2026 AfterBurner Report
The most important thing you need to know is that this article was hand-written by a person, who intended for you to read it, not read a summary. There is no good way to summarize the contents of this text and using LLMs or AIs to avoid reading the contents goes against the author's will.
Whoop! Every year, I spend months building something to bring to Burning Man, and every year, that thing is destroyed immediately on the first contact with playa, often in life-threatening (if not hilarious) ways. The tradition started in 2019 when I made my first LED wearable, a denim vest with responsive lights that had a GPS to show you where you were on playa and audio-reactive beats, but it broke completely in five minutes after which I realized why the brittle design would never survive being worn, let alone worn at Burning Man. And of course last year many of you will remember the tepee-style sails which made for a beautiful pavillion that had to be reinstalled before every party because they were not, technically, "wind-proof."
This year's folly consisted of four giant sheets of ripstop nylon that were meant to cover the cafe. The first night we put them up, they started flapping in the wind like sails with enormous supersonic booms that kept the whole neighborhood awake, and which put so much force on the poles that I thought they would destroy the observation deck.
So the mission changed from "secure the shade" to "just get the shade down before it kills someone," which, it turns out, was really hard, too: it was whipping back and forth with enormous force that threatened to knock you off of your ladder onto the ground, 16 feet below.
And then, two beings magically emerged from the whiteout: new camp member Mullettude, who, it turns out, had years of experience on playa working for DPW and some crucial sailing experience, and veteran camp member Oscarito, who, it turns out, had designed the original version of this shade in past years, which had not been so deadly, and the three of us somehow managed to get the shades down. Mullettude had the idea of throwing a rope over each shade and pinching it, from the ground, to force it into a bowtie shape with much less area, to the point where it was possible to untie.
So this is the adventure. You spend a month at home building an accidentally-deadly shade structure, and then you have the scariest experience ever—taking your life in your hands just to dismantle it so it doesn't kill anyone. And this life-changing adventure is not available, at any price, from your other vacation vendors like Disneyworld (even with a V.I.P. pass). That's the magic of Burning Man. It's why I go back every year.
Your adventures were different, impossible to enumerate here, and just as magical.
You might have repaired our fantastic little mutant vehicle, the Naughty Lust, or driven it around
playa on adventures. You might have built or installed sculptures in deep playa, after weeks
of intensive work with help and encouragement from legendary Burning Man artists. You might have
worked on a ridiculously elaborate menu for the café, and created a popular space that people
are still talking about. You might have served crispy green salads on the last day on playa (this
is GOD MODE Burning Man, by the way). You might have taken over an empty bar at Golden Guy Alley
with the goal of trying to string along the patrons for as long as possible to see how long they
would wait before they realized you had no drinks to give them.
You might have discovered new things about yourself. You might have overcome whatever it is that you failed to do last year, and done it perfectly this year. You might have built the camp perfectly so it held up all week, or you might have packed a shipping container so well it is ready for next year. You might have saved someone's life by saying a kind word at the right moment, without even knowing it.
We had 46 turtles this year (17 of them new!) and each of them had a week or more of amazing experiences, life-changing moments, and more mundane things that I didn't witness and can't include here. But this is the Afterburner Report, and so, for posterity, I shall report on some of the highlights of the camp itself.
The Café. One of the big changes in camp was switching from a party camp to a more interactive afternoon café. We kept our opening party but the rest of the week we just served cold drinks to our neighbors: Tristan's elaborate and extensive menu of mixed non-alcoholic drinks (with alcoholic add-ins available) made on-demand, some prepared drinks made in batches, plenty of ice available, and on cold days we even had espresso drinks, so the neighborhood girls could order cortados and flat whites. The café also served as a staging ground for other interactions: blowjobs (with a leaf blower! Get your head out of the gutter!), our popular Gaywatch sunscreen station, and a dancing pole.
The goal of the café was to create a more conversational, interactive, Proper Burning Man experience than our parties which sometimes just felt like they could be happening in Fire Island or San Francisco. In addition, we wanted to create a more "turtle-native" interaction for those of us who are more comfortable in conversation than at dance parties.
From everything I saw, that goal was definitively accomplished. Every afternoon we had tons of people in the cafe enjoying our drinks and company: people from the neighborhood, friends visiting turtles from farther afield, and general burners who were inexplicably thirsty and delighted to enjoy our elixirs. The reports I heard from turtles were quite positive and most of you enjoyed working interactivity shifts.
The Naughty Lust. Building a mutant vehicle is officially the final boss of Burning Man, because you have to bring
together all the other skills: art, technology, logistics, teamwork, fabrication and automotive
mechanics. It's probably less bureaucracy to get a Swiss Passport than to get a permit to fill
up gas at Hell Station. We bought a used mutant vehicle, the Naughty Lust, that was on her last
legs and ended up completely replacing almost every part of her: the mast, lights, seats, the
wood boat shell, the DC electrical system, wheels, gas tank, shifter (oops, that never worked),
carburator, the suspension, repairing a leaky transaxle, and a few other things that I didn't
understand. It was a ton of work and lots of you contributed. And we learned that it's super
fun to get driving privileges and bring friends and randos around with you. Working on a mutant
vehicle really takes a ton of collaboration. Without 8-bit David's workshop, fabrication skills,
leadership and teaching, we never would have gotten this far. The vehicle itself was originally
built by a burner named Ramsay who died of cancer in April. His design showed us the way. Special
thanks to David from 8-bit Bunny, Mechanic Michael, instigator Peter, and all the turtles that
contributed during work weekends without whom this wouldn't have been possible.
Meals. After many years in which I was driven crazy by campers sitting in camp, staring at shipping containers and trucks all evening, waiting for, or eating, dinner, instead of being out on playa watching a symphony orchestra and choir playing in a duststorm on the sinking decks of the Titanic while a giant metal octopus shot flames from his arms, we finally figured out a better formula for meals. This year we cooked one hot meal per day (usually around lunch time), but also built a beautiful canteen with snacks and meals that you could get great food out of any time.
So this new formula is a winner. Our hot camp meal was around mid-day at the beginning of the week, and pushed to around 4pm or 5pm by Thursday or Friday as people were staying up until dawn. The canteen is permanently stocked with leftovers, stuff for ramen and sandwiches, and even freshly made food in trays that can be heated up and enjoyed any time.
One experiment we tried, which, ngl, people have been suggesting for years, was sitting in the public area for our meals, instead of having a separate dining tent. I mostly heard positive feedback on this. It felt pretty cool to sit in what effectively was a sidewalk cafe, watching the city go by as we enjoyed an al-fresco meal. It was occasionally confusing to passers-by, who saw something going on and assumed it was public interactivity, but that's OK - Burning Man is confusing. On the whole though people came through and felt like turtles were accessible and open and didn't expect that we would feed them just because we were eating. A part of this experiment was deliberately not having any seating in the high-peak tent, so that turtles learned to hang out in the interactive public area where they could see and greet everyone. But for late night snacking and hanging out, it still seemed like turtles preferred to stand up in the high peak tent, away from the public, rather than sitting down comfortably in the public café.
Another experiment was not having any meetings or announcements so as not to interrupt lunchtime conversation. Did you notice the change? What did you think?
The food fort. The food fort continues to work well. For the first time, I'm confident that we properly winterized it before leaving playa so it should be in great shape next year. However, the system of running a generator in the bed of the pickup truck is not optimal. We may look into renting a small reefer (refrigerated truck) next year to simplify this operation.
Build. Build was super easy this year. We did not have a single day with hard weather. Everyone on the
build team was experienced so we really knew what we were doing. One of the interesting changes
we made was focusing on the complicated public areas first, instead of the simple shade structures.
That way we got to work on really making the public areas great while we were still fresh, and
saved the mindless work for later. In retrospect, it also meant that if there had been weather
during build week, it wouldn't have damaged the shade.
Shower. Old timers will regale you of the days of the Gayflower: seemingly infinite water, proper flushing toilets, private showers, and the beautiful stink of sulpher and passionfruit juice. Others will tell of the fear that 2500 gallons of poop might all spill on the playa if a single hose clamp failed. But this year we decided that the more canonical Burning Man system with rented porto-potties, pumped daily, fresh- and grey-water tanks, and an outdoor shower, was far more suitable to the real conditions out there.
The shower worked great except for some minor drain problems, which we can fix in Reno for next year. We'll also probably put it into a traditional evap pond with a pond liner to keep it from making mud. We're still debating if we should try to have warm water. The benefits of warm water are obvious, but the coldness of the water did keep showers short and sweet. In an environment where we're spending about $7 per gallon, that's a real consideration. This year was also much, much colder than average. So maybe we don't need warm water. But remember, this is a do-ocracy: if you make something and bring it to Burning Man, that thing will be at Burning Man.
Camper Storage. Speaking of do-ocracy, Ben announced spontaneously that we will have camper storage from now on. You can send a tote from one year to the next which will also be available during Reno Work Weekends. The opposite does not hold (you may not send boxes into the past).
New containers. We introduced two new containers, Habitat and Canteen. Habitat replaced the Empire Fort and Canteen took a lot of the interactivity stuff out of the Pillow Fort which was over-stuffed. Both were amazing improvements: we're at a point where build and strike don't require jumping up and down from playa to truck bed, and we have enough room to pack every container with an aisle so we rarely have to unload things during build week just to get to things behind or underneath them.
Things that just worked, like, perfectly. Strike. The Lotus Belle tent. The pillow fort. The food fort. The whips, now with video game, for the first time, after five years of incremental improvements. Our new plumbing system, sinks, and canteen filler. The new café sign and the cute tabletop lights. The habitat shade structure and Shiftpods. The tool fort. Our bikes.
But mostly, it's the people... And this year's turtles were amazing. We had a solid crew of returning turtles with enough experience to make the camp run great. It looks like everybody showed up for their shifts! The new Mayor-of-the-Day system really took a lot of the load off of a couple of people and taught some of you more about how the camp runs. We had seventeen new turtles and even though you are all a mass of indistiguishable sparkleponies to me, rumor has it you were all positively DELIGHTFUL and if you come back I will be honored to learn your names. If not in 2027, by 2030 at the latest. I promise.
We have a pretty simple formula for accepting new turtles: you have to come to a work weekend, and then someone needs to sponsor you, and to be honest, we're going to pick new turtles who have a good attitude about work. The only people that have ever been asked not to come back have been lovely people who just can't pull that off. But that simple rule doesn't adequately explain why we have such a sexy, friendly, intelligent, educated, erudite, charismatic, and unusually good-looking camp full of people all of whom I love being friends with. Maybe that's just playa magic.
