Burning Man

What is this "outside"?

BM definitely requires a lot of time. Planning, purchasing, packing and waiting in line to get in!

View attached image.

A friend of mine played host to 3 people who traveled from Australia for BM. I had dinner with them one night and one of the guys had mentioned that he had actually sold both of his cars below market value just so he could raise funds in time. I was pretty shocked.

There are plenty of regional events through Europe that you could look into.

Lot's of people have that misconception, but there is no bartering at Burning Man. Only gifting.

My friend Jaemin wrote a wonderful piece on just that topic.

Burning Man is a GIFTING culture. Huge difference. And, in my opinion, this is EXACLTY what makes Burning Man such a special and life-changing place.*
Let me explain.
At Burning Man, the entire experience is centered around giving gifts to others: compliments, food, music…basically anything that can make someone else happy. You are literally surrounded by 50,000 people who all want to give with NO expectation of getting anything in return!
In today’s society, that’s nothing short of a goddamn miracle.

Lemme give you an example. Remember my politican client? Well, he went to Burning Man for the first time a few days before his wedding (I know, crazy, right?). In the middle of the desert, he came across this woman sitting at a typewriter.
Her gift was badass. Basically, if you told her about someone special in your life, she would write up a little 2 page story about them.

Well, he told Ms. Typewriter all about his soon-to-be wife. Five minutes later, she ended up handing him a story so beautiful and moving…he actually read the whole thing at his wedding! That was 8 years ago and he STILL has it with him today. Now how’s that for a gift??

You getting the idea a little bit? These gifts can be creative, spontaneous, and everything in-between. A few more examples:

• A camp that gifted freshly made french toast and cool mist spraydowns (who knew that’d be such a perfect combo?)
• A rollerskating rink just set up in the middle of the desert, complete with skates and disco music!
• Bartenders gifting snowcones if you gift them a song (we gifted them a 4-part acapella rendition of “Sexyback”)
• My friends and I were just chilling when a woman named “Vanilla Jesus” came up and gifted us a 30 min. interpretive dance on her bike…and it was EXACTLY as awesome as it sounds!
• I complimented this gentleman on his rad light gloves and he just took one off and gave it to me! No hesitation at all.
• A “Hug Deli” where you can order all sorts of hugs (I recommend you get the Long and Awkward Group Cinnamon Roll).

Take that awesomeness, multiply it by a million, and you’ll start to get the picture.

All the amazing art structures, the blasting music, the insanely-creative vehicles – all of the beautiful things that people built in the middle of the desert – they’re ALL gifts. No one is recieving credit or money for any of these things. They’re made purely to be shared, to be enjoyed by all.