So we dutifully follow orders, and we don't dump anything. We're new here, and as a married couple with kids we are very adult and polite. The organizers are very specifically eco-correct - maybe because they're so lighthearted about tolerating most anything else. The idea of leaving no visible trace is a central part of the Burning Man zeitgeist, a performance-art process move. You're not supposed to throw anything away on the playa.

But once the* idea* of a street is established, the community standard holds. They're premarked with tiny colored plastic flags: the flags get bent, they get stepped on, they even get run over. The veterans have brought their own pennants, bicycles, flashlights, and tiki torches, plus enough water for anything. I'm a journalist and a newbie, but even I can tell the pros from my fellow newbies. People come here in clumps: performance people, drumming enthusiasts, site-specific sculptors, sailplane people, ravers, journalists, cops. The camp is like a giant swap meet where no one sells stuff, but people trade postures, clip art, and attitude. It's very throwaway, very appropriative, very cut-and-paste. Over the longer term it's evolved into something else maybe something like a physical version of the Internet. Twist the ignition key and drift with the wind.īurning Man is an art gig by tradition. When you walk across it, you just drift over endless cracked whiteness, lifting your feet maybe a quarter inch from the surface.

He rear-ended a truck while zooming along the darkened playa on a blacked-out motorcycle.

Tribal body paint burning man