Black Rock City – Stick a fork in their bloated Adidas visored corpse. Ravers at Burning Man are done. After many years of Raver dominance over the hippies at Burning Man, hippies may be sitting in the cultural throne for many years to come.
For years hippies at Burning Man were relegated to second class citizens. Their drum circles were drown out by blissful anthem trance and hypnotic progressive house; they were relegated to slouching around Human Carcass Wash and HeeBeeGeeBee Healers. In a sign of how fast things change, it was only 2011 when hippies took over the mantle of dominant subculture at Burning Man.
The soon to be ineffectual World Hippie Council released a short, celebratory statement to the media:
“This year us hippies demonstrated that the future is a moccasin stomping on a rolling ravers face – forever. No judgement.”
At a meeting to sign a formal treaty of surrender in the parking lot of a Beats Antique show in Omaha, Raver kingpin Syd Gris announced long time raver palace ‘Opulent Temple’ was closing up shop. “Ravers are no longer ‘Children of the Night’, said Syd in the post surrender ceremony press conference. “Most ravers are now parents who occasionally do a bump of blow in some suburban breakfast nook listening to a scratchy Goldie album in jittery nostalgia between over anxious texts with the babysitter.”
“All that Calvin Klein and shitty pressed pills finally caught up with us.” – Josh Wink
Analysts say Hippies had several demographic, economic and cultural trends going for them. The 2012 apocalypse popularity was always going to favor the hippies. And once hippies accepted bass music and dubstep into their ouvre the ravers days were numbered.
“The coveted 18-25 demographic swung almost over night to the Hippies once Bassnectar got hot.” – Gallup Research
Longtime Hippie Burner Dusty Lentil said on his tumblr blog ‘Boulder is Awesome, Man’: “Ravers and their googley eyes can talk about PLUR all they want but ravers = conspicuous consumption capitalists – that worked great in the boom years. Thankfully for us the economy collapsed. Ever since 2007 it got a lot easier to get a girl into bed talking shit about ‘the man’ around a campfire beating on a drum, rolling a cigarette.”
Some Ravers hold out hope of a revival a few years down the road. Found on one electronic dance music forum an anonymous poster said, “Ravers will be back at Burning Man. Morning trance will never be defeated. At least we still have Ricardo Villalobos and Kompakt – thank fuck for Germany.”