Taking My Parents to Burning Man Taking My Parents to Burning Man Taking My Parents to Burning Man is a 2014 Canadian documentary film directed by Joel Ashton McCarthy and Bryant H. Boesen that follows the latter's adventures with his 60-year-old parents at the "infamous", annual Burning Man arts festival in Black Rock Desert. Their journey takes them on a road-trip from Vancouver, BC to northern Nevada in a 35-foot school bus. It provides a, "intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the preparation for, the journey to and the adventures at the least-likely family vacation imaginable." Selling out seven consecutive screenings, it won the Audience Choice Award for
Burning Man Sculptor Mary Grauberger, a friend of Harvey's girlfriend Janet Lohr, held solstice bonfire gatherings on Baker Beach for several years prior to 1986, some of which Harvey attended. When Grauberger stopped organizing it, Harvey "picked up the torch," and ran with it. He and Jerry James built the first wooden effigy on the afternoon of June 21, 1986, cobbled together using scrap wood, to be torched later that evening. In 1987, the effigy grew to tall, and by 1988, it had grown to . By 1988, Larry Harvey formally named the summer solstice ritual "Burning Man," by titling flyers for