Tags: anniversary | publishing | Think Magazine

There is a long list of writers, pseudo-writers, photographers, agitators, conspiracy theorists, artists and general wack-jobs that should take a quiet moment of thanks for ten years of Think Magazine...

There are many of us who got a start slogging words, images and what-have-you for Think mag. That process was often painful, frequently embarrassing, and often tinged with brilliance. Most importantly, Think managed to capture the Zeitgeist of the era.

I arrived to live in Prague in 1998 after having passed through the city a few years before. I had Hemingway dreams and words spilling out of me, and Think was the only place willing to take on the likes of me. My first piece for Think was called "Why I'm Here" and it attempted to make sense of why I'd left the States.

The thing was, I wasn't really sure why I'd left home. I had vaguely romantic notions of wanting to discover myself traveling, lots of confused hormones demanding gratification, and plenty of Bukowski-swagger that suited Prague's easy Bohemian lifestyle. But there was something deeper, more existential (there always is) about why I left.

"Why I'm Here" talked about my friend and me and our Beavis & Butthead antics at the mall while we were growing up, which included stealing condoms from CVS and taking a dump under a bed in Sears. It went on to describe the different paths that my friend and I had taken, and by the time I finished writing it I knew a bit more about why I was in Prague, if not where I was going.

And that was Think for me. A work in progress that did a great job of showing us where we had come from, and what it looked like today. What tomorrow will bring, well, that's always been up to you dear reader. Think has always been less about "what to wear this fall" than it has been about "why dinosaurs never existed", mixed in with edgy essays about mall defecation, and party photos to remember that you are actually cool (sometimes).

I'll always have a soft-spot for Think because it epitomizes an era in Prague and a time in my life. It captured that peculiar and incoherent luminosity, and happily it never became so successful that it outgrew what made it special. That would have been very un-Prague like, and very much un-Think like.

Now Jeffree and Keith have relocated to Southeast Asia, strangely enough to straitlaced Singapore. So far they've managed to avoid lawsuits, which only goes to show that Jeffree is a lot cagier than those used to hearing him spin conspiracy theories often give him credit for.

I can't help but think that Singapore will be changed in some way by Think, maybe in a very small way, but changed none-the-less, and for the better. And it's all part of the Think master-plan, which I think was hatched by a gathering of the Stone Masons when they were meeting with the mafia about assassinating JFK.

Me, I just want to tip my cap, raise my glass and say Happy Birthday, Think!