and from the first i heard of it, which was 6 or 7 years ago, i was suspicious of the whole thing being a poser fest. i always wanted to know why folks i talked to about it, who were soooo into it, would use up so much of their time, energy and money to create a "desert utopia" while doing nothing here in (my hometown) oakland to make it a better place to live. i imagine psychologists have a diagnostic term for this condition by now. since i'm new to this tribe, can anyone clue me in to what this might be?
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Re: never been, never wanted to go...
Wed, December 20, 2006 - 4:44 AMI guess it all depends on who you hang with. The people around me do all sorts of things to make my life better. I think if you knew different people your view might be somewhat different.
Paynie. -
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Re: never been, never wanted to go...
Wed, December 20, 2006 - 9:03 AMtrue enough, paynie. i do know wonderful people who do wonderful works who are also burners. i also know of people like the ones i described in my earlier post.
the story i was relating, and not very well evidently, is my first initial contacts with the burners of the day in my old neighborhood. i think the timing is key. 6 or 7 years ago was the height of the dotcom boom here in the bay area. i had just returned from many months out of the country. it seemed the dotcom thing happened, really hit, while i was gone. the neighborhood i moved into when i came back into oakland was new to me. and it had into had gentrified nice and crispy. i was, initially, clueless as to the enormity of the social change that was going on around me.
the people i remember talking to at that time weren't artists or musicians or activists, though i imagine they wanted to be or somehow thought of themselves this way. they worked 80 hour dotcom weeks and were trying to figure out where to spend all that dotcom booty. and how to be in the hippest, coolest spots. burning the man was evidently one of the biggies.
my sense of a timeline on bm is probably skewed, but i'm imagining this is where or just after the bandwagon effect really kicked in.
original point- these initial burner contacts soured any taste i had for attending bm.
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Re: never been, never wanted to go...
Wed, December 20, 2006 - 12:16 PMThere are stupid people all over the place. There's no stupidity quiz at thge gate. But anyone who goes that "just for a laugh" or because it's "trendy" gets their ass kicked by the elements and tends to go to Maui the following year.
People don't go and won't go often seem to miss the point. "Why bother to go to all that trouble when it's just a dust lake bed?" Well, it keeps the wannabes and part-times away. See? -
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Re: never been, never wanted to go...
Wed, December 20, 2006 - 12:42 PM"There are stupid people all over the place. There's no stupidity quiz at thge gate. But anyone who goes that "just for a laugh" or because it's "trendy" gets their ass kicked by the elements and tends to go to Maui the following year."
that's funny. and encouraging.
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Re: never been, never wanted to go...
Wed, December 20, 2006 - 1:07 PMwww.burningman.com/art_of_b...arts.html
www.thecrucible.org/
So don't go thinkin' BM has done nothing for Oakland. :) -
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Re: never been, never wanted to go...
Wed, December 20, 2006 - 1:50 PMwell, how much bm has done for oakland is certainly up for debate. i'd imagine that the people of oakland have done more for burning man than the other way around. the crucible is cool without bm, and fire arts, however interesting they are, don't necessarily get homeless people off the streets or give jobs to the unemployed.
i still do wonder about all the time, energy and money that goes into bm. it seems like much pageantry with very little long-term payoff in community well-being.
and, it seems that the event, which was once about burning the man, is now very much about the man.
i'd love to be wrong about all this. please tell me that i am and show me how.
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Re: never been, never wanted to go...
Wed, December 20, 2006 - 2:02 PMDo you really think that it's Burning Man attendees' job to get homeless people off the streets of Oakland?
Give me a break! Seriously.
So we should close down all the museums and art galleries in America and spend the money on the homeless? Yeah, that'll work.
"Pageantry" would seem more like a competition and that it certainly isn't. BM is an arts festival at it's heart. Yes, it's many other things as well, but one thing it isn't is a welfare system for getting the homeless off the street. -
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Re: never been, never wanted to go...
Thu, December 21, 2006 - 8:54 AMc'mon paynie. let's not get silly. i didn't imply that it was a welfare system, paynie, or that it should be. like the new pic, by the way :)
one of my my points, that i started on in the previous post, is that bmer's promote, at least the one's i've talked to and read about, creating this temporary utopian society. what i lamented was that, all the time, money and energy that goes into creating bm (and is made off of bm'ers) is taken out of oakland, where those things could be put to other uses.
you're taking it to another place, paynie. the place i thought we were going was you telling me how bm benefits oakland.
for instance, does it support artists so they can afford to live here despite the spike in rents and cost of living?
is there a bm non-profit or wing that connects artists with teaching jobs? zeus knows our public schools and community centers need them, and i imagine there are artists who could use the work.
where is bm's presence in the community?
if there is none, then fine. it is what it is. a big arts party in the desert. other issues, such as how authentic it is now compared to 10 years ago, we can leave for another day and for other people to discuss.
again, i am trying to get information, paynie. please educate me.
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: never been, never wanted to go...
Thu, December 21, 2006 - 11:20 AM
www.blackrockarts.org/
www.burnerswithoutborders.org/
".... taken out of oakland, where those things could be put to other uses. " - Yup. This is America and people are free to spend their hard earned cash however they wish.
It really isn't much different from 10 years ago, only bigger. -
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Re: never been, never wanted to go...
Thu, December 21, 2006 - 2:16 PM
".... taken out of oakland, where those things could be put to other uses. " - Yup. This is America and people are free to spend their hard earned cash however they wish. "
hard earned or not, people do have the right to spend money in most ways they see fit. quite true. i don't know what that has to do with what we're talking about, though. i never implied that this right doesn't exist.
i included time and energy in those things 'taken out of oakland', as well. i wish i had also included intelligence, creativity, problem solving skills, and desire to create community, for starters. you seem to be a little hung up on money, but i think all of those things are equally important. and no, there is no obligation, here in america or most other places on the globe, as far as i know, to use those things in any particular way.
thank you for sending the links. they speak to folks who are trying to take some of that temporary utopia out of the desert and into permanent real life.
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Re: never been, never wanted to go...
Thu, December 21, 2006 - 3:49 PMThere's a ton of people in Oakland who attend BM who do all sorts of things for the Oakland community, but you have no way of knowing who's doing what, because you don't know them personally. -
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Re: never been, never wanted to go...
Thu, December 21, 2006 - 10:09 PMand now, my friend, we come back to the almost beginning, where i said that yes, i do know wonderful people who do wonderful works who are burners. and i've been aware, even before you told me so, if you can believe it, that there are probably others out there who i don't know personally. again, i don't think has anything to do with what we've been talking about. mainly b/c these good people do these good things completely outside of bm, not as part of it, not b/c of it. bm is separate from it.
i don't think you really have an answer for the question i've been posing, which is why is bm good for oakland. why is it good for so many people to spend so much brain energy and other resources on this thing, what permanent goodness is left behind?
i think the main answer is that there really isn't much of anything. there's probably a certain amount of spirited networking, that i imagine the best of has coagulated into the orgs which are linked in one of your previous posts.
i think the rest of it is just a big art party in the desert, one that's become a whole lot more trendy and expensive to attend over the years. the temporary utopian thing i chalk up to escapism, or maybe it's just the theme of the party, but that's straight conjecture. and although art is art i can't compare bm to a museum or a gallery, which you did in a previous post, as none i know of charge $200 or more to walk through the door.
as for how bm has changed over the last 10 years, i think i'll go over to the boring man tribe and ask the folks over there what they think.
thanks for having this exchange with me, paynie. be well...rob
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Re: never been, never wanted to go...
Sat, July 19, 2008 - 10:38 PMI know this thread is a couple years old, but the best thing burners do for whatever town they live in is to leave for burning man. *grin* -
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Re: never been, never wanted to go...
Mon, July 21, 2008 - 12:20 AMMeg,
BM is like Christmas in August!!! I can find parking in the Mission and I don't have to wait forever at my favorite breakfast spots!
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