Folks, big news, my baby is turning one tomorrow! No no, not SJ, my OTHER baby, this inbox zine.

This time last year I had an idea to create an e-newsletter that wasn’t about marketing some product, but would find and feed the brains of the weird and wonderful people around the globe.

Instead of overthinking it, I just dug in. I didn’t even have a name for it.

On October 1st of last year, I published the first Newsletter Thingamabob, the e-newsletter which would soon morph into Rusty’s Electric Dreams (RED). By the end of that same October, I had worked out a bunch of kinks and re-skinned it to give it a retro look. I also stopped calling it an “e-newsletter” and coined it an “inbox zine,” a callback to the paper zines I made in the mid-1990s.

In November of 2014, I welcomed the zine’s first Artist-in-Residence, pinata artist Meaghan Kennedy.

A week later, another artist, Michael Wertz, began sending out his own “inbox zine, inspired by RED.

Soon, I started archiving the issues online.

By Thanksgiving, there were so many events to list, I started to organize them by city. In December, I was featured in both Oakland Magazine and Alameda Magazine.

In January, Pee-wee Herman himself gave the zine a big ol’ stamp of approval (!), which made subscriptions JUMP. And, by the end of that month, I legally became “Rusty Blazenhoff,” a name I’ve been going by for 20 years.

In May, RED had its first co-curator, Lucas Mast, who shared his obsession with sneakers with us. 

The kind words kept rolling in, proving that I had created something remarkable…and, still, I continue to tweak and refine all of it. SO MUCH has happened this year for me personally, and all through it, I kept producing the zine, each and every week. I pinky promised myself that I wouldn’t give up, no matter how bad things got.

So, thank you, dear readers for sticking around, for opening up this email each week, and watching me raise this baby. Every parent knows that year one is really challenging. Now that I’ve got that behind me, I think things are about to get a whole lot more interesting. I have some BIG plans, folks.

Can you help? WHY, YES, YOU CAN.

Tell your friends about Rusty’s Electric Dreams. Spread the word. YOU are the innovators and early adopters. YOU have a say in my future success, for reals. In fact, if you’re an artist, you can influence YOUR future success by helping me. The bigger reach I have, the projects I showcase will be seen by more eyes. It’s pretty simple, and I don’t want to get too “Sally Struthers” on you, but I need help getting the word out. Get your friends to subscribe.

— Rusty Blazenhoff

p.s. Thank you, thank you! I love you all!!

[Have something nice to say? Say it and I’ll include it on my Press page.]