History of the hippie movement and the Holding Company, Merl Saunders and Babatunde Olatunji to speakers such as Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna, Paul Krassner, Stephen Gaskin, Robert Anton Wilson, Harvey Wasserman and Ralph Metzner. The Burning Man festival began in 1986 at a San Francisco beach party. Now an annual gathering, the event is held in the Black Rock Desert northeast of Reno, Nevada. Though few participants would accept the "hippie" label, Burning Man is a contemporary expression of alternative community in the same spirit as early hippie events. The gathering becomes a temporary city (36,500 occupants in 2005), with elaborate encampments, displays and many
Burning Man for the artwork "Crude Awakening", a 99-foot oil derrick that consumed 900 gallons of jet fuel and 2,000 gallons of liquid propane to blast a mushroom cloud 300 feet high into the sky. In an attempt to offset some of the event's carbon footprint, 30- and 50- solar arrays were constructed in 2007 as permanent artifacts, providing an estimated annual carbon offset of 559 tons. The Burn Clean Project is a volunteer organization that has helped replace the use of fossil fuel with biodiesel. Burning Man has attracted a number of billionaires and celebrities, many of them from Silicon Valley