What Magazine do you miss the most?

I enjoyed Brills Content as well. American Heritage was great. Golf Digest was good for about the first two years I took up the game, but then you'd see these training articles that were so detailed and unrealistic for most golfers - (Shoe sensors to ensure a proper alignment? Even practicing in "the rough" - how many ranges of "rough areas" you can cut up? Or bunkers you can practice in?). I used to love reading TV Guide's Fall Preview Issue, holding on to them and than looking back at one and realizing some big movie star was in THAT show? Or - did highly paid executives think this show would actually be WATCHED?

Is there any magazine still being published that delves into political humor as well as MAD?

 

Western Horseman and the early years of Spin. Spin used to be this insanely creative magazine that tapped into a weird, speculative edge of American music. Axel Rose was once featured in a mock-up of a Breck ad. One cartoonist (Chwast?) did a multi-panel single page on what would have happened if someone put Janis Joplin on antidepressants. It was like the rightful successor to NatLamp back when it featured cartoonists and illustrators like Sherri Flenniken, B. K. Taylor, and Gahan Wilson.

 

Sports Illustrated as it was -- weekly, relevant, and chock full of great writing and photography. I just remember always being in a good mood on Thursday not only because the weekend was getting nearer, but because I knew my new issue of SI was coming that day (usually). Oh yeah, and every February looking forward to the swimsuit issue before it started morphing into a clone of Vogue or Elle.

MAD comes in a close second. I actually stopped getting it for the most part once I got into my mid-to-late teens, but I find myself wishing I continued to buy it though the late '80s and '90s.

 

I was too young to appreciate the heyday of MAD and its political commentary. But I see excerpts from the Watergate era today and man, they hit the target.

 

Great question.

Some already mentioned, of course - National Lampoon, Mad, Playboy, etc. From childhood, Saturday Evening Post, Readers' Digest. Of that era the one I miss most, and think of most fondly, is probably Life.

I sorely miss Story quarterly.

And I miss very keenly the greatest magazine ever made, DoubleTake. Founded and edited by Robert Coles, it remains one of the most thrilling, beautiful quarterly books ever made. When you see copies for sale used, buy 'em up.

 

Surprised no one has mentioned Inside Sports yet.

Or Sport.

 

The Sporting News. Was the only way to get baseball news on every team (and full box scores) before USA Today.

Sport was great because of the full-page photos. I cut them out and taped them to my bedroom walls.

And Mad magazine definitely honed my puns.

 

Here's what I miss more than any individual magazine lately: magazine stands.

The big storefronts we used to have here in New York, or the blocklong sidewalk sheds out in Los Angeles.

Magazines from literally everywhere on earth, in every language, on every subject. Out of town newspapers, too.

There was a place in my old neighborhood just off Union Square I visited twice a week for ten years. Twice a month I came home with armloads of titles.

Even the flagship Barnes and Noble around the corner with the giant magazine section couldn't rival it for diversity or oddity or devotion.

The internet has made that easier of course, but killed the romance of it, the passion.

 

Alex Haley did a lot of those interviews, pre-Roots. Great stuff.

 

I miss magazines in general. The last few I've subscribed to have gone more unread than read. I'd bring them in, toss them on the couch for a day or two, leaf through them, and toss them in the trash.
Younger generations will never know that feeling of getting the latest copy in the mailbox. There was just a feeling to it.
I subscribed to Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, and Tennessee Sportsman. I miss them.

I miss waiting room magazines because that's where I got to thumb through things I'd never subscribe to or buy.
What I get now regularly is a free magazine that you pick up at the grocery store. It's one of those that makes its money from ad sales, but it usually has some nice stories about local happenings.

 

One of the things I did during pandemic boredom was scour eBay for useless bullshit from my youth I didn't really need. Picked up a near-mint copy of GQ from May of 1990 which had Letterman on the cover so I could re-read the feature on him. I'd forgotten what an absolute bible that thing was in terms of size and content back then. Sure, a lot of it was ads. There was also a helluva lot of good stories too. Turned me on to reading that magazine as a teenager.