Greetings from Black Rock Station!

Dear Friends and Family,
Black Rock Station is Burning Man's 200-acre work ranch, located in northern Nevada, about 12 miles from Black Rock City's location on the playa. The "playa" is what we Burners call the vast desert expanse where the Burning Man festival takes place. It means beach, but there is nothing beachy about it, except maybe some scantily clad visitors and the need for lots of sunscreen!

A couple members of the Café crew went to Black Rock Station, also called BRS, in February to check the inventory of items that were packed on the playa and then moved to the station for storage. BRS is the staging and storage area for the event, full of art installations from past years, containers, trailers, RVs, dragons, and eclectic collections of leftover structures, bikes, and whatnot. It's both a workshop and Burning Man museum.

Metric is the on site manager of BRS, living there year round, sometimes with an assortment of guest cowboys, or a visiting work crew. Turns out that growing up in Virginia, Metric and I went to neighboring high schools at the same time. Imagine us meeting on the other side of the country on some obscure and remote work ranch? Just one example of Burning Man synchronicity.

Later in the year, the work ranch plays host to several work weekends, where members of the DPW build the Man, furniture for the Café, lamp posts, and many other projects. As the event approaches, BRS becomes a bustling hub of activity, as crews amass and start vital prep-work prior to building the city out on the playa. Most of the crew and a lot of trailers, containers, trucks, and equipment are moved on site once they are permitted to relocate by the Bureau of Land Management. Many stay after the event to take down structures, transport items back to the ranch, and make sure that the community leaves no trace.