Isn't it such a waste?

So, I sit here watching the Rose Bowl parade when an echo from the past rattled through my head. "So, why go through the effort and expense of building the Man, just to burn him a week later?" And that got me thinking. Rose bowl floats are built very rapidly for a single event, and have a workable lifespan of about 2 days. There's no question that some amount of artistry goes into each float.... but shall we talk about the waste?

According to the 2005 afterburn report, Burningman provided $437,937 in honoraria to artists, and the Man itself cost $136,304. Well, it's not so easy to get the numbers on the rose bowl art, but here's a couple of hints. ONE float, one small one, had over 6000 roses of a specific rare breed that cost $200 a dozen (from the KTLA newscast). That's $100,000 for that flower type alone on that float. It was also covered with another 5000 lesser roses, many carnations, and seeds. So, that ONE float most likely exceeded the entire budget for The Man. [the FTD float had 45,000 roses plus other flowers]

At almost 50 floats for the entire parade, That's $5 million in the base material cost of the float coverings, this doesn't include the recoupable costs of the float bases, nor the fuel costs, etc. That's just the flowers. Yeah, that's right TEN times the amount gifted to artists at BM. Another way to look at it comes from the offical Rose Parade site: "each float has more flowers than most florists will use in 5 years".

This also doesn't include the incredible amount of work put in by the float builders, the marching bands, the horse groomers and handlers, etc. One bowl parade could easily exceed the scope of the entire Bman event, but only last for 2.5 hours. And although it's probably the biggest and best known, keep in mind that the Rose bowl is only one of 32 bowl games held each year, many that have their own parades too.

Now, it's true a parade opens up a lot of emotions and wonder for the spectators, but I've seen some pretty earth shaking things at burningman too, and I know many people are much more deeply affected by the Bman event than any parade. So, from a strictly cost benefit analysis point of view, I'm thinking the Bman event is definitely the best bang for the buck. Suddenly, I'm feeling pretty good about burning the man each year (not that it really ever bothered me before). And I think the next time I hear some hippy whining about the waste of Bman, I'll cram a dozen roses up their ass and tie them to an art car...