EP 21 Adriana Roberts

Meet Adriana Roberts, a long-time fixture of the Burning Man community who published the event’s prominent alternative newspapers, Piss Clear and the BRC Weekly. The conversation traces Roberts’ thirty-year history with the festival, beginning in 1993, and explores her evolution from a participant creating small zines to an independent journalistic voice challenging the event's official organization. A central theme is the transformative power of the desert, as Roberts reflects on how the "radical self-expression" of the playa aided her own transgender journey and provided a space for communal bonding during the "mud apocalypse" of 2023. Ultimately, the source serves as a historical retrospective on the shifting culture of Black Rock City, lamenting the rise of "influencer" elitism while affirming the enduring value of art and human connection found within the dust.

https://bootiemashup.com/

http://www.pissclear.org/

https://brcweekly.com/

#burningman #blackrockcity #burningmanpodcast #adrianaroberts #bootiemashup #pissclear #brcweekly

Transcript

They make the trek out to Burning Man for a week and a day. After a lot of work, there's a lot of play. Party party drama drama drama. b****, b****, b****. Year after year, they come back to scratch that itch. They all say their lives have been changed. After many years, lives have have been rearranged. That changes what this show is all about. You'll see the impact of Burning Man up and out. So sit back, relax, and cancel all your plans. These are the stories about the shadow of the man. 

Hello and welcome to the Shadow of the Man Show. I'm your host, Andy. Hell yeah. That Andy. Today our guest is the one and only Adriana Roberts. Welcome.

Uh thanks for having me.

And we were talking a little bit before the show, but like you've been a guest I've been wanting to have on for a very long time. Uh not only one of the most beautiful and talented women on the play, but uh the So you're the publisher creator of Piss Clear. What would you uh what was your

Oh, no. Publisher and editor of PissClar. which was um Burning Man newspaper, the alternative newspaper. Uh we started publishing in 1995. We had a 13-year run and then uh took a two-year break, not a break from the Playa, just a break from Playa Publishing. And uh and then realized we still had a lot more to say. And so we relaunched under a new name, which was the BRC Weekly. Tried to be a a little bit more of a a legit alternative news weekly and uh and that published from 2010 until our last issue ever in 2023.

Well, let's start uh at the beginning. So, what was your first year? What and what got you to Burning Man?

1993 was my first year. I've actually been going to Burning Man longer than probably 99.9% of the people who run it. Um I think the only person who's gone to Burning Man more than I have um the uh is probably Danger Ranger. Um I've now been to the Playa more times than Larry Harvey. Um at least for a Burning Man event, which is crazy crazy to think of. Crazy to think of that.

Yeah.

Um

but yeah, uh 1993 was my first year. Uh I had heard about it from I had actually read about it in a um San Francisco local San Francisco magazine called The Nose. They had published an article about Burning Man.

Um I believe in 1992 is when I read about it.

So I I had some familiarity with w with it. And then the following year um a uh the girlfriend of one of my one of my bandmates uh had gone the year before in 1992 and was like, "Oh, yeah. It's" and I was like, "Oh, yeah. That thing I read about in the nose magazine. It sounds it sounds cool." Yeah. So

So was it like just a couple hundred people or something?

Yeah. It was like 800 people,

you know, in 1993. Anyway, so we we had a little camp like way out on the outskirts. It was just a long weekend. It was just desert camping with some random art scattered around. you know, it wasn't anywhere near the level of organization that, you know, it turned into.

So, who did you go with and like what did you guys bring? Was it just like you and a friend or like

uh it was myself and there there was like a crew of I think it was about like eight or 10 of us. Um it was uh my bandmate, his roommate, his girlfriend, her little crew of people who had gone um previous years. Uh Lisa Hoffman was actually the kind of like the lynch pin that that that brought us in. She had gone in 1992. Uh she's slightly Burning Man famous for being one of the graphic designers and art directors. Um I forget which years, but um she did the the whole Black Rock City map and

Oh wow.

You know um you know the stuff.

Yeah. All the stuff that they give out at the gate, right?

Well, some of the stuff I mean I have a whole team of people. But yeah, uh but but she did the uh the Black Rock City map many many many years later actually. She took a big long break from Burning Man and came came back to it. But yeah, shout out to Lisa Hoffman.

Yeah, I mean I think there's a definitely kind of like a a life cycle of of burners, you know? I mean something that was God, who was I talking to? I think uh I was talking to Megs. I was interviewing her uh yesterday. Um but yeah, there's some people who go just for like one year bucket list kind of thing, right? You know, There's some people like there's like oh they'll go for like 3 years but not really get involved and like after 3 years you kind of like h you get jaded you like been there done that it's like it's kind of old news and then there's the people you know it's like you know who do get involved and start theme camp or they they they volunteer or they become staff or

start a newspaper

I mean you get you get out of Burning Man what you put in.

Yeah.

And you know and eventually on perhaps a long enough timeline you might be putting in more than you get out but from the very very get-go, even in 1993, I was involved with stuff. Um, I went to a pre- Burning Man meeting in the Lower Hate, uh, the neighborhood where Larry Harvey lived um at a met at a cafe with a bunch of people organizing the radio station. Uh, because even back then, Black Rockck Radio exists. That's what it was called then. It wasn't BMI. It was it was just called Black Rockck Radio. And uh everyone was signing up for radio shifts and shows and I at the time, keep in mind it was 1993. I was a spoken word artist and uh and my bandmate did like ambient noise and um and uh uh you know music instrumental type stuff. So we signed on to do a shift of me just basically you know doing spoken word ranting on the radio while Well, he, you know, did ambient uh music and noise and sound effects

and this was just the one and only radio station, right? Oh, yeah. Like now they just like done.

Exactly. So, um but you know, at that meeting realized, oh, we need like a you know, everyone's signing up for shifts. We need a we need a program guide. It would be cool to have a program guide of, you know, of all the shows throughout the weekend so people know what's going on. So, I actually printed up a Black Rockck radio program guide and distributed them around Black Rock City, you know, posted it on the bulletin board. Back then there was a big bulletin board. Uh posted it, you know, there was like a couple not really theme camps, but you know, just like Nexus points and so we, you know, that was my first like foray into participating from the get-go before I even got there. Did a radio show and and published a um a program guide and because I was a graphic designer by trade. So the following year, you know, your first Burning Man is just, you know, it it it definitely has the power to hit you hard. And uh it definitely did me even back then with only 800 people. And all year I was having like crazy dreams about Burning Man. So I did a zen. This is again now we're talk now we're up to 1994. they're squarely in like, you know, the age of the independent photocopied stapled zen. And so I made a zen of um I wrote uh I I wrote down uh all my dreams throughout the year. So I, you know, did basically a zen of pros about the dreams that I had had about Burning Man called Dreaming Burning Man. And I published 200 of these and uh distributed um around Black Rock City. At that point, we're up to like 1,600 people. And then the third year, you know, I liked it's like, okay, I got my shtick. I'm going to print something and give it out. It's a great way. Um especially for me, I'm um you might be fooled by my persona, but um I do have a bit of social awkwardness and and social anxiety. So, I need like an icebreaker. And my icebreaker was being ble to run around and be like, "Hey, would you like a, you know, would you like, you know, the radio station program guide or a zen or as it turned out to be in 1995, here's a copy of a zen that I called piss clear filled with survival tips that they don't publish in the survival guide stuff about, you know, mostly sex and drugs. Um, but it was like named after the number one survival tip for the Black Rock Desert, which is drink enough water so that you piss clear. And it always had like this sort of like sassy, snarky, you know, very, you know, fun, flippant kind of attitude about it. And that went really well. And so the following year I did three issues and it kind of became a bit more of a newspaper. And we kind of set it up like we were competing, you know, if like cuz at that point uh Black Rock City had its own newspaper. They had the Black Rock Gazette which was published by the org. So, you know, this is back in the day where print media was not completely dead. And, you know, I did not want Black Rock City to be a one newspaper town. We needed to be a two newspaper town. And so, we were the, you know, positioned ourselves as, you know, we're the alternative newspaper. You know, the Black Rock is that they're just a mouthpiece for for, you know, the Burning Man organization. We we don't mince words. We tell it like it is, you know.

Yeah. So,

and uh and it started off as it started off as like a bit of a a piss take, if you will. Um you know, a bit of a joke, but over the years as the Black Rock Gazette actually legitimately became like propaganda, just a way to, you know, um disseminate information out to the community and just sort of like parrot stuff that was already in the survival guide and you know it was basically just a mouthpiece literally a mouthpiece for the Burning Man organization. Increasingly we found ourselves publishing articles that sort of like you know fought city hall um or in our case you know having a you know another um you know a voice of reason an outside an outside voice of reason that was not directly tied to the Burning Man organization. And we truly became, you know, we truly became an independent newspaper. What started off as kind of like this like this posturing, this sort of like, you know, this sort of like joke. I mean, we were never doing fake news. We were never like The Onion, you know, or or in Burning Man's case, there was a publication called The Shroom. that was a take on the onion that did, you know, we never did fake news. That was never ever ever our thing. But we were very opinionated. We definitely um had a strong editorial point of view. And um and as the years evolved, we discovered that our newspaper, you know, really became a a truly alternative newspaper, publishing articles that you would not, you know, about subject matter that, you know, the or would not touch. I mean, sure, of course, sex and drugs are, you know, the two easy go-tos, but then we're also, you know, writing articles, you know, our second year, especially as Pisclear transitioned into being the BRC weekly, we really became, it's like, okay, you know, there's the SF Weekly, the LA weekly, the Seattle Weekly, it's, you know, like the the

um the alternative

typical alternative weekly. We really wanted to be that. And like the second year we did BRC Weekly, we ran an article that well, everyone, actually, I don't think everyone knew about it, but the turnkey camps, the plug-and-play camps. It was kind of like, you know, everyone knows about it now, but back then it was just sort of like a dirty little secret. Nobody talked about it. Certainly the Burning Man organization never talked about it. And we literally ran a cover story blowing it all out the door being like, "Yeah, this is 100% a thing that happens. We were embedded with a turnkey camp.

Wow.

That like catered to, you know, like, you know, rich and basically like rich Hollywood people and rich tech people.

You guys do like investigative reporting like

Yeah. I mean, but it was, you know, but it was interesting though. If you read this article, you think it's going to be like this total hit piece.

So, when did the the weekly

actually was not. I'm sorry.

When did the BRC Weekly first uh

uh this would have been 20 uh we started in 2010. Uh the article I'm referencing right now would have been 2011.

So yeah. Um

so just in terms of like the mechanics of this like um I mean early on I know you said like with the the radio station you probably like printed that up and then just brought that to the playa. But

yeah,

I mean um

would you guys actually print stuff on the player or or

Yes, Pisclear did that. Um BRZ Weekly did not. No. Um Pisclar was

stupid. God, we were stupid. I mean, we did all sorts of stuff. I mean, we um

No, no, no, no. We didn't um

uh it was printed on newsprint ultimately. We did bring a printer one year when we did we did it more Zen style and we would just photocopy it out there. Um and then

um as as we expanded and we started to do newsprint, what we would do is we would upload the file to a printer in Reno that would then bring it out on a truck. So, uh, the next day. So, that's that's how that works. So, we were publishing on Playa, but um, but yeah, unlike the BRC weekly where it would be put to bed like 2 days before we'd leave, uh, I'd send it to my printer, I'd pick it up. I used the local printer in San Francisco. Uh, except the year of the solar eclipse in 2017. I was at um the solar solar eclipse festival. A not the not the big hippie- dippy burner b******* one, but a different one. Yeah, the eclipse happened all over Oregon. So, we went to like this sort of like county fair one. But, we were driving directly from the or Oregon uh to Burning Man. So, I had to find a printer in like um Shasta, I think. I think it was I think it was Shasta. Anyway, look, I just, you know, needed to find someone that will print this crap on newsprint. Um but yeah. pick it up and take it to the playa. So BRC Weekly uh unlike Piss Clear, if like s*** went down on the Playa, we couldn't really write about it.

But in the later years, part of the reason I gave it up with Piss Clear is because when s*** would go down on the Playa, we were not privy to that. We could not get information at all. You know, it was and it just ended up being like opinion pieces and uh and and hot tape. But like actual news, we did not get access to any actual real news out there, like hardly at all. So I was kind of like, why are we wasting all this time and energy and herculean effort to publish on Playa when I can literally I mean, this is what burned us the the hell out, you know? This is why we took two years off of publishing and And then when we came back as the BRC weekly, I was like, you know what, we're we're we're mostly snarky editorializing. So, we could do all this, you know, and we can do well researched articles that like comment and and um cover the the culture of Black Rock City, but it's like we're not really a, you know, a newspaper. We're like a news weekly, you know. You know, we're not like, you know, it's not like, oh, a thing happened yesterday and you're going to read about in the paper tomorrow. No, we're like a thing is happening to our culture in general and here's the cover story. Like

was it just it was like one issue for like the

one issue BRZ. Oh my god. People would Andy which part of weekly don't you understand? It would so frustrate me. That was the other thing too. We literally named it the BRC weekly to just kind of be like to drive it home. It's like this is it. This is the one issue we're doing for the week, you know, and it's like people would come by. It's like, is today's issue out? I'm like

there it is. And they're like, I got this one already. I'm like,

what part of weekly don't you understand? It's right there in big letters on the cover. Oh, I just thought I don't know.

So, how many people would uh work for the weekly?

Oh, like the the core crew. is was usually like there was about like maybe three or four of us that was like the core crew real tight. Um I was the editor, the art director, I wrote um an editorial. Uh I would usually write one or two articles. I edited everything especially things like the outin list and the ply lingo. Um I had a couple of um copy editors that did proof reading uh especially after I already laid it out. Um, I had a couple of people in camp that would help with distribution and then I would have a team of contributors. Uh, I had a few regular staff writers like, uh, Buck Ae Down and, um, and Scribe uh, aka Steven T. Jones. Uh, they were frequent contributors. Both I was so fortunate to have them. Both of those guys were just excellent, excellent writers. just great writers and and that was the thing that BRC Weekly and and Pisclair as well really really prided itself on really sharp good writing. We wanted it to be um you know a a really good read. Um the problem that we always had with the Black Rock Gazette and then it's um and then successor uh the Black Rock Beacon and you know bless their hearts they you know would you know print this stuff out on a photocopier like out in the middle of the play like every day or every other day. But you know the writing also reflected that work process. Stuff was really slap dash, not well written, you know, not curated, not edited very well, you know, it's like you take what you can get from volunteers who are actually trying to be like, you know, want to be journalists out there and, you know, and a lot of the articles would read like fourth grade book reports. And um whereas our stuff was very I I edited with a heavy hand. I mean for every issue of the BRC weekly and and and Pis not so much Pisclair. Pisclar Pisclar I was a little less um heavy-handed because at our peak we had four issues to fill. So I I look at some of the stuff that I let run in Piss Clear and I'm like well I obviously needed to fill space you know and and we're writing it on Playa. So again, I know firsthand that that that experience of like, "Oh my god, we just I'm cracked out. We all just partied the night before and I need to just finish writing this and upload it to our printer, you know, so we can get this done." Um BRZ Weekly, you know, we we had the a bit more of the luxury of time. So I I felt like it was a higher quality product. Um I've been ve very very proud of the 14 years of the BRC weekly. Um I mean as much as Pisclar Pisclear was um a little like in its later years Pisclear got really b***** like in a really negative way. I read some of those like later issues around 2005 6 2007 and it's just b******** and and the articles I would get like the people who would come by our camp and be like I got an article for you and we're like you know desperate for material and be like go and it would be like just everybody had an axe to grind and it got really really negative and I think that's also one of the reasons why I I killed it off cuz it was just like a lot of negativity and like people would be like you know oh why do you hate Bernie if you hate Burning Man so much why are you even out here and I'm like you're kind of missing the point we b**** because we love it

exactly

but um but when I relaunched the BRC weekly it was it was kind of meant as a kinder gentler article we to be just a little bit more even, you know, evenhanded. Uh, we did eventually just kind of slide right back into our snark, but with less of an axe to grind, like when we brought things to light, you know, when we talked about the elitism of uh certain art cars, like, you know, the whole are you hot enough to get on my art car kind of thing, you know? I mean, we did it like fairly, you know, it was researched. We got good quotes. It wasn't just, you know, one writer just like, you know, ranting, you know. Um, you know, we talked about, um, you know, there was a big article, uh, written from the inside of the Burning Man Hospital, you know, the Burning Man Clinic, Ramparts, uh, a former employee that watched the changeover of management and the medical service that took over. And as a licensed, uh, nurse who worked there, definitely had a you know wrote a great article you know and again like I said this is the sort of stuff that um that we wouldn't like a little bit more researched that we would not have been able to do in the piss clear days when we were just like you know writing a lot of stuff on playa not everything like the typical piss clear layout was about maybe 50% done and then we'd fill in the blanks when we got on playa

so like back in the default world I mean, did this kind of translate? I mean, did you have like a

100%. Andy, do you know what my job was?

Yeah.

For 13 years. Um, in the 13 years I I was doing Piss Clear, actually. Um, I was the art director for a local LGBT newspaper in San Francisco. Um, so for one week a year, I got to be not just an art director, but also the editor and publisher, you know. Um, I also wrote articles for this paper. Um, my uh my background at that that time, especially in the '9s, is I was a music journalist. Um, I was a music journalist for for the newspaper I worked for, but also other national publications here and there. So, you know, I was I was always a writer. Uh, and then um but as a graphic designer, uh, I you know, I There was a year where the um of when we decided to change over from photocopied photocopied um you know just stapled like a Zen to like it was 1990 see five six 1997 1997 we decided to change over to newsprint and um and the way I did that was the printer of my newspaper the newspaper I worked for in San Francisco they had like screwed something up royally. I don't know, like printed one of the pages upside down or I don't know, they just did something. And I made them do a make good and the make good was the first newsprint issue of Piss Clear.

Ah,

I was like, you want to make it up to me? Can you print this? You know, this one sheet, a broad sheet. It was just a big broad sheet of I think a 22 by um uh I think 16 by 22 folded twice so folds down to 8 and 1 half by 11 that same size as BRC weekly. Um so uh yeah they that they did that as a make good and every year I would find an excuse to be like yeah remember that that issue you guys f***** up want to make it up to me and then eventually it got to the point where they would be calling me in August

and they'd be like

it's that time of year again we're we're doing your Burning Man news newspaper, right? We're all big fans.

We've never been to Burning Man, but we love printing your newspaper. We feel like we're a part of Burning Man without having to go.

Yeah. So, how many

Oh my god, that's so that's so great. So,

how many copies would you get printed? And like

199 Well, 1997 we overshot. We did 10,000. Wow.

And uh there were only 15,000 people on Playa. Actually, it might have been even less than that. So, we had So, many leftover newspapers. It was way too many. Um, but also 1997 was u kind of a rough year. You know, no one no one was sure whether Burning Man was going to happen or not. It didn't actually happen in the Black Rock Desert on private land. So, so kind of like a, you know, definitely an outlier year. Um, but then subsequent years we ended up doing like two issues in 1998 and like I said, Eventually we kept adding. We went up to like four issues. I think for two years in a row we did two two or three years we did four issues. And um we would do like around um yeah it was like around the print run I think I think it was like around 5,000 each issue

is about what we did. So 5 to7,000 I I think is what we did.

I mean it's not cheap either.

It was not cheap. Um but like I said it was a good. My my my uh my my printer never charged me for it really because it was only it's only a news broad sheet. They just like they just piggybacked it onto the print run of something else they were already doing, namely the newspaper I worked for because it was exactly the same size. Um and they would just, you know, as they're running it through the printing and press, they would just set it aside. So I always got it done for free. But

wow.

Oh, this is a good story. Pissclear did a thing with fake ads. Every issue we had fake ads as I'm a graphic designer and I loved doing parody ads. So I would design these like it'd be like absolute Burning Man and it would you know and it would be like you know um God just so many um like it would be like a a hot Calvin Klein ad but like an underwear model like photoshopped on the play, you know, kind of thing. So, I would just do these, you know, like like it it was a bit of what if like this is the one thing where we didn't do fake news articles like, you know, like fake onion style articles. There might have been one or two, but for the most part, we really shied away from that. But the one thing I did do was like Pisclear imagined itself as a newspaper, a legitimate newspaper. Uh, in a legitimate American city and yeah, we're going to like what if we were like a real city and we did real advertising, what would it look like? And apparently it looked a little too legit because every year without fail, we would get somebody super iate coming up to our camp, waving a newspaper in their hand and pointing at the fake ads and being like there's not supposed to be any commerce on the ply deod like you know the decommodification how dare you take money from these big companies how dare they advertise in your newspaper and me and my campmates at first were just like flabbergasted that people legitimately thought so what we thought were just clearly parody ads like to us it's just clearly parody but people took it at such face value that we we just rolled with it. We're just like, "Hey, look, you know, newsprint doesn't grow on trees." I mean, actually, it does. You know, it's like we got to pay for this somehow. You know, we're not funded by the Burning Man organization. Wow, that's awesome.

So, you know, we're not an official newspaper. So, so this is how we pay for this. Like, we just like

Wow. I mean, how many of those people you think were like kind of just like it's kind like that was their kind of performance. So like they came like you know

I don't think no

really honestly

but like like you know when someone is kind of like I mean cuz we do do I mean I mean there was a lar element especially to some of the early Burning Man stuff names and people would have these like playa characters and certainly my persona at the time was you know I was the scrappy you know, upstart editor, you know, of, you know, of of a newspaper, you know, it's like like give me that story.

They have like the green visor and like cigar,

right?

That kind of thing, you know, it's like um and uh so, you know, a little bit of that like I would I would go over to the Black Rock Gazette and I would tease them and then you know, the Black Rockck Beacon totally, you know, teased them about like a I can't believe you ran that story and you know, this sort of thing. But it's all done with a nudge and a wink.

Yeah.

Some of these people were legitimately fooled by the ads

and were legitimately pissed off at us.

So, would they kind of come around like afterwards when you're like if No, cuz I think they didn't want to be like if they realize that like their campmates are like, you know, this is totally fake, right? They're probably like, "Oh, god."

So, they would come over to your camp, they be like, "I'm going to settle your cash and then you would be like no see look here's a magnifying glass look you can see it's not real they just like walk away angry like yeah I mean you know some people just don't get the joke so and that's and that's fine um yeah I wish uh because BRC weekly only did one issue and editorial space was such at a premium I I actually didn't do fake ads like the ads I did were just legit advertised. Well, the way I funded that one is I would advertise our DJ gigs. Um I I'm now um around in 2008 uh I uh stopped working for the LGBT newspaper because my DJ career and nightlife career started taking off. So um Booty Mashup is my nightlife and event brand. Uh it's my DJ crew and And we throw parties in uh mostly in San Francisco these days, but um at at our height, we threw parties all over the world. And of course, we threw parties in Black Rock City. So, we would publish our DJ schedule on the back cover of the BRC Weekly. And that was like a legitimate I mean, I guess technically a legitimate ad, but it was basically a hack to have the entire printing of the BRC weekly be a tax write off because I could write off the advertising costs. I could write off basically the printing the print the print bill of the newspaper which was like around $1,000. I could write that off, charge my business booty mashup um $1,000 for advertising in this Black Rock City newspaper and then write it off my t my the my business taxes as advertising. So that was that was the hack for um for the PRC weekly until the dying days when my business couldn't really afford to do that anymore cuz pandemic killed the nightlife industry. So we really had to we had to really tighten our as as you know not every event producer during the pandemic had the luxury of leaning on rich tech bros to bail them out of a pandemic. Some of us had to tighten our purse strings. I don't want to name names or anything of other event producers that maybe would have not tightened their purse strings and instead simply hired more people and doubled down on their donors. But you might know who I'm talking about. Meanwhile, uh this event producer had to really tighten their budget. So, uh I ended up doing some Kickstarters or not a Kickstarter go we we for our last two years at BRC weekly we did GoFundMe and uh and that was great. I actually it was kind of fun. It got me out of camp because one of the perks that you could donate more money to is that I would do a singing telegram and deliver I would deliver newspapers to your camp as a singing telegram.

That's awesome. Wow. So, what was the last year for BRC Weekly? Was that the

BRC Weekly? Our last year was 2023.

23. The mud year, right?

Yeah, the mud year. Mud apocalypse. But yeah, I mean, if you look at our issue, it's like Yeah, it's we obviously clearly published it was last issue ever. But oh my god, like I I kind of gave like all the bullet points of reasons why this was the last year ever for the newspaper. It was going to be my last year probably uh at least for a while. But the one reason I did not site cuz I didn't want to look like boohoo you can't handle the playa but one of the reasons was kind of like the weather and the harsh environment. Um I didn't really write about that as a reason but oh my goodness after the blistering heat of 2022 where I literally got heat exhaustion and then mud apocalypse 2023. I mean, that that definitely could have been, you know, the seventh reason. Um, it's, you know, Burning Man is it is not for the week.

I mean, you notice like since you first went in 93, I mean, 93 to 2023. God, 30 years, right? I mean,

30 years. I went to Burning Man for 30 years.

But, I mean, just in terms of the weather, is that I mean, it's like I mean, have you noticed like I guess a big change?

Um,

I mean, maybe towards the last couple of years. I mean, it's always I mean, we're in Nevada.

It's a it's a roll of the dice, right?

I mean, do you think the weather changed or like

No, I I mean I mean I mean, yeah, it's real easy to just be like, "Oh, see climate change." But I mean, it doesn't change the fact that Burning Man has always been in the one of the most inhospitable deserts in America, if not the world. Um, and we're, like I said, it's in Nevada. Gamble. Gambling is legal. We're always gambling. Every every last week of August, every Labor Day weekend, we're gambling with the weather. I mean, not my first mud apocalypse. Uh there was a big rainstorm and it got muddy in 1995. Um it but it was worse in 2023 simply with numbers and the amount it rained. Um you know, in in 1995 it rained It was muddy for like a day and then it dried up. Um, in 2023 it rained, it dried up and then it rained again. And you know, and it's a also a difference of, you know, is it a bunch of is it like, I don't know, 10,000 hippies stranded or is it 80,000, you know, tech people and famous DJs and influencers and all of that happening.

So, So, uh, I I have to say I was quite surprised at what national news it was, but everyone everyone loves a like a comeuppance, I think. So, shot in front, oh, you stupid burner stuck out in the mud. Meanwhile, I got to tell you on a personal note, um, like I thought 2023 was going to be my victory lap. The last issue of our newspaper, we had a great run. I was like I felt like it was a really strong issue and I was just like, "Yeah, I'm going to like I'm enjoy it. It's my last year. Uh probably, you know, I mean, I kept I I kept it kind of vague. I didn't really, even at the time, I wasn't sure if it was really going to be here or just the last year of the newspaper and then I would like go to Burning Man without a project and just try to like enjoy Burning Man for once without like biting off more than I can chew and you know, it's like publish a newspaper and also do a DJ gig every single day for seven days. days, which is what I would do. I would just like it it was a workation, you know. Um, so like I ended up like not having a great time even before the mud. Like I was just like why am I not having a good time? And I think it was just like it was a lot of a lot of work as it always was, but I was burnt out. Like I had hit burnout. Um, inevitably as much as I tried to hack my burn, making things easy, it's like oh I'm not going to publish a newspaper there. I'm going to print it before I get here. And then anyone who camps with me, it's their job to go deliver newspapers. So, I don't need to do s***. I just need to like put the papers in the red newspaper box and go do some DJ gigs and I'm good. But even then, it's just like, you know, got to check on Center Camp and make sure the papers are there and, you know, and, you know, still do gigs every day. And yeah, I hit a burnout and I just wasn't feeling it. And it is awesome. though contributing to that depression of it is a weird kind of loneliness to be not having a great time when you are surrounded by 70 80,000 people.

Yeah.

Having the time of their lives.

Oh yeah.

It's just like and then the rains came and then it's like and I've like you know I'm like yep I'm not I know the concrete blocks on your feet walking around. I've got a cozy RV. I've got a big newspaper logo on the side of my RV. I know how this works. I'm just going to like I'm going to princess out in my RV, let everyone come to me. And so, like for 36 hours, I didn't leave my RV, but it was a steady stream of people coming by. It was hosting, very one-on-one. Got very intimate connections with people. It wasn't like, "Oh, there's something blowing up in the distance. or I'm talking over loud music at a rave camp or you know I'm on my way to a blinky thing while they're on their way to a blinky thing. No, I actually got like quality time not just with people stopping by camp but also with my campmates who honestly I camp with about a dozen people and it would be like

I never saw them. You know, everyone's poo poo like they're all you know they're they're off enjoying Burning Man. So I actually got to bond with my campmates. And it was only after Burning Man became a national disaster. I use that in quotes. Um that I actually began to enjoy it because it was also it was something different. That was my 30th burn. I was so been there burn that like I got it like when the rains came and it was mud apocalypse. It was like ah something different,

something interesting. you know, and uh

Oh, what a way to go out. Yeah.

Yeah. What a way to go out.

Yeah. I mean, do you think you would ever go back again? And if so, like, would you uh how would how would you do it?

I 100% will be returning to Burning Man someday. You know, once a burner, always a burner. I know I've talked a lot of s*** uh not just in my newspaper, but even in, you know, social media posts. Uh people know me as like, you know, long time burner, 30-year history. You know, you don't become a newspaper editor and publisher if you don't have something to say about the city that you're publishing that newspaper in. So, you know, I uh definitely, you know, there's been a lot of s*** talk. I'm passionate about Burning Man. I I always have been. I still am. The event has changed. I don't need to. And it's And it's not And and and unlike the early years where every year would be like, "Oh my god, what crazy new thing." And Burning Man's kind of been the same for like years now. Years.

I think there's been kind of different eras and epochs, you know, like it's kind of like what we were talking about before like between 2011 and 2023 24. I mean, that's kind of one bubble. I think like between like 96 and and 2011 maybe like another I mean, but perhaps like right now, I mean, this is definitely

Oh, there's definitely a change happening.

transitory period. Yeah. We're definitely in that transition period. Uh last year being uh you know 2024 being the first year they didn't sell out. Uh and

it was really nice. I got to say

yeah I I got good reports from everyone. It was strange not having FOMO. Um you know it's like uh you know you and I talked a little earlier about the um um uh you know just watching it on the webcast and and like just being an experienced burner. You know I could see it on the webcast. I could see the photos coming in. I could, you know, get stories from I mean, quite frankly, I love that Burning Man is not this isolated bubble for a week. You know, I'm glad that there is more connectivity out there and that people are sharing their onplayia stories with the world. I know everyone's like, "Get off your phone, blah, blah, blah." And I'm like, you know, I'm sorry. It's

I actually appreciate

it's the 2020s. All right. It's not the 19 It's not the 1990s anymore. Okay. And you know, and I went to Burning Man in the 1990s.

You remember the Princess Diana?

Nobody knew. We all knew.

Well, it was a ply hoax. So, we all thought it was one of the things that we had in my camp like way back when was we had this thing called the rumor mill because, you know, there was no phone there. There's no internet. There's no nothing. So, that was like one of our little ply art pieces where like we had like nine squares and each one was a different topic and we had like like pens and be like, "Oh, yeah. Write down a like read a rumor, leave a rumor. And like and it was

and then you would get back to the default world and

yeah driving out and like oh my god she really did die here.

She really did die. Oh my god New Orleans really is completely flooded and underwater, you know, stuff like that. Yeah, it was um it it's so Anyway, not going to Burning Man this year

was totally uh this past year was totally fine. Um uh Camp Envy is a Facebook group that uh I joined and so seeing people um uh you know, post stuff. Also, I got to say at this point, um the number one thing that I love about Burning Man and that I probably miss the most is the art. I I I'm an I'm an art snob. I I love art. I I literally like will get on a plane and fly halfway around the world to go to an an art exhibit. Like I've I flew flew to the UK when Bank did Dismaland in like 2015. I, you know, um, flew to, you know, Miami for, uh, for art stuff. It's like, you know, it's like I will I I went to all the way to Marfa, Texas to see art stuff. If you know, you know, you know. So, I love art. Um, which is probably a thing that never really quite got across in my newspaper. Um, but But uh and and so I was going to miss the art, but then like I was literally moved to tears by an art piece this last year at Burning Man 2024, a year that I was not even there.

Um there was a piece out in Deep Playa called I'm Fine. And um and I my my my uh my partner is Ukrainian.

We have um family in Ukraine and so uh the piece for those who don't know it was done by Ukrainian burners. Um and it was you know from a distance it just looks like a big sign that says I'm fine. And uh and again Camp Envy, thank goodness somebody like you know didn't just post a you know a photo far away. They like got closer and closer to it and then And there was a plaque there and they took a picture of the plaque that explains it. You see that it's a bunch of street signs and then upon closer inspection you see it's a bunch of street signs with bullet holes in them.

Oh yeah.

And then you read the plaque about like you know when you're living under wartime. People are constantly checking in on you.

I got that was one of my favorite I think I got to show you this. Well it's great for the podcast but I'm going to show you a picture but uh like I think one of the best pictures I It took all year.

Oh my god, that's gorgeous.

That's the sunrise.

Oh, the sunrise behind

like robot heart over there. Yeah.

And like Yeah.

Yeah. That was that was one of my favorite favorite pieces.

Yeah. And like I said, I did not even go to Burning Man and yet I'm sitting in a flat in Berlin look, you know, with with the, you know, the webcast on and looking at um looking at the images of the art and and looking at that one and just I start crying

um because it was you know the you know the power of art. Uh so I I felt like I still got a a fairly authentic

Burning Man experience even not being there and I think a lot of us discovered that in 2020 when you know it was the virtual burn and you know a lot of people didn't participate but if you did like I was just as busy preparing for the burn and then also during burn week as I felt like doing Burning Man. I still published a newspaper. I was still doing DJ sets virtually. I was in the BRC VR world like running into people and checking out like the virtual art that people made and and it was it was really cool. So, it you start to realize that it was like, oh, Burning Man is such a a thing now. It is it's sure it you know, there's the you know, the flagship event, if you will, that takes place in the Black Rock Desert, but there's also Burning Man in a lot of places.

Have you been to many of the regionals?

I've been to zero of the regionals, but I have been to lots and lots of other parties that have burners and Burning Man vibes. I mean, I guess if you count um the uh uh the San Franc I live in San Francisco, so um you know, we don't really have a re our regional is Burning Man.

Yeah.

Um although people telling me to go to Unscrews, uh, which is the Santa Cruz regional, which, uh, maybe next year, unfortunately, um, this year. It's the same date as my booty mashup party, so I can't make it work. But, um, but we also have, um, a Oh, wait. Why am I spacing on it right now? Um,

well, there's ones all over the

Oh, decompression. Like, I go to the decompression parties, you know, and that's that's pretty pretty burnish. And then there's the equinox parties. is here, too.

So, in LA's got some They've done

Oh, yeah. LA. I've I've I've I've been to um some Burning Man parties in LA and New York, uh in Portland. I've I've been to parties. I haven't been to any of the regional burns

because like I said, when you go to actual Burning Man every year, going to a regional burn is like, but I I know I need to do that. Um so many people when they're like like, "Oh, you're taking a break from Burning Man." They're like, "Oh, you got to hit this regional. You got to go to that regional." Um, uh, uh, Spanky's Wine Bar, a fabulous theme camp that I'm associated with. I DJ there every year for years. We do a fabulous booty mashup party on Wednesdays. Um,

and they they love Loveurn uh in Miami. They were really trying to get me to go to Loveurn, but I you know, but I I couldn't go to Loveburn for kind of one of the same reasons that I also don't go to Burning Man anymore. I just can't afford it. Uh it was a little too expensive. I had just been in Miami, which I I flew there, did a whole budget like I'm I I've got a all you can fly pass uh from Frontier Airlines, so I fly a lot of places for free. Oh, wow. But even even flying there for free, the ticket was like $400 and was just like afford it. Um and the other festivals that I am involved with. Um I'm part of the talent. I'm part of the crew. So I get um I I get a comp ticket. Uh whereas you know I don't never had that with Burning Man. I mean I guess I work my for Burning Man and I never ever ever got a free ticket because I never worked for Burning Man or I just worked for Burning Man.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

I mean, we all do. We all do. It's always a labor of love. So, I always paid for my own ticket. But, um, but people like they I was like, "What? You know, you could probably just ask them for a ticket." And I'm like,

"Yeah, but do you do you read the s*** I publish in my newspaper? I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me." You know? It's like I felt like like I like if I if I accepted a free ticket, then I'm a little beholden by like I'm going to feel a little weird if I write something a little critical of the Burning Man organization. So I was always very adamant about like the only time this is a well

journalistic independence. Right.

Right. Exactly. And the only time I accepted a free ticket I did get in my 30 years of going to Burning Man, I did get one free ticket. It was uh one of the years that I did not publish a newspaper. Um but I had the URL. Um I was squatting on a URL. that the Burning Man organization wanted. I had noticed that the Black Rock Gazette had ended. Um, and uh, and I I don't know, this is back in the day when, you know, we all like cyber squatted on like URLs and so I registered Black Rockckazette.com.

So, they gave you a free ticket for that.

Uh, well, this is the way it worked. Their lawyer uh, contact ed me and they're like, "Yeah, you know, you you you can't really have that." I ignored it. I ignored it. I ignored it. And then finally they got like a little more legal and they're like, "Look, we can show first use um blah blah blah." And I'm like, you know, look, I'm I I run an event that literally um you know, it the theme of the party is boot uh like bootlegged mashed up music that we don't that we modify and uh don't have copyright clearances for. So I'm very very familiar with how copyright law works. I understand for issues I know. Let's just say I haven't kind of I noticed you know nobody had it. So I was just you know holding it for you as someone concerned Black Rock City citizen in the community. So I will gladly you know sign it off transfer it over to you guys even though you're not using it. They still have not published, you know, that, you know, the idea that they're going to,

you know, relaunch the Black Rock as that that'll never happen. But at the time, they thought they might. So, but I was like, but if I hand it over, maybe you could like throw a gift ticket at me. Oh, yeah. No problem. No problem. Yeah. Oh my god. That's all I had to do was ask. Really? That's all I had to do?

So, um Okay, I think we should move to your ne the second question. Uh your background. So, where does it all begin for a young Adriana?

Well, I mean it began with uh you mean like

like where were you born? Where'd you grow up?

Oh. Oh, you mean actual personal baby? Yeah.

Who who cares about who I was before I was a burner?

Um I grew up mostly in Ohio, which I just found out um cuz uh um Marian uh Goodell uh CEO of Birding Man or Um we had a little back and forth

over some posts that I had made. But um and uh one of the uh reason one of the things she had pointed out was it was like I grew up in Ohio and I'm of a certain age and I'm like girl I grew up in Ohio and I am I am actually almost of the same certain age as you like. So so you know making ex you know kind of boomerish excuses. is about not being, you know, uh I don't know as uh it just not being on the same wavelength as me because and using age and background as an excuse did not fly for me because I also have similar um

grew up also in Ohio.

I'm just imagining you're like opening up like a high school yearbook and you're just like what the hell? It's like I'm standing right next to you and this No, I think we grew up in in I'm sure we grew up in different towns, but anyway, um I went to went to college in Ohio and then um I uh did grad school in LA uh for film actually and then came up to San Francisco for spring break. That would have been 91 um two years before my first Burning Man. Um 91. And when I got back down to LA, I'm like, why am I living in LA? Like I need to be in San Francisco, especially as like a queer gender non-conforming um person was like yeah so I moved to San Francisco in '91

uh very quickly got involved in weird little underground scenes which is obviously how you know that you know discovered things like cacophony society events and stuff like that

and uh that's how Burning Man happened.

Oh yeah. Well, one of the things um when I was interviewing uh We were talking before about uh uh Christina Occasio, my uh other previous transwoman guest, and she was telling me that uh Burning Man kind of helped her transition and kind of helped to give her like the space and the freedom, you know, the the whole radical self-exression, radical inclusion, you know, it's like going out to this like the Black Rock Desert and this whole temporary autonomy zone, you know, and it just that the default world out there and like this is what we're creating here. And she was I remember she was telling me that uh that was part of like what helped her come out like uh

for um for trans people especially

and for queer people in general that is a very very very common uh story uh for you know someone's first Burning Man. Absolutely 100%. Uh 1993 my first burn only 8 people. Um, I decided, you know, I was always very feminine. Um, I'm, uh, assigned male at birth. Uh, but always been very androgynous, very fem. Um, I mean, we're talking early 90s. Certainly queerness was there, but, you know, transess wasn't. I was aware of my bisexuality, of an inherent queerness, but, you know, I was like, am I just androgynous? What's the deal? And, uh, The very first Burning Man, I decided uh I was just going to wear a dress all weekend and you know, I've been like, you know, I would go to events in San Francisco, like especially like gay clubs and stuff, and you know, I'd wear a dress. I'd be it wasn't drag for me. Uh it was just like, you know, what we would now just refer to probably as non-binary or gender non-conforming, you know, that kind of that kind of vibe.

Um but at Burning Man, I was like, I'm wearing a dress the whole weekend. and or dresses. I mean, it looks like I wore the same thing every day. Um, and um, and you know, it was freeing and comfortable. It was a permissive environment and it was, you know, I could just had the freedom to just be myself 100%. And, you know, even back then there was the idea of, you know, take what you vibe on out here in the PLA on the playa and bring it back to the real world like it's like oh I really love the art well go you know you can like go go make art if that's what you want to do and in my case it was like gender expression of being a you know a very much a fem I was like oh if I want to wear a dress every day in the default world I guess I can do that and and then started to just do that. I mean, not like every day, but I mean, but my my presentation to the world just became much more clearly what we would now probably term fem non-binary. Um, back then we just said I'm just very, you know, uh, fem actually I was a fem fanboy before the term really existed. But, uh, but just androgynous. And yeah, um, and Burning Man, I I mean, if I'm being 100% honest, I really don't want to like put it all on Burning Man because obviously it was a whole bunch of things, but Burning Man was definitely a piece of the puzzle of my transgender journey of just realizing, oh, wait, I I can I can have this freedom. This is also one of the reasons why I get frustrated when people say things like, oh, I love Burning Man because out there, I can really be who I really am. And you know, and that's why they have their PLA names cuz, you know, that's their true self. And I'm like, you're doing it wrong. You're missing the point. It's like, you if if this is who you're discovering, who you really are, you need to figure out a way to do to to do that the other 51 weeks out of the year.

Yeah.

You know, which is also why there's the cliche of like, you know, the banker who goes out to Burning Man and has their mind blown and then like quits their corporate job and becomes an artist, you know, kind of thing. I don't know if that necessarily is as much of a cliche as it was in the '9s and early 2000s. Um, but that was

You think it's more like a cosplay kind of thing now? People like

nowadays I feel like the cliche is, oh, this is where you get to go and let your freak flag fly. But, you know, you're gonna go back to the default world and still be a tech bro, you know.

Yeah. I mean, another kind of concern because I remember like we were talking about like back in the day like there was no cell service, there was no Wi-Fi, there's no nothing. Um, I I don't know. It almost felt like like a lot of people had like the freedom to to walk around naked or to, you know, pole dance or to dress however they want. And but I don't know. It seemed like when I went last year wasn't quite a lot of that. Number tell me like, oh, that's because every phone has a camera attached and you know or or people are like streaming or you know it's like you have no idea like where something's going to end up and I guess

yeah

like there's a lot of people who like oh you know I have a life I I can't possibly be like exposed to this or

yeah I get it it's um it's unfortunate it's like I miss I can't believe I'm going to say this I miss shirt cockers I miss the shirt cockers bring back shirt cocking like make it I ironic like like the way mullets came back, you know, like bring bring back like ironic shirt cocking. I mean, it it's it's happened here and there. There's there's definitely like

I remember some of the best shirt cockers I ever saw was like these two I think they're like older men and they had like like full-on like uh like those workmen like jumpsuits, you know?

Yeah.

With just the whole cutout.

Oh my goodness. Oh, Burning Man. Oh. Burning Man. So yeah. Well, that you've been kind of touching on the last question of like what the impact of Burning Man or the influence on your life.

I mean, it's been a huge influence. It's um uh which is a blessing and a curse. Um because

I I love Burning Man and I probably loved it a little too hard. And as I've seen Burning Man in in in in the world kind of like make this slow transition from like, oh my god, this incredibly cool arty weird party in the desert, you know, this, you know, um, you know, this really interesting thing to now the perception is, oh, that's where rich people go to party and it's just, you know, a bunch of influencers and tech bros now. And I I went from being proud to be like, "Yeah, I'm a burner. Oh yeah, I was there back in the day." Blah, blah, blah. Ain't no big deal. You know, a little little smuggness to now almost being like, "Yeah, I Yeah, I'm a burner." Like almost embarrassed to admit it because because the perception out in the world has definitely gotten worse. And I hate to say it, not without good reason. There are there's there are Burning Man's always had a share of people that just aren't quite my vibe. And that's okay. It's any any big city, you know, city of 70 80,000 people, it's going to have it share of assholes. I almost stopped going to Burning Man in 1995 because I had homophobic epithets yelled at me. Um, I felt like I was going to get f** bashed. Um, I use that term because that's the term they used. Um, you know, it was uh, you know, there'd be like Yahoos coming in from like, you know, you know, like

the weekend warriors, the weekend warriors kind of vibe. Um, it was just like Ugh. Um, oh, it already jumped the shark. This is 1995, mind you. Okay. Um, and instead I adapted. I adapted. And with every Burning Man change, I always adapted. It's just like, h, you know, and I noticed that increasingly the last few years I went to Burning Man, my uh survival technique for adapting was to just be on my own trip, run around by myself, see the art, hang out at the few camps that I really loved and had people with and then kind of like avoid a lot of the big stuff. It's like, you know, the 2:00 and 10:00 side and then the 2:00 and 10:00 camps. A lot of them moved out to the middle. It's like, you know, it's like this whole like, oh my god, we got to go to Lee Bird's Sunrise Center at Robot Heart. Oh my god, oh my god. You know, it's like, h robot heart, robot heart, robot heart, oh mind warrior, mind warrior, mind warrior. And it's just like these, you know, these people who are treating Burning Man like it's just you know it's the DJ chasers it's the um it's this it's the you know the the EDM festival people there for the clout and it's like at a certain point those people start becoming such a huge number that I could not like ignore it. I could not get a like not you know

somehow come across it and um and you know, just not really my vibe.

So, uh, like I appreciate that it's there. Um, I mean, honestly, I'm going to say as much as like Robot Heart is not my vibe, I will say I did appreciate them in 2021, um, like, uh, being at the Rogue Burn because it was like, okay, god, these people. But at least it feels like Burning Man. It really does feel like Burning Man. like, oh, all these people in their their glittery headdresses and their bedazzled captain's hat and their long white like like

furry coat,

furry coat. And I was just like, h, you know, you know, stumbling into my camp and asking if they could use the toilet in my RV and, you know, Yeah. Yeah. Um but um but you know, like I said, as much as it wasn't my vibe, I kind of weirdly appreciated Robot Heart being there. Um but you know, there there's that element of Burning Man that that unfortunately is the now most publicfacing element of Burning Man. Um you know, this is what people who don't go to Burning Man, this is what they assume

all of Burning Man is. It's not, but it is a very very very even when you're out there.

Mhm.

It's just an incredibly visible part of Burning Man.

Yeah.

Um so yeah, seeing that change has just been

like it's

No, and I it's it's been slow. I was a denier of that.

But I I got to tell you like years, but it I'd be like, "No, no, it's not all that." But it is a lot of that.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I got to tell you, like for me, I a lot of similar that that thoughts and feelings. But uh yeah, I came back after like a 13-year gap and and yeah, I I went through like a lot of these same things. I was just, you know, I was like, "Oh, I don't like this or I don't like that." But I went back and I was like, "You know what? The thing that I think that really kind of like the hook that kind of got me was was more of just like it was like community and connections. It's like and people that I've met like along the way. It's like like it still is possible, you know, to like to go back and just like, yeah, steer clear of the 10 and the two, but you know what? I got friends at like Spanky's Wine Bar. You're just like, I got friends over here. I got friends like and like make that like the experience of

like any big city. You find your people, you find your community, you find your scene, you find your hangouts. I mean, I love that Black Rock City is legitimately

a city and it is and it has always felt that way even even when it was just a small town. Oh, yeah. You know, um it's got the good, it's got the bad.

This is why I was so all in on like, well, if we're going to play Pretend City, you know, Just like the when we were kids, we played house. Now we're adults. We play we play city. Like, okay, I'm going to be the newspaper, you know? I'm going to do the newspaper. And um so yeah, it's Birding Man is still special. It will always always be a part of me. Um and um and I think, you know, a lot of the takeaways uh that I've that I've had have been like, you know, um like I'm involved with Death Guild Thunderdome crew and Oh, you are the

uh I but I camp with them not at Burning Man, but I would camp with them at Wasteland weekend.

Um Spanky's Wine Bar. Like I party with them when they're in the city. They're probably going to drag me to Love Burn next year. You know, it's like you do make these these connections. Um sadly, uh especially in the past few years, um Burning Man got so big that I found those connections were harder and harder to cultivate. And then the ones that I already had were harder and harder to maintain, you know, just cuz like I said, everyone's, you know, unless these are the connections of people who just never leave their camp, you know, it's just harder to connect with people because it's just so damn huge,

you know, and you know how making plans are. It's like, yeah, Thursday night we're going to do a walkabout like, yeah, we'll meet at this thing and then we're we're going to go do an art tour and then Yeah. did not does not happen.

Exactly. Well, thank you so much. This has been an awesome interview. I think it's going to be one of my best episodes so far this year.

I'm glad I didn't trash talk nearly as much as I thought I would.

That's what's so funny is like I try to get people to come in the show. Yeah. Shadow the man. Like shadow. Oh, that's dark. You know, I'm like, well, no, it just means like just the influence and like like I always say, you know, I'm more interested in the phoenix than dwelling on the flames. But uh

yeah, absolutely. I mean, and it's like um a lot of people have come up to me especially since I retired from Burning Man or graduated as as you call it and um you know I no longer do the newspaper and they kind of like make these assumptions like like yeah Burning Man sucks. Yeah, can't believe you lasted that long. Yeah, I got burnt out ages ago. Yeah, they screwed me over. Blah blah blah. Like I said, people still, not even publishing a newspaper, they still come up to me with an axe to grind and I'm I'm actually still stay pretty even-handed. I'm like, "No, if you have not been to Burning Man, I still tell people everybody should go to Burning Man at least once. There is

just nothing quite like it. There's bits and pieces of other festivals and experiences that like that come close that like can mimic an aspect of it. But as far as the whole damn surv extreme survivalist, desert camping, posing as an arts festival. No, nothing comes close to really being that whole epic epic package. There's an epicness to it, you know.

Oh, yeah.

Um and uh but you know, it's like like I said, everyone should experience it once. I loved it so much I did it 30 times. Probably probably way more than I should have. I mama needs a break.

Yeah.

Um

but uh but yeah, I will I will definitely be back. Uh I was planning to go back um you know last year uh and and in fact this coming year um but I keep doing things to manufacture reasons like you know what I'm going to go back to school um I'm doing doing um like doing audio stuff um doing doing uh music production in Berlin that will really force me to be like well nope I can't go. So this is now two years in a row of me doing that like finding another project.

Yeah. take some time for yourself. You know, it'll always I mean,

it will always be there. Even though that the the doomsayers or whatever, you know, like, "Oh, Bernie, this is last year." It's like, "Yeah, yeah."

No, please. I I I too run an event business. I know what it's like to um not make your budget that year and be a little in trouble. And they'll figure out a way. You know, it's it is at this point it's a business. So, you know, it's Not like, oh, they're going to go bankrupt and then be like, eh, okay, I guess we're not doing this anymore. No, there's too much invested. And I don't necessarily mean money investment. I mean just, you know, emotional and just like sweat equity investment and just the cultural investment.

You know, it is, you know, that the direction of the event mutates and changes and you know, we as the participants, you know, have a hand in that

a little bit obviously. um the organizers, you know, it's they're a benevolent dictatorship, you know, let's say the quiet part out loud. Um but at the same time, it's still just, you know, you strip away all the b******* and you know the and part of the b******* is the hardship of you know going to a very stupid place to have a party, but we do it anyway cuz that's kind of part of the experience of the trauma bonding of of the environment. Exactly.

Um, you know, and you know, it might be a good year like it was last year. It might be crappy like 2022 and 2023, but you know, it's part of the part of the experience. Um, it's

it's just still a really cool thing. So, yeah. I always tell people, you know, like, "Oh, glad I never went." And I was like, "No, you should.

No, you should. You should."

And I think that you'll be back.

Oh, a whole Oh my god, Andy. I've got a plan. No newspaper. Uh, I'm not going to tell anyone I'm going

and and and Oh, sorry. What?

Well, no, no, we we'll talk after the show, but we're we're kind of like reaching our time.

We're over time. Okay, fine. I'll tell you later.

Well, thank you so much. Uh maybe we can even do another one this one of these days. So many stories.

I'm around, but I also feel like you've got the the more I don't go to Burning Man, the more you're going to have people who are going to have better stories.

Exactly. Well, thank you so much.

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