Inflation Snuffs Out “Burning Man” Joy as Ticket Sales Plunge
All good things must come to an end.
When we covered the infamous “Burning Man” Festival, thrill-seeking California tech-geeks, Hollywood glitterati, and new millennium hippies were stuck on a mud-laden playa for days after heavy rainstorms stuck the region.
As an additional bonus, Nevada Rangers arrested many climate protesters for trespassing on tribal lands.
Good times, my friends. Good times.
But all good things must come to an end. Apparently, inflation is snuffing out the joy.
For the first time in over a decade, Burning Man is not sold out with just days to go before the annual festival in the Black Rock Desert.
Between last year’s record thunderstorm that swept the playa away, and rising inflation, ticket sales for Burning Man are the lowest they’ve been in over a decade.
We reached out to people on Facebook and asked if they were going to the festival this year, and why or why not. Responses included not being able to fit it in their budget this year.
Organizers of Burning Man are offering tickets to last minute buyers without requiring pre-registration.
Likely, the exodus of Elon Musk’s Tesla, X, and SpaceX teams is not helping . . . as the tech gurus had a lot of disposal income to squander on high-end desert camping. But, I digress.
It’s so bad, scalpers are getting scalped.
As of late Thursday morning, the organization still had general admission tickets available starting at $575 (plus a $55.75 service fee). The official site found itself with stiff competition from ticket resale sites including Vivid Seats, which had tickets as low as $258, less than half their face value.
Meanwhile, sellers outnumbered buyers on the Burning Man Ticket & Camp Exchange page on Facebook.
…The fall-off in demand is in sharp contrast to the years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Five years ago, would-be ticket buyers for the 2019 event were frustrated at overwhelming demand during the online sale, which strained the online ticketing system. In response, Burning Man pushed the Bureau of Land Management to allow up to 100,000 attendees at the event in the BLM-administered Black Rock Desert. BLM refused the request, citing the lack of security available over Labor Day weekend.
It appears long-time attendees are not sad about the development.
There is a sense among longtime attendees that many of Burning Man’s ills — from the much-loathed “turnkey” camps, with luxuries such as private chefs, to phone-toting tourists who exploit the event for its Instagrammable sights — stem from spectators who come to gawk at the spectacle, not participate in it. At a gathering that thrives off attendees’ labor, loafers are admonished for bringing down the vibe.
Wolf, a social worker from San Francisco, admits she probably qualified as a sparklepony during her first Burn back in 2010.
“It’s like, ‘I’m cute, but, oh, my God, I don’t have any water; can you give me some?’” she said, mocking her younger self.
This archetype, Wolf said, is what’s killing Burning Man. For Wolf, going to Burning Man is not about capturing photos of your outfit for Instagram. It’s about “radical self-reliance,” community and generosity.
“You bring things, not only to take care of yourself, but also to help others,” she said.
Meanwhile, the elite media struggle to find a reason for this development.
🚨For the first time in more than a decade, Burning Man is struggling to sell all of its tickets
Bloomberg seems befuddled by this
It’s called a tech recession pic.twitter.com/V8Flhw0B1y
— Amy Nixon (@texasrunnerDFW) August 9, 2024
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The same tyrannical people who want to take our gas stoves away from us and want to stop everyone from burning leaves or using bar-b-q’s because the little flames will roast the Earth, think they are really cool for foregoing showers, crapping in buckets, dropping hallucinogens, and having a gigantic bonfire in the desert.
If they have their way, this will be what we are going to end up like.
The playa is already wet. Last night it stormed over the Sierra Crest into the desert. Gerlach, NV radar for the latest lulz. https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/gerlach/89412/weather-radar/344284
lol climate change!
I saw an old boomer that lives not too far from my house heading out two days ago. He’s got a dedicated bus-camper that he parks on a narrow residential city street 355 days of the year – which creates a dangerous, bulging, bottleneck on said narrow street. Plus, he burns smoky wood in his fireplace all winter long – considering we can buy seasoned almond wood on the cheap here in the north valley? And his Putin/Trump 2016 sticker on his BM bus? I rate him as jackass supreme.
“For Wolf, going to Burning Man is not about capturing photos of your outfit for Instagram. It’s about “radical self-reliance,” community and generosity.”
OMG. Riiiiiiggghhhtttt.
That was a nothingburger compared to last year. Forecast is clear weather for the event.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/gerlach/89412/weather-forecast/344284
How does a festival of spectacular excess celebrate “radical self-reliance, community and generosity.”
The whole thing started with people in the Bay Area who grew up hearing their boomer parents yammer on and on about Woodstock.
Burning Man jumped the shark about 10 years ago. The old original crowd was replaced with new people and it became about taking selfies. The pandemic dealt a death blow that probably can’t be overcome. Its time to create the next cool event. Same thing happened with SXSW, the creative energy has been lost.
Maybe they could fill a big pit with charcoal and have BBQ Man.
Longer ago than that. It jumped the shark when it showed up on an episode of Malcolm In The Middle.
How about they do it on an island? Call it something like “Lord Of The Flies”.
Guess Jets can kinda breathe sigh of relief that Rodgers will be in training camp until season starts.
Most of these people don’t live anywhere close to the poverty line and those that do, don’t care about inflation “they just live and be, mannn”.
I think this is more about the disaster of last year’s festival than anything. They could also be busy in their day job of paid protesters.
“As an additional bonus, Nevada Rangers arrested many climate protesters for trespassing on tribal lands.”
To be fair, the perps were not BM attendees, they were out there specifically to harass the BM attendees. I wonder if one of the reasons for low ticket sales this year could be last year’s proof that BM has become a juicy target for annoying protestors?
I had to look up sparklepony. The illustration was a photo of Bernie Sanders.
Wolf talks about self reliance then admits she ran around begging for water.
Her point is that Burning Man “taught her better.”
BTW: I still get the giggles when I watch the Reservation Cop plow right through the barricade those eco nuts put across the road and then putting them on the ground at gunpoint. Screeching “we aren’t violent” didn’t help much. lol
Inflation stops a monkey pox vector. Silver linings, everyone.
Burning Man has never been my style at all. I have always laughed at the pretenses, and still do. So no one was more shocked than myself when, on the way home on a road trip three months ago, I detoured from Reno, went to the site, and came away with something highly positive to say about Burning Man.
The salt flat was as clean as clean can get. Really, folks, they just about went over it with tweezers. I am a cigar smoker, and actually picked up the remnants of the two tiny matches I had thrown on the ground after I lit one. I couldn’t find a single scrap of litter or debris, and I was looking for it. There were tire tracks, but not deep. I was informed in Gerlach that the playa also attracts a lot of dirt bikers, so not all the tracks were from Burning Man.
One reason those tickets cost so much is that the organization pays a lot of money to have things hauled in and out, including cleanup and disposal. The Bureau of Land Management watches them like the proverbial hawk, and they know it. They tout their volunteer cleanup after the event, but the real work is done by contractors.
The Black Rock Desert is way, waaay out yonder. I have long been in love with the high desert for its stark landscapes, its emptiness, and its solitude, and that place is one of the best empty spots in all of America the Beautiful. Some people would be bored, but if you like it you won’t just like it. To me, the idea of being there with 80,000 people on drugs (maybe 70,000 this year?) is a nightmare vision, not to mention missing the whole point of going to the Great Nowhere to begin with. But it was cleaned up. Oh boy, was it ever cleaned up. It couldn’t have been cleaner than it was; on a scale of 1 to 100, I give them a solid 100.
Normally, it is empty. When I visited one afternoon in the middle of the week, I was the only person on that playa, which is beyond gigantic. So big that you see the curvature of the earth. When it’s going on, Burning Man occupies hardly any of it, which gives you an idea of just how vast it is.
I will never attend Burning Man for the reasons I gave, but I went there to see for myself if their “leave no trace” tagline is true. It is true on steroids. They really did clean it up, and I give credit where credit is due. As long as they keep doing that, then Long Live Burning Man. I will still chuckle at the pretenses, but we all have them.
This is America, and we are free to have a laugh. But I came, I saw, I left. I’m not sure how much I like the Burners, but I do respect them.
WHAT in hell did I just read???
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