Esplanade at night

[smittydc]

Is it just me, or are esplanade theme camps kind of dead at night nowadays? Last year at night I cruised playa art, and made the usual stops at the man/temple/2&10, but I didn't find many esplanade camps that were interesting in the evening. Wal-mart?!? Meh.

I wonder if this is because so many groups have given up building theme camps and have instead built large sound-based art cars instead?
Similarly, I don't see as much fire-based art anymore. Lots of impressive LED work (again, mostly on the art cars), but really not much fire.

I'm not saying it's bad. Just wondering if it's just in my head or if anyone else has had similar thoughts.

[Ano]

Disclaimer: I've only been since 2011. This is all speculation.

I've always felt that Esplanade camps were way more active during the day than the evening. During the day lots of camps are continously pumping out activity; In 2012, I remember Spanky's with their deadly carnival rides, Pink Heart with refreshing cucumber water/vegan ice cream, a PnP camp had a huge dome with daily talks/lectures (and it turned into a giant chill dome at night), there was the playground, and autosub dome with more daily activities... there are a few that seem to be open late into the night (in 2012, Disorient, Enclave, sort of Ball-mart, sort of Tetris Camp), but for the most part, a lot of Esplanade camps seemed to turn into art projects for the evening before morphing back into something else for the day...

I mean, the camps on 2/10 are always full of folks, and it's so difficult to get space on an art car during the evening, that I could see some groups giving up on putting forth massive effort for all-night operations and instead directing that effort towards a rave barge or going 200% during the daytime.

I wonder what is going to be taking up the challenge of the Esplanade this year..

[Lonesomebri]

It's all changed......

[lemur]

lotsa theme camps at burning man seem to go the 'whats the minimum amount of stuff we can do to get placement' route.... and often, the 1 daily 'workshop session' happens in the blazing sun ..leaving everyone the evening to party it up.. im guessing at least some camps that end up on the esplanade end up each year are doing this...

or, may-haps, theyve filled out their 'interactivity' box in the placement questionnaire with stuff they honestly wanted to do but realize they cant actually do once on-site (for whatever reason).. things often go belly-up on the playa, especially plans!!!


just keep on walking..... theres someone else doing stuff somewhere...

[mudpuppy000]

I think they've been trying to spread the interactive camps across the city, instead of concentrating everything on one street.

Sound camps tend to dominate at night and those usually get placed on 2 and 10.

[Drawingablank]

The only thing I found really disappointing about the Esplanade last year was that so many of the camps on that prime real estate broke down and started packing up before the temple even burned.

2012 seemed to have a lot more early departures, so that may have had something to do with it.

[trilobyte]

I'm nudging this over to the 2013 camps board, since a discussion about Esplanade camps is a much better fit there than on the Mutant Vehicles board...

It's just you. Last year I pedaled my trike from one end of the Esplanade to the other twice at night, and both times there were plenty of things going on. Not at every single camp, but probably half of them. I'm not sure what exactly you mean by 'nowadays' (you haven't filled in the 'Burning Since' field in your profile and your post didn't specify), but from my experience (since 2004) that's not too different from my first burn. Some camps are vehicle or art support camps, and when things are dark at their joint it's because they're doing something big out on the open playa - but other than that there's usually something going on at a lot of the camps.

[knowmad]

the Center Camp Service Alley is the new Esplanade. happened a while ago.