It’s a Thursday evening in late July, and a group of about a dozen or so D.C. Burners are gathered for happy hour at Hi-Lawn, the rooftop bar at Union Market. No, this isn’t a group of people doing the latest heart-pounding workout trend or politicos enthusiastic about burner phones. The reality is perhaps less likely: These seemingly average bargoers are actually devotees of Burning Man, the wild, week-long arts festival that takes over a stretch of the Nevada desert every year in late August.

And to hear them tell it, this region — more associated with workaholics in uninspiring button-downs than free-spirited nonconformists — is actually burning red hot when it comes to living the Burning Man lifestyle.

So how did I end up here? It all started when I previewed this year’s Capital Fringe theater festival and stumbled upon a storytelling production titled 10 Principles. The D.C. Burners were listed as the show’s creators, and, after some digging, I found a Facebook page of the same name with an eye-popping 7,000 members. I went a little further down this particular internet rabbit hole, at which point I also found a meticulously well-maintained spreadsheet of official “burns” and unofficial, “very-burnery” events across the Mid-Atlantic region.

When I reached out to the email address listed on the D.C. Burners’ website, I found a reply in my inbox from someone named “Nexus” less than 30 minutes later. There was a nonzero chance I’d taken the first step toward joining a cult.

But when I get to the happy hour, it’s red-flag-free: just a group of people sipping White Claws, laughing, and sharing fond memories of art projects they’d created for recent festivals.

I soon discover that Nexus, 42, whose real name is JR Russ, is the official point person when it comes to all Burning Man-related activities around the region. In his day job, he’s the public affairs specialist for the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, an agency DCist covers regularly — so, we realize, we’ve already interacted over email.

In his Burner life, he’s built giant wooden pyramids, led sing-alongs, and spoken on panels about diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a Black and Filipino American man, he created a subgroup for burners of color to feel more at home at the festivals.

But even in his job with the highly bureaucratic arts commission, Nexus says he practices the 10 Principles of Burning Man, which were written by the event’s co-founder Larry Harvey in 2004 and include “radical inclusion,” “radical self-expression,” and “civic responsibility.”

“I think it’s a way of life honestly, it’s a way to be,” Nexus says.

While some 70,000 burners make the annual pilgrimage out west to the ephemeral Black Rock City — which claims its own airport and ZIP Code — only a fraction of the local burners make it out there each year. Most people I interview say they prefer to stick to smaller, regional burns throughout the Mid-Atlantic.

At these events, same as the main festival, burners build massive structures that are ultimately burned to the ground. They temporarily live in camps based on every concept you could possibly imagine. They host parties and promote each others’ art exhibitions. And, yes, things can get pretty weird (just ask a burner to explain the concept of “art cars,” and you’ll get a taste). But it’s all in service of shedding society’s expectations of them — something these local burners say they try to carry out every day.

At the happy hour, there’s a tech employee in her late 20s, a Ph.D. candidate, and a journalist. But few burners want to discuss what they do for a living.

Instead, a pair of colorful friends introduce themselves as “The Bubbles and Quest Show,” and I almost expect them to start tap dancing. They proceed to finish each other’s sentences for the next half hour and ask if I’d mind taking photos of them while they hold my microphone. Why not?

Bubbles, I learn, was born in Wisconsin and grew up in Hong Kong before living up and down the West Coast and moving to D.C. five years ago.

“This city’s notorious for, like, ‘Who are you? Where do you work? Where do you come from?” she says. “But when you’re at a burn, there’s just so much humanity. It’s like kids meeting in a playground.”

The other half of the show, artist Quest Skinner, 45, dons a large feathered headdress to honor her Native ancestry, she says. It’s a piece she wears to Burning Man, where she’s so respected that she now works with the event’s support services arm and provides resources to other artists as they construct their installations. Quest says Black Rock City has provided her the space to “pull back all the veils” and develop lifelong creative partnerships and friendships, like the one she has with Bubbles. Something as simple as offering a drink of water to a fellow burner means so much more on the playa, the dried-up lakebed Black Rock City sits upon, she adds.

“You can eat at my table, you can sleep under my roof,” Quest says. “I’m not gonna leave somebody in that environment without letting them know they’re nurtured and loved.”

Next, I meet Mark Brailsford, aka “Cobalt,” a 67-year-old from Montgomery County who tells me he feels welcomed in this community in every way. He doesn’t feel as though age or race defines him in this group.

“Unrestricted,” is how Cobalt describes the burner life. “I don’t have to pretend. I’m just me.”

He describes in great detail the lengths to which he and a group of volunteers go to transport their large artistic structures — such as the $25,000 Pyramid of Possibilities — to the playa each year, only for them to get burned to the ground in a final ceremony. And he couldn’t be happier.

I also talk to “Mx Kitty Kai,” a Hyattsville-based sex educator who specializes in kink, who shares that consent is often considered one of the Burning Man principles, even though it’s not on the original list (some have taken to calling it the 11th principle). Kai’s been part of the community for 25 years and never plans to go to the desert. As an openly trans person, he’s found acceptance in the regional burns and the principle of radical self-expression.

“I think there’s a lot more community and events and involvement that happens in between going out to the desert that gets lost just because that’s the big event that everybody focuses on,” Kai says.

In a way, the local burners argue, the D.C. region is the perfect place for the Burning Man community to thrive in. This art-centric group provides a much-needed escape from D.C.’s hustle culture, according to Hyattsville-based artist Caitlin Phillips, who just celebrated her 40th burn. Regulars at D.C.’s Eastern Market may recognize Phillips’ Rebound Designs, her business for which she designs purses made from used books.

Phillips doesn’t bring her books to burns, but instead gifts people pins she makes out of “trashy romance novels.” Some of her Burning Man art is more performative — recently, she participated in a camp that made hundreds of grilled cheese sandwiches for any guests that showed up in the middle of the night.

“D.C. has the largest Burning Man community outside of the Bay Area,” Phillips says at the happy hour. It’s a view shared by others in the group, though it seems mostly anecdotal.

“It makes perfect sense,” Phillips continues. “I mean, you think about punk, you think about go-go, you think about hardcore. D.C. has always been a really good town for subcultures.”

The federal government’s influence on the region’s culture has actually created a natural environment for creativity to flourish, Phillips says.

“When you have the dominant mainstream culture, you get people who really need an outlet,” she adds. “And then you have a lot of people that do creative jobs, you’ve got people who know how to make an outlet.”

Phillips hasn’t been to Black Rock City since 2017 and sticks to smaller-scale satellite burns these days since they’re just easier to prepare for. She keeps a notebook with all the camps she’s participated in and describes burns as camping trips mixed with family reunions, mixed with “really weird work trips.”

“It’s a lot of work,” says Phillips. “It’s not just a party.”

Despite the offbeat air of it all, D.C.’s burner community hasn’t exactly been hiding in the shadows.

In 2018, the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery hosted a storytelling series in D.C. on Burning Man. Nexus was one of the keynote speakers. He described how, as a queer man who was mourning the tragic death of a family member around the time he discovered Burning Man, the local burner community became his outlet. Nexus told the crowd that after his first festival, he began asking himself: “How can we do here the thing we do in Black Rock City, but year-round?”

He also started developing the Burning Man show for Capital Fringe and became active in the Facebook group, where he now welcomes others into the community.

Nexus and other regional contacts also host regular info sessions, such as the upcoming “Burning Man (and Beyond) for Beginners” presentation on Aug. 7 at GlowHouse, a burner-friendly group house in Columbia Heights.

Gifting is one of the 10 Principles, which explains why burn events are “commerce-free zones.” (Yet somehow, tickets cost anywhere from $575 to $2,750 for the nine-day event in Nevada, and many apply for financial assistance or launch Kickstarter campaigns to fund their trips.)

Even burners’ monikers, called playa names, are often gifted by other burners. Phillips still hasn’t received her playa name. “Maybe someday,” she shrugs. “Haven’t found the right one yet.”

After the happy hour, I thank Nexus for the invite and later, over email, ask for a gift — what should my playa name be?

“If I had to give you one, I think it’d be Snapshot (which is clearly informed by the work you do),” he replies, and ends with its definition: “A glimpse of something; a portrayal of something at a moment in time.”