By Steve Rhodes
Filling in for Shipley on the magazine beat.
Wicker Fair
The June issue of Vanity Fair calls Wicker Park-Bucktown “the latest burgeoning pocket” of Chicago – umpteen years after Billboard magazine featured the area on its cover and hundreds of stories after the one-time coolness of Wicker Park has been chipped and glossed into Lincoln Park West. “Over the past few years, this run-down area has blossomed into a square-mile pulsing with sassy boutiques . . . and heavenly restaurants,” writes Punch Hutton.
Well, more like 16 years after a landmark district was first proposed for the neighborhood, which once featured anti-sassy boutiques and anti-heavenly restaurants.
Hutton praises the neighborhood’s upscale “novelty and furniture stores” without any hint of knowledge about the affordable novelty and furniture stores they have replaced, making the area safe for Vanity Fair readers.
In a final coup de grace, Punch recommends relaxing at day’s end at “one of two old-fashioned bars,” the Northside or Piece, which are about as old-fashioned as the BMWs and Hummers parked outside them.
As Keith Olbermann would say, Punch Hutton, you are this week’s Worst Person in the World.
Time Warp
The rest of this month’s Vanity Fair is in a time warp too: James Wolcott discovers YouTube is being used in political campaigns, Christopher Hitchens discovers unrest in London’s Muslim suburbs, and Peter Biskind discovers that Bruce Willis gets along with former wife Demi Moore and her new man, Ashton Kutcher. Strikingly, Willis, whom we assumed had retired to Vanilla Ice Island, is on the cover.
Most fitting, then, are the excerpts edited by Douglas Brinkley of Ronald Reagan’s presidential diary, presented as earnest and heroic even as they further reveal a simpleton living in a fantasy world.
The best part of this issue is the Postscript about Liesel Pritzker. the Chicago Hyatt Hotel heiress who sued her father five years ago for $6 billion for allegedly looting her trust funds.
In 2005, Liesel and her brother, Matthew, now 23 and 25, settled for $500 million and today, the magazine reports, the Pritzker empire is breaking up and cousins and sibilings aren’t speaking to each other.
Hey, it’s tough all over.
Print Fair
I’m a huge fan of Print magazine in part because reading it is such a great tactile experience – page through one and you’ll see what I mean – and in part because it is a constant reminder how far behind the world of newspaper design is in an era when combining form and function really does make terrific business sense – hello iPod and YouTube.
Print is also one of those rare magazines where looking at the ads is almost as enjoyable as reading (and looking at) the articles. Finally, just like the Web, Print teaches us that print mediums are also visual mediums – always have been, always will, and thank God for it.
As for the content of the May/June issue, well, I bet you didn’t know that Everything Belgian is New Again. Or that “governments are giving new funding and support to European video games.” Or that “British politicians, designers, and consumers grapple with that bane of the grocery store: over-packaging.”
I didn’t either. But now I do. Thanks, Print.
Money Honeys
Also in Print: Did you know that in many countries paper currency is larger in size for larger denominations? And that “among the 180 nations that use paper currency, America is unusual in not producing money that is easily recognizable by the blind in some tactile way”?
A federal judge has now ordered the Treasury Department to rectify that.
Indies Rocked
In the new Punk Planet, columnist Josh Hooten briefly chronicles the rise and fall of independent publishing by noting that getting onto the shelves of major booksellers and record stores wasn’t such a good deal.
“Barnes and Noble sold a few magazines, but never as much as we wanted,” Hooten writes. “Same with Borders and Tower. The downward trend in magazine sales, industry wide, continued. Indy Press eventually started slipping in payments. We went through four reps in three years. All the while those big corporate bookstores making money off us indie publications didn’t seem concerned enough to offer better payment terms to help us, even when we started wobbling and falling over. Jason from Clamor and I joked once that we were basically paying Barnes and Noble to throw magazines away for us and why didn’t we save the shipping costs and walk them out to the dumpster ourselves.”
Also, a Bloodshot ad announces a new release, Tied and True, by the Detroit Cobras, one of the best bands on the planet. “Soul lives below the belt,” Bloodshot says, “and whether you’re looking to be grinding it slow or shaking it up good, the Cobras bring it tough and tender, savage and sweet, foxy and fun. Tied and true.”
Tru dat.
Rudy G
The May 5th Economist begins a series of profiles of American presidential candidates with a look at Rudy Giuliani that has a few good lines, even if you don’t believe them. For starters, the Economist takes a swipe at our hometown hero by saying that “[U]nlike Mr. Obama, Mr. Giuliani is famous for substantial achievements.”
You also have to admire at least the punch of this: “Successive Democratic mayors had rewarded dysfunction, showering bureaucrats and welfare claimants with cash but requiring neither group to work (much or at all, respectively).”
And this: “As a presidential candidate, Mr. Giuliani has two weak spots: his policies and his personality.”
George T
In an article about the new book from former CIA director George Tenet, the Economist uses the word “whingethon.”
The piece also notes that “the agency is in perhaps the worst funk in its history. Requests by agents to publish books are running at 100 a month.”
That hardly seems possible – 100 a month! – but we can only hope.
Posted on May 8, 2007