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I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

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Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

#71

Post by sandeepkd »

rightnutwingjob wrote: post #62
cromka wrote: post #60

I have attended festivals for more than half of my life and they're all suspectable to the same gentrification problem as cool neighborhoods: fun/artsy people create fun environments, fun environments attract others who genuinely appreciate fun/artsy but are professionals themselves, professionals attract other professionals but shallower with more money. Or, in short, they get hugged to death. Rinse, repeat. Same th…

Yep. These sorts of evens are better when they have a predetermined end date. Closing down sale, never to be repeated. Then the organisers can regroup and start something new. Rather than the inevitable alternative of morphing in to something unintended, undesired. Better to reminisce about good old days rather than the decay.

I wonder if the original organizers would have much say left if something becomes big enough and successful. It requires a very strong mindset to close something down. Makes me think about the batman movie debacle on some wanting to destroy Gotham city cause they think its beyond repair and then some other ones are hopeful to save it.

Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

#72

Post by fsckboy »

gkoberger wrote: post #49
ElProlactin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a bunch of people want to go to the desert with no cell phone service and just do their thing, why do we care? https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/burnin... > ...and life would be better if more people had the ability to do their own flavors of Burning Man. I'm biased and a bit amusingly jaded because I left the US many years ago and have been living overseas for a long time, so take my next pa…

You can't just post an article about pollution and use that as a trump card. The pollution that comes from the Burning Man artwork, which is the crux of that article, is less than one plane from JFK to SFO. If we're going to complain about anything, the flights to Burning Man dwarf the actual event. But even then, the week of Burning Man, only 0.03% of travel will be people going to BM. I get it, 70,000 people in one…

>Burning Man is _not_ the problem

Burning Man is completely discretionary, you need to compute the total discretionary carbon footprint, and then the BM carbon footprint

Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

#74

Post by HaloZero »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #34
HaloZero wrote: post #19

An aside though about the whole "lost its soul". I was looking up Marion Goodell's salary and it's pretty high. The Burning Man ORG spends a lot on salaries, especially since it relies on a mostly volunteer workforce. She and the C-suite for the Burning Man Org make like $300,000 plus. It's not a HUGE amount in San Francisco if you consider tech salaries but I parsed salaries of CEOs of arts organizations in Californ…

That's a huge amount even in San Francisco. Sometimes I'm shocked what working in big tech does to people's ideas about what a normal annual salary is. Burning Man is a once a year event. Being a c level for that is not comparable to being c level for a lot of other even non profit orgs not to even mention for profit orgs

I mean she is the CEO title, but even then she's still making more than MOST of the non-profits getting city contracts in SF. She makes 400k. The revenue for Burning Man is about 40 million you can compare here too.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/nonprofit-ceo-co...

Ex: Healthright 360 has 1600 employees and makes $145 million in revenue and it's CEO is still paid less than her. They provide healthcare and other types of care for people without insurance.

Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

#75

Post by supern0va »

rodrodrod wrote: post #24

Curiously, I found this 1995 SFGate article offering a related perspective: > Many participants tell me this is the last year the event will be bearable before it "goes commercial." https://www.sfgate.com/style/article/Communal-art-in-the-des...

And funny enough, John Law himself has basically been saying the same thing since the late '90s. He's been shaking his fist at this particular cloud for over twenty-five years, so I'm not sure why an opinion piece like this is even noteworthy at this point.

FWIW, for a lot of us, the magic is still there. Most of the city exists outside of the shiny Instagram influencers that seem to dominate the narrative. We're still there being gross and building shit for the joy of it with our friends.

Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

#76

Post by monkaiju »

raldi wrote: post #73

“Burning Man is supposed to be about anarchy!” “Cool, I’m going to fly in on a private plane” “No not like that”

I mean, if they relinquish their ownership of the plane and joined in with some sort of council that determined how to manage such assets I bet everyone claiming to be an anarchist would be fine with it. Anarchy as a political ideology doesn't mean no rules, it means no rulers.

Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

#77

Post by gkoberger »

fsckboy wrote: post #72
gkoberger wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just post an article about pollution and use that as a trump card. The pollution that comes from the Burning Man artwork, which is the crux of that article, is less than one plane from JFK to SFO. If we're going to complain about anything, the flights to Burning Man dwarf the actual event. But even then, the week of Burning Man, only 0.03% of travel will be people going to BM. I get it, 70,000 people in one…

> Burning Man is _not_ the problem Burning Man is completely discretionary, you need to compute the total discretionary carbon footprint, and then the BM carbon footprint

Okay, then it's at about 0.0008% of discretionary global emissions.

If we're going down the list of things to get upset about, Burning Man is pretty far down the list.

Let people have fun.

Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

#78

Post by EPWN3D »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #34
HaloZero wrote: post #19

An aside though about the whole "lost its soul". I was looking up Marion Goodell's salary and it's pretty high. The Burning Man ORG spends a lot on salaries, especially since it relies on a mostly volunteer workforce. She and the C-suite for the Burning Man Org make like $300,000 plus. It's not a HUGE amount in San Francisco if you consider tech salaries but I parsed salaries of CEOs of arts organizations in Californ…

That's a huge amount even in San Francisco. Sometimes I'm shocked what working in big tech does to people's ideas about what a normal annual salary is. Burning Man is a once a year event. Being a c level for that is not comparable to being c level for a lot of other even non profit orgs not to even mention for profit orgs

300k is a huge amount of money if you have no dependents. Otherwise it's comfortably middle class, but that's it.

Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

#79

Post by ElProlactin »

gkoberger wrote: post #49
ElProlactin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a bunch of people want to go to the desert with no cell phone service and just do their thing, why do we care? https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/burnin... > ...and life would be better if more people had the ability to do their own flavors of Burning Man. I'm biased and a bit amusingly jaded because I left the US many years ago and have been living overseas for a long time, so take my next pa…

You can't just post an article about pollution and use that as a trump card. The pollution that comes from the Burning Man artwork, which is the crux of that article, is less than one plane from JFK to SFO. If we're going to complain about anything, the flights to Burning Man dwarf the actual event. But even then, the week of Burning Man, only 0.03% of travel will be people going to BM. I get it, 70,000 people in one…

> The pollution that comes from the Burning Man artwork, which is the crux of that article...

Did you even read the article? It stated very clearly:

> With organizers themselves estimating that Burning Man emits 100,000 tons of carbon every year, it is clear things cannot stay the same on the playa.

100,000 tons total. Please don't cherry-pick one part of the article to make a point.

> ...and they clean up after themselves...

Except, if you actually did the research, you would know that there are lots of reports of trash being dumped in nearby towns, including Reno and Tahoe. It's not the straightforward "they clean up after themselves" you make it out to be.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/07/burning-man-...

https://www.rgj.com/story/life/arts/burning-man/2023/09/06/b...

> Why can't everyone just do what they want without us taking it to the extremes?

Who took anything to an extreme? Most of my comment was pointing out that in much of the world, particularly in places where people have way less, they find a way to enjoy life and have fun without events that have the environmental impact of a Burning Man.

I'm not calling for Burning Man to be banned. But what I think is extreme is the idea that, because the "world kinda sucks", the solution is for people to take a few days out of the year to go into the desert and let loose. Have a monthly BBQ with friends. Sing karaoke on the weekend. Take a hike every Sunday. Those things will contribute way more to a durable enjoyment of life than a Burning Man.

Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

#80

Post by burnt-resistor »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #34
HaloZero wrote: post #19

An aside though about the whole "lost its soul". I was looking up Marion Goodell's salary and it's pretty high. The Burning Man ORG spends a lot on salaries, especially since it relies on a mostly volunteer workforce. She and the C-suite for the Burning Man Org make like $300,000 plus. It's not a HUGE amount in San Francisco if you consider tech salaries but I parsed salaries of CEOs of arts organizations in Californ…

That's a huge amount even in San Francisco. Sometimes I'm shocked what working in big tech does to people's ideas about what a normal annual salary is. Burning Man is a once a year event. Being a c level for that is not comparable to being c level for a lot of other even non profit orgs not to even mention for profit orgs

Nawh, not even. The truth is it takes 550k/yr TC to buy a basic house ($1.6M) in exactly the neighborhood where I grew up in scrubby yards and broken sidewalks south San José. In SF, it takes 720k TC to afford a regular house ($2.5M). Boomer and Greatest generations got Prop 13 extra low property taxes (like $1064/y because it's 1.4% on $76k valuation) and then everyone else pays 1.4%/y (14k) on a million+ house at market value.
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