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Part 1 -- Introduction and The Camps |
Part 2 -- The Art |
Part 3 -- The People |
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Part 4 -- Events and the Desert |
Part 5 -- The Man and the Burn |
Part 6 -- Exodus |
When it's said there is nothing quite like Burning Man, it is no hyperbole.
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Each year now, for 7 days around labour day, a group now grown to 15,000 people builds a temporary city in the desolate Black Rock desert of northern Nevada.
You've heard of the Black Rock Desert. It's miles and miles of completely flat alkalai dry lakebed where nothing lives. It's where the rocket cars go to try to break the land speed record. And it's the site of Burning Man.
I think if this era has a Woodstock, Burning Man is it. Not that it's similar to Woodstock. It's not a concert or a one-time event. But it will be reminisced about in the same way as the countercultural mecca of the 90s.
The 15,000 people build their city and create art. The build, they sculpt, they show off. They practice a week of idyllic anarchy. And then, in most cases they burn, blow up or destroy what is built in an orgy of fire, declaring it a phoenician rebirth ceremony. 10% of the people run around nude or topless. People get a lot of sunburns.
It all centers around a giant wooden statue of a man, who is burned in pyrotechnic glory Sunday night. That's how it began, with one depressed man holding a party on the beach an burning an effigy to clense his emotions. But it's become much more than that.
Many others have written about Burning Man. To better answer the question of what it is, go to the "official" Burning Man web site or to the Burning Man Archives. You will also find many articles on it in the popular press. It also gets covered on TV when it happens.
In here you'll find my own particular observations, and in many cases comments not for outsiders but for other participants. And you will primarily find the many photos I and Kathryn took with digital camera and film.
My key work in this area is a giant panoramic photograph of the city, known as Black Rock City. Most of my other photos mirror the many other photo collections on the web in some ways, but this panorama is unique. I have a special panorama web page just for it.
This is my account of the 1998 Burning Man. The photos are mostly with my first digital camera. For better quality photography, and less prose, see my 1999 Burning Man or 2000 photo essay.
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The trip to Burning Man also became an excuse for an 18 day RV trip through the American West to Yellowstone. People who can afford it rent an RV to go to Burning Man. The desert is desolate. There is no water, no nothing, just the porta-potties the organizers provide and some ice sales. The RV, with air conditioning, running water, showers and stuff may not give you the full roughing-it BM experience, but nor is it necessary to have that to experience to appreciate BM.
You can read my commentary on RV travel for some notes on my impressions of this style of tourist life.
A good portion of the population at BM is twentysomethings. There are lots of us at other ages, of course, but the energy of youth pervades the festival. While most of the time the RV rental places are used to older couples and families, for this week, every RV to be had in Nevada and California gets taken for BM. Many others come in trucks, SUVs, cars with overloaded roofs, and U-hauls. Some may just tent, but others come to build an interesting temporary home.
It is the role -- nay, duty -- of participants at BM to be interesting. One of the abiding rules (in a town with "no rules") is "no spectators." People there just to watch are unwelcome, especially those thinking it's an excuse to see topless women. That doesn't mean people there don't appreciate the women (or men) for for the beauty they hold or are expected not to, it's just far from the purpose of the event.
I had heard tell of BM for years. Friends had been going since it was quite small, but since I was usually busy labour day I had never gone. The old-timers today lament the loss of the more intimate BM, and no doubt with good reason. However, what has replaced it is still fascinating, if different. It has more rules, more problems, and is too large in scope to fully appreciate, but it's well worth going.
To make sure those who go are serious, the event is 6 to 7 hours drive from San Francisco, and further from most other places. It's also so far from civilization that, in theory, the bending and breaking of the rules that takes place in a week of anarchy can be more tolerated.
Of course, its so big now that the police put forward a big presence, and make the organizers pay through the nose for it. One sees more cops than one will in a regular big city, though they aren't doing anything. People leave their bikes out unlocked all the time. Theft and related crimes are minimal. The fire crews are of course all paranoid about all the burning. The police turn a blind eye to the drugs and victimless crimes.
The organizers, citing the rules of the Bureau of Land Management which owns the desert -- but also expressing a small amount of hippie-communism, I expect -- forbid commerce at the event. There is lots of barter, and lots of simple communal generousity.
The old pure anarchy broke down after getting to a few thousand people. Aside from the No Commerce rule there is also no driving, except to park at one's campsite, and sites are placed into a hemicircular set of streets. Smart people bring bicycles and go everywhere on them. The desert is hard packed, outside of rain, and you can ride quickly on it. There's a lot of noise, 24 hours a day, but they put limits on that, and designated the southern camps as quieter than the northern, but not by much. Earplugs can be handy when sleeping.
Because it's hot and sunburning in the day, it's a night community. Many do their limited sleeping during the day, and party all night. There is always lots going on.
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| Panorama ZOOM view |
As usual I decided to go at the last minute. I made the mistake of not arranging in advance to hook up with friends building what they call theme camps and villages within the city. As such, when we ended up arriving at 2am on Friday morning, it was not practical to track down people and join a camp. So we camped near one of the villages and never got the energy together to move when we later ran into people. Next time I will do it differently. Still, nothing is more than 2 miles from you, and that's not very far on a bike. While there were a few reported bike thefts, by and large people just parked their bikes unlocked. The image is a panorama from the roof of the RV, taken early on Friday, while things were still fairly sparse.
Burning Man is a marriage of art, anarchy and technology. It's a place where hippies, trendy beautiful people, brooding artists, goths and nerds can find something in common.
What impressed me was that some of the art is actually good. It's mostly ephemeral -- meant to be burned or certainly taken down at the end, but some people with real talent go to BM to show off. Without doubt, lots of it is trite, amateurish or sophomorically sexual but there's more than enough of the good to make it worthwhile.
Also impressive is the tremendous effort that goes into the camps and structures. While some just set up a minimalist camp, many camps have impressive structures that clearly were quite some work to set up. People aren't there to camp, they are there to show off what they can make.
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Here you see a variety of shots of different camps. This is just a tiny sampling, and not even the most intersting. There were literally hundreds and hundreds of unusual camps. Some built giant towers or other structures
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Some people, trying to get a smaller experience within what is now a large town of 15,000, build villages within the Black Rock City. They arrange a large cicular area, get common generators and other facilities and collect a group of camps. The Irrational Geographic Society and its stage are shown here on the right. "Drano" city on the left.
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More strange camps, including one (Holmes on the Range) with three naked women on a giant penis. Who can resist taking a photo of that? A lot of the experience of BM is going around, enjoying the camps, and going into them, and meeting the people, perhaps offering to help out. In fact, in line with the BM "No spectators" ethic, this is almost mandatory.
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All the streets were arranged in a hemicircle around the Man. In the center of that was a big cicular area called the Center camp, which included the one cafe and a stage in the middle, and some of the most established camps around it.
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| Panorama ZOOM view |
The best views of that (and many other things) can be found in the giant cicular panoramas we took from on top of a 30 foot tall scaffold tower camp Manward and south of the Cafe Temps Perdue. For best results go to my entry page which is dedicated to those panoramas.
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Part 1 -- Introduction and The Camps |
Part 2 -- The Art |
Part 3 -- The People |
|
Part 4 -- Events and the Desert |
Part 5 -- The Man and the Burn |
Part 6 -- Exodus |
