Built to Burn: Tales of the Desert Carnies of Burning Man

by Tony Coyote Perez, Stuart Mangrum (Editor)

Overview

BUILT TO BURN tells the story of how Tony, a San Francisco blues musician, became Coyote, builder of Burning Man's legendary city in the desert, and how he came to lead a ragtag band of circus runaways, freaks and geeks that would become its Department of Public Works.

In 1996, Tony was making a decent living as a musician, but his creative juices had run dry: one night onstage, he realized he'd just played an entire sax solo while thinking about his laundry. So when a wild-at-heart friend invites him to something called "Burning Man," he grabs his backpack and hops in the car, unaware that the experience ahead will not only turn him inside out, but alter the course of his life.

An essential Burning Man origin story, BUILT TO BURN chronicles the wild uncertainty and creative chaos of the early days in the desert, when the event's future was under constant threat and the organizers were making everything up as they went along. It's a tale of struggle and survival, of friends made and friends lost, as Coyote and his misfit crew battle raging storms, crazed livestock, angry townsfolk and each other, locking horns with the real-life cowboys, Indians, outlaws and outcasts of Nevada's high desert frontier.

Told with wry humor and a bit of cowboy philosophy, BUILT TO BURN invites the reader to experience Burning Man as it was before it got civilized, when it was as wild and untamed as anything out of the Old West.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781734965902
Publisher:	Burning Man Project
Publication date:	07/01/2020
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Tony "Coyote" Perez came to San Francisco from Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1979, and forged a living as a singer and sax player for well over a decade before he started building the cities of Burning Man in 1996. He soon became the City Superintendent of Black Rock City (BRC), supervising the production of the city infrastructure, and was part of the founding management of its Department of Public Works. Long considered the "Bard of the Desert," he works year 'round for Burning Man, and was the first recipient of its Storytelling Fellowship for his many tales of the history and the inner workings of the event and its culture. He resides in San Francisco with his wife and twin sons.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Prologue

Part I - Inferno

Chapter 1 - In Through the Out Door

Chapter 2 - Boom Town

Chapter 3 - A Night at the Opera

Chapter 4 - Inferno

Chapter 5 - God's Flashlight

Part II - Desert Birds

Chapter 6 - Fly Ranch

Chapter 7 - Chicken Karma

Chapter 8 - A Brood of Roosters

Chapter 9 - Circus Redickuless

Chapter 10 - Dusty Acres

Chapter 11 - The Man Will Burn

Part III - The Beach Club

Chapter 12 - Open Range

Chapter 13 - The Church of Metal

Chapter 14 - Who Shot Flash?

Chapter 15 - The Desert Carnies of Burning Man

Epilogue

Acknowledgements