Shoes, bags, even dentures lost at Burning Man await owners

RENO, Nev. — Lindsay Weiss once lost her cellphone and got it back, so she and a friend knew what they had to do when they discovered a camera during the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert — even though it meant giving up their coveted shady seat for a musical performance.

The friends snapped a quick selfie and took the device to lost-and-found, so the owner could claim it and the pair could “forever be a part of their journey,” Weiss said.

“Losing something out there on the playa makes its mark on your trip,” she said of the sprawling counterculture gathering. “Kinda makes you feel like a loser.”

Cameras and IDs are among the more common belongings that end up at lostand-found after the event this summer billed as North America’s largest outdoor arts festival. Other items left behind in the dusty, 5-square-mile encampment include shoes, keys, stuffed animals — even dentures.

Still missing are a marching-band hat with gold mirror tiles, a furry cheetah vest, a headdress with horns and a chainmail loincloth skirt.

“As of mid-November, we’ve recovered 2,479 items and returned 1,279,” said Terry Schoop, who helps oversee the recovery operation at Burning Man’s San Francisco headquarters. “We have about a 60 percent return rate.”

Not bad for a temporary community of 60,000 artists, free spirits, old hippies and young thrill seekers who descend on a dried-up lake bed in the Black Rock Desert for an adventure combining wilderness camping with avant-garde performance.

The usual suspects top this year’s list of most frequently lost in the land of drum circles and psychedelic art cars: 582 cellphones, 570 backpacks or bags, and 529 drivers’ licenses, passports or other forms of identification.

Unclaimed items are listed on Burning Man’s website with photos and numbers. They include more than 200 shirts, 100 jackets, 80 hydration backpacks, 50 pairs of eyeglasses, six suitcases and several dozen water bottles.

It links to an online forum that has brief descriptions of found items: a “big bag of ladies clothes,” a piano tuning kit, a “small stuffed cow with cowboy hat” and one black Dr. Martens combat boot. His most unusual recovery?

“A partial pair of dentures,” Schoop said. “The man showed up, took them out of the bag they were in, popped them in his mouth and said, ‘See, I can prove it’s mine: It fits!’ ”

Marcio Jose Sanchez / Associated Press Terry Schoop, community services department manager for Burning Man festival, looks through lost and found items at the organization’s San Francisco headquarters.

Lost and found items are displayed at Burning Man festival's headquarters in San Francisco.