Interested in joining?

Important: Fees and fee deadlines! Midnight Poutne's fees this year will be $200CAD per person. If there's a surplus it'll be kicked back to members after the final accounting sometime in Sept/Oct. Fees are due by Friday August 13th! Fees can be paid in person to Jody or Kay or sent via PayPal from the donation page (please add $8 to cover PayPal fees).

Midnight Poutine is open to new members in 2010! Here's some information. You can contact us at poutine@modernduck.com for more.

Midnight Poutine is heading into its 3rd year on the playa, and our 2nd year as an official theme camp. We're a small camp in size (50' x 150') and in number (17 people last year, and 25 is our absolute limit this year) but we make up for it in AWESOMENESS. Last year we served over 1000 poutines on 5 nights, and this year we're aiming for 1200-1300! As you've probably heard, poutine is the ideal late night snack and it's widely appreciated by all who taste it.

In terms of facilities, we have a good public area shaded for day use, and a 15' dome (topped by a giant poutine) for chilling out and napping. We have 2 kitchens (so you can cook your own food while poutine is happening) and an evaporation pond. We'll probably have electrical power at night but that's still being worked out. We don't have a shower, but we've never found that to be a problem. There are a few bathing facilities on the playa (e.g. Human Carcass Wash and the Steambath Project) and we keep ourselves clean with baby wipes.

What do we expect from people who camp with us? Most importantly a commitment to our core mission, which is bringing poutine to the playa. You'll have to help run the kitchen 1 or 2 nights per week. We start our preparations at around 23:00, getting ready to serve our first dish at midnight. The kitchen is open until we finish the day's cheese, around 2:00-2:30. Then we cook some final poutines for ourselves, clean up, and go to bed or out to the playa.

No kitchen experience is required :) Don't worry, working in the kitchen doesn't feel like work.. it's actually one of the most rewarding things about our camp.. it's lots of fun and everyone appreciates your efforts. What I should say is you can ONLY help in the kitchen for 1 or 2 nights, because everyone else wants a turn :)

There are also camp fees. We need to cover the cost of the food we give away: cheese, potatoes, gravy, propane, water, ice, garbage bags, cleaning supplies, and so on. We also need to cover the costs of shipping our equipment from Montréal. This year the fees will likely be 200 Canadian dollars per person, but it may be more (it was $250 last year.) It all depends how many people join our camp.. the more people, the less our fees. Remember, this is your gift to the Burning Man community!

Another responsibility shared by everyone in our camp is maintenance throughout the week. As you probably know, the black rock desert is really hard on gear, so we need to keep an eye on things and fix them if they're broken. We also need to take care of the poutine kitchen: cleaning things by the light of day, getting ice (< 15 minutes by bike) and refilling the coolers, and so on.

At the beginning and end of the week, we also share the huge job of setting up and tearing down the camp. Setup is done by a small "early arrival" crew who show up a few days early, but there are inevitably things that still need to be done after the event opens on Monday. Teardown starts on Saturday (burn day) since our last poutine night is Friday. Everything has to be taken down on Saturday and Sunday so that we can leave on Monday. You should also expect to leave with a full vehicle, because everything must go... all our garbage, moop we find on our site, used oil, leftover food, dirty water (that didn't evaporate during the week) needs to be packed out and disposed of.

On top of this, there are your regular responsibilities as a Burning Man participant. You need to buy a ticket, get to Nevada (flying or driving), you need a ride to the playa (driving from Montréal, renting a vehicle, sharing a ride..), and you need your own water, camping gear, food, and alcohol/other drugs for the week.

If you're interested in joining our camp or you want more information, feel free to attend our next meeting or work weekend. Contact us at poutine@modernduck.com and we'll let you know the details of the next event. If you can't make it to any of these (like, if you don't live in Montréal or you're travelling), let us know too! A lot of our planning is done online and you're still welcome to camp with us - about 1/3 of our members last year were from outside Montréal.

See you on the playa!