Burning Man drawing 20,000 to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert

Scott Sonner

Thursday, Sept. 2, 1999 | 9:53 a.m.

BLACK ROCK DESERT, Nev. - The drums are beating. The migration is on. It's time again to burn the Man.

More than 20,000 artists, spiritualists, old hippies, young thrill-seekers and curious travelers are expected to land on the high-desert floor 120 miles north of Reno by the weekend for the 14th annual "Burning Man" festival.

Billed as the largest outdoor arts festival in North America, Burning Man is a psychedelic adventure that combines wilderness camping with avant-garde performance - a Mardi Gras-like celebration on what appears to be the surface of the moon.

"It was definitely worth the trip," said Randy Gilliland, who traveled nearly 3,000 miles from Tampa, Fla., in an old Sears paint truck he bought 12 years ago for $75 to attend a Pink Floyd concert.

The counterculture event on the vast dried mud of an ancient lake bed culminates Saturday night with the torching of a 50-foot wooden man draped in fireworks and neon.

Artists will toss their paintings, sculptures and other creations onto the raging bonfire to reinforce the celebration of art for arts sake.

If you have to ask why, you don't get it, organizers say.

"It's almost impossible to explain," said Ochressandro Rettinger, 23, a computer programmer who made the trip from Albuquerque, N.M.

"It's just great to be with your friends and build a community in the middle of nowhere and not have to follow the normal rules of society," he said.

Organizers say they've gotten a bad rap in recent years from the media, which tends to focus on the nudity, pagan rituals and hallucinogenic drugs that make the rounds.

A few arrests are made each year for the sale of drugs. But local law officers, who team with a private security unit known as the Black Rock Rangers, take a tolerant approach to the week as long as people keep to themselves.

"We've never had a major incident," Washoe County Sheriff's Sgt. Rob Davis said. "They set up a whole city. They even have dedicated streets.

"When I first heard about it, I thought it was a throwback to the 1960s. But as I learn more about it, it's more about artistic expression - an event where people can freely express themselves."

The tent settlements and theme villages stretch about 3 miles from end to end. Bicycles are the main mode of transportation because motorized vehicles can't move once they park at a camp site.

With the wooden effigy in the center, the encampment is laid out in a huge circle with avenues running outward on the face of a clock.

They bisect the circular roads that are named after planets and orbit the center - first Mercury, then Venus etc. That's so you can meet your friends at the corner of 5:30 and Neptune.

Grays, browns and reds dominate the rocky landscape framed by jagged desert mountains that rise up from the desert floor like sand castles.

"The desert is just a great canvas for art," said Brandy Collins, a Texas artist and musician in the Houston-based band "Low Brow."

"I like the aspect of all these different things mixed together. It's hard to tell if it is more like religion or just insanity," he said.

His band plays "weird circus music ... traditional carnie waltzes."

With 20,000 to 25,000 expected, "Black Rock City" becomes one of the five largest cities in Nevada for the week.

The rest of the year its a desolate, 400-square-mile expanse of flat, chalky land called the playa, pronounced "PLY-ah."

Organizers had to get a permit from the Bureau of Land Management, which manages the land and sets forth strict guidelines intended to protect the fragile desert.

"Warning: You are temporary," reads a sign on the entrance drive. "Leave no trace."

Burning Man creator Larry Harvey said the event is an outgrowth of "San Francisco's Bohemian Scene." He started the first one at Baker Beach in 1986 with the burning of an 8-foot effigy and moved to the Nevada desert in 1990.

"We've given you all a chance to live like artists here," Harvey said in a speech at last year's event.

"This whole experiment we're running is an effort to recreate culture in our modern world. Because if we don't do it, I can justly fear that when the machine stops, we're going to find ourselves so isolated from one another that none of us are going to be able to cope with it," he said.

Sculptures with names like "Nebulous Entity" - a gnarled tree made of animal bones - began to take shape on the desert floor early this week as groups like the "Barbie National Freedom Fighters" filtered into camp. Events include an opera with 300 performers against the backdrop of two 30-foot-tall, fire-filled towers representing totems of life and death and a massive group nude photograph on Saturday morning.

Vendors generally are prohibited so participants must pack everything they need. Temperatures can soar past 100 degrees during the day and dip into the 30s at night.

The Burning Man Web site urges attendees to slather themselves in sunscreen and drink plenty of water.

Gusty winds wreaked havoc with the tents and blew down portable toilets early in the week. One of the main media tents blew over on Monday.

"I said, 'At least we've still got our other tent' and 10 seconds later, the other one tipped over," said a Burning Man spokesman who goes by the name of RonJon Jim.

"You plan and you plan and you plan. It shows you the power of Mother Nature."

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