Spaghetti Burn

We started serving spaghetti in 2009. Our inspiration was an old theme camp long gone called Spaghetti Western, they showed movies and served spaghetti. We wanted to create a improv stage experience and serve spaghetti at night. We picked the name Twilight spaghetti theater. We modeled our kitchen and behavior based on a camp called pan cake play house which, was at the time, considered the gold standard for camp kitchens on the playa.

    When we went to pick up our food permit from the health inspector we told him we were cooking spaghetti and sauce. We asked when he would come by for inspection. He laughed and said that he wasn't worried about us and handed us our food permit and a bag of condoms. No joke. That was our experience dealing with the health inspectors for the next three years.

   We were excited that they finally came to visit us and even more excited that they brought a journalist/virgin burner Jim Carlton who put us on the front page of the wall street journal! Thought we have some questions about his fact checking and journalistic integrity. For example, we are pretty sure the man burns on saturday and the event ends on sunday. Messing up basic details like that kind of thing would put his reputation under question in the real world but given that he was at burning man we will let him get off with just a warning. We also have questions about his bizzaro alter ego, the amateur survivalist bank robing bug man. Some people are strange but I guess it takes all types.

  We have also been featured in the black rock gazette, the huffington post, as well as many other publications. I guess the veteran burners journalist for those publications were able to read the What Where When. I say this because actually showed up for diner, and gave us rave reviews! Thanks Guys!

   Over the course of 4 years our camp has served nearly 4000 servings of spaghetti to the burning man community. We don't operate our kitchen every night. Most nights that we do operate start with a thorough cleaning of the kitchen. We have a dish washing station, A hand washing station. All servers wear aprons and gloves. We use ph strips to test that our wash water is sufficiently bleached and clean. We change out the wash water after ever wash session. The spaghetti we serve was just boiled moments before. Health is at the four front of our operation and we are proud that over the course of these years. Many guests come back year after year. We have received many many "thank you's" from our guests and it is that love that gives us the strength to do it again and again.

 We operate at night. We noticed that people tend to forget about fueling their bodies regularly in the evenings. Sometimes a hot meal on a cold evening can gives them enough fuel to keep on dancing, exploring, and participating. It is a gift that we have been delighted to bring to the community for years.  

  We made spaghetti on tuesday and thursday this year and listed the event in the what where when. There was a huge demand on tuesday night and a line formed starting before we were ready. It was inspiring. We went late into the night. Serving spaghetti and preforming and entertaining the crowd. It was awesome! It was exciting! It was exhausting. That is why we planned to take wednesday off. To give us a day to recover. It is challenging to run a kitchen in the conditions of burning man. You have to bring everything you need including the kitchen sink! Nothing is easy. Nothing is free. Most of all nothing happens by it self. We can be pretty exhausted the next day. But hey, We are professionals at being awesome in the playa not just amateur hacks. It's about pacing yourself.

 One of our proudest feats our camp was involved was participating in the Feed The Artists program in 2009 and in 2010. We have served scores of artists before the event opens. In 2010 Larry Harvey came by to personally thank our camp for its support to the artist. Wow that blew us away because we were doing just because we loved doing it!

 Thank you all and see you back in the dust next year! Did we mention we are hecklers too?

The importance of TST

Our camp has changed names many times. Slumber Marshals, TST, Urban Pirates, Electric Sheep Farm and other names I might not even be aware of have come to define us as a group. Without a consistent camp name it is hard to establish our awesome reputation on the playa. We've done an amazing job ingratiating ourselves to the community through our hard work and we should be recognized for it. We've participated in Feed The Artists, been a long standing Theme Camp, performed at regional events, created a great bar atmosphere and above all provided a much needed service. As far as I know we are one of, if not the only, late-night food service on the playa. We've gotten praise in national publications for the environment we've worked so hard to cultivate.

Favorite Memory from 2011

Ok, so this is the test to see a) if I disabled the auto email function and, b) give you the promised a favorite memory (Dani: you better add to this with your much anticipated Earth Guardians adventure!)

Burning Man tips V2.012

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Burning Man Tips v2.012

First and foremost, if you haven't read it already:
The Survival Guide-
http://www.burningman.com/preparation/event_survival/index.html

Goggles- many unwary burners are seen out and about without
their goggles or dustmasks available for rapid deployment. If you are
the truly hardy type then maybe you'll be fine but just know that
60mph duststorms can blow in at any moment day or night, and last for hours.
2010 and 2011 were VERY quiet weatherwise during the week of the burn, but do not be fooled. Anything that you leave outside your tent/RV will be GONE and transformed into awful M.O.O.P. if the quite common 70mph wind gusts kick up. And of your tent isn't heavy enough, it might be gone too! I have seen entire camps blowing down the street.
Nighttime dust storms are infrequent but one happened at the Temple Burn recently and
caught many veterans unprepared. If this happens you're blinded until it blows over. If you use dark lens goggles at night you are also essentially blind, so having a couple pair of each type is best.

Dustmask- Do not use the ones designed for painters. They quickly get
nasty and are quite uncomfortable for long term use. A cheap, easy, and
comfortable solution is to use cotton t-shirt material bought at a
fabric store. Cut into the shape of an edge-on view of the "flying saucer shape", around 6" to 8” wide in the middle part. Comfortable enough to wear for days on end.

Updates and fun!

Hey everyone,

I'm not sure how many of you are aware that we have a TST blog. Most of the emails that have been disseminated recently have actually been blog updates. The reason for the blog is to stop cluttering our emails and start to try and contain discussions in an easy to find format. Email threads can get cluttered and it can be hard to find old posts/comments. With the blog we want to be able to create a forum for discussions that can be found easily by topic. Right now the default for the blog is to send an email to the TST email group for every update. I'm going to disable that function to try and encourage traffic to the blog instead. We will still send all pertinent camp information to the email list but things like camping tips, art brainstorms and other non-essential information will be contained at the blog. Please check it out at http://twilight-spaghetti-theatre.blogspot.com/

As for the fun part... check out the blog for a fun update by yours truly,

Mike (aka Mouse)

A message from Poda and the Planning Crew

Hey TST Campers!

 

Hope you are all getting excited for the madness that will be Burning Man 2012. I wanted to send out a message that will outline the basic camp plans so far, and what we need from everyone that will be Twilight Spaghetti citizens. Of course there is much more room for developing these ideas, but I wanted to start a discussion so that everyone can get informed and get involved. I think we'll be able to pull off some amazing things this year!

Anticipating The Burn

Hey All!

How did we get to the middle of June already? There hasn't been too much progress on the planning end, but we've got a pretty good plan in place. The Bay Area crew is going to be grabbing the equipment and starting on the routine maintenance soon and getting our act together on the new builds. We've got to get our act together on creating a new camp sign, formalizing the layout and getting some new artwork for this years theme, Fertility 2.o. The big news is that we are officially placed on the theme-camp list and are eagerly awaiting placement. I'm holding out hope for Esplanade again, but last year was pretty cool being able to relax a bit.

Budget Breakdown

Welcome back to Twilight Spaghetti Theatre!

Just over 3 months until the man burns... and I cannot wait another #$&*ing minute. Every time I think about it I have to huff that small bottle of playa I keep under my pillow. I wish I was only half joking.  I miss all of my fellow TST burners and am excited to meet all the new TST virgins. This year's ticket situation has been a cluster-fuck at best, but the burner spirit always wins out in the end. Ok Mike, deep breath.... ahh that sweet sweet playa haze.

Look at me I'm participating on the TST website!!!

I think I'm doing this right...

-Ben

2012 And Twilght Spaghetti Theatre is back!

After changing our name for years with silly groups like urban pirates and the electric sheep farm we are back and bringing you all the radical participative theatre and spaghetti you could ever eat