ASUPREMENEWYORKTHING

Artsy people love these expensive design/culture/artsy magazines. I get a subscription to Theme Magazine, which is suppose to be some sorta Asian Quarterly magazine (4 issues a year), Giant Robot (I have no clue, I think a bimonthly), and Royal Magazine (I got for free at some event). I’m not recommending to go out and get copies of these things but they’re not bad so I’ll share some thoughts with you.

So… Have you ever heard about hoarders? You know, people who love to keep everything? I’m sure you’ve got a little of that in your system too. You probably like to collect or keep a lot of bullshit that’s limited edition or sentimental or you think is of value that you could sell one day. Anyway, I’ve got the opposite of that. I used to be a total hoarder but I’ve gotten rid of almost everything I own, other than some clothes, this laptop and a bunch of books (I guess I still hoard books, but I’ve thrown or given many of them away).

I do subscribe to a few magazines and I’m a little bothered by them (because I’m nuts, I just don’t like owning things). Whenever I get them in the mail, I’ll usually HAVE to toss them out in a few days. Before I toss these out though:

THEME: I used to be really annoyed of this magazine. When I got this magazine, I was annoyed cause it was so thin for a magazine that only came out 4 times a year. I was always thinking, what the fuck? What the hell are they doing with all that time? Why is this thing so flimsy? Yes, this thing has really nice paper, it’s a glossy with a brushed heavy stock outer cover and it’s 5 bucks a pop since the subscription is 20 bucks a year and you only get 4!

BUT! It has grown on me. I read a little about them, I visited the website, I read the blog and I got a better understanding that it was a magazine started by this married Korean couple who started out as designers and they had good intentions, whatever that means. Anyway, I see it as the Giant Robot magazine of New York. The articles are pretty interesting since they do cover a wide array of subjects. What’s interesting is that their headquarters (office) is near all those street wear boutiques (Alife, Staple, etc.) so I feel like they’re definitely influenced by them (it always has a fashion photography editorial section and a whole section for recommendations of things you should buy).

Oh, anyway, they cover a lot of stuff in various Asian countries, though they do lean towards design and art related matters. It’s not limited to topics outside of the US either, it has a bunch of interesting essays about Asian-Americana, all types of art stuff, fashion, interviews, and great photography, etc. Like Blackbook Magazine, they’ve got a theme for every issue. OH! I get it…. Their latest issue is titled “Inside the Private Journals of…” There’s an article about James Jean. He did the cover.

The wonderful thing about this magazine is the tone. The writers are very respectable and feels genuine. It doesn’t feel like that ‘in your face I’ll do whatever I want’ voice that seems to have gotten so popular the last 10 years. I think the magazine is going on that upmarket route and trying to be very limited edition or uppity cause if you look at their site, they’ll even say they’re very selective of their advertisers. Their clients include Adobe, PF Flyers, Scion and Natural American Spirit Native American cigarette (haha).

It’s a good magazine and I enjoy it enough. It feels somewhat trendy and is meant for leisure reading. See for yourself, they’ve got articles (though not all of them) on their site.

Giant Robot: It’s an Asian culture magazine that’s based in San Francisco. There’s a whole different style with this thing compared with Theme. They’re definitely more ‘I don’t give a shit’ than Theme though they’re not exactly in your face either.

Giant Robot was initially a small photocopied magazine but that was more than 10 years ago and since then they’ve become this fancy glossy and have opened up a bunch of stores all over California and one in New York City selling all types of novelty (cute, colorful, collectible, plastic, wood, etc). Most of the writing and interviews are still done by the original creators Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong. The writing is very casual and because it’s mainly these two guys, it feels VERY personal. I noticed within the last few years they’ve been doing some great interviews with some cultural giants so you know they’re definitely growing in notoriety.

Most of the advertising in GR are these little unknown companies trying to target a very specific “type” of people (hipsters/artists/people living in San Francisco/people in their 20s/White guys who love video games and Asian chicks). I like GR for all sorts of reasons but one reason is because they’ll sometimes have suggestions for films I’ve never heard of and after I learn about them, I can download them illegally off the internet.

I’ve met Eric Nakamura and he looks old with his white hairs but acts and sounds very young. Overall it’s quite an interesting magazine. I would recommend it.

THE ROYAL MAGAZINE: I don’t know much about this magazine. It looks very fancy. There are a bunch of pages inside this magazine that has a lot of fancy graphics and just one word on the page. It’s definitely trying to be cool and ala mode. It feels very hypebeast/slamxhype/highsnobiety if you know what I mean. It’s not too bad.

It’s SUPER trendy and it’s all about music, art, design, business, street wear, etc. I don’t know if you can subscribe to this thing or not. I tried to do some research on it and I noticed that it’s just given away at very trendy events. Maybe someone can shed some light on this. It’s a pretty thick magazine and it has a bunch of advertisers. It feels like a music video on paper.

It’s okay, it was free. For a free magazine, it’s really quite fantastic cause it looks and feels like something that would cost me 5-10 bucks. Do you know what I mean? When you go to Barnes and Noble, they’ve got this whole section in the magazines area for these type of magazines and they’re usually pretty expensive.

Okay, whatever, nobody knows what the fuck I’m talking about. great. I’m tired.

A large portion of the magazine is just interviews. Would I recommend it? Yeah, sure, why not, it’s free, try to get a copy. If you can’t get a copy, they’ve got the whole thing on the internet for you to browse. Go to their site.

GQ & Details: I get a subscription to those two too. The latest issues were not that interesting. I tossed them out. They both had a little thing about polishing your shoes, which was useful, cause that’s what I did during the weekend (shaking my head slowly) -sigh.