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The Case For Magazines
I miss flipping pages
He asked me if I wanted to see something cool. I said “yes” because I did. What had started as Friday night happy hour drinks turned into poorly rolled joints in his small studio apartment on the Lower East Side, New York City’s turn-of-the-century party district.
We worked together at a magazine. A ‘men’s general interest’ magazine, ninety or so pages a month of soft-boiled service journalism, and PG-13 cheesecake designed to appeal to boys and balding, pot-bellied men. He edited entertainment stuff, and I edited ‘gear,’ which was the industry word for “junk.” There are two types of journalists: the insufferable do-gooders and anti-social goofs, and I was the latter.
The job was simple: polish every comma. It was also fun. Our days were spent assigning stories, arguing with the art department, and scribbling wittier kickers with pencils in the margins of proofs printed in color on long sheets of paper.
The cool thing he wanted to show me was his private collection of magazines. I was surprised. I don’t know what I was expecting at the time. Something more stereotypical? Knives? Baseball cards? Drugs?
The magazines were sealed in plastic bags. These were his prize possessions. First, a few…
