Best way for an outsider to get involved

[Eturnol]

Hello,

I went to my first burn in 2014 and had a wonderful time. I have tried unsuccessfully to obtain main sale tickets in 2015 and 2016. I have been reading about how it's recommended to get involved with the community if you are looking to obtain tickets, but my question is what is the best way to do that?

Facebook groups, fund raising events, Craigslist? What is the best way to get involved? I personally feel like it's unlikely that someone would sell two tickets and a vehicle pass at some party, but I guess you never know.

If it was up to me , I would want to help build an art car, learn welding or lighting so that I could incorporate that knowledge into a piece of my own one day. But if I manage to find someone who needs help, what is the polite way to also say that I'm looking for tickets, without it seeming like I'm only there to get something?

[Bless]

Where do you live?

[Eturnol]

I live in San Diego and was thinking about attending Youtopia to meet more burners but am open to all suggestions

[lucky420]

You start to make those connections "at some party". All the things you listed, fb groups, local fb groups, fundRaising, and yes go to youtopia! Volunteer to work on local projects, volunteer for youtopia. Craigslist I'd be very wary and careful of. Stick around here and engage, you can make solid connections here too.

[mudpuppy000]

Yes, get involved in local events. Not so much for looking for tickets, but for being involved in the community. Maybe tickets will come your way or maybe they won't, but it won't really matter as you are having fun.

Youtopia is amazing. You might not even want to go to burning man after that.

[misfit]

work for the man,,, volunteer. what skills do you have.?.

[trilobyte]

Get in touch with your regional group or with camps/projects in your area. If it's a project you're excited about, just get involved and start helping. Meet people, make connections, and let it come up in conversation naturally. "Have you ever been?" "Are you going this year?" "Do you have a camp?" "Do you have tickets?" are all natural topics of conversation among burners (new or veteran alike).

If you find that you're always the one who's initiating that discussion, or that your potential interest in the project depends entirely on whether they're able to help you get tickets... then you may be doing it for the wrong reasons.

[Eturnol]

Thanks!

I sent an email to the SD regional contacts and he recommended some art collectives to join and help out, so that seems really interesting. I'll stay away from Craigslist and hopefully will try to attend Youtopia but I will have to convince my wife on that one

[Eturnol]

I honestly don't have many skills to speak of but I built a hexayurt, a 16x8x8 wooden shade structure, a swamp cooler, solar powered lighting and a solar shower all in my first burn, basically on my own.

There's a lot of info on these boards and on YouTube that makes it doable

The thing I wanted to do next was like a Bruce Munro field of light, but maybe use fiber optics and have a field of grass instead of flowers. I'm not sure how hard that project will be, but maybe some people at the art collective will have experience rigging fiber optics

[dragonpilot]

Skills are nice to have, but sometimes just having a willingness to help out or a strong back and getting along with others is sufficient. Demonstrate to your local contacts/regionals that you can be counted on, show up on time, don't quit until it's miller time...and then keep on going!

[BBadger]

Yeah, just the fact that you volunteer, show up, and are reliable can go a long way in joining the inner circles of some of these groups.

[vargaso]

Hello,

I went to my first burn in 2014 and had a wonderful time. I have tried unsuccessfully to obtain main sale tickets in 2015 and 2016. I have been reading about how it's recommended to get involved with the community if you are looking to obtain tickets, but my question is what is the best way to do that?

Facebook groups, fund raising events, Craigslist? What is the best way to get involved? I personally feel like it's unlikely that someone would sell two tickets and a vehicle pass at some party, but I guess you never know.

If it was up to me , I would want to help build an art car, learn welding or lighting so that I could incorporate that knowledge into a piece of my own one day. But if I manage to find someone who needs help, what is the polite way to also say that I'm looking for tickets, without it seeming like I'm only there to get something?

Same as with anything: blowjobs.

[Eturnol]

Whose dick do I have to suck to suck a dick around here??

[Savannah]

Whose dick do I have to suck to suck a dick around here??

We cut off our respective dicks, and sold them on the black market to fund the shuttle to the Mothership.

[Ratty]

Whose dick do I have to suck to suck a dick around here??

I'm saving this for a future sig line, sticker, bumper sticker, patch. Thanks

[Dr Helix]

Whose dick do I have to suck to suck a dick around here??

till i suck the right D

Or, another way of looking at it might be:

"How many dicks do I have to suck till I suck the right dick's dick?"

This is called the Woodchuck Variation

[some seeing eye]

Many W Coast cities, Austin, Boston, NYC and more have significant burner communities. They get together for costume parties, dance parties, campouts, happy hours, yoga, hooping, barbeques as friends. Generally I've found them to be creative, fun and friendly - the type of people you would want as friends. So just go to their events beyond "official" regionals. And just like FB has a social graph, it has an event graph.

And look, San Diego has a monthly meetup: http://regionals.burningman.org/event/s ... eet-3/all/
I would wager that https://twitter.com/SanDiegoSanta might have a few burners in the mix.

Many cities have house parties burn night too!

But like we discuss on finding a camp - it is not nice to make pretend friends just to get tickets.