Newsstand

I’d grab whatever was at the newsstand. PRINZ had Berlin writers on love and drugs. VICE was running Issei Sagawa next to Richard Kern nudes. NEON mixed breakup advice with animal sex philosophy. NYLON called Franz Ferdinand the world’s best-dressed band while also interviewing a snowboarder named Kjersti Buaas.

The magazines had this weird mix: high and low, serious and stupid, dark and trivial. You were paying for one thing that actually interested you and tolerating everything else. What stuck with me was how clearly you could see what editors thought mattered at that moment.

They were usually wrong, but the wrongness was interesting—you could feel it in what they paired together. A cannibal interview next to lingerie next to fashion advice. That’s what mattered then, visible in the choices.