Last week, roughly 70,000 people gathered in Northern Nevada’s Black Rock Desert for Burning Man 2025. This annual event draws an international crowd to what is arguably one of the biggest parties in the world. And while it is undoubtedly a massive party on a scale that’s pretty hard to fathom, Burning Man is so much more than that. It’s a celebration of community, art, music, and self-expression. I won’t even attempt to explain or describe it because I couldn’t possibly do it justice. You’ve really got to experience it for yourself to understand what it’s all about.
For one week every summer, Black Rock City — the temporary city built by the participants — becomes the third-largest city in the state of Nevada. Made in the shape of a clock, the semicircular city wraps around the playa with the man structure in the exact center, along with hundreds of works of art scattered about. Once you’re there, driving vehicles around the playa is not allowed other than “art cars” (some of which are extravagant rolling sound stages) and “mutant vehicles,” which require special registration. As such, bikes have traditionally been and still are the primary form of transportation for most attendees.
The Black Rock Desert playa is a remnant of prehistoric Lake Lahontan and is a dry lake bed comprised of super-fine alkali dust. It is perfectly flat, so it is often super easy to ride around on, but the surface conditions vary from year to year depending on the previous winter and recent weather events. Some years, it’s gloriously hard-packed; on others, it’s super dusty, and when it rains, it becomes the sloppiest mess you have ever seen.
On an average day, I typically ride well over 20 miles while bouncing between neighborhood events, sound stages, art pieces, and art cars — with exactly zero feet of elevation change. My bike of choice has always been a standard singlespeed beach cruiser, which is arguably the most common type of bike you’ll see at Burning Man. Cruisers are cheap and simple machines that require little maintenance and have fewer parts to break or get ruined by the dust and generally harsh conditions. Like anywhere else, electric bikes are becoming more and more prevalent on the playa, too. This year was by far the most e-bikes I’ve ever seen out there.
No matter what kind of bike you ride, it is incredibly important to light them up at night. With tens of thousands of other people riding bikes around in the dark, your bike’s lighting helps you avoid being run into by other riders or art cars as they cruise around the playa. It also helps you stay visible to and stick with your friends and to identify your bike when it’s parked among hundreds of others. There are so many lights on bikes, art cars, art pieces, and sound stages on the playa at night, it is some serious sensory overload. Turns out, it’s also damn near impossible to take pictures of moving bikes with bright lights on them at night…
While bikes are simply a means of transportation for most, for others, bikes are a form of self-expression. This year was my 12th time at Burning Man, and I’ve seen some really impressive creations over the years. The creativity, engineering, fabrication, craftsmanship, and time that goes into some of these bikes is frankly pretty mind-boggling. In some ways, it’s kinda like the handmade creations we’ve been covering from the MADE show, while in others, it’s nothing like that at all. I doubt I came close to seeing all of the cool bikes at Burning Man, but here’s a collection of some of the most interesting ones I saw this year.
Ted is a good friend of mine, and he’s been riding the bike pictured above on the playa for the past three Burns. This homemade chopper started as a beach cruiser frame. Beyond the front and rear triangles, he fully customized everything else with steel tubing and welding equipment in his garage. Even the kickstand was made from scratch to support the extra-tall and very heavy bike. The fork alone weighs around 35 pounds.
The seat on the chopper is roughly five feet high, so you have to get a bit of a running start and some momentum before jumping up on it. Ted also made the custom horn. With three air horns combined, it sounds like a locomotive when you blow hard through the tube. You can seriously hear it from about a mile away.
My friend Reva likes llamas, so she made the trailer seen above that she calls Dolly the Llama. The trailer opens up to store beverages, jackets, or whatever else you want to throw in there, and it can also carry a passenger. The best part is that she can push a button, and it blows bubbles out of its butt while she rides.
One of our camp’s contributions is “Playa Weenies.” This year, we brought 600 hot dogs out onto the playa along with a Tiki Bar and DJ setup and gave them away to anyone who wanted one. Dolly the Llama helped us spread the word to folks passing by.
I wasn’t close enough to get a great picture, but I was intrigued by this family’s approach to riding together around the playa. With mom on an e-trike up front, towing a child, and dad on non-electric trikes behind, everyone can pedal if they want, and no one gets left behind. I actually caught up with Emily (in front, on the e-trike) after the burn, and she gave me the lowdown. She said her family has been using a variation of this trike bike train for some time. Everything is custom and bolt-on, making it easy to attach, detach, and switch up the setup as needed. She said that this year was the first that her son was large enough to ride the bike in the middle, and that the bike in the rear has over 1,000 playa miles on it.
Perhaps even cooler than that is the homemade, towable Airstream trailer that they made for their son. This way, he can cruise around with his parents, and if he gets tired while they are out, he can get some sleep in an enclosed space until they return to camp. I’ve seen similar setups before, but none that actually look a lot like a mini-Airstream trailer. Pretty neat if you ask me.
What was a basic ol’ cruiser bike looks a heck of a lot more interesting with a bunch of tools and bike parts welded onto the frame. It might not be quite as extravagant as some of the other bikes in here, but it goes to show that small details can make a sizeable visual impact.
Tall bikes are the OG. It seems like there used to be a lot more of them, so I was stoked when I saw this guy out cruising this year. It’s basically just two bike frames welded on top of each other, with the drivetrain modified to work with the upper set of cranks. With a saddle height probably ~6 feet or so, mounting and dismounting tall bikes can be a little tricky. Years back, I remember seeing a tall bike like this that required the rider to pedal backwards to move forward. It hurt my brain to look at it. A friend of mine says he knows a guy with a 25-foot-tall bike, but I’ve never seen it in person or in action.
When I saw this Mad Max-looking bike parked, unfortunately, the owner wasn’t around to give me any info. Clearly, it’s a custom design with swoopy tubes on the sides that appear to be made of steel. I think those are 24-inch wheels, obviously with some fat, knobby tires and a suspension fork. It’s a bit of a low-rider with that seat position combined with the out front placement of the cranks and the reach up to the grips. I’m guessing there’s a mid-drive motor to help move what is probably a very heavy bike. Seems like it might even hold a passenger seated behind the driver with feet on the foot pegs under the seat.
Thankfully, this guy stopped for a second to let some traffic pass so I could get a somewhat clear shot of his custom tall trike at night. It’s fair to assume that he made this thing himself, maybe out of some old pieces of a jungle gym. It has a loungy seat, and I’m pretty sure those are 26-inch wheels. The drivetrain isn’t super obvious, but it looks like the cranks are turning the front wheel, which might or might not have a small hub motor.
Fred here has been creating some of the most badass bikes on the playa for over a decade. Interestingly enough, I used to rent the house next door to him, and he happens to be one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. He’s made at least four super unique bikes that I’ve seen over the years. This three-wheeled two-seater is his latest ride, and one of two bikes that he brought out this year. This bike was completely designed, engineered, and fabricated by Fred. It rolls on two Hoosier race car tires paired with a massive three-spoked steel wheel that is ~7 feet in diameter.
I don’t know the specifics, but this bike has to weigh close to a thousand pounds. It has room for two and two sets of cranks, or it can be ridden by one person, as seen in the previous photo. But to get such a heavy bike to move is no small feat. There is a small e-bike motor attached to one of the sets of cranks to add a little pedal-assisted boost. Otherwise, the somewhat complicated-looking series of sprockets and chains results in what I assume is a planetary reduction-type system that gets this thing rolling. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this bike go faster than 3 mph or so.
This tandem is the other bike that Fred brought out. I didn’t see him riding it at any point this year, but I have seen it ridden a number of times in the past. Like the previous bike, Fred designed and built this thing himself, and it rolls on some of the same Hoosier race car tires. Unlike the three-wheeled bike, this one only has one set of pedals, and it relies entirely on human power to propel it forward — no assist motor here. Believe it or not, the turning radius is huge. He didn’t bring it this year, but he also has a bike that looks like a speeder from Star Wars. Lastly, he used to ride a bike with five or six-foot-tall wheels front and rear that had a seat centered in between, but I think that one has been retired.
Perhaps the most impressive bike that I’ve ever seen at Burning Man is the handmade trike — called the Dreamcycle — in the photo below. Not surprisingly, Randy (pedaling) and Fred are good friends, and this bike was clearly influenced by Fred’s designs. Obviously, it looks somewhat similar with the Hoosier race car tires, but it puts off a pretty strong penny-farthing-esque aesthetic with the huge front wheel made of steel. The Dreamcycle was completely designed and fabricated by Randy, with a bit of assistance from his buddy Fred. What strikes me the most about this bike is the smooth lines created with the curved, round steel tubing, resulting in a super clean look.
Given its 6-foot diameter front wheel and massive frame made of steel, along with two race car tires, this bike is obviously super heavy. Not surprisingly, it has a bolt-on e-bike motor to help get it and keep it moving, but it only moves at a snail’s pace regardless. The front and rear lanterns light up, along with the smaller lights on the curved tube off the front. One of the coolest features of this bike, however, is the oil candles incorporated in the front wheel. The balls dangling from the front spokes are all oil candles that are attached with axles so that they always hang down as the wheel spins. At night, Randy lights them up for what is arguably one of the coolest details on any bike on the playa.
Unless you’ve been to Burning Man, it’s hard to fully understand what it’s all about. A gallery of photos of interesting bikes certainly doesn’t tell the whole story, but hopefully, it gives you a little insight into the creativity, ingenuity, and unique creations that some burners bring to the playa each year. I’m currently still cleaning up and catching up on sleep, but I’m already looking forward to the weird and wonderful bikes that I’ll see out there next year.
