Burning Man 1998 - The Burn

SEP 06 1998 · 21:30

Burn Night 1998.... this is excerpts of some video that Phil Hollenbeck shot. The guy on fire was featured at the burn again, but as you can see here, after just one circle around the top of the platform, his flames blew over to the leg of the Man and accidentally set off some fireworks there. The fire runs up the Mans leg and within seconds, as the guy and everyone else scatters for their lives, all the pyrotechnics go off at one time. It was spectacular, and nobody got hurt. What was planned to be a staged progression of fireworks and fire over several minutes, blew up as one big explosion..... and it blowed up goooooood, as they say. The guy on fire, wasnt invited back the next year. He was pretty miffed about that, and maybe even tried to mount a petition to get himself back.... he wrote some letters anyway. But it wouldnt have mattered. Even if he had been scheduled to do his bit again in 1999, he wouldnt have been able to because the Man went off on his own AGAIN that year. They had trouble with the neon in the Man all week and on burn night, after a long delay of trying to get the neon working right, it shorted out somewhere, set off some fireworks, and again all went up at once. Again people had to run for their lives, and again it was spectacular. Chuck Cirino shot some incredible video from inside the circle in 1999, with great shots of the Man engulfed in crackles and pops and fireworks shooting past Chucks camera while Jim Masons crew and their compressed Kerosene canons frantically pulled back from the inferno. They did their show that they didnt get to do that night on the next night, and it had its own set of spectacular problems.... but thats some video and story for another time. Again in 2000, the Man went off early, three years in a row... It was getting freaky... but no mater how the burn does or doesnt go down, the party still goes on all night long..... party on participants.