Burning Man Texas @ Austin

From Pyropopedia

Burning Man Texas @ Austin was a small regional event in 1998 that evolved into Burning Flipside. George Paap, the regional contact, had reserved Recreation Plantation for the first weekend in June, and had announced the event through electronic media and paper fliers.

About thirty people attended---some had already lived the magic of Burning Man; some had not. The event had no volunteers other than George; no greeters; no rangers. The one or two theme camps were far from grandiose. Certainly this was a humble start.

The Texas weather that spring had been smothered with hot, humid blanket of Mexican slash-&-burn smoke. But on that Friday night it rained, washing the haze from the sky for that one weekend, and leaving instead a pale blue sky and balmy temperature.

The Man was constructed onsite, in a first show of do-ocracy. He was a stick figure of bamboo & straw, with a straw penis, and he had to be stood up with bamboo sticks propped against his back. He burned of course, in a ritual of fire that strikes a common human chord. The celebrants danced, and this was the festival's sole event.

Given its modest beginnings, this event could have been lost to obscurity. The participants could have found it lacking, particularly compared to the "big burn" (then approaching 15,000). The spark could have faded, but it did not. Something in the cooperative efforts to construct an effigy, something in the dance around a fire, something in sharing mimosas & banter on a lazy Sunday morning, some of these things and more had forged a family.