Got Tickets?

Tickets have started shipping – did you get yours yet? STEP is apparently still open, but anyone lucky enough to be selected from now on will have to join the 4000+ people in the Will Call line.

No big deal, right? Well, check this out. AJ Jennings has posted some drone footage taken last year at the gate on the way in. This will help explain to the 30,000+ n00bz Burgins Year One Burners why yesterday’s announcement about extending gate times is so significant.

When you arrive at Burning Man after your long pilgrimage to the middle of nowhere, be prepared for as much as 8 hours of waiting in line before you finally get in. Even once you get past the Greeters’ Station, ring the bell, kiss a hippy and make a Dust Angel, you could still be hours away from your camp. The speed limit is 5 MPH:

There were also citations for speeding, although the incidents reveal there seemed to be confusion about the current speed limit in Black Rock City. Burning Man staff (via the event stipulations) have agreed on a pre-event limit of 10 mph, but it’s possible the citations were given for exceeding 5 mph

BRC 2013; photo by Duncan Rawlinson

Black Rock City takes up almost 1000 acres. It is laid out in an arc, with a radius of 3250 feet. This means a diameter of 1.25 miles. The city takes up two thirds of the circle. This means the length of Lapis Lazuli, the outermost road, is 2.6 miles from 2 o’clock to 10 o’clock. These numbers are from the 2012 Environmental Impact Assessment on the BLM web site. According to Wikipedia, the circle diameter is now 1.5 miles. This would make the L road length  3.14 miles.

If anyone has any information about the length of the journey from the Greeters’ station to the L road, please share. I estimate it to be about half a mile. These distances don’t sound huge, until you try to drive them at 5 MPH with near-zero visibility.

Go faster if you want the cops to come to your vehicle with a sniffer dog.