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Burning Man

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Pyromaniacal artist Paul Addis gets one to four years for arson Paul Addis, who was remembered fondly at the Mozilla 10th anniversary party, has been sentenced to serv 12-48 months in prison and pay $25,000 in restitution after pleading guilty to prematurely setting fire to the Burning Man last summer. [Laughing Squid]

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Burning Man 2008 tickets now on sale! The show takes place in the middle of the desert from August 25 to September 1 and this year's theme is "American Dream." [Laughing Squid]

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Paul Addis, the accused arsonist of this year's Burning Man, has been arrested again on arson charges. This time, Addis was caught on the steps of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral carrying small explosives. His next court date, for the Burning Man charges, is on November 13. (Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid) [Laughing Squid]

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burning man

Simpsons director sets tuba on fire


In the Nevada desert, the extreme-geek subcultures of Silicon Valley and Hollywood meet, breed, and raise mutant offspring. That's the only explanation I can come up for why Xeni Jardin is interviewing Simpsons director David Silverman about his sideline of playing a flaming tuba. Best part, of course, is when he plays the Simpsons theme as flames spurt out of the instrument.

3:34 PM on Fri Oct 26 2007
By Owen Thomas
596 views, 5 comments

burning man

The burners return, en masse and without class

The good news: Burning Man is over. The bad news: The burners are back in town. Once a year, the Bay Area's most troublesome pyromaniacs head out of town, leaving Silicon Valley cubicles deserted and Mission barstools empty, as they fill up Black Rock City, the temporary site in the Nevada desert for the now-ended arts and counterculture festival. Despite Caltrans's best efforts to block their return by closing the Bay Bridge, they've come back — except for one sad suicide. It's never the ones you wish would off themselves who do, of course. Take Paul Addis — please. The man accused of prematurely setting fire to Burning Man's giant wooden statue was one of the first to return, beating a hasty retreat after spending time in a Pershing County jail. At a Labor Day barbecue, blogger Scott Beale taped Addis in a pseudoconfessional rant. More »

9:33 AM on Tue Sep 4 2007
By Owen Thomas
3,821 views, 10 comments

Latest by n/a: I must have met him after his breakdown. Lord knows after my encounter with him...I can see that. And it is not endearing. Actually, it is one of the things that irks me about the arts: When do more »

burning man

The Man is dead, long live the Man

BLACK ROCK CITY — It is quiet here this morning. The rave camps have settled down, fire-spewing trinkets have ceased exploding, and the only citizens of Black Rock City out at this hour, just after 8 a.m., are dazed as they wander through the detritus of dead glowsticks, dusty embers, and unconscious hippies. More »

10:35 AM on Sun Sep 2 2007
By sdavalos
1,607 views, 2 comments

burning man

The Man burns tonight

BLACK ROCK CITY — Actual conversation, overheard at the Porta-Potties:
"So what'd you do last night?"
"I took some unknown hallucinogen from a guy I didn't know." (shakes head sadly, as if in shame)
"How was it?"
"Fucking awesome."
The Man burns tonight. Like it was supposed to, before those gol-dinged ne'er-do-wells came in with all their smart-aleck "Burn the man early" talk. Right! Like this is supposed to be a festival of anarchistic self-expression or something!

1:02 PM on Sat Sep 1 2007
By sdavalos
433 views, Comment

burning man

Satan's Calliope rocks the desert

BLACK ROCK CITY — One of the main advantages to being the middle of the fucking Nevada desert for Burning Man, the arts and counterculture festival held here this week, is that it's a lot easier to burn a whole lot of accelerant without incurring too much wrath from the local authorities. Of course, every single thing that is soaked with gasoline and set on fire out here has gone through a rigorous process to make sure that carbon-offset trees get planted up in Canada somewhere. This is a kind, gentle, carbon-negative hippiefest, after all. However, some attendees transcend the incineration of mere wood and plastic and build art pieces that really say something while they're warming up the planet. More »

12:36 PM on Sat Sep 1 2007
By sdavalos
899 views, Comment

burning man

The Orb Swarm rules the night

BLACK ROCK CITY — One of the neatest things I have seen in the self-expressive miasma that is Burning Man, the countercultural arts festival here in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, has been The Orb Swarm, a group of spherical robots designed to roll around the playa and interact with participants with lights, motion and sound. Imagine this: You're deeply intoxicated on a substance of your choosing, wandering around in the dark, when suddenly you're nudged by a two-and-a-half-foot high aluminum balls twittering at you and changing color. Yeah. You're tripping over balls, and the balls are tripping you. More »

3:59 PM on Fri Aug 31 2007
By sdavalos
1,132 views, Comment

burning man

The Man rises again -- for a day

BLACK ROCK CITY — Friends playing along at home, you can stop fretting and sleep a tad better tonight, knowing that the dedicated hippie construction workers of Burning Man have erected a brand new Man, the giant wooden statue everyone came to Nevada to watch burn down. Following the early burn on Tuesday by local antihero Paul Addis, the all-volunteer Department of Public Works worked 'round the clock to build a brand new totem, after it was found that the portion of The Man left standing after the premature incineration was not stable enough to use as a base. The new Man is decked out with neon just like the old one, and the pavilion of corporate sponsor appeasement green technology exhibits will once more be open to the eager denizens of Black Rock City. And to think — in a day, we're just going to burn it all down again.

12:52 PM on Fri Aug 31 2007
By sdavalos
1,234 views, 1 comment

Latest by sample032: Somewhere between the angles and the aspect ratios, the burning man figure creeps me out. more »

i hate it here

Dust storms roil the playa -- and this reporter

BLACK ROCK CITY — We had a wee tiny, itty-bitty hardly-worth-mentioning dust storm yesterday. There was a moment when we could not see twenty feet across the street to the neighboring camp due to the whiteout conditions. The total lack of visual stimulation forced us to imbibe playa margaritas (a "playa" margarita because we used tasty, tasty Gatorade instead of lemon juice). The great thing about playa margaritas? The mixer rehydrates you as fast as the alcohol dehydrates you. Pretty soon, the packaging on the Spam Singles that someone had brought to camp was uproariously funny. We made it through the crisis just fine, never fear.

12:44 PM on Fri Aug 31 2007
By sdavalos
805 views, 2 comments

Latest by Simone Davalos: Yeah, tell me about it. more »

burning man

Techno playa bling

BLACK ROCK CITY — In between weathering dust storms, drinking heavily and stalking Internet tycoons, we have come in contact with an amusing assortment of tech people who have come to Burning Man to shrug off their work cares and forget about the Web for a few precious, hot, dusty hippie-filled days. We managed to tackle Stef Magdalinski, illustrous CTO of Moo.com, as he was puttering about his camp. More »

12:26 PM on Fri Aug 31 2007
By sdavalos
668 views, Comment

exclusive

Interview with the accused Burning Man arsonist

Paul Addis, the man accused of setting torch to The Man, the wooden totem at the heart of the Burning Man festival, has drawn his share of fans and detractors. Chris Radcliffe, who's tangled with the organizers of Burning Man over various issues, even paid thousands of dollars in bail money to spring Addis from jail. But aside from a statement sent to blogger Scott Beale of Laughing Squid, he hasn't spoken to defend his actions. Until now. In an exclusive interview, Addis, who's been charged with the felony of arson, spoke to Valleywag as a friend drove him from Fernley, Nevada, back to his home in San Francisco. The full interview follows. More »

Feature

4:56 PM on Thu Aug 30 2007
By Owen Thomas
7,122 views, 7 comments

Latest by waynelambright: Addis's face paint looks like a Porsche GT1. [tinyurl.com] more »

burning man

Black Rock City's first-ever suicide

Death is always a possibility in Nevada's high desert, the site of the annual Burning Man festival. But heat, dehydration, and drugs are the causes one would expect. Not suicide. But local coroners have confirmed the festival's first suicide, SFGate reports. The still-unnamed dead man's body hung from the top of a two-story tent for hours before someone thought to check after him. "His friends thought he was doing an art piece," said a federal agent on the scene.

3:46 PM on Thu Aug 30 2007
By Owen Thomas
5,962 views, 8 comments

Latest by dustydust: On the morning of Thursday, August 30th a young man from Colorado chose to end his life in the rafters of a public tent at Comfort & Joy. Though he was unknown to us, in the wake of his passing more »

burning man

The arsonist of Black Rock City speaks

Blogger Scott Beale of Laughing Squid has obtained a statement from Paul Addis, the man accused of setting fire to The Man, the wooden statue which provides the Burning Man festival's raison d'etre. Addis, who has a one-man show devoted to the life of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, portrays himself as the spiritual heir of Thompson. "Most of you are newbies who have been drawn in by the semi-religious nature of the event, or maybe just the easy drugs and easier sex," writes Addis to his critics. Well, duh. Here's the rest of what the premature incinerator, released on some $3,000 in bail, has to say for himself from the outskirts of Reno, Nevada: More »

2:08 PM on Thu Aug 30 2007
By Owen Thomas
3,063 views, 18 comments

Latest by n/a: well said, arsat! bravo! more »

rumormonger

Google founders spotted at Burning Man!

BLACK ROCK CITY — A rumor has just reached our ears that Google's cofounders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are here at Burning Man, the ever-dusty counterculture and arts festival taking place in the Nevada desert. We even have their purported addresses on the playa. More »

1:23 PM on Thu Aug 30 2007
By sdavalos
2,913 views, 2 comments

burning man

The 8 types of Burning Man attendees, according to Jonathan Grubb

BLACK ROCK CITY — Jonathan Grubb, maverick something-or-other of software developer RubyRed Labs, had an informative and enlightening column about the many types of Burning Man attendees published in The Black Rock Beacon. The Beacon is one of many carefully edited, lovingly printed, well-researched news outlets on the playa, and they use the interesting and charmingly old-fashioned medium of actual paper to get their message out. But they use an interesting technique to get their content out: copy and paste. Grubb's column, you see, was taken verbatim from a blog post he wrote last December. Ah well. After the jump, nonetheless, a quick list of Grubb's eight Burning Man archetypes, with our comments. More »

11:59 AM on Thu Aug 30 2007
By sdavalos
1,989 views, 3 comments

Latest by LongAgoYahoo: Burningman stopped being cool around 1996 or 1997. more »

burning man

Black Rock City remains no Man's land

BLACK ROCK CITY — Despite the best efforts of many sleep-deprived hippies with the Department of Public Works, The Man itself, the centerpiece of the Burning Man arts and counterculture festival in Nevada, is still not back up. Crews have been working around the clock to restore the festival's iconic sculpture after it was prematurely burned by local antihero Paul Addis early Tuesday morning. The area has been strictly cordoned off by some very pissed-off volunteer Black Rock Rangers, with no one except for officials allowed entry. The featureless desert, normally dominated by the giant wooden statue, is sad and eery, especially in the frequent dust storms. More »

11:17 AM on Thu Aug 30 2007
By sdavalos
766 views, Comment

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