Sweet!

I always wondered when someone would do that.

And I've been to a few burns myself and had a great time.

I think that is awesome. Burning man is getting a bit too structured. Plus I really hate hippies.

That's so sweet awesome good to hear makes my day I'm sad what about the children and the artists great yes! Nice! About time. Stinky hippies.

I iz in ur dezerts, burning ur manz!

"Woah... dude. Is it, like, next week already?"

Burning Man is countercultural, sure, but you'd have to be smoking crack to think it's a hippie event. Hippies = Dave Matthews and tie dyes. Burners = Technology and explosives.

Burning man, where you can do whatever you want except burn the man.

Tough one ... sure, someone put a lot of work into the Man, but on the other hand: it's a subversive art event: what could be more subversive than burning the sucker early? And ... it's not a hippy event, troglodytes.

Hey, where did my friends who are always going on and on and on about how unbelievably fucking awesome their BM camp is gonna be this year run off to? Oh, that's right! Ahhhhhhhh, the sweet silence ...

I don't see Burning Man as a hippie event. I see it as a place where there are thousands of people who don't bathe for a week. Since I can't go for an hour after waking up without showering, I think I would die of self loathing.

@10,

And they're in the desert, in the summer. Talk about stanky.

Burning the Man without permission: an insult to the artists who built the thing, or just an awesome prank?

I'm inclined to call it a dick move by someone who wanted special attention but isn't cool enough to get it on his or her own merits so they decided to fuck someone else's shit up. From a social perspective it's basically like someone jumping up on stage during a performance and trying to cop attention off the artists -- or painting on someone else's sculpture or whatever. It's basically just a hijacking by some cunt with nothing going for them but an ego surplus.

Burning Man tends to attract people like that.

And I have to say that annoying Burners are annoying in exactly the same way as annoying hippies, to the extent that hippies were the fashion victim poseur sycophants of several movements -- anti-war, civil rights, women's rights -- that actually had important goals. These are the people who bring giant puppets to anti-war protests.

"These are the people who bring giant puppets to anti-war protests."

Which probably explains the decided lack of such in Bellevue yesterday, since, of course, all "those people" are somewhere else this week.

And seriously, who are these "hippies" the Righties keep going on about? I thought the last hippie died, alone and forgotten, still clad in his disheveled tie-tied shirt and bell-bottomed denims, a "J" of Columbian tucked into his sweat-stained bandana, in an alley in The Haight back in 1992.

@10 WTF are you talking about? I took a shower every day at Burning Man. Sometimes two.

@12 - You might be right, but it strikes me as a brilliant move. @8 has a good point - subverting the subversive art event. And, it's a fine lesson about attachment and impermanence for all involved.

Now, if someone does it again next year, that's dicky.

It speaks volumes that the "Burning Man" folks had to call in the police to arrest someone for "burning the man". An act of self-expression the stupid thing was supposed to celebrate to begin with. So completely establishment of them. Not surprising, but it efficiently describes what Burning Man began to be about starting in the mid 90's when they formed a mgmt company, started charging money, and started having the bureau of land managment start patrolling the area.

hoho, no, the hippies have not died, there are still plenty. they've just grown up and realized a lot of real things about life, such as having a place to sleep other than a van is actually a pretty awesome concept, and that they have to hold real jobs in order to do that. nu-hippies are almost undetectable when compared with today's burners- people who just like drugs and only talk about politics as a way to act responsible while they're tripping. i do it all the time, but i'm not quite a burner. mostly because i've never tripped.

all that said, damn, someday, i'm gonna attend a BM. for posterity's sake.

lol@5.

Am I the only one who thinks it's wasteful that they called the fire department to put out something that they were going to set fire to anyway?

Remember, the first man was burned on a public beach.

Maybe the Burn is getting too big?