Burning Man Pokémon appear most elusive yet
BLACK ROCK CITY, Nev. – How about Poké-no?
Thousands of people flooding into the desert for Burning Man are about to run into a dusty, disconnected reality: the wildly popular Pokémon Go game doesn’t work here.
Although Black Rock City appears in the Pokémon Go app, there’s no Pokémon to capture, putting to rest fears technology would irrevocably alter the Burning Man experience.
The annual pilgrimage to the Nevada desert draws about 70,000 people, many of them young, tech-savvy and from Silicon Valley and the San Francisco area. They build a master desert encampment called Black Rock City on the playa, a dry lakebed, complete with a tear-down airport, hospital and endless art installations.
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Each year brings new fears of how iPhones, Facebook or Snapchat will alter the event. There was scattered speculation in advance of this year that hunters of the virtual monsters — which appear to smartphone users via augmented reality transposed over actual surroundings — would be scouring the playa. One Burning Man participant even mocked up a Poké-map, further stoking the rumors.
But it’s not so.
Truly unplugged
As in years past, there’s some cellphone service, and it’s getting slower every day as more and more people pour into the area. AT&T appears to have the best service, with full LTE coverage in camp. Verizon appears to have 3G service, and Sprint users can pretty much just text. Service usually grinds to halt by about Wednesday, although there’s sometimes better service in the middle of the night when more people are asleep.
That’s just fine with artist Peter Hazel, who was spending Saturday working with a team to assemble a giant concrete-and-ceramic octopus. This is the third time he’s been commissioned to make art for the event, and his 25,000-pound Octavius sculpture was designed so people can climb all over it.
“I wanted to make it as interactive as I could,” he says, scraping mortar off a trowel during a break. “It’s the ultimate compliment when someone comes by and touches your art.”
Several of Burning Man’s core principles run counter to constant iPhone use, including the requirements for both participation and immediacy.
That’s not to say there isn’t a significant tech presence here on the playa. Tech titans have long had a major presence here. Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk is a regular, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google have shown up over the years.
And technology underlies major portions of the event itself. Every entry ticket gets scanned, and vehicles leaving and returning during the week are tracked via QR codes. Event organizers have a microwave link connecting their computer systems to the Internet, although most communications are done either face-to-face or via radio.
The crowd here is the kind accustomed to always-on Internet access, and based on their demographics (70% have at least a bachelor's degree and 90% are aged 19-60), this is probably one of the densest clusterings of smartphones on the planet.
But with their phones off, participants, well, participate. There’s nary a selfie stick in sight, and strangers become friends over beer and grilled cheese sandwiches. Burning Man organizers say they've deliberately chosen not to provide Internet service to ensure participants remain present, instead of focusing on outside distractions. Whiteboards are how you leave messages, and paper maps replace GPS for the week. Participants instead have the chance to learn about Japanese rope bondage or meditation, drink iced espresso naked or make custom nipple rings.
Back at Octavius, Hazel finishes cleaning off his trowel. I ask him if he knows about Pokémon, and get a funny look. “Never heard of it,” he says. I explain it’s a mobile-phone game and his expression doesn’t change much. A few feet away, a person-sized ceramic fish sits on a pedestal, awaiting placement near the concrete octopus.
“This is real, man,” he says.
Trevor Hughes is a Denver-based correspondent for USA TODAY. Follow him @trevorhughes.
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