Sunday, September 19, 2010

Internet blogs killed the magazine star...

Let's take a trip down memory lane...Since an early age I have always enjoyed flipping through the pages of magazines to find the newest and latest of which our vast world had to offer. Magazines mostly published monthly or quarterly arrived at my doorstep with the latest and most current trends and happenings throughout the world. It all started with Sports Illustrated for kids, then Sports Illustrated, MAD, Cracked, BMX Plus, Thrasher, Transworld, etc etc... There was an indescribable feeling of panning through the pages of A BMX Plus or thrasher at A 7-11 seeing all the new tricks and styles that were coming out, calling your boys and asking them if they had seen it yet, or just dropping something new on them and hoping that they din't see it yet and them give you all the props. Fast forward A few more years The Source magazine helped introduce me to so many groups and rappers,in which I would learn their backround stories, and lifestyle, not to mention the section of cool urban lettering that we like to call Fitti'. Even if I didn't have the money I would flip through as many pages as I could in all the mags that I liked before the store clerk would tell me I had to buy it if I wanted to keep reading them, This was A time before you could grab 10 magazines at Borders books and sit with A frappalattechino and read til your eyes bleed. Enter Fitti': Early on fitti' magazines were few and far between, the first magazine I remember buying was Skills magazine from Tower Books on South st.(When tower was down on 4th and south for all my Philly peeps!) My friends and I thought it was the coolest thing ever we took it home and tried to bite and chomp just about every last thing in the magazine cover to cover. As time went on more and more fitti' mags surfaced from just about everywhere. This was pre internet for all my 90's babies, I frequented Tower weekly to see what mag had dropped and who was in it, what interviews were in it, what music they were hyping etc etc.. As the 90's dawned, Lifestyle shops opened that catered to the things we were into, they sold mixtapes, fitti' mags, videos markers, nozzles and tshirts posters, skateboards etc etc. 12 oz prophet really pushed the bar for being A fitti' mag, but On the Go, Life sucks Die, and While you were sleeping were A few of my favs. I am A sucker for content and wit, and those 3 magazines brought a lot of that action to the table. As the 90's were ending the internet made it's way into peoples homes, and info and pics started to pop up quicker then the magazines could get them pressed and delivered to the stores or your doorstep, so in A way it was old news by the time you had seen it. This internet transition sparked A feeding frenzy of knowledge, and endless resources to fill that hunger. People were posting stories, pictures, comments, interviews everywhere, and at A click of the mouse you could find way cool stuff from every corner of the planet, this didn't slow down it only got faster and faster from web sites that sort of released online magazine type of things, to blogs that added content daily, to present day were info is added at each mouthful of cheerios that some dumb celebrity just ate. In A way i love it because i am still that little kid in the 7-11 looking online for all the coolest that the world has to offer, but the nostalgic old f#*k in me hates the rapid fire what's next mentality that it has created. I am A collector of many things and magazines were one thing I liked to collect and still do, call me old but I miss the days of having everything in my hands, and the actual motion of flipping through the magazine cover to cover. Well, time waits for no man and he won't wait for me so I try to keep up with this turbo highway of info thats out there, but it's sometimes nice to just daydream back to A time when patience meant something and you waited A month just to see what band your favorite skater/rapper was listening to, now just check his twitter hourly and you cans see what he wipes his a$$ with...So, long for now I have to get back to the land of Oxymoronville and post this blog post so I can be part of what i was just ranting about.
















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