The INSIDER Summary:
- Every year, Burning Man festival organizers rebuild and take down Black Rock City for the festival.
- The festival grounds are shaped like a giant clock.
- It has a symbolic meaning, but it also allows for a helpful address system.
Every year, the Burning Man festival creates and destroys a temporary city in the Black Rock Desert. Black Rock City is shaped like an enormous wheel, with eight different segments and an open space on one end.
Why the weird shape? There are aesthetic reasons for it, of course. There's a symbolism that goes into the "Wheel of Time,"as the organizers call it. But there's also a functional purpose to the circle: it makes an address system.
In 1999, Burning Man organizers came up with the shape to mark the close of the millennium. On the inside, the famous "Playa" at the festival's center is supposed to be a giant circle divided into 60 units. They're encased in 12 larger units, so it looks like a clock spanning half a mile of desert.
Surrounding that are eight sections, each one named after a planet that orbits the sun. The sections are separated by "circumferential streets," crossing through the circle. And then there are "radial streets," which go around the arc.
It's a little confusing, so here's an illustration to show you how it works, modified from the Burning Man website.
With even more subdivisions, for minutes and second, you can effectively given an address for every person in the circle. One example address is "5:24 Mars."
The whole planetary system is pretty confusing. In more recent years, Black Rock City started using just hours and minutes to denote addresses.
Having an address is helpful for meeting up with people and scheduling your time at Burning Man. It's also helpful for emergency vehicles, who are on hand in case of fire, or if the dusty Nevada desert conditions get too tough.
At the end of each festival, Burning Man attendees clean up after themselves and leave no trace of it behind. The next year, they build it all up again. It works thematically with the shape of the festival itself, ending and renewing itself as time goes by.
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