News From the Bog #0
Missed you loads!
What’s up?
Ok, we made it. We are on substack. Something we have thought about doing since 2020, but never got round to because we love to make it hard for ourselves. We will really, truly miss the mailchimp interface and ability to edit the newsletter’s design, but we’re already late to the party, right?
If you were already a mailchimp subscriber, you’ll know the reason(s) we have returned to the digital sphere. You’ll also probably recognise the format of this particular newsletter. (If not, you can read all our old newsletters here, including our last one announcing the Great Return.)
So, how will this all work from now on? The vague-ish plan is to send you a newsletter like this, including recs, research and some light reading every couple of weeks, then some special, heavier subscriber-only content every other week. Interspersed will be OG Bog content from past issues, which we know doesn’t get read nearly enough due to the nature of our sites.
Under our current financial restrictions, we’re trialling this cadence as a start, and hoping to bulk up the more in-depth or research-heavy content as we gain more subscribers. Basically, the more of you guys that pay for this, the better this thing will be.
We’ve migrated about 200-ish of you over from mailchimp. A modest number, and one that we grew completely organically without any public-facing page to entice people into giving us their emails. And if y’all subscribed for just £4.00 a month (literally the price of a half pint in Hackney these days) we could pay our contributors, like, £200+ per piece minimum – which isn’t too bad for a first time substacker.
As we get a better idea of how much we’re working with we will be putting together some standard rates for contributors (which we hope will soon be higher than £200 a pop). We’re super inspired by the publications that have managed to use substack as a source of income for both an editorial team and a list of stellar contributors, and we’d love to get there one day. But this all depends on you guys!
A subscription costs just £4/month or £45 for a whole year. Take a look at the options here:
So what the hell to write for our first post?! Well, we thought we’d keep it simple: do what we do… Ummm, not best, but pretty well, and tell you about some stuff we’ve found and love on and off the internet.
Garm of the week
Garm of the week is back, baby! And we have been thinking a lot about masks now that the UK government is set to ban them at protests.
So, without further ado, our first substack’d garm of the week is………………..
The Zapatista football kit!
“Wtf that’s so cool!” I hear you cry. Because, honestly, has a national team ever looked so hard? No, they have not.
If you’re not familiar with the Zapatistas, we’re here to catch you up: formally known as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, or EZLN), the Zapatistas are a left wing (duh), indigenous-peasant militant group who control a large amount of territory in Chiapas, Mexico. They rose up against the Mexican government in 1994 and managed to form autonomous regions run by their own community.
Their political ideology is pretty close to anarchism, but they prefer to refer to it as ‘Zapatista’, having created their own specific ideological matrix broadcast to the outside world through communiqués written by Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos. It was through his communiqués, published on the internet, that the Zapatistas spread their word, and have inspired people the world over to visit their home in Chiapas and adapt parts of their ideology into their own political and social movements.
These communiqués are still being written, and an archive stretching back to 1993 can be seen here.
His writing is really beautiful and poetic and you can read English translations of it in this book. We also thought this review by Naomi Klein was quite good for some background info if you’re new to the Zapatistas.
Marcos, who quickly became the movement’s figurehead in the mid-90s, was pretty much always photographed wearing a balaclava, army fatigues and a patchwork patrol cap decorated with three red stars:
His masked appearance means that his revolutionary spirit can stretch beyond the identity of one specific leader. He is the embodiment of the revolution, so he is not an individual per se, but the people.
Marcos’ red star and balaclava infiltrated the football team’s identity, too. This photo, another one that is giving major fitspo, was taken (maybe on the same day?) in 1999 by someone called Luis Jorge Gallegos:
We did some digging and found out that football is actually not a big sport in Chiapas (apparently the preferred sport is basketball) but they do have somewhat close links with Inter Milan who have sponsored Zapatista infrastructure projects and even donated strips to Marcos, who is apparently a fan.
Here you can read a very cute and funny letter from Marcos to Italian billionaire and former owner of the team, Massimo Moratti, asking him to help organise a series of matches with the Zapatista team across Mexico, Italy and the US (with Diego Maradona as referee).
We copy + paste a stellar passage of the letter here for your pleasure:
And, perhaps, in order to differentiate ourselves from the objectification of women which is promoted at football games and in commercials, the EZLN would ask the national lesbian-gay community, especially transvestites and transsexuals, to organize themselves and to amuse the respectable with ingenious pirouettes during the games in Mexico. That way, in addition to prompting TV censorship, scandalizing the ultra-right and disconcerting the Inter ranks, they would raise the morale and spirits of our team. There are not just 2 sexes, and there is not just one world, and it is always advisable for those who are persecuted for their differences to share happiness and support without ceasing to be different.
Bring a bit of Zapatista into your day, every day. 🌱
Other stuff we liked on and off the internet
Last week we were lucky enough to score an invite to Alice Gomme’s studio and saw some of the most incredible pieces of clothing we have ever seen. Alice spent many years travelling across Europe to rag yards to salvage clothing that has been mended or altered by its previous owner(s) and has, in the past year or so, started opening up her archive to more than just commercial clients. You usually have to pay to go, and we actually think that’s a really great thing because it keeps things A- small and intimate and special, and B- means the clothes aren’t overexposed. We are hoping to do something longer-form with Alice soon (if she’s into it).
Ok, fine, it actually says BQG but we are so into it. It’s from an expedition to Mount Everest the 1920s but we feel like it lives in the same world as Franco Rubartelli’s photographs of Veruschka. The poses make it look high fashion. Like, this vibe and this vibe mashed together or something. Styling inspo to the max.
And finally some rainy Friday night viewing for you all.
Ciao for now!