Welcome to Gangletown

It's full of contradictions.

Photo by Natalie Anne Powers

If you have made your way to gangletown, then you are maybe probably already familiar with me ~*the author*~ in some way or another. Maybe you’re a close friend or a former colleague from that place we worked in our twenties. Maybe you’re a writing agent looking for the next big thing, or maybe you’re my Mom at home eating a fudgsicle. OR! Maybe you’re a sexy stranger. If so, you should know that a deep need for validation impulses me to value your strange presence very highly. Please don’t leave, or I will cry. 

Whether you're my sweet bestie, my husband, or the woman currently staring at me from across my apartment complex courtyard, I’m grateful that you’re here.

For this first post, I want to let you know what gangletown is about, why it exists, and what you can expect in your inbox each week.

Sound crysp? Let’s do it.

What you can expect for sure definitely yes okay.

gangletown is a weekly newsletter written by David Kimple. Subscribers will receive updates directly in their e-mail.

1. When you subscribe to gangletown at any level, you’ll receive access to the Sunday edition. Sunday editions are released every week and include original essays, pieces of fiction, poetry, cultural commentary, or journalism. And maybe probably other things also additionally as well too.

2. As a paid* subscriber in gangletown, you will receive the Sunday edition (see above) as well as “hump day” motivations every other Wednesday, monthly round-ups of my favorite things**, and the ability to donate one free all-access subscription to anyone of your choosing.

*Paid subscriptions help to support my work as an independent writer. If you can pay for this work, it is more appreciated than I can accurately express with a human language. That said, if you would like full-access but are unable to pay for any reason, I am happy to gift you the subscription. Shoot me a simple message with your email and “I’d love full access, but dollars are stupid,” and I’ll make it happen.

**Does Oprah have this trademarked?

The dreaded “about” section

I don’t want to wait for our lives to be over
I want to know right now 
What will it be…

Okay pause. I know we just started, but…pause. Perhaps quoting lyrics from a song that rose to popularity because of a seminal 90’s teen drama called Dawson's Creek isn't the best way to open a description of what one should expect from this newsletter.

…or...actually yeah, that was 100% a lie. It’s exactly the thing. Unpause. 

I Don’t Want to Wait by Paula Cole peaked at number 3 on the Billboard charts in November of 1997, and so did I!

I’m probably joking. Hopefully, the second part of that is only true if you’re speaking to my fifth-grade teacher, whose name rhymes with Mr. Sherlinger. He was an asshole. But the song, despite the implication of its “peak” chart history, actually lives on to this day. It’s not living in the top 100 anymore, but it lives in you like Mufasa in Simba. I’d bet Monopoly money that if it were playing right now, damn near anyone reading this would find themself transported to...a place. A place riddled with unusually specific details, enormous questions, intoxicating whimsy, and the cringiest of cringey faux pas. A place that smells like the food court of your hometown mall and your ex’s shampoo. It’s the stupidest place you’ve ever been, and also, it somehow made you the person you are today. Just as it happens with I Don’t Want to Wait, it’s where you end up when earnestness & absurdity, romance & nostalgia, and queerness & farce are mixed into one big bowl. That place is somewhere. I like to call “gangletown.” 

Much like Dawson’s Creek, gangletown is a desperate and overdrawn caricature of middle-American mediocrity. It is the confusing intersection of all the different versions of oneself that try to gain attention and control over the present. It’s the difficulty of deciding who you are and who you want to be because there are just so many options. 

In truth, gangletown is not just one thing but, rather, it is all of the things at once. Let’s be honest, that last line doesn’t make a ton of sense, but also, it’s seemingly insightful, so I hope when you read it, you softly vocalized an affirmative “mmm” to yourself. Yes, self, mmm indeed.

Why are gangletown do exist tho?

I intend gangletown to be a space for unbridled and unapologetic creative exploration. Doesn’t that sound nice? I agree. And doesn’t it also sound annoyingly vague? I agree! But I’m going to level with you...that is the intention.

In comparison, there are many other newsletters/blogs out there with more specific niches like “economics and artisanal goat soap” or “#MomLyfe in Appalachia”; I celebrate those niches! In fact, I celebrate them so hard that in about six iterations of writing gangletown’s “About” section, I thought, “oooh, what if it is all about_____?”. But gangletown is not all about _____. It is subject to changes in style and content from week to week. Now that I’ve said that, watch- we’ll probably look back at the archive and notice that in 9 out of 10 pieces, I drifted nostalgically back to the era of 1997-2003 as means of contextualizing my adult personality flaws. If/when this happens, you’re not allowed to say anything, or I will cry again.

The reason gangletown isn’t built for one exact niche is not that I’m a neophyte with brand development and consumer needs. It’s because I am what some call “moody.” Others call it “being a Libra.” I call it being a gangletown (noun). You see, I’m big on going through phases. I shed my skin with the seasons. I want to dye my hair on Monday and shave it on Wednesday. I like to change things up. Basically - and I don’t want you to alert a psychotherapist or exorcist - many different people live in this body. They’re all asking for the pen, and I want to let them all have the chance to use it.

That said, as a writer-for-hire, it’s not always easy to write whatever I want. I am usually asked to share the most narrow description of what I do to get the job. I *hate* these summaries. I even hate this summary that you’re reading right now. These things never quite capture the whole picture, and it drives me bonkers imagining the layers that could be included but don’t quite fit.

For example, if you’re a TV Writer (or just a wannabe TV writer like me), there is this thing on Twitter called “#WGAStaffingBoost” that, if I am to offer a grossly reductive summary, started as a way to get writers noticed during the still on-going WGA packaging drama. In the “staffing boost,” writers on Twitter put together an elevator pitch of themselves to encapsulate what they do. Here is a tweet I shared in this thread a little while back:

You can find me/my writing at the queer intersection of sit-com and monster-of-the-week dramedy. I love fast talkers, ensemble casts, and one-liners. My writing asks big life questions in playful and romantic ways.

Yes, I stand by that tweetpitch for the most part, but I know it’s not comprehensive in my heart. This is what I do when I am script-writing, but where is all the other stuff? Where is the poetry? Where is the over-sexualized medical drama? The novels waiting to be written? Where is the heartbreak? Where is the angsty rebellious teenager who dyed his hair blue? Where is the kid who got called a “faggot” and had to wait after school in the band room for over an hour to avoid getting beat up? Where do all these Davids get to live at the same time?

What I’m bemoaning here is perhaps an entirely unoriginal fear of being pigeon-holed. Or pigeon-holing myself? Either way, there is a pigeon, there is a hole, and they should not be together! When they ask what I write about, can’t I say “yes” and be done with it? Because I want to do it all. I mean, come on! I’m a thirty-something white, cis-gendered male in middle management. I think I can do it all!

At the end of the day, I envy all you creators out there who have mastered the use of those niches for your own benefit. No bullhonky, I applaud you, and I would like to absorb your talents into my bloodstream how Dark Willow can absorb books with her hands.

So what do I offer? I’m going to keep working on honing that witchcraft for myself…on my own time or the time of a well-paid therapist. For right now, though, I have to cast a wide net while I figure it out. That net is gangletown. You write sci-fi? I write gangletown. Do you write poems about climate change? I write gangletown. Poetry or prose, schtick or politic, Buffy or Beckett, it’s all gangletown.

My “niche” is gangletown, and right now, you’re in it.

Okay so and yes but what now then?

If you’ve been able to stomach this performance of my internal monologue long enough to make it to this point, I can confidently say that you should subscribe now. Things only get less confusing and self-indulgent from here.

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