Some Hate and Love mail we’ve received:

I got your first issue of Swagger last night at Sauced and I became anxious to run home and read it.
When I finally got home I snuggled in my warm bed and began to read.
It was disgusting and delightful all at once and after I read it I masturbated for an hour!
I’m excited to read next month’s issue.
Us virgins got to have something to look forward to.
Great job and keep it up!
( no pun intended )

Jennie D

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Dear Swagger,
As a bike-riding woman, I sincerely appreciate that SOMEONE has finally started producing a DIY zine which advocates bicycles, art, music and local enterprenuerialship. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your zine, and I was especially entertained by the “Dating advice from a total Dick!” I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time… well, since I saw the Twin Towers costume in the Gazette’s Ghouls Gone Wild halloween parade. That shit is comic gold! Chester’s portrayal of “meat pockets” is not only hilarious, but dead on. Any drunk bitch who goes home with a guy after only 4 shots obviously can’t hold her liquor, and deserves to be called “easy.” Your magazine is extremely offensive, which is why I find it incredibly awesome. I’d like to see more articles from lady bicyclists, and maybe a woman’s dating advice issue I hopt to be as swaggerifically cool as your contributors.

Keep it nasty,
Suzi Uzi

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Okay guys, I appreciate your DIY ethic and your fuck-cars attitude, but there’s a line between being “edgy” and being downright misogynistic. Maybe your “Dating Advice from a total Dick” is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek and funny, but if that’s the case you clearly don’t have the skill to pull “edgy but not offensive” off. Statements like “‘no’ means ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ means she’s easy” is openly advocating rape and not in any imaginably way funny. That and calling a woman a “meat pocket” I hope ensures that none of you will ever get laid again.

Everyone involved with your zine should feel responsible for being associated with whoever wrote that piece (despite your weak disclaimer at the beginning of the zine encouraging people to not take it seriously). It means you either actively condone those ideas and language or it means that you’re too insecure to call your friends out on their tasteless bullshit.

As an added note, being cool isn’t macho posturing, what’s on your ipod and what track frame you’ve got between your legs. Actually being cool isn’t an accumulation or consumption of “alternative” culture. Maybe you’ll grow up one day and realize that.

- A bike-riding woman who is way cooler than you’ll ever be

p.s. My friend and I threw away all your copies at Coffee Slingers.

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Good stuff, let us know what you think!