I work Gate.

Gate is awesome and operationally significant. It feels good to do something legitimately important for the city while having a blast doing it. 95% of the people who make up Gate are amazing human beings who love their work and love the Gate family... I'll cover the 5% later. It feels good to work with people who love their job, as opposed to default life where I work in an office where everyone hates everyone and everything.

There are a variety of positions in Gate that are very different and present different opportunities depending on your personality. Lanes, Perimeter, Airport, Exodus, Fluffing, Logistics, Transpo.... and there are definitely more than that, all of which provide their own challenges and their own kinds of fun. It's very easy to climb the Gate ladder and do real cool work and see a side of the city nobody knows exists. If you have the time and prove yourself and you have the calling to do this, you could be out in the desert for a very long time building Gate Road and the Black Hole, and watching the city go from dust to dust.

I love Lanes, and there's something seriously special about being one of the first official Burners people come in contact with. I do the sustainable jackass thing, but most of all I love to have fun with people - if I have a car full of virgins I tell them where the exit lane is and tell them to turn back before they ruin their lives, for example. When a car pulls up in my lane I like to scream and joke that they snuck up on me. I also like being able to emphasize safety, give people tips on how to get to their campsite safely, and if I have time, I'll tell people to stop by our bar for a drink because we have the best fucking bar on playa. I've had people stop me in the city and tell me that they had a lot of fun in our interaction, and then I'll give them the hug I had to deny at the gate (BECAUSE I NEED TO KEEP TRAFFIC MOVING PLEASE MOVE ON HOLY SHIT WE ARENT GREETERS)

So.

The bad is that it's very easy to dedicate way too much time to Gate and never actually "Go to Burning Man." We have a great bar, a great camp, and it's easy to jade yourself off of the sparkle shitshow that is the playa and just trap yourself in the black hole of depravity that is our job and our camp. I'm a self-admitted Robot Heart Loving, Sunrise Chasing, Bike Riding, part-time sparklepony. It's a bit tough sometimes to do both Gate and Sparkling as much as I would like. Gate shifts are also generally HARD. I come back from the lanes exhausted because I put 400% into making the experience as pleasant as I can for participants while chugging traffic through safely.

The ugly? I want to emphasize this is my sole experience and there has been efforts to clamp down on this kind of stuff.

Okay, so here's how i can frame it. 5% of Gate is old school, and I mean OLD SCHOOL. They hate you, they hate the department, they hate kinder-gentler Gate, they hate Burning Man, and for some reason, they're still around. My first ever interaction with Gate as a volunteer, my first year, I went to the black hole to check in for my initial stuff. I was stopped outside the camp by someone and before I could do anything they said some really really rude shit because I was wearing what couldn't generally be identified as "Gate person" - zebra everything - and this person said: "We dont serve your faggy type here in our camp, fuck you freak" - with full sincerity, while they barred me from walking in. That was a great way to be introduced for the department I had just signed up for 40ish hours with. I rode back to my camp and put on a black vest and some jeans and nobody bothered me when I returned. There are people in Gate who are cliquey and do not like you no matter what, unless you pass some kind of test or something. There's a couple who do operationally important stuff who treat me like shit when I come in to the Gate for a drink or a shift - if one of them is at the bar they'll purposefully go out of their way not to serve me or give me a shittily mixed drink, while making theater out of checking my ID even though they've done it multiple times and clearly know who I am based on how they're treating me. I forgot my ID once and this person looked me in the eye and said they had no idea who I was and had no way to verify I was of age... while also calling me by name...? I've been on shift and been treated like shit because it's a shift full of "Cool kids" and I'm not one of them. I've got on a gate art car and been kicked off because someone who is more "cool kid" than me wants to get on. I've tried to seek help from someone following the directions clearly laid out and they acted like I was the worst human on Earth for daring to go about things.

I want to emphasize these experiences are way overshadowed by the amazing amount of fun I've had with this department. I love working Gate and it's one of my favorite things at Burning Man. I've met some of my best friends through Gate. About half of the camp I'm with is Gate. I'm gotten a friend and my girlfriend (and maybe another buddy for next year?) on the Gate wagon. I'm thinking of working fulltime for Gate next year. There is just a very present cliquey shit element that loves to make people miserable and they are somewhat invincible based on the fact that they've been around for years and do operationally significant things. It's a present factor that has been addressed in trainings and meetings and stuff, as far as I know, but that's how it goes.