Intrepid Roadtrips: Burning Man

Given how much ink this website has spilled over Burning Man-related brouhahas, it seems only proper (if that word can ever be associated with us after last week) that we should write about the main event itself.

Full disclosure: this my ninth year attending the festival. I have drank the kool-aid, wiped my mouth, and asked for seconds. I am fucking evangelical about this shit. This is not going to be unbiased reporting.

Whenever people ask me what Burning Man is like, I answer: "It's like the world ended, and only 50,000 freaky, creative, compassionate people survived, and they built a city where you can basically do whatever you want." I've been all over the planet, and I can assure you, there's no place like this on earth. It couldn't exist. Nothing about it is sustainable. Except the feeling it leaves in you.

If you're like me, the "average" day there sometimes goes like this: you wake up a little after sunrise. You put on whatever the hell you please. You hitch rides on pirate-ship art-cars. You lounge in hammocks that have been suspended 20 feet high, while lunatics with hooks on their boots practicing "batmanning." You ride the naked slip n' slide at the Duck Pond. You go playa-surfing, riding around on a wheeled surfboard with a motorcycle engine attached to it. You give frozen Otter Pops to strangers who look hot. You make out with hot strangers. You watch flames erupt from the tentacles of a mobile steampunk octopus. You bike past guys in full matador-wear, swinging red capes at you and yelling "Ole!" You dance under the towering lasers of the sound camps, stretching across the sky like horizontal heat lightning. You find yourself nestled amidst the petals of a 40-foot tall rose, watching the sun rise over a life-sized Trojan horse. You feel like you've barely made a dent in the wall of fun and wonder before you.

And yet, people still ask why I keep going after so many years...

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•WHAT: What my crew of first-timers described as "the best week of their lives."

•WHERE: Black Rock City, NV

•WHEN: August 22nd - September 3rd, 2012

•$$$: Early tickets are $250, later tickets are $350

With Your Help, Unicorns WILL Exist

Normally I would never use intrepidLA as a way of pimping someone else's Kickstarter project, because that means money, somewhere, is not going to me. So when my friend Danielle asked me to help promote her campaign to build a mobile dance-floor shaped like a giant pink unicorn and bring it to Burning Man, I was like "Hell no, my website will not become a billboard for your harebrained schemes." And then she's all like, "I've got pictures of you, Haynes", and I'm all, "You don't scare me, that could be anyone's ass", but then it turned out that very few people have a tattoo of their own face on their left buttock, so...

Meet Charlie The Unicorn! Charlie began his life as a 1979 Chevy flatbed truck, and with your help, he will grow to be a 16-foot-wide, 20-foot-tall, neon pink, double-decker den of iniquity, completely with a DJ booth, a bean-bag lounge, and the head of the titular beast leading the way through the wilds of Burning Man 2011. (Check out his backstory here.) The crazed true-believers at Camp Charlie have already raked in 25% of their goal, and every little bit helps. Dig deep, fellow degenerates!

$10 gets you a mix from the camps DJ's. $25 gets you a daytime playa art cruise on the eponymous monster (or a jerk chicken BBQ dinner here in LA, for anyone who can't make it out to the playa this year.) $50 gets you the daytime cruise, AND your face on one of the giant lollipops decorating the vehicle. $100 gets you things that are not morally acceptable even in Nevada (check the website for more details.) Take a few bucks out of whatever you were going to spend on mescaline and fishnet tights, and help make a dream come true.

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• WHAT: Help bring Charlie The Unicorn to the Playa
  
• WHERE: On Kickstater -- here
  
• WHEN: Right now, bitchez, don't wait
  
• $$$: Bids range $1 to $500.