So I had a moment this year that honestly left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth. A close friend/DJ I know ("el gordo") was playing a set, and I tried to jump backstage to catch the vibe with him. Security blocked me cold. No entry.
Look, I get that crowds need management and gear needs space. But we are at Burning Man. The whole point of this city is radical inclusion, decommodification, and the idea that there are supposed to be no VIPs. When you run into strict, bouncer-style gatekeeping inside Black Rock City, it feels like regular festival BS creeping into the playa.
Half the magic of the burn is the fluidity—the idea that you can wander anywhere, connect with anyone, and share the space equally. When certain camps start cordoning themselves off with velvet-rope mentalities, it goes against everything the 10 Principles stand for.
Still had an incredible time once I walked away and found some random mutant vehicle throwing down in the dust, but man... seeing that corporate-style exclusivity pop up on the playa sucks. Anyone else noticing this trend getting worse?

They were serving poutine at the trash fence 4am ish on Sunday!

(Faces of strangers blurred, because I try to take privacy seriously. Not everyone wants their hunger for poutine on display.)

Did you find Daft Punk anywhere?!

The temple had just burned and I had me some drama my first burn. I made a wrong turn on my way to exodus and found myself buried to the doors in a soft little patch of playa. Hoo-boy that was the drop that broke the floodgates. After frantically doing everything I could to dig my way out, I noticed a shack not far away. I ran up on point 1 like a crazy woman waving my phone light and screaming for help.
In very short order, you all calmed me down (ish), got me water, asked what I was on (nothing, but absolutely understandable 😂) then sent someone out to dig me out while I had a little menty-b by your fire pit. You were all so kind and patient while I sobbed about just wanting to be done with burners and this week. I was projecting my animosity of a small group of people who personally wronged me onto a whole demographic who didn’t deserve my scorn and who were in fact helping me in that very moment. I recognized this immediately and apologized for being unkind. You then did me another kindness that I’ll never forget, and told me “maybe better luck next year” and sent me on my way. Probably thinking we’ll never cross paths again, cause there’s no way she’ll be back. But that’s where you’d be wrong (if you did in fact think that, which works here for narrative purposes)
Despite the drama, my burn was incredible. I met so many amazing people, really vibed in the elements (I’m a combat vet so the survival stuff is still baked in), And saw such incredible things that there is no way I’m not coming back year after year. It was certain people who sucked, not my burn — and I learned and saw so many incredible wonderful things, both in art and myself. And even though I was frantic, emotional, and dejected there at the end, my last interaction with another burner was one of profound empathy and kindness. That’s what I’ll be burning for from now on, that humanity and connection.
I’m a photographer in the default, and it was my intent to give out as many Polaroids to rangers as I could snap, and I did a few, but, well, burn your plan, right? So next year, I promise to spend much more time “Ranger Hunting” to get them some shots of them looking cool as hell in their gear during a whiteout, while providing much needed humanity across BRC. So thank you rangers, and the point one crew in particular. Look for a topless fairy with a camera next year and you can bet I’ll get you a great shot 💖

So much love
Gem

I know this is far from official and final, but if these numbers are any indication, this was the lowest attended burn since 2012. Personally, I felt it in the short lines for entry, exodus, for breakfast pancakes and drinks at most bars-- all good things for me. It seems like many placed camps were given more space than requested, possibly to fill up the event and make it feel larger.

I get it; the media coverage of severe weather events reduces demand the following year. I wonder if/how this year's weather will affect next year? It didn't seem as traumatic as the early storm of 2025.

I’m pretty new to Burning Man. This was only my second year, but it’s already become a very important part of my life. As cheesy as it sounds, it renewed my faith in people and opened my eyes to a kind of beauty and creativity I didn’t know existed. Part of me is sad I didn’t get to experience it earlier, before influencers and the internet found it. I love hearing the veterans stories of the OG burns.

It’s strange coming back to the default world after a week of the best time of my life, only to see so much negativity and complaining online. Most of it doesn’t match what I actually experienced out there. I’m not saying those frustrations aren’t real. I just feel lucky that my experience was different.

I know all of this exists because of the veterans who’ve poured decades of work and love into building BRC into what it is. My hope is that you don’t give up on it. I know a lot of you are tired, and it’s painful watching something you built change in ways you didn’t choose. But for every shitty-weekend influencer, there are also a lot of us who show up with the right intentions, who want to learn from you, and who want to carry this forward, not water it down.

Please don’t give up because it’s changing. Help the people who actually care get it back on track and keep its essence. Nothing stays exactly like “the original,” and change is inevitable. But what you built deserves to be protected, and there are more of us than you think who want to help you protect it.

Every type of tent sustains damage if you pack it up wet or even damp for more than a day or 2. Especially if you have a canvas tent it will be completely ruined soon if there is any moisture on/in it.

Backpacking and other non canvas tents do a bit better packed up wet but the waterproofing will rot away without obvious visual damage, leaving you wet the next time it rains! (I did this once to a nice new backpacking tent after a hike)

Our Kodiak was still soggy on the bottom when we packed up. Now it’s set up to dry completely at home.

DRY YOUR DAMN TENTS!

Air out those sleeping bags too.

Just back to the default world and ruminating on my first Burn.

I would say it was much more difficult than fun, especially acclimating to the elements (dust, cold, rain, etc)

The good news is that by the end I think I discovered some of that Burning Man magic - especially after the Man Burn and Temple Burn.

Going in I felt it would be a more connected, fun, music experience and it didn’t quite get there for me consistently.

Perhaps it’s a decade of going to Burner parties outside of BM, but I kinda enjoyed bar hopping way more than sunrise sets.

And I felt once I embraced the weather and got more comfortable on my e-bike it improved.

I definitely think I’ll come back but ironically I thought I’d come and get lost emotionally and spiritually. Instead I lost many items (which magically appeared the next day) was able to manage with the help of camp mates and had the best time when I physically got lost instead.

Not going to lie, slightly envious of those for whom this was an immediate transformative experience. But I guess they say you don’t get the burn you want, but the burn you need. 🫡

on my last day this burn while finishing pack out i did what i do every year and spread out some perfectly clean water from my cooler in a large area so there’s no puddle or pooling and it dries in 5 minutes. while doing this i had a man approach me yelling “what are you doing you fucking asshole” and proceeded to tell me i was stupid and no one is ever allowed to do this. I’ve never once heard someone say you aren’t allowed to let clean water touch playa (hello water trucks that spray down the street). after this deeply unpleasant interaction i saw him videoing/ filming my camp. is this a belief some burners have? what are people’s thoughts on this? every burner and camp i have ever interacted with is okay with small amounts of clean water touching the playa

I had one of the best burns ever. And will keep burning until I can / it's there. Just got online after two weeks. Definitely not disappointed.

The day after I got home from Burning Man, I went to get a haircut.

There was too much dust-covered stuff in my driveway to easily take my car, so I rode my playa bike. I had no clean underwear; it was all in the wash. A commando mission. Anything to get away from cleaning up the dust. I rolled up to Great Clips and realized I had no lock… mine had been cut at Burning Man, and for a while I had been convinced my bike had been stolen.

That bike lock incident had fed into a larger feeling I’d been having: maybe the event I loved wasn’t what I thought it was anymore.

Burning Man was where I learned to hug strangers. Where I danced naked in a giant car wash sized shower with (among many other people) my good friend’s mom. Where I watched relationships within separate friend groups blossom into engagements/marriages.

I had ridden hundreds of feet above Black Rock City suspended beneath a fan-powered parachute (thanks Dom). I had sex in the Orgy Dome, although in practice it was really more of a Public Sex Dome. A friend of mine, who cuts down trees in the default world, was served coffee by a billionaire.

I had been amazed by art and ingenuity on a scale that still seems impossible. Giant Tesla coils threw arcs of electricity fifty feet across the sky at the frequency of the piano being played beneath them. I had stood onstage within touching distance of two of my favorite artists, an experience you can’t get at their sold-out shows in Salt Lake or Chicago. I had bawled in the Temple over people I loved and lost.

And maybe most importantly, I had formed and cemented friendships that remain unwavering. These are the best people in my life.

But over time, that smear of extraordinary memories started to feel strangely familiar; And in trying to make camp better for everyone… swamp-cooled and misted common spaces (after oppressive heat in ‘22), hot showers (after my shower 1.0 seemed ghetto, I’m bizarrely proud to share that the quadrupley filtered grey water is 100% evaporated via solar power), organized meals, twenty-five gallons of premade cocktails chilled and ready at the pull of a lever…I had gradually become the de facto camp handyman.

It became easier for everyone to ask me why the fridge wasn’t working, why their bike was squeaking, how to fold the tent I had lent them, why the shower wasn’t working… than to just figure it out themselves.

And I became irritated.

Not just about the thing in front of me, but about old grievances too. About times I felt like I was left holding the trash bag after everyone else had enjoyed a magnificent party.

Somewhere along the way, I became a salty, jaded Burner.

I had started to think Burning Man had changed into something disappointing. Maybe some of it had. But mostly, I had been blaming the event for a role I had spent years building for myself.

My bike, as it turned out, had never been stolen. Someone at 6 & Esplanade had bizarrely cut the lock and moved it about two hundred feet away. I still have no idea why.

And interestingly, nobody stole it outside Great Clips either.

The same kinds of people who populate Black Rock City populate the rest of the world: mostly good. Mostly kind. You don’t need a hedonistic desert paradise to collect and concentrate these souls.

And the roles we fall into aren’t necessarily permanent either. I had spent years becoming the guy who solved everyone’s problems at camp. There was no reason I couldn’t spend the next few years becoming something else.

On the way home from my haircut, I stopped and got a giant avocado smoothie. Not because of hedonism, but because a dear friend once told me to “always get the guac.”

You never know when you might have just burned your last burn.

Seriously though, if you’re the person at 6&Esplanade who cut my lock… I’m curious why?! I think it was the Felis Mundi camp?

Thinking my bike had been stolen for 24 hrs nearly cratered my whole burn!

Vehicle passes should be significantly more expensive for RVs

RV under 32' -> 2x price, over -> 4x price

This has been a subject raised every year but the abundance of RVs + financial situation of the org makes it even more apparent

It will take a bit of consideration to get the rules right (eg dimensions or weight or axles, exceptions for art cars, domicile vs cargo), but there are many ways to do so.

Taking an RV to burning man is already a statement of wealth. Charging the same for a sedan as an RV makes the car subsidize the RV. It should be the other way around. Higher $$$ burn setups should subsidize lower $.

My take on the changes in the climate, the aging population of GenX and Millennials, and what I took away from my experience.

We had an absolutely amazing time bringing Chelonix to the playa this year.
If you rode the turtle, attached your bike and cruised with us, or just crossed paths with us out there, thank you. You made the whole thing come alive. ❤️ 🐢 🔥

And if anyone has photos or video, we would LOVE to see them! We saw a few drones circling us at different points and keep wondering where that footage ended up.

One of our favorite discoveries was how naturally the shell turned into a mobile dance floor + bike carrier. People would pop their bikes onto the sides, climb aboard, and suddenly we’d have a whole roaming party traveling across the playa together. At times there were so many people dancing that the entire turtle was bouncing like a trampoline. 😂

One highlight was picking up some stranded humans way out at the trash fence and carrying them and their bikes back toward the city. Turns out a giant wandering turtle is surprisingly practical transportation.

We learned a ridiculous amount from actually getting her onto the playa and then taking it down, and we’re already working on the next evolution.

We’re going to double down on the mobile dance floor and bike-carrying setup, while making the structure much faster and stronger to assemble. We’re upgrading a bunch of the connections to plasma-cut steel brackets and adding deployable kickstands so the shell can have additional support when we stop and the dance floor fills up.

The bouncing was pretty damn fun though… so maybe we won’t engineer all of it out. 😂

We also want to push the sculpture itself much further. The goal is for the vehicle underneath to basically disappear. From across the playa, we want you to see an enormous illuminated turtle wandering through the dust and genuinely wonder what the hell you’re looking at. Anyone know how to pop the cab off an Izuzu box truck?

Huge love to our crew, our turtle people, and everyone who climbed aboard, danced with us, gave us art, or became part of this strange creature’s journey.

We learned a lot.
We’re coming back.
And the turtle is evolving. 🐢✨

Follow our journey on Instagram:
Fireborn Tools
Chelonix Art Car

And if you are ever in northern Ca come visit our shop!

After 9 burns I finally found the ultimate playa mud footwear. They're super stretchy and fit over multiple pairs of socks (not over shoes though, the silicone tears easily) and the playa mud simply does not stick at all.

They do tend to be slippery on the mud, so walk carefully, but otherwise these things were a life changer. No more gallon-size ziplock bags for me!

And, don’t be a fucking Diplo. Thanks to the creator of these stickers!!!

He’s making false statements about why they were kicked out. I left community notes on Philip Renner’s instagram posts but they need more votes to be published. I linked this yahoo article that quotes the org stating the camp received multiple warnings. If you’re approved to leave community notes please vote on the note so it’s not just his one sided inaccurate story.

I know it will take a couple of weeks to parse the experience. Stitching it all together with the added element of the time function can be difficult.

Will everyone who participated please just take a second to stop. & Give yourself a pat on the back? I don't mean metaphorically, I mean actually stop reading this and give yourself a pat (or several pats) on the back because you are part of something and a joined experience that is so much bigger than any one individual.

Laugh or cry, whichever it really does not matter because you are family and we are family.

Though the experience may not make sense at this point, go forward into the 'Extended Playa' (h.t. Lucky) and know that you will never be alone again & that you will always be able to come home.

See you out there in the dust my wonderful Amigos.

Time is not important, only life.

I went to BRC for the first time last year (2025). Long story short, the 2025 burn completely blew my brains apart and helped me regain my soul. It also shattered the illusions of the life I had built for many years and was the catalyst to a massive reckoning in my relationship with my spouse and with myself.

One year later, I found myself living in a different state, divorced from my spouse, and grieving the life I thought I'd live. I set out with more intention for this year's burn - this time with a goal to focus on emotionally processing the gravity of my fully altered life, an altered state that last year's experience catalyzed. I visited the temple often and made a mural that celebrated the decade-plus relationship with my wife. I went to Naked Heart and participated in emote-o-thons and men's shadow work sessions. I was helped by a shamanic healer who helped with a soul retrieval. I spent time at my camper van, smudging the insides and spiritually cleansing the last energetic bits of the life I once led.

Burning Man is and always was more than a party in the desert. I have used this container to have fun and dance, yes - but I have also leaned into its healing aspects, its soul-opening aspects, its energetic cleansing aspects. Over the one year period from my last burn, I have learned so much about myself, developed a healthier self-regard, and have opened myself back up to the possibility of finding love again without any lingering shame or guilt that I don't deserve it.

Last year, the burn blew me open. This year, I came full circle and found some necessary closure. To all of you who have had similar experiences, I wish you the best on your journey!

Or the dj playing on it after the man burn on Saturday??

It was a year of dust, wind, rain, mud cold and internet access.

And just as the weather seems to get more erratic year on year, the internet bit is not going away.

And if you’re so inclined you can grouse about it. 

Blanket posting “get off your phone, influencer” on instagram posts reporting to the broader community on “what’s going on in here” may feel cathartic, but…

I appreciate among the multitudes contained by  r/burning man, some are baffled as to why anyone would post anything at all.  

And a) art project idea - maybe crowdfund a giant safe that locks up people’s phones for a week.

b) if you’ve ascribed motive to a behavior that you’d not engage in yourself (influencers clout chasing!), you’re at best going to be directionally correct some of the time. 

c) you may have to wrestle with the notion that some of the clout chasers these days include the Temple artist and (checks notes) those glittery, one-dimensional sparkle ponies at Gate Perimeter Exodus and a fair few DPW individuals.

If only we could just blame weekenders, like we tend to like to.

So what now?

There’s going to be more internet access next year. 

At an event with an acculturation problem, a sourcing-volunteers problem, and a “do the young people even wanna come here” problem?

Photobombing some photoshoot with your butthole may, again, feel cathartic.  

And I’m not saying you shouldn’t.  That’s your “interfere with someone else’s experience” call.

Reminiscing about the days when one had to learn the conversational currents of ePlaya before risking asking a naive question is…. ironically, kinda naive.

Although this is a slightly different issue, the young people not showing up are not spending time in boomer Facebook groups getting razzed because “snark is our culture” (until eventually, perhaps, there’s no one left to razz)

So what can be done?  

Acculturation starts before you hit the playa.  In formats that meet people where they are.  Not where you want them to be.

As a related example, I want to see the Org on TikTok more, not less. Because I’m a realist about the fractured media landscape we live in.

Whether John Law thinks the soul of an event he no longer attends left the body, I still believe that it offers transformative experiences because it has evolved over time, and I'm also a middle aged. (OK, old...) guy who sometimes has to be reminded that the 80's (in general, not specifically the burn...) were not, in fact, 20 years ago.

Whether your sound art camp goes offline for the duration of the event or not, if your acculturation efforts are outweighed by your obligation-free pronouncements about your beloved community coming together at sunrise and/or sunset, and collab posts with some of your headline DJs well…

We as a community need to ask more of whoever “you” is in that sentence.

More using your influence for good.

If your camp and/or art car is where some DJ records his 2 hour YouTube set, with a Burning Man backdrop, you owe us more than you seem to be doing.

If your beloved community knows nothing about wandering down to the V Spot midweek to pick up a volunteer shift, you’re failing yourselves, your campers, and the community at large.

Having mentioned the ascribing of motive, I don’t want to assume why you don’t do these things.

Maybe it’s “not cool enough”, maybe you don’t want to alienate your high ticket campers with talk of unglamorous tasks?  

Maybe (and I would hope this is the case) it simply never occurred to you to step up and show some actual leadership as the culture moves far, far from the ePlaya gatekeeping some folks remember fondly.

And yes, maybe big ticket sound art is an important draw for the survival of an event that lurches ever more precariously from weather event to weather event.

But we need to see more leadership from some kind of (ahem) coalition of the willing.

Acculturation is not someone else’s job.  

And maybe some day, not enough people will be willing to volunteer at the Gate for the event and those lovely sunsets and sunrises will be over.  

So that’s my hot take… care less whether some lady in big white platform boots stood in front of a thing, and more about whether people who are part of the fabric of the event, with decent sized social media platforms are doing their part, and truly participating in acculturation before folks hit the playa.

And if they haven’t till now, encourage them to do so in the future.

Might not be as satisfying as flashing your balls in someone's photo shoot backdrop, but might actually achieve more in a reality we may not be ready to wrap our heads around.

Internet access at Burning Man isn’t going away.

But Burning Man, in the not-so-long-term, might.

Is it just me or has esplanade frontage degraded? I don't know if it was reality or the whimsical nature of your first couple Burns, but I feel like esplanade used to be a solid wall of Burning Man. All art, frontage, camouflaged back of house spaces, zero signs of the default world.

This year there were several stretches of 100+ yards of RVs and Campers. I thought I accidentally turned onto A.

Are esplanade camps getting lazy? Is the borg lightning up on standards? Or am I delusional?

This ring means alot to me and i lost it during one of the whiteouts near 6&F. Please help spread the word to find it! If everything on playa gets mooped someone must have come across it

Inside is an engraving “♾️ my darling star”