Shadow Of The Man

Meet Torria Lee (AKA Luscious Blue). She is a veteran black burner from Portland who’s first experience with the Burning Man world was SOAK in 2005. A year later she first hit the playa, camping at Snuggletown at Black Rock City in 2006. In later years she was part of a mutant vehicle group called the Pipes Of Passion as well as volunteering with the Post Office. I first met Luscious Blue in 2006 when she camped across the street f...

Meet Adriana Roberts. She is one of the longest attending burners who first hit Black Rock City in 1993. In 1995 she started one of the very first “papers” on the playa called Piss Clear which she and friends ran for years (until 2007). After taking a little time off from Piss Clear she started a new playa publication called the BRC Weekly in 2010 which ran for a number of years before recently ending in 2023. In 2008 Adriana start...

Meet Megs (aka Meghan Rutigliano) who grew up in the East Coast and Midwest and first went to Burning Man in 2005 from Chicago. She helped the late, great Burning Man legend Tom Laporte record BMIR commercials. In 2007 she moved to San Francisco and applied for a job on a whim with the Burning Man Project as a receptionist. In 2008 she was hired, not as a receptionist but to help out with the Regional Network. She helped to lead th...

Meet Athena Demos who started her Burning Man career in 1999 by immediately stripping naked and running off on a mobile viking ship that went off to go help raise the Man. She didn’t remember where her camp was so over the next few days the playa provided for her until she was able to find and return to her friend who brought her there. A few years later she helped organize the first LA Decompressions then became one of the first R...

Meet Dan Miller, Larry Harvey’s roommate and the longest participating burner. Dan was part of everything from before the beginning. Dan and Larry lived together from 1981 - 2000, and only after they moved in did the realization occur that they had met earlier in 1978 at a raku (a kind of pottery that involves “burning” pottery in fires) multi-day campout at Pescadero beach. This campout would become the earliest inspiration for La...

Meet Inani Schroedinger one of the geniuses and instigators behind the Burning Man Philosophical Center on Facebook and on the playa. He first hit Black Rock City in 1998 and started off by volunteering with Pepe Ozan and did many things on the playa including helping to build the Man base. He has quite the interesting story and journey to Burning Man. He has a lot of stories to share, we only covered a fraction of them, he will ha...

Check out episode 16 with Xina Ocasio. She is a trans woman from Austin, Texas who first encountered the world of Burning Man by getting involved with Burning Flipside. After volunteering with this pioneering Texas Regional event she later made it to the playa, and in her first trip to Black Rock City she organized one of the first villages! She is an amazing woman with an incredible story. She is also part of a band you should che...

Join us today for a conversation with the one and only Nurse (aka Jess Bobier). She has been burning since Andie Grace and her first hit the playa together in 1997. Nurse has been to BRC around 25 times and has been a fixture as a volunteer at Media Mecca for many years. She has a lot of interesting insights into the inner workings of the "Project" and a lot of great stories. And if you hadn't noticed she is a very g...

In the mid to late 90's Yoms happened to see a piece of a strange video late at night of people in costumes on some odd bus in the desert before going to bed. It so transfixed him he had to wake up and watch all the way through the credits until he found what he was looking for. What is this Burning Man thing?

Yoms was working for the BBC and convinced them to send him to the playa for a fact finding reporting trip. This would ...

This February we are celebrating black voices from the playa and our first guest is none other than Chef Juke (aka Patrice Mackey). Chef grew up on the east coast before moving west to the Bay Area and later Oregon. He has trained in the culinary arts and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the oldies (music), you can see where his playa name comes from. His playa experience goes back to the mid 90's. Currently he is in leadershi...

Welcome to Episode 12 with Amy Bunker. After spending a couple of years being very Burning Man adjacent while living and studying in Northern California she finally made it out to BRC in 2001. Amy has worked and volunteered in many departments over the years. Her longest stint was as Regional Contact for New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine in the early 2000’s. She has been to many Regional events from Hawaii to Europe and has worked ...

Welcome to the first show of 2025 featuring Beth From the show Accuracy Third (https://accuracythird.com/). They are a podcast about Burning Man, or "an oral history of Black Rock City", and they first started their show about 9 years ago. It's a great show and I encourage you to check it out.

Learn about Beth and her journey to Black Rock City and how she volunteered, got involved, and met her co-hosts. Our...

in 2025 Playa Pete will mark his 30th consecutive trip to BRC (minus 2020 and 2021, but he did go to the renegade burns). Over the years he has been one of the main screen printing suppliers to BMP and more recently he has held the position of First Cabin Boy on the Monaco.

Pete spins quite a few amazing tales, follow his story from growing up in Vancouver, joining the Air Force, becoming a male model, and meeting Danger R...

Explore the impact Burning Man has had on its Superintendent Tony "Coyote" Perez. Burning since 1996 he quickly joined the ranks and together Will Roger formed what we all know today as the Department of Public Works or DPW. He has written an excellent book about his experience called "Built To Burn" where you can read all about his experiences in his first few years on the playa back in the wild west days.
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Welcome to Episode 8 with Jennie Kay. Learn about her start in Michigan in a very religious community before she left for the wild west. She learned about Burning Man after she moved to Monterey, CA and first hit the playa in 2002. After a few years of being one of the main organizers of her theme camp (Cypress Lounge Bingo) she became a Regional Contact for Monterey and started a very popular free and public beach gathering. Jenni...

Our guest today is the one and only Action Girl (aka Andie Grace). She has come a long way from growing up in St Louis, then moving to SF where she got involved with the Cacophony Society before going out to Black Rock City in 1997.

Andie quickly got involved and volunteered with Media Mecca when it was first forming. Andie has worn many hats as a Burning Man Project staffer, besides working with Media Mecca she she took o...

Meet the Norwegian-born viking, artist, and veteran of the US military and DPW, the one and only Otto Von Danger. He was a Marine, builder of the Man, and drive by shooting range "Range Master", this is not an episode to be missed.

Sorry it's a little late, but this episode was meant to be a bonus episode for the end of September. 

Otto's opinions are his alone and do not necessarily reflect th...