What Magazine do you miss the most?

I’ve freelanced for one of those free magazines you pick up at the grocery store for about 15 years. It’s been good, reliable income. Each time we’ve bought a car during those 15 years, we’ve scheduled the payment to be due on the 20th of the month because that freelance check is in the mailbox about the 15th of every month.

 

My parents got me a Games magazine subscription as a kid. I loved that, even though I could only solve about 1/3 of the puzzles on a good month. Quality articles too. Frankly I’m unsure why I let the subscription lapse.

 

I remember how thrilled I was when I first stepped into the library at college and realized they had almost every magazine published in America readily available. It was almost overwhelming to a kid who grew up in a small town where the library had a couple dozen periodicals available.

 

My parents used to get quite a few: Sports Illustrated, Golf Digest, The Nation and Mother Jones (Mom was/is a bit of a lefty), and I enjoyed leafing through them. OK, the Nation not until I was older. But it was always well-written.

I was given a subscription to Rolling Stone in high school and it was read cover to cover for the next decade. Having kids (and their slobbering over Al Gore) ended that, but I still read their online stuff to this day.

Finally, another vote for MAD magazine. It was past its prime by the 1980s but I still enjoyed it. And the anthologies of their 1960s and 70s TV and movie parodies still make me laugh.

 

I have been a Rolling Stone subscriber since the late-1970s, light years from those days, obviously, but I still have some old issues in the crawlspace (the one with The Clash on the cover is one) and a lot of anniversary issues to remind me of how great it used to be.

Somebody mentioned Spin, great, great mag in the early days.

The Sporting News, which was invaluable in the pre-Internet days (found a stash of them at work one day which made for a great wasted afternoon), having access to their archives is one of the real perks of a SABR membership.

 

National Lampoon, 70s version. Harvard guys with a juvenile sense of humor.

 

I miss the William Jeanes/Csaba Csere era Car and Driver. Man did those editors have a roster of talent who could make any car sound interesting.

 

I’m probably showing my age here but Black Sports was phenomenal back in the day. One of my best buds growing up was also a distant relative of Lester Rodney who was a KING back in the day

 

I started subscribing to The Sporting News when I was about 9 or 10 (back around 1984ish). Devoured every inch. Probably one of the main reasons I landed in this business, along with the Gammons/McDonough/Ryan Boston Globe Sunday sports sections of that same era.

 

I was a particular fan of the Team Notes. A's Acorns, Gi-Antics, can't remember the names of some of the others. Halo Happenings? Tiger-Tales?

 

I liked the Stan Isle columns in TSN way back then. Hated Joe Falls, though.

YMMHVed.

 

May have noted this, my apologies if I did, but when I started college in 1993, my roommate and I subscribed to the local paper as well as Details, Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News and Inside Sports. Our room was a fire hazard within a week. May as well have been 2900 years ago.