Story by Brian Doherty
Photo by Lane Hartwell
BLACK ROCK CITY, Nevada – Eight hours after an unprecedented, unscheduled early burn of its central icon, Burning Man insists the burn will go on. Torching the Man early is a running gag among the more anarchic of Burning Man attendees, but this is the first year it actually happened.
A new Man will be built within the next two days and burn as scheduled Saturday, Burning Man press liaison Andie Grace said in a press conference Tuesday morning. The pavilion of green technologies beneath the Man was not seriously damaged during last night's unexpected fire. Burning Man attendees will still be able to visit the demonstration projects of green technologies as the Man is rebuilt and reinstalled.
While smoke was still in the air, Grace said, artists who installed the man's neon were already discussing plans to rebuild the structure.
During the first full night of revelry at the one-week event, whose encampment is known as Black Rock City after the Black Rock desert in which it's held, much of the city was busy watching the ongoing lunar eclipse when the fire began just before 3 a.m. Tuesday at the Man.
For many, far from the pavilion in the center of the city on which the Man stood, the sight of unusually fast-moving trucks with emergency lights speeding through the dense city was the first sign something strange was going on.
A crowd of hundreds quickly formed in a circle around the impromptu burn as two of the event's water trucks sped in within minutes. Firefighters began dousing the blaze with aerial water jets. Within 23 minutes of the fire's beginning, it was extinguished. The Man, its legs and chest black and charred, was still standing Tuesday morning.
The crowd's mood was split, with some adopting a premature Burn Night attitude, shouting, "Burn the Man."
One 11-year Burner, Johnny Dwork, an event organizer from Portland, Oregon, who is camping at Otter Oasis at Burning Man, saw the early burn as a chance for Burners to rethink their attachment to the central icon of the event and get to "live the myth of the phoenix."
Larry Harvey, Burning Man's co-founder and director, was on a platform in his camp watching the eclipse when he noticed his Man on fire. Once realizing that the fire was under control and no one was apt to be hurt, he says, his immediate reaction was laughter.
The early burn, he said, will help show that the Man itself is "nothing but a wooden doll," and that the event is really about the joint effort of attendees to create it. It will turn this year's Burning Man into a "narrative of community and redemption" as the attendees get to see or assist in the public rebuilding of the statue, he said.
While precise details of the cause of the burn are still unknown, and the Burning Man organization so far refuses to comment officially regarding suspects or charges, a dispatcher for the Pershing County Sheriff's Department in Lovelock, Nevada, said a San Francisco man was in custody at the county jail Tuesday afternoon.
Paul Addis, 35, was booked into the Pershing County Jail on charges of arson, possession of fireworks, destruction of property and resisting a public officer, according to the dispatcher, who declined to give her name for publication.
Addis, who writes online using the pseudonym "CyberSatan," has been part of the Burning Man community for many years. He has publicly complained about the event's supposed degeneration from its former edgy dangerousness and total freedom.
Hal Robins, a San Francisco artist, worked with Addis recently in a stage production of Dr. Strangelove in which Addis played Col. Bat Guano. Robins recalls an event celebrating the life of Hunter S. Thompson – Addis was a big fan of the gonzo journalist and the writer's love of guns and "bad craziness" – in which attendees had to pass an "Addis checkpoint" where Addis, wearing tight short shorts and strapped with guns and ammo clips, would mock-examine everyone's ID. "He is very fond of military style," Robins says.
Rick, a San Francisco designer, says that when he saw Addis on Monday afternoon, Addis asked him, "Do you have a flare gun or any explosives?"
Brian Doherty is a senior editor at Reason magazine and author of the books This is Burning Man and Radicals for Capitalism.
