Alternative news and satire magazine Smashpipe announced that it will resume weekly publication on Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015, after over a year's hiatus.
"I'm proud to bring Smashpipe back to its New York City roots and that we are dedicated to publishing over than 500 original articles in the next year," Publisher John Engstrom, said in an exclusive email.
Starting today, Smashpipe will resume publishing "the best writing we love twice a week including regular contributions from co-head writers Tony Sokol and Jim Knipfel and weekly horoscopes by Rob Brezsny." Knipfel and Brezny made their bones at free weekly alternative paper The New York Press, which was the main competitor to The Village Voice in New York City from 1988 to 2011.
Jim Knipfel wrote the long-running and popular "Slackjaw" column for the New York Press. He also wrote the critically acclaimed memoirs "Slackjaw," "Quitting the Nairobi Trio" and "Ruining It for Everybody," as well as two novels, "The Buzzing" and "Noogie's Time to Shine." Tony Sokol is a contributing editor at Den of Geek and wrote and produced New York City's original Vampyr Theatre in the 1990s.
"The thing that sets Smashpipe apart from so many of the other places I've written for is that there's no limit, no restrictions, no agenda," said Knipfel. "We have no target demographic, which means the writers have the freedom too say whatever the hell they want without worrying about who they might offend or what sacred cows they might be skewering. Most sacred cows deserve a good skewering. Plus they're delicious. Oh, and Smashpipe pays, too."
Brezsny was the first famous horoscope columnist to prognosticate in first-person language. Utne Reader described Brezsny's column Real Astrology as breathing "new life into the tabloid mummy of zodiac advice column," or so it says on Wikipedia. Brezsny wrote the books "Images Are Dangerous," "The Televisionary Oracle," and "Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring To Shower You with Blessings."
Jim Knipfel wrote long-running and popular "Slackjaw" column for the New York Press. He also wrote the critically acclaimed memoirs "Slackjaw," "Quitting the Nairobi Trio" and "Ruining It for Everybody," as well as two novels, "The Buzzing" and "Noogie's Time to Shine."
Other contributors will include Daniel Riccuito, publisher of the alternative film magazine The Chiseler, Mike Cecchini, managing editor, and Christopher Longo, deputy editor at Den of Geek as well as Jennifer Matsui, Konstantinos Christakis, Mike Conklin, Lauren Beck and Jeff Klingman.
Smashpipe describes itself as equal parts "irreverent, punk, and literary, but always unexpected. Smashpipe is home to ideas, opinions, reporting and interviews you won't find anyplace else, written by people with enough of an inside understanding of media, politics, history and the culture at large to peer through the fog of bullshit, and do so with style."
"The Smashpipe publishing system is a revolutionary single-page-app injected with the DNA of traditional print alt-weeklies. We want to make it easy for anyone to publish a magazine as a single page app for offline use," Engstrom said.
Now headquartered in NYC, Smashpipe publishes two editions weekly, Thursdays and Fridays.
