#burning-man

#burning-man

After the conclusion of the nine-day, annual event in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, a woman reported on Monday that she was sexually assaulted by a man while at the festival, the Pershing County Sheriff's Office said in a news release. The woman was interviewed by investigators and provided a "very distinct description" of the man who allegedly assaulted her, which officials said can be challenging in a setting such as a festival.

I've spent the last week at Burning Man, surrounded by aging hippies, rich Europeans, fire twirlers and engineers gone wild. My skin is buried under a seven-layer dip of dust, sweat, sunscreen and spilled beer. My ears are still ringing slightly from the nightly barrage of electronic music. On a given day here, I've seen a lifetime's worth of bare cheeks. I am desperate to go home. But somehow, I'm happy.

Have you ever wanted to burn a man? In June 1986, the founders of the Burning Man project and nonprofit, Larry Harvey and Jerry James, built a wooden human effigy and set it on fire on San Francisco's Baker Beach as a symbolic act of letting go of their personal crises. They call it the First Burn. Every year since, the two committed to doing it again.

BLACK ROCK CITY, Nev. - This year, Burning Man has had a rough start. On Saturday, one day before the gates opened to the public, a brutal dust storm whipped the event, with gusts reaching 50 mph. That storm, which may have been the worst in Burning Man's history, destroyed several structures, including the beloved Orgy Dome and "Black Cloud," a 50-foot-tall Ukrainian artwork.

As we move about the Burning Man Exodus from San Francisco, we experience those last few days where the city feels less dense and compacted. You notice a bit more elbow room in Cloud City. The coffee line at your favorite café is shorter, and shopping at Trader Joe's is, well, not as unpleasant as usual. Public transportation, like bus rides and BART trips, feels more manageable.

For some tech leaders, Burning Man is better than a boardroom. Over the years, the arts festival has become a stomping ground for tech moguls, celebrities, and models who want to spend a few days in the Black Rock Desert. Burning Man attendees encourage some level of anonymity, with costumes and nicknames that give public figures the privacy to party among their fellow Burners.

"The entire ladder pulled away from the wall, and swung out about 3 feet," Law said. "If I'd gone any further, the ladder would've folded and I would've fallen 40 feet to my death ... That was a near miss."

Last year, Rachael Gingery left Burning Man in the back of an ambulance with a broken back, broken ribs, a bruised spleen and a punctured lung. It was the kind of brutal experience that might make you think she'd never return to the nine-day-long art and music event in the Nevada desert. Yet this August, Gingery was busy getting ready to return for her ninth Burn.

Far from a traditional festival, Burning Man essentially builds a city up from nothing, with attendees being encouraged to give back to the community by way of creating artful experiences that range from wholesome to very NSFW. The events are chronicled in a massive listing on the Burning Man website that compiles hundreds of wacky options for Burners to indulge in.

Goggles with foam so the dust can't get in A sweatshirt for sleeping on cold nights Loose and comfortable loungewear or PJs to sleep in Slider sandals for walking to the Porta Potties Many, many pairs of socks. We'd wear these even with our sandals to protect ourselves from the alkaline dust - no one wants Playa Foot! Underwear, specifically cotton for the heat Sneakers for helping set up or tear down camp

That virtual Burning Man experience not only attracted around 13,000 visitors, but also accolades from the Producers Guild of America. The success led to the decision to keep the digital version of Burning Man going even when the real-life festival returned in 2021. BRCvr, named after the festival's temporary Black Rock City settlement, became a recurring Burning Man outpost in VR.

Standing in the West Oakland warehouse, you wouldn't have suspected that anything sacred was under construction. Stacks of wide, black wooden panels stand spaced out across the concrete floor. An ear-splitting drill whines from an adjacent lot. A crane stands off to the side, and a whiteboard leans against the wall, with a reminder scrawled in dry-erase marker: "THE TEMPLE BURNS IN 35 DAYS."