A number of my close friends are part of the gay community there, so I strongly care about that issue. My experience has been that the gay community is very str

A number of my close friends are part of the gay community there, so I strongly care about that issue. My experience has been that the gay community is very strong and has as good relations with police as anyone. Of all the complaints I've heard about police, I really haven't heard that as a theme. I'm sorry your friends had that bad experience. The (overbearing) presence of police is dispiriting, and is most definitely a sunk cost of the growth and notoriety of the event as it now is. No one enjoys that. It is what it is. That said, it's easy to overstate its impact - they're ultimately a very small part of the experience and don't really stop you from doing whatever you want to do out there. Burning Man is not what it was in 2000. People who really enjoyed what it was then may not enjoy what it is now. But it really isn't Disneyland or Vegas. Thankfully (in my experience), there's still a long, long way to go before it gets there. When it's getting there I'll be the first to step off the ride. But I'm still enthusiastically in love with what it is now and proud of the communities I know and have been a part of. They're some of the most solid people I've ever known. That's mostly, in the end, what keeps me there. Our conversation sounds like a "changing of the guards" dialogue. I'm glad you have good memories from your times and I hope you can find some joy knowing there are still people with fires in their heart stirring the flames.