Daring and sexy, firespinning is one hot hobby
by Regina Nuzzo
Washington Post’s EXPRESS
Friday, May 13, 2005
About a year ago, Michael Lewis started showing up to his job as a marine fisheries biologist with odd scorched patches in his short salt-and-pepper hair — places where he accidentally whacked his head with 250-degree-Fahrenheit flaming balls of wax on the ends of long chains. “Fire kisses,” they call them. Just a little souvenir from his new hobby.
Lewis has joined the D.C. metropolitan area’s tightly knit firespinning community. By day, its members are anything but circus freaks. Most work 9-to-5 as computer programmers, nurses, economists, scientists.
But at night they love to gather and play with fire, creating fleeting geometries of light in the air as they whirl flames near their leather-clad bodies. Firespinning can be sexy, athletic and communal — with just the right splash of danger.
