I wrote:
[Local promoter Joegh] Bullock and others credit El Circo (as well as the Death Guild, whose members build the Thunderdome and dress like road warriors) with creating the postapocalyptic fashions that many now associate with Burning Man. Most of the original El Circo fashions, which convey both tribalism and a sense of whimsy, were designed by member Tiffa Novoa, who has since hit it big with her Onda Designs.

"That is the Burning Man look now, and I give them credit for that," Bullock says, noting that in the early days of Burning Man, nudity was the dominant fashion, something that began to change with the arrival of the ravers. "It's a lot more fun and sexy to wear a skimpy costume than to be nude."

That fashion sense has carried over onto the streets and into the clubs of San Francisco, giving an open and otherworldly feel to many parties. There's a constant updating of wardrobes, with much of the shopping done at fabric stores and sewing collectives like Stitch Lounge, and other outfits constructed from modified thrift store items or outrageous duds from places like Haight Street's Piedmont Boutique.

"By now everyone in San Francisco has a closet full of costumes. You don't see that in LA or anywhere but here," Bullock says. "It's also an icebreaker. How many times have you gone up and said, 'Wow, that's a really great costume,' and then you can start to talk or flirt."

It can also be a personally transformative experience. "At first, this was all costuming, but now it's who I am," says Matty Dowlen, who manages El Circo's operations and looks like a cross between a carny, a hippie, and a trapper. "I really love Burning Man. It helped me discover who I am as an artist."

Of course, it has helped that many of the people in both Death Guild and El Circo are, in a word, hot. "A lot of the women in El Circo were some of the most beautiful in the world, and [Novoa] dressed them up to look even more beautiful," [electronic music artist Random] Rab says, noting that it changed how the denizens of El Circo conceived of themselves. "One day everyone was all hippied out, and then they were all tribal and tattooed."

Much of what El Circo have done since arriving in town has been to try to re-create in San Francisco what they developed on the playa. Dowlen says they're always wrestling with this question: "How can the flow be maintained and re-created in the city?" Lorin [Ashton, a DJ also known as Bassnectar] and his El Circo buddies contemplate that as they strive to be about more than just music, cultivating a new kind of culture and communal ethos.