BRC Weekly

11/08/2025

I’m so glad the — Black Rock City’s hottest new newspaper — read this article in our last issue in 2023:

How to publish your own playa newspaper in 16 easy steps

1. Get the word out that you’re making a newspaper and looking for interesting articles about Burning Man culture.

2. Get content. Find good writers. Write your own pieces. Find comics and infographics. Add photographs. Have a strong editorial point-of-view. Credit everyone.

3. Do an Out/In List. And Playa Lingo. Adriana said that it’s okay.

4. Edit everything. Mercilessly. Including your own. Everyone writes way too much. Listicles are good. No word salad.

5. Find a local printer who prints double-fold broadsheets on NEWSPRINT. Get the correct print specs for your layout.

6. Do layout in Adobe InDesign or similar desktop publishing software. It won’t be enough editorial room. You will p**s off at least one writer who gets cut for space.

7. Proofread. Proofread again. Get others to proofread. Don’t worry when you still find typos after everythng’s been printed.

8. Put it to bed! Generate a PDF and send it off to your printer. Crack open a beer.

9. Pay your printer $1000 or so for around 20,000 copies, give or take a bit.

10. Pick up the bundles of newspapers from your printer. Get some help, it’s gonna be a lot. Pack it up for the playa.

11. Get some bankers boxes. Print your newspaper’s masthead and tape it to all the boxes. Schlep it all to the playa.

12. Put 2 or 3 boxes of newspapers in Center Camp. Keep these filled every day.

13. Deliver newspapers around BRC. Make your campmates help deliver papers.

14. Find other distribution spots around BRC. If Black Rock Station is out in deep playa, make sure their old-school metal newspaper box at the train station is filled with newspapers. Bar camps with high-traffic and visibility are also good.

15. Retrieve all the newspaper boxes at the end of the week, from Center Camp and elsewhere. Leave no MOOP!

16. PRO TIP: Publish a photo of yourself in every single issue so maybe you can become “playa famous!” Also wonder if anyone even reads newspapers anymore. Repeat every year until you burnout.

09/01/2025

BRC Weekly's star columnist, Buck Down, just lost his and his family's entire house in the LA fires. It was all while they were out-of-town, so they were unable to salvage anything. A GoFund me was set up, every little bit can help some very good people.

I'm Garth, a New Yorker that lived in Los Angeles for 10 years, … Garth Belcon needs your support for Help Suzanne, Milo and Buck Down rebuild after the fire.

10/09/2024

Nothing has made us want to return to Burning Man more than seeing this new Black Rock City newspaper, Your Playa Provider. Where do we even start?

Maybe with the utterly TRAGIC choice of font for the masthead, or the fact that it’s smaller than the only headline in the entire paper. 16 articles and no one thought to use a bigger font for the headlines? It’s just an ugly, hard-to-read wall of grey text.

The Out/In List is far and away the best thing here, but the rest is a hodge-podge mix of rambling rants, prose, fiction, and Onion-style fake news, with no unifying editorial point-of-view. In the first article, they say “We Do Not Care” — and it shows. Especially egregious is the BMIR hit piece which was more mean-spirited than even the bitchiest years of P**s Clear.

Adriana Roberts appreciated the digs and disses — this Gen X veteran can handle the Gen Z shade. We just wish it was a better read. We take back every bad thing we ever said about the Black Rock Beacon!

26/08/2024

Best quote from this article by former BRC Weekly writer Zapher Jones, talking about "burgins," aka virgin burners who haven't been to Burning Man yet: "This is going to be the best generation of new Burners since the '90s. These are the people that saw headlines reporting of a desert festival turned state of emergency, where participants were forced to p**s in jugs and resorted to eating L*D to ward off the hunger in order to survive … and said F**K YEAH, I want in on that s**t show!” 🔥🤣

Before Burning Man each year, longtime attendee Zapper Jones peers into his crystal ball to make predictions and rant about what's to come.

23/08/2024

Adriana Roberts got some juicy quotes in this article from the BBC.

As news of rising prices, intolerable weather and poor ticket sales have hit the Nevada desert event in recent years, some speculate its days could be numbered.

19/08/2024

Adriana Roberts is not even going to Burning Man this year, but still writing about it. New article just dropped on The Bold Italic — and damn right she pulled quotes from our 2014 issue, where Larry and Marian vehemently bi***ed about sound camps posting Black Rock City DJ line-ups early. Oh, how things change when they aren’t selling out tickets anymore.

19/08/2024

We feel bad for anyone who can’t sell their tickets.

18/06/2024

In case anyone was thinking of picking up the baton to publish a new Black Rock City newspaper, here’s how to do it, in 16 easy steps! This was published in last year’s Last Issue Ever.

01/05/2024

In an effort to “save” Center Camp, is FINALLY getting rid of Rod’s Road. As longtime residents of this cartographic misstep, we’ve lobbied for its removal for years. This paragraph was from last year’s cover story by — glad to see that it’s finally happening.

09/02/2024

2011 — still the best playa party flyer ever.

09/02/2024

2011 -- still the best Bo**ie Mashup BRC playa party flyer ever.