By We did it! Merry-Go-Round Magazine is now six years old! Six years ago, a bunch of literal kids started a pop culture website and somehow, pending any GoDaddy or WordPress outages, here it remains today!
It’s been a turbulent year of ups and downs—I’m not sure if you heard, but COVID never really stopped over the last year. I can only speak for myself and not the rest of our editors and contributors but, there were certainly moments through the last year where keeping this little magazine afloat felt exhausting. But looking back on the last year, I remain extremely proud of this little site. Even when things are slow pop culturally, and even through the burnout of a global pandemic, we’ve somehow stayed the course and produced some of our best writing to date. Profiles of important musical artists like Cloud Nothings, Slaughter Beach, Dog, Bartees Strange, and Anika Pyle, a ranking of every Keanu Reeves film, a deep-dive into 2020’s buzziest game HADES, and not to mention E3 recaps, Sundance coverage, and a year’s worth of excellent AYA VS. THE BIG BOYS episodes… we’re still alive and still kicking.
But Merry-Go-Round’s successes, at least to me, didn’t just happen within this website URL. Many of our longstanding writers have published amazing writing on other websites, from Jesse Herb in the Los Angeles Times to Ted Davis with words at Resident Advisor, Adam Cash contributing to Country Queer to Blake Michelle over at MXDWN, among many others, it’s thrilling to see writers expanding their voices in other corners of the internet.
We do not have a fun show lined up to celebrate year six—once again, we have been thwarted by the novel coronavirus. Maybe in year seven? But, we do want to celebrate with our writers, editors, patrons, and readers of the magazine! If you’re in LA, join us at Arts District Brewing at 6:30 P.M. PST, if you’re in NY, join us at American Trash at 8:00 P.M. EST! You can see the details here and feel free to reach out to us via Twitter for more info!
It’s important to reiterate that Merry-Go-Round Magazine is entirely reader funded via Patreon. We’re in the process of tweaking what our Patreon looks like (more on that soon!), but needless to say, today is a great day for you to become a supporter for as low as $2 a month! We’re thrilled to pay our writers for their work and that is a luxury we have because of our Patrons. You can learn more here.
Thank you so much for reading, sharing, and engaging with our work for the last year. If you’ve followed us on social media, bothered to click on a link, or shared an article with a friend, you’ve helped grow this website and I appreciate it.
Stay safe,
CJ Simonson, Editor-in-Chief
Comments