Burning Man is a yearly festival held over Labor Day weekend in honor of all that is strange, beautiful, and flammable. I attended Burning Man with some folks from talk.bizarre, a virtual community and USENET newsgroup. See the full-scale Burning Man exhibit for more text and photographs.

September 5, 1996

Nevada is a dry place. The Black Rock Desert in Nevada in particular is dry and dusty. Huge hot roving bands of people, trouncing on a subsection of said parched earth, lighting things on fire, and churning up landscape with vehicles/sculptures/feet/fuzzy bunny slippers/couches, were drier and dustier still.

It was GREAT.

Things that go well with a desert: mud. naked people. water trucked in on big trucks in multi-gallon drums, and squirted on naked people via pitch-fork shaped hoses. spray water bottles, waterguns, drinking water bottles, kiddie pools of water, dirty ice water in coolers, trucks selling ice twice a day at $2 a bag. a cafe in the center of camp selling mochaccinos. trampolines. ice smoothies that you could barter for. drugs, any kind, hallucinogens in particular. glow-in-the-dark things. body paint. mountain bikes. motorcycles. couches outfitted with engines and steering wheels. anything outfitted with engines and steering wheels. cars shaped like sharks and bearing 10 or more water-gun-bearing postal workers shouting militantly. McSatan burgers. two-story climbable, musical structures built from several dozen pianos. sand castles. plaster. metal. welding tools. human-sized mousetraps. pedal-powered aircraft. parachutes. neon. accordians. circus acts. pyrotechnics. musicians, in mobile vehicles or standing still. drums, incense, chanting, belly dancing. alien landing signal procedures. flammable materials.

a 3-story neon man, exploding, burning, and toppling.