- Burning Man, an annual nine-day arts-and-culture festival in the Nevada desert, kicked off this past weekend.
- Among its 80,000 attendees, Silicon Valley elites and high-rollers are known to pay thousands of dollars for chef-prepared food, pricey campers, and luxury accommodations.
- One such campsite, called Humano the Tribe, was banned in February from this year’s Burning Man for violating the festival’s “leave no trace” rules and having Fyre Festival-like conditions.
- Humano the Tribe offered accommodations up to $100,000, and Burning Man attendees complained that the camp’s portable toilets burst into flames last year.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
A luxury camp attracting high-rolling influencers and featuring $100,000 campers won’t be one of the thousands of attractions at this year’s Burning Man.
Burning Man, the nine-day arts-and-cultural festival in the Nevada desert, kicked off this weekend. The desert city is expected to draw up to 80,000 attendees for its many art installations, musical performances, and general mayhem.
Despite organizers touting principles including radical inclusion and decommodification (there’s no money exchanged on the grounds), Burning Man has attracted Silicon Valley elites and influencers ready for a luxury experience.
But one such campsite, called Humano the Tribe, won't be at Burning Man this year. Burning Man organizers banned the camp in February after reports that it had not adhered to the festival's rules and was disrupting attendees' experiences.
In 2018, Humano the Tribe offered luxury tents and campers ranging from $25,000 to $100,000, as well as "raw and purely organic foods" made by private chefs, Mashable reported.
Meanwhile, the costs of tickets for this year's Burning Man range from $210 for low-income attendees to $1,400 for presale admission.
http://instagr.am/p/BnppOa1Agkp
But on top of Humano the Tribe's luxury offerings being shunned by regular festivalgoers, the campsite ran into some other major problems that have led some to draw comparisons to the failed Fyre Festival.
A Reddit thread last year outlined that the biggest issue was with the group's private toilets, which Mashable said weren't installed with proper plumbing and leaked black water contaminated with fecal waste. One Reddit user said they saw the Humano toilets "go up in flames" at the festival.
In its blog post announcing Humano's ban, Burning Man organizers wrote that Humano was a "strain on resources" and had a poor record of adhering to the festival's "leave no trace" policy of cleaning up and leaving the desert in a better state than it was found.
http://instagr.am/p/BZ1Y23Vle72
Burning Man organizers also described Humano as one of the many "turnkey" or "plug and play" camps, favored by "sparkle ponies," a term for the models and Instagram influencers who use Burning Man as a place for photo ops while dressed in elaborate costumes.
Burning Man is also known to attract Silicon Valley elites, whose most powerful members have taken up a luxury stretch of the festival dubbed "K Street Black Rock."
Tech executives including Elon Musk, Eric Schmidt, and the Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have previously been spotted at Burning Man.