Captain’s Log: C.C. Canopy — Star Year 2024
For the last four months I’ve been deeply immersed in world-building and designing outrageous experiences in the heart of this year’s version of Black Rock City. As the Center Camp Plaza Project Manager, I have the privilege, honor, and great responsibility to hold space for, and in some cases actively orchestrate, the center of the swirl. My mission is to catalyze the emergence of something new, fantastic, and outrageously engaging in a zone that knew its identity for decades, and then plummeted into an odd type of existential decay over the last two years.
From a Ghost Town…
“Ghost Town” is the term I’ve heard used most often to describe what Center Camp became after the COVID-19 pause, and it’s a phrase that fits the desert imaginal scape quite well. I’ve combatted this dismal spell in my own mental space with a conjuring of my own. I dream of myself as a boisterous buckaroo, sauntering into the whistling wild west center of town with bubble guns and kazoos strapped to my bandolier, jokers up my sleeves, and a magic squeaky rubber chicken whose squawk calls in the merrymakers, the pranksters, the zany gag-wits and cutup clowns from across the lands. “Ghost Town no longer,” at least if my magic rubber chicken’s got anything to say about it!
And yet, it’s important to recognize that the decline we experienced is part of a larger cycle. Seeing the Center Camp fields lay fallow for a few years gave us the opportunity to experience what it’s like when the heart of the city is empty. From the barren landscape of service camps dark at night, to the image of an unattended canopy cordoned off because it had become a lake in 2023, these memories give us the permission to dream anew and ask the important question:
What wants to spring to life in the center of our great city, here at this important cultural nexus point?
Urban Renewal and Cultural Revitalization in the Heart of the City
It inspires me to report that the concepts of urban renewal and cultural revitalization have been important driving forces in the reimagining of our Center Camp experience. The minds at Burning Man Project and engaged Burners in the community are regularly ruminating on these academic wrinkles. What we are collectively building this year is born from the fruits of their musing.
A fascinating alignment is emerging. This alignment of thinkers and doers, of minds and hearts and desires, is calling forth innovation and a return to togetherness and joyful engagement. It’s like a giant magnet, pulling weird art, wondrous characters, and satirical shticks into an epicenter of awe that will manifest in physical reality smack dab in the midst of the Central Plaza and Center Camp Canopy. Rejuvenation is upon us, mark my words. What’s more, it won’t look like it’s looked in the past — so prepare for that new-new.
One of the most unique facets of our beloved Black Rock City, which sets it apart from every other city on the planet, is the amazingly short urban lifecycle. Across all the cities we know in the world — which we’ve grown up in or visited on vacation or spent four years grinding in their local university halls and service industries — the city lifecycle generally traverses six phases: rapid growth, slow growth, shrinkage, decay, renewal, and revitalization. For the most part, these phases play out over long time horizons, decades or even generations.This is due to the fact that most city streets are paved; the urban planning is complex, rigid, and institutionalized, and the buildings are made of wood and bricks and stone and steel.
Yet in Black Rock City, where the infrastructure is held together by rebar, zip ties, and dreams, and the canvas is wiped clean down to playa each year to build anew, we’re provided with a much more responsive and condensed urban lifecycle. In this special petri dish, the implications for learning about the cultural mechanics underlying urban transformation are tremendous — and not just in theory, but in lived practice.
What will be gleaned from the experiment at hand?
Will we step up to innovate and create together? Will we harvest the learnings from our unique experiment and provide valuable contributions to society at large?
Only time and the omniscient magic rubber chicken can tell.
But What Will It Look Like? To the Galactic Center We Go!
Here’s what I will share, just to be fair to those of you who’ve made it this far: The new Center Camp Neighborhood will be nothing short of a new Galactic Center, alive with weird Burning Man everything. The Plaza is full of theme camps with a balanced array of daytime and nighttime activities. Service camps have been moved out to the Esplanade or peripheral neighborhoods. Rod’s Ring Road is gone; it was time for a change to the neighborhood layout, bringing the energy into the center.
In the Plaza you’ll find a ski slope, a piano bar, a jazz lounge, a few fabulous watering holes, a home-brew beer hall, a sunrise cafe that serves breakfast sandwiches and caffeinated goodness, a teahouse, two karaoke spots, a carousel, roaming appliance robots, and a couple of fire stages where the city’s best fire spinners will be imbuing the space with bold fury! A total of eight camps around the Plaza will be serving muddy bean juice, so hopefully we can just leave that at that. The Plaza was curated by our Placement team intentionally to uplift and encourage the objectives of rejuvenating the zone into a bustling downtown district.
Then there’s the Canopy. This is a place where I’ll opt to leave much of the plans to be a surprise. And what an epic surprise it will be. What I don’t mind disclosing now is that there will be hundreds of activated collaborators bringing their special sauce into the center of the center. A center stage will be built the likes of which center camp has never seen. French Quarter will be installing an epic hundred-foot-long dining room table that will feature absurd tea parties, crafternoon sessions, gaming tournaments, and ridiculous dining pop-ups. You can expect an Around the Clock Teahouse with ceremonial tea service 24/7. There are 16 alcoves around the perimeter of the Canopy featuring cool micro-environments and devious spontaneous experiences. There will be many of the staples you’ve known and loved over the years, such as contact improv, a new and improved art gallery, a speaker series, the People’s Fashion Show, the Cacophony Society mixer, the Billion Bunny Takeover, and spoken word poetry of questionable quality. And there will be new things that Center Camp has only dreamed of hosting before … like the Burner Olympics, the Genius Hour variety show, Black Rock Blackjack, a grand trading post, and so much more… I can’t believe I’m leaving it at “and so much more…” But for real, there is SO MUCH MORE. You might just burst your fun meters, so maybe leave those at home. For those of you keen to brush up on all the happenings, you can peruse the Playa Events Guide for Center Camp activities. Also when you arrive on playa, you’ll want to take a gander at the WhatWhereWhen guide’s sexy Center Camp centerfold — featuring events beneath the Canopy!
If you feel the energetic pull to embark on this journey of renewal and revitalization and you wish to add your intentions to the cauldron, you are cordially invited to participate in the Opening Ceremony, Sunday August 25th at 7:30pm at the main entrance to the Canopy. Let’s convene and remember that the heart of Burning Man isn’t just in the art or the music or the beverages that help us wake up. The heart of BRC is found in the connections forged and the spaces shared. It’s about the magic of the moments spent with other adventurers, in time as it passes. How very precious these fleeting experiences are.
Squawk Squawk!
Captain Gabriel, signing off for now. May we meet in the new Center Camp Canopy Galactic Center soon. And until then may your journeys be filled with dust, dreams, and delightful surprises.
Cover image of aerial view of Center Camp, 2023 (Photo by Barbara Kojis)
It sounds absolutely marvelous, I might just pitch my tent right there. It already sounds like too much and then said to be even more!
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The “ghost town” had nothing to do with Covid and everything to do with taking away coffee. Larry wasn’t an idiot when he envisioned Center Camp as similar to a plaza in Europe where strangers can come and get a coffee and watch the world go by. He also saw it as a place where people that were not in a camp could go to and feel part of the life of BRC. The idiots that saw coffee as commodification and desire to ban anything resembling commerce were proved totally wrong by the absolute wasteland that Center Camp has become. Here is a RADICAL idea. Bring back coffe and see what happens. Center camp always had tons of things happening but you needed a reason to go and that was a CUP OF COFFEE!
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Just to be clear. There will be caffeinated goodness. It just won’t be for sale. There are multiple collaborators bringing coffee to gift at periodic times under the canopy. There is an Around the Clock Teahouse serving tea 24-7 and Black Rock Tea Company in the Plaza. And there are no less than 8 camps around the central plaza that will be serving muddy bean juice on the reg.
Bring a cup, get your coffee, and watch the world go by.
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I have never really seen an explanation of why coffee was removed. It isn’t just the coffee; it is the way a hot or cold beverage makes it so easy to sat “let’s go to Center Camp” or “Hey there’s a place we can get coffee.” Even a smaller version of the cafe, even a model that offered Portland style “coffee food trucks” but BM style…Center Camp evolved along with the cafe, and while I will still roll by CC, it won’t ever attract randos the way it used to.
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It WAS reaaalllllyyy good coffee, too ):(
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I almost want to apologize for completely and utterly agreeing with this response to this article(Not that this article isn’t very, Very, very exciting (and the possibility of what we will discover this year at Center Camp). Center camp Café was my absolute favorite place on Playa, and I am incredibly excited to see a discover what is there this year! If it’s still a ghost town this year, please please bring back the coffee! ☕️)’(
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Sounds incredible! We are hopeful and helpful.
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Spirits are high up here already . Can’t wait for this Center Camp !!
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Excited to see the new center camp revitalized! And YOU on the playa verses the oaks. See you and your camp creations in the dust!
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Center Camp became a ghost town after the café was closed down, not because of the pandemic. When will the powers that be simply admit that a café brings Center Camp alive and allow it to exist again.
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Sounds exciting, looking forward to being a part of it! (editor: “Jonah, whatever you do, don’t use the ‘c’ word.” lol!)
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Exciting! Can’t wait to see it! The Burner Olympics is not to be missed!
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Looking forward to it and hoping that the ghosts and tumbleweeds go away!
That said, don’t blame Covid for the interstellar emptiness.
It was the decision to get rid of coffee.
We all know it.
Maybe someday the memo will arrive at the ivory towers.
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Thank you!
This sounds juicy!
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Good luck, Captain Gabriel. I’ll be with you all in spirit, an ancient comet far afield who once grazed close to The Galactic Center, long ago.
Slickfinger- DPW 2002- 2008
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I would have them consider that if they couldn’t make the most popular part of the burn work, the coffee at center camp, that they should outsource it to someone and have them bring it back. I understand it was one of the most powerful parts of the burn and thus was difficult to handle but I bet that there are still people willing to do all the free labor for staffing if everything is open, above board and transparent even with an outside source doing it. The fact is that people are riding their bikes through the space the lack of coffee left, the advertising for the non-profit now looks like commodification and camps provide literally a space for everything else. If the problem was steaming milk, I bet even drip coffee and amendments would be enough for people to spring back to life in the universal oasis we found in center camp.
Hope it’s even better than before covid this year. I want to see it be something better than ever through and having a watering hole has always been the best place to meet in the desert.
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A watering hole it shall be.
HOTD will be holding it down in the Central Plaza.
Sunrise Cafe can serve 18 gallons of coffee an hour, oh… and breakfast sandwiches.
There’s a Soda camp, a Homebrew camp, a Tea house, and that’s just around the central plaza…
the Canopy has it’s own surprises in store.
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Wow. I came into this article expecting to completely poo-poo it, guarding my bitter grief over the autocratic and horrible demise of Center Camp Cafe. Which just about broke my heart. I’ve been a Burner since 2006; and Center Camp Cafe was—hands down—one of my very favorite places in the world. I believe Larry was right: we need a warm, welcoming City center. When it was unceremoniously yanked—in a manner so deeply disrespectful to its life, its history, and the vision of our Grand Poobah—a part of my heart died.
However, sir….your description has given me some hope.
I won’t be able to get there this year…but next year is looking pretty bright. Thank you so much for your efforts.
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What fun ideas! I’m glad to see so much energy and intention going into such an important part of our city, can’t wait to see what you’ve got cooking
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Center camp lost its natural purpose when it exiled the cafe’ – warranting little more than a cursory/obligatory once a week glance thereafter. Restoration is naturally obvious – and far simpler than the extraordinary measures you propose.
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So excited to see Center Camp come to life in a new way! Just what the center of the city needs.
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Great peice Jonah i cant wait to experience all theses things firsthand
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Center Camp is nothing without coffee. Coffee brought people in, then they stayed to wake up or wind down with strangers in a comforting environment. There’s a reason people bookended their waking hours with coffee at Center Camp over any performance, event, ceremony, art project, or party in the WWW guide, and you’re not going to get them back by offering the same golf-clap amateur hour stuff they never cared about in the first place. The cafe was more central and meaningful to my experience (and many others’ if they reflected on it) than the temple and man burn. I’d take the cafe over either of those. 10/10 times.
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SO excited to be bringing our MythMaker Quest to this Revitalized Centre Camp Vision! Looking forward to a tremendous experience!
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Wow! With a piano bar, a jazz lounge, a few fabulous watering holes, a home-brew beer hall, a sunrise cafe that serves breakfast sandwiches and caffeinated goodness, a teahouse, two karaoke spots, holy moly, that sounds AMAZING and sure to reenergize the Center Camp. Love it! Can’t wait to experience.
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Image all of the things above, but with coffee.
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Exactly right Jimmy!
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Yes! Coffee brought me to Center Camp.
Pasties being applied and amazing yoga couples kept me there for a long drink.
But, it was still iffy.
Coffee AND all the new plans – that would be great!
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Sad. Been to CC twice during burn. Gost town again.
Fail.
Bring back the coffee.
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you guys knocked it out of the park!
how can I get booked to do a dj set next year?
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