DIAMOND BRIDGE IS COMING (finally!)

Anyone who wishes to contribute and/or be featured in a literary-oriented arts & culture journal based in northern New Jersey - verbal and visual artists, bands/musicians, book/film/music reviewers, etc. - please send correspondence, ideas and submissions to: 

diamondbridgenj@gmail.com 

The name Diamond Bridge obviously comes from the street in Hawthorne, which was this editor's first exposure to the outside world of American pop culture, kitsch & satire via my very first newsstand - a luncheonette on the corner of Diamond Bridge & Hawthorne Avenues, now called Dee's, formerly Adele's in the 1970s - and the older Hawthorne Theatre, before it was subdivided into a multiplex. 

As my parents took me to Goffle Brook Park for walks and recreation, the suggestions of childhood friends (not to mention TV commercials) instigated demands to go to the movies - not just Disney, but contemporary films like Star Wars, Saturday Night Fever, Animal House and so on.  Moreover, this was also the era of the so-called Modern Age of Comics, beginning with Marvel's Giant Size X-Men #1 [1975], and augmented for me by Warren's horror movie mag Famous Monsters, risque comix like Vampirella, Heavy Metal, MAD of course and National Lampoon...perhaps most significantly, Creem magazine had a major cultural impact as it documented the entire punk/New Wave periods in rock & popular music and introduced an only preadolescent child to the writings of Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau and Nick Tosches, among others.  (I never had the privilege of meeting the late Bangs, although I did get to know Tosches in subsequent decades by attending his readings in New York City.) 

If you're familiar with original underground music zines like PUNK and Flipside, as well as our very own unique Weird New Jersey, and agree that our immediate area (chiefly Bergen & Passaic Counties) could use something fresh, imaginative and creative in terms of a print publication, please get in touch. 

Best,

Napoleon Nikolai Zivkovic
Passaic County Cultural Historian
Acting Paterson Historian