Joe Fenton a/k/a J.D. Boggman: First Manager of the Drive-by Shooting Range (Burning Man)

First manager of the Drive-By Shooting Range at Burning Man.

Joe Fenton, an early Black Rock Ranger, says, "I didn’t go to the burns on the beach, but I did a paper about them for a college course on the anthropology of festivals. Larry told me very specifically that the figure was an effigy of his ex-girlfriend, the mother of his son. He told me he wanted to burn her out of his memory. He moved off that soon afterward. I guess he figured it wasn’t very politically correct, and now that idea is actively suppressed."

Larry disputes this, saying, "The idea that it was over a breakup—I actually made that observation once, to a reporter from Outside [“Black Rock Flambé,” September 1993]. That was not a conscious thought in my mind at the time. That was the result of introspection. But people like a simple story; it gets them off the hook. It’s over a love affair. Oh."