Photo by Sidney Erthal

There are a number of “SimulBurns” happening around the world … if you can’t make it to Black Rock City, but want to feel the Burn, and you’re near one of these areas, hook up! (Note that these aren’t official Burning Man events. Your mileage may vary.)

Location: North Bay Area B.F.H.C. (die guessing) — Undisclosed Location in Sebastopol, CA
Date: Thurs Aug 30 @ 4pm through Mon Sept 3 @ 4pm
Name: Captain Cluck
Description: This a rad, 3rd annual, 4-day, under-the-radar event on an awesome property with a superb cast of seasoned burners. Due to space limitations, this event is INVITE ONLY. We may already be maxed out, but if not, we will pull names from a wait list. If interested, please send us your contact info and a Facebook link and tell us why you are jonesing for a BM-like experience. Bear in mind, compelling theme camps or large pieces of artwork or other unique contributions to the event may put you on top of the list. Please send inquiries to: howhuman here: howhuman (at) comcast.net Thanks!

Name: Pete Wyatt
Event: Hekeburn
Location: The Domes, Waiheke Island, Auckland, New Zealand
Date: Sept 1st from whenever
Description: We are not going to Burningman this year instead The Man is going to burn here in our Home of the Domes. Grab your finest Playa gear and other essential supplies and head to Waiheke Island for a Full Moon and other burner mayhem. Contact Pirate Captain Lumos on +64210572722 or lumosnz here: lumosnz (at) gmail.com. PS: I will be taking a vehicle over to the island so I will have room for your extra gear (and I will sell it to the highest bidder upon arrival on the island).

Location: Central (contact for details) Christchurch Canterbury, New Zealand
Event: Burning Man sucks, so we’re not going!
Date: September 2nd 11am-11pm
Name: Hippie Tim
Description: A party to celebrate the burning of the Man while our friends with the means to do so enjoy what’s shaping up to the dustiest year ever on the Playa.

The Man burns at about 4:00PM NZ time so we’ll have it up on the big screen so we can all celebrate, hopefully it won’t be too dusty for us to be able to see it! And throughout the party we’ll have the live stream running on it so we can all check out the art etc etc, it will be as if we’re there!

Come dressed in your finest costumes (if you’ve got something that is still playafied then bring that!) and we’ll do our best to mentally transport ourselves to the Black Rock Desert. We’ll have a themed bar running and will be getting right properly day time drunk! We’ll have a BBQ going for dinner so please bring something to cook and share with everyone. If anyone has any installations they’re making for Kiwiburn then feel free to bring along models and drawings to share with everyone so we can all get excited!

Feel free to bring anyone and everyone whether they have been out to the desert or not to enjoy this lovely event! It will be a great chance to show newbies what we’re all about. Feel free to participate! This is a Do-ocracy, if you want to do something DO IT! Drop a line to hippie here: hippie (at) kiwiburn.com for more details.

Location: Thames Beach, London
Event: Balsa Blighty
Date: 9/1/2012 7pm – high tide
Name: Miss Cheeky
Description: Balsa Man London regional Tiny burn on the Thames beach.

Location: SF Bay Area, 20600 Aldercroft Heights, Los Altos, CA
Event: Summer Blaze: The Orphans
Date: 8/29/2012 – 10/3/2012
Name: Hibbard Engler
Description: http://orphans.kcd.com Summer Blaze: The Orphans
An Alternative to the alternative! We will have up to 1200 people gather at Lupin Lodge for a Burner friendly event. There are 30 artistic events and 12 DJ’s going on to handle the unticketed. The Blaze goes from Wednesday August 29th to Monday morning, September 3. Phone hotline is 408-310-5297 email orphans here: orphans (at) kcd.com

Location: Netherlands, Magneet Festival Grounds Amsterdam Noord-Holland
Event: Burning Mill
Date: 9/1/2012 23:00:00
Name: Marco Antonio Morales
Description: http://www.magneetfestival.nl/idea/burning-night We celebrate Burning Night at Magneet Festival honouring something unique to the Netherlands and relevant to this year’s theme (Fertility 2.0) in a uniquely Dutch interpretation of fertility: the ubiquitous Windmill, which has turned otherwise unusable land into fertile soil across the Netherlands.

The Windmill will be a beacon of expression and interaction – until September 1st. On this night come along wearing your best Burning Man outfit and *no shoes*, and we will set the Windmill alight after a celebratory ceremony of fire and non-amplified music. (drums, guitars and other instruments)

The resulting ashes will be mixed with fertilizer and a tree-pot built on Sunday, so the following weekend a meiboom tree can be planted to complete the fertility circle – just in time for all those returning from the Burning Man to join, adding their own ashes from the Man. Ribbons will be available where you can write your wishes for the coming year and tie them to the tree until the end of the Magneet Festival.

Get involved, participate, find out how you can help, dance around the fire – and make this Burn one to remember!

[Guest blogger Jennifer Scribner is a lazy foodie and enthusiastic Burner since 2006. As a Nutritional Therapist and the founder of Body Wisdom Nutrition, she specializes in helping people learn to prepare delicious whole foods to heal illnesses by healing digestive problems first. She wows her campmates and neighbors with seemingly gourmet meals that are actually based on minimal effort in the default world.]

The only vegetables I brought to my first few Burns were small packages of baby carrots. Anything other than that seemed like too big of a hassle. Why take time to fool with veggies on the playa when I want to be out participating? Plus, won’t they just go bad in a couple of days? I’ll stick to my string cheese and goldfish crackers, thanks.

Veggies!

By my fourth Burn I thought, “If eating veggies in my daily life makes me feel awesome, why would I give them up for the week when my body is exposed to extreme conditions?” I became determined to figure out how I could make eating veggies at Burning Man easy and convenient. That’s when I stumbled upon the secret: chop all your veggies before you leave for the Burn, then seal them up in plastic containers or Ziploc bags and pack them in your cooler. Read more »

Burning Man on the Brain, button by Editrix Abby

While Burning Man has gained a well-earned reputation for being one of the greatest parties in the world, it’s a somewhat lesser known fact that it’s also a crucible for creativity, innovation and intellectual discourse. We’ve done a round-up of all the workshops, talks, conferences (yes, conferences) and other intellectual pursuits happening in Black Rock City this year — turns out there’s a lot of ‘em! Read on, then get out there and get your cerebellum stimulated! You’ll also find a list of academic events on the back of the What Where When guide, which you’ll get at the Greeters Station.

(Please note that as with any “scheduled” event in Black Rock City, your mileage may vary. Camps move, times shift, weather blows things away, and people aren’t 100% reliable … so take this schedule with a grain of salt, and check in with the organizers directly if you want to make sure things are happening when and where you expect them to.) Read more »

Pop quiz: what makes for a solid playa conditions? Answer: A winter season full of precipitation, which compacts and solidifies the playa surface.

Whiteout Inside a Tent, photo by Joseph Pred, taken August 13, 2012.

Well, folks, due to one of the most anemic winters the west coast has seen since 1977, this promises to be one of the dustiest years ever in Black Rock City. If 2011 was your first year, YOU WERE BLESSED BY UNBELIEVABLY GOOD WEATHER AND PLAYA CONDITIONS. It was an anomaly at best, and it won’t be like that this year, no siree. Veteran Burners will tell you that dust is always an integral part of the experience, and it’s so very true … but as much as we revel in and love its alkaline awesomeness, it’s much less fun when you’re not prepared for it. Read more »

How important is it to NOT pass vehicles on Route 447 while driving to or from Black Rock City? Well, rather than our telling you, let’s ask Leslie, who has particular experience in this department: “I was struck head-on by a person passing and my car was left three feet shorter. I suffered unbelievable pain, spent time in a wheelchair and in physical rehabilitation as the result of his one bad choice to pass. Much of what was good in my life has been taken from me as a result.”

What’s the risk? She’ll tell ya: Read more »

Addendum:  We want to make sure you all know that our intention is not to screw over the buyers in this process, but rather to make sure they DON’T get screwed. Check the list for your ticket number.  If you purchased one of these tickets, please contact partiserv here: partiserv (at) burningman.com and we will assist you.

When our ticket office is alerted to situations where tickets are being sold for above face value, those tickets are voided and the ticket numbers are placed on our voided ticket list. If you’re wondering whether you might be holding (or are being offered) one of those voided tickets, you can find the (regularly-updated) list of them here on our ticket page.

Individuals selling tickets at above face value are notified that the ticket they purchased has been voided. If they can provide us with the original ticket and either proof that a sale wasn’t completed, or that a sale was reversed, they are considered for a refund. It’s also made clear to them that if they DID sell it, they should arrange to give a refund to the buyer, since they are now responsible for having sold something that is not good for its intended purpose.

If you’re holding one of these voided tickets, contact partiserv here: partiserv (at) burningman.com.

We came across Tex Allen and his awesome calling-cum-project through the magic of the interwebs, and we tracked him down to give us the inside scoop on the nose. Cuz we love the nose. Here’s Tex:

Tex!

It’s hard to explain exactly WHY the Nose and I’m not saying that as an artistic redirect, you know, to add MYSTERY. The truth is, the Nose just happened one day. Overnight, I just started wearing it out in public and three days later, it HAD me. My YES, the one thing that was SO easy to do and not only made ME happy, but transformed people around me with joy. Real joy. Let me say that when you’re presented with your YES, it’s not an easy handshake. The best analogy I can think of right now is having a floodlight flipped on, just above your head, in a dark room, while you were sleeping and someone pulled the covers off you. Then 5 seconds later, you find yourself sitting in a chair across from Morpheus, in the Matrix, chatting about Why? you wear a clown nose in public. 90% of the time. Yeah, that’s kinda how it felt then AND now. Read more »

And now for some ticket news. At this point, ALL tickets have been mailed out to those who purchased them — or they’re being tucked safely away at Will Call, if that’s what you specified. (If you have not received your tickets and are expecting them, contact our ticket support folks for help.)

Thanks to the fact that the BLM increased our population cap to 60,900 this year, we’ve got one more limited open sale of 1,000 tickets coming up this Friday August 3 at 12 noon PST. You must sign up beforehand to have access to the limited sale, and you can ONLY sign up during a twelve hour window on August 1 from 10am to 10pm PST — that’s TOMORROW– so, get ready! These tickets are non-transferrable, Will Call only, and yes, they will go FAST. More information and sign up on our tickets page. Read more »