Swim Into The Six Hundred
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Hello, and welcome to Swim Into The Sound’s 600th post!
Since I just recently waxed poetic when we published our Million Word Celebration back in June, I’ll try to keep this short. Word count and navel-gazing aside, tradition is a tradition, and I don’t want to ruin my streak of celebrating each fresh hundo that this site breaks off. If you are in the mood to journey back through the past, here are each of our previous centennial posts:
Stemming nicely off our 500th post, this celebration of 600 is mostly concerned with merch. Long story short, the Swim Into The Sound merch store is officially back up and running! There’s also some free shit in the mix, but for that, I’d like to elaborate…
Last year we whipped up a fresh round of Swim Into The Sound merch that I was super proud of. Still am! This drop included a pretty sizable run of “Caffeine Lovers” shirts inspired by a certain Northeast coffee chain, a batch of big-ass totes emblazoned with our classic logo, and some “Smoke Into The Sound” lighters that I can only deliver by hand because the USPS is weird about shipping flammables through the mail for some reason (😒).
When we put this merch up for sale, I was adamant that any proceeds would be split among three charities: The Palestine Children's Relief Fund (pcrf.net), Be Loved Asheville (belovedasheville.com), and the Gender Liberation Movement (genderlib.org). While we still haven’t covered the costs of production or sold out of any of these offerings, at the end of 2025, we donated $100 to each of these charities, and it felt nice to turn all our nerdy work here into something actionable.
I’m excited to announce that (after a move and semi-horrible period of jobless limbo) I’m now settled into a new city and back in possession of my big box of Swim Merch. Thanks to my friends Mad, Poppy, and Dimple for keeping the merch safe in North Carolina while I figured out my living situation.
Not only does this mean that our store is officially back online, but on top of this lovely merch spread, I’ve also made it so that anyone can get a Swim Sticker shipped to them for FREE! That’s right, if you’ve wanted to stick our little logo on a street sign, dive bar bathroom wall, laptop, or water bottle, then this is your chance. I’ll ship one sticker for free anywhere in the US. If you want a handful of them, there’s a pack of five available for $6, or for $8 you can get three stickers and a Swim Into The Sound guitar pick!
When I first started doing these posts to celebrate each fresh 100 articles we achieved, it felt a little self-congratulatory since I was the main one writing, editing, and publishing all this stuff. Even still, I believe in celebrating your achievements and recognizing the work that got you to where you are. To that end, I’d like to thank all the Swim writers who have helped us reach 600. I just ran the numbers, and I’m the attributed author on only 45% of these posts. Sure, I edit everything and organize things behind the scenes, but this site is now made up primarily of other people’s writing, and I think that’s cool as fuck.
This is all a long-winded way of saying Swim Into The Sound is the cumulative effort of dozens and dozens of talented writers, designers, coding friends, and cool music people I’ve been lucky enough to meet over the last eleven years. Thank you all for being here, for caring, and for all the beautiful music and writing I’ve been able to experience; I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Happy 600! Go getchaself a sticker.
