"How does a sealed tent get dust in it? It has no openings — I'm the first person to open it!"
Sounding like a tourist upset with his hotel accommodations, Lee Freedman is calling out from a tarp-covered tunnel of tents and makeshift shelters. Freedman's tent, which was set up before his arrival by a guy he never met named Glen, is filled with dust, even though the zipper was closed. The St. Pete Beach resident's complaints immediately mark Freedman, who also goes by the name Vermillion, as a Burning Man virgin.
Lifestyle adjustments — not just the vagaries of tent housing, but harsh weather, dust storms and the lack of phone or Internet — have likely kept the Burning Man festival, which just celebrated its 21st year, from growing to the point of self-destruction. While debates about how hardcore and creative it used to be continue to rage on, it's still a mental and physical test, and it's still an artistic oasis unmatched in the U.S., or for that matter, anywhere overseas. And that's why an estimated 30 to 50 Florida residents traveled over 2,000 miles to spend a week in the Black Rock Desert in northwest Nevada.
Freedman soon asks me to be the first vice president of the Colorblind Association of America; he's creating a color-based alphabet called Kromofons, a palette that colorblind, color-challenged and color-sighted people can all see equally. Although I politely decline, it's not the most outrageous offer I've received in the past few days; everyone is an artist in Black Rock City, the name for the temporary community that springs up the week before Labor Day every year. By Saturday night, when the 40-foot-high wooden man at the center of the city is set on fire and burns to the ground (hence the name), there's officially almost 39,000 people in attendance (more than half of whom, judging by past Burning Man surveys, are over 30).
Freedman brought his fiancée, Jan Stein, who upon arrival says she's prepared because she's "been to Club Med and lots of other camps." A writer by trade, Stein was formerly the public art program coordinator for Hillsborough County and used to own a gallery in Tampa. She's now creating one-minute videos about visual artists, mainly in Florida, which she hopes will begin airing on local PBS stations later this year. She's come to Burning Man to meet artists, network, and maybe find some locals for her program.
She shouldn't have a problem here.
A woman who identifies herself as Storm hands me a book, titled Gaia's Revolt, and tells me her just-published semi-autobiographical novel is about a post-apocalyptic world in which "the religious right and Greenpeace-type people join forces" to rebuild society.
The Orlando resident, a marketing coordinator for a construction management firm, began writing in 1995 but was unable to find an ending to her book. Her first trip to Burning Man in 2005 provided her with artistic inspiration, and the friends she made in the Florida "burner" community pushed her to self-publish. "Their support is what made me bite the bullet and put up the seven grand to get it printed."
Moss (real name Miles, no last name provided) is a six-time burner who sometimes drives all the way from his Temple Terrace home to the Black Rock Desert (a 60-plus-hour drive). He says the Tampa Bay burner crew has long been intertwined with former area residents who moved on to Idaho and Michigan. In the past, the tri-state group known as the conglomerate (or "GLOM" for short) set up a full bar, giant shade structures and even a small rollercoaster. But this year, it seemed like too much work; instead, many are simply participating in "The Playa-Que," a massive barbecue featuring daily Iron Chef-style cooking battles and 18-course banquets for passersby.
Moss, who was born on Davis Islands, manages retirement communities in Tampa and St Petersburg, and looks pretty clean-cut except for his pierced septum. He says the biggest misperception about BM is that "it's just a big rave-drug festival. You can walk down the esplanade [Black Rock City's main drag] and know that it's a lot more than that."
Indeed, the amount of art is overwhelming. One of the favorites is "The Serpent Mother," a 90-foot-long dragon created by the San Francisco Bay-based Flaming Lotus Girls. Consoles on the serpents' legs allow anyone to shoot 5-foot-high flames out of the individual vertebrae. "People come out here with the vibe to just push bigger and better, more elaborate, blow-your-mind type artwork," notes Moss.
The so-called "Belgian Waffle" has been the most talked-about piece at the festival. A 40-foot-high wooden structure consisting of thousands of 2-by-4s, the waffle/makeshift dance club was put together with nail guns by a dozen Belgian artists three weeks before the event began and turns out to be the largest fire of the week when it's burned on Sunday night.
As Burning Man has grown beyond its San Francisco roots, burners from around the country have developed online chat groups and organized regional events throughout the year in the spirit of "radical self-expression" that characterizes the annual festival. The Florida regional used to be called "Sunburn," but has been renamed "Afterburn"; this year it's scheduled for Nov. 10-12 at Maddox Ranch in Lakeland. Glen Gray, a six-time burner and former Tampa resident who now lives in Fort Lauderdale (and the guy who set up Freedman's tent), says he expects about 250 artists to attend. They'll set up a Burning Man-style city, he says, with a sun as the center.
In the meantime, the Playa-Que folks have been chatting about costumes, preparation and transportation online, and going to parties at "The White Cat Hotel," an Ybor Heights house rented out by a guy whose "playa name" is Whitecat. (Playa is the alkaline-laden sand that makes up the surface of the ancient lakebed in which Burning Man takes place.) A first-time burner himself, Whitecat met the rest of the Florida contingent at Transformus, a regional burn in Asheville, N.C. He says the common thread is "creativity and the love of creativity, freedom to create and the freedom to enjoy."
The Tampa Bay burners all believe there's potential for a thriving art scene in Tampa, if local talent were given more public and private support. "Most of our friends are artists and have gallery showings all the time," says Moss, but they have "big ideas and no funding."
Jason (who also goes by "Parts Per Million"), a Tampa environmental engineer who's in his second year at Burning Man, is wearing a black kilt with a belt that says "spank me." It's a pretty mundane outfit compared to the body paint, stilts, fire-spewing metal suits and fluorescent animal creations that can be seen at every turn. This constant stream of creativity is what brought him back to the Burn: "You see stuff out here that you don't see anywhere else in the world." He's impressed with the diversity of art in Tampa Bay, but "out here it seems like the art is a little more whacked-out and crazy, like the more funky it is the better."
He also appreciates the openness and lack of art-snob supremacy in burner circles. "You can go up to anybody, talk to most people and they are welcoming and responsive … from the tree-hugging hippies to the corporate CEOs, everybody's out here and nobody has any type of corporate identity, you are just free to self-express."
A man in a long black skirt comes over and asks for volunteers to come wash dishes in preparation for tonight's dinner. Everyone gets up to help — there are no maids here.
Back at the Playa-Que Sunday afternoon after the burning of the man, Freedman and Stein are packing up to leave. They both say they will be back next year, but with an RV and the comforts that a tent simply can't provide. Freedman says he spoke to Burning Man founder Larry Harvey for two and a half hours about making Kromofons the official language of Burning Man; he also decided he's leaving Tampa Bay because "there's no culture there" and moving to Fort Lauderdale. Stein says they had a bad view of the burning of the man until a couple from Berkeley gave them seats on a motorized couch that lifted them 75 feet into the air.
"Everyone was so polite, respectful. We had an abundance of food, everyone shared what they had. We had water, electricity for me to plug in my video camera, watermelons delivered by beautiful nude bodies, and art, art, art everywhere. And just people talking to each other everywhere about how to make the world a little bit better."
Stein volunteered at the St. Pete First Night celebration years ago and says she learned that people will come out to look at art and see the installations. "Burning Man is like First Night on steroids," she explains, and gives praise to the Burning Man organization's practice of awarding grants to artists for temporary pieces both at the event and in their hometowns.
"I think there's a leadership issue," Stein says, explaining why she thinks there's never been a consistently strong arts festival in Tampa Bay. As the sun sets, and the electronic music grows louder for one last (official) night, which will include the burning of the waffle, she envisions what could happen if the Burning Man spirit spread to Tampa. "Any city, if they are dedicated as a community for a singular experience and they are true to the art, you can do almost anything you want."
Meanwhile, the burners who remain in the Bay will try to create a lively cultural scene themselves. Whitecat says he plans to rent out a warehouse in Tampa this fall to get artists connected and to collaborate on outdoor art in Tampa — perhaps a project to bring to Burning Man next year. He's also working on a metal fire sculpture — even though he's never sculpted anything before.
No matter what, says Glen Gray, Burning Man is still five years ahead of the art world; the Floridians coming back to their communities are planting seeds of creativity and raising the bar. "It's a massive compression of thoughts, ideas, creativity, niceness, people's will; there's sexiness out here, there's stuff that will change the world."
But you still can't get rid of that dust.
This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2006.