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Black Rock citizens play naked, taking
turns crawling over each other's mud-covered bodies. Click the photo to enlarge it |
Why would anyone
buy a $100 ticket to drag tons of raw material and camping supplies out to a remote, sun-hammered
desert just to see a big wooden man explode in flames?
If you have to ask, you haven't been there. Yet.
Every Labor Day weekend, Black Rock City bursts forth on this barren alkali wasteland two hours from
Reno, like the twisted spore of some psychedelic Brigadoon.
And there it hums for a week, as if gyroscopically balanced on jeweled bearings, in a glass sphere
tinged with smoke, sweat and magic.
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A satyr salutes. The legs are tiring to wear, he says, but very lifelike. Click image to enlarge it
and check out his feet
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The mechanics
seem simple: The Black Rock City Department of Public Works marks off a semicircular grid of
streets.
Radio Free Burning Man pumps out trance music, sex chat, bad poetry and pleas to stop littering.
The Black Rock Rangers deftly manage everything from dehydrated artists, sudden fires and hazardous
campsites to runaway dogs, lost wanderers and inconsiderate jerks.
And the volunteer lamplighters stroll out at dusk to fend off the night with flickering oil lamps
hung high from graceful posts.
Black Rock City operates like any small industrial town.
But its citizens live under only one
city law -- "NO SPECTATORS" -- and pitch in to manufacture the city's sole product: art.
You can try slapping labels on Burning Man: Monster party. Weirdo campout. All-souls hootenanny.
Pagan ritual. Art jam.
But they never do it justice.
More: So what the hell is Burning Man?
More photos
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Burning Man
• Stretch your soul
• What is Burning Man?
• The fine
print
Video
 See the Man
burn -- and moreQuicktime
Quicktime VR 
• Ruins of the Temple of
Rudra
• High tower
view of Black Rock City
• Read the fine print on the ticket.
Out on the Web
• Burning Man's online
home
• Burning Man archive
• One citizen's page
• Who is Larry Harvey?
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;)