Exclusive Interview + Rewards Update (Patreon)

So this month the kratom selection is going to be Red Horn! The red strains are known mostly for their analgesic effects so the couch-melters out there will be happy. I also enjoy red the most, even though I just use it for energy. We ordered a whopping 5 kilos this month!

🔑🔑🔑🔑🔑

We are sending out 550 zines this month! The theme is Patriotism and we got exclusive entries from Matt Christman from Chapo Trap House, @RIPMarkusJ from the discourse collective, @Clownhound who is responsible for the zine looking so great, and all around good guy @TedGlomski. I also got a hold of a few boxes of Desert Storm trading cards as your Loot for this month 😄

Lastly, @CarlWilhoyte did an interview with us at the Cleveland show for a DSA magazine. The text is below. Enjoy! 

Street Fight Radio, America’s #1 anarcho-comedy radio show, hosted by Brett Payne and Brian Quinby, sat down with Cleveland DSA during their recent live show at Mahall’s. Interview edited for length/clarity.

What is Street Fight Radio (SFR)?

Brett: It’s our attempt to do mainstream talk radio, but for leftists. There was a time when we tried to be very informative about politics, even now we just try and make jokes, but it inevitably bends in the direction of mutual aid or fuck the government, anti-authoritarian type thing.

Bryan: We started this before there weren’t a lot of leftist podcasts and it was just “How can we do something that’s relatively mainstream?” I grew up listening to Howard Stern, Opie & Anthony, which are definitely not leftist type shows. I always wanted to do something edgy, but with our sensibilities.

Brett: I used to listen to rush Limbaugh just because I didn’t want to listen to music. I just wanted to hear opinions thrown around and his were easy to take down obviously. But there was no one having the conversations we were having while drinking and stuff.

Talk about the early years of SFR.

Bryan: Early SFR in 2008 was straight comedy, and other people weren't fond of it. “Too dark,” they said. It was really just us talking about our situation. "I'm broke as hell, even though politicians say things are going great, they weren't for me. Even though we got this guy Obama, things don't seem better. Not for us."

Brett: We used to do heroin jokes.

Bryan: We’re currently working on a comic about an actual bear who lives in a town and has to come up with money. He goes on all these dirtbag adventures selling drugs and stealing. I said maybe he has delinquent child support payments.

(laughing) Like he has to go to Bear Family Court?

Bryan: Brett said, “That's probably too dark.” For the past year, there's been so many jokes about family court now, we took out all the edits we did back then.

Brett: In 2008-2009, Bear Stearns was crashing, the economy was going down, and people were losing pensions. We had the audacity to say it was all a scam and people came to us saying "Oh no, you just don’t understand investing." And I said, "Well how much money did you lose?" "A lot, but we'll bounce back." 

Oh, you lost $158 million? I work at a grocery store. Thanks for the investment advice.

Bryan: We made a sign that said, "Can your 401K do a wheelie?"

Brett: A year later in 2009 we hooked up with WCRS. We did a couple of live events that were like the dumbest idea of all time. We would do comedy and then DJ's would play dance party music.

Bryan: It was the dumbest thing in the world. People would be dancing and partying and then they'd shut the music off and we'd come out onstage and do comedy. Who the fuck wants to watch comedy in the middle of a party? We would like to do a show and then jump into audience and watch a band together. We want this to not be just stand-up comedy.

When most people hear “anarcho-comedy”, they don’t quite know what to expect. But when they actually listen, the Midwest authenticity comes through.

Bryan: I never identified with any standup growing up. I wouldn't call my influence "comedy". It was radio shows growing up and pro wrestling. It informs how we do stuff. There's two of us, because like wrestling, it's a tag team.

What do you think of Dwayne Johnson running in 2020?

Bryan: As anarchists, I don't think we'll ever endorse someone for President. We don't want to get caught with our pants down. I can guarantee he's a lot more conservative that people probably think he would be. Wrestling is ultra-capitalist. It's naked capitalism. A wrestling president scares the fucking shit out of me. 

That why you guys are running for mayor of Columbus as a tag team?

Bryan: It’s what we know. We need help from people who know how to run campaigns. What we know is that if we can get the signatures and get on the ballot, we’ll hold campaign stops and bring cool people there to do campaign shit. The Chapo Guys, Rob Whisman, District Sentinel guys to do campaign stops. The goal is to get the people running to explain why we can't have the things we're asking for. Not even a Democrat in Columbus is going to run on a $15/hr platform, so Brett and I are going to run on a $16/hr wage. When they say it’s impractical, we're going to demand they explain to their constituents why they're not worth $16/hour. We're probably not going to win.

After 2016, nothing surprises me. I don't make any predictions now.

Bryan: We have this idea for the Dept. of Policing and Sanitation. Like in retail, if the police can lean, then they can clean. If we need the police, we will call them. Until they’re called, they'll be cleaning up the roads, picking up trash, washing windows, doing any other thing besides trying to bust people for nothing. Just even saying things like that in a public forum makes noise to make both parties reckon with our politics. I think that's what DSA should do: force people in the middle, neoliberals, and conservatives to talk about the things that matter to people.

Where do you want SFR to go? 

Bryan: We like doing the zine, the live shows. It's very fun. Maybe some video? In the immediate now, we'd like to see the Patreon get to $10K a month, that'd be a living wage. We'd do shows on the West Coast and just to be able to get everywhere we need to do shows. I think we're seeing a new comedy scene happening that is more radical left than any comedy scene before it. We're not afraid to yell at the Democrats or the Republicans. It's really disappointing watching standup comedians and hear them yelling at people for not voting for Hillary Clinton. We're not scolds. We're fun and we're trying to make this fun. There’s a lot of people around us that do serious work, and were trying to raise awareness and make it fun. Not a single one of us have played by the comedy scene's rules.

Brett: People that make their own money independently of a job start falling under the spell of meritocracy for everyone, that everyone earned their position in life and then you fall victim to those stupid ideas about bootstraps.

Bryan: We're 2 dudes who are kind of losers in a way? I can see where someone getting to the point of Chapo Trap House's success and thinking "I fucking did this and no one deserves this but me!"

Ironic when your entire business model is Patreon and merchandise.

Bryan: We know we're standing on the backs of a million people. I honestly don't think a lot of these other comedians have gone through the same shit that we have. And if they have, they don't talk about it. We're going to do 25 mins about being poor tonight. How many comedians do that?

Brett: We'd like to have an office, like a warehouse or something to play around in and make video content. Also, I'd want to have an experimental type place. A lot of the problems of capitalism is that it takes money to do everything and we have a lot of projects we'd like to help out with, but you always need funding. It's just a matter of keeping at it, that's all.

Bryan: We went to Pikeville, we went to the Inauguration. We get that from a lot of people, "We've never heard comedians talk the way that you guys talk.” We want to set up a movement of regular people.

Thanks for talking to us, guys.