Radical Inclusion

by

glamcocks9Radical Inclusion: Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.

Radical
A. Very new and different from the usual, ordinary or traditional
B. Favoring extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions.
C. Very basic and important

What is so radical about being inclusive? I feel like it should be second nature to us. We are a diverse community with extremes in ever direction. How is this new and different? Probably because growing up gay has left some of us frail, cautious and weary. I have been raised as a gay man very differently than you, just as you have been raised differently as a gay man, woman, trans, etc. I use the word ‘raised’ loosely. I’m personally speaking in terms of when I started to live my life as a gay man. Who raised me? Who raised you?

I was raised as a gay man in Omaha, Nebraska. There, it was “Oh, he’s so fun! Let’s go dancing!” type of attitude from my straight friends, being gay was like a fairy tale. From my gay community it was a little more intricate. I was the new gay out of the closet and I was curious and others were curious about me. I hooked up carelessly. I fell in love. My heart was broken. I drank a lot. I danced a lot. I was challenged with drugs. I was learning a lot and I lived curiously within my means. I made best friends, met some mean characters and connected with everyone in between.

“Oh, he’s a whore.” whispers the sexually frustrated gay.
“Let’s do shots and make-out with strangers!” cheers the vivacious gay.
“He’s got HIV, be careful” ignorantly says one gay.
“He’s cute, kiss him. Then let’s go to Flixx for girls night” encouraged the lesbian.
“You think you’re better than me because you’re cuter than me?” shouts the just as cute gay.
“You’re fun, let’s dance on the speaker” flirts the queer.
“Stick with me kid, you won’t have any problems” winks the drag queen.
“Hi, I’m Mike.” says my future lover.

Those are just a few examples of statements I would hear any given night about me and/or other people in a bar. Even at a young age, I thought I knew what was right and what was wrong. I can proudly say that I frequently challenged my fellow gays, and it often lead to either a change in behavior or the loss of an acquaintance. I too have been challenged by my fellow gay man and woman, and have grown from my ignorances. I say “gays” because I didn’t feel a strong connection with the word “queer” at that time in my life. I was obviously in the wrong city.

Many people had a positive impact on my life as well. Chris, for example, is the happiest gay man I have ever met. He is 40-something… eh, he will always be 40 years old to me. I swear he grows younger every year. He has this joie de vivre that transcends to everyone he encounters. He could be talking about his bankruptcy, his heart attack, his crazy sister or the death of a drag queen and yet all of his stories have this warm and light tone. He never undermines the seriousness of any situation, but he simply embraces the reality for what it is. I’ve held him when he cried. He has held me in his arms while I cried, once when my heart was broken and another when I shared with him that I was HIV positive. No matter who you are, what you wear, where you are from, how long you’ve been out of the closet, your religion, body type, your sexual drive…you always feel like you belong in his presence. Chris is one of the many who raised me as a gay man.

So to me radical inclusion is about accepting our differences, and most importantly embracing myself so I am not my own stranger. “Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community”. Anyone may be a part of our Queer Community. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community. To be radical is to challenge and change ordinary and traditional ways, especially about what is very basic and important, such as a sense of belonging. It’s important for me as a human to respect myself in order to embrace another. As a Queer man, it is important for me to embrace my life style for me to truly respect another’s life style.

No one is perfect, yet we are all beautiful. Shall we challenge how we may have been raised and shed the bad and embrace the good?

The Man burns in 6 months and 30 days.

[I encourage comments and discussion, as I have no expectations with this post, other than challenging thought]

_____

Originally posted on Faceboook w/ comments here

Ticket Sales Announced Today

by

Well, after a long wait the Borg released ticket information. As it turns out the Nevada Entertainment Tax does not seem to apply to Burning Man, but some genius somewhere is charging $80 / car pass now. That blows balls! Anyhoo, at least we finally have word.

Burning Man just updated info on its 2016 Ticket Sales:

-Directed Group Sale tix and Main Sale tix will remain $390
-Low Income Sale tix will remain $190
-2 levels of limited Pre-Sale tix increase to $990 and $1290
-The new mandatory Nevada “Live Entertainment Tax” of 9% will be collected from you at the time you purchase a tix
-Nevada still hasn’t answered Burning Man’s inquiry as to if/why the 9% tax applies to Burning Man
-If Nevada sees it Burning Man’s way (“Hello, Hell? Is that snow?”) the 9% collected will be refunded
-Vehicle Passes increase to $80 for 2016 yet are not subject to the 9% tax
-See tix sale info on BurningMan.org at http://bit.ly/1PiXeNj
-See tix sale 2016 Important Dates at tickets.burningman.org
-You must register to participate in any tix sale
-To register, you must have created or updated your Burner profile in order to buy tickets. Do that NOW at profiles.burningman.org

Community

by

When listening to old Larry Harvey speeches COMMUNITY is the same reason Burning Man was founded and allowed to evolve. We build a city every year with a gift based economy and sew the seeds of love that inspire almost super-human creations; then we burn it all down and come back the following year. It is the life cycle of a phoenix over and over again.

“Community is the result of a group of people
striving for a common purpose.” – unknown

Most of us strive for a diverse and interesting population we are welcoming guests into our camps for various functions on the playa better than we do in the default world sometimes. We find comfort in out cliques and forget through the glass bubble that people on the outside can just as easily see in. For the Queer Burner population we have been challenged at an even higher standard from within and out to make ourselves accessible and escapable. That is the Gayborhood has been unfairly accused of being a wall keeping people in and out. Some camps have been accused of the same, but many of us have worked hard to show them they have no foundation for that claim.

“Well it seems to me, that all real communities grow out of a
shared confrontation with survival.Communities are
not produced by sentiment or mere goodwill. They
grow out of a shared struggle. Our situation in
the desert is an incubator for community.”
– Larry Harvey

In the comfort of our camps and social groups the unintentional barriers based on looks, social similarities and basic needs exclude some people. Again, some camps have worked very hard to turn that image around with tremendous success. Others have been less willing to forgive and others have enjoyed the bounty of more mature and less synical memories of the past and looked to a shining bright future.

The Gayburbs out at 4:30 & I:
This space developed as queer camps began
coalescing with the familiar for neighbors who
made the experience safer.

As leaders in the community we have a responsibility to our people. Radical self reliance is a good principle to live by, BUT watching your team-mate’s back is also important to solid. We have those camp mates that do not use self-care and sometimes it is by choice or reaction to the new world around them. The weather and the fervor of the TTITD event can be overwhelming. By watching out for a fellow beings we further strengthen the bonds of our foundation.

What defines community?

The people behind the common goal. It really takes those who can see the vision of a unified force to speak up and stand out and then show the leadership qualities that create the wake that others follow in. We have our leadership and we have our participants. The ties that bind us are the thin string of individual faith and unspoken desire to be safe and secure that we rally behind. Sometimes, as we have seen time and time again, is merely proximity. Sometimes safety and community develops out of something greater. But we do it together.

People: Puck

by

2b96c9106b94c0ad577d7008d33029ed-bpfullHe was one of the earliest Queers to land on the playa and be queer. Not just weird queer but freak fag flag waving homo with other homos making an impact on this new thing called Burning Man in 1993. He was a part a of a new wave of people coming to the playa and making a bold new statement. That group would eventually start the first version of the Gayborhood when queer camps began networking.

purkissGayborhood_html_64f6cfe9
1993

Puck (Nathan) wrote an amazing piece recounting burner history from when a group of guys wandered out to the playa way back when and laid the foundation that would one day become Mudskippers Urban Decay Cafe and even AstroPups and more. And eventually Avalon Village that became the Gayborhood.

Read Nathan’s piece LINKED HERE

 

People: Mario

by

Mario CisnerosMario was a lead for a camp called Moonbow Camp that was, when I started my burner adventure, a special place on the playa. They were at 3:30 and A when I first went to their camp for the Official Gay Burner Meetup in its day. He brought us the official gay meetup and the Gay Pride Parade that started at the man.

Up there to the far left is Mario with the bullhorn. This to the right is also him in his better days. He was a force to be reckoned with and an inspiration for me in the work I have done to make Queer Burners into something. Because of him and a parcel of other people it is why I am determined to make this project a success.

I put a link to the picture above, taken by another amazing human in our community from Burner Buddies. It shows the first Gay Pride parade at Burning Man orchestrated by Mario and his friends in 2008.

When Mario passed in 2012 it was a deeply felt shock. I wish people could appreciate that someone like him had such a brief and profound impact on me in the community. We spoke a matter of days before he passed on the phone and he cheered me on. I had no idea how sick he was. He cheered me on and spoke words of encouragement. Then I left memories of him at the temple and tried to carry the torch he carried a few more years longer.

  • The previous posts talking about our burner leaders was posted under the collective name. This one is more personal. This one is from me.   Toaster

 

People: Pink Pants

by

12314103_10203922705946830_6916226417254714998_nAdvocate, leader, creator, spark of seemingly endless energy. Ariel is a highly motivated member if our Queer Burner Community.

Ariel ( Pink Pants) is the co-creator of Camp Gender Blender and part of the organizing team. Ariel is a proud gender out-law, decade-long burner, educator, activist, performer, and writer. Ariel loves sparkles, glitter, dancing, making smoothies, and being a rock-star at life. You can find Ariel on playa teaching about gender, leading rituals, hosting play parties, drags shows, and making a queer-fabulous ruckus. Off playa you can find Ariel working to shift the patriarchy, ensure a future of safe healthy non-gmo food, facilitating workshops including gender liberation, overcoming oppression, nonviolence as a life path, team building, and much more. Ariel is currently training to be a Priestess as part of the Kohenet program. Ariel loves to play with gender and uses many different pronouns including unicorn. Ariel is available for speaking engagements, workshop facilitation, and performances. Ariel can be reached on Facebook as “Pink Pants” and by email at ariel@genderblenders.org – from genderblenders.org

While this snippet from the web site for her camp Gender Blender says an awful lot about her she recently returned from a trip to the Middle East where she advocated heavily (see cover image) for American Jews for BDS.

“Honoring Trans Day of Resistance by existence – for existing is resisting! So thankful for my community for all my Trans and GQ folks for the world we are creating – I give gratitude and I mourn all the lives lost due to hatred and bigotry. Here is to a better brighter future that we are building with each breath. I’ll be looking for my community tonight in Istanbul Turkey if you know folks here connect me!” – from her Facebook page dated  11/21

When Ariel shows up this person shines so bright. See Ariel in the crowd often will have a bullhorn in hand or maybe a unicorn horn. This person has the energy and vitality we can all appreciate and love.

701 5000 100/day 10% …numbers baby

by

Queer Burners is meant to be a collaboration. It’s here as a canvas for participants to add to it. Recently someone asked me if this was a one man show and I ‘say’ : “NO” but with few acceptations I am the only one posting articles. As we float into 2016 – 8 years after starting this project – it is really time for this site to either take flight or go away.

As a resource many people have seemed pleased with it. With great anticipation, Cody from Glamcocks might start a series of articles about acculturation. I seriously want more people to dive in and write more about their area of expertise. It’s not always clear as to what those are for some people and we need diversity. Diversity and inclusion is really important.

It is exciting to see 701 people signed up on the site. About 10% of those are completely inactive and about the same number come back to the site a lot and actually sign in. The cool thing is that we are still seeing (even in this off season) about an average of 100 visitors a day. People are watching and paying attention.

With the combination of our regional Facebook pages as well as the main ones (all linked on the Queerdo’s Regional Page) we are reaching on average 5000 people with our posts and information. Some automatically populates to our @queer_burner twitter and to the Page. Our mailing list (linked at the bottom) has about the same number of people on our membership.

Today is Christmas Day and with this post I wish you all a Happy Holiday season.

People: Jessica Allred

by

b4503fe267951df4bd4662c63770591c-bpfullJessica was one of the first women from Camp Beaverton to reach out to the Queer Burner community at large in an effort to make Camp Beaverton more accessible to any and all genders. She served as camp mayor a few years ago when the Queer Burners project was really getting it’s legs and was one of the community members who helped make it successful.

Around her time as mayor and following the camp began instituting a concierge program that spread through other camps that invited other people into the Beaverton camp.

While Beaverton was founded by a heterosexual white male it became synonymous with being a camp primarily of lesbians. But what some might not know, they provide education for people of all kinds. Jessica was one of the curators of this awesome educational series.

11990607_10204645507006568_2656276238302964434_nLiving in Massachusetts she is one of the many that makes the big trek to Black Rock City and helps keep Camp Beaverton Home for Wayward Girls going. Her support for Queer Burner projects has also been greatly appreciated and among those who helped build bridges between their camp and the many others who love the Beavers so much throughout the community.

Changes to Theme Camp Thinking

by

What makes a theme camp? What gives some of these staying power while others fade? Who is really making a mark on the culture, while who is just producing a glorified camp with friends? Truth is Burning Man is demanding camps innovate and change. Camps that are not evolving are getting placed less and less.

There are 5 standards for present and future camps need to meet (from April 2014 news letter from Placement)

  1. Theme Camps should be visually stimulating, have an inviting design and a plan for bike parking and crowd management.
  2. Theme Camps must be interactive. They should include activities, events or services within their camps that must be available to the entire Burning Man community.
  3. Theme Camps must be neighbourly. This includes keeping sound within set limits, controlling where camp generators vent exhaust, and easily resolving any boundary disputes that may arise.
  4. Theme Camps must have a good previous MOOP record (for returning camps).
  5. Theme Camps must follow safety protocols designed by the organization (this includes traffic management on the streets, proper handling of fuels, and any other areas defined by the organization’s production team including alternatives to RV lined streets).

Gayborhood camps might think they have a better chance of placement without innovation or evolution because they are a staple of the area. Some camps have been really setting the bar in their presentation. Another area of note is the friendly nature of the camp; is that is inviting – engaging – interactive? Some camps have made remarkable steps in that area as well.

“Community is the successful result of people coming together for a common goal”**

comfort__joy_2006Comfort & Joy has been the epicenter of the Gayborhood for a number of years now. Their neon courtyard created by Chickpea and art pieces by Neon suck people into their space and do not require a lot of direct engagement to make people feel welcome when visiting. They do have fluffers who keep their space refreshed which is an additional welcoming factor of their space.

Over the last few years the camps that have made strong presentations:

  • Comfort & Joy – Glamcocks – BloAsis – Barbie Death Camp – Paradise Motel – Celestial Bodies – Mystopia

Most improved process of making people feel welcome in their camps:

  • Glamcocks – Camp Beaverton  – Gender Blender

Camps to watch grow in recent years:

  • Hanging Gardens – Disco Chateau – Peterson’s Pink Pagoda – Sun Guardians

Exciting new camps that brought a lot of fun to the playa:

  • Cub House -Gaylactic Village (now including Homojitoville)

Gone are the days when the Borg are willing to let camps stay the same. Theme camps have to become more interactive or provide services that make the city more inviting. They can come in many forms from Snow Cones, to Super Hero Parties to Oil Wresting (3 camps had this in 2015).

There are some new subjects coming to light in the 2016 season that have yet to officially be directed, but you can look forward to seeing:

  • Frontage lighting for camps including day oriented camps
  • More rules on sound: sound camps in the city
  • … and more I am sure

Want some help with your camp infrastructure or plans for 2016. Well, we have news! There is going to be a Camp Creator summit coming to the Bay Area in 2016 where camp leaders, vendors and builders can get together. It will be called LiSP 2016: Leadership in Silly Places. Stay tuned for announcements and ticket sales.

Working together and networking is a good way to up your game for 2016. The baseline is higher now. The good thing is that Placement is keeping us all on the ball with their mailing list. Get on it by contacting Placement through the web site or emailing placment@burningman.org. You will be automatically added if you submit your Placement Application in April 2016.

**source quote unknown
Banneer Image from Toaster
2nd inset image for Comfort & Joy unknown

People: Cody Chance Enicke

by

Cody is a champion in his community. It is certainly not contained to his camp at Burning Man every year. He is a leader with the Glamcocks and their voice for the newbies with acculturation. In 2015 his efforts really helped make the Queer Burner glamcocks9Retreat a success with all the volunteering and support. Along with Shane, Yogen and other members of the Glamcocks they are making a whole new bold statement for theme camps at the Burn.

The Glamcocks first appeared on the playa not that long ago, but have made such an impact that they are hard to emulate. Cody was there from the beginning; with others but this is a thank you letter to Cody for his impact and influence with the success of this community.

In 2016 Cody will be starting a series here writing articles about acculturation appearing regularly. His insights and growing success with the Glamcocks is worth noting. He has been one of the champions of successful integration of his fellow camp mates into the culture of Burning Man and the Queer Burner community. It especially noteworthy as we have seen this camp grow into a diamond on the crown of the Gayborhood.