Do you have piles of Vanity Fair unread in your living room? Or a stack of Wired on your nightstand? You keep meaning to get to them, but never do. Yet you know, you know, what’s in them is good stuff. If only you had the time. Well, The Booksmith on Haight Street has set aside some time, a whole day in fact, for you. February 27, 2010 is the first ever National Magazine Day. Kevin Smokler, whose brilliant idea this was, agreed to answer some questions about what you can expect at Magazine Day.
Q: Describe what will happen at Magazine Day
A: On Saturday, February 27th, magazine lovers around the country will spend the day reading through their own stack of unread magazines. Here in San Francisco, we'll be throwing a Magazine Day party at The Booksmith on Haight Street from 1-6 p.m. The store will set up a few long tables where folks can bring in their stack o' magazines and spend the afternoon reading, trading and forming community around a shared love of magazines. Five bucks gets you all the coffee and snacks you can consume and access to Booksmith's magazine rack for the day.
At 6 p.m. we're going to have a panel discussion called “The Future of the Magazine.” I’ll moderate it and participating will be Derek Powazek of Fray; Jen Angel, formerly of Clamor; Jeremy Smith of the digital shearable.net and Andrew Leland, managing editor of The Believer.
Q: Will the store be open for people not participating?
A: Indeed it will.
Q: Who started Magazine Day? And why?
A: I did. I'm Kevin Smokler, SF-based writer, head of BookTour.com, and hopeless magazine addict. A few months ago, I posted on twitter "There should be a national holiday for catching up on your stack of unread magazines." It got retweeted about 25 times and people I didn't know started emailing me and asking "When is Magazine Day?" So I thought, "Why run from instead of with a silly idea?"
Q: What do you hope Magazine Day will accomplish?
A: That for one day, magazine lovers need not feel guilty about spending a day with magazines, then letting them go when read.
Q: Any magazine recommendations?
A: I'm a huge [fan] of Bomb Magazine, which is an arts and culture pub that focuses on conversations between creative people of different mediums (musicians yapping with painters, architects chatting with novelists). Wax Poetics is my new favorite music magazine. It focuses on classic soul, funk, jazz, and world music. Lapham's Quarterly is a great yet rather expensive journal where every issue is about a central theme (Love, Money, Crime) then the "articles" are different takes on that theme throughout human history.
Q: How many magazines do you receive at home?
A: The New Yorker and Wired. I'm both trying to cut back and design increasingly elaborate schemes toward scoring free subscriptions. The addicts’ peril I suppose.
Tickets to Magazine Day are five dollars. You can purchase them at Brown Paper Tickets or by calling 800-838-3006 and in the store. Booksmith is located at 1644 Haight Street.
Kevin Smokler is CEO of BookTour.com, the world's largest directory of literary events. His essays and commentaries have appeared in the SF Chronicle, the LA Times, Fast Company and on NPR. His book "Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times" was an SF Chronicle Notable Book of 2005. He lives in the Upper Haight. More info here.
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