Burning Man
 

What is wrong with these people? Even without the weather, this looks like a recipe for disaster.

Burning Man 2025

I think very few people ventured into that area of Nevada when I lived there from 1970 through 1983. Maybe if you wanted to drive very fast. I did that a few times. I had a purple Nova with flowers on it. Probably would fit in with the crowd there now. The flower child car I mean. I was in Denver from early Summer 1983 through early Summer of 1984.

It's a very strange phenomenon, for sure. Oddly enough it usually isn't a disaster. In 2023 there was flooding but remember - this is in the middle of the desert. So most people think desert = no rain = no flooding. Problem is, if it rains on the desert, the ground where people are camping/parking is compact and doesn't really absorb the water very well, leaving it no place to go. It doesn't take a lot of rain to flood the desert.

There was a woman who gave birth there this year, who didn't even know she was pregnant. And another person found dead in a pool of blood that is being investigated as a homicide.

Of course all that would be considered "just another Tuesday in the Ocala Forest" so I dunno what to tell ya.

People are strange.

Very true. But even without the weather, not my idea of a good time with no showers, real toilets or sane people.


True story: My aunt was so fat, she didn't realize she was pregnant until her water broke!

This should surprise no one.

I've never been, and now I know not to bother.

Understatement.

I’ve had invitations but it never appealed to me. Extreme philosophical/endurance statement, in my opinion.

I guess you weren't the camping type. We did summer camp every year growing up, and girl scout camp didn't have indoor toilets, we had outhouses and slept in enormous tents (there were 15 bunks in the tent). A few years later we did Jewish camp, and while we did have showers, they were long buildings with a dozen shower heads lined up and no hot water in them, and we shared the bathrooms with daddy long-legs spiders and mosquitoes as big as your thumb. When I was 18 I went on a thing called American Teen Tours/American Trails West, before they did the glamping/hotel setup. We hiked and bicycled and camped our way across the country and back. Most of the campsites had plumbing, a couple did not, and a few times we washed off in streams or soaped up during downpours and let the rain wash us off.

Living in nature gives you a different perspective of things. I can still squat, so I don't need any toilet at all if push came to shove and there were some non-poisonous leaves nearby.

Based on what you see in videos and news sources, it looks like a bunch of people who are content on not bathing for days and living in pig slop.

Whenever you get a large group of people together, with or without drugs, with or without alcohol, you’ve trouble.

Remember woodstock?

No, but my babysitter did.

I have met a few people who were at Woodstock. One used to work at the Blockbuster and then I would see her at the Publix or maybe it was the Winn-Dixie south of the Villages Regional Hospital.

Apparently the "Orgy Dome" was destroyed.

The priest Savonarola loved Burning Man (the idea came from him, sort of—he burned men for heresy, or had the “secular arm” do it). Thenit caught up with him and he got burned, too. Doesn’t this bonfire look like the one when they burn the huge wooden man at burning man?

Didn't you just describe The Villages?

When I backpacked 50+ years ago, it was to get away from people. Can’t imagine camping with 10,000 strangers. As a nature counselor at a boys camp in Becket, Ma, I enjoyed introducing nature/camping/backpacking to NYC kids. Not having a toilet didn’t bother me but there were always a few who were taken back by not having a toilet!