Playa del Fuego

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Playa del Fuego A Burner Event
First year:	1998
Location:	Odessa/Townsend, Delaware United States
Month:	May & October
Most Recent Event
Date of event:	May 20 to 22, 2006
Participants:	850
Website:	www.playadelfuego.org

Playa del Fuego is a regional event inspired by the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada. The event is held in Delaware twice a year, with the Fall event being held on Columbus Day weekend and the Spring event being held over Memorial Day Weekend. Most of the planners and participants come from the Baltimore- Washington DC metropolitan area and surrounding states including, but not limited to, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

Playa del Fuego is a camping event that celebrates art for art's sake and espouses a gift economy where no vending, sales or barter are permitted. Visual and performance artists from all over the mid-atlantic region and the East Coast create a temporary community for the weekend. Participants share a wide range of talents from sculpting, painting, music, theatre, and DJing, to alternative forms of expression such as games, performance art, and circus talents such as juggling and fire spinning.

The event aheres to the ten principles of the Burning Man event in Nevada. Among these are the LNT (Leave No Trace) philosophy, an environmental policy whereby participants are obligated to remove every piece of refuse that they generate while at the event, taking it with them when they leave. The themes of radical self-expression and radical self-reliance are also borrowed from Burning Man. In addition, the event is considered a "no spectators" event, meaning that all attendees are expected to actively participate in its creation, staffing, and general philosophy.

According to the official website, it is "a celebration of the spirit of radical self-expression, community, and participation". The event is planned and run completely by volunteers. Playa del Fuego (often referred to by participants as PDF) ends with a bonfire; however, instead of a human effigy as in Burning Man, a wooden pony is burned in honor of the event's origins on Assateague Island in Maryland.

[edit] History

PDF began with a small group in 1998 on a beach at Assateague Island. Eventually, the event grew too large for that location and moved to private property in the Odessa/Townsend area of Delaware to accommodate the several hundred participants that now attend the event. It has continued to grow and for the Fall 2005 event, tickets offered for sale on the Internet were sold out in minutes.

Tickets for the 2006 event were $35.00 USD each, and were handled in two releases of 425 tickets each.

Tickets go on sale for PDF mid march on the website.