Talk:Burning Man

Cacophony's members, early visionaries, and current times

One of my concerns here is that several founders of Burning Man find no fame or glory here. For those of us closer to the founders, we know the whole idea was formed and took shape at meetings at 1907 Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco. The huge rambling 2-story flat in San Francisco was home and guest house to several people who were intimately involved with the creation of Burning Man. In case it isn't obvious, friendships suffered when some people turned out to love the glory more than others.

A chief architect of the Burning Man vision was the great doyenne, Roberta "P" Segal, who in true, gender-driven diminution and historical refab, first envisioned and authored the tenets of Burning Man. Another person who stylized and created the original silk screened swag for the parties of 40 at Baker Beach and elsewhere, Chris de Monterey, is also left out of the evolutionary tale of Burning Man.

The Cacophony Society still meets, at least several people still do, in San Francisco on the first Saturday of each month (It is currently Sept. 2022). More than this, Ms. Segal has gone on to a new vision, post several thousand dollars per ticket, in the quest for creative essence; she has created an artist's housing project in San Francisco so the arts can be reborn and San Francisco can once again be a flourishing artist's center. 157.131.246.221 (talk) 05:24, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Visionary P Segal needs to mentioned as a founder of Burning Man

It is well known within the community of early participants, that the ideas for Burning Man were discussed and evolved at 1907 Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco, where visionary P Segal was involved along with a small handful of others, some who continued with it, and some who did not as Burning Man took on a life of it's own. There are some remarkable photos out there, but I am not sure if they are available for use from those years. Another early member was Chris de Monterey, who silk screened the first tickets to Baker Beach events. 157.131.199.58 (talk) 01:42, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

• It's not Wikipedia's job to give people fame and glory, and "creative essence" sounds unsanitary. EEng 18:49, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

There are thousands of people whose creative contributions have assisted in the development and growth of the event as a whole, but whose specific contributions have not extended to independently-published sources and/or notability that meets Wikipedia standards. The same is true of many organizations.

A self-published interview by Segal at https://www.trippingly.net/burning-man-musings/interview-with-larry-harvey-the-burning-man-responds-to-the-proust-questionnaire-p-segal seems to identify their own contributions as being a small part of the cacaphony society's contributions, which are acknowledged in the article. Photos from early years of the event would be valuable to the event and to the Nevada Historical Museum, even if they can not achieve the rights requirements to be used on Wikipedia. JKPrivett (talk) 09:18, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

2023 rain-out and fake news

Flooding has closed the entrance this year source. I was curious if it's ever rained on Burning Man before? Apparently there was also a hoax claiming an Ebola outbreak source. Beland (talk) 03:52, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure about previous rain events but this one I think should probably be included in the history section. - Reallygreatoaktree (talk) 13:36, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

According to social media, it's not a hoax. The Feds have quarantined the camp due to the outbreak of the highly contagious, flesh-eating disease. They're not letting anyone in and out. Complete media blackout like they've tried to do in Maui. 152.130.11.77 (talk) 17:06, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

you mean Brace Belden? He is trolling. Also, complete media blackout isn't possible considering people bring Starlink and other satellite internet to these places. Synopsis19117 (talk) 03:26, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Added mention of the hoax to the 2023 article. Still curious if rain has happened before. -- Beland (talk) 16:58, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

It has rained on multiple occasions for brief periods, causing half-day closures of the event roadways, which are on a dry lake bed.

What was notable about 2023 is that it rained heavily both during the build week and the event week for an extended period, and the volume of rains led the roads to remain sufficiently impassible for vehicular traffic for multiple days including the scheduled burning of the effigy and the intended departure date of a preponderance of the participants.

I will look for wiki-quality source to document this in the article, such as the Bureau of Land Management annual permit after-report. JKPrivett (talk) 09:33, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Hedonism and paganism

Cxbrx, I take your point about blogs being a poor source. I've re-written with books as a source, though honestly they are janky-seeming books that might be nearly self-published. But, they are by commentators (Ben Shapiro, James Goll and Lou Engle) recognized enough to have their own Wikipedia articles. I'm opening this thread to discuss if this is adequate sourcing. Jno.skinner (talk) 23:44, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Jno.skinner, thanks, those sources are a bit better than the blog an at least the authors have articles. It would be nice to find better sources, but I'm fine with letting the section stand as you have written it. Other editors will likely have opinions and will hopefully improve that section. Cxbrx (talk) 00:21, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I'll recommend Lee Gilmore's "Theater in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man" by Lee Gilmore on University of California Press (ISBN 978-0-520-26088-7) as a researched source. "Paganism and Neopaganism" is an index entry. In general it frames the event as ritualized more of an inspiration to individual participant's belief systems rather than driven by formal external belief systems. I'll drop in one quote here though...

"This is not to say that sex, drugs and rock-and-roll are not to be found at Burning Man, but that the media's sometimes too singular focus on these aspects is the result of superficial impressions and not substantive examinations" (p. 138). JKPrivett (talk) 09:49, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Article size. Is it time to split off the Event Timeline section?

Today, the article is 9,069 words, see XTools. WP:SIZERULE says: "> 9,000 words Probably should be divided or trimmed, though the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material."

Perhaps Burning_Man#Event_timeline should be placed in a separate article? That table has a lot of data and could use references to support those numbers. Much of the data in the table is repeated in the history and population section. Cxbrx (talk) 19:17, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

The naming of Burning Man

We currently have the following passage:

'By 1988, Harvey formally named the summer solstice ritual "Burning Man" by titling flyers for the happening as such. This was apparently done to ward off references to "wicker man", the reputed Celtic pagan practice of burning live sacrifices in human-shaped wicker cages.

However the second of the two listed sources (at the beginning of chapter 2) makes it clear that:

a) Harvey dislikes the notion that he was inspired by the movie 'The Wicker Man', especially since he hadn't seen it at the time.
b) Harvey particularly disliked the idea of describing the man as made of wicker of all things, which would imply a shoddy build quality.  

However the present version of the text would imply that he wished to disassociate his event specifically from the Celtic pagan practice, and not the movie or the fact that wicker is the 'wrong' material.

I propose the passage be rewritten to reflect this. 2001:14BB:691:468F:DC8E:1607:FA9B:8550 (talk) 21:55, 3 December 2024 (UTC)