The future of Burning Man

Burners everywhere were frantically preparing for the playa, or scrambling to find scarce tickets to Burning Man, which had just sold out for the first time in its 25-year history. But when the board members who stage Burning Man gathered in the 15th-floor conference room in their new Mid-Market headquarters to talk to the Guardian on July 28, they didn't even want to talk about the event that begins Aug. 29. Instead, they wanted to talk about the future of the dynamic culture that this unique countercultural event has spawned, a future that has as much to do with San Francisco as it does Black Rock City, the temporal Nevada desert town of about 50,000 people that most people know simply as Burning Man. But their focus right now is on the new nonprofit, The Burning Man Project, that is being launched this week to manage the event and its culture well into the future. "We're planning for 100 years," Harvey said. Or as DuBois put it, "It's really not about Black Rock City at all, but how we look out to the world." Since taking over five of the top floors in the David Hewes Building at the corner of Market and Sixth streets — with The Burning Man Project office placed on the very top floor, over the many burner offices now busily dealing with more immediate tasks — their outlook on the world is downright panoramic. They envision a high-profile Burning Man Urban Center in San Francisco and other year-round facilities for furthering the burner culture, made possible by new funding streams they want to develop beyond the revenue from ticket sales, such as grants and perhaps even corporate sponsorships. Oh yeah, and as Harvey made clear in his April speech announcing the conversion to the new nonprofit, the six board members also want to cash out with significant financial payouts as they begin to relinquish control of the event in phases over the next six years or so...more

Ah those enviros and hippy types, always after the almighty dollar.