Month: October 2026

Do you have to camp in the Queerborhood?

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Ever since my first burn in 2015, I’ve always spent my time on playa residing in the Queerborhood. It became my center in the desert: the place from which the rest of Burning Man made sense.

Even when I took a year off theme camp life to open camp with a few friends, we were just across the street from the last row of placed queer camps in the 730 sector. Even when I ran an art support camp in 2025, I was in the same sector, just a couple streets from my usual stomping grounds.

So when I was asked to join a camp across playa in the 2 o’clock sector, I really had to think about it. 

Would I feel at HOME there? Would the rest of playa still make sense? Would I make it over to the streets I used to roam? Would I feel safe? Would I find community?

a sign in the desert spelling the words "welcome home" in front of a shade structure containing a hammock
Welcome Home. Photograph courtesy Duncan Rawlinson, duncan.co.

I’ll admit that I wondered if I’d find any queer community at all. It’s almost as if I thought all queer Burners were in the Queerborhood.

And I am SO happy to have been wrong!

I had the most wonderful experience spending my build and burn weeks with people who started as strangers and ended as friends. And, honestly, I shouldn’t have been surprised at all to discover that several of my campmates are queer, too.

As I set up my personal space, my neighbor for the week pulled out a large rainbow flag to hang up in our shared space. That’s when it really hit me.

What I learned this year is that while the Queerborhood is still my favorite ‘hood on playa, and while I’ll continue to support and protect queer spaces, we queers truly are EVERYWHERE.

So if you, too, find yourself year after year choosing to camp in the Queerborhood, firstly, THANK YOU for being the guardians of our special container. And secondly, be sure you get the hell out of camp and find what I found.

We’re EVERYWHERE.

2026 Burning Man Trip Report: Axis Mundi

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What are people going to remember about Burning Man 2026?

To me, it felt like a pretty easy year. There was a lot of wind and dust and some pretty cold weather, but everybody just plowed through it and kept having fun. The concert featuring the Black Rock Philharmonic together with the Playa Choir, with percussive fire bursts provided by El Pulpo Magnifico, located at the Titanic, took place during a thickening whiteout that really made it hard for the choir, but everyone pushed through anyway and it was awe-inspiring. There was some light rain one night, and a lot of people left their bikes behind and walked home, but it wasn’t a mudpocalpyse and the playa was back to normal by the next day. There was a sense of things just working fine. The spectacularly high man base burned quickly and when it collapsed in flames, it all collapsed at once, boom, absolutely gorgeous.

The population was smaller than usual (60,000, I heard). There’s so much going on, between art, the city, and the playa, that you would never notice, but it was easier to get tickets and exodus only took an hour. I have to say that this was the best year for art, large and small, in a long time. There was just a ton of the big spectacular stuff and a lot of cute little things, too. A new trend I’m noticing is adorable little art out in the deep playa where you can sit down. Benches, chairs, sofas, little living rooms: I’m here for it.

Let’s focus on our stomping grounds: the queerborhood. Comfort and Joy has new leadership who have done a great job of reinvigorating the camp, focusing on the important things like the super-popular naked wrestling, the afterglow tent, Chickpea’s dayglo garden, and the Pink Gym. The leadership of BAAAHS has announced that the art car itself will be taking a year off in 2027 so that the people who have spent more than a decade maintaining it and running it can actually go to Burning Man one year. There is a crop of new camps, too: I noticed Bikini Bottom(less), PLUR pups, and Through the Looking gl.Ass. VICE had a truck crash – fortunately, nobody was hurt, but they still managed to get to playa and serve iced coffee. My camp Future Turtles switched to a café format – I hope you enjoyed the Coffee and Blow Jobs.

The Naked Pub Crawl was a bit of a drunken mess (what!?), with more stops than ever and really, really cold weather, but people pushed through anyway and fun was had by all. This is the second year in a row where it was low key too cold to be naked, so Bar Bunny renamed it the “Flasher Pub Crawl.” Fair.

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