Encounters at interview locations. I want to be swept away by the energy of Bangkok.
This is the first time BRUTUS has featured Bangkok since 2019. Six years have passed, including the COVID-19 pandemic, and we've been running around the city to capture the current state of this city, which is changing at a dizzying pace, in food, culture, art, and more, all in one issue!
Just a 10-minute taxi ride from Siam, a large shopping mall bustling with young people, you'll find a complex called Galileoasis at the end of a small alley. An old building renovated to include a hotel, gallery, theater, cafe, and more, it's a popular spot for culture-conscious people from both Japan and overseas.
We visited SPACE BAR ZINE STORE, a zine specialty store located within the building, for our interview. We hope you will be able to get a feel for the passion the two store owners have for Thai zine culture through the pages of this magazine!
As I was browsing the wonderful store, packed with zines and miscellaneous goods collected from all over the world, one zine caught my eye. It was a somewhat kitschy piece of work, featuring illustrations of Asian instant ramen packaging. I heard it was by an illustrator living in Thailand called Nene! I fell in love at first sight and bought it immediately.
While the excitement was still fresh, we asked nene to illustrate the page for Songwat, an area we also covered this time, and she was in charge of that.
Songwat is a trendy area where young people have renovated an old warehouse district and new shops are opening one after another.
In the magazine, nene's illustrations express the fusion of a retro street atmosphere and the vibrant creativity of a generation that wants to do interesting things.
The encounters I had at the places I covered took on new forms in the pages of the magazine, and I felt that this was also a way of embodying the modern feel of Bangkok, so I wrote the article with that in mind.
Please take a look at the pages and find out why you should visit Bangkok now!
