Originally published at: Radically contagious: thousands seem headed for unticketed Burningman | Boing Boing
…
Part of me expects the Burners to know better than the Sturgis yahoos; part of me is unsurprised that they don’t.
Well… good luck with that
Brings a whole new meaning to Burning Man…
none of me is surprised.
Covidiots gonna covidiot.
Ok so, the lack of bathrooms is what gets me. Is there any sort of authority that can kick them out if they just show up? Because thousands of people in the middle of the desert with no bathrooms or running water in the middle of a pandemic sounds like maybe the worst idea possible.
Without basic hygiene, think about how many more interesting diseases they can spread, not just boring old Covid.
The official Burning Man works really hard to clean up after the event (not perfect, but they do work at it). I have no confidence that the unpermitted events will do the same.
Under Trump, the Bureau of Land Management tried all sorts of crap to harass Burning Man and attendees, and I expect those same people who did that still work for the BLM. The unpermitted events will likely give BLM more ammo to use against the Burning Man non-profit, even though they are not involved.
The question for me is whether Burning Man should black list the groups going out on the Playa without permits from the official Burning Man event?
If you bring it in, pack it out!
It’s not just going to be a MOOP problem, is it?
So, a grassroots Fyre Festival, then?
They would be absolute fools not to. I would wager good money that it’s not just “gotta be on the playa” that is driving a lot of interest, probably a lot of it is “There’s no rules now” (i.e. we can bring guns/fireworks/ATV’s). This, along with the probably thousands of literal piss and shit holes that will be dug, I’d be really surprised if Burning Man can recover from this, even with the disavowal.
I’ma predict that there is at least one confrontation between BurningMan refugees, and people who are going out just to stir the shit pot. There is a continuum (or maybe, a Venn diagram) of people ranging from attendees who are trying to promote the original tenets of BurningMan (clean up after yourselves, do spectacular art pieces, try to be kind to each other) and yahoos who just want to tear around on the playa, do things that would generally be illegal/in poor taste elsewhere, and mess with others not of their ‘in group’.
Covidman! Now with Delta!
So, what lucky first responder gets the call if a bunch of risk-assessment optimists out in the desert with limited planning ends up going badly?
If they don’t get lung damage from contracting COVID, they might get it from the amount of smoke in the Black Rock area from the California fires. The air quality is pretty nasty.
Porta Pottie camp for the win.