When a 20-year-old punk put on a series of illegal shows in the desert

Reminds me of an idea I had a few years ago when the northeast states and provinces like Quebec and Ontario were in the grip of an intense cold snap as a result of a "polar vortex". I live near Lake Ontario and the surface of the entire lake froze over to a thickness that would support a transport truck.

You probably see where I'm going with this: throw a big party/rave in the middle of the frozen lake. The goal would be to keep it on the Canadian side (where I live) but far enough out into the lake that local police have no jurisdiction - IANAL but my primitive thinking was to see if you could situate it where it would require federal intervention, which seems to me unlikely to materialize in time to stop a party.

In any case, we would be in the middle of a very large lake, and I'm not sure that there are any laws preventing throwing a party there in the first place.

Naturally, to be a welcoming environment, a party like this would greatly benefit from a huge bonfire, raising concerns about risks that are less likely when you party on dry land, but I thought it was a fun idea...

Not that this isn't an interesting story, but the headline is dubious. The origins of Burning Man had far more to do with the SF Suicide Club and the Cacaphony Society than what was going on in LA. The first burns were arguably Cacophony society events, and there were Cacophony Society trips to Black Rock prior to Burning Man moving there.

During the early-mid 80's there was a strong illegal party atmosphere in youth culture. It was promoted by the punk rock fanzines and people were throwing illegal shows everywhere. I was an Iowa punker, and my buddy and I (who I later formed software companies with) used to rent out apartment club houses, church basements, various small venues and then overwhelm the situation with 2-3x the allowed occupancy, 3-6 unannounced local punk rock bands, a school bus with literally 60-80 kegs of beer inside, and every local drug dealer had a little private space to do business. These would be "1 night" events that would last 2 days, the situation would be so out of control the police would just try to manage the crowd. We simply took over with a mob of degenerate youth. I remember one major blowout the cops tried to shut the party down and gave up as the crowd simply ignored them. They even tried billy club force, until surrounded by skinheads shaking their heads. Christian Iowa had no idea how to handle this, and we had a blast.

Illegal shows and music fests were common here on native reservations, in forests and abandoned buildings until overdoses happened so much the scene was killed. At the time Nicholas Sand was hiding from the FBI and flooding the local market with high purity lsd/mdma ect. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Sand When his lab was busted fake drugs started being peddled at these events causing enough problems the police and reserve police took zero tolerance of any unlicensed shows/raves.

I've also noticed in the beginning, when it's just people involved in that scene, there's no problems. It's when popularity of your illegal festival spreads and outsiders show up who have no connection to anybody involved that problems begin, such as meatheads who eventually turned up on a regular basis to these parties to throw punches, set fires and sell piperazine derived pills.

Pssh, ravers have been doing this in the deserts of socal since the early nineties (if not earlier)

Surely deserts anywhere have a rich history of people secretly partying there, just like forests and whatnot.

A lot of that scene has died down but the burner contingent is still going strong. If you know the right names and the right people to talk to its fairly easy to find.

This reminds me of the generator parties Kyuss used to play at in the early 90s. So wish I could have gone.