Three years ago when we launched this zine, Beast was much too hardcore for most Czechs, gone soft since the late 90s on cheap beer, eager tourists and the complacency that came with EU accession. Those days, even hipsters were shocked by our provocative name, muscular editorial and ‘Eat the West’ attitude.
But with mainstream acceptance—especially from the West, which is still wrongly seen as setting lifestyle trends—the shock gave way to muted admiration and respect. Through our success we had shown that having controversial opinions, strong editorial and beastly tendencies created more impact than Xeroxed Wallpapers like Bloc, which were all the rage in the early naughties.
So it’s no surprise that having made Beast mainstream and acceptable, we’d be copied eventually. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery after all. Last week my inbox was flooded with urgent messages from Prague beasties alerting us to a new beast on the block.
A Czech publishing house has launched a Beast magazine (www.beast.cz). Their concept is much more obvious than us, who are both beasts and B Easts. Their Czech-language magazine is a testosteronal copycat FHM, a beastly men’s magazine for those jaded perhaps by the cutesiness of Maxim, Playboy and other mainstream men’s mags.
Since we don’t own the copywrite for Beast, we can’t sue them unfortunately. That would be fun, wouldn’t it? We’re still trying to prove de facto trademark right by being distributed under the B EAST banner for three years. Our lawyers in Prague think we have a fighting chance to stop them from bringing out an issue without acknowledging their debt to the original beast. Stay tuned to our website for more updates on this.
