Burning Man Braids

I’ve taken up a lot of new hobbies recently, like eating pounds of gummy bears, making friendship bracelets, and re-watching Modern Family 90 times. But on top of those hobbies, I’ve also been keeping up with my hobby-turned-side-hustle: braiding hair! I first talked about braiding in July 2018, more than 5 years ago. When I look back at that post now and see the quality of my hairstyles, I cringe. But that is good, because it means I’ve been continuously improving.

When I first created an Instagram account just for hair, I followed 30 people. Now I have more than 4,000 followers myself! I haven’t talked about braiding on here since November 2021, when I braided 21 people for the NYC Marathon, but I’ve been quietly continuing my passion business, and I actually braided 20 people last year for the 2022 NYC Marathon. I’ve written before about how I randomly fell in with the running community, and it’s been so interesting to watch my business take off in ways I never predicted. I wasn’t sure if braids were just “having a moment,” but five years later, it seems like they are here to stay, at least for certain things.

Running braids have continued to be a big source of business for me, and I already have 11 clients booked for the NYC Marathon this upcoming November. But it’s not just running, people have found me for all sorts of reasons. So far this year I have had 32 separate clients, including 4 birthday parties, a 1:1 braiding lesson, hair for a family photoshoot, girls for school field days and before going to sleepaway camp, and of course a few people for the NYC Half Marathon. Somehow, despite having the most traumatic year of my life, my side business has been thriving. I’m not going to lie, the administration side of the business has been a challenge, since I mentioned that my cognitive functioning has been less than ideal. I accidentally double booked someone two weeks ago and had a minor freakout, but I tried to give myself grace and ultimately, I was able to reschedule everyone successfully.

You may be wondering why I decided to post now, during a random September week, about braiding again, and that’s because what happened three weeks ago was brand new: BURNER BRAIDS. If you haven’t heard of Burning Man before, you’re not alone. The event this year got more press than normal, so you may know about it now, but I knew very little until three weeks ago. It is an annual, week-long festival in the middle of the Black Rock Desert outside Reno, Nevada, where 35,000-70,000 people congregate and create their own temporary city. According to Wikipedia, where I got most of my information before talking to actual Burners (that’s what the participants are called), the event is guided by ten principles: radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy.

You can either “open camp” or bring an RV. Once there, you mostly ride bikes around to other camps, and you aren’t allowed to have a car unless it’s a piece of art. You also cannot transfer any money, so everything is gifted between people. Each camp has their own unique gift, whether it is experiences, like a “human car wash,” or food, or a sangria bar. Everything you might need is provided by others. The desert area where people congregate is called “the playa” and people often say, “the playa will provide,” but what they really mean is, other Burners will help you out.

So, what does any of this have to do with braids? Well, first of all, the event is in the desert and showers are hard to come by. People who choose to come in RVs may have them, but it’s still complicated because you can’t dump used water in the desert and you aren’t allowed to leave a trace, so this makes hair-washing complicated. More importantly than the lack of showers, there is an abundance of sand. Specifically, the sand in Black Rock is not actually sand, it’s the alkaline remnants of an old lakebed. This means it sticks to everything including skin and hair. Burners are advised to bring vinegar to spray on themselves because it’s the only way to get it off. Between the wind and alkaline residue, long hair gets matted and often need to be cut before being detangled upon “reintegration” into the “default world.” Most Burners try to avoid this, therefore, braids. There are many threads on reddit dedicated to “long hair ideas” for Burning Man and almost all of them suggest braids.

Between 2019 and 2022, I braided about two people per year for festivals, but this year it seems I went viral!  I ended up braiding 13 people for Burning Man, and that was on top of my “real” full-time job! I was exhausted. In fact, I started turning people away a few weeks before because I knew I couldn’t handle any more. People often ask me if my hands hurt from braiding, but it’s not my hands, it’s my back! First of all, being on my feet is taxing. While I usually believe in a no-shoe apartment, I make an exception for braiding. When I’m leaning left to right, left to right, left to right, trying to get those stitches JUST RIGHT, it creates a lot of torque on my back, and shoes with good support help slightly. Laying on the floor also helps. Some days during the last month, I laid on the carpet before clients, and then again after.

I took so many amazing photos and videos of people’s hairstyles, and at first, I was trying to hold back from posting content on Instagram because I wanted to wait for photos from the actual event. But I couldn’t resist and I ended up posting three styles (here’s one!) that couldn’t wait. Also, I wasn’t sure if waiting made sense, since I couldn’t be sure if there would be any photos from my clients. The alkaline sand is not only bad for hair, but also bad for phones and cameras, and since there isn’t any cell phone service in the desert anyway, not all people choose to take pictures. However, sometimes people put together amazing outfits, and I wanted to see the hair together with the whole look!

The final weekend of Burning Man, as I was waiting not-so-patiently for my clients to come back, I was braiding two girls for Electric Zoo, another festival in New York, and they told me there was tragedy at Burning Man, with monsoon storms completely saturating the entire camp, and stranding tens of thousands of people in the desert due to road flooding. My first thought was, I hope they have enough food and water! My second thought was, I hope the braids hold up! As more news and videos came out, I was even more nervous. I heard they were told to conserve food and water, and that they did not know when people would be able to leave.

I waited and hoped, and posted on my Instagram stories to see if people were ok. About one week after, I sent direct messages to everyone to see if they were ok, and I was relieved to find that most said the news was far worse than the real situation. Everyone said that while it was extremely muddy, they all helped each other out and got home safely. I heard from a few people that they were extremely glad to have braids because once they were told to conserve water, hair washing was out of the question! Remember when I told you that I had a double-booking issue? My favorite story of the week was that two friends who came to my house to have their hair done, met another girl who was here at the same time because I was running a bit behind. They were talking together for a while, and they ended up meeting up in the desert despite not having any cell service! They took photos together and they looked so happy and awesome with their braids. It warmed my heart!

I can’t finish my blog without mentioning the necessary tie-in to last week’s post on small talk. In addition to hurting my back, the other thing that usually exhausts me from braiding is the constant chit-chat. I have an incredible amount of respect for full-time stylists who need to talk all day, it’s tiring! Add that to the fact that I no longer exceed in small-talk, and it’s especially grueling. One of the reasons I learned so much about Burning Man this year is because I employed my favorite tactic from last week’s blog: asking many questions so as not to have the conversation fall back to the topic of me. Braiding hair now carries an additional complication, especially when I am braiding for birthday parties, because the topic of children and how good I am with them tends to come up. When I did a family’s hair for their annual photos, it came up. I am always doing mental calculus about what to share and how to skirt the topic of family, but when I’m braiding in my apartment that I share with my husband, family inevitably comes up sometimes. I remember braiding clients in January with my ultrasound photos on the fridge in the back of my time lapse videos! This past month, thankfully I was only asked once about kids when we were talking about our relationships.  I am never sure whether to be fully honest, but in this case, it was just the two of us, and I acknowledged that I had a daughter, but that she died. I kept it moving and immediately asked another question about how long she had been in her relationship. The moment passed, and I felt relieved and happy that I didn’t lie. It’s complicated because I want to be honest, but I try not to kill the mood. It’s not a secret that I lost a daughter and it’s pretty visible if you follow me on Instagram or watch my stories, so I try to strike a balance. I hope that with more time, I find it easier to talk about her in casual conversation.

Braiding for festivals this year was a blast and an exciting change of pace. When I braid for a race, I’m on a tight schedule with so many clients that I can’t try anything new. For the festivals, I have a chance to be creative and I try new styles I have never done. Each client came with their own inspiration, and I was able to bring the styles to life. I loved the freedom and creativity that went along with working with colored extensions and having more flexible time. I am not sure how many more clients I’ll be able to take for the rest of the year besides for the NYC Marathon, since I am traveling almost every week this season, but I’ll keep you posted. If you don’t already follow my hair account on Instagram, check me out @BraidInManhattan or look at my website, I even made a new section for Festival Hair!