Greetings from Toast Town home of the Toasted Man and the official Arizona Regional Burn. Grover and I want to let you in on a few things that will be changing for Toast 2005. We are gearing up and are almost ready to roll out the initial website and announce ticket sales. Ticket sales will start early this year, the reasons for that are covered in this announcement. Don't wait, there are ONLY 300 tickets! This event now has a reputation in the Burner community. I had a LOT of requests for information about it at Burning Man this year. Don't wait until the last minute to order tickets. If you do, you might not get one.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Event Location:

Toast 2005 will be held at Area 51 Witch Well Arizona, April 28th-May1st. Contrary to popular rumor, this will be the same place as last year. For those who have never attended Toast, Witch Well is located directly between Saint Johns Arizona and Sanders Arizona on Highway 191 at the Junction of Hwy 61 from New Mexico. There is no town called Witch Well, it is a geographic area. Toast Town/Area 51 is located 3 miles down a dirt road at the highway junction.

-----------------------------------------------

Center camp!

As many of you remember Curtis and the Cult of ERIC have hosted Toast Town's center camp for the last two years. It has been a blast having them do that. In 2005 Curtis is stepping aside and letting someone else do it. Cult of ERIC will still be at Toast and participating in Center camp from time to time, but not running it or offering the structures. For Toast 2005 the folks at Happy Camp, (who are comprised of Burners from all over Arizona and several other regions) will be hosting Center Camp lounge. Stay tuned for details from Toast as well as the Burners from Happy Camp.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tickets!

Yay tickets! RuNoUt and Ruben are jointly working on the art and the printing of the tickets. Tickets will go on sale sometime in the next 30 days. Do not attempt to order tickets early. If we receive ticket orders postmarked before the official sale start date your envelope will be returned to you unopened. The start date for ticket sales will be announced in a couple weeks *after* the tickets are printed and the website is ready. This year we need to raise the price of tickets for several reasons. But we want you all to know it is not for Grover, myself or anyone else to use to line our pockets. That said, sadly................there is a price increase. We are raising prices to $25.00 dollars for mail order and will call, $35.00 dollars for reserved tickets paid for at the gate. There will only be 300 tickets available for sale. Toast is not in the business of making money, we don't try to make a profit. We only want to cover expenses and give back to the community if we can. Folks, before you bitch, 25 bucks is still dirt cheap for a 4 day event!

Here are the reasons we need to do the increase that are beyond the misc administrative expenses required to produce the event.

One is we must buy insurance. For 2005 we are purchasing a policy that covers group camp outs that people in other regions have been using. This is primarily to protect Jerry and Virginia's personal assets. They should not have to worry about paying for insurance for our event to keep from getting sued and loosing their property if someone decides to be stupid.

Our next expense of course is potties. This year the potty expense will be in excess of $2000.00. Half of that needs to be paid in advance.

Our biggest material need is radios. Burning Man LLC is now requiring officially sanctioned regional events to have fire safety, first aid and security in place and able to function during the event for the safety of event attendees. We have done this for the last 2 years so we are pretty well organized to handle that, except for Comms. We have attempted to use FRS and GMRS radios at this event for the last 3 years with limited success. Actually with not much success at all due to people continually stepping on our transmissions not realizing that they were on one of our operational frequencies. This makes it impossible at times for us to communicate. In order for us to meet Burning Man's requirements for event security and safety we need to purchase commercial Motorola radios in VHF or UHF. These are not cheap, used ones with a spare battery are about $100.00 each. We need at least 12 radios for Rangers Firefighters, EMT's and event staff as required. These radios will be placed between events in the custody of our AZBurners Ranger Lead, "T.C." AKA, Town Crier! We are going to try to get licenses to use them anyplace in the state if we can. This way they can be used at any AZBurners event that needs them. However since the radios will be licensed they will not be available for use by anyone and everyone. They will for regional event security, safety and administration only.

Lastly we would like to offer art grants for materials for artists to build art for Toast. "Art", especially large scale and interactive art is very important to Toast as well as the culture of Burning Man. We want to help artists realize their goals by helping you create it. We also want to have funds to be able to bring artists and their art that is traveling around to regional events like we did for Charlie and the Tunnel of transformation. Toast paid Charlie $400.00 last month for the Tunnel of Transformation. This money was what was left over from last years Toast ticket sales that we did not use. I believe Mark and Kismet also gave him some as well. The Tunnel now belongs to the AZBurners regional community and its official home is Gateway ranch. It will be disassembled and transported to Toast again this year, then taken back to Gateway ranch after the event.

The amount we offer for grants is dependent on the expenses we incur producing the event. Art grants will initially go to artists who have a proven track record or creating large scale and interactive art at Toast, other regional Burns and at Burning Man.

Along with the grant it *may* also be possible for us to comp *some* artists a free ticket to offset thier costs by creating large scale art. Ticket Comps are separate from an arts grant and are considered on a case by case basis. Please don't ask unless you really cant afford one. Nobody should feel they are entitled to a free ticket to Toast.

We like to get a lead person to spearhead the grants process. However please wait until we get the website up and we officially announce it before contacting us about the job. If you think you are interested think about it before applying. Who ever applies for the job must not be considering applying for a grant.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Volunteers:

Last week we set about looking for a Media Ho for Toast, that position is still open . If you are interested please contact blackrockcity(at)cox(dot)net. We will also be looking for numerous other key lead personnel to help bring the event to fruition and make it a huge success. We will announce those when the website is rolled out in a few weeks. Stay tuned!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gary Taylor, lead bozo, Toast/BM liaison, willing co-conspirator Grover Davis, bean counter, Toast ranger, alter ego We are the Toast coordinators! What will you do at Toast?