Burning Man Festival Site, Nevada

Burning Man is an annual carnival of creativity that takes place on the playa of the Black Rock Desert, in northwest Nevada. It typically attracts 60,000 people, and is considered by many to be the biggest and best party in the world. Participants pay a few hundred dollars admission, and spend a number of days immersed in the spectacle, full of music, performances, continuous raves, and spontaneous events. Burning Man compels a staggering amount of creative production, including temporary sculptures as large as buildings, and culminates in a wicker-man-like conflagration on the last day. After the event, all of the structures and infrastructures of the temporary city, briefly the third largest community in Nevada, disappear. Some of the material is stored in rows of shipping containers at a ranch nearby, and much returns to the San Francisco Bay area, where the majority of the organizers and participants come from.