BLACK ROCK CITY, NEVADA

Black Rock City, Nevada is home to the annual festival of Burning Man.  A dynamic mashup of art, music, meditation, and bacchanalian festivities, Burning Man has come to symbolize much of the best, and worst, of West Coast culture.  The gathering takes place in Black Rock City, Nevada, a community of 65,000 people that springs up each year in the alkali flats north of Reno, transforming the arid, lifeless lakebed into a nonstop hive of activity.  The literal and symbolic center point of the festival is the burning of the titular man, a massive effigy built over the course of months and consumed in a massive pyrotechnic display that serves as the emotional climax of the event.