Hello and happy Sunday.
We are officially twelve days into 2025, and we at br.o are keeping busy–trying to keep ourselves distracted from the impending dread of the upcoming inauguration on the 20th as well as trying to stick to our New Year’s Resolutions.
I for one have committed to Dry January (dust-baths only ;)).
In the past seven days, I have felt this website coming to life. This week we got to post four articles, each one from a unique author, and we also got to launch some new features, and further develop the cite to suit the new bits and bobs.
To toot my own horn, I was particularly giddy about how well my article/interview on Brandywine performed. I owe a notable amount of that success to the artists featured in that piece who re-posted the article to their social medias. Rest assured, more interviews are on the way!
I am currently in the process of recruiting interview subjects for the upcoming br.o exclusive podcast: Denver Life This! The first episode I have planned is “People Who Do Activities.” Generally, I am just looking for people who live in and around Denver who want to talk about their interesting (or not) lives/passions/what they do. If you have an interest in talking about yourself, or you know someone worth talking to, feel free to reach out to staff@bottlerag.org, for a possibility to be featured on the show.
Speaking of podcasts (sort of), we also ~officially~ launched live radio broadcasting! As mentioned in the last update post, live radio is a new feature on br.o, and you can find the schedule for our streamed content and live broadcasts at bottlerag.org/radio. I hosted two successful radio broadcasts on Monday and Tuesday evening where I played a mixture of curated songs from my digital library, some tunes from our featured local artists, and some vinyl tracks. In addition to all that, I also got to play some song requests that were sent in to us via email. If you would also like to request a song, or if you have a message you wish to share with our audience, you too can email us at staff@bottlerag.org.
As for updates with our other contributors. We got to post another piece from semi-regular contributor and br.o homie, Billy Lyle. Billy Lyle currently lives in L.A, where the end is nigh. The piece he posted has absolutely nothing to do with that. It’s about the history and appreciation of disco music, and he curated a playlist to go along with it, which you can find a link to on our radio page, and hear played from 8:45a to 9:45a Sunday mornings on br.o radio. He didn’t ask me to say this, but you can make his day a little brighter by clicking on the author URL on any of his posts and donating to the fundraiser. The money goes to Dahnoun Mutual Aid, an organization providing aid to the people of Gaza affected by the ongoing war.
Furthermore, two new contributors, Curran Collier and tj posted to br.o for the first time this week! It is so exciting to get to platform new voices. If you haven’t read their pieces yet, “Thanking Dying Stars for Our Addiction to Innovation” and “A Wake Up Call,” then be sure to go back and give those a read. We hope to publish more work from these writers in the future!
That being said… the vision of bottlerag.org is to break the status quo and elevate a diverse range of voices. So far, we are elevating several white male voices and one white woman’s voice. It’s not really giving, is it? All I could think this week was: We need more not white-men writing for the site. The problem is, white men appear to be the demographic that is most ready and willing to share their thoughts online in essay form. It’s just nature. People with more sense approach the online realm with more reluctance and caution.
I’ve been asking around, looking for more non-man/non-white contributors to the site. We are looking for more writers, artists, whatever. We can’t offer you much, but we can offer you a platform for your work, and a platform for all your relevant links. If you are not a white man and you are interested in becoming a br.o contributor, I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH, you can email us at staff@bottlerag.org
Final thoughts and closing remarks:
We recently got an Instagram (barf) @bottlerag.org_ where we post stories with polls and notifications about articles. We are also on tumblr.com as @bottlerag-org, you can follow us on there to see my unfiltered enlightened thoughts and ideas. We have also created a Venmo account for donations– the money from these donations will go towards paying our contributors and paying off some of the maintenance that goes along with running the site. If you would like to financially support what we do here at br.o, you can scan the QR code on the sidebar of any post on the site, or you can type bottlerag-org into your venmo app.
If you want to support br.o in a way that is not monetary, there are still plenty of things you can do to help us out. You can subscribe to our email list to get a notification any time we post. You can add bottlerag.org to your home screen of you phone to access br.o radio just as easily as any other music streaming service. You can tell your friends to check out the site. You can submit your playlists to us on our radio page. You can submit your work to us on the website or by email. For the love of god, please email us at staff@bottlerag.org. We are so lonely.
Again, we will accept article submissions, blogs, stories, poems, photos, art, videos. Anything you want.
Thank you to everyone who has supported us so far. We couldn’t do this without you. Things can only keep going up from here.
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