First Person

Burn, Baby, Burn!

by Jennifer Raiser

“YOU’RE going to WHAT?” I was asked when I announced with equal measures of trepidation and glee that I’d committed to join a camp at Burning Man.

As a woman who does her primary hiking around Union Square, there was rightful skepticism that I was deliberately traveling to a barren alkaline lake-bed in the Nevada desert, particularly one that banned shopping and was light on showering. Ah, but journalistic curiosity is a powerful thing.

And my beloved brother Phillip Raiser had assured me that he’d provide a suitable oasis in the midst of Black Rock City, as the desert locale of Burning Man is called. “You’ve got to be there to get it,” he emphasized.

So I packed up my mufti, the hot pink bell-bottoms embroidered in turquoise crystals from Sari Palace, the jangly belly-dancing scarves, the dust masks and protective goggles (are you getting the look here?) and put on my SPF 60 sunscreen. Lots and lots of sunscreen.

Meeting me at the “Not Here International” Airport — a dirt airstrip with topless traffic controllers — with a double-decker traveling “Souk” (a van painted to resemble an Arabian market), known as the Kazbus, I was suitably welcomed with libations (Kazmapolitans, natch), and instantly welcomed into a diverse cohesion of our 30-person camping coterie, ranging in age from 22 to 72.

This friends-of-friends amalgamation included auto mechanics, solar activists, restaurateurs, and venture capitalists who all volunteered responsibility for hosting on the Kazbus. Guess whose skill sets were the most valued at Burning Man? (It wasn’t the VC’s.) Aha, I was starting to get it.

Knowing my penchant for a certain Parisian designer from the Rue Cambon, my brother had thoughtfully outfitted me with a 1967 Airstream called the Coco Cabana. upholstered in leopard, and decorated with a silhouette of Mademoiselle herself. It was a suitably secure pod from which to observe and hide from the great goings-on that occurred 24/7 in this temporary city of 40,000 revelers, observers, exhibitors and exhibitionists.

The best way to describe Burning Man is Clan of the Cave Bear meets Studio 54. (And yes, Darryl Hannah was rumored to be there, but so were David Bowie, the Google guys and Pee Wee Herman, to give you an apt juxtaposition.)

Far greater than the sum of many parts, it was one part pagan ritual (standing in a huge circle burning giant effigies), one part techno-music rave (the thump-thump-thump bass heartbeat was inescapable), one part techno-geek invention (sustainable tofu-toasting solar oven, anyone?), one part art festival (some of the most remarkable pieces on a monumental scale, many of them burned in a final act of performance art), one part summer camp (lots of pancakes and sing-alongs), and one part beatnik be-in (lots of tie dye and Ben giving away his and Jerry’s ice cream).

How many parts is that? More like the sum of a whole and a half. And it is impossible to see every art piece, every performance, every theme camp in one short week — and that is if you choose to forego the parties and the ubiquitous alcohol (but it’s BYOC — bring your own cup).

There’s no commerce or vending at Burning Man, save the sale of ice to benefit the local community’s school, which tolerates this once-a-year invasion, and lattes to benefit the workers in the Burning Man infrastructure, who toil all week that others may revel.

From its humble beginnings on Baker Beach 21 years ago, the Burning Man organization creates a temporary city which is remarkably safe, thoughtful and well-organized, right down to its own airport, TV and radio station, daily newspapers, infirmaries, and portapotties (400 of them, efficiently cleaned and restocked twice daily).

They even have their own peace officers, the Black Rock Rangers, who work with local law enforcement to ensure that all goes smoothly and legally. Despite its dramatic growth in popularity, the organization is fierce about protecting the spirit of Burning Man, which embraces radical self-reliance, sustainability, respect, generosity, and creative self expression. All this sounds very hippy-dippy, but is actually a wonderful set of ideals made real for one week a year in a place that looks like Tatooine, Luke Skywalker’s arid planet in a galaxy far, far away.

Fire is given pride of place at Burning Man, as the metaphor for destruction and rejuvenation, of heat and light. Many of the art pieces and performances incorporate fire, culminating in the remarkable ritual of 40,000 celebrants standing in a circle watching the Man burn on Saturday night. Gazing into the giant flames, seeing the red light reflected in so many eyes, you cannot avoid thinking about 9/11, or Hurricane Katrina, or the Iraq war (which was noted directly in a miniaturized military graveyard listing the name and photograph of each American casualty).

But it’s even more primal than that. Seeing things burn in the middle of the desert is compelling, evocative, terrifying and cathartic at once. In fact, there are two burns: on Saturday night, the Man burns in a revel of fire dancing, pyrotechnics and music. The next night, the Temple of Hope, onto which people have written messages to those who’ve died, burns in a silent and reverential ceremony that brings the week to a solemn close.

Burning Man is often dismissed by the uninitiated as “an excuse for a bunch of hippies to play commune in the desert.” Well, they have a point. But they don’t have the point, which is to eliminate the common precepts of structure in our society (like electricity, money, running water) in order to let the best of human nature emerge through all forms of art, performance, generosity and, well, fun.

Yes, fun. Go figure that extreme camping on the moon could be fun. But with such an array of costumes, installations, and unexpected discoveries, the camping becomes a means to an end: it’s how you stay there and see what happens. Yes, you know the ending: the Man burns. And Dorothy goes home to Kansas. But that doesn’t mean that Oz isn’t a riveting place while she’s there.

Experienced “Burners,” as they’re called, know a lot about how to make it all work. They spend 51 weeks planning their encampments, their shade structures, and shower evaporation pits, as the precept of “leave no trace” means the dry lake bed is returned to pristine condition. There are no trash cans or dumpsters — you bring it, you burn it, or you pack it back out, every orange peel, sequin and bottle cap. And yet most supermarket parking lots look worse by noon than the Playa did all week. If you dropped something, someone would pick it up and hand it back to you. This is an event that bans pets, firearms and feather boas — the latter because they shed — with equal fervor.

Radical self reliance means you’d better figure out how to survive the elements, with 70 m.p.h. dust storms, 100 degree days, and 50 degree nights being the norm. Hydration is essential, although the five well-established medical tents offer an abundance of Gatorade, IV drips for the dehydrated, and tetanus shots for the occasional thumb that missed a tent stake in the dark. But where self-reliance failed, the spontaneous support of other Burners rallied, whether the need was tangible (hooray for duct tape!) or topographical (like a ride to Center Camp for more ice).

The city is laid out in a series of concentric circles, with the Man in the center of a theoretical clock. Campsites are laid out between two and 10 o’clock, leaving the area around and ahead of the Man, called the Playa, free for massive art installations, art cars, performances, fire dances, and anything and everything that requires wide-open space to be appreciated.

The “Man” is a 40-foot-high art installation that’s lit by neon and packed with fireworks, so that when he burns on Saturday night, he explodes with all manner of pyrotechnics.

The circular streets are listed alphabetically as Anxious, Brave, Chance, Destiny, Eager, Fate, Guess and Hope, and the cross streets are listed as minutes on the clock, so that you can tell your friends your campsite is, say, at 4:30 and Eager, giving all an easy means of navigation.

The precise location of official theme camps are listed on a map, but the unofficial network spreads information almost as efficiently. Unless your car has been specifically approved as an art piece by Burning Man’s Department of Mutant Vehicles (DMV), driving is strictly forbidden.

Bicycles, often wildly embellished, propel Burners around the Playa in delightful array, the distinctive decorations providing an efficient means of identification in a sea of Schwinns.

For one week a year, Black Rock City becomes the fifth largest city in Nevada, with a highly cooperative populace following the rules about driving, litter or behavior, or risking immediate expulsion. Talk about civic engagement!

ART DISPLAYS RANGED IN SCALE FROM MONUMENTAL to minute. Some were meant to be seen during the day, others lit up at night, many could be seen at all hours, providing useful landmarks for the dusty walk back to camp. The use of lighting, fire, el-wire (like flexible neon) and other forms of luminescence, were prevalent on cars, clothes and camps, both for decoration, but also for safety.

Over 200 major installations were vetted by the art committee, and $400,000 was dispersed to support pieces relate to this year’s theme of Hope and Fear: the Future. But numerous other unregistered pieces were strapped to handlebars, painted on bodies, or sung to the heavens.

The art is ubiquitous, and ambiguous. Is that a golf cart or a mastodon? If a trailered motorboat is filled with water and towed around the playa, is it art or is it a tepid hot tub? And what about the bicycle dressed up as a cupcake or a camel, or a tiki bar, complete with thatched overhang and battery-powered blender? Whatever it was, it was done with ingenuity, passion, and in most cases, total anonymity.

Aside from official art tours led by docents in the afternoon and evenings, discovery and appreciation of art was left to individual Burners to explore. And unlike in a museum setting, participants were encouraged to touch, climb or propel works of art as a means of appreciating them. Imagine the best Jungle Gym ever invented, and then quadruple it in size.

The most dramatic art piece was an organically formed “blobitechture” structure called Uchronia, which towered 50-feet high and 100-feet long at the end of the Playa. Loosely designed on a cocktail napkin after the artist met a Burner in Belgium, it was assembled by a team of 72 European volunteers, all dressed in white, utilizing 100 miles of pine scrap lumber of different lengths, meant to symbolize the varied individuals on the planet.

By day, the structure provided dappled shade and formed an impromptu cathedral for the numerous weddings that were held at Burning Man, and by night, transformed into a techno-rave palace, looking like the love child of Frank Gehry’s Bilbao and the Sydney Opera House. And finally, on Sunday night, it became an evanescent manifesto, as its creators slowly and methodically lit it with flares, and burned it to the ground.

Other pieces were as effective but much more literal. Oakland’s Flaming Lotus Girls collective amazed with the Serpent Mother, a welded Jurassic snake whose propane-burning mouth threatened to bite anyone who approached her steel egg.

A photovoltaic field of robotic sunflowers, a giant bamboo mandala, a 30-foot-high I.T. (information technology) science fiction creature, a flaming ice sculpture, an enormous reflective double helix, and many, many equally effective pieces were punishingly transported, and painstakingly assembled at the Playa for a one-week installation, many to be demolished onsite. The site specificity and technical complexity of the art made it that much more appreciated by those fortunate enough to explore it.

“THE PLAYA PROVIDES” IS A MUCH-USED PHRASE, but an apt one. One Burning Man principle is based on gifting, and the generosity is abundant. At every turn, there are offers of water or something stronger, from homemade absinthe to tequila and beyond. Pancake houses were more plentiful than truck stops on the I-80, and many camps were established around particular services offered at a particular time of day.

The Heebee Geebees Healers offered yoga, meditation and massage, CoolTown offered walk-through misting and vodka snow cones, the Black Rock Diner offered grilled cheese sandwiches between midnight and six AM…all free, just for showing up.

There were art cars providing rides, often with themed beverages to boot — the traveling Saloon served up whiskey with the dance hall girls, a top-hatted barkeep, and a plink-plink upright piano through swinging doors. Your only challenge was being at the right place at the right time to do and see at all hours of the day and night.

Burners shared gifts of small and large tokens — from medallions to full costumes to clean panties — or offered skills and experiences to everyone who joined in — 2 AM Playa Roller disco (skates in all sizes!), bagpipes (and other pipes) at sunrise, a foot massage, or a magical Chinese teahouse presenting steaming porcelain cups of oolong tea at 4:30 in the morning.

Yes, it can feel like a Mad Max movie. The Department of Public Works crew tends to wear Road Warrior black boots and studded black utili-kilts, and deliberately hit one another’s cars as a form of affectionate greeting. There’s a geodesic Thunder-dome where combatants stage mock battles with foam weapons as onlookers cheer them from the rafters. The bars look like a scene from Star Wars, with freakishly outfitted aliens sidling up to naked sylphs. When the rave music gets into your head, it can feel like a Brigadoon of the Apocalypse.

Now as for the juicy bits. What I found most notable was the remarkably fine comportment of the participants. I never saw outrageous drunkenness or dramatically bad behavior, although there was lots of happiness to go around. Drinking and inhaling were the dominant choices for escape, with a subset of things you might witness at the Folsom Street Fair. For many, the drug of choice was actually the sleeping pill Ambien, accompanied by an effective set of earplugs, as a temporary stay against the exuberant noise of hardier all-night Burners.

And then there was the nudity: partial, complete, casual, unabashed, experimental. By day two, it looked utterly normal. It’s hardly mandatory — in fact, it appeared to be the small minority, but it happily coexisted with outrageous costumes, practical masks and dust goggles, and the ubiquitous hiking boots that protect feet from the damaging alkaline clay.

Sunscreen and hats, and thankfully, are the most prevalent forms of protection, although protection of other kinds was highly encouraged and enthusiastically used by the consensual minority who chose to pursue their bliss in the privacy and comfort of designated camps. Like the experience of a nudist beach, the sights ranged from delightful to diverting — but all were received without judgment. The proud beauty of a survivor’s mastectomy scar is a more powerful statement than the perky sun salute on someone half her age.

Socioeconomic strata dissipate at Burning Man — lots of Silicon Valley types happily coexist with hand-to-mouth fire twirlers or welders, and talking about one’s job or status is roundly discouraged. Many that have means give abundant parties or underwrite art pieces, but a performance or volunteerism to light lamps or staff information booths is equally valued.

Mechanical expertise is held in highest esteem, as the punishing conditions reduce car parts and tent flaps to rubble in short order. When asked why he spent $80,000 creating an elaborate art car, one host said, “Because I could, and because it needed to be done.”

The day before the Belgian Uchronia burned, someone wrote on one of the beams, “Do all you can with all that you have in the time that you have in the place that you are.” Which perfectly summed up the event — a community built around the burning desire to share, to celebrate, to play, to express, and to reinforce the best of human nature for a week in the here and now. Which is pretty hot stuff, indeed.

Jennifer Raiser reported on the Debutante Ball for the August issue, another ritualized tribal gathering that also involved elaborate costuming, all-night dancing, and a celebration of gift-giving.