Suggestion for making burning man free

[Jordan 10-E]

The idea of a Burning Man with vendors turns my stomach.

First of all, one simple point, having vendors would not do away with the need for tickets, infrastructure, legal and land fees, etc...

More importantly, the idea of Burning Man is to foster REAL interaction among people and to bring about creative release through art. When money is introduced into the picture, it merely becomes an exchange of goods. Once the transaction has taken place between two parties, there is no more reason for the parties to interact. This I will argue is NOT real, significant, and meaningful social interaction.

Burning Man is not about the exchange of goods. It is about discovering what it means to be a human being and all the creative ways people are able to express themselves. It is about play on a primal and almost childlike level. It is a fantasy world of exploration. It can be deeply philosophical, yet is also very real and exciting. It inspires the soul.

Another thing is that preparation is a fundamental part of the overall experience. Without that preparation the experience would basically lose almost all of it's depth. Having to bring items of survival like food and water and shelter help bring about a sense of self-reliance and the need for community. We are so used to buying everything and doing nothing. Actually what most of us "do" is slave away most of the week in a job we hate and we wish we were off in some exciting place other than sitting behind a desk. We are slaves to money. Burning Man helps show that there are more creative ways of doing things.

The structure of Burning Man will help you discover things in yourself that may come in no other way.

I can only say that if you don't understand the "no commerce" aspect of the event then you will only begin to understand when and if you attend. There is sure to be something or someone there to help you understand. If you still don't understand after that then I'd put forth the idea that Burning Man is not really for you.

[Wind_Borne]

Did I mention that one year I lost my wallet, keys, and eyeglasses at the beginning of the event, stressed all week about it, only to find them in my glove compartment, where I had put them for safekeeping, on the drive home?

The first thing I do when I reach my campsite is to stash all my real-world-ware (wallet, cellphone, house keys, ...) in a spot in the car. Then I lock the car and forget about that shit until Monday morning.

Like technopatra , I once had a moment of anxiety out by the Rubber Duck near the trash fence at 3:00 AM about my house keys (did I remember to stash 'em?). But I quickly decided that if I had indeed lost them, it was too late to worry about it now. So there wasn't much point to think about it until Monday.

It turns out that I had stashed the keys on arrival.

[Zane5100]

It's too bad that Do_japan has not been back to post again.

I really wanted to find out if he was honestly curious about the "no vending", or find out if he was just another lazy fuckwit that expected to bail him/herself out of every difficulty by buying his/her way out and doesn't understand why the rest of us doesn't agree.

[KellY]

One thing that makes me think D_J falls in the "lazy-minded fuckwit" category is his lack of running the numbers. I mean, with the population numbers this year, six million in revenue sounds like a pretty good rough guess. Now the way a lot of events that have vending work is that merchants pay a percentage of what they earn to the event -say twenty percent ( I know lots of places have flat fees, but I've gathered talking to folks that the fees are often calculated to equal an average percentage of booths' revenue). So, in order to turn over six million dollars to the org, the vendors would have to do about THIRTY MILLION dollars of business in one week.

Anyone want to buy a twenty dollar glass of beer?