Murdered trees, stale news, obscene print bills, waste, waste, waste…
Why I Still Cling to Surf Mags… Jesus christ. This is what happens when you let a commenter start writing shit. We’re a website, not a magazine. Digital, not analog. The future, not the past. Toe the party line, motherfucker.
I get where ol’ Negs is coming from, though. I, too, was a young boy enamored with the printed word, rushing down at the beginning of each month to the weird magazine store that kept a full selection of glossies in every genre as an excuse for the existence of the large curtained area that took up the majority of the floor space. So many pornos.
I popped into a similar shop in downtown Honolulu a while back, near the Fort Street bus stop, where all the hobos and dispossessed mentally ill hang out.
It’s 2015, modern notions of decency meant the proprietor barely provided a pretense for his smut peddling. A handful of National Geographics, a few assorted celeb rags, arranged haphazardly in the front. A steady stream of perverts making their way to the back.
Who jacks off to a printed page these days?
I remember once, way back when I still lived in LA and the internet was barely a thing, my wife, then girlfriend, accompanied me to the newsstand. Which I guess is what they’re called, though it was a proper store.
“Wow,” she said, “This place is popular.”
Six or eight single men were browsing the shelves.
“Do that many people really buy magazines?”
“Kinda.”
I paid for my haul, a lovely selection of skate ‘zines, weird art mags, awesome independently owned adventure journals.
“Watch this.”
We left through the front door and watched the mad rush to the porn section the moment the only woman present was gone.
The point is, magazines were pointless, even when they had a point. Stale news, obscene print bills, waste waste waste. Murdered trees smeared with ink, delivered to your door once a month. Rarely anything good in them. And even then, never worth saving. My colossal pile of cherished issues hit the dumpster years ago. Nothing of value was lost.
I don’t even think I have more than a handful of books in my house. Digital is divine. You can read them in the dark, fit thousands on little magic device, and, if you know what you’re doing, they’re all free!
No one gets to control the narrative anymore. Everyone gets a voice.
Admittedly, most of those voices spew from the mouths of morons who have nothing of value to say, but that’s hardly a new development. People haven’t gotten stupider since the 90’s. Poorer, definitely, but not dumber.
Yeah, I miss a few, and yeah, I definitely miss the money (not that it was much, but it was more), and I’m a little sad I never got to play the big man magazine mover and shaker I always dreamed of being.
But, shit, I put my effort into building a better buggy whip. The times are changing, better get with ’em or get left behind.
So I moved on. All my subs are lapsed. In the end they’ll all be dead. With the exception of a few niche titles.
The Surfer’s Journal will probably hang around for a long time, as well as… well, that’s all I got.
