Burning Man Spreads Its Flame - New York Times

References to Hot Sauce and Playa Barbie, and quotes from Leo.

Burning Man Spreads Its Flame - New York Times: "THEY were all there: the shirtless guys in weird top hats walking around on stilts; women with unexercised buttocks spilling out of metallic hot pants; people in loincloths twirling fire. To anyone who has visited Burning Man, the arts festival in the Nevada desert now in its 16th year, the cast was instantly recognizable.
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Kate Lacey for The New York Times

BORN TO BE WILD: Members of the Black Label Bike Club ready to joust at a party in Brooklyn. The club wanted a scene less “soft and safe” than Burning Man.
Kate Lacey for The New York Times

A reveler at the Black Label Bike Club’s block party in Brooklyn.

Except this party wasn’t in the middle of the Black Rock Desert, with close to 40,000 alternative culture-vultures covered in dust.

It was a few blocks from Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall and the 101 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles.

An estimated 5,000 Burners, as festival-goers are known, gathered Oct. 14 for a “decompression” party, part reunion and part fund-raiser for the Burning Man organization. The purpose was to reconnect with friends last seen dancing in a pagan frenzy near neon-lighted art installations, before the ritual torching of the 40-foot effigy that gives the gathering its name."