Tag Archives: kickstarter

Support Your Local Sporting Scene

If you read this site and/or follow me on Twitter and the like, I’m guessing there’s a very good chance you’ve heard this news already. On the off chance you haven’t, have you heard the news?

It seems that a veritable supergroup of great writerly types is teaming up to make a brand new daily sporting web site called The Classical. Like who? The first name that caught yours truly’s eye was Tom Scharpling, whose Best Show on WFMU I’ve waxed about rhapsodically on this show many times. Aside from being one of the funniest people around, he is also an NBA fan ne plus ultra (see this interview for evidence) and can speak/write on the subject with the utmost authority, and thus is an ideal catch for such an endeavor.

But when it comes to the roster of champs involved with this endeavor, that is far from all. There’s Bethlehem Shoals of Free Darko fame (read their hoops books if you haven’t, because you should). Tim Marchman, one of the best and most criminally underused baseball writers in America. Eric Nusbaum from Pitchers and Poets. David Roth, whose weekly sporting chats at The Awl (w/David Raposa) never fail to crack me up. And that is but a sampling.

Okay, great, they’re gonna do a website. Why am I writing about it? Because in order to make The Classical “a sustainable business, rather than yet another blog or Tumblr” (their words), they need dough. So they’ve set up a Kickstarter page with the goal of raising $50,000 to make this a reality. If you’re on the fence about whether you’d like to contribute to the cause, I’d suggest reading the Project Description and the full list of contributors, and above all else, watching the accompanying video, which has some hilarious visual cues.

And of course, if you do contribute, you’re in line for some valuable schwag, including (but not limited to) a chip clip. But if you can’t swing a contribution (times are tough, I know), you can always like The Classical on Facebook, or tweet about it, or mention it on the social media platform of your choice. It’s free, and it helps.

From what I can tell, the response has been pretty great thus far; as I post this, The Classical has already raised over $11K. But that’s obviously not quite their goal, so if you’ve ever complained about call-in radio shows or lamented the general meatheadedness of sports commentary, please consider doing your part to elevating said commentary on the interwebs. Future generations will thank you.

The Space Between the Cushions Collective: An Update

A while ago, Scratchbomb featured a Kickstarter page created by The Space Between the Cushions Collective, a group from Bushwick that “shifts the public art paradigm by creating sustainable, locally-grown couch forts.” Eventually, they were able to gain the funds necessary to embark on a tour, but I haven’t received an official update from them since a stop in Philadelphia. They were supposedly on their way to Pittsburgh, but I’ve received little more than texts from them in that time. I thought I’d share them with you in attempts to piece together their progress since The Collective’s last full-fledged update.

April 15
Do u kno if primant’is has vegan platter? asked guy behind counter 8x and he just keeps starin at me

April 17
damn;altenater might be shot again. shouldntve tried to recharge ipad and portable french press at smae time

April 18
back on the road got altenatre fixed, only cost $700 to fix that and the busted hobbit belt on the van’s third axel

April 22
gotta hightail it outta akron. set up couch fort on site of old tire factory and got this wierd rash

April 23
rash getting worse, startin to freak out, think i might have that creepshow disease where i turn into a grass monster

April 24
false alarm. turns out it was just a mosquito bite.

April 27
wtf! Schuyler got nabbed by the Chicago cops! just cuz he put up one of our installations on some el train steps and some old lady tripped. not gonna stand for this! rally tomorrow in grant park!

April 28
big crowd here, at least 8. 9 if you count the guy who’s looked over from that bench a bunch of times.

April 29
Schuyler’s outta jail, wants to know why we didn’t just bail him out instead of holding ‘some bullshit rally’. i told him in art it always makes the most sense to do the thing that makes the least sense. he punched me in the sternum

April 30
Schuyler called us a buncha assholes and took a bus back to NY.
i always doubted his commitment. his loss. we’re goin to Madison next the abandoned couch capital of the upper midwest

May 1
a buncha dumb college students ran off with our lattest installation and set it on fire. everyone’s goin nuts over here i think the school beat their big rival osamabin state or something? i dunno i don’t follow sports.

May 4
woke upearly this morning to watch the sunrise and think about how precious and fragile life is andhwo we have to make the best use of what little time we have on this planet. reallty got me motivated to findsome abadnoned couches and make forts out of them today

Update from The Space Between the Cushions Collective

Thanks to your generous donations, The Space Between the Cushions Collective will be hitting to road soon! We fell a bit short of our goal, which was admittedly a bit optimistic. It’s hard for anyone to raise $95,000 in just two weeks, especially when you’re getting the word out primarily through flour-pasting fliers onto bus shelters and wind-powered text message blasts. But Kickstarter agreed to partially fund our quest if we promised to never use them or mention them again after this sentence. Thanks, [redacted]!

In case you haven’t heard of us before, first, crawl out from the rock you’ve been living under. Then, listen to this: The Space Between the Cushions Collective creates sustainable, locally grown couch forts that help the poor, unenlightened citizens of East Williamsburg discover their urban spaces in bold new ways. Those we’ve helped include the kids of P.S. 209 (except for the one who poked his eye on a protruding couch spring) and that derelict who begs for change outside the deli on Irving that still sells 4Loko.

Now, we’ll be taking our organic couch fort-construction techniques to big cities and slightly smaller cities across America! Our fixed-gear van is fully repaired, and even though we couldn’t afford the mural we really wanted, we did get one of our favorite artists to cover it in a large canopy made of stitched together airbrushed jean jackets. We also found a lobby poster for Space Jam to hang inside the van. It looks so stupid, it’s awesome.

We’ll be sending you dispatches as we travel, to update you on where you can find our latest installations. Stay tuned, and keep watching the couches. First stop: Philadelphia! Actually, first stop’s in Mahwah, since Bill’s gotta drop off some laundry at him mom’s house. And then we might check out a house show in New Brunswick; I heard the guy who plays bike in Arcade Fire might do a solo acoustic set. But after that, it’s straight on to Philly!