The Burn.Life Blog

A Visual History of Burning Man 1997-2000

4/8/2015

I just put up the new'97-'00 section of the Visual History of Burning Man, which lays out how Burning Man evolved from the post-'96 near-debacle (from the Org's point of view at least).

It's an interesting evolution, and by the year 2000 Burning Man really looked much like it does today, if smaller. In that year you had:

The creation of the first David Best Temple (unofficial, but definitely the embryo from which the official 2001 Temple was birthed).
The creation of the 10 and 2 o'clock sound corridors, pretty much entirely for EDM.
The giant structure over Center Camp you see today.

Photo: Reno Gazette Journal

The first Temple. Photo: Jim Provenzano

My favorite quote from 2000 is from Adrian Roberts, the editor of the defunct Piss Clear magazine at Burning Man. He said, "We used to play house. Now we're playing city." Pretty apt.

Check out the history page for a ton of photos and video from those years.

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Burning Man 2014 Afterburn Report

4/2/2015

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The Burning Man Project just released its annual 2014 Afterburn report, breaking down the results of the survey that around 10,000 Burners filled out about their 2014 experience. I went through it and pulled out some interesting stats. Enjoy!

Median Age: 34
Median Personal Income: ~$55k
% of Burners earning $300k or more: 2.7%
58% male, 41% female, 1% fluid gender.
87% white.
69% of attendees have at least a Bachelor's college degree.
Americans = 83.5%
Californians make up 43.7% of Burners, dwarfing all other US states combined.
English is the primary language of 84% of Burners, with French (2.8%), Spanish (2.6%), and Russian (2%) in the following three places.
75.5% of Burners vote Democratic. 7.4% vote Republican. 5.6% vote Libertarian, and 3.2% vote Green.
35.1% were birgins.
75.9% had attended 4 or less Burns.
Only 5.5% had attended 11 or more times.
Peak population was hit on Thursday, after which it declined.
Busiest day to arrive was Sunday, by a wide margin.
Busiest day to leave was the Sunday after the Man burns, followed closely by Monday.
96% of people entered via the Gate (vs the Airport, Burner Express Buses, etc).
Average Burner drove about 272 miles to get there.
44.6% of vehicles entering the Gate had 2 people in them. 12.8% had 1, 19.9% had 3 and 11.8% had 4.
38.9% of Burners said they spent $1000-$2500 to attend. 28.8% said 500-1000, and 14.5% said 2500-5000.
64% of Burners were in placed camps (I'm a bit dubious about this one.)
69.4% of Burners reported themselves as hetero, with the others being fairly well divided between bi-curious, bisexual, gay/lesbian, and a lesser amount that reports as 'refuse label'.
71.8% of Burners do not identify with an organized religion. Those that do are most likely to be Catholic and least likely to be Muslim.

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Year 2000 MSNBC Coverage of Burning Man

4/1/2015

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This is a pretty fun wide-eyed view of Burning Man from the mainstream media in 2000. Worth 4 minutes of your life!

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