When I attended the AAN (Association of Alternative Newspapers) conference in San Francisco last year, I'm sure my publisher expected me to spend my time in conferences and at business lunches discussing ways to make the newspaper more money. Instead, I met Steve Jones: San Francisco Bay Guardian editor, talented writer and burner. We hit it off right away; by the second night of the conference, we were bartending at a Burning Man party together until 5am. I missed half the seminars the next morning and just barely stayed awake enough to drive home for work.
It was a good decision.
A year later, I no longer work for that paper. But I still enjoy Steve's work (and his friendship, though we haven't actually seen each other in person since), as he is that rare journalistic creature with both experience and enthusiasm. (Most journalists lose the latter as they get the former.)
Here's an excerpt from his most recent story about Burning Man and how it relates to things that actually matter:
BURNERS WITHOUT BORDERS Burning Man, the giant art festival in the Nevada desert, has a reputation in some quarters as a self-indulgent freak fest. And for a lot of the people who make the trip, it's mostly a party. But behind the scenes, the event is a serious operation: Someone has to build from scratch and then take down what amounts to a medium-size city every year.So Burning Man has spawned a large network of resourceful people with all manner of survival, construction, and cleanup skills — and when Katrina hit, during last year's festival, some people decided to put their well-honed community-building skills to work on the Gulf Coast.
For Steve's story about becoming a Lotus Girl, check out this site.
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