What OOOF! BONG! isn’t.
It is not hard-hitting journalism, incisive political commentary, endless lists of what to do or where to eat, divisive op-eds that feign to walk some imagined middle path, recycled press releases bent on increasing clout and revenue, generic interviews with emerging or established artists, three-and-a-half-star reviews of movies that no one wants to see but goes to see anyway, pearl-clutching over the death of culture, impressionistic personal essays vaguely regarding loneliness or loss, cynicism that masquerades as satire, an exercise in civic pride or shame, the new hotness, a contribution to the discourse, a total game-changer, blatant click-bait, optimized for search engines, pseudo-intellectual bullshit, a rising tide that lifts all boats, a desperate plea for attention, a lament for the pre-internet world, or one last hurrah.
What OOOF! BONG! is.
OOOF! BONG! is merely a set of observations, criticisms, lies, and stories about Montreal and/or Montréal and/or Tiohtià:ke which, according to the venerable MontrealTips.com, is “undoubtedly one of the unique places you can live in.”
It is - when we’re feeling humble about it - just an attempt to describe what it’s like to live in Montreal right now. That’s it. It aims to be aggressively parochial. Rather than covering ant-men and their wasps, we’ll be talking about that man we met on St-Antoine at one a.m who offered to sell us a child’s bike (handle streamers and all) for no fewer than three cigarettes. Rather than opining about Canada’s hawkish UFO policies, we’ll be offering up hundreds of words about some band that only plays every other full moon in the burnt out husk of Super Sexe. There will also be, we suppose, more traditional culture and society stuff - but told from an obtusely local perspective. We might discuss that book everyone is reading, but we’ll also talk about why it seems like there’s always someone vacuuming at Paragraph (legit, what’s the deal?).
In other words, OOOF! BONG! is writing about this city for people who love and hate this city in equal measure by people who love and hate this city in equal measure.
Remember when that whale came close to the island and everyone was really excited and then it turned out it only came here to die? Yeah, so, this is like that but in newsletter form.
It’s free. It’s not backed by government grants or corporate funds. It’s not affiliated with any political party, cartel, hedge fund, co-op, gang, non-profit, or anything else. It has no designs on radicalizing you, your children, or your parents. It’s not an elaborate ruse to get your data. It’s a periodical (!?) about a city written by human people who live in it. It comes out every other day (or, if you want to get fancy about it, bidiurnally) starting now [EDIT: This is no longer true as of May 8, 2023. It now comes out frequently and randomly!].
If you want to pitch something, ask a question, call us names, pledge your allegiance, or whatever - you can do so at ooofbong at gmail dot com or @ooofbong on that terrible bird app.