By Jim Carlton
Rainstorms have prompted the temporary closure of the annual
Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, putting a damper on the
annual convergence of more than 50,000 hippies and hipsters--many
from Silicon Valley.
Officials of Black Rock City LLC, which hosts the normally
dust-choked revelry, asked state and local law enforcement Monday
to turn away so-called Burners after storms drenched its location
on a playa 110 miles northeast of Reno. A statement posted on
Facebook attributed the shutdown to undrivable conditions on what
would have been opening day of the event, which was set to end
Sept. 1.
"Drivers are being instructed to find a safe location to park
until the expected reopening of the event on Tuesday," Burning Man
said in the statement.
Jim Graham, a Burning Man spokesman, said late Monday the
festival would reopen at 6 a.m. Tuesday, after the condition of the
makeshift city's roads were assessed.
Some Burners vented their frustrations on social media. "Each
day I'm stuck in Reno the selfie gets progressively more angry,"
wrote 28-year-old Aaron Hoffmeyer, a technology analyst from San
Francisco, in posting a mockingly stern expression of himself on
Twitter.
Other techies poked a little fun. "Extinguished Man," Alexia
Tsotsis, co-editor of the technology news site Tech Crunch, termed
the festival on Twitter.
Burners include some of the elite of the tech world, with entire
camps populated by employees and executives from companies such as
Facebook Inc., whose chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has been an
attendee. They build elaborate art sculptures and drive unusual
vehicles in a bash that ends after the ceremonial burning of a
giant wooden effigy--the burning man.
The festival originated in 1986 with just 20 people attending on
a San Francisco beach. As it grew, it moved in 1991 to the Black
Rock Desert outside Gerlach, Nev., and has been held there ever
since. The festival, often plagued by massive dust storms, has
grown so big in recent years that it draws a large presence of law
enforcement, and mileslong traffic jams.
Write to Jim Carlton at jim.carlton@wsj.com
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