Today in off-brand Burning Man:

In our defense we didn't count on the
Administration just saying "fuck it."

Usually around this time you'd have to listen to stories about my yearly trip to Burning Man but because of the pandemic, the decision was made back in April to call off the week-long orgy of fire, EDM and, well, orgies. Remarkably though, I'm still going to talk about it. Sorry. Anyway, canceling was the smart move. Back in April there was still a lot of confusion about how COVID-19 spread and eighty-thousand people without running water was just asking for it even though at the time we thought America's pandemic response would probably get this thing under control by August.

Although in real life you can't
command Q your way out of it.

But here we are. Anyway, the Org, that is, the non-profit that runs Burning Man, put together a virtual burn; sort of a series of online events burners could participate in in lieu of the event. There were DJ's, workshops and fire spinners over things like Zoom and Twitch. I even went on some kind of virtual reality recreation of Black Rock City that simulated-I shit you not-the hours long wait in line at the gate. I guess if you want to re-live the absolute worst thing about Burning Man.

And you know, it was all really ambitious. Because yeah, in lieu of the actual event, why not try and come together and give the community a shared experience and that's super but I'm sorry, it wasn't great. I don't know if it was my meager tech-savviness, or a spec deficiency on the part of my laptop, or just more people trying to log on than the servers could manage but Saturday night's Man burn was...well...

Is buffer-full a word?

Pictured: Dumb idiots.

But hey, Burning Man's whole thing is that it's not a show, it's something everyone builds, so in many ways it's on me for not trying to make it better. That said, the attitude of make your own experience also unfortunately led to some people making their own experience. In San Francisco, a thousand dumb idiots showed up to Ocean Beach to have a completely socially un-distanced Burning Man party and start some super illegal bonfires.

Not all Bur-goddamnit, I'm turning
in to one of those people, aren't I?

The Mayor closed the parking lot and called out the burners as being "reckless and selfish" and yeah. Agree. Except this was Labor Day and Americans have been reckless and selfish throughout this pandemic, so how was the city caught off guard by people showing up to the beaches on Labor Day? In fact, lots of communities in the area closed their beaches, so it seems like not closing Ocean Beach was also reckless and selfish. And according to BAAAHS, a burner sound camp who threw one of the parties, the police checked in, but didn't tell them to shut down until 1 a.m.

"It's actually more of a sponge."

-Silver Man

Ok, yeah, there were absolutely burners throwing parties at the beaches over the weekend and they totally shouldn't have been doing that. But it's not like they were official events and as BAAAHS' organizer pointed out, there were tons of parties happening at the beach, not just burners. But the story is how burners showed up and threw a reckless and selfish party in the middle of a pandemic so I guess what I'm asking is could we stop painting everyone with the same brush?

Speaking of things we probably should have figured were going to happen either way, did you see that Burning Man kind of happened anyway? Or at least a bunch of people went camping in Black Rock Desert but it was definitely not Burning Man.

Pictured: Definitely not Burning Man...although you know, definitely Burning Man.

A feeling that would have evaporated
after two hours of no bathroom facilities.

Anywhere from a few hundred to a couple thousand people showed up with no organization, no porta potties and no speed limit making their off-brand Burning Man the most on brand Burning Man since the lawless burns of the 90's. And I have mixed feelings about this. The Org pleaded with everyone not to do this and I'm such a goddamn rule follower I wouldn't have gone, even if the pandemic wasn't a concern. But still, and maybe this is months of social isolation and the crushing anxiety of an upcoming and possibly rigged election talking but I feel like I missed out.

Anyway, good on them. I hope they had a good time, but even more so I hope they picked up after themselves. Like, seriously. One of the most important rules of Burning Man is leave no trace, and people spend weeks after the event walking the dry lake bed picking up every cigarette butt, bike part and whippet cartridge and leaving the place exactly how we found it. So if these people who defiantly didn't do Burning Man left garbage on the playa, we're all going to get blamed for it.

Pictured: that one time someone left
most of a plane in the desert.