One of the awesome features of Burning Man the past three years has been a Boeing 747 hauled into the playa in ever-growing pieces by the Big Imagination camp.
Playa - (geography), also known as an alkali flat or sabkha, a desert basin with no outlet which periodically fills with water to form a temporary lake. Dry lakes are often called a playa in the southwestern United States.
In 2016, the art piece started as just the top two passenger decks of the front of the 747. Since then, the camp’s volunteers have expanded it each year, about 500 volunteers helped construct the vehicle and about 1,000 people helped fund it
It was shipped more than 500 miles to Burning Man from the Mojave Airport and Space Port in southern California each year.
The plane is still at the playa, around 12 miles from the "Black Rock City" about three weeks after the event’s flashy conclusion because of a series of logistical breakdowns, and the soft playa, the Reno Gazette Journal reported Saturday.
The volunteers found that the rubber mats used on the plane’s path to protect the desert floor are too thin to hold the airplane, causing the landing gear to sink into the soft sand found at the edge of the dry lake bed.
Volunteers are in process of dragging the multi-ton aircraft off public land and onto a parcel of private land.
Ken Feldman, the CEO of Big Imagination Camp, which built the airplane over the course of four years and shipped it to Burning Man “We started this. We’re going to finish it,” he said. Big Imagination Camp wants to keep it closer to the playa for future Burning Man events.
The Burning Man organization’s Department of Public Works also took to a break from deconstructing the temporary Black Rock City to help.
The Big Imagination camp now says it plans to “move it to a permanent location nearby,” but it seems that moving the plane 12 miles from the event site might have been the organization’s temporary solution for saving money for both storage and transport. After all, moving the 747 means disassembling it into pieces and transporting it 500 miles down highways — requiring police escorts, road closures and disconnected power lines.
The organization reportedly has private property nearby that it can use to store the piece until next year, but the BLM spokesperson notes that “there’s no road between the playa and this piece of private property where they’re proposing to put the vehicle.” Building a road isn’t possible due to it being a National Conservation Area.
https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-nevada/747-stranded-at-burning-man-site-will-be-moved-to-private-land/
https://twitter.com/thepointsguy/status/1041138630763458566
https://thepointsguy.com/news/burning-man-747-abandoned-in-desert-video/
That's amazing. I've been following burning man photos for years and never saw this item. But the stuff that people build and bring is incredible. As far as the 500 volunteers who I'm sure show up, there's 4 or 5 main brains that run the show. Then there's probably 25 or 30 very talented assembly people. After that there's another 25 or 30 people who can complete a task once someone from the prior group gets them started. That basically leaves you approximately 435 people who your constantly asking politely to move because they're in the way or handing them a 1/2" nut and telling them to go stand over there with this and I'll call you when I need it in 4 or 5 hours or go dust the plane. I know everyone gets excited and wants to help but I've been a part of too many of these style cluster fucks and if you don't politely remove them from the serious side of business it turns into a shit show.
ReplyDeleteI just looked back through my coverage, and I've never seen it either, but, it's only 2 or 3 years old, so, easy to miss it.
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