In this age of brewing
collapse, we could all use a little distraction. A good magazine is like a fine cup of coffee at sunrise, full of life you weren’t quite aware of yet. The legends did it through great writing, and later great photography too. Dickens, Hemingway, Nash, these guys wrote for periodicals. That set a tone that begat modernist sublime introductions to the nooks and crannies of subculture.
Thompson with Rolling Stone,
Vollmann and
McNeil with Spin,
Stecyk in Skateboarder,
Mofo in Thrasher, this short list could go on... Today the very culture of print media is dangerously near extinction; newspapers’ death knell rung louder each year by the lythe arm of
web 2.0. Still the newsracks are chockablock with zines. The bulk are thinly veneered ad books, while a select few maintain some standards. All maintain a web presence, toes gingerly dipped in the water. Evan Slater, long-time editor of Surfer and now Surfing, summed up his approach in a recent interview, saying essentially that the daily disposable content feeds the web, while the material that forwards the culture is reserved for the mag. He sees ink and paper as the archival arm – the epic stories and powerful photos are the domain of the printed page, while the net provides the small fish.
If you’re ‘in’ a subculture no doubt a magazine or two have shaped your awareness of that activity or thing that you love. It could be music, or fashion, an art or a sport; there’s a rag that purports to purvey the culture. As readers, staying within that realm is usually about all we do. If we ride a bike, we read bike mags, ride a wave, surf mags, love hiphop, hiphop mags, etc. Every subset has it’s one rag where the rare combo of editing, writing, image and flair comes together and makes magic. A true magazine junky reads outside the set, dipping into a search for good screeds, deep interviews, striking photos. If you’re lucky, sometimes you delve out of your own zone and that good mag is even better than a good cuppa at the crack. With a nod towards supporting the power of ink, here’s a couple recommends worth getting a sub to, cause you ain’t gonna find ‘em on the stand.
Dice deals in motorized cycling, with an emphasis on homespun builds from Europe, Asia and the States. The only two-wheeled machines around HPT are pedal powered,; Dice gives a worthy diversion. A bloke from the UK and a mate in California put it together with love and spit. The writing is brilliantly wiseass, the photos are crackerjack glimpses into another world. It’s printed fairly well, bound small. A half-size mag that one-kick starts six times per year and generally raises hell. It’s a treat in your mailbox every other month.
There’s nothin’ like a really good interview.
Juice Magazine is pretty much nothing but, with
people you really, really wanna know more about. The interviewers are underground heavy hitters themselves, so when you get Steve Olsen interviewing
Dave Alvin, you better sit down and pour another cup ‘cause you’re gonna learn about fractal math, the relationship between punk and country, and a flashback history of the American West. Oversized, with a mediocre glue-up, it’s printed on paper that will remind you of Thrasher if you skated, the photos can be dark and it comes out when it fuckin wants to. Juice is
bad as, as the Aussies say, and even if you never touched a skate, surf or snowboard in your life, you will learn something that touches your soul in every issue. Subscribe and support.
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