Here at the Slop, we like a good story.
In the wee morning hours of March 23rd, 2010, I interviewed Will Dithridge about the founding of the Slop. Here's what was said....
ben - "So tell me something about the Slop"
will - "I guess we could basically say the Slop was an idea... this all sounds really too self-gratifying you know? I mean you know what I'm saying?? I dont know if I really want to write this..."
b - laughs "Well we already started..."
w - "Alright so if you're wondering where this came from, I'll tell you. I was getting angry that no one would print anything that I've ever written, except for the NY Islanders Magazine, and uh, one day when I was very hungover and pissed off in the bathroom, I thought... 'why can't I print them myself?' .. and that's basically it."
b - "So wait, where did the name come from?"
w - "Yea I figured really the, um, biggest hurdle of anything is finding a good name for it, and it had to kind of be lasting, so I remembered this quote by my friend Don Powers a long time ago, when we were sitting at this, uh, table in the back of work and, uh, he had bought a kind of large soda and..." laughs "...I asked him if I could have a slop of it..." laughs "...and uh he gave it to me, and then my friend Pete asked if he could also have a slop of it, to which Don responded, 'what is this the community slop!?!?'..." much laughter "... and that was basically... that was.... I dunno, I figured for a literary newspaper, it was kind of fitting for some reason. Strangely aesthetically pleasing just to, uh, say... and you know it just kind of caught. It was all pretty terrible. this is the worst about us page that's ever been."
much laughter
b - "Any final words?"
more laughter
w - "uh..." laughs "... my dad had once told me, right before he died, that whatever I did, I was gonna be great at, and it was kind of... weird... because he hadn't assembled a coherent sentence in months, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere he kind of whispered that in my ear. And so then when I was sitting on the toilet that one day I thought, '...well... if he thought I could do this, then why not?'. I figured that this kind of paper would cheer people up... kind of an alternative to the daily newspapers, which kind of make people angry. Its really depressing. I figured I would do what I could to offer people an alternative to that..."
b - "Well that's not such a bad story after all..."
w - "Yea... I guess not"
final laughter
There you have it. The slop. The community slop. The brooklyn slop. Its all slop to us. Thanks for reading.
