NY TIMES 35,000 Revel at Festival in the Desert

[DVD Burner]

35,000 Revel at Festival in the Desert
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: September 6, 2004



TIMES NEWS TRACKER



Burning Man Festival


Nevada

LACK ROCK DESERT, Nev., Sept. 5 (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 on Saturday.

The 19th annual Burning Man festival, a 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."

This year's event was relatively uneventful after two deaths occurred a year ago. A Bureau of Land Management spokesman, Jamie Thompson, said the event, held 120 miles north of Reno, ran smoothly with no major accidents. Drug arrests and citations were also down, preliminary reports showed.

Last year, two people died and four were hospitalized after accidents with aircraft and the "Mad Max''-style "mutant vehicles" that roam the desert.

The annual fantasy event grew out of San Francisco's bohemian street theater nearly 20 years ago, when a group of artists and spectators spontaneously burned an eight-foot wooden figure on a Bay Area beach. The event has been growing ever since.

While many people were packing up and leaving the desert on Sunday, others stayed to burn an elaborate Temple of Stars later that night, laid out in a quarter-mile crescent.

Many were awed by this year's temple, created by David Best, an artist.

"There's no comparison to last year" said Wendy Wright, 37, of Reno, who is known as Rebel Barbie. "This is the best one yet."

It took thousands of hours to build the illuminated temple from lace-like filigrees of plywood left over after toy punch-outs were made. Builders started construction four months ago in Petaluma, Calif., before shipping the components into the desert aboard flatbed trucks.

This year's structure was so elaborate that it opened to participants only on Friday night, barely 48 hours before it was to be burned. Revelers leave the names of departed loved ones and other remembrances to be burned in the temple.

Many visitors cried while composing their gifts, and some collapsed into the arms of others. One middle-aged man read a lengthy, moving essay about his eccentric late mother, then fell to the floor of the temple and hyperventilated.

For many, torching the temple has become the centerpiece of the event, a more intimate, spiritual moment than the rave-party-like immolation of the man icon.

"To burn it, it's like giving it to a higher force," said Fred Dickson, who helped build the temple. "It's like an offering."

[spectabillis]

... Drug arrests and citations were also down, preliminary reports showed...

Ahem.. *cough* ...

what?

So now I get it, why the enforcers confiscate everyone's stash without making an arrest. Bastards, hope they choked on it.