B EAST Magazine website

Bread&Butter, Barcelona’s tradeshow for selected brands, was steaming this year, not just because it attracted most of the koolest brands in Europe, and beyond. It was also just hot and humid in southern Spain, the sort of weather that drives most Indians or Texans to the comfort of their airconditioned offices and living rooms. Europeans like the heat though—which is still a relative novelty in these global warming times—and, so while some premises were airconditioned, especially those in the swankier Urban Superior and Denim Base areas, many had to deal with the heat. Especially those stuck in the concrete sweatbox of the gargantuan Sport & Street area. Our sympathies went out to Reebok, which had one of the coolest stands at the fair, but was stuck in Barcelona’s version of Dante’s Inferno—down, down in the basement.

The heat, though, meant that fans (the objects, not the star-fuckers*) were in high demand, and those brands savvy enough to hand out their own punkahs certainly got more bang for their buck than biz-as-usual stickers and fliers. We went around photographing fashionistas fanning themselves, and here you go.

And, finally, one of our favorite brand managers, Stephan Ploch from Reebok, Germany

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.