The Copenhagen Report

So out doing a bit of bar-hopping/bar-crawling or whatever you want to call it on Saturday, I ended up grabbing a magazine that caught my attention as I was ordering a beer at Jolene on Sorgenfrigade in Nørrebro (an intentionally kitsch funny kind of place - DJ and an acceptable selection of beer - which I was kind of thankful closed at midnight not because I'm getting old and wanted to go home (I didn't) but because it was a decent evening and an alright vibe but the night was kinda going nowhere and when Jolene's closed it obviously forced us to go someplace else and we otherwise may not have since it was kinda shitty weather outside and we were kinda comfortable sitting there on Jolene's couch).

Anyway, this morning when I woke up I found this magazine stuffed into my jacket pocket waiting for me so I got to flipping through it to be pleasantly surprised. There's not so many Copenhagen mags out there that are written in English, especially ones actually worth reading (actually, there are basically none that I know of...) which is kind of a shame not only for me (well, I can manage to read Danish with effort and patience and a dictionary) but because I think Copenhagen has a lot to offer but it's kinda hard to show all this stuff to the world even though a lot of it should be and it does get written about but there's often no English translation available. So that's why I grabbed this one. An edgy city mag that digs into the counterculture of Copenhagen is always welcome, especially written in English.

Bitchslap is it's name. It's chalk-full of pleasingly scruffy writing, pixel-perfect images complemented by top-notch design and production making it a juicy little piece of work and one quite aptly named. Amateur journalism often is the most invigorating to read when done right.

In the case of issue 7, which happens to be the issue that I got ahold of (they're all available at www.bitchslapmag.com), I'd go as far as saying one article about Simon Strange, the vice-cultural major of Copenhagen (who happens to be 26 and seems to get the essence of what punchy politics can do for a city) deserves an award in itself for worthwhile journalism. And besides offering a fascinating little profile of Simon, the article in itself is a nice little bitchslap to complainers who don't bother to actually get off the couch.

So call me a (new) fan and check it out yourself if you want to see a picture of Copenhagen that is bang on but that you'll never hear about in the tourist 'literature'...