After his set (the end of which we listened to by biking next to the art car so as not to abandon our bikes somewhere random on the playa, we migrated to BAAAHS, where Alvin was playing and Afik was going to take over. He however had the treat to have Dave do a b2b with him, and it was a great set
lovely unbreathable air :)
good thing those things are somewhat rugged
Afik had fans :)
That was a great 4H+, thanks a bunch to Dave, Alvin and Afik for the great trance, which otherwise is somewhat lacking at burning man :)
Like the previous years, it was a lot of work to process/fix/sort all the pictures and write this summary report (Over 4000 pictures, trimmed down to 1831, and 532 selected as the better ones sorted in different categories, 263 are in this page because I'm not good at picking :) ). All pictures are geotagged, so you can click on them to see where they were.
As a way to say thanks if you enjoy the report, share it with your fellow burners, or friends who might be interested in burning man.
If you'd like to see reports from previous years, you can go to my main BM page, and especially if you don't know burning man, you should read my 2002 page which has more of an introduction.
If you'd like to use my pictures in a commercial setting, drop me a line to discuss and I can give you full resolution pictures (marc<at>merlins.org).
If you'd like to say thanks with cash, please donate money to one of the many camps and art installations that are often out of pocket after burning man.
Summary:
I again tried to enjoy the moments and interactions more than bike every last street, but I still covered a lot of ground. I biked 261km/162 miles in 7 days, not a record, but again I tried to enjoy the moment more, so that's a win I think :)
My RGBPanel P3 shirt has 64x96 pixels vs the 64x64 pixels on the neopixel matrix
sigh, I kept having to fix dead pixels
During the day, I was wearing my snowboarding gear :)
my night outfit was only good enough for night/sunrise/sunset (and I had to recharge its big battery packs)
The flight to BM was uneventful which is good (more pictures):
cool to see the DMV registration line from the sky
Anyway, let's get on with the pictures:
Black Rock City
After tying up the plane, we got greeted by the nice airport folks:
I was soon greeted at the airport by Paul, one of my friends and coworkers
The airport infrastructure has been improving every year:
they had a picture display, featuring some of my pictures
Another year, another Burning Man with its infrastructure:
Another Burning Man and Center Camp
This year, I probably found the most wildlife of any year:
we found a fearless bird
Of course, day panoramic views are fun, but night ones are nicer:
Random table I found in the middle of the playa at night:
Oh yeah, the alcaline dust, honestly what I like the least about BM. I bought my PM2.5 particle meter, and it topped out during a dust storm, saying "OMG, do not breathe this air". I had NOX95 filters and they were essential:
baseline is good
dust storm is terrible
Art
Sadly, I lost almost all my day art pictures, but here's one:
Night art was very nice (sadly my day art pictures were lost):
Paraluna was still very nice
this year's Centered was shorter than sonic runway, but still nice
you could still barely bike through it
Mega Mega was a fun art piece with a door code that you had to find. The code ended up being 8764, as shown on a truck in a video that wasn't always playing ok. The inside was hillarious:
this was the inside
The Folly was this year's deeper Playa Art of size:
lots of lines to get up, even on the first day
nice views from the top
I enjoyed the Xmas tree looking art:
Deep playa fence had lots of random small art:
Camps
Like last years, we stayed at Dustfish. I tried to improve our solar system for this year, and managed to make just enough to power all our electronics: my power hungry flashlights, and LED outfit, soldering iron, and laptop:
100W of panels across 3 panels was barely enough, especially with the playa dust
one meter shows the solar power flowing in, and bigger meter the poewr that flowed out the storage batteries
Dustfish had a cabaret show and musicals, including rent:
During the day, we biked around as many streets and camps as we can. So many, only a very few shown here:
one camp had rooms for loan with their own decors
nice, a camp to celebrate my now defunct favourite night club
fresh panties camp was a great idea
been there before, but what's not to love?
Circle J had a nice store I missed the previous years. Best store on the playa :)
My friend Tinic and his friends setup the excellent Duck Pond:
Thank you soft landing for the teahouse and the talks this year again:
Rick Doblin gave another talk on the status of MAPS
Thanks for what you do and all your efforts, Rick
Thank you to all the camps that were offering food in various ways:
this lost boat captain was asking for help
a nicely gave you yummy fish if you tried to help
lots of grilled cheese, a playa favourite
yummy meat in some camps
a Russian camp had lots of yummy Russian treats
pizza on the playa in the middle of the night, yum
More Camps at night:
its bigger brother
one camp had some very nice rooms to win for a night
Jennifer suggested we tried roller disco, which has been there forever, but I never tried, so we did:
Jennifer's backpack worked well at night
Black Rock Gladiators was rightfully upgraded from street F to Esplanade, good for them. Their announcers were fantastic:
Multiple camps had nice LED setups:
sadly, she was still working on the code at BM, and I didn't see this matrix runing later
duck pond still had their technically impressive massive RGBPanel array, similar to my shirt, but bigger
fun matrix
very cool LED cube
interesting design, which when rotating gives the one below
another nice rotating one, nice design
I enjoyed the LED Grand Piano again:
Another different Piano in the middle of the playa
Erotica Hypnotica had fun hypnosys show, what the video for details:
Illuminaughty had an LED meetup on wednesday night:
nice raver cube demo
One big highlight music-wise, was Dave Dresden playing great trance on the Root Society art car, and then B2B with Afik and Alivn on BAAAHS art car, with another great sound system. It was lovely being able to spend a sunny and then dusty afternoon with them (more on this page).
Root Society had a nice art car with great sound system
nice to have a picture with Dave Dresden
Then, we have the sound camps:
Root Society was in the Place of Opulent Temple this year
Slut Garden has powerful lasers this year
747 was back this year, stronger than ever:
People
As each year, people pictures:
We ran into my good friend Brian, running ESD coms:
Jennifer and I also got to try a one wheeler:
I missed some parades this year, but at least got the Billion Bunny March:
Night pictures:
Jennifer and I had a 64x64 RGBPanel backpack
Fire
Outside of the big fire, there are plenty of other ones, and some are quite impressive too:
The Lama Fire:
The Mega Cake had great fireworks:
Sympathetic Resonance:
The Folly:
that fire was dicey, and dropped a lot amber and flaming stuff into the crowd
looked pretty though
And there were many more, hard to catch them all:
Vehicles
As usual, I enjoyed all the crazy vehicles, art carts, and bike-like constructions :)
this is where all the street signs have been
awesome vehicle, like every year
cute
Of course, it gets better at night:
Some of my coworkers did those very cool high tech surf boards. We went to visit their camp:
they have their own radio system to track the boards across the playa, nice
I was lucky enough to try one out, they are tricky to ride and make sharp turns with
they look great at night of course
Mayan Warrior was still a favourite, with more upgrades:
But there are more, like Pulpo Mecanico and BAAAAHS:
Fewer fancy bikes than in the earlier years, but I found this one:
Of course, like everything else, it gets more fun at night:
fancy job on this bike
Temple
The temple had a weird shape this year, I can't say I loved it, but here are a few pictures:
The Man
Like every year, the fine folks doing a big BBQ on the man, were back. Sadly, I got a throat infection and had to get some medical help and sleep, so I wasn't up all night to see the sunrise:
in the meantime I'll take a grilled cheese sandwich, thanks :)
While my burn wasn't an all nighter due to my infection and need for sleep, it was still a great burn, and I left the next day to get home and get some rest (as well as better air for my throat).
Conclusion
Well, that was 11 burns, they're all different and for now I'm looking about next years', so I guess that's good news :)
I hope you enjoyed this report. Feel free to say thanks to me by simply sharing it with your friends, and see you on the playa in the future (or you'll see me at night with my lights).
In my quest for visiting Google buildings, I knew that we had a few buildings in San Jose, CA, but they were so close that I waited until I happened to be driving nearby. I did some evening, and found they were contractor buildings for support and shopping express from what I could see:
I generally avoid going to Pure, which is a shame given how close it is to my house, but the searches at the entrance take forever and are a serious turnoff. Not to disappoint, they took 10mn+ to take my entire outfit apart and told me I was somehow not supposed to bring a small point and shoot camera in. Uh?
As for SayMyName, trap is typically not my music, but I heard him at EDC and he played an interesting mix of trap with a few trance songs here and there, and put on a good show in general, so I figured I would go check him out. Sure enough, he was quite energetic and put on a good show:
We had already been at La Folie in the past, but it had been a while, and it's a good restaurant in SF, so we were happy to go back for our anniversary (a couple of days early):
