Burning Man is a week-long festival with international draw, held annually on the week prior to and including Labor Day weekend (in early September) in the United States. Its current location is on the playa of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, at 40°45′17″N, 119°14′11″W or 90 miles north-northeast of Reno. The temporary city (housing 36,500 residents in 2005) is put forth as an experiment in community, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance. The culmination of the event is the burning of a large wooden sculpture of a man on Saturday night, the sixth night of the event.
History
The annual event now known as Burning Man began on the summer solstice in 1986 when Larry Harvey, Jerry James, and a few friends met on Baker Beach in San Francisco and burned an eight foot tall wooden man as well as a smaller wooden dog. The inspiration for burning these effigy figures has been shrouded in mystery by Harvey, who described it as "a spontaneous act of radical self-expression." However, sculptor Mary Grauberger, a friend of Harvey's girlfriend Janet Lohr, had held spontaneous art-party gatherings on Baker Beach on or about the summer solstice for several years prior to 1986, and the burning of sculpture was a central theme. In addition to the burning of sculpture, a key ingredient to the pre-Burning Man gatherings was the fact that Baker Beach is a cove area frequented by nudists. Another notable US-based effigy-burning is Zozobra, which occurs every fall during Santa Fe, New Mexico's "fiestas"; an approximately 50 foot tall "Old Man Gloom" has been burned every year at Zozobra since 1924.
My sister and her boyfriend went to Burning Man this year. She live in San Fran. She is the leftie in the family, but Mom is trying to catch up.
Ah...It all begins to come together now. 0.o