Photo: Jon O.

Hi. Are you shy? Do you have a hard time walking into a camp full of complete strangers and striking up a conversation? Does the idea of walking out of your tent in a crazy outfit strike terror into your heart? Fabulous! My people! Read on.

The dumbest mistake I made my virgin year was expecting the playa to entertain me. Waiting for other people to reach out to me and draw me in, figuring all I’d need to do was show up and I’d somehow be assimilated into the vibe. I was intensely shy, and didn’t have much experience figuring out how to insert myself into an unfamiliar culture. I had all the stuff I needed to survive, except social skills.

Burning Man is full of 50,000 people who are more-likely-than-in-normal-life to want to talk to you due to our participatory culture, but they’re still just people doing their own thing. If you are desperately shy and walking around hoping someone will talk to you- it might happen, it might not. But if you make an effort to talk to other people, the results will likely be good. If you don’t make an effort, you might be disappointed. And lonely. And nobody wants that.

Here are some suggestions that have worked well for me, perhaps some might work for you too. I’ve managed over seven years at Burning Man to transform myself from a desperately shy person into someone who is less-shy and can easily talk to others. Most of the time. I still have my moments of wide-eyed terror and wishing I had a book to hide behind.

Smile. Seriously. Shy people are sometimes seen as angry, aloof, haughty, unfriendly, you name it. Pretend you’re outgoing. Yeah, it’s terrifying. Do it anyway. Burning Man is a good place to practice looking friendly. Smile at everyone until your face hurts. Then take some ibuprofen and smile some more.

Have some conversational starters. Not “lines”, per se, but there’s a few things I’ve found that most everyone wants to talk about. I have great success with sidling up to strangers and asking “what’s the coolest thing you’ve seen today?” or “what’s the best piece of art that you’ve run across?” or the like. Everyone has wildly different experiences! Explore them.

Wear It Anyway! If you bring costumes to Burning Man but then feel uncomfortable going out in them, wear them anyway. You might feel terrifyingly like the center of attention when you step out of your tent in something that pushes your comfort zone, but you look pretty normal to everyone else. Nothing is normal in Black Rock City, so the weird becomes the norm. People enjoy complimenting each other on costumes (if they notice you at all). It’s a good conversation starter, too. Ask that person wearing the fabulous costume if they created it themselves.

Float More, Steer Less. Try an experiment where you let the whims of others dictate your day. Walk up to strangers and ask them for a destination suggestion or an activity. When they say something like “go climb the Man base and check it out” or “go visit XYZ camp and do (activity)”, do it. Once you’ve accomplished that task, ask someone else. Repeat. Have adventures. Or get distracted on the way. Whatever.

Go to an activity you find in the What Where When guide. You’ll meet people there because you’ll all be doing the same thing. It provides context, and context is a great way to meet people.

Meet your neighbors in the next camp over. Bring a snack or a drink or just a smile. Ask where they’re from, how their journey to Burning Man went. Let them know that you’re there to help if they need anything. They will usually offer their help too, and often a seat in their shade and a beer and an invite to sit a spell and chat.

Go to the Volunteer table near Playa Info in Center Camp, and ask if they need volunteers anywhere. Many projects and departments need volunteers. Having a Job makes it easy not to be shy.

The Nuclear Option. If all else fails and you feel desperate yet brave, make a sign (hand-held or on a t-shirt) that says “I Am Shy” and go hang out somewhere. People will come talk to you because, well, shit, we’re all shy sometimes.

HUGS!

Photo: Phil Steele

Burning Man is the only city in the world in which each citizen is welcomed within its gates by intentional human contact. Often, this takes the form of a hug. Physical contact with other humans, even just the touch of a shoulder or a brief friendly embrace, is an incredible way to create connection. Hugs make our brains happy. What an amazing opportunity we all get, coming into this City in the dust, to be personally Greeted by someone volunteering their time to make sure we feel loved and invited to participate.

In the past six years volunteering at the Greeters Station, I’ve seen a lot of different interaction styles. There’s a huge spectrum from the wide-eyed Virgin racing out of the car to roll in the dust and bang the bell and hug everyone in sight and screech “I’M NOT A VIRGIN ANY MORE!”… to the frustrated, tired person who’s been driving all night and just wants their damned packet of dead trees and NO HUGS LEAVE ME ALONE WHY DO YOU WANT TO TOUCH ME.

Both are understandable. Our emotional baggage stored neatly in the overhead compartment can sometimes shift during transit to Black Rock City. Here’s the thing though- if you show up for your vacation to Burning Man, no matter how long you’ve been driving or how hellish your travels, and you can’t spare a moment for the person welcoming you? If you can’t bring yourself to relax, to let go, to make that shift in your brain towards Saying Yes? I’m of the opinion that you’ll regret it.

As a Greeter, I specialize in trying to gently break the brains of these tired, frustrated folks. I love them. They are my people.  “I understand that you’re exhausted and you want to go get your camp set up,” I say. I tell them that I’m offering them a moment of relaxation and welcome, a brief respite to appreciate that they’re stepping over that invisible line in the dust and into Black Rock City and that everything is now different.

But mostly, I tell them that they will regret not getting out of the car to hug me.

Once they’re in camp and chilling in the shade with a beer, once they venture out into the thumping heart of the City- they will perhaps think back to the very beginning of their time at Burning Man, when they told a stranger NO, I will not hug you. I will not take a moment with you. I will not accept your gift.

Occasionally, while I’m leaning into their cars and telling them this, some of them get it. I see them think for a brief period of time. The hand on the door latch. It opens. They extract themselves from the car and reach for me. We embrace. Sometimes, it’s sort of resentful. Sometimes they tell me they can’t remember the last time they’ve had a hug. Always, they say thank you.

The Greeter Station is your one, 100% guaranteed, invite to participate. Greeters don’t care if you’re shy, if you’re angry, if you have swamp ass from sitting in the car for 10 hours straight.

Hug your Greeter. You won’t regret it.

In the spirit of the revolutionary interactive art of Burning Man and Black Rock Arts Foundation, we invite YOU to come out to celebrate and pARTicipate in the Mobule experience! Get involved with this great Black Rock Arts Foundation grantee project and help make it happen! It will be in New York, Black Rock City, San Francisco and Los Angeles, SOON. You know you want to, so make it happen!

Mobule is a kinetic, multi-media, mobile, interactive street art performance that connects people from different cities. Check out theses videos about Mobule on the project’s website: http://www.mobule.org/

The artist, Ludale, needs 3 partners for each performance. It’s really easy to help! All you do is:

- Invite people to participate in an interactive game (invite them to try on the ‘space helmet’ and control the Mobule. Who doesn’t want to wear a space helmet?!?)
- Interview people
- Help video the interviews
- Help pack up the Mobule after the show

Don’t one of those roles sound just like something you could do?

Here are the dates the Mobule needs help. All performances are 9:00 pm – 11:00 pm:

Monday, August 15th
Tuesday August 16th
Brooklyn Bridge park – New York.

Friday, August 19th
Pier 14, Near the Raygun Gothic Rocketship, by the Ferry building – San Francisco.

Saturday 20th, August 20th
Mission Delores Park – San Francisco.

August, 29th – September 4th
Center Camp – Black Rock City.

Friday, September 9th and Saturday 10th
Santa Monica Pier – Los Angeles.

Artist Ludale and the Mobule also need places to stay during their travels, and need a ride to and from Burning Man any day between 8/23 and 8/28!

Can you help? Email ludo here: ludo (at) ludale.fr if you can!

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about when I hear that sound camps are scrambling to find tickets for a bunch of prominent professional DJs;  and that established burners who can’t make it in this year are suggesting that tickets be reserved for “hard core” burners who have put years in at the event:

The most counter-cultural thing about Burning Man is that it’s largely a production of amateurs.

The rest of it not only can be co-opted, but already has:  nudity and art and face paint and fuzzy boots?  Hell, you can get that on Cinemax.  DJs and electronic music?  That’s been so commoditized there are t-shirts of Che Guavara spinning beats.  Environmentalism?    That’s been going downhill ever since “save the whales” became a bumper sticker.

The vast majority of what happens at Burning Man can be replicated in a slick and professional way.  Yet every time that happens the results come out tasting like instant coffee.   McBurning Man is nothing like Burning Man, even if the french-fries are delicious.

It’s Burning Man’s rank amateur status that keeps it alive and interesting and challenging to the culture at large in a way that raves never were and TV can only dream of.  After all, the mechanism of appropriation is to bring professionals in and have them do things to spec.  Amateurs are unpredictable.  They’re in it for the passion, not the money, and they’ll follow their passion way past spec:  amateurs can’t be co-opted as long as they stay amateurs.  Burning Man can’t be co-opted as long as amateurs are the one’s really driving the culture. Read more »

Worse things have happened to people than not getting tickets.

Has someone hit you up for tickets yet?

Man … this is brutal.

I’ve been getting slammed with requests all day even though my relationship with Burning Man is so small that, if you were to look at Burning Man’s organizational chart, you’d need an electron microscope to see my name.  Which would be misspelled.  For people who are actually on the inside, I’ve been told, it’s been a flood of biblical proportions – one that might go on for 40 days and 40 nights.

Meanwhile the scalpers have sharpened their scalpels:  Burning Man tickets have been selling for north of $800 on eBay.  It’s as if Jerry Garcia had come back to play one more concert, with Justin Bieber.  Admit it:  you’d feel terrible about shelling out $800 bucks to see that, but you would.

Some of the people left out of the dust are newbies who planned for everything but the gate.  They bought their airfare, they got the time off work … but just never got around to buying a ticket.  Some are old Burning Man hands who ignored the warning signs:  months of rumors, a special note in Jack Rabbit Speaks, and constant questioning from friends about whether they’re in or out this year.  Either way, their disappointment is understandable but the reaction seems outsized:  things sell out, right?

Maybe.  But on the other hand, why wouldn’t people assume that they can get in?  Burning Man is founded on the notion that there’s a place for everybody:  it’s the kind of event where people just show up.  It grew from a rag-tag party where all 100 people knew each other to a 50,000 person happening because people just kept showing up unannounced.  Hell, a small legion of assholes showed up every year at the gate without a ticket, food, or water, under the assumption that the most hostile environment in the world will provide.  And it did.

That’s just the way it works:  you show up and if you run out of something you know the people at the next camp will let you use theirs.  Or there will be a theme camp giving it away.  Or a naked hula hooper will want you to have it.  For over a decade now Burning Man has been a culture of abundance.  The Man never runs out.

What we’re seeing now may be 21st century Burning Man’s first serious encounter with a culture of scarcity. Read more »

The panel: Curious Josh, Ryan, Liana, Kevissimo and Paynie

A group of super-talented LA photographers got together in a downtown loft the other night to talk about taking pictures at Burning Man, and there was a ton of helpful information you want to know about, whether you’re planning to bring a high-end DSLR, a disposable camera from the supermarket, or anything in between.

Here’s who was there and where to see their work. Take a look. These folks are seriously good:

* Ryan Jesena – http://tinyurl.com/6k8epez
* Curious Josh - http://tinyurl.com/66mdqt3
* Steve Payne – http://www.paynie.net/
* Liana Bandžiulytė – http://tinyurl.com/5s8ucmx
* Kevin Rolly – http://www.kevissimo.com

So what they have to say about photographing on the playa is going to be worth your while. And we’ll get to some of their tips in a minute, but there’s some fine print that should come first. Lots has been written already about the rights and responsibilities of photographers on the playa, and we don’t have to go over it all again. But what a lot of it boils down to is: Read more »

Evening crowd shot from the Cal Neva parking garage during Compression 2010. Photo by Bill Kositzky

Reno is blowin’ up. Living here right now is highly exciting, despite the recession that just won’t die. We may not be rich, but we Reno dwellers have great art at our fingertips and Burning Man culture up the wazoo. Who needs money when you’ve got art and fire?

For years now, the City of Reno has been working with BRAF to exhibit Black Rock City’s best artworks. This month, the Spire of Fire is in place and will be lighting up every Tuesday night as part of Artown, Reno’s month-long art festival. Read more »

This is Chris “Kiwi” Hankins, leader of the 2011 Temple crew, with a scale model of the Temple of Transition. Those of you who visited the Megatropolis installation in 2010 will recognize its colorful silhouette, which should give you a point of reference. Yes, that’s to scale.

Another point of reference: three times the height of Marco Cochrane's "Bliss Dance".

This year, a largely international Temple crew will construct a circle of six structures: five 58-foot-high outer temples, and a 120-foot-high inner temple. The temples will be connected with 60-foot-long walkways. The entire installation will have a diameter of 200 feet, and will be taller than the Man.

To build something on this scale, as Burners well know, you need an impassioned leader. Enter Kiwi, an experienced builder who’s been constructing the Man at Kiwiburn (New Zealand’s regional burn) for several years, and who has also lent a hand to build Black Rock City as part of the Department of Public Works.

Kiwi’s latest achievement is Megatropolis, which he and the International Arts Megacrew built last year.

“Before we were even finished building Megatropolis, I was already thinking ‘what are we gonna build next?’” Kiwi says. Later, as Megatropolis burned, a friend turned to him and asked, “What do you think?”

“I think I want to do the Temple,” Kiwi replied.

Read more »