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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| PayPal Giving Burning Man a Real Buzzkill.... |
| 2010-08-11 |
| PayPal has frozen the account of the Flux Foundation – a large crew of Bay Area artists and burners that is headed to the Black Rock Desert this week to build the most ambitious Temple in Burning Man's 25-year history – claiming the right to profit from the money until the group formally attains its nonprofit status from a backlogged federal government. I blame George Bush!!! “All that money is just sitting there and we can't touch it,” says artist Jess Hobbs, referring to the tens of thousands of dollars that the crew has raised this summer through events and other fundraising drives to supplement an art grant from Black Rock City LLC that didn't come close to meeting the project's $180,000 budget. Check out the pic at the link of the deluxe "Temple". See what 180 large can get you from the world's finest stoner artists. All 100% flammable, too! PayPal -- which has been criticized for its secrecy, financial manipulation, and other corporate misbehavior -- was founded in San Jose in 1998 to facilitate online financial transactions and in 2002 was taken over by eBay, the company from which billionaire California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman acquired her wealth. The company has not returned inquires from the Guardian made this morning. Hobbs and a crew that includes more than 200 other artists and burners have voluntarily worked almost every day this summer to build the Temple of Flux, a series of massive dunes that replicate peaks, canyons, caves, and other natural land forms – a project that I've been embedded with for a Guardian cover story that comes out Sept. 1. “They will take the donations and their fees, but they won't give us our money until we get our nonprofit status,” Hobbs told a meeting of the crew last night at the American Steel warehouse in West Oakland, where they've been working on the project since early June, before she and other principle artists PK Kimelman and Rebecca Anders left for the playa today. “And the IRS is so backed up they're taking at least six months to give out nonprofit status.” Hobbs and other Temple crew members are now scrambling for ways to support a difficult on-site build that will take more than two weeks to complete, including asking crew members for loans and encouraging everyone to put the word out to the community, hoping to find generous benefactors who can at least extend a bridge loan. "For the cost of two really good hits of X from Velvet Jones, you too can Burning Man crews and camps are traditionally informal groups, but given the scale of this project, the Temple of Flux crew this year tried to create a new model for fundraising and sustaining the organization beyond this year's Burning Man event by filing the voluminous paperwork required to create the nonprofit Flux Foundation. But now, PayPal has thrown the effort into a real state of financial flux, taking its cut of nearly 3 percent but refusing to even explain why the corporation has deemed it necessary to freeze the group's finances. So, let me see if I got this correct. You open an account as a nonprofit before you got the paperwork blessed by the proper authorities. Some other company holding the cash is not sure how much to hold onto for the IRS until this all settles out, so they freeze the account. And it's their fault because you can't get your crap together like an adult? Put down the bong, Princess....you've had enough for today..... |
| Posted by:Swamp Blondie |
| #8 I don't get what you mean by "Burning Man is trial by fire for ad talent". No advertising is allowed there, neither is any vending. It is actually a pretty cool event. There isn't a single trashcan there and when people leave, it is as clean as when they found it. If you hauled it in, you haul it out. There are two things you can buy there: ice and coffee. The proceeds go to the local schools (not for salaries, but for "stuff" they need) if there is any left after expenses. You want to take a shower out there? Fine, bring your own, and bring your own water for it. Oh, and you will need to haul the dirty water out. You can't dump it on the ground there because it is a dry lake bed and it turns to muck if you put water on it. Hippies actually don't fare well out there and it is an engineer's dream. The thing about Burning Man is like a lot of other things, most media tends to pick out the most extreme examples and portray them as typical. There is a US Marine Corps camp out there, there is bluegrass music. It is probably one of the harshest environments in which to camp in the US. It can be 100 degrees by day and 35 at night with winds howling for days at a time that can rip a tent to shreds. That temple is an important part of the experience. It is a place where you can place a burden, a loved one's ashes, a painful memory ... and then burn it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXNNWK_G4XU Some years the rendition of Ave Maria will send chills up your spine depending on who is performing it. People build some crazy things out there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiV1BIRVFNI&feature=related I never met a hippy yet who could build something like that. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2010-08-11 22:03 |
| #7 GPal seems like a good alternative to PayPal. |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2010-08-11 20:06 |
| #6 PayPal is evil. Avoid it. Seriously. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2010-08-11 19:38 |
| #5 A college roommate owns a west coast advertising firm. Hires his best talent at Burning Man. Messing with Burning Man is really going to upset the ad firms (not just his). Burning Man is a trial by fire for ad talent. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2010-08-11 19:32 |
| #4 SF Grauniad: Aw, geeze, dude! |
| Posted by: mojo 2010-08-11 17:57 |
| #3 Wow Dude! That temple is, like, all holy or something! And read some of the comments.... |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2010-08-11 15:53 |
| #2 But you don't understand, this is really, like, a total bummer, dudes and dudettes! |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2010-08-11 15:32 |
| #1 So a simple white cross in the desert needs supreme court approval, and yet torn down by leftie vandals. Still unable to put a new one up because the old one was the only thing protected and this guy is building a burning temple???? WTF! |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2010-08-11 15:30 |