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For the third consecutive year, thousands of people gathered at Bolado Park for a regional Burning Man-affiliated event last week.
An estimated 3,000 attendees participated in the 13th annual unSCruz 2025 Cosmic Odyssey, a three-day festival held May 1-3 by nonprofit Santa Cruz Burners.
The event’s website calls it an opportunity to “create art, community, music, dance” adding, “The Playa unites us. The World is our canvas.”
Burning Man events typically conclude with the ritualistic burning of a wooden figure known as the “Man,” meant to symbolize honoring the past, releasing fears and regrets, and celebrating a new start.
Bolado Park CEO Dara Tobias said the venue has been pleased with how unSCruz has been conducted and hopes it returns next year. After what Tobias described as unfair community criticism during unSCruz’s first year at Bolado Park—“they were called devil worshippers,” she said—the organizers have “proved themselves.”
“They take as good a care as anyone else who uses the park,” Tobias said. “They clean up after themselves and leave not a scrap of paper behind. They enjoy being here and we really enjoy having them here.”
Tobias noted that the weekend draws attendees of all ages including children, and other than the price of admission paid in advance, everything inside the park is free.
The event was previously held at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds in Watsonville.
An official Burning Man Regional Event, the local version is endorsed by the original Burning Man but receives no money from it.
On its website, unSCruz organizers declare they are “non-commercial in every way; we abide by the Ten Principles.”
Authored by Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey in 2004, those principles range from “radical inclusion” and unconditional “gifting” to “decommodification” and “leaving no trace.”
Started on a San Francisco beach in 1986, Burning Man now occurs annually in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert outside Reno, and has spawned a number of regional events in the U.S. and abroad.
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