RENO, Nev. — The blank canvas of desert wilderness in northern Nevada seemed the perfect place in 1992 for artistic anarchists to relocate their annual burning of a towering, anonymous effigy. It was goodbye to San Francisco’s Baker Beach, hello to the Nevada playa, the long-ago floor of an inland sea.
The tiny gathering became Burning Man’s surrealistic circus, fueled by acts of kindness and avant-garde theatrics, sometimes with a dose of hallucinogens or nudity. The spectacle flourished as the festival ballooned over the next three decades.
Some say it grew too much, too fast.
Things came to a head in 2011 when tickets sold out for the first time.
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Organizers responded with a short-lived lottery system that left people out of what was supposed to be a radically inclusive event.
As Burning Man matured, luxurious accommodations proliferated, as did the population of billionaires and celebrities.
Katherine Chen, a sociology professor in New York City who wrote a 2009 book about the event’s “creative chaos,” was among those who wondered whether Burning Man “would be a victim of its own success.”
Exponential growth led to increasing questions about whether organizers had veered too far from the core principles of radical inclusion, expression, participation and the pledge to “leave no trace.”
Burning Man participants walk through dust at the annual Burning Man event on the Black Rock Desert of Gerlach, Nev., on Friday, Aug. 29, 2014. AP
That last hurdle was never harder to clear than this year as “Burners” tried to leave over Labor Day weekend after torching the 80-foot (24-meter) wooden sculpture that is “the Man.”
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A rare rainstorm turned the Black Rock Desert into a muddy quagmire 110 miles (175 kilometers) north of Reno, delaying the departure of 80,000 revelers. Once out, organizers had six weeks to clean up under terms of a federal permit.
By the smallest of margins, they passed the test last month, with a few adjustments recommended for the future. The verdict from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management means Burning Man is in line to use federal land again next year.
Debate over the event’s future, however, is sure to continue as divisions grow between the aging hippie types and wealthier, more technologically inclined newcomers. Veteran participants fear the newer set is losing touch with Burning Man’s roots.
Burning Man organizers don’t foresee major changes in 2024 thanks to a hard-won passing grade for cleaning up this year’s festival. AP
The event has made a quantum leap from a gathering of hundreds to one that temporarily becomes Nevada’s third largest city after metropolitan Las Vegas and Reno. The festival drew 4,000 in 1995 and topped 50,000 in 2010.
It’s no wonder seasoned Burners sound a bit like griping cribbage players on a rural town square when they mutter: “It ain’t like it used to be.”
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“Back then, it was much more raw,” said Mike “Festie” Malecki, 63, a retired Chicago mortician turned California sculptor who made his 13th trip this year to the land of colorful theme camps, towering sculptures, drum circles and art cars.
“There are more (people) who come out to party and don’t participate. We call them spectators,” he said.
Senior organizers long have wrestled with whether to become more civilized or remain what co-founder Larry Harvey described as a “repudiation of order and authority.”
Festivalgoers stand outside of their cars as they wait for traffic to move while exiting the Burning Man festival in Black Rock Desert, Nev., Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023. AP
Ron Halbert, a 71-year-old from San Francisco, has worked support for Burning Man’s 90-piece orchestra for 20 years and remains optimistic.
“It’s still the gathering of the tribe,” he said.
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The event is permitted tentatively for the same 80,000 attendance cap next year.
Organizers are considering some minor changes, though generally resist making new rules, said Marian Goodell, Burning Man Project’s chief executive officer.
Critics on social media howled at the mayhem left behind this year, posting photos of garbage piles, abandoned vehicles and overflowing portable toilets while ridiculing the “hippies” and their leave-no-trace mantra.
But that mayhem may have actually helped bring Burning Man back to its roots.
Katrina Cook of Toronto said it forced people to be true to the founding principles of participation and radical self-reliance.
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“The rain weeded out the people who didn’t want to be there for the right reason,” Cook said.
Mark Fromson, 54, was staying in an RV, but the rains forced him to find shelter at another camp where fellow burners provided food and cover.
Another principle of Burning Man, he said, centers on unconditional gift giving with no expectation of something in return.
After sunset, Fromson set off barefoot through the muck for a long trek back to his vehicle, slogging through thick clay that clung to his feet and legs. The challenge, he said, was the mark of a “good burn.”
Nevertheless, Jeffery Longoria of San Francisco, who marked his fifth consecutive voyage to Burning Man last summer, said its core principles are going to evolve no matter what as a new generation takes over.
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“The people that created this community, a lot of them are getting older and retiring and there’s a lot of new young people coming in, the kind that have, you know, a couple $100,000 RVs and are kind of just careless about the environment.”
Soren Michael, a Los Angeles technology worker who made his 11th trip this year, said the biggest change has been the ability to communicate with the outside world from the desert.
“It was almost part of the appeal to be disconnected,” he said.
Twenty years ago, the psychedelic celebration like none other already was attracting academic scholars — anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, economists and communications professors — curious about how the makeshift civilization functioned without real-world rules.
Burning Man references started popping up in TV episodes and talk show punchlines.
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The rich and famous began venturing to Black Rock City, as the festival’s temporary metropolis is called.
A full-blown exhibit about the phenomenon debuted in 2018 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. Even then, veteran Burners complained about the event becoming as much a curiosity to see as to do.
That’s in part the problem veterans have with the advent of glamor camping, or glamping, in which private companies provide packaged trips to concierge camps with luxury RVs and lavish meals under chandeliers. Some believe the camps violate Burning Man principles.
The growing number of billionaires and celebrities who fly in on private jets to Black Rock City’s temporary airstrip “seems to be everyone’s favorite thing to hate,” Goodell said. But wealth shouldn’t be a cause for shame, she said.
“The question is not about glamping,” she said. “Comfort doesn’t assume lack of engagement. It’s whether you have a glamping camp and you’re not really engaging.”
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Burning Man’s purpose remains the same: building a creative, stimulating environment, the essence of which people can take back to their own communities.
“We thought that from the beginning,” Goodell said. “We just didn’t know it would be 80,000 people.”
You are here: Home/Features/ Nevada BLM hosting recreation focus groups July 2 and 3
by Jessica Hernandez
The Nevada Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is inviting local residents to participate in upcoming recreation focus groups. The gatherings will discuss suggestions for recreational activities on BLM-managed lands across the state. These 90-minute sessions will be conducted in Caliente, Ely, Elko, Winnemucca, Reno, Carson City, Tonopah, Pahrump, Beatty, Henderson and Las Vegas. The meetings […]
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Henderson City Councilman Dan Shaw is facing two more lawsuits, accusing him of making illegal loans via a tribal lender allegedly owned and controlled by Shaw and his business partner Greg Jones.
The filings bring the number of federal class action lawsuits filed against Shaw, Jones, and the lender, Green Arrow Solutions, to six since 2022. Four of the suits, which are almost identical, have been settled in Illinois, Massachusetts, and Indiana, court records indicate.
The newlawsuit, in Illinois, seeks to prevent Green Arrow Solutions, purportedly a tribal enterprise operated by the Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians in California, from making and collecting high-interest loans of more than 700% annual interest over the Internet. The company is allegedly using tribal immunity to evade regulation.
The plaintiff in the case received a loan for $350 from Green Arrow Solutions in February 2023, according to the complaint.
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“The loan would result in repayment of $1,132.28 if paid on schedule,” the complaint says. “The total interest charged would be $787.28, which according to Green Arrow Solutions equates to an annual percentage rate of 852.42%, a rate more than 20 times that permitted in Illinois (36%).”
Shaw, who was appointed to Henderson City Council in 2017 and later won election, faces a general election challenge in November from Dr. Monica Larson.
“The personal and business behavior of elected leaders matters,” Larson said in a statement to the Current. “It goes to the heart of ethics, integrity, and good decision-making. The charges in these current and past lawsuits are serious. Residents deserve better.”
Elizabeth Trosper, Shaw’s campaign communications director, said she expects Shaw to be dropped from the lawsuit. “It would be inappropriate to further comment on a open lawsuit that includes Dan Shaw or his companies.”
The Illinois suit, filed May 30, alleges that in an attempt to evade prosecution, “non-tribal owners of online payday lending businesses frequently engage in a business model commonly referred to as a ‘rent-a-tribe’ scheme,” in which “non-tribal payday lenders create an elaborate charade claiming their non-tribal businesses are owned and operated by Native American tribes.”
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The alleged scheme, according to the new suit and those filed previously, is purported to shield the lenders from state and federal usury laws under the guise of sovereign immunity.
“However, the tribal lending entity is simply a facade for an illegal lending scheme; all substantive aspects of the payday lending operation – funding, marketing, loan origination, underwriting, loan servicing, electronic funds transfers, and collections – are performed by individuals and entities that are unaffiliated with the tribe.”
The suit alleges that in exchange for use of the tribe’s name, the true owners pay the tribe “a fraction of the revenues generated.” While the percentage varies, “the number is almost always in the single digits.”
Tribal administrator Ben Ray did not respond to requests for comment.
A map on Green Arrow Solutions’ website indicates it does business in Nevada.
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“On information and belief, the list of states in which Defendants do not make loans depends on the likelihood they will face public or private enforcement actions,” says the Illinois suit.
The complaint lists five other Internet lenders that purport to be operated by tribal enterprises, but are owned by Nevada Impact Management, LLC, a company that lists Shaw and Jones as officers.
“Attempting to circumvent state interest rate caps by fraudulently hiding behind tribal sovereign immunity has been found to constitute criminal conduct,” the suit says, noting a New York jury convicted two individuals in 2017 on 14 felony counts for operating a network of tribal lending companies.
A Wisconsin suit was filed this week. Only a cover sheet has been filed. The attorney representing the plaintiff did not respond to requests for comment.
An ailing former Los Angeles-area gang leader has been denied release from a Las Vegas jail ahead of his trial in the 1996 killing of music legend Tupac Shakur, despite a bid by a hip-hop music figure to underwrite his US$750,000 bond.
A Nevada judge rejected house arrest with electronic monitoring for Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis, 61, saying she wasn’t satisfied with assurances that Davis and his would-be benefactor, Cash ‘Wack 100’ Jones, weren’t planning to reap profits from the sale of Davis’ life story.
A Nevada law prohibits convicted killers from profiting from their crime.
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Clark County District Court Judge Carli Kierny said in her ruling issued Wednesday that a review of Jones’ financial records also did little to address her concerns that Jones might be a “’front’ or ‘middleman’ for the true bond poster”.
Davis has sought to be released since shortly after his arrest last September made him the only person ever charged with a crime in the killing, which has drawn intense interest and speculation for 27 years.
Prosecutors allege the gunfire in Las Vegas that killed Shakur stemmed from competition between east coast members of a Bloods gang sect and west coast groups of a Crips sect, including Davis, for dominance in a musical genre known at the time as “gangsta rap”.
Davis has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. His trial is scheduled for November 4. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
After a 45-minute hearing Tuesday, Kierny said she was left with more questions than answers after Davis’ legal team tried to demonstrate the source of the funds.
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Prosecutors have argued that Davis intends to benefit from retelling his story about the killing of Shakur and played a recording of a jailhouse phone call in which Jones describes to Davis a plan to produce “30 to 40 episodes” of a show based on his life story.
“It is an illegal benefit, profiting from this crime,” prosecutor Binu Palal told the judge. Palal didn’t respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday on the judge’s decision.
Jones, a music record executive who has managed hip-hop artistes including Johnathan ‘Blueface’ Porter and Jayceon ‘The Game’ Taylor, offered sworn testimony Tuesday by video from an unspecified place in California.
He said he paid 15 per cent of the bail amount, or US$112,500, as “a gift” from his business accounts to secure Davis’ release.
Davis’ attorney, Carl Arnold, didn’t respond to emails or phone calls left at his office Wednesday seeking comment. A spokesperson for Arnold didn’t immediately have comment when reached by email.
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The judge said in Wednesday’s two-page order she wasn’t convinced the bail money was not being paid “out of profits from Mr Davis discussing the killing of the victim in this case.”
While Jones testified he was bonding out Davis because Davis was fighting cancer and “had been a pillar of the community”, previous interviews “suggested another motive”, Kierney wrote.
She said Jones indicated there were “stipulations” on the bond and “that Mr Davis would be signing a contract regarding the rights to his life story, ostensibly including the shooting of Mr Shakur.” She said that was supported by a recorded phone call at the jail when Jones “insisted that a contract be signed before the bond premium was paid”.
