What a crazy year! One of our best burns ever transformed into a unique and challenging burn experience. We pulled together, survived, and thrived.
Houpla Burning Man Theme Camp
Our community-sponsored Houpla Theme Camp made its fifth trip to Burning Man. It once again brought a large crew of over 50 Houstonians and friends to Burning Man in 2023 and kept its focus on introducing new people to Burning Man. Per usual, around half of the camp was attending Burning Man for the first time.
Pre-rain, Houpla was on pace to serve over 4,000 breakfast tacos to the 9 o’clock sector and operated its successful new Cheap Sunglasses Bedazzle and Repair Station. The firepit saw nightly use, and our 4th Annual Texas Nooner happy hour was the best it’s been yet.
The rains camp Thursday morning, effectively shutting down Burning Man for several days due to the deep, hard-to-traverse mud the rains created. The camp rallied to keep everyone safe, warm, dry, fed, and entertained. We closed our interactivity and repurposed our breakfast taco supplies to serve the camp and our neighbors. Our in-camp porto saw heavy use, saving people a long walk in the mud to the Burning Man portos. We worked together to collect info from Burning Man and get updates out to the broader world. We waited out the rain, and soon the sun came out and dried the mud. We attended the Man burn together Monday evening and safely got the camp off playa only one day late.
Houlie Burning Man Theme Camp
We created a second community-sponsored camp called Houlie. This camp joined with Houpla in forming a HUBS, and the two sister camps were placed adjacent to each other and shared resources.
The camp brought a crew of approximately 20 folks, both from Houston and farther afield. It served Colombia coffee daily alongside Houpla’s breakfast tacos and offered poker in the afternoon. Houlieans rallied alongside Houplans once the rains came.
Burning Man Houston Community Truck
The all-volunteer Burning Man Houston Community Truck project again made a safe, on-time, successful run to Burning Man and back, its 4th voyage. Our community remains proud to offer the cheapest, most-reliable transportation option for the community. After selling out once again, we’re exploring expanding the program (potentially to a shipping container) in 2024.
Thank you to our volunteer drivers and all the folks that contributed to loading and unloading the truck!
