Month: June 2017

July 1 News Letter out June 30

by

The by monthly news letter went out on June 30th to launch the weekend and let people know about coming events.

July 4th Weekend

It’s time for fireworks and picnics in the park. Patriotism is probably along party lines this year, but with this full on launch into summer I hope everyone has an amazing and blessed holiday weekend. Be safe out there. Drive safe out there. Live, Love and Laugh as much as you can. And for those headed out for the 4th of Juplaya … you so lucky! – Toaster & Queer Burners

In this issue of the monthly news letter:

  • Is this Newsletter worth it?
  • Placement Announced for 2017
  • 2017 Queer Camps List
  • Events
  • The Mechanics: How this email works

Hello… is anyone out there?

Is this news letter a value to the community? Our total list has swollen in the last couple days to 735 getting this email from 720ish. Frankly it has been at the same number for almost a year. Yet, as much pertinent information possible is collected and assembled 2x a month. As a backup many of the news letters have been published on our web site (www.QueerBurners.Com).

With some changes coming to the whole Queer Burners structure coming this year, this is also a chance for the community to be more directly involved and have a say in all publications and services offered by this site. Be the change you want to be.

Queer Burners Mission is simple: “A Mission of Building Community and Leadership”

Placement Announced

What exciting and earlier than anticipated news! According to Trippi Longstalking in a recent letter from Placement, the Placement announcements would not be out til the beginning of July. But that changed just a few days ago when we all started getting email notifications (as camp leaders) that … well, shit is going down. And that FILLED the air with excitement.

…and then as usual a map was created to try and give some reference to where camps were at and IF a semblance of the Queer Neighborhood would be kept in tact. There were A LOT OF REASONS to be worried. We lost Answergirl and especially Hepkitten this year who (to my knowledge) were among our strongest advocates. We have had awesome relationships with Placement but when the team changed so drastically this year we could only guess at what that might lead to.

Thank fully the Queer Neighborhood is present, but fractured in spite of the grouping shown. We have good proximity, but that is really not a Placement issue. As hard as it is to say, it is really up to people filling out the applications to be clear with what camps they want to be placed. If you wrote “I need to be in the Gayborhood”… there is no OFFICIAL Gayborhood so there is nothing for a Placer to latch on to. In many cases they do not know which camps are queer/gay/lesbian/trans or not. A stronger Queer Community means we have to be more on topic with our requests.

2017 Queer Burners Camp List

A new list is published today with a different format for best practices on the site. It will be live this afternoon. It is not too late to be added to it, but the graphic above can only hold so much. . Check out the 2017 Queer Burners Page on our web site. 

Events

This is a list of events we know about:

BURNING MAN 2017 – Hot Events

Submit your events for the news letter in the link below.

The Mechanics

Thank you to everyone who has contributed and helped keep this network thriving. As we get closer to event season there is room for more people to play in this garden. If you sign up on the Queer Burners web site and are verified, then you too can write posts and continue conversations relevant to the community at large. Thank you to so many of you.

Mid June News Letter

by

PRIDE MONTH!

It is the Summer of Love & Pride in San Francisco. There are so many amazing events they can’t ALL fit in here! Wherever your Pride is, this month or any other, please  enjoy it!!!

In this issue of the monthly news letter:

  • All Of Us event report
  • Announcements
  • 2017 Queer Camps List
  • Events
  • The Mechanics: How this email works

All Of Us

Our 3rd year with this event and our first using this branding has yielded unparalleled success.  Our team did such an amazing job on the production and it really was an amazing team effort.

Announcements

Burning Man is coming up quickly and in July the Placement department will start spelling out the city layout. Just this week Burning Man opened the listing for the What Where When booklets and camps submitted their planned events for the burn.

  • There are no plans for BRC Pride events except for a fun run organized by a Beaverton member. See BRC Pride on Facebook for links and info.
  • Here we are in Pride Month and nothing planned for Burning Man this year. If anyone wants to do more please go to BRC Pride on Facebook.

2017 Queer Burners Camp List

The list is taking shape and camps are seriously gearing up to get ready for “Radical Ritual” Burning Man 2017. Do not be one of those people who wait til the last minute to commit because you WILL be left out. Check out the 2017 Queer Burners Page on our web site. 

Events

This is a list of events we know about:

Submit your events for the news letter in the link below.

The Mechanics

Thank you to everyone who has contributed and helped keep this network thriving. As we get closer to event season there is room for more people to play in this garden. If you sign up on the Queer Burners web site and are verified, then you too can write posts and continue conversations relevant to the community at large. Thank you to so many of you.

All Of Us was fucking awesome

by

So, it’s been a week now since All Of Us ended. Many of the people involved in the magic are off doing the ALC (AIDS Life Cycle) ride from San Francisco to L.A.. So, as I write the official report on the event about money and critical things I await the details to fill in those pieces on the other web site. (www.lgbtproduction.org)

The event opened on Thursday noon and went through Monday noon after Memorial Day. It was the longest weekend we attempted before. It worked out well for so many! The space at www.saratogasprings.com was absolutely perfect. We have just under 150 people come out and thank goodness we managed to just break even on expenses versus income.

A Great Week

While these lovely people at the jacuzzi do not represent the diversity we had, we are proud that All Of Us brought a lot of new faces to the event. It was glorious…

There was a pop-up Jacuzzi party hosted by thee (in spirit) Whitney Houston on Thursday evening. It was a naked soirée in the hot water and it was fabulous. There were all kinds of wonderful human in the mix and the music was fantastic. The Jacuzzi was the most popular spot on the land at the end of any day – no wonder it was turning green by Sunday afternoon.

Each day progressed with a new layer of loveliness and unimaginable brilliance among all those who came out. There was so much love, uninhibited embrace, with no matter who was there or gender. We were blessed that our demographic did change on some level with a lot more women and gender non-conforming people that fit together and celebrated.

On a couple notes, there was a detailed waiver everyone signed when coming in and part of it talked about respecting other people and their boundaries. We did have a moment when someone was talking about trans-people openly with real trans persons just a few feet away and it was wrong and hurtful. We also talked about boundaries for consent and as it turned out someone did not heed that either. Someone was violated and we simply cannot allow those things to happen in our community. All Of Us is about unity and inclusiveness.

DJ Jason Godfrey on Decks at the back of the BAAAHS bus and next to The Journey
DJ Jason Godfrey on Decks at the back of the BAAAHS bus and next to The Journey

The Journey

The crown jewel of the event was the 30 foot long piece of this art piece going to Burning Man in 2017. Dan Reeves was the original visionary and his team of amazing humans who came out and set this up. It was celebrated every night!

It was part of the Art Garden that we had set up in front of the Heart Lodge along with Squares by Steve Dudek and Frames by www.visualsby3.com that was a great collection of installation pieces.

Friday night was a party at the art piece and the DJ’s sis an amazing job. The art was outstanding. The energy was awe-inspiring.

Saturday saw the majority of the workshops in all three tracks of the weekend while The Journey folks did live screen printing in front of the main Lodge. The Journey folks even set up a bar and served drinks as they did their magic.

  • Mental / Physical Health and Self Care
  • Acculturation and the 10 Principles
  • Leadership

The workshops were amazing and well orchestrated. The information was invaluable. We shared some amazing ideas and performed some exercises that made our participation and community stronger.

Meal Time

The food was amazing as well. Thank you to Jose for another year of delicious offerings. While we may have fell down on some of the vegetarian options we will do even better next year. But happily everyone got fed and our food and beverage team did a great job in the end. We are grateful that Jose came up from Mexico once again to help us!

We did daily Brunch and Dinner with snacks in between. The kitchen team seemed to be able to take it more easy this year which I was very glad for.

They even served hot dogs and snacks at the Sunday Pool Party (SPF) with bacon wrapped around them and on buns. Event the veggie dogs had a veggie bacon on them. Someone was heard saying: “They are really committed to bacon.” Well, this is a burner event, right?

Thank you to everyone who helped with volunteering.  The weekend could not happen without you. While we had some paid positions, many gave their time and energy to make this event happen. Who profited from it? Well, no one did. All the money that was left over is being folded back into the community.

The Gate ran flawlessly thanks to an amazing team there. Exodus was went just as smoothly. It with a sincere and deeply held feeling of appreciation to everyone to helped in making the magic either by being there or getting us there.