man internet backbone, and I came quite close to succeeding at this goal. A couple times, I successfully got my radio talking to the backbone's radio with a low bitrate (you can see my improvised radio "tower" in the image above). But despite that, I was unable to get any actual packets onto the internet, and this ended up being a waste of time. I think it would have worked if we were closer to center camp. Anyway, it was fun to try to get it working.

Next Time

I'd love to come back again. I'd love to spend more than a couple of weeks preparing (I decided to go this year at the last minute), and maybe even build a contribution to the crazy spirit world. Hopefully next year.

Some are concerned about the air quality at Burning Man. There's lots of dust, and the dust is made of hazardous materials: gypsum, silica, and iron. This will be my first year, and I wanted to learn about the risks. These are some things I found. TL;DR: I won't be skipping the burn due to the air quality issues, but I will be trying to keep my sleeping quarters relatively free of airborne dust, and aiming to wear a P100 mask when the wind gets above about 20mph.

I considered two main types of risk:

1. Silicosis
2. General risks from dust inhalation

Silicosis

Silicosis is a very unpleasant and potentially deadly lung problem that can occur due to exposure to large amounts of silica dust. It kills tens of thousands of people per year worldwide, mostly due to occupational exposure. However, it only kills about a hundred people per year in the United States. This difference is partly because here, workers are usually not exposed to silica levels above thresholds set by OSHA.

So how bad is the exposure to silica dust on the playa, compared to occupational exposure limits? In a 2019 Bureau of Land Management report on "Public Health and Safety at the Burning Man Event", the authors note:

OSHA thresholds vary from the EPA and are based on exposure during an 8-hour shift over the course of a 40-year career...

An air quality study was performed by government industrial hygienists during the 2018 Burning Man Event. The study found six samples exceeding the OSHA permissible exposure limits (PELS) for respirable crystalline silica and three exceeded OSHA PELS for total respirable dust. Crystalline silica is a contributing factor to silicosis of the lung and a known carcinogen naturally occurring on the playa surface... All samples exceeding PELS occurred with winds in excess of 18–20 miles per hour. It is recommended that all exposed employees use an N95 Respirator when winds are in excess of 18–20 miles per hour and reduce the use of open-air vehicles.

Based on this, I think it seems unlikely that attending Burning Man for a week every year poses a risk comparable to e.g. working in an industry with large amounts of exposure to silica dust, especially if one takes precautions during the dustiest time.

Dust Inhalation

Separate from silicosis, high levels of particulate matter of any kind pose a health hazard. You can find data from 2017 showing hazardous dust levels (both pm10 and pm2.5) basically the whole week. Allegedly there was a nearby wildfire that may have made these numbers look worse than normal, but let's assume they're representative. The concentrations of both pm2.5 and pm10, throughout the week, put the AQI solidly in the hazardous range at many times, once even exceeding the pm10 AQI scale. This is concerning! However, a quick check indicates that the health hazard (at least due to pm2.5) is about as bad as smoking 1 cigarette per hour. This is bad (equivalent to about 1 micromort per hour), but it's manageable. You can improve matters by wearing a protective face covering - especially a p100 or n95 mask.

Taken together, these hazards suffice for me to take extra measures to protect my lungs while at Burning Man, but not for me to skip the event entirely. My plan is to wear a p100 mask whenever convenient (especially when the wind is up), and to sleep in my car with MERV16 filter fabric taped over the windows.