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Burning Man

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Burning Man is an eight-day-long festival organized by Black Rock City, LLC, under the guidance of founder Larry Harvey. The festival is held annually and ends on the American Labor Day holiday in September. The festival takes place on the playa of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, 90 miles (150 km) north-northeast of Reno. Though the specific location on the playa changes from year to year, the location has been quite constant in recent years. The temporary city is an experiment in community, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance. [1] The event takes its name from the ritual of burning a large wooden sculpture of a man on the sixth day.

The festival is named after its Saturday night ritual, the burning of a wooden effigy.

Principles

Because of the variety of goals fostered by participatory attendees, Burning Man does not have a single focus. Features of the festival are subject to the participants and include community, artwork, absurdity, decommodification, and revelry. Participation is encouraged, and being a spectator is discouraged.[2] The Burning Man event is governed by the 10 principles of Burning Man, which are radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy. [3]

Gifting

Instead of cash, festival participants rely on a gift economy, a sort of potlatch. Since the earliest days of the event, an underground barter economy has also existed, in which burners exchange material goods and/or favors with each other. While this was originally supported by the Burning Man Organization, this now is largely discouraged by the event organizers.[4]

Art

Art on the playa is assisted by the Artery, which helps artists place their art in the desert, and ensure lighting (to prevent accidental collisions) and burn platform (to protect the integrity of the dry lake bed) and fire safety requirements are met.

Since 1995, a different theme has been created, ostensibly by Larry Harvey, for each year's event. For 2006 it was "Hope and Fear" and for 2007 it is "The Green Man". It determines to some extent the design of the Man (although his design and construction, while evolutionary, has remained relatively unchanged) and especially the structure on which he stands (an Observatory for "Vault of Heaven" a Lighthouse for "The Floating World"). These themes also greatly affect the designs participants employ in their artworks, costumes, camps and vehicles. [5]

Burning Man primarily features outsider art and visionary art, though a great variety of art forms are presented during the event. Creative expression through the arts and interactive art are encouraged at Burning Man. Numerous Theme Camps, registered and placed by the LLC, are created as event and residence centers by sizable sub-communities of participants and use extensive design and artistic elements to engage the greater community and meet the LLC's interactivity requirements. Music, performance, and guerrilla street theatre are art forms commonly presented within the camps and developed areas of the city. Adjacent to the city, the dry lakebed of Lake Lahontan serves as a tabla rasa for hundreds of isolated artworks, ranging from small to very large-scale art installations, often sculptures with kinetic, electronic, and fire elements.

Artwork is generally viewed as a gift the artist makes to the community, although art grants are available to participants from the LLC via a system of curation and oversight, with application deadlines early in the year. Grants are intended to help artists produce work beyond the scope of their own means, and are generally intended to cover only a portion of the costs associated with creation of the pieces, usually requiring considerable reliance on an artist's community resources. Aggregate funding for all grants varies depending on the number and quality of the submissions (usually well over 100) but amounts to several percent (on the order of $500,000 in recent years) of the gross receipts from ticket sales. In 2006, 29 pieces were funded.

Various standards regarding the nature of the artworks eligible for grants are set by the Art Department of the LLC, but compliance with the theme and interactivity are important considerations. This funding has fostered artistic communities, most notably in the Bay Area of California, the region that has historically provided a majority of the event's participants. There are active and successful outreach efforts to enlarge the regional scope of the event and the grant program. Among these is the Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF).

While BRAF does not fund any installations for the event itself, it relies on the donations from the LLC for a significant portion of its funding, and does facilitate presentation of work created for the event in outside venues as well as offering its own grants for artworks that typify interactivity and other principles and traditions the event.

Mutant vehicles

Art cars and Mutant Vehicles are vehicles, often motorized, that are purpose-built, or more commonly, creatively altered cars and trucks, and are a common art form at Burning Man. These range in size from motorized chairs and couches to golfcarts and large double decker buses. Participants who wish to bring motorized art cars or Mutant Vehicles must submit their designs in advance to the event's own DMV or "Department of Mutant Vehicles” for approval as well for physical inspection at the time of the event. Vehicles that are unsafe, minimally altered, and/or whose primary function is to transport participants are discouraged or rejected.

Most participants bring bicycles to help transverse the event, which covers an area of approx. 5 square miles. Many participants turn their off-the-shelf bicycles into art bikes through "garage engineering" and decoration with accessories including fake fur, reflective tape, stuffed animals, electroluminescent wire and other materials.

Temples

In addition to the burning of the Man, the burning of a temple has become and important ritual at the event. The ritual burning of David Best's temple projects from 2000 to 2004 rivaled the burning of the central Burning Man complex in community significance and popularity. The ornately designed temple buildings have used recycled scrap plywood from toy manufacture and other wood mill operations and have borrowed from Southeast Asian and Balinese architecture to create very large and flammable structures. Themes of loss and grief are expressed by participants who use the temples as repositories for memories, often of deceased loved ones, which are often commemorated with objects and mementos placed in the temple and writings on the objects or the temple itself.[6] In 2005, Best stepped aside to allow for another artist, Mark Grieve, to build his own interpretation of a temple.

Black Rock City

A neon-tubed Man, from the festival, 1999

Black Rock City, often abbreviated to BRC, is the name of the temporary urban phenomenon created by Burning Man participants. Much of the layout and general city infrastructure is constructed by Department of Public Works (DPW) volunteers who often reside in Black Rock city for several weeks before and after the festival. The remainder of the city including theme camps, art installations and individual camping, are all created by participants each year.

City Planning

The developed part of the city is currently arranged as series of concentric streets in an arc composing, since 1999, two-thirds of a 1.5 mile (2.4 km) diameter circle (resembling the layout of Poverty Point) with the Man Sculpture and his supporting complex at the very center. Radial streets, sometimes called Avenues, extend from the Man to the outermost circle. The outlines of these streets are visible on aerial photographs.

The innermost street is named the Esplanade, and the remaining streets are given names to coincide with the overall theme of the burn, and ordered in ways such as alphabetical order or stem to stern, to make them easier to recall. In 1999, for the "Wheel of Time" theme, and again in 2004 for the "The Vault of Heaven" theme, the streets were named after the planets of the solar system. The radial streets are usually given a clock designation (for example, "6:00, 6:15"), in which the Man is at the center of the clock face and 12:00 is in the middle of the third of the arc lacking streets. These avenues have been identified in other ways, notably in the 2002, in accordance with "The Floating World" theme as the degrees of a compass (for example, "180, 175 degrees") and in 2003 as part of the Beyond Belief theme as adjectives ("Rational, Absurd") that caused every intersection with a concentric street (named after concepts of belief such as "Authority, Creed") to form a phrase such as "Absurd Authority" of "Rational Creed". However, these proved unpopular with participants due to difficulty in navigating the city without the familiar clock layout.

Center Camp

Center Camp is located along the midline of BRC, facing the Man at the 6:00 position on the Esplanade, and serves as a central meeting place for the entire city.


Villages and Theme Camps

Villages and Theme Camps are located along the innermost streets of Black Rock City, often offering entertainment or a service to the temporary residents[7].

Theme Camps are usually a collective of people representing themselves under a single identity. Villages are usually a collection of smaller theme camps which have banded together in order to share resources and vie for better placement. Some Theme Camps and Villages have added links at the end of this article.

The Burning Man community

Terminology

There is specific terminology used by the Burning Man community.

  • Burning Man participants often refer to themselves and other participants as "burners".
  • A Burning Man "virgin" is someone who is attending Burning Man for the first time or is planning to attend Burning Man in the future (some take many years to actually shed their virgin status).
  • "Yahoo" or "tourist" are pejorative terms used to refer to people who come to Burning Man to spectate rather than participate in the event, often arriving not long before the actual act of immolating the effigy.
  • "M.O.O.P" means Matter Out Of Place. It is the term used for trash and fly-away items on the playa.

Self-expression

The event promotes self-expression, and participants express themselves in a variety of ways. The event is clothing-optional and public nudity is common, though not practiced by the majority. [8] The event also has a reputation for sexual promiscuity. [9]

Burning Man and the environment

"Leave No Trace" policy

Participants are encouraged to Leave No Trace of their visit to Black Rock City. Burning Man takes place in the middle of an uninhabited large desert playa. Participants are told to be very careful not to contaminate the playa with litter (commonly known as MOOP, or "matter out of place"). In addition, while fire is a primary component of many art exhibits and events, materials must be burned on burn platforms. At one time, burning was allowed to take place directly on the ground of the playa, but the formation of burn scars was observed.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which maintains the desert, has very strict requirements for the festival. These stipulations include trash cleanup, removal of burn scars, dust abatement, and capture of fluid drippings from participant vehicles. Weeks after the festival has ended, a team of volunteers remains in the desert, cleaning up after the temporary city and making sure that no evidence of the festival remains[10].

A local environmental group, http://stopburningman.org, has criticized the festival for the environmental impact left by the festival. Their criticisms include the following

  • Despite the BLM and LLC insistence on the practice of LNT, the amount of residual trash at the site has increased over the years [11].
  • The cleanup verification process is flawed
  • According to ecologists Peter Brussard and Donald Sada, the cumulative effects of Burning Man on the complex playa ecosystem need to be more carefully investigated.("Stop Burning Man". Retrieved 2006-08-06.)

Burning Man and effect on global warming

A group of San Francisco scientists are calculating how much the event will contribute to Global Warming[12]. They have created Cooling Man[13] a system that will calculate how much greenhouse gasses the participants will create. The movement has inspired many to look for positive ways to get involved in the Global Warming movement by seeking out solutions. The Cooling Man website suggests ways the Burners can offset the damage by planting trees or investing in alternative energy solutions[14]. Since this is a new development, the impact won't be noticed until Burning Man 2007, a year when ecological concerns will also be explored through the art theme of "The Green Man".

Safety, policing and regulations

BRC is patrolled by various local and state law enforcement agencies as well as the Bureau of Land Management Rangers. Burners refer to these people collectively as LEOs (Law Enforcement Officers). Burning Man also has its own in-house group of volunteers, the Black Rock Rangers, who act as informal mediators when disputes arise between burners. When the occasional eviction of a burner from BRC becomes necessary, volunteer rangers typically enlist the assistance of LEOs.

Burning Man has developed a reputation for drug use,[15] which is not tolerated by law enforcement.

In 2001, local law enforcement objected to an art installation depicting a homosexual act at a camp called "Jiffy Lube." The art was moved to a more private area of the camp, giving rise to charges of censorship and homophobia from a number of quarters.[16]

History

1986 to 1989

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 (2.4 m) 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." A popular myth is that Larry Harvey had a girlfriend (sometimes it is a wife) that he caught in bed with a good friend. Not wanting to actually harm his former friend or end up in jail, he constructed an effigy which he burned on the beach, thus Burning Man was born. This myth has been discounted many times. 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 (15 m) ) tall "Old Man Gloom" has been burned every year at Zozobra since 1924.

Satellite image of Black Rock City showing the familiar "C" or semicircle pattern.

Harvey attended some of the pre-Burning Man gatherings on Baker Beach, and when Grauberger stopped holding her parties, Harvey picked up the torch and ran with it, so to speak. Harvey asked Jerry James to build the first eight foot (2.4 m) wooden effigy with him, which was much smaller and less artsy than the neon figure featured in the current ritual. In 1987, the effigy had grown to almost fifteen feet (4.6 m) tall, and in 1988 it grew to around forty feet (12 m).

The name "Burning Man" came to Harvey when he was watching a video of the 1986 ritual. A member of the crowd watching the event shouted out "Wicker Man!", suggesting that the burning of the wooden effigy was somehow related to the ancient Celtic ritual of the Wicker Man, signifying rebirth. Harvey was the son of a Freemason, and (for Harvey) the use of wood in building the man had symbolic significance and was a critical part of the ritual; also, according to him, he did not see the movie The Wicker Man until many years later, so it played no part in his inspiration. Accordingly, rather than allow the name "Wicker Man" to become the name of the ritual, he started using the name "Burning Man."

John Law, as well as other members of the Cacophony Society, have been heavily involved in Burning Man since 1989.

1990 to 1999

The event grew quickly, moving from Baker Beach in San Francisco to the Black Rock Desert of Nevada in 1990 after the burn scheduled for the summer solstice was shut down by police. After striking a deal to raise the Man but not to burn it on the beach, event organizers disassembled the effigy and returned it to a vacant lot where it had been stored. Shortly thereafter, the legs and torso of the Man were chain-sawed and the pieces removed when the lot was unexpectedly leased as a parking lot. The effigy was then reconstructed, led by Dan Miller, Harvey's then house-mate of many years. The Man found his new home in conjunction with the already scheduled Cacophony event sponsored by John Law and Kevin Evans, "Zone Trip #4" in the other worldly, remote and largely unknown, Black Rock desert.

As the event has grown, one of the challenges faced by the organizers has been balancing the freedom of participants with the requirements of various land management and law enforcement groups. Over the years, numerous restrictions have been put in place, such as bans on fireworks, firearms, dogs, and driving non-art cars. A notable restriction to attendees is the 7-mile (11 km) long temporary plastic fence which surrounds the event and defines the pentagon of land used by the event on the southern edge of the Black Rock playa. This 4-foot (1.2 m)high barrier is known as the "trash fence" because its initial use was to catch wind blown debris that may escape from campsites during the event. Since 1998, the playa beyond this fence is not available to burners during the week of event. Some artists and early attendees believe the underlying freedoms and concepts of the Burning Man event have been reduced or eliminated by these restrictions, leading to criticism of the current event as being too structured and controlled. Others contend that these restrictions are unfortunate but necessary to the survival of the event in the face of growth and notoriety and that in balance the original spark of creative invention is well alive and flourishing. Additionally, other recreational users of the desert believe the event's rapid growth and arid location (where the natural healing effect of the winter rains is not as effective) has caused the surface of the Black Rock Desert to change for the worse. The Burning Man organization strongly denies that the event has ever caused any damage. Several documentary films have been made about the event, some of which give a fair representation of the event. Most of these films are available through the Burning Man website.

2000 to present

In January 2007, John Law announced that he would be pursuing Michael Mikel and Larry Harvey in a bid to make Burning Man and its trademarks a part of the public domain.[17] [18]


Timeline of the event

Statistics shown below illustrate the growth of the Burning Man festival, according to a timeline on BurningMan.com and other sources:

(Note: the man has remained close to 40 feet (12 m) tall since 1989, the height and structure of the base has changed, thus the following referenced height figures are misleading)

Year Height from ground to top of Man Location Participants Theme Notes
1986 8 feet (2.4 m) Baker Beach, San Francisco 20 None Larry Harvey & Jerry James build & burn wooden man on Baker Beach on the summer solstice.
1987 20 feet (6 m) Baker Beach 80 None
1988 30 feet (10 m) Baker Beach 150-200 None
1989 40 feet (12 m) Baker Beach 300+ None First listing of the Burning Man event in the Cacophony Society newsletter.
1990 40 feet (12 m) Baker Beach / Black Rock Desert, Nevada 500 / 90 None Figure erected at Baker Beach on Summer Solstice (june 21) but not burned. Labor Day weekend becomes the date the event is held in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada.
1991 40 feet (12 m) Black Rock Desert 250 None First year of neon on the man.
1992 40 feet (12 m) Black Rock Desert 600 None
1993 40 feet (12 m) Black Rock Desert 1,000 None
1994 40 feet (12 m) Black Rock Desert 2,000 None
1995 40 feet (12 m) Black Rock Desert 4,000 Good and Evil Encampment becomes known as Black Rock City.
1996 50 feet (15 m) Black Rock Desert 8,000 The Inferno Theme featuring Dante's Inferno/HELCO. First year the man is elevated on a strawbale pyramid.
1997 50 feet (15 m) Hualapai Playa 10,000 Fertility Driving and guns banned. First year the city has grid streets.
1998 50 feet (15 m) Black Rock Desert 15,000 Nebulous Entity Forms its first management structure, fund-raises and becomes solvent.
1999 40 feet (12 m) Black Rock Desert 23,000 Wheel of Time Listed in the AAA's RV guide under "Great Destinations."
2000 40 feet (12 m) Black Rock Desert 25,400 The Body
2001 70 feet (21 m) Black Rock Desert 25,659 Seven Ages See Seven Ages of Man
2002 80 feet (24 m) Black Rock Desert 28,979 The Floating World First year for FAA approved airport.
2003 79 feet (24 m) Black Rock Desert 30,586 Beyond Belief Dogs are banned for the first time.
2004 80 feet (24 m) Black Rock Desert 35,664 The Vault of Heaven
2005 72 feet (22 m) Black Rock Desert 35,567 Psyche The Man can be turned by participants.
2006 <Unknown> Black Rock Desert 39,100 (est.) Hope and Fear: The Future
2007 TBD Black Rock Desert TBD The Green Man

The event has changed considerably as it grew from a small handful of people on a beach in San Francisco to over 39,000 people attending the festival in 2006. The scale of the event has increased enormously, and Black Rock City, LLC has in turn become more structured. In 1997 a group of people began a much smaller festival both as an alternative to and as a parody of Burning Man. The so-called Burning Shithead Festival takes place in Joshua Tree National Park every year at the same time as Burning Man. An Anti-BurningMan also formed with an emphasis on fewer restrictions, occurring just before Burning Man such that the less-ironic could still attend both.

Regional events

The popularity of Burning Man has encouraged other groups and organizations to hold festivals similar to Burning Man, such as Xara Dulzura, Fuego de los Muertos in San Diego, Playa del Fuego in Delaware, Toast! the Arizona Regional Burn, Burning Flipside in Texas, Nutopia in Toronto, Recompression near Vancouver, BC, SOAK in Oregon, and June's 4-day festival Critical Massive in Washington. In recent years, burners wishing to experience Burning Man more frequently than once per year have banded together to create local regional events. These events are typically much smaller than Burning Man itself, often consisting of no more than a few hundred participants. Some of the events are officially affiliated with the Burning Man organization via the Burning Man Regional Network, while others are organized and created by burners independent of the LLC. A good example of the latter is InterFuse in Missouri, Firefly in Vermont, and Transformus in North Carolina.

One type of event is popular with those that find returning to the "default world" to be a little jarring after having enjoyed the experiences of the burn. To relieve this culture shock, burners may participate in decompression events to recapture the spirit of the original festival.

Other regional events have been established that connect and grow localized communities of burners. These events build upon the cultural bond of Burning Man, yet add a particular unique flavor of their own. Most regional events last a few days, occur annually, and are much less formal than Burning Man itself.

See also: List of regional Burning Man events

Burning Man in popular culture

  • Burning Man 2006 was covered extensively for television for the first time by Current TV which handed out cameras to participants and broadcast daily updates via satellite from the playa. In keeping with the spirit of Burning Man, Current removed their corporate branding and said no to commercial sponsorship for the entire week of coverage. The result was a temporary pirate TV station known simply as TV Free Burning Man. The five daily pods as well as the live burn can be viewed online here: [1]
  • Reno 911 The officers, planning to go undercover at Burning Man, head out from Reno but get lost on the way encountering various embarrassing situation such as having to attend a family restaurant in their fairly ridiculous costimes and getting questioned by other fellow cops. (Season 1, Episode 10, originally aired 9/24/03).[19]
  • Malcolm in the Middle When Hal and Lois discover Malcolm and Reese's plan to sneak off to the Burning Man festival, they decide to make it a family outing, with predictably disastrous results. Hal sets up a barbecue grill and curious observers assume that he's actually engaged in some kind of "suburban dad" performance art. Reese and Lois embrace the true spirit of the event and Malcolm loses his virginity to an older woman. The episode was the season premiere of the show's final season (Season 7, Episode 1, aired 10/30/05).[20]
  • The Simpsons In episode 4 (Lisa the Tree Hugger), Season 12, a guest character called Jesse Grass mentions the Burning Man festival at an environmentalist meeting.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer In the season 2 premiere episode (When She Was Bad), Sunnydale High's computer science teacher Jenny Calendar describes her summer vacation (which included attending Burning Man) to Buffy's watcher, Rupert Giles. "I did Burning Man in Black Rock, ohhh, such a great festival, you should've been there. They had drum rituals, mobile sculptures, raves, naked mud dances, you would've just... hated it with a fiery passion!"
  • South Park In episode 902 (Die Hippie, Die), Eric Cartman briefly makes references to Burning Man while talking about hippie festivals. Also, in the background at the hippie festival, a large neon man, similar to the one at Burning Man, can be seen.
  • Comics In X-Force (issue #75), the characters visited a thinly disguised Burning Man festival entitled "Exploding Colossal Man."
  • Music One Floppias (Sacramento, CA) song is called "Staying at the Bruno Hotel", a reference to the only hotel in Gerlach, NV - near the site of the festival. The band had attempted to purchase tickets at the gate of the event, but was turned away, leading to the inspiration for the song.
  • The Google Story by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed, contains an entire chapter describing how Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two creators of the Google search engine, were regular attendees of the event.
  • David Cross jokingly mocks anti-Bush protesters on his comedy CD It's Not Funny by saying, "I'll see you at Burning Man, ya hippie."

See also

Notes

  1. ^ What is Burning Man?
  2. ^ What is Burning Man?
  3. ^ 10 principles of Burning Man
  4. ^ Burning Man Principles
  5. ^ Event Archives
  6. ^ Art of Burning Man
  7. ^ Theme Camps
  8. ^ Burningman.com Event Preparation
  9. ^ What I Saw at Burning Man
  10. ^ Bureau of Land Management
  11. ^ Trash Concerns
  12. ^ Global Warming
  13. ^ Cooling Man
  14. ^ Cooling Man Calculator
  15. ^ One more Pagan Orgy, Sex Drugs and Glow Sticks
  16. ^ Jiffy Lube
  17. ^ http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/01/11/burning.man.ap/index.html
  18. ^ http://laughingsquid.com/john-law-sues-his-former-burning-man-partners/
  19. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0685169/
  20. ^ Malcolm in the Middle

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Burning Man.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Burning Man 2005.

Template:Geolinks-US-hoodscale

General

Photo collections

Video

Theme camps

  • Disorient - an art collective and a camp at Burning Man with a large sound system
  • Fandango - Fandango is one of the oldest and largest villages in BRC, yet they have tended to keep a relatively low profile. In recent years they have hosted the Slowburn Lounge, a low-key, comfortable, barter-free bar.
  • Fear No Martini - Fear No Martini serves martinis at its pre-determined and/or unplanned parties and events. Features a massive art car the "Martini A Go Go", often lovingly referred to as "The Kracken".
  • Funkcamp - based out of San Francisco, Black Rock City, a sub-division of one of the oldest villages called Fandango. Funkcampers returned to the playa in 2006 as Roadhouse featuring house-band, "Southern Frost."
  • Fairyland - based out of San Francisco, Fairyland conducts classes in making tutu's, sock poi and white trash fashion with all materials provided. Fairyland is in the Avalon village.
  • Flight To Mars - Seattle-based organization dedicated to art and performance in Seattle and at Burning Man. Typically host to a continually reinvented funhouse containing on various years a maze, a ballpit, interactive art, a dance floor, a spinning disc of death and a bar.
  • Golden Cafe - a sidewalk bistro offering cocktails in real glassware, live improvised music by day, and a gourmet supper club by night. The Golden Cafe currently draws its membership from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Boston, Boulder, Toronto, Ontario, and San Diego.
  • Pink Mammoth - a San Francisco-based not-for-profit artist collective that provides an underground (i.e. unregistered) pink-themed bar and club, notably operating only during the daylight hours. (See also Wikipedia entry at Pink Mammoth)
  • Quixote's Cabaret Club & Bar - an international theme camp inhabited mainly by people from the UK and Germany, Quixote's run a Cabaret theater that gives homeless artists a stage on which to perform and showcase their talents, in front of a well-watered audience. QCCB is part of the Avalon village.
  • Space Cowboys - a San Francisco collective and Burning Man theme camp, featuring DJs and performers, and a large, mobile sound system, mounted to a customized Unimog.
  • Hair of the Dog Lounge (HOTD) - Bay area theme camp proudly serving booze and live music on the playa.
  • Space Virgins - Seattle-based arts collective dedicated to freeing people from constraining guilt
  • Hookahdome - Exploring extreme arts of pleasure through flavored tobacco smoking, belly dancing, and fire performances.
  • Radio Electra 89.9 FM - One of several FM radio stations located inside Burning Man that broadcast during the event.
  • K-SVERT 106.5 FM - "The Ten Watt Flame Thrower..." Providing both an on-air and live stage experience, K-SVERT is located on the Esplanade @ 4:00 during BM2006.
  • Pangea - San Diego based collective of smaller, specialized camps organized into a larger more complete whole.
  • Cypress Lounge Bingo The Cypress Lounge has been providing BINGO services since 2003, now offering "flogging" bingo.
  • Honi Soit Croquet - Based out of California, Oregon and Idaho. Serving up drinks and croquet since 2001.
  • Camp E.Z.R.A. Exchange Zone for Registered Aliens - Based out of Reno Nevada, Bringing Aliens and Hosts together for a brand new burning experience.
  • Ultra Stunt Danger Academy - (USDA) - an evolution of subsets of camps over many years, home to lifesize Rock'Em Sock'Em Robots, and creator of multiple small fire projects and social mischief.
  • The Genital Portrait Studio offers a variety of genital portrait styles. We are also the Playa’s premier provider of Genital ID Cards.
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