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A dust storm chased away some participants from the counterculture Burning Man festival before its traditional climax Saturday night on the northern Nevada desert, authorities said. [snip] "We are in (a) total whiteout," he wrote by e-mail. "A similar cold front caused a major dust event on Monday. The rest of the event has been relatively dust-free."

When San Francisco performance artist Paul Addis was arrested two months ago for prematurely setting Burning Man’s iconic wooden structure ablaze, some mused that Addis may have been trying to simply shake things up at the 21-year-old festival of radical self-expression. But as Addis, 35, remains behind bars in San Francisco after being nabbed Sunday night for the alleged attempted arson of The City’s historic Grace Cathedral, investigators, “burners” and churchgoers were hard-pressed to come up with a possible motive. Grace Cathedral spokesperson Brent Andrew said members of the Episcopal congregation had no idea why a man with no known...

SAN FRANCISCO - The man accused of setting the Burning Man on fire four days early has been arrested for allegedly planning to set Grace Cathedral ablaze, San Francisco police said today. Paul David Addis, 35, was arrested on the cathedral steps at 11:40 p.m. Sunday by police who said they had been tipped that someone intended to set fire to the Episcopal church, police spokesman Sgt. Steve Mannina said. Addis was wearing an old ammunition belt that carried small explosives, Mannina said. He was booked on suspicion of attempted arson, possession of an incendiary substance, possession of explosives and...

Let the '60s refugees and their rainbow-haired progeny roll in the mud and do in their Burning Man. The grown-ups of the world are setting fire to our patriotic spirit, winning freedom for oppressed Iraqis and killing a lot of Muslim extremists who would be more than happy to take them out into the desert night, douse them with gasoline and burn them alive, exactly what they did to Iraqi children whose parents supported reconciliation in Iraq. Please join the Fight For Victory caravan. Come to Washington, D.C., on Sept. 15 for the Gathering of Eagles and Eagles Up! push-back...

I was intrigued by the headline of an article from Monday's Washington Times: 'Burning Man' gets religion. It starts out with a look at the feelings and experiences of a Muslim man who attends Burning Man. Interesting enough, so I kept reading. The first page of the article is rather innocuous; it merely talks about what Burning Man is, about the mostly "spiritual but not religious" people who attend, and about how out-of-place Muslim convert Jack Fertig is there. All fair and true enough. But then, it gets to the meat of the article for me. First, let me say...

SAN FRANCISCO, (AP) -- After the signature effigy of the Burning Man festival went up in flames four days ahead of schedule, festival-goers vowed to rebuild the 40-foot icon by Saturday's planned climax. But not everyone was disappointed by Tuesday's incineration. The alleged torching of the wood-and-neon figure by a San Francisco performance artist has cast light on the disillusionment of many who feel the annual celebration of radical self-expression has lost touch with its spontaneous, subversive roots. "People have been trying to set that thing on fire for years," said Hugh D'Andrade, a San Francisco artist who attended the...

SAN FRANCISCO - Burning Man became Burnt Man four days early on Tuesday, and a San Francisco performance artist was arrested on suspicion of igniting the signature figure of the counterculture festival in the remote Nevada desert. The early morning fire scorched about 85 percent of the structure, Burning Man spokeswoman Andie Grace said. Event engineers decided it would be best to dismantle it and rebuild a less elaborate version, accomplishing in two days what normally takes weeks so the figure would be finished in time for Saturday night's scheduled burning, she said. The approximately 40-foot-tall wood and neon structure...

BLACK ROCK DESERT, NEV. - A San Francisco man was arrested on felony arson charges today after the 40-foot-tall "Man" statue whose torching is the annual highlight of the Burning Man festival in Nevada went up in flames four days early, authorities said. Paul Addis, 35, of San Francisco, was booked into the Pershing County Jail in Nevada on the arson charge and misdemeanor possession of fireworks, Sheriff Ron Skinner said.Festival organizers, meanwhile, pondered the smoldering remains of the Man and promised to rebuild the big guy in time for Saturday's regularly scheduled burn in the Black Rock Desert north...

Inside the Alamo Square apartment of Larry Harvey, the co-founder and impresario of Burning Man, there is a wooden statuette of Ganesh, the Hindu deity known for his patronage of arts and science. The expensive artifact was part of a splurge Harvey allowed himself three years ago, when he finally was able to redecorate his rental apartment and turn it from the paper-infested swamp he'd lived in for the past 22 years to the elegant bachelor pad it is today, adorned with Far Eastern decor and inhabited by a man who, by his own definition, has done well for himself....

Bin Laden found - at Burning Man! Black Rock City, NV - Despite a half decade of being sought for the 9/11 hijack bombings, Osama Bin Laden is still at large. Recent sightings of Bin Laden in this Nevada festival indicate he is much closer than anyone thought. "This is proposterous", fumed representative Nancy Pelosi. (D-CA) "We have spent billions of dollars in pursuit of this man, and here he is literally in our backyards." MORE http://www.staggeron.org/universe.html#osama_burningman

A counter-culture arts festival which champions alternative living is being vetted by environmentalists for its contribution to global warming. Burning Man bans the sale of anything but ice and coffee and declares clothing optional. The festival, which is expected to draw nearly 40,000 people to the Nevada desert this week, is described as an "experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance". It has few rules, no structure and features performances, installation art and music, which culminate in the symbolic burning of a large wooden man. A group of San Francisco scientists, calling themselves Cooling Man, have...

TWENTY YEARS AGO, a pair of San Francisco bohemians, Larry Harvey and Jerry James, burned a handmade wooden effigy on San Francisco's Baker Beach. That simple gesture, through word of mouth, attracted more participants in following years, and by 1990 the crowds pushed it off the beach and out to the Nevada desert. It developed into a seasonal settlement of 40,000 or so, known as Black Rock City. For one week each year, Burning Man becomes the most quintessentially American city in America. The city, dedicated loosely to art, community and general post-Merry Prankster high jinks, gets built, lived in,...

Sometimes there is just no way to know. Sometimes you are just handed a slab of raw perspective, a shocking dose of irony, and you have to do with it what you can. Some readers wrote me e-mails when I was out scorching my nether parts in the remote Nevada desert at Burning Man 2005, half naked and beglittered and intensely hung over and posting daily blog entries that read more like postcards from my moaning id than rational semicoherent slivers of BM reality.

A man dressed as a clown who assaulted another man and stole his bicycle at a counterculture festival last year has been sentenced after the victim's friends tracked down the disguised assailant. Dennis Hinkamp had to have two plates implanted in his arm after the attack at the Burning Man festival in the Black Rock desert, Nevada, Associated Press reports. Although his attacker disappeared into the crowd of painted and costumed celebrants, Hinkamp's friends began an internet search to find him. They linked the assailant to a group called Anarchoclowns, and finally to a hospital in Washington state, where Johnny...

Tips Lead to Arrest of Clown Assailant 2 hours, 38 minutes ago RENO, Nev. - A man dressed as a clown who assaulted another man and stole his bicycle at last year's Burning Man festival has been sentenced after the victim's friends tracked down the disguised assailant. Dennis Hinkamp had to have two plates implanted in his arm after the attack at the annual counterculture festival on the Black Rock Desert. Though his attacker disappeared into the crowd of painted and costumed celebrants, Hinkamp's friends launched an Internet search to find him. They linked him to a group called Anarchoclowns,...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The Board of Supervisors passed a resolution Tuesday opposing the construction of a coal-fired power plant in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, close to the spot that draws thousands of people every year to the Burning Man festival. The resolution passed unanimously with extensive public comment from environmental advocates. It urges the city of Los Angeles to reject Sempra Energy's application to the Department of Water and Power to tap the regional transmission line it partially owns to carry electricity across the border to California. "This won't be the straw that broke the camel's back, but it's...

City says sanctuary for day laborers must come down after property owner complains. Burning Man's renowned temple-builder, David Best, was one day from completing a towering art project dedicated to the day laborers in San Rafael's canal district when the city decided it was all too much. "The Chapel of the Laborer," a small-scale version of the respected plywood structures that Best builds for the weeklong festival in the Nevada desert and then burns in remembrance of the dead, was to be a temporary sanctuary where Latinos could gather, pray or light a candle for loved ones. One of six...

BLACK ROCK DESERT, Nevada (AP) -- As jugglers danced with hoops and spirals of fire, vehicles belched flames and hypnotic drums echoed through the night, more than 35,000 costumed revelers ritually burned a 40-foot neon-and-wooden icon of a man deep in the Nevada desert. The 19th annual Burning Man festival, a bizarre counterculture event in one of the most remote places in America, was back, this year with record crowds. "It's an emotional experience," said Silvie, of San Diego, who would give only her first name. "There's a reverence here." The annual fantasy event grew out of San Francisco's bohemian...

Burning Man, infamous for its drug-fueled debauchery in the wind- whipped Nevada desert, may seem like the last place to haul the kids for a family vacation. But the annual experiment in radical self-expression, communal living and massive interactive art is becoming something of a counterculture Disneyland as increasing numbers of Burners from the Bay Area and beyond are bringing their young ones to Black Rock City. To the uninitiated, a dry lakebed in the middle of nowhere -- plagued by dust storms and extreme temperatures and inhabited by no small number of naked people -- sounds like no place...

<p>Oh sure you've got your giant floating neon dragons and your epic desert sculptures and your hissing Mad Max-ish art cars shooting flames 400 feet into the air, and every single thing everywhere smells like some combination of sweat and dust and marijuana and urine and fire and tequila and glue.</p>

<p>Burning Man, the wild counterculture festival held annually in one of the nation's most remote areas, is coming to cities across America.</p> <p>It's time to try to influence the very culture against which this year's record 30,500 Burning Man participants rebelled, the phenomenon's founder and resident visionary said in an interview.</p>

<p>A woman riding an "art car" at the counterculture Burning Man festival died when she accidentally fell under the vehicle's wheels, authorities said.</p> <p>The death of Katherine Lampman on Saturday was the most serious in a series of accidents at the weeklong huge desert revel, where thousands of people gather each year in a celebration of art, performance and individuality.</p>

<p>Rising from the desert in one of the flattest, most remote places on earth is an 80-foot temple topped by the stylized figure of a man.</p> <p>It wasn't here last week and it won't be here after Saturday night, except for a pile of ashes where it is to be ritually burned to the ground.</p>

By Thomas Horn For the past ten years earth-worshipping pagans have migrated from Canada, Brazil, Germany, Russia, and 25 other countries, to an isolated corner of Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where a four-day-long New Age techno-fest known as "The Burning Man" has been conducted. Recent attendance at The Burning Man surpassed 15,000 wiccans, satanists, goddesses (white witches), nudists, and a consortium of other lost party-goers, who converged on the hot Nevada desert for a Labor Day weekend of "glorious Hell on earth." The number of participants at the Burning Man gala has nearly doubled each year since 1986, and...

Black Rock City LLC, the San Francisco-based money machine that organizes the annual Burning Man drug festival in the desert about 100 miles north of Reno, is threatening to move because it can't get along with its neighbors. Frankly, I like the idea of a move back to Northern California, where Burning Man originated and where it belongs. I recommend Mendocino, where participants would have access to a ready supply of illegal drugs. Let me clarify my position on Burning Man: I don't think it should be abolished. Rather, I simply believe it should be held on private property in...

RENO, Nev. -- Thousands of techies, old hippies, trippers and artists from worldwide are on their way to the northern Nevada desert for the annual Burning Man counterculture festival. Although the event known for its eclectic artwork, music and games began yesterday, most participants aren't expected to show up until later this week at the Black Rock Desert, 120 miles north of Reno near Gerlach. Billed as a celebration of art and radical self-expression, the 17th annual gathering is expected to draw 28,000 people from at least 40 states and 20 countries. "There's a certain energy out here, everybody is...