Burning passion

Josh McHugh

A tattoo-covered man swings high above the Nevada desert, suspended by four large hooks in the skin of his back. He is one of 23,000 people on this prehistoric, desiccated lake bed 160 kilometers north of Reno attending the week-long Burning Man festival.

They're engineers, software developers, executives, digital artists, lawyers, professors. To say that Silicon Valley's denizens work hard is an understatement. To say that they play hard doesn't approach what you see at Burning Man. They're here to play with fire and drugs, erect monstrous sculptures, dodge fireworks, defy heat exhaustion, march in spontaneous parades and dance to ear-pounding music. They are at the cyberculture's de rigueur power-networking retreat of the year.

Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon.com is here. So are throngs of techies from America Online, Netscape, Yahoo, George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic and dozens of Weblets. The general rule of thumb here is that almost anything goes. Almost-there's one taboo: openly talking shop. These revelers have descended on the Black Rock Desert to schmooze, the foreplay that can lead to recruiting, job-shopping, partnering. But they won't admit it.

"We have a rule-no talking about work or the technology industry. It's ironclad," says Yahoo art director Ford Minton, 33 {ed: Creative Director at ShiftPods in 2020]. He is here for his fourth year, camping with some two dozen pals from Yahoo and Netscape. After a tough bout with a trampoline, he was strapped to a board for a two-hour ride in an ambulance to Reno. "They thought I had broken my neck." He returned wearing a neck brace.

There isn't a dot.com logo or Web slogan in sight at Burning Man. Corporate sponsors are forbidden. "The second they bring corporate money in, it's over," says software engineer Anthony Parisi, 36. The organizers spurned Jim Beam bourbon, Spin magazine and Nantucket Nectars. "Very cool guys, but what they wanted to do was clearly promotional," harrumphs Marian Goodell, Burning Man's de facto minister of culture. She vetoed firms wanting to set up corporate theme camps and nixed an MTV film crew.

"We're not against commerce-hell, commerce is the backbone of civilization," says Larry Harvey, 51, a leathery former landscaper who founded Burning Man in 1986. It began when he built a 2.5-meter-tall wooden stick man and invited a few friends to watch him set it afire on a San Francisco beach. By 1990 the confab was so big it had to move to the desert. The current sculpture is 12 meters high; Harvey brings in enough cash ($105 apiece) to cover expenses and pay salaries to himself and a staff of six.

"What we are against," Harvey says with great solemnity, "is the commodification of culture." As he speaks, an open-air saloon on wheels cruises past, carrying 25 sweaty, stark naked patrons. Disney is all about the commodification of culture. That is why a group called the Los Angeles Cacophony Society built a 20-meter-long copy of the Disneyland attraction "It's a Small World After All," played the theme song-then blew the whole thing up.

Burning Man is laid out like a 5-kilometer-diameter clockface, with a 2.5-kilometer-diameter open space in the center (the "playa"). The campsites-with names like Spiral Oasis, Bleu Light District and Motel 666-stretch from 2 o'clock around to 10 o'clock. At the clock's center stands the towering stick man, bathed in neon, mounted atop an altar of hay bales.

Scattered around the Man are other attractions: the spiral "Saran Wrap maze," a hockey rink (no ice), a tree made of animal bones and skulls and a geodesic "thunderdome" where combatants tethered to the top bounce around and joust with padded clubs.

Only two places here accept money-an ice store and a massive tent cafe where espresso-starved campers line up 60-deep each morning. All other goods are brought in by participants and are bartered for or given away.

"Those poor yuppies, with nothing to buy," says Daniel Packard, 26. "They wander around the desert, dazed and confused, asking, 'If we can't buy a sweater, did it really happen?'" Packard lives in San Francisco and hosts Dollar Holler, a puckish daily Internet radio show about the financial markets. Going on stage in angel wings to do a comedy bit, he works the crowd-and keeps an eye out for business.

Burning Man fans trade corporate identities for camp identities. Visitors to Atari Camp can relive their first encounter with Pong. At Bianca's Smut Shack, amorous campers sprawl on a dozen couches and snack to a DJ's mellow music. Hotel Beirut, with two 9-meter-tall Day-Glo daisies made from eucalyptus trees, draws crowds with a sonic assault, despite being on the "quiet" side of the camp.

The event culminates with "the burn" on Saturday night. Thousands gather in a circle around the sculpture and roar as it bursts into flames. The structure crumbles, and the horde rushes in toward the bonfire, spontaneously marching in a counterclockwise vortex before spinning off into the night for "after burn" events.

Peter Rosberg, 31, chief technologist for Web retailer Bigwords.com, cruises the camp in a motorized wheelchair, wearing a silver lam jacket and brandishing a bottle of champagne. At the festival, he has met people he later hired as well as future employers. His Burning Man credentials give him a leg up in the Web world: "It's a filter they apply."

At Spiral Oasis, campers in various states of undress gyrate to thumping dance tunes. Mark Pesce, who teaches interactive media at USC, music producer Paul Godwin and Tony Parisi put $8,000 and eight months of preparation into the staging of DJ Christ Superstar here with a cast of 37. It was one of the most talked-about events of the week.

Another Spiral Oasis resident, Gil Silberman, an intellectual-property lawyer, met several of his best high-tech clients at past fests. "It's not as though you come here and push your business on your friends," says Silberman, just before clambering onto the camp's trampoline. "But if you come here and have fun, it takes care of itself."