Burning Man 2003: Beyond Belief

You can go back here for my index of burning man reports, and there for my 2002 report, which includes more details for the first time burner (and answers to common questions if you don't know burning man)

Pictures and Videos

I have taken 1021 pictures and videos and brought the count down to 658 (better quality ratio than last year, maybe party thanks to my new Canon S400 camera), as well as 79 mini movies
While I will give links to chosen sections of the archives, the impatient can find all the pictures and the small videos here
All video links require the Divx video codec. Go download it if you don't have it yet (mplayer on linux should work out of the box)

Summary

Just like last year, I flew to Reno, and in true burning man spirit, stood around with a "Need ride to BM" sign and got picked up by a nice girl who was driving there by herself. After a quick shopping stop, we were on our way there, and got there in a record time (slightly over two hours) on wednesday afternoon.
This gave me the chance to actually see the desert around BM since the last times I went through it, it was dark.

[picture]

Random factoids and picts:

I stayed with the great folks of the greeters camp and ended up doing a shift greeting new arrivals on wednesday, under a raging dust storm, causing us to greet people while wearing snowboarding goggles and a surgical mask to protect ourselves from the flying dust. We had to reassure virgins that the weather probably wasn't going to be that way the whole time
We had a good time watching the multiple outfits that Blondie was wearing every day, but then again, she came prepared
Turns out the weather was quite good: we had a little dust blown around here and there but that was about it. The only problem was the lack of moon, as announced multiple times, so if you didn't have any flashlight/glow stick/leds, not only you couldn't really see where you were going, but you especially became a liability for people biking around or driving art cars around (I know I almost hit some people while biking across the playa). Fortunately, there wasn't any real accidents that I heard of (outside of that very sad accident where someone fell/slipped off the back of her art car, and got run over by the trailer behind it, but considering how many art cars could have collapsed under weight, or things like the scaffold of death, or the thunderdome, we should be thankful that this is the only fatal accident in 15+ years of burning man (mmmh, I just heard that there were a few fatal accidents before, so now I don't know if it's true or not, details by mail appreciated)
But seriously, people, get lights so that you can be seen at night, don't just rely on luck, it always runs out eventually.
Like last year, I biked all the streets of BRC to go see all the camps, but this time I finished on saturday since some camps pack and leave on sunday. While I thought that there were too many camps with no theme or anything funny or interesting, the ones that did make the effort still were plenty (my favorite was probably still Dismal Town, NV with their great decors and radio-controlled rolling hay ball (video link))

You can find pictures of all the camps during daylight and night time
But if you ask me, nothing beats topless balboa lessons (video link)
When you're done chasing random blinky lights in the middle of the desert (or stumbling on a randomly placed parking meter, which I have to admit, really cracked me up), it's time to go check out the night clubs (one of my favorite aspects of Burning Man, because it's otherwise hard to get decent techno, and especially good trance around the SF-Bay area).
As usual, there were many clubs to chose from, your energy was the only limit.
You can find pictures and videos (with music samples) of most of the clubs here

I think my personal favorite was the Sumo club, please give kudos to the DJ and the people who put it together if you know them.

I would however also give a special mention to the Sol system camp for their Sonic Runway display, not only for their good laser work, but their array of pyramids with a chasing light at the top (very cool, but you kind of had to be there to really appreciate it)
While you'll see below that I have a lot fewer pictures from the man burn, all hope is not lost because I compensated by actually making it to the Critical Tits Bike Ride this year. I think my favorite remains the cheerleader (video link) that was there. T - I - T - S - TITS
After that you could also enjoy the various things that were on the playa, like the card castle, the wholly burger sign and stand
I also really liked the colored tree display
Night time was also time for some other beautiful sights, like pictures of the man itself, and pictures of BRC from the man
The man burn itself just wasn't as good this year as far as I'm concerned.
The "pre-show" was actually quite good and the performers did a great job.

The burn however had multiple issues.
- The lighting of the man broke again this year. WTF? I understand that most of the money doesn't go to the actual man structure and burn preparation, but you'd think that with more than 5 million dollars in ticket sales, you could allocate enough money to check and rehearse the arm lifting mechanism and make sure the lighting isn't going to break again as you move the arm?
- The pyrotechnics were clearly inferior compared to last year (although I can understand that, if the issue is all the resulting MOOP and the additional load on the brave folks that do all the cleanup)
- The burn itself unfortunately wasn't much to look at. The base put out so much smoke that from the front you could not even see the man burn at all, or collapse.
- It was also over way too quickly. Everything went down within a few minutes, which I guess was ok since you couldn't see much anyway. Last year was a much more enjoyable and lengthy spectacle (in comparison, I snapped more than 100 pictures then versus 15 this year)
It's a shame as it had started well after the nice addition of a red beating heart as the man was about to get burned.
Right after the burn, if you had circled around the fire an unknown number of times, it was actually quite weird and disorienting with the man being gone and most of your night landmarks being hard to see because of all the art cars surrounding you. It's interesting to almost feel lost in the middle of all those lights.

Anyway, we ended up finding out that Sandra Collins was spinning that night, so that sounded like a perfect way to finish the night.
I ended up not staying for the burning of the temple of honor for several reasons:
- A lot of people leave on sunday, so there is less to see anyway
- I just didn't like the temple of honor nearly as much as I liked the temple of joy from last year and I didn't think it would burn as nicely
- I had a plan to leave with a small plane back to Reno, and that had to be sunday morning.
But don't take me wrong, I had nothing against the temple of honor, I just wasn't inspired by it as much as the temple of joy.
I was however very impressed by the temple of gravity, which featured very massive rocks suspended over you, and was used as a place for several weddings.
Anyway, a few (too few) hours of sleep after the man burn, I packed up, and headed up for the BRC airport and got a ride back to Reno, after a loop around BRC, which yielded some great pictures (you can however notice a few holes on the playa as by sunday morning, when the picture was taken, some of the 30,000+ people who were there had already left), and I go home to hose all the playa dust off my stuff and post these pictures

Want more?

Here are a few links:

Go see all the pictures here
My other Burning Man reports
More will be added soon (submit your links to me)

Copyright

Please let me know if you'd like to take pictures or text for online or publishing use, I'll work something out with you, and help you get direct access to the raw pictures if needed.

Thanks,
Marc

2003/09/04 (11:34): Version 1.0