Burning Man hackers get burnt Hundreds of entrepreneurial and impatient hackers have exploited a loophole to purchase early tickets to the Burning Man festival. Geeks meddled with Ticketfly's first-in-best-dressed system to jump the queue and push in ahead of the hordes hoping to attend the counter-cultural event. The Cosmic Corporation, the event's …
Yes, I want to spend a week out on a miserable, hot, flat, dry lake bed in the Nevada desert in the middle of summer, eating all that wind-blown alkali dust, surrounded by tens of thousands of weirdos, posers, and trust fund kiddies, and I want it so bad that I will cheat so that I can brag about getting tickets in the first minutes of the sale.
This event started as a pure anarchy thing with just a few free spirits, but now it has morphed into a crowd-sourced, tightly controlled, Phreakland-On-The-Playa. My brother attended it once, and the word is you better have a fully equipped caravan/motorhome if you don't want to feel like a refugee all week.
Apparently many make do with tents and such with no shower available, so when the daily water truck comes 'round to settle the dust in the "streets," these fine people run along behind to get a free shower. Apparently the need is very, um, strong...
Whereas in the UK we have festivals such as:
T-in-the-Park
70,000 + people in a muddy field in Scotland. You hope the mud is because of the rain and not the leaking urinal troughs. The port-loos are blocked with bottles of buckfast, so while you're at the stage having cups of 'hopefully' warm beer thrown at you, someone has decided to leave a cr@p in your sleeping bag.
or Glastonbury
175,000 + people in a muddy field in England. Where the mud is mixed with cow cr@p, yet diving in it for the press pack seems like a good idea at the time. The 10ft security fence is no help stopping the supply of drugs as the face painting tent is actually a secret tunnel.
Burning Man doesn't sound so bad.
T-in-the-Park doesn't even qualify as a festival in my book. More like an oversized gig full of neds.
I still go every couple of years when there's a band playing that I can't see otherwise but it has never really felt like a festival, not even when it first started in Strathclyde Park (yes, I am that old).
At least Glastonbury is still relatively friendly in comparison and it's undoubtedly a festival, cow-mud and all.
That said, I usually prefer smaller events, preferably under 10,000 people.
Of course you need a motorhome c/w food and water. You're going to be spending days in the f*cking desert.
Less telly, more camping trips. A bit of scouting or an outward bound trip or two wouldn't hurt either.
Azathoth's nebular nodes, is there anything more willfully stupid than a human being chasing a good time?
The stage is a flatbed truck, some noisy gensets in the back sponsored by a local building company.
10€ entrance fee to pay for dixie toilets and red cross and bring, whatever gets you going.
It´s still there, at least in Germany. Well you might not get the Stones on stage but its about the fun of spending a weekend with likewise people. And at the end you stack up the hay bales for sitting and sleeping comfort provided by the farmer on whos land it takes place and burn it so he does not have to clean up the mess. That´s a Burning Man. Some people want express themselves? Most welcome, as long as long as they clean up behind themselves. I organized some of this events myself and it always was a pleasure. Prepaid, select people, gathering point, travel by bus and ferry (to an island without mobile phone coverage), no blurring sound systems on the camping lot, free F&B, excellent.
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