"I've spent the last week at Burning Man, surrounded by aging hippies, rich Europeans, fire twirlers and engineers gone wild. My skin is buried under a seven-layer dip of dust, sweat, sunscreen and spilled beer. My ears are still ringing slightly from the nightly barrage of electronic music. On a given day here, I've seen a lifetime's worth of bare cheeks. I am desperate to go home. But somehow, I'm happy."
"Listen: I did not come to Burning Man solely to have fun. I was sent here for work, by my editors at SFGATE. I am not a Burning Man person. If anything, I am - was - what you might call a Burning Man hater. It's not the mud, the dust, or the heat, or any of the other Biblical plagues thrown daily at this hostile landscape. It's the culture. Or what I thought it was, anyway."
"When I arrived on the playa, I asked a young woman, also a first-timer, why she came out here. "I don't know," she said. "I guess I'm just into yoga, and energy and stuff." Yoga, energy and stuff. Three things I am not super into. Any whiff of new agey-ness gives me hives. On the surface, Burning Man combines several things I dislike: goofy outfits, white dreadlocks and millennial kitsch."
A skeptical attendee goes to Burning Man for work and expects discomfort, heat, dust and cultural affectations. The attendee encounters a range of participants—aging hippies, wealthy Europeans, fire performers and engineers—and experiences physical grime and sensory overload from nonstop music. Initial cynicism and avoidance of Burner culture and its New Age trappings persist, along with discomfort around perceived millennial kitsch and tech-house music. Encounters with first-timers and moments of genuine human warmth, including being told someone loves the attendee's "energy," produce unexpected happiness and a softening of prior judgments.
Read at SFGATE
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