Not too long ago, Pershing County, Nevada wrapped up its 30th annual Burning Man held in the Black Rock Desert. Jump back a few years and most people wouldn’t have even know what it was.
“Burning Man?” “Do you burn a big sculpture of a man?” — Precisely. But wait! There’s more!
It all started back in 1968 when two guys named Larry Harvey and Jerry James decided to construct a human figure out of wood and burn it on the San Francisco Beach during the Summer Solstice. As they did this, crowds of people gathered around to watch it burn and voila, thus Burning Man was born.
This is not so much a music festival, but a gathering of thousands of people enjoying not only music, but mainly art and interactive sculptures. You won’t be seeing flower crowns here or any cute little chic outfits, no sir. You will see a barrage of leather, laced-up clothing, chainmail, bandanas or scarves wrapped around faces as to not get any sand in your mouth, and anything else that’s crazy and out of the ordinary like colorful wigs and fishnets.
Not only will you see everyone riding around on bikes or crazy vacuum cars through the desert, but you will also probably see a lot of big celebrities like Katy Perry, Cara Delevingne, Diplo, and Karlie Kloss, who were all spotted at this year’s Burning Man.
With so many stars posting about their time in the desert, it will of course start to trend and more and more people will want to go. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because festivals want a good turn out, but at the same time, will this “newly” emerged fest be slowly filled with rich tweens and wannabe cool kids just doing it for the insta? Let’s hope not.
Burning man is all about the experience of selfless giving, art appreciation, and making new friends in the desert.
