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Monday, September 06, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
FESTIVAL OF FIRE
Thousands drop their inhibitions and reinvigorate their sense of fun before the Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert.
By Ed Vogel
Donrey Capital Bureau
GERLACH -- More than 23,000 mind-blown residents of Black Rock City, Nevada's sixth largest community, staggered home Sunday after witnessing a spectacle of fire and fun quite unlike anything else on Earth.
The eight-day Burning Man festival is not a latter-day Woodstock, Sodom and Gomorrah or a pagan ritual. Burning Man cannot be defined. Suffice it to say, Burning Man is a three-mile-long carnival in the dust where everybody gets silly and has a good time.
Sure there were hundreds, if not thousands of naked people -- particularly pot-bellied, middle-aged men -- walking around on the dried mud playa of the Black Rock Desert, 114 miles northeast of Reno. But the naked novelty wears off after you see your hundredth penis or pair of breasts.
At least three-fourths of the people retained their clothes over the windy and mid-70s weekend. But just because they didn't disrobe doesn't mean they weren't exhibitionists. Men wore dresses, women's underwear and lots of masks. Women preferred black Gothic clothing, prom dresses and bikinis. If you didn't wear a costume, then you painted your body.
There even was a man wearing a nice suit with white shirt and tie. He kept a cell phone at his ear and shouted, "Sell, sell, sell."
His pleas apparently to shed his stock portfolio wouldn't go far in this Bedouin-style, desert encampment on U.S. Bureau of Land Management land about seven miles east of Gerlach, population 250. You can't get cell phone reception out here in the boonies.
Nor could you take a shower, find a water fountain, or buy a meal or a T-shirt in the cashless economy of Black Rock City. There were port-a-potties, but the lines often were 50 people deep and the smell permeated through to the next block.
In addition to the naked and strange, there also were plenty of normal-acting people in the temporary city in the desert. Hundreds of senior citizens and families with young children showed up for the festivities.
You had to look hard to find anyone openly smoking marijuana. Beer was the drug of choice.
Karen Roos of Santa Cruz, Calif., brought her 5-year-old twin sons, Karel and Elan, to Burning Man for the second consecutive year.
"The first time the boys were here they said, 'Momma, that man has no clothes on.' After a couple of hours, they got used to it and didn't say a thing. You come here to be the person you want to be. We all want to act like children and here we can."
Tammy Hayden, a waitress from Cedar Ridge, Calif., echoed her thoughts.
"Society has closed our minds to our inner child," she said. "Here your inner child can come out. Out here I don't wear anything."
But Della Fuente, a graphic artist from Pasadena, Calif., mentioned all the alkali dust blowing off the desert would only destroy the skin of the naked.
"There sure are a lot of sexually repressed people here," she added. "They must not get to show off the rest of the year. We should be naked more often in society. But everyone makes such a big deal out of it."
Richard Lambert, a fabricator from Calgary, Alberta, was decked out in his official brown Black Rock Rangers uniform as he tooled around the playa on an all-terrain vehicle. He and his son, Kalab, come to Burning Man each year to bond.
Son Kalab is an audio engineer in New York who worked as a sound engineer at one of the dozen camp sites that featured music -- mainly electronic techno sounds. Each summer the Lamberts take time off from the real world to tent together in Black Rock City and volunteer their skills for free.
"It's a father-and-son bonding experience," Ranger Lambert said. "Out here it is like you are staying on the surface of the moon. It is a totally alien environment. It is mind-altering without the drugs."
Indeed, the Saturday night burning of the man was mind-altering.
Picture Kuwait after the Iraquis set fire to the oil wells during Operation Desert Storm. Huge fires burn at several spots on the playa. Green laser beams shoot out from surrounding mountains. Bolts of electricity arc from the head of a man on a tower.
A procession of people carrying lighted torches march up the promenade to the Man -- a 50-foot tall red-and-yellow neon and wood figure constructed on top of 400 bales of hay.
The drums beat louder. Black Rock City residents have become a primitive tribe. Fireworks explode across the sky. The colors change again and again.
The crowd shakes with anticipation. People dance, laugh and stare at their surroundings with astonishment. You feel like you are inside a kaleidoscope.
The neon lights in the Man go out. Even at Burning Man, there are mechanical failures.
But the red neon is restored. Then without warning the Man ignites. Fireworks pop from his body. Propane gases are shot high into the sky from four huge wooden balls on the playa around him. The drums beat louder. People scream.
When the Man topples, they rush forward and dance within a few feet of his smoldering remains.
Burning Man No. 14, the 10th in the Black Rock Desert, has been an unqualified success.
San Francisco landscape designer Larry Harvey looks like the kind of guy who would be more comfortable sitting around his living room, popping a few beers while watching the Niners on the tube.
Yet this short-haired man in black Levis is the guy that brought this mayhem to the desert.
He looked almost embarrassed Saturday as he explained to his devotees that he got the idea for creating a "sacred space" during a visit to the pyramids near Mexico City.
"I'm somewhat of a showman," quipped Harvey to the rapt attention of his followers. "People ask if Burning Man is a religion. No, but it is a spiritual event."
He babbled on about religion for about a half hour, but really didn't make much sense, other than giving a surprising revelation about the Man. Burning Man really may be Burning Woman.
"Burning Man looks like a man or woman," Harvey said. "He could be a man or a woman."
Initially, he and friends burned a small wooden man on a beach in San Francisco in 1986. After four years of beach burnings, the local police complained and Harvey began looking for a place where he could be free with his fire.
He found the sacred space way out in the Black Rock Desert, the flat arid waste that pioneers tried to avoid on their wagon train treks West and that speed racers like Craig Breedlove discovered in the 1960s.
British Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green broke the sound barrier for the first time when he achieved a land speed record of 763.035 mph here in 1997.
Harvey soon discovered the Black Rock more hospitable to his tribal gatherings. What San Francisco could not stomach has thrived in the live-and-let-live state of Nevada.
The event drew just a few hundred initially and attracted attention only in the Bay area. But by the mid-1990s, Burning Man was on the must-see list of every counterculture rag and Web site. Crowds since have doubled every other year. The 1998 Burning Man drew 15,000.
While not much of a philosopher, Harvey is smart enough to know what it takes to please the population in Gerlach and to keep law enforcement authorities happy.
"Burning Man doesn't bother me in the least," said Gerlach senior citizen Eileen Carter during a break from mowing her backyard lawn. "It's fine with me. You don't even know it is there unless you go out there."
Gerlach Postmistress Jola Mott applauded the event organizers for their gifts of money to the high school and senior citizen center. They also clean up the desert once the hordes depart.
"They have given quite a bit to the school," she said. "They let the locals go out there free. I enjoy it. It is kind of fun."
While there are no charges for locals, the outside world pays a big price for the freedom of Burning Man. Tickets started at $100 on the opening day of the festival last Monday and increased by $5 each day. Forget your dog unless you are willing to pay his admission.
The real fanatics of the Man buy their tickets before April 15 when they cost $65.
About two-thirds of this year's crowd bought tickets early, according to Scott Deals, a Burning Man spokesman and the event's Web designer.
"Everyone here has to abide by the laws of Nevada," he added.
And just as nudists can gather on federal property around Lake Tahoe and Lake Mead, they can disrobe in the federal Black Rock City. The city fathers haven't gotten around to passing any public indecency ordinances.
Despite the ticket price, quite a few dogs -- and a desert tortoise -- made it to this year's festival.
Ted Chu drove down from Idaho Falls, Idaho with Camas, his German chocolate terrier and popped down $125 to let her accompany him to the camp.
"She goes everywhere with us," he said. "Last week we floated the Salmon River. We floated the Green River in Utah the week before."
Cary Larsen, of Minden, didn't have to pay for Turlock, her pet desert tortoise. She helps find homes for desert tortoises from Southern Nevada and Burning Man was good way to show Turlock off.
"He's not a problem like a dog," said Larsen as people congregated around the tortoise. "Next year I want to start a tortoise theme camp out here."
According to the Ministry of Statistics, just 5 percent of the crowd is Nevadans. About two-thirds hail from California.
"It smacks of San Francisco," said Chuck Cedla, a U.S. Defense Department employee from Reno. "It's a real cash cow for the businesses in Gerlach."
Cedla offers his comments while riding a huge wooden rocking horse. He wears gladiator garb and wishes aloud that there were more naked people.
"I'm just out here doing my own thing on this horse," he said. "I have met just two bad people here out of 18,000 (eventually 23,000). It's just great."
When he finishes with the horse, Cedla can journey across the playa where a bunch of people are playing baseball -- with a kids' plastic bat and ball. Then there are swing sets.
Other people are flying kites and throwing plastic disks. And everybody rides bikes. The inner child reigns today.
A sign along the rutted dirt entrance road explains what you must do when you arrive here. When you go to Burning Man, leave your guilt behind.
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Printable version of this story
Spectators cheer as a 50-foot-high wooden effigy of a man is burned on the final day of the Burning Man festival near Gerlach on Saturday.
Photo by Laura Rauch/Associated Press.
Adelma Roach and David Lurey of San Francisco stretch following a yoga class at the Elvis Yoga camp at the Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert near Gerlach Saturday.
Photo by Associated Press.
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