Notes: The Writer and the Rolls

Ahead of this year’s gathering a reflection on the most unexpected vehicle to arrive at Burning Man

Alexandra Cheney

13 July 2023

Whether chosen or given, everyone gets a Playa name. It’s one of the many rites of passage created over the last 36 years of Burning Man. Bequeathed by a long-time burner who doubled as a consigliere, mine preceded my arrival: the Writer.

To some, it evolved to the Writer and the Rolls.

Exactly nine days prior in 2022, I sat at a formal, multi-course dinner 450 miles southwest of Black Rock City (the 3,000 acre dry riverbed in the Black Rock Desert about two hours outside of Reno that’s home to Burning Man). In four inch heels and forty degrees cooler, I was on assignment at Monterey Car Week, where the same number of people descend upon the Monterey Peninsula for a variety of races, shows, concours and auctions as Black Rock City—roughly 80,000. A bit of a different crew. Decidedly a divergent dress code. 

Around the table, we chatted about forthcoming travel and future assignments; as a travel writer and culture reporter, the line between my job and life often feels like that point where ocean and sky merge. Although a perpetual optical illusion, on a clear day it’s more easily detectible, on a misty one, not so much.   

You should take a Cullinan to Burning Man,

a colleague declared, his tone matching his sarcastic but serious personality. I had mentioned my desire to attend this multi-week built community where principles like radical inclusion and immediacy were put into practice. His suggestion likely would have remained a punchline were it not posited where, across the table, my dining companion happened to be a perfectly besuited Torsten Müller-Ötvös, CEO of Rolls-Royce.

Müller-Ötvös, ever game for unique opportunities, coolly responded, “oh yes a Cullinan, Black Badge if we have it.” He called to his confrère, informed him of as much and it was settled.

The remainder of my inaugural Burning Man came together in a shockingly mellifluous manner.

“The playa provides” is a longtime burner adage that became a reality on more than one occasion. My neighbor knew someone selling a ticket. A friend had a tent. A guy I started dating loaned me an E-Z Up. A former colleague’s longtime burner dad offered space in his camp and an encyclopedia of wisdom. A Burning Man Facebook group had a vehicle pass for purchase. I found an old bicycle in storage and invested in a robust amount of solar rechargeable lights. All of this was amassed in 72 hours in a methodical frenzy of high-speed driving all over Southern California—from Ventura to Redondo Beach. I didn’t know what I would actually need, although I had a checklist.

Historically, things rarely fall into place as this did.  

You see, I frequent multiple worlds, from luxury car events and stylish hotel openings to fully immersive Navy SEAL training and professional surfing competitions. I endeavor to navigate those spaces thoughtfully albeit separately because, while they are personally and professionally intertwined, they occupy different spaces in my brain.

I wondered what it would be like to bring them together. I asked friends and some strangers on a sliding scale of amazing to ridiculous where this idea fell. Everyone had a strong opinion, which usually means it’s a worthy pursuit.

While I know my way around a car and continue to explore the ins and out of luxury, I approached Burning Man as a social and personal experiment.

Introduce what is the apex of coachbuilding luxury, a Rolls-Royce, to Burning Man, a community that prefers art cars and eschews commercialism (so much so that the governing body, Burning Man Project, issued a Cultural Course Correct in 2019 to discourage planned plug-and-play camps). Go solo. Set up a tent. Sleep in the Cullinan. Ask questions. Say yes. Participate. See what happens.

You’re going to be overdressed for the event, no?

When the guy dropped off the black mica Cullinan with a powder-blue and white interior,  freshly coated in layers of wax and positively sparkling clean, he jovially said, “you’re going to be overdressed for the event, no?” He was referring to the car, not my wardrobe (fishnets are encouraged, sequins positively forbidden on the Playa).

I awoke at 2:30AM in Santa Monica, car already packed, and knew the journey and the destination were one and the same. The miles were easy and tough, alternating with the hours. Zero line to get in; the city was already in its third day.

“This is the cleanest you’ll ever be here,” said my dude at check-in, as I slid out of the SUV. Shirtless, wearing a foam pink cowboy hat and a grass skirt, he added “we give a lot of hugs, but since it’s your first time it’s tradition that you roll in the dirt.” I obliged on both, rang a cowbell and received a cacophonous chorus of “welcome home” that echoed across the flagged entrance. “Interesting vehicle choice,” he noted, tipping his hat as I climbed back in the Cullinan.

The looks I received behind the wheel as I drove 4mph (to limit the amount of airborne dust) toward my camp, ranged from bewilderment to chuckles, curiosity to confusion. A large amount of people didn’t seem to care or notice. One particularly portly gentleman outfitted in nothing but a pair of strappy sandals and a lei bounded up from his lawn chair and ran from his camp into the makeshift street to yell “fuck yeah, nice Rolls!” He called himself a car enthusiast.

The full Monty of freedom and self-expression in a single scene.

I parked the Cullinan next to a black minivan and across from a U-Haul, amid a sea of trailers and tents, RVs and makeshift dwellings. The Playa dust began to settle on the SUV. The largest surprise came as I unpacked the tent and shelter. Some fellow campers expected a trailer, complete with generator and shower, however the Cullinan doesn’t have towing capabilities. Alternating between sleeping under the stars of Black Rock City in a tent and those of the Starlight headliner in the SUV produced the same result. By 9AM, neither one was inhabitable.

Luxury, now, was a swamp cooler, a generator, or a fully enclosed hard structure. Luxury was a shower with any temperature water, sleeping someplace where dust didn’t accompany me to bed.

“It’s an interesting push-pull all the time,” Marian Goodell, CEO of Burning Man Project, told the Wall Street Journal in 2021 when asked about Burning Man.

That, for me, rang true. The push-pull of surviving in a triple-digit-desert, of redefining thoughts, facts and philosophies that were more clearly defined in the “outside world” (a reference to anything outside of Black Rock City). While the Cullinan certainly didn’t lead to all those realizations, it did play a part in my identity on the Playa.

On my penultimate day, as I was packing my camp up, a group of older men came over. Their intentions were twofold: they all immediately began helping me break down (communal effort is one of the 10 principles of Burning Man)—pulling rebar out of the ground, folding my tent—when one casually but decisively brought up the Cullinan. Why this SUV? Why here? Like anything, the color of someone’s tutu or a request for some water, it was simply a way to connect, to start a conversation.

My answer: why not?

Their response: a continuum of chuckles until one called the decision “literally radical.” (Three of the ten aforementioned principles include the word radical.) A sea of concurrences followed, and some whispered requests for driver seat selfies.

From dusk until first light, I spent the evening hours with newfound friends biking, dancing, dreaming and experiencing the Playa. Art—performance, visual, installation, moving and abstract—was on full display. This writer and the Rolls exited Black Rock City the dawn after the man burned. Delightfully uneventful, my departure preceded Exodus (when tens of thousands of Burning Man participants from Black Rock City leave en masse on a single two-lane road). No lines; a commendable if not fortuitous achievement.  

Images by Alexandra Cheney