Original subtitles

Yes, uh, we're going to take over the world.

When?

Sooner than you might think.

Welcome to Burning Man!

Oh, we got people coming.

-Welcome home. -How are you?

-Hello. -Oh!

Dust angels, please.

Roll over.

You gotta get the full package here.

That's it. Love the dust.

You may now ring the man's doorbell and tell him,

"I'm here to burn!"

Yell it out.

I'm here to burn!

Imagine that you are put upon

a desert plane,

a space which in itself

is so vast and blank,

that only your initiative can make that a place.

Imagine you're surrounded by thousands of other people,

that together you form a city,

and that within this teeming city,

there is nothing that's for sale.

If you've seen an aerial shot

of Black Rock City, it's a beautiful clock shape.

What people don't know is that it's an actual city.

There are roads, neighborhoods, and community spaces,

all designed to create

spontaneous interactions between people.

Have you ever been in a city

where you couldn't buy or sell anything?

When you give a gift or receive a gift from someone,

it creates an immediate moral bond with them.

That's, of course, where community begins.

This is an inhospitable,

natural environment that will kill you if you let it.

We live in a consumer society

and we're completely insulated from the realities of nature

in our own inner needs.

There's nothing like living through a catastrophe

with other people to bond you to them.

That's the point. We want that challenge.

Why do some of the most

talented, brightest, most creative people

come to our temporary city

in the middle of the desert,

work harder than they normally do in their jobs,

give up their scarce resources,

and call our little dusty city home?

What are they getting here

that they're not getting in our year-round cities?

People keep saying,

"Well, what does Burning Man mean?"

Burning Man leads people up to the threshold

of what religious experience is.

In fact, it gives them the experience pretty largely.

It is a city of imagination.

And imagination wants to be free and abundant.

And we're creating joy.

We're bringing connection.

In the default world,

people are more disconnected and lonelier than ever.

That's why people think of Black Rock City as home.

Four, three, two, one.

Ignition.

I don't think it's... I've got enough... Hang on.

Can I zip it all the way up?

People were saying no. Option down or up?

It looked a little uptight

when you got it all the way up there.

Yeah. Exactly.

-I am a little uptight. -I know.

Hi, everyone...

-Hello, people. -thanks for joining us for a second time.

We're so excited to share news

about what's going on behind the scenes

at Burning Man Project.

Without further ado,

I'll hand it off to our CEO, Marian Goodell.

Hello, everybody. I'm Marian.

We are on the road to making a decision

about whether we'll do Black Rock City 2021.

It takes a lot of energy to do this.

Go, no go, Burning Man. I have no fucking idea.

We've faced a number

of existential crises

over the years,

and, and the COVID pandemic has certainly been one of them.

The deadly coronavirus officially hitting the US.

In 2020, we didn't really have a choice.

We had to cancel.

And it was a... it was a huge letdown.

The theme for 2021 was the great unknown

because we had no freaking idea if we would do Burning Man

that year or ever again.

Honestly, you know, I'd say that feelings

were divided in the organization.

Do we want to be dealing

with people with bad COVID-19 symptoms

in the middle of nowhere?

Um, what feels successful?

Is a successful event that nobody died from COVID?

What is the thing that we're trying to prove by doing this?

The answer to that is to not do Black Rock City.

The reality is, we could still find ourselves in a situation

where we don't have enough money,

and we'll have to let people go.

And if we let the people on this call right now go,

I don't know that we can fire up the engines again.

That's still all true.

Here I go, first time back in the office.

Today's an important day.

We're going to announce our decision

about whether to do Burning Man or not this year.

I'm done waiting and wondering and watching people be tortured

as to whether we're doing it or we're not doing it.

Uh, we need to make a decision. There's no good decisions.

There's two bad decisions to make.

Marian's been CEO of Burning Man since 2013,

and I've been by her side,

running it with her, ever since.

Our board is evolving into a new sort of board.

We have a fair amount of new board members,

and we've not worked together as a team all that much,

certainly not with a crisis like this before.

They started asking a lot of questions recently

about whether we're gonna survive.

"Are the finances okay?" "Am I doing my job?"

"Is it gonna be safe?" "Are we doing the right thing?"

"Are we being responsible?"

It's kind of becoming pretty clear

that it's a lift that we're not ready for.

What if we cancel the event?

We need Burning Man to survive the pandemic.

And a lot of people around the world feel that way.

-Hi. -Hey!

Kimbal was a new board member.

His brother, Elon, had made a significant donation,

and Kimbal was representing that.

And he's been coming to Burning Man

for over 25 years.

My name's Kimbal.

I'm very honored to be here today with you guys.

Welcome, Kimbal.

You know, I really struggle

to describe Burning Man to people.

But the way I like to describe it is,

imagine the beach.

Some people like it, some people don't.

But would you ever say to someone

who has never been to the beach,

"You don't need to go see the beach"?

It is an experiment that is never-ending.

I think it means different things to different people.

For me, personally,

it is this amazing opportunity to...

once a year,

burn the past

and start again.

It's my religion. It's my ritual.

It's my spiritual calling.

And I never miss it.

Okay, so we're gonna, uh, turn it over here

to Marian and her team.

It's so weird to not be in front of a laptop, okay?

Let's just say that's where I feel weird for a moment.

Okey-doke.

So, the item at hand

is Black Rock City recommendation and discussion.

Um, our recommendation is that

there be no Black Rock City of 2021,

and, um, that we aim all of our efforts

for Black Rock City 2022.

Kimbal, you want to share just a little?

That's just a bad idea.

People will be depressed as hell because of this announcement.

So, be very thoughtful that this will traumatize people.

I found it depressing

and lacking in vision.

There is vision, and I've been thinking about this

-for quite some time. -Yeah.

Farhad?

I think it's an incredibly conservative decision.

Um, and Burning Man is not... That's not...

That's not the image of Burning Man.

We are radically self-reliant, we're civically responsible,

we are a communal effort thing.

30,000 people or more are gonna gather in the desert.

And as long as the 10 Principles are in place,

Burning Man happens, with or without us.

It is really important that we consider staff,

the 10,000 folks that through all of the surveys

and all the work we're doing,

there are 10,000 people that help run

all of the operations.

That includes greeters, that includes lamplighters,

that includes airport, that includes Burner Express bus,

that includes the box office.

And I'm touching on some of the areas that when we surveyed,

the box office was less than 20% of the people

wanted to come back.

The airport was less than 20%.

And these are volunteers.

These are not paid people.

There are gonna be 50 that...

No, 500 competing events on Labor Day weekend.

And what we're basically saying to the world is,

"Go try something else this weekend.

Please, please go try something else."

That sounds crazy.

The playa is the Vatican,

and everything else is a church.

I think, Marian, you're not challenging yourself.

I think you guys are, uh, you're giving up,

and you shouldn't be,

and I'm disappointed.

Burning Man was never intended to be safe.

And let's go have some fun on the playa

and let the cards fall where they may.

I think it'll be the best burn ever.

The first thing I want to say,

is it the same thing?

Is it Burning Man

if our international people can't be there?

-Is it Burning Man? -Yes, it is.

I don't think it is Burning Man.

Can I stop being interrupted?

Can I stop being interrupted, please?

You asked a question.

Okay, I'm not gonna...

If I ask another question, don't answer it.

Okay. Fair enough.

If you guys are all thinking that anarchy

and that cool, like, renegade shit is Burning Man,

-then you're missing the boat. -Go, Harley, go!

The thing about Burning Man that's beautiful is,

you can have that, because you have people

who trust each other and love each other.

And without the trust, and without the love,

and without the community, you cannot have that anarchy,

you cannot have that craziness.

And that's what this is all about.

This is my 30th year.

I feel like I get Burning Man. I feel like I know what it is.

I'm not sure everyone else does.

The man must burn.

The man must burn.

I have joined this board because the man must burn.

It will burn.

Black Rock City doesn't just pop itself up in August.

This is a $60 million event that involves hundreds of people

who part-time or full-time, work here.

Canceling again this year would mean zero income

for ticket sales and massive layoffs.

Outside of this boardroom,

nobody knows that Burning Man is canceled.

Not even our staff.

So, can you measure that space now

between Blue Oasis and Donkey Show?

Yeah, that's about 40 feet.

I lead the team that decides

where all the camps go.

And, I mean, I think this is a question I have for Trigger,

but those two are...

We have over 1,500 camps to figure out.

And, you know, when you're planning a dinner party,

when you're planning a wedding,

like, who's gonna be able to connect

and have good conversations, matters.

these four cars up here,

I think we're golden.

Marian is gonna make an announcement on Saturday.

I don't know if Burning Man's gonna be canceled this year,

so I keep doing my job.

That works, too.

You've got at least 10 feet there

to get in and out, back to this area,

and this is where your fence...

I grew up in San Francisco,

and my parents are immigrants from Burma.

Burmese culture is very conservative.

I mean, from my experience being gay,

and coming out, and, you know, it wasn't like,

"Oh, great. Let's..."

Full embrace. You know?

I worked for the city of San Francisco for a decade,

and they were really proud of that.

They were like, "Oh, you work for the city. Great."

So, I do tell them that I still work for a city.

Uh, it's just not the city they thought it was.

There's no better place to, like, find love

and fall in love.

And so, what I often say now is I went for the art,

but I go back for the people.

I actually met my husband at Burning Man.

I was a little bit more nerdy,

he was a little bit more carefree.

We were friends for years before that,

and Burning Man just allowed us to really connect.

I really hope Marian makes a decision soon.

It just feels like an elephant in the room.

As of right now,

the Burning Man community is building

and planning for a burn this year.

My name is Lindsay.

For the first 88 days of quarantine,

I had no human contact whatsoever.

Hey, guys.

Welcome back to another exciting day

of experimental psychology.

It was just me and the dog and an empty Zoom screen.

I'm a professor of psychology, but my passion is horse riding.

People that I meet at school or during school,

they would never know that I ride horses

or that I have horses.

I compete in an equestrian sport called reining.

It's really fun, really cool.

So, this is a lot of horse trophies

that I've won over the years.

My mom was the one that got me into horses,

and one of her favorite things in the entire world

was just to watch me ride.

She passed away in 2015.

It was six weeks from the time she was, uh, diagnosed

until she died.

So, pretty abrupt and unexpected.

We were very close.

We would talk all day, every day.

And now I'm here in these four walls,

wishing that she could just, like, tell me what to do,

or what decision to make.

Like, I have so much shit to do in life...

Which is basically, you know, what society is.

It's like, go back to work, get this done, get this done.

Oh, you're sad? That sucks. Like, go to work, cry...

You know, go cry in... in-in the car afterwards.

Like...

You kind of always have to be on.

When COVID first happened, it got pretty depressing.

So, during that time, I got into VR.

I had just started dating someone.

He had had VR headsets,

so we would go and hang out, and wander.

It's kind of like a Google Earth.

And we'd go to different locations that he had traveled.

One of the places that he showed me was Black Rock City.

And that's how I discovered Burning Man.

In my mind, I thought it was just people doing drugs

and having sex in the desert.

My perception of Burning Man totally changed.

When I discovered the burner culture and lifestyle,

that whole community got me through the pandemic.

I've never been to Burning Man in person.

One of the things I learned is that there's a temple,

a place to grieve.

Being at Burning Man

and being able to take some type of tribute or memorial

to temple will be extremely helpful to sort of find peace

and, and kind of let go, I guess.

It's something I really need right now.

The Temple Burn

is completely different than the Man Burn.

It's reverent.

It's a spiritual moment.

And it happens every year.

People often go to the temple

with messages to loved ones that they want to let go

or the energy that they want to release.

The temple was created

by David Best after a friend of his

passed away unexpectedly,

and he wanted to have a place to grieve.

Where do we go to grieve these days?

If you give me

the most painful thing in your life,

I'll guarantee that it won't come back.

And how I guarantee that is, I put it in a safe place.

I wrote it in the name of my mother,

of my father, of my... my best friend in high school

who was kidnapped and murdered,

along with the names of thousands of other people.

We build this thing to put our sadness,

the way that other people utilize their church,

or their community, or what have you.

He's created a sacred space,

is really what he's done,

and everyone has instinctively honored that.

We use fire as a place for healing,

not as a... a weapon.

So many people struggling.

There's a need for a place for grief.

Burning Man was never intended to be safe,

and... and that's frankly been a part of the appeal.

My projection is,

everything is gonna be back to normal by the end of July.

Uh, it could be the best Burning Man ever.

There is a huge number of people out there

that want to see Black Rock City happen.

I'm physically and emotionally exhausted.

I'd say this is probably the hardest thing

I've had to do.

When Larry passed away,

he was the chairman of the board,

and our visionary.

I want to introduce you all to some of the people

that helped create this community.

Marian ran the communications team,

she helped start the regional network,

government relations and everything.

And she was Larry's girlfriend at the time, so...

Marian's unique skills in... um, with money,

and business and communication seemed like reasons

that she would make a good CEO.

She was the executive arm

of Larry's vision, to some level.

And with the void of the spiritual leader of Burning Man,

they naturally turned to Marian.

And this wasn't necessarily her role.

What do I think Larry would've thought about this?

I've had a number of different conversations

with him in my head.

We do our job as planners this way.

You had to come here and you had to survive in nature.

And when people go through that,

it puts them in touch with other people

because you look and you see your neighbor,

and you know he's experiencing the same thing.

If we can figure out how you order a society

so that, like a Petri dish,

a culture will grow in it.

And that's where we stop planning.

Tell me how it began.

We're in the worst economic mess

since the Great Depression.

Prices are going up.

I see the lines get bigger and bigger

outside the unemployment office.

It's the land for the rich,

and the poor can go to hell.

Originally, it was a small group

in the underground culture of San Francisco.

Unlike now,

it's hard to imagine,

this city was, uh, in a deep financial recession.

All these old factories, buildings,

largely abandoned or destroyed.

And so, artists and pranksters, it was really easy to access.

The Cacophony Society

was a network of free spirits,

united in the pursuit of experiences

beyond the pale of mainstream society.

They were devoted to guerilla theater,

appropriating public places for performances.

It's complete anarchy. "A group of urban adventurers,"

is the way they bill themselves.

We did ride the cable car in the nude

on Easter Sunday morning.

What's the worst that can happen?

Are you gonna get arrested in San Francisco?

Probably not.

I'm here with my friendly weenies!

We would create a whole subculture about

moving through the world

in a way that you were not a consumer.

In a world where every value, every transaction,

every relationship is a commodity transaction,

there won't really be much of anything.

This obsessive drive towards profit.

And making fun of corporations.

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes,

working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.

Fight Club was based directly on Cacophony Society.

And SantaCon as well.

We were good at logistics for events,

especially outdoor, illicit, show up, do it,

get away before the cops come events.

In 1986,

I was living in San Francisco.

I'd had a very, very modest landscaping business.

And I had a friend, Jerry James,

who was a carpenter, you know,

and I called him one day and said,

"Let's burn a man on the beach."

I think he may have asked me to repeat my statement.

It happened to be the solstice.

It seemed like a, a good time to celebrate.

He wasn't much bigger than us.

But, uh, when we lit him up with gasoline,

he incandesced like a sun brought down to earth.

And I heard about a bunch of people

who were gonna go to the beach and burn a wooden man.

And I said, "This sounds very interesting."

The moment it was lit,

everybody on that beach came running.

What we had instantly created was a community.

It was a kind of Dada event

of construction and destruction.

Larry's brilliance was seeing

that light bulb moment,

watching everybody's faces in cultic fervor.

This hugely powerful symbolic connection

to their psyche.

It's very powerful.

It was our response to the fire

that made it significant, that invested it with meaning.

We were so impressed, we decided that we'd come back

and do it again.

Everybody get together!

♪ We are stronger ♪

♪ Than before ♪

In 1990, we showed up on Baker Beach

with about 900 people,

and this four-story wooden man.

This is Larry down at the beach. Can you hear me?

John, Michael and I carried the project on our shoulders.

Me and Cacophony, we were event organizers.

And that was the conjoining of the two groups.

That was a group effort.

Slow! Slow!

And the police came, and they said,

"Where's your permit? You don't have a permit."

We didn't have a permit. We were outlaws.

The most liberal city within the United States,

being San Francisco says,

"That's too crazy for us.

You can't do that here anymore."

It's an art project. It's responsible people.

Well, we would be willing to put it out without any kind of fuss.

Larry Harvey made a deal with them.

He said, "Okay, let us have a party around the man,

but we won't burn him."

Thank you, we appreciate it.

We did not burn the man on Baker Beach in 1990.

So, a few weeks later,

Larry Harvey, John Law and myself,

we decided to take the Burning Man

to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada.

I love that place. I mean, you don't understand.

I fucking love that place. It's awesome.

It was really a fantasy tableau that you could,

as an architect in your own mind, create.

It was a blank slate. You could imagine anything.

And I took a stick,

and I drew a line on the ground.

And I said, "On the other side of this line,

everything will be different."

This was a great piece of nothing

in which anything that was was more intensely so.

With a few prompts,

you could invent a whole world around yourself,

and there was nothing to contradict it.

We were great friends

in the middle of the most surreal place you could imagine

with absolutely nothing around us,

and no people anywhere.

It was fabulous.

Release your fear!

Come and be free just for, even for a short period of time

before we go back to our real lives.

There he goes!

Ray, let's take a look

and figure out what else we need to get to get ready.

Okay.

The first time I told my wife I was going to Burning Man,

I think she asked me what it was.

Then I think she looked it up, read about it.

"Burn life." That sounds interesting.

Ray probably has always had a bucket list.

It used to be running of the bulls.

That was the thing. He wanted to run the bulls.

Well, I vetoed that one because I did some research,

and found out life insurance does not pay

if you die while you're the running bulls.

Maybe we should just Google "Burning Man packing list."

Come on, man.

What? Well, you can't run out to Walmart,

you gotta make sure you got everything.

Go back up there, at the top.

-Moisturizer. -Mm-hmm.

Porta Potty-safe toilet paper.

-See, that's something. -Mm-hmm, okay.

Birth control, condoms.

You better not need no birth control.

Back... Back up.

So, okay.

We gotta think about clothes

and how many clothes you want to take.

Are you gonna be primitive and basic?

Or are you gonna be extravagant?

I don't know.

I might have a tutu,

'cause people are supposed to.

You're supposed to have a tutu?

Yeah, I think we gotta get a tutu.

Man, I saw a cute one in Target the other day.

I didn't know you needed one.

No, it doesn't have to be really cute. We don't...

Reina! Raylan! Come here for a minute.

Yeah?

Reina, sit here. Raylan, here.

Okay.

So y'all heard Daddy talk about

this Burning Man thing, right?

-Mm-hmm. -Y'all know what it is?

-No. -Not really.

They build this big city

in the middle of the desert,

and people hang out there for a week, pretty much.

So, they, like... There's no money exchanged.

It's like bartering, or just giving.

Decommodification.

So, it's like extreme Christmas.

Extreme...

-Okay. -It sounds weird.

-It sounds weird? -Yeah.

A good kind of weird, or a bad kind of weird?

A weird kind of weird.

-What about you? -It's weird to think

that Fa is going to something like this.

Why?

Well, 'cause, like, he's old.

Dude.

I am a retired combat veteran.

And I was a paratrooper.

You know, I'm the only Black person who lives out here.

Only Black family.

We've been out here for 18 years.

I'm surrounded by the most conservative,

bigoted, racist, homophobic...

And that's what I deal with on a daily basis.

I grew up in a ghetto.

I went from zero to barely graduating high school,

and going my whole working adult life

as a blue-collar infantry paratrooper,

to three graduate degrees, later on a Fulbright Fellow.

The challenge for me is... is mostly psychological.

I mean, after you've served in combat...

those moments come up.

I've got to face it.

I need something that really shakes things up at this point.

You know, the Burning Man Organization

doesn't actually put on Burning Man.

Everything is created by the participants.

We started a thing called a theme camp.

We got... Our whole city is organized around theme camps,

20, 30, 100, 200 people working together

to produce some kind of gift made through art

that they offer to a civic society.

There are camps that offer everything,

and all of it is given as part of their gift to the city.

This place is built by all of us.

Every person who comes here contributes something.

And so, it's easy to start to have

this strong sense of ownership

of what Burning Man is.

I'm Marisa Lenhart.

I have been going to Burning Man since 1999,

and I manage Thunderdome.

My friends ran a nightclub in San Francisco

called Death Guild, a goth industrial nightclub,

and they went to bring non-rave music,

non-techno music to Burning Man.

When Thunderdome came in '99,

it was the biggest dome that had ever been built.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!

When people think of Burning Man iconography,

they think "Mad Max" and they think "Thunderdome."

I think they just hold a lot of weight.

Two men enter, one man leaves!

Two men enter, one man leaves!

What happens at the Thunderdome?

Consensual violence happens at the Thunderdome.

We let people battle people that they know.

We will have people who think that they're enemies.

They're actually angry with each other.

And there is nobody who leaves that experience,

and doesn't hug, and isn't closer than they were before.

It's incredible.

After Burning Man put out their survey to gauge participation,

Thunderdome wrote a statement to explain our decision

not to attend the event this year,

whether or not it happens.

"Death Guild Thunderdome will not be attending.

"Burning Man at Black Rock City this year.

"We wanted to make this crew statement prior to

"and not as a reaction to

"any decision or announcement from Burning Man Project.

"Risking lives and participating

"in a non-essential event that is already lacking in diversity

"is unacceptable to us.

"Black Rock City 2021, if it happens,

risks being the whitest, richest event ever."

-Oh, my God. -"And we can't in good conscience participate."

Okay.

I don't even want to talk about Thunderdome.

Bunch of pussies.

I'm personal friends with her, or I was.

I kind of would like to have been given a heads-up.

I'm getting all these text messages from friends.

"Can you tell me where you're at?"

There are definitely some risks,

um, in not doing the event, for sure.

Um, one risk, for sure,

is that people would show up on the playa anyway,

and that could be serious stuff, like people with guns,

driving too fast, that aren't even burners,

that wanna come out and party

in the Black Rock desert for Labor Day weekend,

and they haven't been able to do it for 25 years.

Like, that's a real part of it.

If things go sideways while people have shown up out there,

um, the more we're gonna have to mop it up

to make it to 2022, absolutely.

Since 1990,

we have gotten a permit from the Bureau of Land Management.

And that relationship has had ups and downs.

But this is a typical thing that the BLM does for its safety?

-No. It's not typical. -No? Is it... But...

This is a... not a typical event.

No, no, no, no.

We pay them a permit fee every year.

Um, in 2019, our fees I think totaled, uh...

$4.5 million.

They keep taking so much money that we can't put it

to the sorts of things we'd like to put it to.

We're just paying them, essentially.

Now, we're at the point where we...

we deal with Washington, D.C.,

and we have expensive lobbyists.

A gentleman told me

that the federal government was messing with Burning Man,

and that Larry Harvey and Marian,

um, were coming to D.C.

to try and see if there's... they could get any support

for being left alone.

And I said, "Well, I'm familiar with Burning Man,

haven't been, but I would be delighted to be helpful."

And they said, "You know, you guys ought to come out

to Burning Man at some point."

And I said, "I've always been interested in it,

since I started hearing about it, and, uh, we'll come."

I think shaking hands is a perfectly acceptable way

of greeting people,

and hugging people you've never met before

is a little different.

It was great fun.

Just a wonderful collection of people.

And, it was...

I just decided at the time, I'm...

I'm coming back regularly.

Grover Norquist next on two topics:

the middle-class squeeze

and also for Grover, the Burning Man.

I wanted to finish off, though, by asking you,

you just got back from Burning Man.

Can you just tell me about... a bit about that?

Did you think that the anti-tax message

went over better with people

who were tripping on magic... magic mushrooms?

I think it helps, yeah.

The stereotype for Burning Man

is definitely that it's very liberal,

but I think when you scratch the surface

and depending on who you talk to,

it can be seen as fairly libertarian.

Nobody expects Grover Norquist to be here.

But he is here.

He's well-read, like Larry,

talking about Victorian literature

and magic,

and the two of them couldn't stop talking.

And all of it was about creativity and free thinking.

I don't know how many people have come up to me,

"You and I are the only Republicans here."

I said, "Yes, you're the 14th person"

who's said that today."

We still don't know whether Burning Man is on this year,

but here's what I usually bring.

Very nicely made cigars, Cuban tobacco,

made in the United States.

Um, and people love those as gifts.

People put a lot of time and effort

into some of the, um,

Burning Man jewelry that they have.

And I have... This is kinda my collection of stuff

that I, I got there.

And I hold on to it to keep in mind

if I could ever do something half as cool.

"Radical inclusion does not include Trump enablers."

Somebody had those.

Um, it's kind of contradictory, but, uh...

The first year I was there,

um, I stood next to, uh, Larry when it burned.

I trust that Marian is going to make the right decision.

People are doing a great deal of work just to get to Burning Man.

The beauty of an art car,

or as a mobile stage, is that it's, it's fleeting.

Just the fact that you have the freedom to go anywhere

and make it happen,

there's something very beautiful about it.

You know, something very fulfilling

that you cannot get anywhere else.

I grew up in Mexico City, and I became an entrepreneur.

I came to Burning Man for the first time in 2012,

and I was really impressed by the creativity,

in how, like, there is nothing to stop any idea of emerging.

I came back to Mexico from Burning Man, and I said,

"You know what? I want to make one of these cool,

self-sustained, like, stages that you see at Burning Man."

The first year that we brought the car was 2012,

and I think, uh, that the beauty about Burning Man is,

you meet so many people that want to just collaborate.

And since that year,

you know, we had like lots of photographers,

engineers, architects, all wanting to contribute.

So this is just a sum of a lot of people's work,

right?

In the early days of Burning Man,

there were people who came out to Burning Man,

who, for whatever personal reason they had,

had decided to make their cars into pieces of art.

And it really inspired a lot of people

to think of their vehicles as a, um,

a canvas for their personal expression.

And then the second wave,

you started seeing people do bigger things.

And some of the vehicles became well known,

not so much for their art,

but for their music.

There's Robot Heart, that has a big following.

There's Mayan Warrior,

a really impressive vehicle

that also has an incredible light laser show.

I've seen ones that,

more than a million dollars went into them.

And ones that probably took maybe

a few hundred dollars to put together.

Another way to look at Burning Man

is a giant sandbox,

and everybody brings toys to play.

There's something very beautiful,

something very fulfilling,

that you cannot get anywhere else.

♪ Our broken mind embassy ♪

I think it's one of the most irresponsible things

I've done in my life, financially.

But one of the cores of Burning Man

is the gifting economy.

We do this as a gift.

We work hard all year

to get our art car ready for Burning Man,

but we still don't know whether it's going to happen or not.

Acavallo was Quill's life's work.

It's shaped somewhat like a boat.

Started out as six life-sized steel horses

that go up and down and shoots fire out of the top.

It's a big bouncing jungle gym

for adults to be sexy and play.

The whole thing is built by hand from scratch,

made from dreams and sacrifice.

Quill Hyde and I first met when we were teenagers.

We were pretty isolated.

Just two hippie kids trying to make it in New York.

After graduating from Columbia Engineering,

and working in theatrical automation for 10 years,

I was looking for something life-changing and different.

A spark.

The first year I went to Burning Man,

there were these kids who had like a chair

on the back of a giraffe with a ghillie suit,

and there were computers...

and, uh, it was very like...

And I thought, "Quill has to come to this thing,"

'cause he was doing automation for Broadway shows in New York.

Things popping up and out of stages.

And it was a perfect marriage for his engineering

and his art brain.

That's what Quill needed.

Art spark.

I was looking for something else,

and I found it at Burning Man.

It takes tools to make stuff.

And dogs.

But he also had that, like, "win mentality,"

so he decided to "win" Burning Man.

That's what it takes to make stuff.

Quill decides to build the biggest art car

on the playa.

I just wanted to share...

an art car idea.

The carousel popped out of his mind.

That's a horse.

Look at that.

Easy, man.

That desire to create art for Burning Man,

I had to restructure my whole life to make that possible.

And that included the move back to my hometown in Washington.

We were able to, like, have the space to work on art

that we could never find in New York.

I pursued my career

in silk painting.

I've worn my dresses at Burning Man,

I've outfitted camps.

I make scarves for people.

This is not just a playground for artists.

It's our life support system,

and we've been waiting for two years to return.

This is what I love to do.

Prioritizing the art over everything else.

The org is supposed to make an announcement

any day now,

and, um, I really hope it happens.

Fingers crossed.

I'd say this is probably

the hardest thing I've had to do.

The grief that's gonna get compounded

on all the excitement that people have had

in looking forward to Black Rock City.

There'll be like grief, upon grief, upon grief.

I think this is the first time we're meeting in person.

Did you get any shots yet?

-I got two. -Are you clear?

I have one more week before I'm clear.

So you can stand as far away as you need to.

Later today, Marian will announce

whether Black Rock City is happening.

Not being able to tell the staff is really torture.

It's very difficult to sit and wait.

Apparently, they're going to make

some sort of announcement today,

but I have been watching my computer screen

all fucking day

and still no updates.

Here. Here's my Burning Man stuff.

Found it. One thing.

It's like the whole place

is like a Burning Man camp, you know?

Yeah, it's because my entire life

has become Burning Man.

Did you see my director's chair? Aren't I fancy? Huh?

Isn't that good?

I come from a fairly well-to-do family,

and when I was, uh, about 11 or 12,

we lost most of our... our finances,

and things changed very, very quickly.

I wanted so deeply to find a place

where, like, I didn't feel like I had less than,

or I was less than, or I was, um, weak and small.

And so I made myself as big as fucking possible.

A lot of people live this sheltered cicada shell life,

where their true self is hidden,

very, very small, deep inside of them.

And Burning Man is the only place that they can shed that.

Let's go. Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. Let's go!

Let's go.

Burning Man has provided me the knowledge

that there was a place for me, and that there was a world

that didn't have to be the world I saw.

-Where are you from? -Uh, D.C. Washington, D.C.

-I'm from D.C.! -Nuh-uh!

-Big hi! -Hi!

Hi, habibi. Ah!

It really wasn't until

I convinced my family to go to Burning Man,

that there was an incredible reversal of roles.

When I took my mother, my sister, her sister,

my... her... my aunt, my nephew, my sister's husband,

um, and I took them all together as virgins.

And I did it because I felt like

they would never understand me until I showed them Burning Man.

-Mama... -Faster.

...have you had a nice burn?

I've had a great burn,

and I've met wonderful people, like John.

My mother, who is 70,

she met a guy on Plenty of Fish that was also a burner.

So they made a date at Burning Man to meet up.

They had the best time,

and they've been together ever since.

Yeah!

The thing that she said to me was that, like, she didn't know

that she had adventures left in her life.

It gave my mother her life back, and it restored her soul.

Mom, are you having a good time?

I am!

You know, I might make fun of Marian.

I might make fun of other burners.

But I have nothing but eternal gratitude

to anybody who makes that place possible

because it provided that experience for my mother.

It's just a miracle.

I think a lot of people are gonna lose their fucking minds

if they don't go to Burning Man this year.

-Nice to meet you. -When you have moment,

can we put a microphone on you?

Oh, yes.

Alright!

Alright.

What do we got there?

It has an auto gain control...

This is gonna be a 10-minute piece, people.

-Great. -Not long.

Oh, my God.

I'm gonna fuck up.

I can see it now.

Yeah, Stuart, the problem with me not doing it,

it feels like a chick... I, like, chickened out.

Oh, my God. This is so hard.

Check one, two.

You gonna have your scarf on?

Is someone actually saying right now

that I shouldn't do the video?

That's what I said yesterday.

Should I not be doing this?

Fuck.

Hi.

We have some exciting things to talk about.

For 2021,

we know the need for community has never been stronger.

And building community is what burners do best.

We also recognize that the pandemic is not over.

But we've made a difficult decision,

based on the best information available to us.

We have decided to focus our energy

on building Black Rock City 2022.

It's too important to do half-assed,

so we're doubling down on next year.

We recognize your need to be in community,

and your desires.

So, we suggest that you create community.

Take this moment, gather together.

We're gonna celebrate Burn Week online.

-Oh, lame. -And offline.

So lame.

Oh, 2019.

The last burn we'll ever know.

That's not true.

No, we're not canceling Burning Man.

We're just not doing Black Rock City.

Remember, we will always burn the man.

Several of us came together,

and we raised $13 million of philanthropic capital

to help the org put the Man on in 2021.

You asked us to help, we helped...

and then the... you broke the promise.

And so that... That really carried

such disappointment in my heart.

It... It really hurt.

The Bureau of Land Management

has said public lands will be available all summer.

Sick.

So, wherever you are in the world,

take the 10 Principles with you.

Show up as a responsible burner.

-Yes. -Remember, leaving no trace.

In my very humble opinion,

she's clearly telling the Burning Man community

that the land is open.

It is up to you to be the best little burner you can be.

Leave no trace, bring the 10 Principles,

and go to fucking Burning Man without them.

For the second year in a row,

Burning Man is canceled.

But that is not stopping

some people from trying to throw

their own unofficial party in the Nevada Desert.

Sheriff's office has a message for those people:

"Don't."

Burners, they are trying to stop us.

All I know is that I'm going

because it's gonna be radically inclusive

and radically fuckin' awesome.

And if things go wrong, they'll go wrong

and we'll take care of it.

In my heart, it tells me

it's probably gonna be more towards

the shit-show side of things,

'cause there are some people who want it to go back

to what it was back in the '90s,

before it became such a structured festival.

Back in the old days,

we'd shoot guns.

Mobile shooting ranges,

wanting to blow things up on the playa.

Last time this chaos happened,

it was a huge disaster.

We'd go up there and drove

across the playa, fucking,

shooting guns out the windows, drinking wine,

and on mushrooms.

I thought, this is the most American thing

you could possibly do.

But in 1996,

horrible shit happened repeatedly.

Tents were on fire.

You cannot have anarchists

and chaos with 10,000 people.

It was an apocalypse.

If people try to do the burn

at this scale, without us,

people could die in the desert.