Editor’s note: this is a guest post from Amy Brown Carver, a Martian and screenwriter, and Grid Free Minds. If you'd like to see more of Amy's work or to reach out to collaborate, you can find her here.
I’ve been hearing rumors about Mars College for years, and it sounded straight out of science fiction: artists, AI kids, and hippies building some kind of solarpunk utopia in the desert? Turns out that’s pretty accurate, and the truth is just as interesting as fiction. Read on to learn about how Freeside found abundance rather than tragedy of the commons, and how to run your golf cart on poop gas.
Founded: 2020 Dates: January through March (roughly) Location: Bombay Beach, California Residents: variable, but 60-70 in 2024 and 2025 Rented or bought: Bought Physical space: empty plot of desert one mile away from the town of Bombay Beach Governance: Do-ocracy under two largely-hands-off founders, evolving towards a central elected governing council with a mandate to start implementing a sociocratic model (We’ll see how it goes!) Website: https://www.mars.college/
ORIGINS
Burning Man meets Bombay Beach
In 2018, Freeman built the “Pod Mahal” for the Disorient Camp at Burning Man. It was two rows of 15 plywood hexapods each stacked three high on pallet rack scaffolding. It cost a lot upfront, took a month to build, and a week later when Burning Man ended, they had to take it all down. Freeman was left with a ton of plywood and pallet racks and the thought: “What if we could leave it up longer?”
Meanwhile, over 600 miles away in Imperial County, California, the derelict resort town of Bombay Beach had been attracting artists and nonconformists for decades. A friend of Freeman’s suggested he check it out, and when a plot of desert about a mile away came up for sale, Mars College was born.
This is what I’ve gathered, at least. The first I heard of it was in 2023 when my boyfriend-at-the-time told me he had been accepted “to Mars” and was leaving LA for three months.
“You’ve never even met these people.” I argued. “And you don’t know where you’ll be living. They just told you to show up and they’d figure it out. What if it’s a cult? What if you get too cold?” (He had heard of Mars through someone in his juggling community. To me, this was not reassuring.)
He told me it was a legitimate program with an AI focus and an off-grid bent. “It’s like Burning Man but with more education and fewer parties, and it lasts until March.”
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