Dennis Little conducts a slide show for members of the Douglas County Historical Society at the Carson Valley Museum & Cultural Center on Aug. 8.
Photo by Kurt Hildebrand.
Over the next few days, dusty RVs and vehicles will turn up at gas pumps across Western Nevada as Burning Man’s annual Exodus begins.
After the Man burns tonight, burners will begin to pack up their art cars and displays after the weeklong event.
“You don’t have a clue what real traffic is until you experienced Exodus,” long-time burner Whiskey Galore, aka Dennis Little, told a packed house at the Carson Valley Museum & Cultural Center on Aug. 8. “If you thought it was fun going to Burning Man look at the fun leaving.”
Most of the media attention for the event this year focused on a woman who was pronounced dead after she was found unresponsive on the first day and delays getting in due to last weekend’s wet weather.
But for the most part, Black Rock City is very much like any other community of 70,000 people that springs up for a week in the desert and then disperses.
Little already had his spot at 4:30F when he spoke earlier this month as part of the Douglas County Historical Society’s monthly lecture.
While a lot of media attention about the event focused on last year’s “Panic on the Playa” after Hurricane Hillary turned the ancient lakebed to mud, Little said it was a “bit overrated.”
“It was the worst mud I’ve seen at burns over the years,” he said, saying it sounded worse than it was.
“I think it went a little bit south when Chris Rock’s publicist said Chris is stranded and is about to be eaten by zombies,” he joked.
Burners were concerned that one of the bridges had washed out and they were truly cut off, but that didn’t turn out to be true.
While making world news, Little said one person from India was chagrined that the Bombay Times didn’t contain a single word, “not even on the society pages.”
The event dates back to 1986 when burners constructed an 8-foot effigy of a man at Brooks Beach in the Bay Area.
Little said the event moved to Nevada after in 1990 after being rousted by San Francisco park police about setting a 40-foot man alight.
“Someone said, ‘I know a place in Nevada where you could probably set off an atomic bomb and they wouldn’t notice,’” Little said.
There were only 350 people at that first Black Rock Desert event, but it continued to grow every year climbing to 8,000 attendees in 1996, according to Little.
“But then, as all of us know, thank you Sunset Magazine and AAA exposed it in national tour magazines,” he said. “In 1999, Triple A listed Burning Man in their RV Guide of great destinations you must see. From there it escalated and escalated until it reached capacity in 2013 of 70,000 people.”
The man grew over the years, too, reaching 105 feet now.
Black Rock City is a semi-circle divided like the face of a clock with rows of concentric circles. The retired Douglas County planner said the city is about four square miles and two miles from outer edge to outer edge and a mile from the edge to the hub.
