Going Full Burn
As I write this, we are less than one month from Pittsburgh’s 20th annual “Can’t Stop the Serenity” charity screening at the Parkway Theater in McKees Rocks. June took us into summer at full burn— brutal temperatures in the 90’s cooled by intermittent storms— the kind of weather that might make one eager to flip the calendar page and welcome July and Independence Day (surely high on the list of any Browncoat’s favorite holidays).
The early-summer weather isn’t the only thing that’s been going full burn, though. Ticket sales for CSTS Pittsburgh 2025 have been live for nearly a month, and the crew and I are busy getting everything ready for our 20th anniversary shindig on July 27. We’re very excited about returning to the Parkway Theater for the first time since 2019. Along with the chance to watch “Serenity” in a comfortable, modern film lounge, we’re also looking forward to the expanded food and beverage offerings that the Parkway will have available for our attendees. Not only will there be movie concessions for the screening, a fully-stocked bar and a micro-brewery on site, but the Parkway also has a full slate of delicious menu options— all at very reasonable prices that will leave plenty of coin in your pocket for games and drawings to support Equality Now and the American Legion’s “Be the One” initiative (a campaign aimed at reducing the rate of veteran suicide).
This year’s CSTS shindig, which is sponsored by Geek Frontiers and Jump Cut Theater, will have everything you’ve come to expect from a CSTS event in the Steel City: games, prize drawings, a shiny door prize and a special drawing for those in attendance who are seeing the Big Damn Movie for the first time. We’ve already received a whole passel of shiny prize donations from some of our big damn supporters, including the California Browncoats, Jeff McClelland, Roland Cyr, Karen Hallion Design and Illustration, the Washington Wild Things, Pittsburgh Comics and individual members of the CSTS Pittsburgh crew.
And although we haven’t had a cosplay contest in many years, the climate-controlled atmosphere at the Parkway is surely conducive to comfortable cosplay, so if it’s been a while since you pulled that Blue Sun t-shirt out of the drawer, put on that cunning hat that shows you’re not afraid of anything or taken that coat of a brownish color out of the closet, I can’t think of a better time to do it.
If you don’t have tickets yet, you can get them today just by clicking on the button that says “Buy Tickets to CSTS Pittsburgh” on the homepage of this website. I hope to see you on July 27, but if you can’t make it to the shindig, our tickets page has a donation-only option so you can still help us do good works for our worthy charities.
And the fun won’t stop when we close the books on CSTS Pittsburgh next month. The California Browncoats plan to end this 20th anniversary summer of “Serenity” with a bang— or more accurately, a “Big Damn Shindig.”
From September 18-21, Browncoats from all over the ‘verse will descend on Newhall, California (a community in Santa Clarita, CA) for a first-of-its-kind event combining the Browncoat Ball with CSTS Los Angeles. Some of us on the CSTS Pittsburgh crew have been helping the CA Browncoats organize the event, and I can tell you that it’s going to be a once-in-a-lifetime shindig that any Browncoat would dream of experiencing.
In addition to the ball itself, the 2025 Browncoat Ball will include a bus tour of several of the shooting locations used for the “Firefly” TV series, and members of the original shooting crew will ride along to tell stories of their experiences working on the show! “CSTS Los Angeles” will feature a screening under the stars on the rooftop of the Hotel Lexen in Newhall and will include displays of props used in “Serenity” as well as opportunities to bid on memorabilia donated by cast, crew and private donors, with proceeds benefiting Equality Now and Feed the Streets LA.
And that’s not all. At least one graphic artist who worked on “Serenity” will be on-hand that weekend to talk (and answer questions) about his work on the Big Damn Movie, and attendees will also have the chance to see original shooting locations from other shows like “Marvels Agents of SHIELD” and “Justified” in their free time.
If you aren’t one of the Browncoats from our brigade who have already registered and you think you might want to join us in California this September, the “not-so-early-bird” price discount for tickets ends on July 1, so you want to get your tickets real soon, or else the full burn you feel might be in your wallet. How do you do that? Just pound that “Buy Tickets to the Big Damn Shindig” button on our homepage once, and the rest should be easy enough to figure out.
So, why not join your fellow Browncoats this summer in celebrating the love that has kept “Serenity” in the air for two decades? Whether it’s here in Pittsburgh, in California or both, I hope to see you in the world real soon.
Until then, keep flyin’…
-Chris