How an Accessibility-Focused BRC Camp Unraveled in the Dust—and How Somehow we Found the Will to Burn Anyway

By Sara Nicole Glass

In the weeks before Burning Man 2026, Astro Arcade sounded almost too good to be true.

There would be arcade games. Bumper cars. Fire performers. A circus tent. Mutant vehicles. A kitchen. Shade. Showers. Bathrooms. Water. E-bikes. RVs and Shiftpods for campers who had arranged lodging. And, perhaps most importantly, an explicit emphasis on accessibility—a camp designed to make Black Rock City more navigable for people who might otherwise struggle with its brutal physical demands.

The camp’s WhatsApp group radiated enthusiasm.

“Let’s make some beautiful, ridiculous, accessible, unforgettable Burning Man magic together!” organizer David Harris wrote on Aug. 8, describing Astro Arcade as more than “arcade games, bumper cars, fire performances, carnival madness, and ridiculous amounts of fun.”

People joined from across the United States and overseas. Some were veteran Burners. Many were not.

One camper announced it would be his first Burning Man. Another had dreamed about attending for years. Judy, who identified herself as deaf, explained that she relied on lip-reading. Juan said inclusion was what had drawn him to Astro Arcade in the first place.

For people with disabilities or mobility limitations, the accessibility piece wasn’t decorative branding. It affected whether Burning Man was realistically possible.

And that is part of what makes what happened next so troubling.

By the end of the Burn, members of Astro Arcade would be openly using the word “scammed,” disputing payments with their banks, requesting refunds, collecting evidence, and eventually submitting a consolidated complaint to Burning Man’s Placement and Camp Support teams.

But that’s only half of this story.

Because Astro Arcade was also my tenth Burning Man.

And somehow, buried underneath the missing accommodations, broken promises, whiteouts, rain, collapsing air mattresses, busted e-bikes, and my increasingly elaborate attempts to find somewhere habitable to sleep, I still found Burning Man.

Maybe that’s the strangest part of all.

The Promise

Astro Arcade attracted an eclectic group.

There were musicians, DJs, fire performers, aerialists, builders, educators, international travelers, and veteran Burners. There were mutant vehicles, including Simon the Turtle and Fuzzy Bunny. The whole thing sounded like an accessible carnival in the desert.

I joined as MissConception: DJ, MC, poet, fire dancer, professional hula-hooper, and longtime Burner. Burning Man 2026 would be my tenth Big Burn. I was also involved with another playa camp, Pandora’s Bike and Fix-It Shop, but a dear friend had connected me with Astro Arcade.

The concept seemed almost tailor-made for me: circus arts, performance, interactive play, and accessibility.  When my friend Frank told me about it, Frank is one of the smartest people I know, and I immediately trusted my friend’s judgment. I didn’t think twice about trying something new.

And unlike many people in Astro Arcade, I was not a Burning Man virgin. I had nine Big Burns behind me, along with regionals, years of Burner community, and enough connections scattered across Black Rock City that I knew if something went sideways, I could probably figure it out.  That difference would turn out to matter.

I don’t believe I was personally targeted in the same way some newer campers appear to have been. In fact, looking back at who paid substantial sums and who was apparently allowed into the camp for little or nothing, I began to wonder whether experienced Burners like me—and my friend Frank—were useful to the operation precisely because we lent it credibility and possessed the knowledge and social networks necessary to keep the camp functioning when things fell apart.

I can’t prove that was intentional. But it is difficult not to notice the pattern. Astro Arcade needed veteran Burners. Because when the infrastructure failed, somebody was going to have to know what to do.

Days Before the Burn, Everything Changed

On Aug. 27, as campers were already traveling toward Nevada, Frank Cohen posted a sobering update. He said he had spoken with Harris, who was experiencing serious complications from chemotherapy and checking himself into a hospital. Harris would not be coming to Burning Man.

This wasn’t exactly news to me. I had spoken with Harris numerous times while preparing grocery lists and discussing logistics. I was supposed to support camp leadership and talked with him at length, and he said he wasn’t planning to be there but was still just helping to support on the ground where he was as he was healing from his cancer.  Apparently not everyone knew he wasn’t coming.

“The reality is that his illness and treatment have had a major impact on camp preparation,” Frank wrote. “A number of important things came together very late, and some things simply haven’t come together yet.”

Then came the clarification: “We are NOT a plug-and-play camp. We are arriving at a camp that needs to be built by the people who are camping in it, and have food that needs to be cooked by the people eating it.  Here are the shifts to sign up!” Campers were also warned that things might be “incomplete, confusing, missing, or not where we expected them to be.” (Sounded like typical Burning Man to me…)

There was enormous sympathy for Harris. Cancer is bigger than Burning Man. Nobody begrudged a seriously ill man for going to the hospital instead of the Black Rock Desert. So we rallied. People offered tents. Rides. Labor. Supplies. Expertise. The Burn was coming whether Astro Arcade was ready or not.

I Arrived. My Camp Did (& Didn’t.)

We hit the gate line around 10 PM Saturday night of build week, and the line didn’t take too long. Two guys in an RV had given me and this sweet lady a ride from the Bay Area. Sidenote: When we got to the gate, the RV guys looked at me and said, “What’s a SAP?” (which is an early entrance pass you need if you want to enter before Sunday…. I thought they knew! They did not). I quickly sent some messages on the limited similar, and BAM, had two more SAPS land in my lap, just as we approached the ticket takers… only to find that when they scanned them, they said, “It appears these same SAPS were scanned 12 minutes ago already”.

“Um, what?” BlinkBlink. They let us through anyways, saying we looked like good people and it could have just been a computer glitch. “HAVE FUN!” (Maybe those SAPS should have been an omen?)

When we finally rolled into my Astro Arcade Camp at 9&B location around midnight, my challenges became much less theoretical and a bit more obvious.  There was a camp, with resources, and I was supposed to have a tent and cot, but the organization of it all was two sheets to the wind. There was essentially nothing waiting for me.  No comfortable little desert oasis. No organized accommodation ready to receive me. No air mattress. My RV friends wearily unloaded ALL of my stuff and said, “If you need to come camp with us, you can.” Though I had faith that this was my circus camp, and everyone was still trying to get it together like you do at Burning Man. There were some comforting burner bodies around to ask, and somehow, a Shiftpod materialized. This is Burning Man, after all. Things appear.

Things also disappear.  Entire living rooms materialize in the desert. People you’ve never met give you exactly the thing you desperately need and then vanish back into the dust. So: great. I had a Shiftpod. Now I just needed something to sleep on which I was told was being brought, no problem.

I started asking around, and eventually some guy brought me an air mattress. Not a camp air mattress. His personal air mattress.  He gave it to me.  “Enjoy.”

This is the other side of the Astro Arcade story. At nearly every point where the infrastructure failed, an actual human being stepped forward. I inflated the mattress, collapsed onto it and thought: Okay. We’re good.

About an hour later, I woke up considerably closer to the playa.

The mattress was very, very deflated. Of course it was.

The next morning arrived early because sleeping on the ground tends to make sunrise surprisingly punctual. I wandered over to a friend’s camp at Spankys trying to figure out my next move. And sitting there was a brand-new air mattress. Nobody was using it. Of course there was. I could have it. Problem solved. Again.

That became the rhythm of my Burn. Something goes wrong. Improvise. Something else goes wrong. Ask somebody. Walk somewhere. Find a friend. Find a stranger. Acquire an improbable object. Give blessed strangers a gift, just because you never know when you’re going to need your street cred again. Continue Burning.

Meanwhile, the Basics Were Falling Apart

Other campers were dealing with much more consequential problems. On Aug. 28, the group learned that some delivered RVs had arrived without water and would require additional paid fills. Campers began asking whether they needed to source emergency tents and shade structures themselves.

The group started taking inventory. Where was the water? Where were the showers? What was in the kitchen (thank god, we had a kitchen, with refrigerators and freezers!)  Where were the bathrooms? (There was one porta-potty, but it was already full and deemed out of service because the credit card associated with paying for pumping had declined) Where was the shade? Who had paid for an RV? Who had paid for a Shiftpod? How many people were still arriving? Did we have disabled campers depending on these services?

By that evening, people already on playa warned incoming campers that things were “not going as planned” and advised them to be “fairly self-reliant.” They reported that the camp had one generator when two were expected, while sewer and water remained unresolved. This wasn’t about missing carnival decorations anymore. People were trying to determine whether everyone had shelter.

Someone chimed in on the WhatsApp group: “Hey, if you’re coming out and you were promised an RV or a shift pod, know that you might have been scammed. Bring your own shelter, food, and water.”

Harris disputed parts of that characterization, saying four people had been promised Shiftpods and maintaining that food and water had been brought in. When campers immediately asked about water, portable toilets, showers, the kitchen, and shade, Harris replied that someone had gone to fill the tanks, the shower equipment was still in Empire, and the shade tent had been built. That exchange captures the central contradiction of Astro Arcade.  From outside Black Rock City, things were repeatedly described as present, coming, being delivered or being handled.  On playa, we were standing in the dust trying to find them.

Enter the British Wedding Couple

Then came Tuesday. Tuesday was a whiteout.

Not a cute little dust storm where you pull up your bandana and take a dramatic selfie. An all-day, everything-is-dust, horizon-is-gone, where-the-hell-is-my-camp whiteout.

And into this arrived a couple from London. They were supposed to get married on Thursday. They had come all the way to Burning Man for this, and according to what they told me, they had paid several thousand dollars for a package that was supposed to include accommodations, e-bikes, and food.

What did they have with them? An air mattress and a tiny tent.  They were understandably frustrated. I looked at my extra-large kush Shiftpod (which I had paid nothing for).  Then I looked at them. I knew tons of people across Black Rock City. Surely, somewhere in this ridiculous temporary metropolis of 70,000-plus resourceful weirdos, there was another tent where I could rest my buns.

So I went on a mission. And I found one. It was an orange, dome-like tent, and I decided that would become my new home to house all of my camping treasures!

This meant setting it up, and then moving all of my belongings out of the Shiftpod into said snackshack. Now, if you know me, you know I do not take glamping lightly. I certainly do not pack light. I don’t go to Burning Man with two tank tops, cargo shorts and a toothbrush. There are costumes, boots, coats, hats, lights, hula hoops, fire spinning toys, DJ gear, first aid kit, face paint… There are things whose purpose I may not discover I need until 4:47 in the morning…..

So there I was, in an all-day whiteout, schlepping my entire desert boudoir from one structure to another. But I did it.  I found the couple and told them: “Take my Shiftpod. Enjoy your wedding.” ::Fuck your Burn:: I mean, is it even a burn if it’s not fucked in one way or another? (At one point the couple even suggested that perhaps we could share the shiny shiftpod. HA. I politely declined.) Trust me: you do not want me rummaging around in my closet at five in the morning trying to find matching arm warmers because Bender is playing sunrise at the trash fence and I’m not missing it.

They needed their space. I needed mine. Perfect solution. Or so I thought.

The Shiftpod Takes Flight

The next time I checked on them, they hadn’t moved into the Shiftpod. Instead, they had left Burning Man.

And they hadn’t told anybody. Well, apparently they messaged the Whatsapp group, but our promised WIFI wasn’t up and working yet (imagine that?) The Shiftpod, meanwhile, was no longer filled with the tremendous quantity of my possessions that had previously been anchoring it to the Earth. We had weighted it with some items, but apparently not well enough. The wind caught it. Several of the main poles broke. And just like that, a beautiful, functional Shiftpod—one of the camp’s most precious commodities—was unusable. This would have merely been sad and ridiculous except that my replacement tent had developed its own problem.

Dust. So much dust. It was not sealed well enough for the conditions we were experiencing. By the second night of relentless whiteout conditions, I was lying inside thinking that if I kept breathing this much playa dust while I slept, I might actually die in my orange dome. 

That’s when my friends arrived to rescue me. They had decided I was moving to their camp a block away. And yes, one block at Burning Man sounds close. During a whiteout, carrying someone’s Burning Man bedroom, it is a heroic expedition. But by then I had another idea. Instead of moving everything again, why not take the cover from the now-destroyed Shiftpod and wrap it around my orange dome?

We did. And it worked. My weird little orange dust sieve became a reasonably protected desert palace. Habitable! Victory! The playa rides on, even when you’re ready to get off the ride.

And by Wednesday, I was absolutely ready to get off.

“Please, Take Me With You.”

When I finally saw the message from the British couple come through on the WhatsApp saying they were leaving because the accommodations were not what they had expected, I immediately messaged them: “Please, take me with you.” But I was too late. They were already gone.

Fine. Who else was driving out? How do I get the hell out of here? I started plotting my escape.

And then it rained. Of course. Now nobody was going anywhere.

The playa turns to a thick, sticky mud when wet, and vehicle traffic becomes impossible or severely restricted. So there I was. I had wanted out. Burning Man said no.

And I am kinda glad it did. I mean, I worked so hard; we all worked so hard to get there… might as well enjoy it a little, eh?

Radical Self-Reliance Is Not a Refund Policy

Burning Man has always demanded self-reliance. Bring what you need to survive. Help yourself. Help your neighbor. Expect the unexpected. It’s all happening.

But there is a crucial difference between radical self-reliance and paying someone thousands of dollars for accommodations and accessibility services that don’t appear. That distinction was particularly troubling because Astro Arcade had specifically presented itself as accessibility-focused. One camper later documented payments totaling at least $1,350 and said he had been promised an e-bike because an injured heel made walking difficult. Without the expected mobility assistance, he said, he was largely confined to what he could reach on foot.

Foreign travelers faced another vulnerability. If you’ve flown internationally to Reno with the understanding that your shelter, food, and transportation have been arranged, “just bring your own tent” isn’t a small adjustment. Neither is it a small adjustment for someone with a mobility disability who was counting on an e-bike. Veteran Burners can MacGyver almost anything. First-timers don’t yet know what they don’t know. And that is why I came away with the suspicion that inexperienced Burners, foreigners, and people who needed accessibility support were particularly vulnerable in this situation.

Why I Think Burners Like Me Were Instrumental into playing into the Scheme

I didn’t personally lose thousands of dollars to Astro Arcade. That fact is important. I don’t want to tell someone else’s victim story as though it happened to me. My experience was different. I had something perhaps more valuable than a prepaid package: ten Burns’ worth of social capital.

I knew people. I knew camps. I knew how Black Rock City works. I knew that when an air mattress failed, you walked somewhere else and asked. When a tent didn’t work, you found another tent. When someone else needed your shelter more than you did, you gave it to them and figured yourself out afterward.

I knew the difference between this is Burning Man difficult and something is seriously wrong here. That is why I suspect veteran Burners like me and Frank served an important function, whether knowingly or not. We made the thing survivable. We helped make it look like a functioning camp. (And I HAVE to give a HUGE shoutout to Charlene and the other folks who came together and worked their asses off to build, maintain, and strike our camp, for real! It would never have been the splendid shit show it was if it were not for you)

We figured it out. We had food. We had water. We (sortof) had a shower. We were at Burning Man! Whew.

I cannot establish from the conversations and messages exactly how much money Harris or affiliated entities ultimately collected, and claims circulating among campers that the amount may have approached $200,000 would need financial records before being presented as fact. What can be documented is that multiple campers reported paying substantial amounts for services, lodging, meals, or mobility assistance they said were missing or inadequately delivered.

Meanwhile, somehow, the camp kept functioning. Because we kept it functioning. One big happy, dysfunctional family. (Ironically, ‘Dysfunction’ was the name of my friend’s mega camp down the street that helped me get through the burn and helped me save my tent from the dust. I also need to thank Pandora’s Bikes, Wally’s World, and Spanky’s for contributing in one way or another to making the burn habitable for me. And of course all of the genuinely wonderful burners at the Astro Arcade… THEY are the true survivors.

The Camp That Campers Built

Astro Arcade didn’t completely collapse. Instead, something pretty predictble happened. The campers became the camp. People cooked. People shared food. People found water. People fixed things and coordinated. We all took care of each other and shared information. We tried to make sure nobody was stranded.

Charlene McGinnis emerged as one of the people repeatedly praised afterward for holding the operation together. Charlene “ran the fucking camp and worked her ass off,” a sentiment other campers echoed.

There were also Rangers at our camp repeatedly dealing with issues. One camp leader later said he had been visiting Rangers so frequently that, by the end of the week, they were joking about the length of Astro Arcade’s file. 

One campery had an art car had had done a lot to bring in the infrastructure of the camp, later disclosed that Harris had paid him $5,000 as an art grant for the art car and another $5,000 for camp layout, flagging, and on-site coordination. He said he had worked on fuel, power, vendors, water fills, pump-outs, food delivery, and tent installation. 

Again, there isn’t one simple story here. Some promised resources did arrive. Some people worked extraordinarily hard. Some people were paid. Some people got to come for free. Most paid a lot of money.  Some campers had fantastic experiences. Others were miserable. Somehow all of those realities occupied the same dusty patch of Nevada.

The World’s Most Annoying E-Bike

So I managed to score one of the e-bikes, thanks to Frank, who drove them in and set one aside for me… except mine was unusually tiny! Small wheels and deep playa dust are not a match made in heaven. I wiped out several times over the course of the first few days, and then the normal bicycle functionality broke. I still had electric power, but pedaling gave me no propulsion. So as long as the battery had juice, I had transportation. When the battery died, I had a very expensive, very tiny object to push around.

And naturally, nobody could find chargers for all these bikes at camp. We were essentially sharing one charger. So if you couldn’t locate the charger when your battery needed it, congratulations: You no longer had wheels.

For somebody accustomed to bouncing from Center Camp to the trash fence to an art car to a friend’s camp to a performance and back again, this was devastating to my preferred level of chaos. Talk about cramping my style.  Par for the course of the weekend…And Then Burning Man Became Burning Man Again

The rain eventually stopped. The playa dried.

THEN the desert gave us two of the most gorgeous days and nights you could ever hope to see.

Suddenly I wasn’t trying to escape anymore. I was at Burning Man. I was aware of how priviledged I am and decided to make the most of it.

I climbed the enormous, surreal Jack in the Beanstalk: Above and Below treehouse-like artwork, inspired by the artist’s little girl.

I swung on the swings. (Not the upside-down swing…I did that another year.)

I rode every art car I could catch. RedHotBev remains one of my favorites. They always seem to have the best breaks!

I took my grief to the Temple.

I performed poetry at Center Camp. I made two of my three scheduled performances. (Sorry, Friday.)

I returned to one of my favorite traditions: performing at Hair of the Dog, mixing smoothies and beats and raps on their stage.

I talked to strangers. I reunited with old friends. I danced. I wandered.

And I spent a lot of time alone. That’s an important part of Burning Man, too.

Sometimes you need to explore Black Rock City by yourself. Sometimes you need nobody else’s agenda. You ride until something catches your eye. You stop. You climb something. You talk to a stranger for an hour. You cry somewhere unexpected. You watch the horizon change. You follow music you can’t identify.

And somewhere in all of that, you get right with yourself.

One friend put it better than I could: “I thought we were coming out here just to party,” they confessed. “And if you had told me I was coming out to the desert to unpack my deep-seated trauma, defrag and reset my chi, I definitely would not have come. But I’m so glad I did!”

That might be Burning Man’s most honest marketing slogan.

From Decompression to Documentation

Once we left Black Rock City, the atmosphere in Astro Arcade’s WhatsApp group got even weirder.

The introductions and emojis became evidence. Who paid what? To whom? For what? What was promised? What actually arrived? Who had receipts? Who had screenshots? Who paid separately for meals? Who paid for accommodations? Who paid for bikes? Who wanted a refund?

One person reported paying Harris $1,100 through Zelle. She contacted Schwab and explained that she had authorized the payment but believed much of what she purchased had not been provided. The bank investigated but, she later reported, was unable to recover the money.

Other campers disputed payments as well. But one of the smartest things the group did was resist the temptation to turn outrage immediately into a verdict.

“No need to agree on whether this was a scam, mismanagement, etc.,” a camper wrote while organizing a tracker. “For now we’re just documenting facts independently.”

Radio Silence

By mid-September, campers said Harris had become difficult or impossible to reach. He had gone completely radio silent. The group began trying to reconstruct the organizational structure itself. What exactly was Astro Arcade? What was Dawn Collective? Who worked for whom? Who had been paid? Who was volunteering? Who controlled the money? Where had the camp fees gone? What happened to the e-bikes?

Why had people apparently received different versions of the same story?

The joyful pre-Burn chat had transformed into an informal investigation.

Case #00455922

Eventually, campers brought the documentation to Burning Man.

On Sept. 17, a consolidated report was submitted to Burning Man Placement and Camp Support. Case #00455922, concerning AAA Astro Accessible Arcade / Dawn Collective.

Campers were encouraged to submit their own firsthand accounts documenting what they paid, what they were promised, what they actually received, and whatever records, screenshots and photographs supported their accounts.

And that is where the factual investigation stands. Was Astro Arcade an intentional scheme? Was it a legitimate camp catastrophically mismanaged amid its organizer’s reported medical crisis? Did it begin as one and become the other? Those are questions that require evidence beyond one WhatsApp thread.

But I know what I saw. I saw people arrive expecting shelter that wasn’t there. I saw campers trying to locate basic infrastructure. I saw people who had paid for accessibility support struggle without it. I saw experienced Burners turn themselves inside out trying to fill holes they had not created. I saw an orange tent become a dust-proof palace through the creative application of a dead Shiftpod’s skin.

And I saw a group of people somehow build a community inside a camp that was coming apart.

The Burn Inside the Burn

That’s the part I keep returning to.

Astro Arcade failed to become the camp many people believed they were joining. But in responding to that failure, the people inside it accidentally created something much closer to what Burning Man is supposed to be.

We participated. We improvised. We gave away what we could and fed one another. We solved problems. We got angry. We laughed. We wanted to leave, then we were prevented from leaving. And thank God for that.

Because if I had gotten the ride I was desperately searching for on Wednesday, my Burning Man story would have ended with a broken bike, a destroyed Shiftpod, an orange tent full of dust, and me fleeing Black Rock City feeling completely defeated.

Instead, I stayed. And the weather cleared.

And I climbed things. And I danced. And I performed poetry. And I rode art cars through the night. And I took what hurt to the Temple. And I found old friends and made new ones.

And I remembered why I had come back to this impossible place for the tenth time.

There is a temptation after a terrible experience to let the terrible part consume the entire story. Burning Man doesn’t work that way. Almost nothing out there is entirely terrible or entirely beautiful. Sometimes the best night of your life happens in the middle of one of the worst weeks you’ve had in years. Sometimes a camp fails you while the people inside it save you.

Sometimes the thing you desperately want is to leave—and the rain traps you there long enough to realize you weren’t finished yet. And sometimes radical self-reliance means realizing that the desert palace you thought would be waiting for you isn’t there.

Sometimes, you have to get back on your ridiculous little half-working e-bike, and you go find the party. Because the playa rides on, even when you’re ready to get off the ride.

Astro Arcade was supposed to be a circus. In the end, it certainly was.

Just not the circus any of us thought we were joining.

Somehow, despite everything, we still got to go to Burning Man.

It kicks my ass every year. That’s what it’s supposed to do!

-MissConniption

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