The Astro Arcade Camp at Burning Man

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 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.”

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.

When I finally rolled into Black Rock City, the problem became much less theoretical.  There was essentially nothing waiting for me.  No comfortable little desert home. No organized accommodation ready to receive me. No air mattress.

Somehow, however, 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.

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 trying to figure out my next move. And sitting there was a brand-new air mattress. Nobody was using it. Of course there was. 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. 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 cush 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.

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. Enjoy to house all of my treasures!

This meant moving all of my belongings out of the Shiftpod. 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.  (At one point they had even suggested that perhaps we could share it. 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 just want to give a HUGE shoutout to Charlene and the other folks who worked their asses off to build, maintain, and strike our camp, for real!)

We figured it out.

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. (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, Wally’s World, and Spanky’s for contributing in one way or another to making the burn habitable. 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 much more interesting 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 Camper who had an art car ad 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 a few days, and then the normal bicycle functionality broke almost immediately. I still had electric power, but pedaling gave me basically 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.

And 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. And I made 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 darker.

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!

-MissConiption

Click here to check out the video recap!

The Fire Is Older Than All Of Us

The Evolution of Kansas City’s Flow Scene

“Do you even flow bro?” Welcome to spin city. The Kansas City flow arts scene did not appear out of nowhere. We inherited it. Every burn scar, every drum circle, every renegade, every hoop jam, every weird warehouse show, every LED toy, every busking spot, every late-night parking lot spin renegade—is possible because of a whole lot of people who built this community before we even knew it meant to run saftey.

And a lot of us did it FOR YEARS broke. And sober. While raising children. Weathering breakups in peresonal and professional relationships. Even when the city treated us like freaks, and we were asked not to spin, or banned from venues!.

We flow, because somebody else made it possible to spin out in public in the first place. I remember when the Bottleneeck and Liberty Hall started banning hula hoops because we all were beginners and back then hoops would go flying hitting people, taking out eyes left and right. It wasn’t a good look, and I avoided it for YEARS. Until Ina Moon finally forced a hula hoop into my hand and said “you will master this”. That’s when I started taking it seriously.

Let’s go WAY back

Electric Park is one of the most fascinating—and influential—pieces of Kansas City history. Long before Worlds of Fun, there was Electric Park: a dazzling amusement park covered in thousands of electric lights that helped define entertainment in the city and later inspired a young Walt Disney. 

The First Electric Park (1899–1906)

The story begins with the Heim brothers, owners of the massive Heim Brewery in Kansas City’s East Bottoms. To attract people to their brewery and streetcar line, they built an amusement park adjacent to the brewery. Visitors could ride the trolley to the park, enjoy attractions, and even drink beer piped directly from the brewery. It quickly became one of the nation’s earliest successful amusement parks.  The park featured rides, gardens, fountains, theaters, and one of its most famous attractions, the Mystic Chute water ride. Electric lighting was still a novelty at the time, and the illuminated park became a regional sensation. 

In 1907 the Heim brothers opened a much larger Electric Park at 46th Street and The Paseo. The new park covered nearly 30 acres and was served by multiple streetcar lines. Opening day attracted an astonishing 53,000 visitors. 

The new park featured:

• Roller Coasters
• Swimming beaches and water slides
• Vaudeville acts
• Dance halls
• Concerts
• Boat rides
• Gardens designed by famed landscape architect George Kessler
• An alligator farm
• Massive illuminated fountains and promenades
• Most famously, the park glowed with approximately 100,000 electric light bulbs, earning it the nickname “Kansas City’s Coney Island.” (By 1911 it was drawing around one million visitors annually.)

When Prohibition arrived nationally in 1920 through the 18th Amendment, the Heim Brewery lost its primary source of revenue. The brewery attempted to survive by producing near beer and other products, but it was never as profitable. This weakened the financial foundation that had helped support Electric Park and other brewery-related enterprises.

That said, Prohibition did not directly close Electric Park. The larger and more famous Electric Park at 46th and The Paseo continued operating throughout the early Prohibition years. The final blow came in May 1925, when a massive fire destroyed much of the park. Faced with rebuilding costs, a changing entertainment landscape, increasing automobile travel, and the financial challenges that had accumulated during the Prohibition era, the owners chose not to rebuild.  Some think that the fire was started intentionally to get the insurance money. 

The Walt Disney Connection

One reason Electric Park remains so important is its influence on Walt Disney.  Before he became one of the most famous entertainment pioneers in the world, Walt Disney spent several formative years in Kansas City. Disney moved to Kansas City as a child in 1911 and visited Electric Park frequently. Years later he cited its beauty, cleanliness, landscaping, fireworks, train, and immersive atmosphere as major inspirations for Disneyland. Many historians consider Electric Park one of the conceptual ancestors of modern theme parks. 

From 1921–1923, Disney operated the Laugh-O-Gram Studio out of a 31st and Troost Building, where he experimented with animation, created short fairy-tale cartoons, and worked alongside future animation legends such as Ub Iwerks. Although the studio eventually went bankrupt, Disney developed many of the storytelling and animation techniques that would later shape the Disney empire. Kansas City is also closely tied to Disney lore because he later said that a tame mouse at his Laugh-O-Gram office helped inspire the character who became Mickey Mouse. Today, the historic Laugh-O-Gram building is being restored as a museum and creative center celebrating Disney’s Kansas City roots.

Pre “Flow“

Before there were curated Instagram flow retreats and sponsored LED props, Kansas City already had an underground movement culture. The roots stretched through:

• City Market Performance artists
• Renaissance Festival camps
• African drum traditions
• Belly dance circles
• Punk houses (Lawrence, KS, Outhouse!)
• Industrial performance art
• Burning Man culture
• Circus communities

City Market Street Performers

Kansas City’s tradition of public performance can be traced back to its historic streetcar era, when the River Market served as the city’s original commercial and cultural center. The first streetcar line began in City Market in 1870, connecting downtown to surrounding neighborhoods and helping shape the city’s growth. In the decades that followed, the River Market evolved from a transportation hub into a gathering place for musicians, festivals, street performers, and public celebrations. The modern revival of public performance accelerated with downtown revitalization efforts in the 2000s and the launch of the free KC Streetcar in 2016, which reconnected the River Market, Downtown, and Crossroads districts. Programs like Art in the Loop expanded this vision by transforming streetcar stops, parks, and public spaces into stages for poets, dancers, musicians, and multidisciplinary performance artists. Today, the KC Streetcar corridor functions as a moving arts district where civic space, public transit, and creative expression converge, continuing a tradition that began more than 150 years ago.

The modern flow arts movement in America emerged from a unique convergence of juggling culture, circus arts, martial arts, dance, rave culture, and festival communities during the late 1980s and 1990s. While many flow props have ancient roots—such as poi from the Māori people of New Zealand and staff spinning traditions found throughout Asia—the contemporary American flow arts scene began taking shape through juggling festivals, drum circles, and experimental performance communities. The movement accelerated dramatically through events such as Burning Man, regional burner gatherings, Rainbow Gatherings, and music festivals, where artists began blending object manipulation, dance, meditation, fire performance, and self-expression into a distinct art form. By the 2000s, hoop dance, poi spinning, staff manipulation, contact juggling, and fire arts had become staples of festival culture, supported by organizations such as Flow Arts Institute and a growing network of teachers, gatherings, and online communities.

3rd Degree Burn – Vesuvius Lit the Match

3rd Degree Burn formed in 2003 and was the first fire group in Kansas City that predated Vesuvius in 2005. They performed and practiced at a lot at the River Market and riverside spaces.  Getting the majority of gigs in the fetish community, they also performed at concert preparties, Indoor Football superbowl half time shows, Arenacross halftime shows in Kemper Arena, West Bottoms haunted houses, and more. 3rd Degree Burn was also the first fire group from Missouri to spin during the preburn at Burning Man 2004. As Agni Tara’s fire performing was rooted in primal drumming, and they soon connected to the 7 piece West African drumming group Djembe Kaan. In 2004, Agni Tara became the first Fire Goddess and served for 13 years at Interfuse, a regional burning man event in which Zay, Chase, Booser and a few other cats decided needed to happpen once they discovered the burer magic. (Thanks guys!).

In 2005 feeling creatively stunted, Agni Tara went on to form a new group of like minded members, Vesuvius Tribe consisted of 5 original members and 2 safeties, Over the course of 5 years, 40+ performers and safeties have joined the tribe and contributed to paving the pathway for fire arts in Kansas City. alented beginning blended choreography, theatrical storytelling, ritual aesthetics, drumming culture, and raw spectacle at a time when most people had never seen organized fire arts outside of Renaissance Festivals or underground gatherings.

By 2006 and 2007, Vesuvius was producing large*scale public performances across the region including a fullu choreographed 30-minute Alice in Wonderland fire show inside Union Station for Priest of Pallas 2006 complete with a flaming tea party. Quixotic just forming opened the show and Vesuvius Tribe performing alongside Lucent Dossier closed out the evening.

Performing at local art events like Chalk and Walk, Artopia, Fringe Fest 2005, EDM, and Burning Man events, they eventually introduced the city and held the reins to Waterfire performances. Vesuvius became a bridge between underground fire circles and multidisciplinary performance art, helping lay the groundwork for the KC flow arts, busker, and performance communities that followed. 2007 Vesuvius Tribe was performing LED and fire on stage for String Cheese at Big Summer Classic at Camp Zoe in 2007. The connection made at this event led to moving into more LED and busker events. Being one of the first groups to perform at Rothbury Music Festival, which later changed its name to Electric Forrest, meant they had to get creative since no fire was allowed in the forest. They came up with 7 non-fire different acts. Being called back the following year, the El-Wire stick figures running rampant at midnight to 2:00 am was a hot ticket! Rothbury was their biggest paid gig at $10,000, but split between 20+ performers, gas, and costumes. What they really gained was experience and a whole lot of fun.

They also performed with Quixotic at Priests of Pallas 2006. It was their first year and Quixotic opened with a peaceful contemporary dance. They did Alice and Wonderland with fire, and Lucent Dossier closed the night with an epic perormance.  After that, Quixotic got some corporate money and basically started emulating Lucent Dossier shows, which took off.  They all performed at the Beaumont Club on Funksgiving with the VibeTribe in 2015,  and when an inexpireneced Q fire performer set the stage on fire, Vesuvius had to extinguish the flame because they had no safety equipment. The irony is palpable. 

Vesuvius Lit the Match

If you want to understand modern Kansas City fire culture, you can turn next to Vesuvius.  Not because they were the only ones spinning fire—but because they helped turn scattered curiosity into an organized community.  They performed at Ren Fest, underground gatherings, Camp Gaea ritual shows, and alternative arts events when fire performance still scared the hell out of most people.  There were no safe, polished community spaces then. There were parking lots.  Vacant spaces. Word-of-mouth gatherings. Sketchy fuel cans.  And trust.  You got to learn when you showed up because elders shared knowledge directly.

KC Drum Tribe and Affiliates

According to aerialist and educator Rachel McMeachin, elements of Kansas City’s modern flow arts community can be traced back to the late 1990s. After producing a performance by the industrial performance group Crash Worship in 1996 and later touring with the group, McMeachin began experimenting with poi and fire props around 1997. During this period, artists and performers regularly gathered at a warehouse called Infinite Sun near 18th and Oak for drum circles, dance parties, and fire spinning. These gatherings served as an early precursor to the flow jams and community practice sessions that would later become common throughout the region.

The scene intersected with Kansas City’s experimental arts community. Groups such as Seemen, an offshoot of Survival Research Laboratories, brought interactive kinetic fire sculptures to local warehouse events. Another collective, the B-Team, combined glass art and performance by pouring molten glass onto the ground while performers tap danced across its surface. These collaborations brought together musicians, visual artists, fire performers, dancers, and experimental theater practitioners, contributing to a growing culture of interdisciplinary performance in Kansas City during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

A decade later, Rachel McMeachin founded Voler – Thieves of Flight, which became Kansas City’s first dedicated aerial arts studio. Established in 2007, Voler introduced aerial silks, lyra, trapeze, acroyoga, and circus arts training to the region. The organization expanded into both a performance ensemble and training academy, helping develop aerialists, circus artists, dancers, and flow performers throughout the Midwest. Today, Voler continues to operate from its studio in Kansas City, Kansas, serving as both an educational center and professional performance company.

KC Drum Tribe grew out of a small drumming meetup in the early 2000s that originally met at Wild Oats in Overland Park. When organizer Kim Ousler stepped away, Skot “Skewb” Person took over, moved gatherings to Loose Park on Monday nights, and helped transform the circle into a thriving community centered around rhythm, dance, and participation. Loose Park KC Drum Tribe became Kansas City’s infrastructure for alternative culture. Every Monday night, that was where hoopers met drummers, fire spinners met poets, burners met musicians, travelers met organizers, and where weird kids realized they weren’t alone. What began with just a handful of drummers grew into gatherings of more than 100 people, attracting hoopers, dancers, fire performers, families, and festival-goers. Over time, KC Drum Tribe became one of the region’s most visible community drum circles, helping nurture the culture of flow arts, drum-and-dance gatherings, and participatory performance. For many artists, performers, and free spirits, Monday nights at Loose Park became a weekly ritual built around one simple idea: everyone belongs in the circle.  At one point in 2011 or 2012 Drum Tribe started meeting at the KC VibeTribe space. Have you heard about the VibeTribe?

Vibe Tribe KC Tried to Build an Actual Home

Well, Yosh’s Loft in the West Bottomes technically did it first and better, but around 2011, The VibeTribe KC emerged as something ambitious:  not just a jam group—but a multidisciplinary artist collective full of: Fire spinners, Hoopers, Poets, DJs, Belly dancers, MCs, Painters, Performance artists, Costume designers. 

MissConeption got a phone call asking “how many performance artists can you bring to Kansrockas?” which was a new arts festival at the Kansas Racetrack Speedway, with Eminem and GirlTalk headlining #swooon. She said “IDK, 60?” Then she promptly called 60 of her friends saying “hey, we got a gig! Let’s go!”   From that spun running the children’s activities at Harvest Festival at Mullberry Mountain in Arkansas, Wakarusa’s bluegrass cousin festival, performing at Wakarusa and running the fire circle for several years at that festival and other regional events. VibeTribe was even given an art studio for $1 a year for two years, thanks to the generosity of arts patron and real estate man Gregg Patereson, who also owned the Uptown Arts Bar.  He dumped TONS of money into the performance arts, paying VibeTribers to busk and hold signs on stilts to draw attention to a flourishing arts district in Midtown.  (We were definitely not making him any money.)  For a moment, at 5504 Troost, there was an actual attempt to build a permanent creative sanctuary, which offered free yoga, dance and flow workshops to the community. It was a ‘pay what you can’ dues system, where everyone involved was asked to contribute $25-50 a month to cover the overhead of water and electricity and keeping ice in the cooler on nights when we had events.  (In two years we operated, not ne person ever actually paid any dues, and MissConception was stuck with the utilities and liability.) Haters mean you’re doing something right, right?

Parralelling this movement and supporting the ethos, Emerald City was a housing initiative attempting to infuse artists into houses on Troost, helping them get foreclosed houses and starting a Friday night art walk.  All of it folded into the fabric of chaos when people started taking advance of the perks, breaking into the art studio, leaving he water running in the bathrooms all night to run up the water bill and sabbatogue the success of the organizers.  The VibeTribe was divided…. Half of the performers wanted to be professional, polished and paid well to ever leave the house.  The other half wanted to give it away for free for the love on the street in jeans and sloppy t-shirts and looked like abunch of clowns who had nothing better to do but jam out with their clams out.  Eventually, the organizer, MissConception, gave up and folded her cards, leaving town to escape the drama and criticism.

Spaces like the VibeTribe and Yosh’s Loft existed because people sacrificed for them.  Landlords forgave rent because they wanted to see art in the city. Volunteers cleaned bathrooms for the love.  People organized endless unpaid rehearsals for a shot at guest list opportunities because the promoters believed in the performing arts and knew we didn’t have any money, but we all wanted to support the music! 

Nobody ever had any money, and when we did, when it was spit, there wasn’t much to go around per pearson. Guests lists and exposure, that was the most valuable currency.  Oh, and we had a TON of fun. “One tribe, one vibe!”  But small towns have loose lips.

KC Fringe Changed the Question

Then KC Fringe arrived and changed everything. Because suddenly, flow artists had to answer: “What are you actually saying?”

Not: “How many tosses can you do?”
Not: “How cool is your dragon staff?”
But: “What is the meaning of this performance?”

That’s when flow arts in Kansas City began evolving into:

• Theater
• Spoken word
• Immersive art
• Interdisciplinary storytelling
• Political expression
• Ritual
• Movement poetry

Groups like Vibe Tribe and Vesuvius helped push that transition publicly. Flow arts stopped being merely a spectacle.  It became art.

Don’t forget about the Hoop Mammas!

The Hoop Mamas are one of the most influential hoop dance and flow arts businesses to emerge from Lawrence, Kansas, and they played a significant role in the growth of modern hoop culture throughout the Midwest and beyond. Founded in Lawrence in the late 2000s, Ali MacAuley head Hoop Mama started a handmade hula hoop company and quickly grew alongside the explosion of the flow arts movement that was happening at festivals such as Wakarusa, Burning Man, Electric Forest, and countless regional gatherings. The company became known for producing high-quality custom dance hoops and helping introduce thousands of people to hoop dance as both an art form and a movement practice. By their own account, they have sold more than 40,000 professional hula hoops since 2008. 

What made Hoop Mamas special wasn’t simply the hoops—it was the community. Lawrence in the late 2000s was a fertile breeding ground for creative culture. Hoop Mamas became part of that ecosystem, helping connect hoopers, teachers, and performers across the region. Many Midwest flow artists got their first professional hoop from Hoop Mamas or learned through workshops and community events connected to the company.  The hoop mammas taught me SO many skills, and made the best hula hoops (did you know it’s supposed to go up to your belly button for the right sized hoop?)

Their success coincided with the broader transformation of hooping from a children’s toy into a recognized performance art. During this era, hoop dance evolved into a discipline that combined dance, circus arts, meditation, fitness, and creative expression. Festivals like Wakarusa helped accelerate that growth, and Lawrence became one of several unexpected hubs where the culture flourished. Now circus troupes like The Last Carnival and Rekinection crew continue to set the stage for professional performance artistry and education in the midwest.

THEN, when MissConception moved back to Kansas City after graduating from KU in 2008, she met Ziggy, Luna Breeze, and Surka Noelle, who were the most fantastic hula hoop entertainers around! They blew minds wind open, and taught everyone so many tricks! We would practice at Crosstown Station jam night, or on the Nelson lawn regularly, somebody started a performance troupe called the Wonderful Travels of Mr 9. We were gifted this weird office building hippie arts commune above the Coffee Wonk on Main street, and it was a hipppie haven! Once that dissolved and Chumsey the Clown left town (long story), all of the best performers started moving to the coast, circa 2009. MissC started getting calls. “We need fire dancers for this event” or “Do you know anybody that can teach hula hoopping to the Girl Scout camp?” so she figured out how to master the flame and started organizing as well as teaching. As the VibeTribe began to take a more central role in fire and flow, the band DumpTruck Butterlips spun off in full affect, to tour nationaly before sponteneously combusting due to emotional ‘differences’. (Another blog… another day.) But man they sure made hooping look cool!

WaterFire and Busker Festival Made It Public

WaterFire KC was one of Kansas City’s most beloved public art events, blending fire, water, music, and community into a large-scale immersive experience along Brush Creek near the Country Club Plaza. WaterFire originated in Providence, Rhode Island, where artist Barnaby Evans created the first installation in 1994. The concept featured dozens of floating bonfires on urban waterways accompanied by music and performance, transforming public space into a communal art experience. The project became internationally known and was later adapted in several cities around the world. 

In 2007, Barnaby Evans brought a custom version of WaterFire to Kansas City on Brush Creek, creating a uniquely local interpretation of the project. The event quickly became a signature fall celebration featuring floating fire braziers, live music, dance, visual art, and community gathering along the creek. 

Over the years, WaterFire KC showcased a wide range of local artists, musicians, performers, and arts organizations while drawing thousands of visitors to experience Kansas City in a completely different way. We used to firedance on boats as they floated down brush creek lighting up the fires!  And we were paid.   It was an honor to participate, and all of the tribes came together for this epic city communion.

Like Art in the Loop, WaterFire wasn’t simply an event—it was an example of creative placemaking. It transformed public infrastructure into an artistic experience and encouraged people to see familiar spaces with fresh eyes.

For many artists, WaterFire represented:

• Public art outside traditional galleries
• Community participation
• Cross-disciplinary collaboration
• Temporary transformation of urban space
• Accessibility to audiences who may not typically attend arts events

When the Lawrence Busker Festival began in 2008, making Lawrence one of only a handful of U.S. cities to host a dedicated international-style busker festival. From the beginning, it distinguished itself by including poetry and spoken word performers alongside traditional buskers such as jugglers, comedians, magicians, and circus artists. 

The festival feels like a natural extension of Lawrence’s long-standing reputation as an arts, music, and counterculture hub. With its historic downtown, vibrant street life, University of Kansas influence, and history of supporting independent artists, Lawrence proved to be fertile ground for a festival built around creativity, spontaneity, and public participation. 

Each year downtown Lawrence transforms into a walkable wonderland of performance “pitches” where artists perform throughout the weekend. Audiences wander from show to show discovering:

• Acrobats
• Fire performers
• Jugglers
• Musicians
• Magicians
• Comedians
• Circus acts
• Poets and spoken-word artists

Recent festivals have included dedicated areas such as Poetry Alley, the Sorcerers Circle, musicians’ stages, and performances by internationally touring buskers alongside local Kansas artists.  One of the things that makes the Lawrence Busker Festival special is its relationship with Art Tougeau, Lawrence’s beloved human-powered art car parade. During Busker weekend, downtown often becomes a celebration of creativity on wheels, performance art, costumes, and community participation, creating an atmosphere that many attendees describe as part street fair, part circus, part arts festival, and part family reunion. 

Today, the Lawrence Busker Festival is very much associated with Richard Renner, performance artist and clown connoisseur who serves as its director and public face. Multiple festival announcements, press releases, and community profiles identify him as the festival organizer, director, creative force, and founder, and he truly is a dream to work with. He holds space for so any local and national artists, currating the most talented street perforers and sideshow variety for this special event.

Two of the biggest honrs of my life were performing as a mermaid spinning fire palms on a boat on Brush Creek and hosting Poetry Alley at this year’s Busker Festival. Oh, and I kinda sorta got to open for the Flaming Lips one year too :D.

Who is Richard Renner?

Richard is one of those rare people whose personal biography and the Busker Festival are deeply intertwined. He is:

• A longtime Lawrence-based performer.
• A professional clown, juggler, physical comedian, actor, and street performer.
• A graduate of the University of Kansas with a theater degree.
• A student of legendary performance teachers including Marcel Marceau, Yuri Belov, and Avner the Eccentric. 

Before creating the Busker Festival, he spent decades performing as a variety artist and touring entertainer. His background comes from the worlds of vaudeville, circus arts, physical comedy, mime, and street theater rather than traditional arts administration. 

According to the festival’s own history, in 2008 Renner found himself unexpectedly unemployed from a long-running performance job and began looking more seriously at street performing and busker culture. That same year, Lawrence launched what would become the Lawrence Busker Festival. 

In recent interviews, Renner has described the festival as a gift back to Lawrence and something that has become larger than himself. He has repeatedly emphasized the community-building aspect of the event and the way people return year after year to reconnect. 

One of the things that makes Lawrence unique is that it has always welcomed poets, spoken word artists, and interactive performers alongside jugglers, fire artists, magicians, and circus acts. That’s unusual in the busker world and likely one reason the festival became such a natural home for performance artists. It truly invites performers (and audiences) to put their money where their mouth is!  Busking pushed performers to work on creating that audience relationship, and taught performers something social media still cannot: how to earn attention honestly. And how to ASK for money.

The Burning Man Connection

While WaterFire predates many modern placemaking movements and is organized very differently than Burning Man, it shares several core ideas:

• Art as an experience rather than an object
• Temporary transformation of space
• Community gathering around spectacle
• Interdisciplinary collaboration
• The creation of wonder in unexpected places

The difference is that Burning Man creates a temporary city in the desert, while WaterFire transforms an existing city for an evening. Both ask a similar question:

What happens when art becomes part of the environment rather than something you merely observe?

Here’s the Hard Truth

Every arts community eventually faces the same danger: Amnesia.

Young artists arrive and assume the scene has always existed exactly as they found it. They mistake inheritance for invention. And then they begin treating elders as irrelevant the moment those elders stop looking fashionable. But the reason you have:

• Safe jams
• Public events
• Paid gigs
• Circus schools
• Flow festivals
• Collaborative venues
• & audiences willing to watch fire at all

…is because earlier generations normalized it through decades of unpaid labor and risk.

Respecting elders does not mean blind obedience. It means understanding: you are standing on architecture you did not build.

Know Your Place

“Knowing your place” does not mean: “Stay small. It means: understand your relationship to the past. Learn who came before you.

Keep asking questions (these are questions I should have asked 20 years ago when I started spinning fire and herding cats!)

Thank organizers. Volunteer to support the people who have been doing this longer than you have been alive.

Teach beginners who want to learn. Don’t be “too cool”. Run safety. Pick up trash. Credit your teachers. Stay honest.

Learn the history of the spaces you perform in. Support older artists before they disappear quietly.

Because one day you will wake up and realize: you became the elder. And the scene will only survive if someone younger chooses to remember you, too.

The Fire Is Older Than All Of Us

Kansas City flow arts was never just about spinning props. It was always about: community, ritual, improvisation, music, movement, street culture, radical creativity, and the temporary construction of belonging.

The props change. The technology evolves. The platforms rearrange.  But the fire itself is older than all of us.  And if you are lucky enough to carry that torch for a while, the least you can do is learn whose hands held it before yours while you pass the tourch safely.

(Don’t even get me starated on the Cowtown Ballroom music scene!)

Burn bright friends (and foes),

MissContradiction

(If you have a peice of history that is missing or you would like to add, email sara.serendip@gmail.com)

AI Is Not the Enemy. But Your Closed Mind Might Be

Unpopular opinion? Every generation has a boogeyman.

And now?  Artificial Intelligence has become the newest punching bag. How convenient? 

What fascinates me isn’t that people are skeptical. Skepticism is healthy. What fascinates me is how many people have already decided AI is evil without ever taking the time to understand it.  Lord, is our species in trouble!  

I would be genuinely curious to know how many of the loudest AI critics watch football, drive cars, fly on airplanes, scroll social media, stream movies, play video games, or rely on GPS to get them everywhere they go.  Everything we do has an impact on the world.

Everything.

Yet somehow, AI has become the scapegoat because it is much easier than taking the time to understand the value.

The irony is that most of us have been using forms of artificial intelligence for decades. GPS navigation, recommendation algorithms, voice assistants, predictive text, fraud detection, search engines—we’ve been quietly benefiting from AI long before ChatGPT arrived at the party.

The difference now is that the technology has become visible.  And visibility makes people uncomfortable.

AI Didn’t Make Me Less Creative

It Made Me More Creative.

I’m an artist! A poet. A producer. An educator. A performer.

And AI has not replaced any of those things. It has amplified them.

The songs I’ve created with AI collaboration have received some of the strongest feedback of my creative life. I made a birthday anthem for my best friend Stacy that made us both cry multiple times.

The educational programs I’ve developed with AI assistance are more polished than I ever could have imagined. I’m talking about personalized trivia games, Torah yoga, Jewish Jenga, and so much more!

No, I’m not “stealing other people’s art”! I am putting my own photography and logo and branded imagery in, letting it work it’s AI mash up magic, and coming out with more fantastic fliers and PR material than I ever dreamed of. Would I have paid another graphic desiger to do any of this? NO! I would have done it myself, and it would have looked half assed, because I’m not getting paid for most of the art I produce anyway.

Projects I have had sitting in my parking lot for 10 years are finally getting handeled and out the door. (Check out this children’s book I wrote, based on a true story about my vegetarian grandmother getting caught eating lambchops, that I never thought I’d be able to get to!

The grants, lesson plans, workshop outlines, marketing materials, event concepts, and research projects I create are more organized and comprehensive than ever before.

True story: One grant I applied for was turned down, and when I asked for feedback as to why I did not receive the funding, I was told that my application was SO polished, SO professional, and SO good, that it was lightyears ahead of everyone else who submitted, and they did not think that I was a real person who had applied. (First world problems!). I’ll call it a win, and a learning curve.

The emails I have sent to parents and target audiences have received “wow factor” feedback, with people gushing to ask “how did you write that?” and telling me “well done!”.   For example, one of our students wasn’t following the dress code, which was proving to be ‘distracting’ in a professional school environment. After multiple attempts to call the student in, it was clear I needed to send an email to the parents and get clear on our policy. I spent a bunch of time researching how other faith-based organizations word this delicate predicament, again and again only to find useless verbiage stating “it is a case-by-case scenario”, and that it’s” up to each community to determine the best guidelines to uphold”. Finally I turned to AI to “write me an email to middle school parents about proper dress code for a reform synagouge” and I get more compliments on my classy email about classroom etiquette. The middle schoolers still need cat herding, but at least it is clear on our end what is expected. 

Not because the machine did the work. Because I did. Yes, the machine helped.  (The robots can be your friends, too!). But my brain was still involved. You can’t check out. This distinction matters.

A paintbrush doesn’t make someone a great painter.
A camera doesn’t make someone a photographer.
A typewriter doesn’t make someone a published writer.

And ChatGPT doesn’t make someone more creative.

Creativity still comes from people.
Ideas still come from people.
Vision still comes from within.
The soul is still human.

So, when you hear that something is affiliated with AI, do you automatically stop listening and discredit the source?  If so, you might be missing the point.

The Real Problem Isn’t AI

It’s Lazy Humans.

I hear people say: “AI is producing garbage,” and sometimes that’s true, but that is what humans do!  Garbage in, garbage out. The only reason there IS garbage within AI is because a HUMAM put it there.

If you feed AI thoughtless prompts, you’ll get thoughtless results. If you don’t fact-check, edit, revise, question, or contribute your own intelligence, you’ll create mediocre work.

The problem isn’t artificial intelligence. The problem is people outsourcing their intelligence.

I use AI every day.  And I spend just as much time correcting it, refining it, challenging it, and collaborating with it as I do accepting its suggestions.

AI is not an oracle.  It’s not a replacement for critical thinking.  It’s not a doctor, and it’s not your therapist. It’s a brainstorming partner.  A research assistant. A creative collaborator.  It can facilitate a conversation with your doctor to ensure that you are getting proper medical answers and attention that you deserve. It can help you book flights and find the best pricing with the most direct route, cutting out all the bullshit (no advertisements in AI researching!)

It is a mirror that often reflects the quality of what you bring to it. So take a look at that reflection folks, and if you don’t like what you see, then maybe it’s time to get back to the gym.

“OY! It’s Taking Our Jobs”

So let’s talk about that elephant in the room.

People often say, “AI is taking our jobs.”  Quite the contrary, actually.  (You were going to lose your job you didn’t want to work anyway!)

What’s happening is that people who understand how to use AI effectively are becoming more productive than people who refuse to learn it. That is who is taking your job. Someone who knows how to work with the robots.

The same thing happened with computers.
The internet.
Social media.
Digital design tools.

Technology changes the job market. That is nothing new.

The question isn’t whether AI has a purpose.  The question is whether we’re willing to learn how to use it responsibly.  Because the longer we refuse to engage with it, the harder it will become to catch up. And you didn’t miss the boat yet, there is still time for you, but you have to do. your homework, and not remain passively critical. You’re biting yourself in the ass.

The Ethics Still Matter

This is where the conversation gets interesting. Because I don’t believe every use of AI is ethical. Far from it.

We should be discussing:
Transparency.
Privacy.
Bias.
Misinformation.
Deepfakes.
Plagiarism.
Consent.
Environmental impact.

Those conversations are important. In my workshops and talks about using this new technology, I talk extensively about ethical AI use, especially when it comes to talking to our children about it (because just like with sex and drugs, if you DON’T teach them, they are going to learn about it somewhere. How much do you want to control that narrative?”

Fact-check everything.
Protect your private information.
Don’t use AI to cheat.
Don’t use AI to impersonate people.
Don’t use AI to spread misinformation.
Don’t use AI to replace your humanity.

Use it to enhance it. Technology reflects the values of the people using it. Always has. Always will.

What About Our Children?

As an educator, I believe one of the biggest mistakes we could make is pretending AI doesn’t exist. Many schools and organizations are trying to ban it. I can sure empathize and understand the instinct. Everyone is afraid of what they do not understand. But history suggests prohibition rarely teaches wisdom or has been effective. Instead, we should be teaching students:

How to verify information.
How to recognize bias.
How to write better prompts.
How to be HONEST.
How to think critically.
How to collaborate with technology without becoming dependent upon it.

The future belongs to people who can think for themselves. AI doesn’t change that. If anything, it makes thinking even more important.

Don’t Let it Replace Human Judgement!

One of my favorite examples of why AI should NOT replace human judgment happened when I asked it to create a meme of a Mushroom Minyan, which came after a lady came in from outside exclaiming “there was a mushroom minyan in the yard!” which was a group of ten mushrooms in the grass. By the time I went outside to take a picture of it, it had been destroyed, and I was not able to capture that imagry.

For those unfamiliar, a minyan in Judaism requires ten or more people gathered together for prayer. So I asked AI to confidently generate an adorable image of mushrooms gathered in community… except the image it created had only nine mushrooms. And I failed to count them. The entire joke depended on there being ten! (Come on, Sara!)

Another time, I used AI to help create a song for my students and was so excited about the result that I failed to fact-check it before presenting it to them. Within minutes, the kids started raising their hands and pointing out inaccuracies. Instead of pretending the technology was perfect, I turned it into a teachable moment. We discussed why AI gets things wrong, how important it is to verify information, and then we worked together to correct the lyrics. Ironically, the mistake became more valuable than if the song had been perfect in the first place.

AI isn’t failing when it makes mistakes—that’s expected. The failure happens when humans stop thinking critically and assume the machine is always right. The goal isn’t to let AI do our thinking for us. The goal is to become better thinkers because of how we engage with it.

Don’t even get me started on the humans that are intentionally feeding AI wrong infrormation to sabotage the results. I wish I had that kind of time on my hands!

A Tool for Human Flourishing

The greatest gift AI has given me isn’t productivity. It’s time. Time with family. Time with my dog. Time for self-care. Time for art. Time for ideas. Time for community. If a tool can save me hours of repetitive work and allow me to spend more energy on the people and projects I love, that feels less like a threat and more like an opportunity.

The real question isn’t: “What can AI do?” The better question is: “What can we do with the time, creativity, and possibilities it gives back to us?”

Let’s Have the Conversation

Right now there are two camps: those who If you’ve already decided AI is evil, this article probably won’t change your mind. That’s okay.

But if you’re curious…

If you’re open-minded…

If you’re interested in having a thoughtful conversation about creativity, education, ethics, productivity, and the future of human imagination… I’d love to visit your organization.

I offer engaging presentations and workshops for educators, artists, marketers, nonprofits, schools, and community organizations on how to use AI creatively, responsibly, ethically, and effectively.

No hype.
No fearmongering.
No techno-utopian nonsense.

Just an honest conversation about one of the most important tools of our generation.

The future is already here. The question is whether we’re willing to learn how to dance with it.

Rememeber: “The thinker hated the pen. The writer hated the brush.”

— MissContradiction

How do you feel about gefilte fish?

Printed in the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle on March 12, 2026

By: Sara Nicole Glass, Director of the Weiner Religious School


There is one kind that I bet all of you might actually like… A bold statement.

If you have ever walked through the synagogue parking lot, you may have spotted a grey fish on the back of a car with an unusual word in it. Yes, it’s a fish shape that is often associated with a Christian symbol — except this one proudly says “GEFILTE” in the middle. Yes, a gefilte fish car emblem, which ideally makes people smile. That’s right, I have not just one, but two Gefilte fish on my ride. Why? Yes, I have an agenda, and the intention is to make people who know giggle, and also maybe to allow those who don’t know to wonder.

Believe it or not, that little fish represents the very heart of who I believe we are as Jewish people, creating space for asking questions, while keeping our sense of humor.

It is a reminder that being Jewish can and should be joyful. Judaism is serious when it needs to be, but also can be playful, funny and full of cultural zest. I saw this particular silver gefilte fish emblem years ago at a store [It’s a Beautiful Day – 3th and Broadawy”in MidtownKansas City and had to have one. There has been one hanging on my car (almost) ever s) nce. Ironically, the only time it was stolen was when I was at a Shabbat dinner event last year. So of course, I found a new, slightly different version, after which I found the original one (which I could not locate anywhere for about six months), and frankly I liked the silver simpler one better, probably because while gefilte fish is uniquely part of our collective Jewish identity (or so it seams, around Passover), this little symbol also speaks to so many other people for what they need it to mean.

For me personally, it symbolizes the way we live: rooted in Jewish identity while at home in a multicultural world. While I was raised Jewish, my grandmother was Catholic, so I’ve always been exposed to different faiths, even though I identified as Jewish. I was taught that there are many different ways to identify, and that is okay. That silver fish has become a well-known symbol, but creating a Jewish twist on it, I’d like to think, is something quintessentially Jewish — acknowledging our neighbors’ traditions while joyfully contributing our own voice and humor. My gefilte fish isn’t mocking anyone; it’s simply joining the conversation with a bit of chutzpah.

Also, it highlights the idea that humor is part of our theology. Judaism adapts, evolves and meets us in our everyday lives — even in the parking lot at the grocery store. A silly little fish with the word “gefilte” inside has become a playful theological lesson: Judaism is alive and on the move!

I love that it serves as a conversation starter about Jewish identity. People ask: “Wait, does that say… gefilte?” Then we get to talk about Judaism — not the formal, textbook version, but the lived version filled with food, stories, music, culture, humor and community. In those small encounters, the gefilte fish becomes a tiny ambassador for joyful Jewish life.

I’d like to think I’m driving around, trailing many of the core values of Reform Judaism: joy, openness, cultural pride, pluralism and the belief that Jewish identity should be lived out loud and without fear. It’s Judaism that is confident but not exclusive, grounded but not rigid, proud and always welcoming. That’s what we teach our children, model for our teens and practice as a community.

So what does the gefilte fish on my car really mean? It means I believe in a Judaism that laughs, learns, evolves, welcomes and delights. It means Jewish identity is something we can carry proudly — whether on our hearts or on the back of a car. And it means that even cruising down I-435 can embody living a joyful, Jewish life.

Call it a mitzvah on wheels, but please, don’t steal my gefilte fish!

Send any fun Jewish humor that comes your way to sglass@beth-torah.org.

Meeting Ringo Starr: My Jew-Ish Journey

“We are in the business of relationships” Rabbi Paul Steinberg from Congregation Kol Shofar always told me.  And he’s not wrong. “I’ve been doing this my whole life,” I thought!  It all comes down to who you know… truly. 

Last week at my teen youth program when we were discussing famous Jewish and people of color, the students asked me who the most famous person I ever met was. Was it the time I (think) I almost dated Max Greenfield from The New Girl?  No…That may or may not have been a catfish. Was it the time I had lunch in New York with the legendary talk show host Phil Donahue? Nope. (He was super cranky! But at least he paid.) 

It was most definitely the time that I was fortunate enough to meet the iconic Beatle, Ringo Starr in Chicago in 2003. 

We were celebrating my father Norman’s 47th birthday with my stepmother Adina (who I introduced to my dad after my parents divorced) and my brothers Adam and Netanel.  Now nobody loves The Beatles more than Norman!  His new wife, Adina (I call her my other mother), has a brother who is a Rabbi in Israel and happened to be friends with Ringo’s manager who was also an Orthodox Jew. (Ari and the manager were friends in high school at a yeshiva.)  Adina reached out to the manager who said yes, we could meet Ringo before the concert, during the VIP meet-n-greet.  Adina asked him if there was anything that we could do to repay him, and he said “It would be great if you could bring me a kosher sandwich. I only eat Kosher food”. So we went to Ken’s Kosher Deli in Chicago. We were trying at the same time to surprise my father by meeting Ringo, so we had to hide the sandwich on the way to the concert and smuggle it into the show! Quite fun for a 17-year-old.  Norm sensed that there was a surprise in store, and he wrongly guessed that my grandparents were going to be meeting us there for the concert. Little did he know that it was actually Ringo who we were there to see. 

We were the last people in line with the radio ticket winners for the special meet-n-greet and we got to shake Ringo’s hand and take this photo with him.  Ringo didn’t say much, he mumbled something about the song The Beatles sing about Kansas City, and we asked him if he was going to play it, to which he replied “Maybe.” (He didn’t). 

But it didn’t matter. We met RINGO STARR! Thanks to a sandwich, and an old friend from college type of connection.

It wasn’t until many years later, reflecting on this event, coupled with so many other rich experiences that have happened to me over the years, that I fully realized the value of investing in relationships.  You never know what you invest in in the present and how it might later impact your future… what kind of job opportunities might raise your resume to the top of the stack because of who you kept up with from college, or who on your social media friend’s list might see a post of yours and offer up some brilliant information or resource, all because you thought to ask, and they cared enough to stay in touch and nurture that relationship. 

Many years later, I was working on my 3rd hip-hop album and I wanted to write a hip-hop song that my dad, one of my favorite people in the world, could relate to.   I wanted to show him how the beauty of poetry and words could be so powerful, and I thought about how much my father loves The Beatles. So I went and compiled all of The Beatles song titles I could find in a list and started editing them into a story.  What fell out was, to this date, probably the most proud piece of work I have ever channeled as an artist. I called it, “Let It Beatles”, and it’s a story composed almost entirely of Beatles song titles: 

These things happened in my life because of the meaningful relationships I have chosen to invest in. During the decade I previously worked at my current place of employment as a Communications Associate, I strived to form and maintain these kinds of relationships with our staff and community. I stepped in as needed, covering youth group programs and social justice initiatives that were not specifically part of my job, but needed to get done nonetheless.  Last year, when I was looking at returning to Kansas City from San Francisco, I like to believe that it was many of these previous relationships that helped me secure this director position in my current role.

Who knows who I might meet next!?

Check out “Let It Beatles” the poetic Tribute by Sara Nicole Glass Listen to the song here: http://bit.ly/LetItBeatles202

All of these stories are true, and I have been so blessed by so many incredible relationships.  (Now if somebody could let John Mayor know that there is a nice Jewish Girl in Kansas City who is still single and looking, that would be great, thanks 😉

Oh so sincerely,
MissConception

Dear San Francisco, {a love letter}

OoMy heart center, my muse. How is it that we have only been apart for a few weeks, and it feels like an eternity.  You will forever always be in my mind, body and soul.  

What I have learned from you!  And perhaps I taught you a thing or two as well along the way.  You reminded me of the importance of play and caucaphonous delight.  You brought me into the frabric of a history so rich, money was never an object (except for maybe housing rent).  You surrounded me with security, empowered me with confidence, and kept me protected from harm.  Your serendipiteous bubble gave me the freedom to explore no uncharted territory, from your many beaches, to the Red Woods safe in the South Bay Santa Cruz Mountains, from the Castro, to the East Bay Richmond, to the Inner Richmond in San Francisco (twice!), to the nostalgic and historic grounds of the lucious Presideo, I was all over you.  And you were there for it. You met me with 100% and fanned my flame. You told me “bring it on” and to “turn it up.”

My main lover. My muse. How could I leave you this way? It’s been a long road, and while half my heart may be in San Francisco forever, I had to haul ass back to the mid west on a different mission. I confess, I miss you more than expected.  You will forever be my favorite lover. My soulmate. My friend. Despite the time it takes to meet again. 

You were so kind to me, despite the hardships. My angels watched over me and saved me from total destruction. You inspired me in so many ways. Every event. Every art walk and concert. Every. Single. Fruit stand. Was absolutely. Next level. Mind blowing. You took it to the next level on the reg. Popping off was your MO. You set the tone for the rest of the country to follow suit 5-10 years behind your classy ass. How did I get so lucky to dedicate ten years of my life to basking in your beauty, soaking up your beached and sun rays… sleeping in on all the rainy dayz.  The natural air conditioning at 55 degrees and balmy every damn day, and even your mist is to be missed.  

Oh how I do miss your magic. Showing up to sold out shows and being ushered in because I looked important and was likely on the guest list or performing. “Here, you need a backstage wrist band”. Invited to after parties on rooftops I thought existed only in dreams. That bronze gate, your golden park, outside the lands with its bison and lakes stowed away, full of discovery and charm and museums outta this world. Ripe with mitochondrial historical networks embedded in the eco chamber that is also the loveable Haight Ashbery. The mission was always clear: to say yes to the sunset. Crossing a bridge meant I love you at $12 a pop and an hour of my time, it was worth it to laugh over a bottle of local alcohol free moonshine. Honey mommas united and free at lakes of merit superfluously. The stars ploughed right through my heart every night was a Friday of merit on the lake… and every morning a Monday, but still, the exhaustion was with the thrill.  Still I can feel you around me, my aura now, like a field of ghosts of lovers past in my psyche, bound in love. 

Until we meet again old friend, I will have you in my heart and mind forever in time.  Yes, while I may court Kansas City for a few years, flirting with New York or LA, like long lost star crossed lovers who never given a chance. Timing is everything. I will always cherish the ten years we had and keep those memories/lessons sacred, holy, and dear. 

I’m only a phone call or a train ride away. Don’t be a stranger, California! Call me. Come visit Kansas. You’re welcome – Anytime –

Truly tours,
Miss California Vine 

Rafiki my friend

I’ve seen some crazy things in my time here on earth, but never have I seen anything come and go so wildly as my beloved canine friend Rafiki, my friend, Raef, Ren, RafMeister 4000, RifRaf, Mr Rafickles, of the many names I gave him, it’s sad to say that now he may rest in peace.

Rafiki came into my life somewhat unexpectedly, and boy was he a wild-child. A friend of mine had gotten a chihuahua and I said to them, “Oh, I so want one”! and my friend took me seriously. She said that the momma was having another litter and that I could get one on the next go around. I told her I wanted to name my dog “Bageira” after the puma from Jungle Book, and she laughed.

Well, a few months later this friend called me up and said “hey, I’m bringing your dog in a few weeks.” “Oh, dear”, I thought. There weren’t exactly dogs allowed where I lived. But I figured I’d deal with that soon enough. Then about a week later my friend called and said “Hey, the dogs came early, so I’m bringing you Rafiki next week”. “Rafiki?” I thought. Oh, snap. Rafiki was the wise manderil from The Lion King and the name meant ‘my friend’ in Swahili. So mote it be.

A week later she showed up with this little pup and the rest was history. I fell in love immediately. When my landlord called the next day and said “We know you have a dog, get rid of it”, I was presented with a choice: to move or get give him away! But at work the next day, a friend told me I could register him as a service animal online, and that way my housing unit had to by law let me keep him. I looked in the process, had some therapists of mine write some letters saying why I needed a service animal as a dog, and voila, I was allowed to keep Rafiki at my current place of residence. The fun began.

From the start, this dog was not an easy animal… he was a full-time dog, requiring constant attention and stimulation. Luckily, I was allowed to bring him to work with me, and I worked from home quite a bit, during the Pandemic, so I had the time and energy to spend with him. It was hard work, but worth it. He truly was my soulmate. After about a year and a half of having this pup, I ended up landing a new job but that new place of business was not super keen on having dogs in the office. While I could have pressed the issue, I feared it made me look unstable and I didn’t want to start off a new job that way, so I turned to dog sitters and left him home more often. As time went on, it became easier to have Rafiki stay full-time with my friend, whom he adored, and I would take him on the weekends when my friend needed a sitter. While it pained me to be away from him so, it felt like the best move for the dog’s happiness.

As things can sometimes go, me and this friend ended up having a bit of a falling out, and I was told I wasn’t going to get my dog back or be able to see him again. I was pretty devastated. After trying to get the police to help me get him back and consulting with some lawyers, I decided to take matters into my own hands and to just show up at the residence of the person who had Rafiki, and I took him back. In what ended in a not very pretty battle, I ended up getting my dog back, and was ecstatic. I was no longer working at that same job, and was able to be with him even more, and it was truly a dream. I cherished this little pup. He truly saved my life during what were some very hard times. He was my baby.

So you can imagine the horror when on the solstice, December 20, 2023, a coyote that I had seen a few times in my neighborhood, came up to our front door and Rafiki ran out after him, thinking the coyote was a dog that he wanted to play. As I chased the two down the street, franticly screaming at Rafiki to stop, and come back, alas, they were too fast for me, and I watched the coyote grab Rafiki in its mouth and run off into the woods with him. It was truly, the most horrific thing I have ever gone through.

I was in shock for several days, and it made for quite a sad Christmas, New Year and Birthday season. I thought that I knew what grief was, but I really didn’t know the level of grief thought possible until this event. I still to this day, break down into tears almost every time I drive down my street. I cannot get that image out of my head, going over the incident over and over again in my head, obsessing about what I could have done differently, and maybe he’d still be alive.

While that dog had been trying to kill himself since the day I got him, eating whatever he could possibly fit in his mouth and running out into the road every chance he got. I still loved that little bugger, and I will always cherish the blessed time we got to spend together. He truly was my best friend and my baby.

When just the other night, someone made a donation to the nonprofit I know and love and volunteer for in the name of Rafiki and my solid work in healing and in doing my art, tears came to my eyes. Though he may no longer be in this earth, he most definitely lives on in spirit.

Thank you sweet Rafiki for coming into my life; for making my life better and for always being so sweet to me. Thank you for teaching me to stop and smell the flowers, and how to play with a ball. Thank you for stealing my heart and making it whole again.

You will forever be missed and be my best friend, Rafiki. My sweetheart.

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Love you always,

MissConception

Of A Revolution: Black Rock City

The path that led me to Burning Man is not traditional… but it did start with a Black Rock.  Let me tell you a story: 

You see, I was always a jam band girl from the start, not intentionally, but by fortunate accident.  In high school, my friends convinced me to go to a John Mayer concert (who I’m still in love with by the way… after those Dead and Co shows, hash tag marry me John Mayer!). So we were there are the Uptown Theater, Kansas City in 2003 mostly to see the opening band, OAR, (Of A Revolution), and I that’s when I promptly fell in love with the sweet sultry chords of chaos.  Their 17-minute-long Crazy Game of Poker song won me over instnatly, and from there I was off to the dance floor races.  I tripped on to bigger better jam bands, including the String Cheese Incident, The Grateful Dead (I know, I know), and eventually I was turned on to the best band out there in the world, PHISH.  (DUH!)  Us Phish lovers are sort of like a cult, where once you go Phish, you can’t help but tell everybody how amazing they are… kind of like vegans, but with style.  Oh, but I digress…

Anywho, it was this jam band festival scene that I rocked for over a decade, that took me to places and back-stages I never could have imagined.  It was THIS scene that led me to Burning Man, at the pressings of my Wakarusa festival director (and we know, Burning Man isn’t a festival if you ask any Burner, but it’s a sure hard left from one, and I was all in.)  

Burning Man resides in the middle of the Nevada Black Rock Desert, and while it’s a pain in the ass to get to, it’s surely one of the mightiest places on earth.  I keep going back, even when I don’t want to. I love that black rock.

Come to discover, my favorite jam band from my past, OAR, coincidentally has a little song called Black Rock.

“Well the black rock, is where I spend my time, writing a mystery and writing a rhyme…. oh the black rock”

Now this song, is actually one of my LEAST favorite songs that OAR has in their catalog, but when I discovered the song, I messaged the band and asked if it had any connection to our beloved Burning Man Black Rock City?  They actually responded: “No”.  Oh well… long shot.  But still, serendipitous, nonetheless. 

As an artist myself, I am a true lover of the mash-up… any good mash-up, making two pieces of art or music even more prolific with a good blend.  As a poet and writer, my trademark is taking the song titles of famous bands or artists, and mashing their own lyrics up into a new but familiar story of glory.  I have written one for Phish, one for the Beatles, one for The Dead, one for Bob Marley, and of course one for OAR:

“Hey girls and boys,
if you only knew,
about Mr Brown and
his conquering fools.
It was a crazy game of poker
that started the craze,
to a destination
on top of the cage.

Whose chariot we follow
to a black rock of soul
from the city on down
about an hour ago…
Believe in this music,
it’s the only solution,
for this is the beginning
of a revolution”. 

-My Original OAR Tribute Poem

I even put together a poker bulresque performance to the Crazy Game of Poker, but you’d have to subscribe to my onlyfans to get that insider info 😉

Another favorite tribute I have is to all pop music that I wrote by looking at my iTunes years ago and pulling out all the band names that had double entendres.  For example:

“Mammas and poppas of this three-dog night, it’s almost early November and my third eye has gone blind…”  You can listen to the song on spotify: https://spotify.link/hxqM0HeujCb

Well, many years ago, I was fortunate enough to meet OAR and actually got to spit them my OAR poem and Rock ’n Roll tribute.  How badass right?!

A little while after that, I heard a new OAR song, that felt like my concept, them mashing up all these bands and song titles into a song they call “Favorite Song”. 

Hmmmm…. I guess I’m flattered! Maybe it was my influence, maybe it was the times… who know? 

You never know where this great mash-up world is going to take you.  

Now, when someone asks “how do I know what my burner name is” I tell them to start with their AOL screen name they used when they were younger. That can tell you a lot about a person. Me? My first handle was ‘HeyGirl16″. My favorite OAR song is still “Hey Girl”

This girl has come a long way since her OAR fan girl days, but the music still speaks to me, and has had so much influence over my own artistry today! Thank you OAR, Black Rock City, and to all of those who have supported my art and music over the years.

Coming out soon, I am releasing a parody album (think Weird Al) called Sarenade!  Stay tuned for the drop and I can’t wait to see you on that black rock! ❤ 

Love,
HeyGirl16

The Art of the Mask – Some Perspective

Many of you may wonder why I or several people still continue to wear a mask, so I wanted to offer my perspective about the Art of the Mask, and why I continue to sport the mask, even though the pandemic seems to be behind us. 

Wearing a mask was something that originally, I despised and resented, though after it being culturally suggested I wear it at my previous job, I came to appreciate some of the different aspects, and now it is something I often prefer when I’m in public.  First of all, working in events, here at the JCCSF and also attending many social events in my spare time, I do find that after having to wear it for several years and having actually gotten COVID now at least four times, my immune system is not what it used to be.  I feel very vulnerable in getting sick myself, but working many events I also feel a lot of guilt around possibly spreading germs to other people, especially older folks and people with a high risk.  Wearing the mask protects me to an extent, but also protects others I come in contact with who may be even more at risk than myself, and I could never live with the fact of being responsible for spreading anything to others, especially my elders.  I definitely take note when anybody else in the room is wearing a mask, I find it the respectful thing personally to do, reading the room, but I always make it clear that nobody else should feel obligated to do the same.  It’s a personal choice I just happen to find comfort in, but to each their own!

I also find that wearing the mask usually destroys my makeup, so once I put it on once during the day, it’s not optimal when my best face isn’t on, and then I risk not looking professional, and that’s never a good call!  So the mask it is. 

Lastly, I am a big fan of essential oils, and I discovered a wonderful trick in putting a few drops of lavender, eucalyptus, or my favorite oil nobody has ever heard of “Ravansara” in my mask, so that not only does it smell nice, but it literally is cleaning the air I breathe. It just feels good, while not bothering other people who are sensitive to smells and would rather not get a whiff.  I’m happy to show anyone my method (and let you smell the Ravansara oil, which I have a great source on) who might be interested.

I hope this provides some clarity and perspective into why sometimes I, and possibly others, choose to wear it or not wear it.  Sometimes I just didn’t get around to doing my makeup.  Sometimes I might not be feeling 100%, or I notice others are not feeling well and I am protecting myself, let alone them.  There are lots of reasons, and I can assure you, it’s not always out of fear.

Bottom line is you do you and what makes you feel comfortable, always.  Feel free to ask me questions anytime!

Much love,

MissConception

Eventation Invocation

Why do I work in events?

My first event I ever planned was my Bat Mitzvah.  Perhaps I should backtrack a bit.  See I was raised in a gift shop at 95th and Nall in Overland Park, Kansas, named “Carol’s Cards and Gifts”, which my grandparents owned, and that was my daycare jumping-off point from day one – It was obvious. I was born and bread to be an event planner and comunity builder.  Grandma Carol taught me how to set, size, style, and sell, and wrap gifts for the customers, amongst other things… she molded me.  Eventually, she helped me plan my Bat Mitzvah party at age 13, and oh what a mitzvah it was!  I went with a music theme of course, with CD/s as the invitation and music note balloons, at the downtown Windsteads 50’s diner we picked the theme and ran with it, and HELLLLLLL YEAH.  That was a lot of fun. Then what?

The second event I took on was a few years later, my sophomore year of high school in my Jewish youth group when I was president of my Shoshana BBG Chapter and we had a mission to throw our annual sweetheart dance.  Nobody else wanted to take the lead, so I became president and planned the dance with earnest.  “I know how to throw a party, that’s easy” I thought. I deemed it: “Oooh baby, do you know what that’s worth? Oooh heaven is a place on earth!”. Invitations were ordered, the scene was set, got the venue, the menu, the DJ, and bam, did we have a ball that fall!

In 2004, I graduated high school and had my family drop me off at a music festival after my KU Orientation wrapped up, because I had bought a ticket since a band I loved (OAR- Of A Revolution) was on the lineup. I knew I was supposed to be there.  I didn’t exactly know what a music festival was at the time, but my parents realized quite quickly that they were essentially dropping their young daughter off at Woodstock and she might not ever fully come back.  (Thanks, Mom!)  Wakarusa (named after a river in Kansas that translates to ‘ass-deep’) certainly changed my life, or opened it right up at least, and I made a commitment that I’d go to every Wakarusa every year, and eventually, be a part of it, which I did.  I worked my way up at that festival, the second year hanging fliers to promote, then running their street team, moving on as an artist check-in agent, emceeing a side stage, performing a music set, and eventually running the whole fire dancing performance artist program in my last years.  Ass-deep we were in that magic for 13 years. It was a calling.  And I lived for it.  Long live Wakarusa. Thank you for shaping me. 

Now, it was at the 2nd Wakarusa where I had a VERY profound LSD trip, where this New Orleans band Galactic essentially ‘told me’ telepathically that I needed to become a rapper. “WHAT!? What did that even mean?” I questioned my reality as I freestyled in my head to their music and the whole tent would pop off … then drop off when I stopped until I freaked out and decided I was not prepared to control this whole shit-show when I needed to slow my roll and go sit and my tent and have a good long think.   I woke up after that weekend even more enthused and decided to start taking this ‘shit’ seriously because music and hip-hop were not just a game or something to be taken lightly. Rather, it was a way of life, and so it was to be my lot that I had to learn how to own, on my own.  What business did a white Jewish girl from Kansas have in the rap game anywho? I was about to find out and determined to prove ‘em all wrong. Or at least prove it to myself. My tongue was a gift. Mastering the craft of an emcee and poet was not to be never an easy path, but I was born for controversy, so  I embraced it.  MissConception never did things the easy way, hence the name. I am both sides of the coin.  My mission was to defy stereotypes.    

Moving through college, I ended up hosting a series of poetry slurrrrs (I refused to call it a SLAM because art should not be monetized or made into a competition; I preferred to slur my words) at the Jazzhaus of Lawrence, Kansas whilst getting a journalism degree in strategic communications from KU, nonetheless.  I took poetry courses to avoid British Literature finals, which led me to quite a platform of cacophonous collaboration! I loved hosting poetry night on the 1st Wednesday of the month where we would feature various poets, artists, musicians, and whatnot sometimes back-lined by a bass player or drummer or DJ.  Monday was jam night and musicians would regularly ask me to come up and ‘read a poem, we don’t care what you say, just spray some words, say something’ which it really pushed my creative edge.  “You, want to hear my voice?” I thought. This voice, that I was told since a little girl to “be quiet, to hush, shhhhhhh, you’re too loud”, I heard reverberating in my subconscious.  But yes, these people wanted to know what I had to say!  So I said some things.  And I thank you Jazzhaus to this day for popping that wordsmith cherry of mine.  Because it turns out, I had a lot on my mind. 

Towards the end of my Lawrence stint, in 2007, I had just graduated and I remember getting a call from my friend who was dating the writer Daniel Pinchbeck at the time, asking if I knew of a venue and could put together a showcase on psychedelics and the 2012 paradigm shift movement that was happening…. I did, and we did so.  It was fucking  BRILLIANT!  And edgy!  Talks of using psychedelics to coerce paradigm shifts of great magnitude filled the air and though my parents were pretty confused at this point, it all made sense to me.  We were aligned and set to thrive on this new knowledge quest.  I threw together the lineup, the music, the speakers, the vendors, and the ambiance at the newly opened Pachamamas establishment with the help of a dear friend, John Gallup Circada Rhythm, and we made some serious magic manifest. On events, I was hooked! 

I must mention, it was during these years that another friend kept putting a hula hoop in my hand insisting that I MUST learn dem tricks and that hula hooping was the future!  I resisted endlessly because I thought the hoopers just looked slooppy and silly, but a few more trips down some seriously syndicating rabbit holes and I too became one with the hoop. I resisted for so long, until it finally unlocked something in me I never knew possible.  Funnily enough, it took learning how to hula hoop which eventually gave me enough courage to become an emcee and step up believing in myself on the mic.  If I could look stupid spinning hoops around doing nothing, surely I could unleash what I was born to do: SING. 

Moving back to Kansas City in 2008 attempting to hold down a “real job” on the side I started a little local poetry open mic night called Poetic Underground at the Uptown Arts Bar. Each Wednesday would be a different host to share the burden of hosting and we all took turns making sure the good spoken word art form had room to grow. After dark, I would attend these super beatnik midnight poetry candlelight readings occasionally that felt like you were in a dream and the collective consciousness of creativity was purveying alive and kicking.  

It was 2011 when I get a nod from my friends everybody’s favorite hippie store It’s a Beautiful Day, who said their guy John Bukaty was looking for performance artists for a new festival called Kanrocksas.  “How many people can you bring, Sara?”   We brought 60 dancers, painters, movers, shakers, and performance artists, and the Vibe Tribe of Kansas City was born!

Then, in 2012, our dreams and prayers came true, when we were so heavily focused on asking the universe for a space to commune to call our own, and a bus to travel around, and BOTH of those things were gifted to us, for FREE!  You cannot imagine the responsibility that comes with managing even FREE hippie events.  It was our golden hour…. and in hindsight, we could have done so much more. But for one year the VibeTribeKC thrived at 5504 Troost Street, KCMO, where we hosted almost entirely free yoga and dance classes, performance arts and musical/theatrical events, and then some.  Drag queens on stilts spinning ribbons? You got it. We had it.  It was a vibe.  But you had to be there.  And it definitely wasn’t sustainable. 

I was asked to produce not one, but two Fringe Festival Shows, with encouragement, thank you Cheryl Kimmi, and the KC Fringe team.  I put together a full stage show and even opened for the Flaming Lips once outside of Lawrence’s downtown theater, which was an epic notch on my belt!   My DJ Q used to spin beats on stilts with two tables stacked on top of each other, just to pack a punch.  Two rules of show business I’ve always said: 1. Shock Value. 2. Always leave them wanting more.  We owned that shit. 

I quit my job twice to go to Burning Man, first in 2013, and then again in 2015 when I assured the synagogue I worked for that “I’m not coming back!” and finally meant it.  I landed at a nudist resort and lived in a yurt selling high-end granola on the side to make ends meet, no joke.  You wouldn’t believe me if I told you…. Throwing events at the Lupin Lodge outside on those magical grounds has truly been one of the highlights of my life, and for that community, I am so grateful.

The bay has embraced me so, and while nothing tugs at the hearts strings quite like home, I am so grateful for all of the confidence and permission California granted me.  Coming from the Midwest, I felt like everything I did was a little too loud.  In California, all I hear is “Turn it up”. People are hungry for more innovation and ingenuity than ever before. California is definitely pushing the envelope. 

Now you wouldn’t think it, but it took a global health pandemic to turn this rockstar extravert into an extremely particular introvert.  My patience has dwindled over the years.  I don’t have time for much bullshit anymore.  I like to get right down to brass tax if I’m going to cross a bridge or dedicate any of my rare free time to something. I currently work as the Event Rentals Manager at the JCCSF and am loving the vibe here, being able to use this wealth of event knowledge I have accumulated over the years to try and help sort out people’s needs and wants for event space in the bay area. It is truly an honor to serve the various communities I get to interact with, from the Jewish folks to the Drag Queens, there is a space for you, and we’re inclusive OKAY! How can you not be?

Volunteering on the Burning Man Community Events Team has been a wonderful honor, helping procure Decompression, Precompresion, Burnal Equinox, and more.  Bringing people together in the name of art and creativity is definitely my passion.  Nothing pleases me more than getting everybody I love together in one room and watching them fall madly in love with each other.  Magic in event work is found in synergy, and I am so blessed to be surrounded by so many talented and dedicated individuals who come together to create new experiences that keep our hearts and minds active and fresh. 

So what’s next? Well, if you’re planning an event and want to take it to the next level, give me a call.  We’re just getting started!

And then some,

MissConnection