Burning Man
Burning Man began as a bonfire ritual on the summer solstice in 1986 when Larry Harvey, Jerry James and a few friends met on Baker Beach in San Francisco[19] and burned an 8 ft tall wooden man as well as a smaller wooden dog.
In 1990, a separate event was planned by Kevin Evans and John Law on the remote and largely unknown dry lake known as Black Rock Desert, about 110 miles north of Reno, Nevada.[20] Evans conceived it as a dadaist temporary autonomous zone with sculpture to be burned and situationist performance art. He asked John Law, who also had experience on the dry lake and was a defining founder of Cacophony Society, to take on central organizing functions. In the Cacophony Society's newsletter, it was announced as Zone No. 4, A Bad Day at Black Rock (inspired by the 1955 film of the same name).
Meanwhile, the beach burn was interrupted by the park police for not having a permit. After striking a deal to raise the Man but not to burn it, event organizers disassembled the effigy and returned it to the vacant lot where it had been built. Shortly thereafter, the legs and torso of the Man were chain-sawed and the pieces removed when the lot was unexpectedly leased as a parking lot. The effigy was reconstructed, led by Dan Miller, Harvey's then-housemate of many years, just in time to take it to Zone Trip No. 4.[21]
Michael Mikel, another active Cacophonist, realized that a group unfamiliar with the environment of the dry lake would be helped by knowledgeable persons to ensure they did not get lost in the deep dry lake and risk dehydration and death. He took the name Danger Ranger and created the Black Rock Rangers. Thus the seed of Black Rock City was germinated, as a fellowship, organized by Law and Mikel, based on Evans' idea, along with Harvey and James' symbolic man.
The three most well-known founders and present partners in ownership of its name and trademark (Law, Michael Mikel, and Larry Harvey)[22] were known as "The Temple of the Three Guys".
Artistic contributions
Law, a neon sculptor and artist, originated the concept and design of installing neon on the Man at Burning Man[23] , an act which at once created an invaluable navigation aid and an indelible, omnipresent symbol. At that time, Burning Man had no streets, street signs, fences, or any other artificially imposed boundaries, and it took place in the virtually featureless deep playa (on which it may be easy to lose one's bearings or misjudge distances and wind up stranded alone in the desert). The decision to implement neon into the Man may have added to the safety of the event.
The early years of the festival allowed driving throughout the city but eventually curbed the practice back to only art cars. The symbol of the Burning Man, which had been added to the desert event later and was not part of its initial inception, became more and more identified with the event, in part because with the addition of the neon it was always universally visible, becoming the single unchanging reference point psychologically as well as physically.
Founders' conflict
The last year John Law attended Burning Man was in 1996 when his friend, Michael Furey died in a motorcycle crash[24] while setting up the event and a couple were run over in a tent by an inattentive driver attempting to get to the distant rave camp.
