Wall Street executives at Burning Man? You bet. Though there’s nothing farther from the cutthroat, moneymaking world of Wall Street than the anticapitalist, anticorporate festival of radical self-expression known as Burning Man, we found several New York business executives and Wall Street types who are heading out West this week and staying through Labor Day. In the dusty, storm-ridden desert flatlands north of Reno, Nevada, is a place dubbed Black Rock City, home of the biggest little countercultural festival in the world.“I first went out there in 2003 because a classmate from the Stanford Business School had an art project on the playa,” says a senior executive for a major Wall Street company, who asked not to be named. One of the main draws for him and most of the other 50,000 participants expected this year are the massive collaborative art projects, like last year’s giant Belgian Waffle or the 50-foot stick figure that gets torched at the end of the week—the burning man that gives the festival its name.
“That’s the attraction. You create something from nothing, it’s remarkable for a short period of time, and then it’s gone,” says the executive, whose own participation includes cooking gourmet meals and distributing them for free to the masses. Other attendees contribute three-dimensional creative works, all of which result in a temporary psychedelic city of art and theme camps on “the playa,” the ancient lakebed where the event is held.
The Stanford classmate in 2003 created a multimedia installation that paid tribute to the sun, with trapeze artists performing at sunset, music synchronized with the sunrise, and, thanks to the creative tinkering of a couple of Silicon Valley engineers, a sound system with light projections. “You could actually watch the sound emanating through the light across the playa.”
But this is hardly the first time business people have attended the festival. Past attendees from the business world include Amazon C.E.O. Jeff Bezos, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Google C.E.O. Eric Schmidt, among others.
Of course, because the nature of Burning Man is to leave all commercial trappings behind, the organizers of the event are loath to tally the number and type of professionals in attendance, although a spokeswoman noted that “we do have a large group coming for their corporate retreat this year. They are building an art project.”
And the business folks who go (albeit anonymously, in the spirit of the event) say they get something out of this nonhierarchical, open-society environment. “When I return, I think I’m a far better executive, in terms of innovation and creativity,” says the senior executive. “And each year that I come back, I’m better for it. I think my team and my company are better for it. I stay creative and expose myself to new ideas.”
Leslie Bucksor, a partner in a New York financial-consulting firm, and his wife, Cory, will be camping out with his business partner this year; this will be his 10th year on the playa. And he may do business, if the necessity arises. In 2002, Bucksor left the camp three times to work on patent applications at Bruno’s Casino and Country Club, a nearby desert dive. “If it’s the only way I can be there, I will do it,” Bucksor says. “It’s such an important experience for me.”
Leaving the playa is the only way to conduct business in this commercial-free zone. Cell-phone coverage and internet access are very limited, and there’s no commerce whatsoever. The mini-countercultural civilization survives on gift giving; even bartering is not allowed.
But if no cash changes hands on the playa, it certainly does ahead of time. Going to Burning Man is not cheap, with presale tickets starting at $195 and going up to $350 at the gate. Plus, attendees have a massive preparation list: food, water, tents, sleeping bags, glow-in-the-dark anything, bikes, and goggles and dust masks for surviving the dust storms. And more and more participants are stepping up the experience with decked-out R.V.’s and luxury camps equipped with extensive high-tech elements and semipermanent buildings.
James Okura, who runs his own art-production company, sets up an air-conditioned fake-fur-lined tent and tunnel system he calls the Geisha House. “We provide chilled sake in an office watercooler and Japanese snacks. Our motto is ‘You are your own geisha.’ ”
“People have definitely stepped it up for luxury,” says a hedge fund trader in his thirties, who’s going this year with some heavy hitters in media and finance. “This will be my first year going in an R.V.: The Four Seasons version of Burning Man.”
Newbies are in for an exercise in surviving in a very noncompetitive, open atmosphere—attributes that are exactly the opposite of the Wall Street and hedge fund worlds. It’s not for everyone.
“The Wall Street crowd at Burning Man is very small,” says the hedge fund trader. “I would not encourage anyone I work with to go. I see how people are in this business, and I would not trust them to engage the experience as it should be engaged.” He went for the first time in 2001 with friends from San Francisco.
The trader is afraid the playa will be polluted with what he refers to as the “aggressive indulgence that is part and parcel of New York City, particularly of those in high-powered, high-paying jobs.”
Such people may have the wrong idea about the festival. “People think it’s a big drug-sex thing out there when it’s really, really not,” the trader says. “It couldn’t be farther from the truth.”
Celebrities such as Sting, Courtney Cox, and Robin Williams have been known to go in previous years, but there are no V.I.P.’s at Burning Man, and that’s part of its appeal. “The Burning Man spirit,” says the trader. “I’ve seen it overwhelm people out there. If everybody went once, the world would be a cooler place.”