Well it seems to me, that all real communities grow out of a shared confrontation with survival. Communities are not produced by sentiment or mere goodwill. They grow out of a shared struggle. Our situation in the desert is an incubator for community.

What started in 1986 as a summer solstice evening ritual burning of their artistic creation of an effigy of a man with a group of just a dozen people at San Francisco's Baker Beach soon became an annual event that over 4 years grew to more than 800 people. In 1990 in collaboration with the SF Cacophony Society the event moved to Labor Day weekend in the Black Rock Desert where it has grown precipitously from a 3 day 80 persons "zone trip" to an 8 day festival with over 50000 "participants.