Tomorrow we'll be back for more frolic and fun.: September 2006

Oh sure you've got your giant floating neon dragons and your epic desert sculptures and your hissing Mad Max-ish art cars shooting flames 400 feet into the air, and every single thing everywhere smells like some combination of sweat and dust and marijuana and urine and fire and tequila and glue.

And sure there's your rampant glittering nudity and writhing all-night dancing and improvised kitchen-sink costumes and sudden vicious unrelenting alkali dust storms that could choke a cow and make your throat feel like it's been rubbed with sandpaper and your eyes dream of saline solution. This is pretty much a given.

You've got your requisite body painting and drum circles and kite flying and giant kickball and rope-bondage class at Camp Arachnid, music at the Church of Wow, penis gourds on parade, yoga and massage and the ragin' Thunderdome bash-fest and the famed Critical Tits all-female all-topless bike procession.

All topped off by the glory that is the ever-present Pinky's nightclub/libation station, stuck somewhere on the spoke of Imagined between the roads known as Faith and Evidence. Bless you all.

And of course there are always, always the rows of mandatory and simply indescribable porta-potties stuck out in the middle of the Nevada desert in 102-degree heat for a week. For this, there are no words.

Just another Burning Man, really. Sort of pedestrian, all this astounding otherworldliness, this sense of entering another planet, of stepping out of reality as you know it an into a place where anything goes and usually does and no one really thinks much of it except that it's usually pretty relaxed and ridiculous and surreal and friendly and half naked and grinning.

Do we need to be clearer? Are there still those who don't know, don't really understand? Is it even possible to describe the indescribable?

Because you can't explain Burning Man to your parents and you can't explain it to the religiously terrified and you can't describe it to those who, no matter what you say, refuse to see such events as anything other than some sort of freaky-deaky druggie Grateful Dead-esque Satan-worshipping sex-romp thing, one that they pray their kids never get sucked into lest they become kinky beautiful liberal atheists who like anal sex and weird art and vodka shots and open-mouthed laughter.

OK look. Burning Man is not an orgy. It's not a sweetly blasphemous pagan love-fest. It's not a giant drunken drug-addled overly hot week-long rave party with lots of beer and margaritas and bikes and exposed nipples and unshowered flesh and flashing shiny things and dust and crazy nouveau idealistic neo-hippies and breathtaking starlight. Not solely, anyway.

What it is, really, is a chance at unfettered self-expression, with drinks. And this is why it's still so vital, so important.

What BM is, really, is 30,000 people who erect this bizarre gorgeous temporary fully functional art-filled dust-drunk city in the middle of nowhere sans money sans phones sans work sans rules and tear it all down a week later, and that, in effect, is what makes it so gorgeous and strange.

And you'd think this lack of rules, this lawless inebriant-fueled glitter bomb of an event, would result in this teeming screaming free-for-all, this haphazard mess, nothing but violence and mayhem and rape and sodomy and hey you jerk quit grabbing my ass.

When in fact you might be amazed at how civilized and generous and open and friendly most people can be in such circumstances, how relaxed and smiling and accessible, with the notable exception of the camp that played very loud and very mediocre techno 24 hours a day, nonstop, right next door to my camp, and we nicknamed you Annoying Music Camp and you were unfathomably obnoxious and I wish you ill.

What BM is, really, is a chance to hang with like-minded creative nutballs who, at the conservative end of the spectrum, are so urgently in need of release they look forward to Burning Man the entire year so they can finally cut loose and be the type of person they always want to be, at least for a week, at least a little, before they dive right back into their oatmeal lives and hunker down for another paycheck and sigh wistfully.

And on the other end, there are those who live on the fringe of the culture all the time and view BM as the pinnacle, the cumulative blowout result of all their nonconformist energies, the status-less judgment-free dream utopia they've always felt could exist year-round, if we all just tried really really hard and gave up money and air-conditioning and ATMs.

And Burning Man can, in fact, become a little tiresome. A little stale. A little less than magical after a few trips and what's amazing is how you can begin to take it for granted, begin to forget that there's nothing like this happening anywhere else on the planet.

And it was my third year at the famed alt-everything festival, and despite the same old hot pants on thousands of semi-naked women, the same old random dust-choked large-scale mega-art, the same old countless REI tents and parachute domes and odd playa mobiles and mutated trucks and funky signs and clever camp names and huge thumping sound systems and what must be a million bucks' worth of glow sticks, it just didn't quite have the magical zing, the flavor, the electric transformational punch it once did.

But of course, that's just me. It happens. Because Burning Man is just exactly as much or as little as you need it to be. It is exactly the experience you make it, and as any seeker of intense transformational pops will tell you, if you aren't craving a step outside your normal reality, or if you aren't really needing a sticky injection of semi-radical, liminal vision questing at that particular moment in your life, Burning Man might not yank you the right way.

No matter. Because regardless of how powerfully it slaps your spiritual ass on a given year, the truism remains that this event is still one of the few bright glimmers of rabidly creative, pro-individuality hope in a snarlingly uptight, lockstep BushCo world. Try saying that about Ozzfest, dude.

Because in the end, it doesn't really matter what anyone thinks of this stunning festival. Burning Man shrugs off criticism as easily as it defies definition. You simply take one look around the playa, one glance at the art and costumes and the people, and no matter how tired or ennui filled you might have become, you can only feel an overwhelming sense of, well, gratitude.

That it's still happening. That it's still here, still strong and still diverse and outrageously imaginative, still pulsing with funky divine alt-vibes, retaining its core sense of release and evolution and joy and well-lubed creative flow.

This is more important than you know. This is more vital than many of us realize. In the age of Homeland Security and bludgeoning deficits and a government that would love it very much if everyone with any independent opinion whatsoever would please shut the hell up so they can pillage the world at will, you realize how precious a commodity this sort of energy has become.

Ultimately, BM reminds you of just how desperately undernourished is the world when it comes to exactly the mind-set the event itself illuminates. No matter how it hits you, no matter how deeply you connect with it, you can't help but look around and say to yourself, sweet Jesus with a tequila shooter and a sequined Buddha costume, thank God this event still exists. And flourishes.

Because this ain't hippie-dippy New Age crap, not some Grateful Dead Rainbow Coalition acid-trip hemp expo. It's raw, it's dirty, it's hot, it's ugly, it's beautiful, it's surreal and funny and strange and uncomfortable and incredibly freeing and connected and honest and man are you ever grateful for a shower when you get home.

And if that's unreality, it sure as hell feels like the real thing.

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

(Me: And that's what it's all about *clap clap*. Are you gonna be there next year?!)