Author

Louis Marrone

Browsing

Troma Entertainment, for the uninitiated, is the longest-running independent film studio in the United States and home to the most ridiculous low-budget films ever made. If you’ve ever been to a midnight screening, stumbled upon an esoteric public access television show or even ventured over to the “weird” side of YouTube, then you’re only about halfway there. 

The latter part of the 2010s has proven to be nothing short of a hellscape of scandal, opinions and angry mobs. It’s a cultural phenomenon called “The Culture Wars”, and the deeper into it we get, the more divided we seem to become, with the left calling for the right to be punched and harassed, the right calling for the left to be “owned” and “triggered,” and both calling for the shutting-up of those damn centrist “fence-sitters” who have committed the unearthly sins of being politically open-minded and legitimately hearing both sides out.

Packed away haphazardly under the J/M/Z in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn sits a small alleyway — locally referred to as “Punk Alley.” In it resides a used book store, a used record shop, a cassette-based experimental noise record label and, of course, KPISS: the resident pirate radio station.