The New York Review of Magazines

Found

By Jay Pfeifer

Circulation..........25,000
Date of Birth..........2001
Frequency..........Irregularly
Price..........$5
Natural Habitat..........Originally sighted blowing across streets, collecting in doorways. Now, sits in captivity on coffee tables and nighstands and in backpacks.
THE melting snow of springtime always reveals some surprises. Amid the puddles, slush and discarded plastic bags, there are treasures to be had. Some have monetary value; say, a quarter or a MetroCard. But the most interesting things are the ones with the least redeemable value. The city is awash in misplaced notes, letters and lists—fragments of other peoples’ lives. I used to ignore the flotsam that collects in doorways, against chain-link fences and at subway stations. However, now that I’ve read Found, I stoop to pick up just about anything that flutters across my path.

The idea behind Found is a simple one. People (or “Found operatives”) from around the country mail found notes and pictures (or in one rare case, a shoe) to the headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There, the Found team, led by self-appointed “point guard” Davy Rothbart, founder and editor, publishes them at a semiregular, near glacial pace. So far, he has dropped just three issues in as many years.

Taking a page from the world of ’zine publishing, Rothbart and his team at Found recreate the intimacy of seeing something unintended by taping the actual notes to a dark background. Crumpled letters with wrinkled, torn edges are still rough, and the handwriting (constantly on the edge of legibility) is reproduced verbatim. The black-and-white magazine looks like a scrapbook put together by someone armed only with a pair of dull scissors, a roll of transparent tape and a copier. Rothbart provides little context with each find, including only a short title, the location of the find and the name of the finder. The thrill of discovery is still remarkably intact thanks to this rough, hand-hewn design.

Even though Found owes its existence to the physical world of pen and paper, reading the magazine is an exercise of imagination. The found items that Rothbart publishes “all have a sense of narrative,” he said. “I look for things that are surprising. Things that have a sense of a story. It might be only a hint of a story, but it is there.”

The magazine is filled with the rushed scrawls of angry lovers. A woman thinking that she has just caught her husband cheating writes: “Mario, I fucking hate you. You said you had to work then whys your car HERE at HER place??” Despite her righteous anger, she ends her note with this: “PS - Page me later.” The note typifies the charming, contradictory nature of human behavior that animates the pages within Found.

Other pieces show an unintentionally humorous self-seriousness. A full sheet of legal paper written in neat, hesitant capital letters says, “If you took my detergent I’m sure it was a mistake so I’m not mad YET. But your pushing me and I push back so it better be back f-ing soon.”

Found counters every laugh, however, with a chill. In the first issue, the magazine reproduces a handbill posted by a woman offering a reward for a “copy of video George Bush and members of Congress had taken of me making love; they sought to thwart my fraudproof national telephone voting system.” It’s this kind of note that makes the magazine so rich. The narrative that Rothbart looks for is all too present here. Like reading someone’s diary, the fun can disappear when such dire material crops up. It is important to note that there is no trace of condescension or derision. By simply presenting these bizarre finds as they appear, Found lets the material speak for itself.

Rothbart’s idea has picked up a lot of steam since the first issue. He and his friends started the magazine with 800 copies and now he estimates that the first two issues have sold 40,000 copies apiece. The third issue hit in March with a first-run printing of 25,000 copies. “It’s stunning that it’s taken off,” he said. “I’m excited, but I’m like a steward of this project. People really are a part of the magazine. I think of this as a giant collaborative art project.” It seems that an entire nation of people with shoeboxes full of found notes were waiting for an outlet. A steady stream of 5-10 daily letters from every state and every continent fills Rothbart’s mailbox and threatens to overtake his basement.

You can find a copy of Found by checking the list of retailers on the Found Web site: Found Magazine. And then, don’t be surprised if you start to notice the little scraps of paper stuck in nooks and crannies. As Rothbart wrote in the first issue, “Four out of five are duds, but that fifth one will keep you looking.”

Loiterers, Thieves & Lots of Coffee

Dispatches from a day in a neighborhood newsstand
By Jay Pfeifer

6:38a.m.

DRESSED in a pair of neatly pressed green trousers and a blue buttondown shirt, Essam Moussa has two things on his mind: get the store open and get the coffee brewing. Moussa, a middle-aged Egyptian immigrant with olive skin and thinning black hair, ambles up to Global Ink, his storefront newsstand on Broadway and 112th Street, and unlocks the door.

Inside, the tiny store epitomizes the ingenuity of New York shopkeepers who must maximize their minimal space. Some 6,000 magazines sheath the walls, covering every vertical surface with a multi-color patchwork. Global Ink carries virtually every available magazine, from the scifi conjecture of Atlantis Rising to the literary content of Zyzzyva. On the walls, the magazine racks stretch from the baseboard to a couple of feet overhead. Even the unreachable-by-human-hands space over the cellar staircase in the back of the store is covered with racks of oversized fashion magazines. (This is by design—they are the most expensive magazines in the store and are protected by their inconvenient location.)

The checkout counter, a ten-foot island to the left of the entrance, is the only exception to the all-magazines décor. The cash register is at the end nearest the door. At the other end is a refrigerated pastry case holding an array of too-perfect muffins, scones and danishes. Behind the sweets, against the left wall, is a pair of refrigerators filled with bottles of fruit juice and water, a coffee machine and three vacuum carafes.

For the first bleary hours of the day, Moussa and four other employees will serve most of their customers two things: coffee and the morning newspapers. They will need the caffeine as much as their customers do.

7:44a.m.

ONE of the first customers, a gray-haired man, is obviously a regular— he carries his Global Ink insulated mug, emblazoned with the store’s logo. A dozen more of the mugs collect dust on a shelf above the coffee machine. “In the beginning, five years ago, we sold a lot of them,” Moussa says. “We had a good deal. Instead of $1.25, you paid 75 cents for a refill if you had the mug. But some people moved. That’s what happens. People come to the neighborhood for three, four, five years, then they move. New people take a while.”

As he waits for Moussa to refill the mug, the customer asks, “How are the kids?” nodding toward the pictures of Moussa’s two young daughters hanging on a refrigerator next to a couple of World Trade Center postcards. Before leaving, the man grabs a New York Times and pays for the coffee and the paper—a small-bills transaction that typifies the morning routine at Global Ink.

8:36a.m.

A PROBLEM. Next to the register, Moussa keeps a hand-written list of fourteen customers for whom he reserves a set of newspapers every day. Today, he’s short two copies of the Financial Times. They didn’t get enough copies from the distributor. Worse still, one of the expected customers is notoriously cranky. A year or two ago, Moussa recalls, “We didn’t have his newspaper. Somebody sold the copy we were holding for him. I don’t know what happened, but it was a nightmare for me.” Now Moussa has to buy the papers from one of the street-corner newsstands down the street to cover today’s shortage.

He resents the inconvenience more than the notion of giving a couple of bucks to his “competition.” The corner newsstands aren’t really his competition—“They only carry, what? Time and Newsweek? We carry design, architecture, German magazines; they don’t carry those,” he says. “I don’t consider myself a newsstand.” What would he call his store? He doesn’t have an answer. A magazine shop? A bookstore? “ I just think of myself as Global Ink,” he says.

9:54a.m.

WHILE customers stream in and out, Moussa and his employees— there are generally two or three of them there at any given time—patrol the store’s single aisle, pausing to straighten askew magazines and restock popular ones. The most popular magazines and, hence, those most in need of restocking, sit right next to the front door. These are the general-interest publications; The Nation, Harper’s and The Atlantic are his best sellers—a byproduct of his proximity to Columbia University. Moussa’s other biggest sellers—Vogue, Elle and the other fashion books—sit under the racks in boxy containers on the floor. The ad-heavy magazines are too fat for the space available in the vertical racks—and too much trouble for the workers responsible for keeping them on display. “We put those on the floor so they can stock more. If we didn’t put them there, we would have to go back every five minutes to restock.”

10:30a.m.

A YOUNG mother wheels her sport-trike and three kids into Global Ink. The toddlers descend on the comic books (conveniently at low eye level) while the mother scans the shelter magazines. This makes Moussa happy—attracting families is important to him.

“We try to get every magazine our distributors have—except for the adult magazines. We don’t carry pornography. They sell a lot, but I want parents to take their kids in here without worrying. It’s bad enough that we have those in here,” he says, nodding dismissively toward the flesh-colored stacks of FHM and Stuff on the floor.

11:07a.m.

AS HE walks out the door, a middle-aged man grabs a copy of Loot New York, a classified-ads paper, from under the Times rack. Moussa’s employee behind the register sees it and calls out, “Excuse me, sir! Excuse me, sir!” The customer freezes as he is halfway out the door. The man has not paid for the paper—and as he turns around, he laughs nervously. Did they just nab a shoplifter? The customer comes back in, and the Global Ink employee points to the top of the paper in the man’s hand. Loot has a large banner across the top of the front page that says “Sell Household Items Free!” Just under the word “Free,” in much smaller type, of course, is the price: $2. The man pays for the paper, smiles sheepishly and, this time, makes it out the door without incident.

Shoplifting is the greatest threat to Global Ink. Moussa is courteous to everyone who enters the store, but in each potential customer he also sees a potential thief. “Old, young, man, woman, black, white—it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to generalize, but it happens a lot. Everybody who has a chance will do it.”

The frequency of theft has Moussa exasperated.

“When I opened the store five years ago, I never even considered it,” he says. “I put mirrors up three years ago. And now I have cameras everywhere.”

The bane of Moussa’s battle to stop shoplifting? “Bags, bags, bags,” he says. His magazines disappear in students’ backpacks and customers’ purses, but “I can’t search everybody’s bag.”

On one occasion, the Sunday edition of the Times, a big seller for Moussa, became a Trojan horse used to conceal contraband.

“One guy slipped magazines in the Sunday Times and tried to pay for it that way.”

11:30a.m.

MOUSSA ducks out to run a couple of errands and leaves his employees in charge. Shortly after he leaves, a deliveryman from one of his seven major distributors arrives, pushing a dolly of boxes to a small desk in the back of the store. As he unloads shrink-wrapped bundles of The Economist and People, an employee checks off each allotment on an order form. Shortly after the deliveryman leaves, however, it becomes clear that they did not get enough copies of two magazines. Unfortunately, they have missed their chance to correct the shortfall. Once the deliveryman is gone, Global Ink has no recourse. When Moussa returns, he is clearly agitated. “This is a nightmare. I told them to make the driver sign the invoice if they are short, but they did not do it.”

Moussa is convinced that the missing magazines are not a logistical oversight on the distributor’s part. “The driver steals. You have to watch him.” He can’t be sure, but he suspects that the deliveryman takes magazines from his shipments and sells them at other newsstands, pocketing the cash. But without a signed invoice, Moussa cannot prove that the magazines never arrived; they simply have to take the loss. Worse still, this driver works for one of the largest magazine distributors, and Moussa knows that the company will not help him remedy the problem. “If I call them, they don’t care.”

1:15 p .m.

FOR most of the day, customers move through the store in waves, but at this lunch hour, the place is almost completely empty. The three employees—one at the counter, one standing in the middle of the store and one at the back—all stare expectantly at the front door.

1:20p.m.

ONLY five minutes later, however, seven people are browsing and the store feels full. Moussa estimates that almost 1,000 customers pass through the store on an average day, and about half of them will buy something. He used to claim almost 2,000 visitors in the early days of the store. But, back then, he opened earlier and stayed open later— from 5 a.m. until 1 a.m. Now, because of declining business and his busy life at home, he has scaled back to 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

2:22p.m.

ALL day long, customers stand rooted to the floor and read Global Ink’s magazines without any intention of buying them. Despite the heavy traffic, a large number of readers show no desire to move at all. A man with long, graying dreadlocks stands in front of the computer section for an hour and a half, reading and intermittently chatting on his cell phone. He starts to bring T3, a British technology magazine, to the cashier but only gets as far as the pastry counter before turning on his heels. He sticks it back on the rack, buys a couple of newspapers and heads out.

This behavior does not seem to bother Moussa. His philosophy: Customers are welcome to read anytime, but they’d better leave the magazines as they found them. “It bothers me when somebody tears out pages or steals CDs,” he says, not unreasonably.

3:45p.m.

A YOUNG man walks in, hands Moussa a videotape and heads right back out the door. Adding it to a short stack of videotapes on the floor behind the counter, Moussa explains that he has a deal with a video store on 105th Street. Customers can drop off their rentals at Global Ink and Moussa holds onto them for the video store. Moussa estimates that approximately 30 to 40 percent of video returners will buy something. “It’s good for him and it’s good for me. You know, if they stop in, they buy coffee, a newspaper or a magazine.”

The videotapes are not the only anomalies behind the desk. In addition to stacks of domestic and foreign cigarettes, Moussa stocks a collection of cello, violin and bass strings. He even has a couple of trombone cleaners hanging back there. Moussa explains proudly: “We’re the only supplier for the Manhattan School of Music in the neighborhood.”

4:05p.m.

MOUSSA can count on the big-name magazines to sell, but what about the other 5,500 magazines? How well can magazines like MakeUp Artist (sci-fi section, middle of the right wall) or Mini Truckin’ (auto section, back-left corner) sell? Moussa insists, “Every magazine here sells.”

He clarifies that by saying just because every magazine may sell, it doesn’t mean they sell consistently. “We had this issue of Topic magazine that never sold. But next issue, people were coming in and asking about it because it was featured on the radio. In this business, you can’t predict anything.”

Unsold magazines don’t necessarily mean that Moussa loses money. When he started Global Ink five years ago, he had to give his seven magazine distributors a large deposit, somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000 to $25,000 each. With his account started, he receives a full order of magazines on consignment. When new issues come in, the unsold copies they replace get shipped back to the distributor and are subtracted from his bill. Even though unsold magazines don’t cost him anything, they can shrink his margin. His profits depend on volume, and when magazines don’t sell, it hurts. Moussa sums it up: “This business is really tough. You play on a very small margin.”

9:34p.m.

MOUSSA and his staff are busy sweeping the store’s pale hardwood floors in preparation for closing at 10 p.m. As he scans the racks, Moussa repeatedly stoops to pick up the stray subscriber cards that litter the floor. “If I don’t do it, who else will?” He focuses, however, on replenishing the bottled drinks behind the counter and getting the coffee machine ready for the next morning. “It’s like the restaurant business,” he says. “As soon as you’re done with lunch, you get ready for dinner. We have to get ready for tomorrow.”

Presenting the Amazing Magazivo!

By Jay Pfeifer

SAD to say, magazines just aren’t what they used to be. If you’re not slogging through a jungle of advertorials in search of genuine, independent content, you’re stooping to pick up the subscription cards that litter your floor. Reading magazines is almost more trouble than it’s worth. But relief is in sight! Personal video recorders (think TiVo) have given viewers control of their sets. And now, it’s the magazine reader’s turn. Thanks to the evolutionary, revolutionary, retributionary Magazivo, you, too, can regain control of your magazines. The Magazivo is a magical, marvelous, multi-functional device that does it all for you. Here are its fantastic features: 1. Dis-Card You’ll never have to bend over to pick up a subscription offer again. The Magazivo automatically plucks all blow-in cards from the magazine before you ever open it. And as an added bonus, the Magazivo flash-incinerates the cards, leaving only a fine white ash behind—perfect to fertilize your garden. 2. Swag Frag Everybody likes to get something for free, right? But magazines give you more than you want. Whether it’s compact discs soft-glued to the cover or perfume strips that leave you in a scented haze, the Magazivo removes them for you. For your convenience, the Magazivo doesn’t destroy these giveaways—it adapts them. Old perfume strips make great air fresheners for your car. As for those CDs, wait for a couple of special issues and you’ll have a new set of coasters! 3. Synergex The Magazivo removes all crosspromotion by detecting any hint of corporate synergy. See that “Two Towers” cover story on Time? No wonder, Time Warner owns both the movie and the magazine. Well, you won’t see it anymore! The Magazivo filters out all undue corporate influence. 4. Advertorinator The Magazivo does more than just cancel cross-promotion, however. Don’t want to read about the economic boom in Ecuador? What about vacation possibilities in Jamaica? The Magazivo easily removes the lengthy advertorials that clog today’s magazines. Search and destroy, Magazivo! 5. Blurb Buster Let the Magazivo put an end to those cover-blurb dead-ends. No more getting suckered in by promises that magazines don’t keep. If the story doesn’t live up to the hype, it’s hasta la vista, baby—the offending text is vaporized. 6. Stable Table We at Magazivo, Inc. don’t agree with everything Oprah does (frankly, the book list just scares us) but she does get one thing right with her magazine: she puts the table of contents where it belongs—right up front. Now, no more flipping through dozens of pages to find the most useful page of the entire magazine—the Magazivo cues up the contents. 7. ZeitHeist With Magazivo’s patented celebrity-removal feature, you can program the machine to edit all references to celebrities du jour. Don’t ever want to read about Rosie O’Donnell, Ben Affleck or Paris Hilton again? A quick hit of the “Z” button and they’re gone. Set it and forget it. It’s just that easy! 8. Jump Cut When the magazine says, “Jump,” you no longer have to say, “How far?” Thanks to the Magazivo, you’ll never read the first 200 words of a story then have to turn to page 468 to read the last 2,000. The Magazivo cuts and pastes the pages together. 9. Page Protect And that’s not all! In today’s world, the simple act of reading a magazine can be a grave threat to your health and the well-being of your loved ones. Each page is a bacteria-laden razor just waiting for one false move. Just think: The spring fashion issue of Vogue represents more than 230 chances for injury and potential infection. The Magazivo is here to help. The device will blunt each page edge for you, to remove any chance of a paper cut. The Magazivo is more than just a convenience. It could save your life.