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The Perfectly Imperfect Guide to Magazines

Former guests + users tell us about their favorite magazines.

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May 6, 2025

They’re portals to new rabbit holes, windows into subcultures and interests that For You pages long ago deemed passé - like Japanese hiking culture or underground punk scenes. They stack up by your bed like little time capsules of what once mattered and refuse to disappear with a software update, curated by actual humans who geek out over paper stock and font choices.

At their best, discovering a magazine can feel like playing hooky from reality—proof that we're all craving something we can actually hold onto.

? 😃 ?

What's your favorite magazine

put us on

@perfectlyimperfect

May 6, 2025

🗞️

County highway magazine

America’s Only Newspaper. $50/year for 6 issues and you can’t find any of the pieces featured online — print only baby! Read about Nabokov’s obsession with butterflies, Meaghan Garvey’s dispatch to Texas to write about Townes Van Zandt, pro-cigarette propaganda, and more! You’ll look so sexy and mysterious at your local coffee shop.

@bashfulchicken

May 12, 2024

📔

SLAM magazine

When I was young I loved TIGER BEAT and BIG BOPPER magazine, and now I subscribe to SLAM. It’s like the teenybopper NBA magazine. Every month, there’s a pullout poster and you have to decide who you want on your fridge, you know: Trae Young or Zion? Oh, and there are articles about all of the cool teen high school players coming up. And the best pages are League Fits, with all the NBA stars in crazy clothes. And then there are the letters to the editor, and that’s, like teens at home complaining to SLAM editors being all, “There has been gross lack of representation of my man Jaylen Brown in League Fits!” I love it all.

@cat-marnell

Mar 8, 2022

👩‍✈️

Pilot

By @dagny - every issue has a different physical format it’s sick

@fitz

Mar 27, 2025

🕵️

The Fence (Magazine)

The Fence is a young, smart and brutally funny London magazine in the tradition of vintage Tatler or Spy. Subscribe in print or buy the NFT we co-designed.

@daisy

Feb 22, 2022

🩰

homme girls!

the interviews are super cool to read & the format is personable

@saivee

Jan 20, 2025

😃

Sex Magazine

I just like the way they have the simple lay out and I like their content. It’s just a culture mag and I like to read the interviews.

@BennyLiquid

Mar 20, 2025

😃

sap magazine :)

@arianamamnoon

Feb 7, 2024

📕

broadcast magazine from pioneer works in red hook

they just put out their first print issue and managed to wrangle some very fun writers (from hannah baer to ed park, some deisgn by pippa garner) into writing some very interesting essays and stories. super charmed by the fact that it is printed on a kind of very thick newsprint? a unique tactile experience. its like eight bucks and they'll ship it to your lovely little home, wherever it may be. also this is a great question thank you for asking it.

@whatcanibring

Feb 21, 2024

📚

Capsule global

A beefy spiral-bound annual publication put out by Kaleidoscope. Serves as an archive of radical design (interior, furniture, fashion, graphic, architecture, everything) both historic and contemporary. You can choose from 3-4 different covers when purchasing an issue which is fun since it’s definitely going on your coffee table.

@not__exactly

Nov 20, 2024

📕

Climax Books

Probably biased, but my friend Isabella Burley runs the best independent bookstore happening right now. Also, in male dominated book and zine world, her amazing FEMALE perspective is great. She has substance and style and I am excited to welcome Climax to NYC when she opens a Manhattan outpost soon.

@lynette

Jun 28, 2024

📔

enzo the magazine

very cool brand of 20-somethings makin whatever they want (mags, video essays, short films, etc) (pic taken from enzo issue 8)

@wayneyea

Apr 22, 2025

🔖

Independent magazines i love!

🎪 Cabana (amazing interiors + each issue comes covered in dead stock fabric from a luxury brand) 🏸 racquet mag (explores the niche of tennis and other racquet sports) 🪄 a magazine curated by (Dan thawley is my idol!!!) 🪆 the gentlewoman (Penny Martin is also my idol) 🌸 BLUMENHAUS (deserves its own rec tbh— the most gorgeous large-format mag all about flowers, florals, plants, and gardening)

@scremes

Feb 15, 2024

🎥

W Magazine

specifically their best performances issue. beautiful editorial photos & i always get to know the actors in awards season running a little bit better than through other methods of campaigning, like actors on actors, etc. i am particularly into this year’s because they did away with the juergen teller photos lol

@strawberrygirl

Jan 16, 2025

🪖

Synchron and high fructose

Found these a while back after being influenced by the fluxus art movement and holy shit they’re amazing. Lots of interesting styles and concepts

@hulseid

Apr 18, 2024

📰

Pen Magazine

is a japanese magazine about art, design and travel. i mostly read the photography articles and haven't had time to check out their other stuff, but those alone are really cool :) definitely worth a read if you're into japanese culture

@gay_lime_lobster

Sep 30, 2024

📩

Magazine Subscriptions

Nothing feels as good as unsubscribing, but you’re gonna want to hold on to a physical subscription or two, if for no other reason then ambiance. Personally, I recommend American Affairs and The New Criterion, a couple of quality periodicals with good aesthetics that some may call “fascist,” but I call respectable. Reading magazines will help you improve your attention span and cut through the wasteland of takes. God knows we could all use some of that.

@anna-khachiyan

Aug 23, 2022

📕

My zine from April 2024

I was on the zine team for my college's local student-run magazine last year and it was so much fun! We each got assigned to make a mini-zine that captured the behind-the-scenes process for the magazine photoshoots. My zine was centered on the "Bite The Hand" shoot. The props team 3-D printed a hand to put in a punch bowl & the styling team decorated the models' hair with candy. We had a launch party for the mini-zines & everyone's turned out so good! I've linked the final issue of the larger Strike Magazine in the post here. :)

@gforce2001

Jan 17, 2025

👕

032c T-Shirt

No comment. But the magazine is great too!

@anna-delvey

Nov 3, 2022

💊

THE OPIOID CRISIS LOOKBOOK

THE OPIOID CRISIS LOOKBOOK IS THE ONLY MAGAZINE I'D HONESTLY SPEND MONEY ON AND I SAY THAT AS SOMEONE WHO GREW UP ADDICTED TO FASHION RAGS. ITS NOT A FASHION MAGAZINE OR A FASHION LOOK BOOK AT ALL. THE EDITORS DUSTIN AND DASHA ARE MAYBE THE MOST GENIUS ARTISTS I KNOW. THE ART AND THE WRITING IS ALWAYS INCREDIBLE AND NOT IN A SHOCK FACTOR BULLSHIT WAY. IT TRULY FREED MY MIND BLAH BLAH. LOOK OUT FOR MY INTERVIEW WITH THE LEGENDARY LAURA ALBERT (SOMETIMES KNOWN AS JT LEROY) IN THE UPCOMING THIRD ISSUE.

@megprincess

Feb 8, 2023

🏕

GO OUT Magazine

Excessively hiking this year has been so fun, but the other half of the fun is the technical hiking apparel that goes with it - oh, and wearing only hiking gear even when I’m not hiking. I really appreciate Japan’s love for outdoor style and culture. GO OUT’s web magazine has been my daily morning check-in and my biggest outdoor gear inspiration. I recently picked up a few of their physical magazines (it’s hard to come by in the US) and I really enjoy flipping through them every now and then. Contrary to typical magazines that we’re used to, GO OUT magazines are basically beefed up catalogs of goodies and collabs that make for great coffee table content.

@serey-morm

Dec 10, 2020

🧑‍🤝‍🧑

Forever Magazine and Heavy Traffic Magazine

'Forever' and 'Heavy Traffic' are two standout lit magazines from New York City, each helmed by dear friends of mine. Their readings have admittedly triggered neuroses that at times makes me feel like I'm at a NASCAR event. They have really made me love writing, going to bookstores and to readings again. Truly heartwarming. However, I take issue with the recent Interview Magazine article that appeared to pit these two magazines against each other, based on their "editorial standards". The notion of comparing them simply based on their editorial standards is NOT sexist enough. I mean who can argue with the fact that these two publications have distinct aesthetic identities based on the fact that they are run by opposite sexes and should be judged on this fact alone!

@matthew

Aug 23, 2023

📒

The face!

@helenalemin

Jan 16, 2025

📚

The Internet Archive

Open access and the preservation of digital artifacts are causes I can get behind, so I’m going to give The Internet Archive some appreciation here. I spend quite a bit of time browsing their offerings, some of which have made their way into my art projects. You’ll have to take your own trip with it, but some of my personal highlights include: a complete archive of Mondo 2000 magazines, a collection of K-Mart background music from a former employee (recently denoised by another IA user), and the Noise-Arch collection which pulls together many gigs of underground tape cassettes from the 1980s-90s. Recently I started using a ChatGPT Chrome extension and put it to work reading entire PDFs, searching for keywords, summarizing etc. Pretty awesome library school / digital hoarder / subvertainment stuff, if you like that sort of thing.

@daniel

Nov 22, 2023

📙

Zines

I adore music zines. Always loved them. I don’t mean full-on glossy magazines, though I love those, too. I mean the handmade, typewritten, toner-smeared kind made out of printer paper and staples and a burning desire to participate in a tradition of creative writing, interviewing, art-making, and whatever other form of creativity one feels like stuffing into its pages. At the moment, I’m obsessed with a few: Hallogallo, which is run out of Chicago by Kai Slater (of the bands Lifeguard and Sharp Pins) which just published its 10th issue featuring an interview with Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier; Love Injection, a long-running club culture zine by NYC’s Barbie Bertisch and Paul Raffaele; and Shadow Wolf, the handiwork of Holland-based electronic artist Legowelt.

@ryan-schreiber

Mar 19, 2024

📖

Apartamento

This biannual publication is summed up wonderfully as "an indispensable resource for individuals who are passionate about the way they live." This issue in particular (#33) is such a banger. Mixed between short essays, each interview (and its associated interior portraits) is honest, intimate and inspiring, often conducted by a close friend of the subject. As a reader, I feel like I'm hanging out in their living room. Issue #33 includes: Hari Nef, Franz Erhard Walther, Madelon Vriesendorp, Lloyd Kahn, Eric N. Mack, John Wurdeman, Antonia Marsh, Enrique Olvera, Ron Arad, Motoyuki Daifu, Jimmy Wright, Najla El Zein, Hans-Walter Müller and Rachel Roddy.

@leen

Sep 10, 2024

📰

le petit 3

the most cozy newspaper delivered once a month, it’s basically centered around infusing life with meaning by living in tune with the seasons. each month’s issue acts as a love letter to the present that expresses the themes at hand through musings on mindfulness, slow living, art, astrology, mythology, mysticism, history, health, spirituality, philosophy, AH. ITS JUST SO AMAZING

@kayleepatrick

Nov 21, 2024

👖

POPEYE magazine

A lot of work goes into the lifestyle/streetwear features in this magazine. Even though I can’t read Japanese, I like to flip through the photos and translate the pages one by one for outfit and travel inspiration

@slimarabia

Jan 19, 2025

📰

For scale’s OCCASIONAL print issue

Looks like you’re reading the sports section but it’s actually an article about the glamor-butch aesthetic

@leen

Nov 20, 2024

⭐

artforum and believer

Believer rising from the ashes back to near the height of its power is amazing. Artforum still is generally good, tho I'll prob pivot to a different mag once my subscription is up.

@jrpaperstack

Jan 16, 2025

🎵

Aphex twin’s origin story

speaks for itself. from the recent 032c.

@barr

STAFF

Jan 26, 2025

🪷

editorial magazine

fun and smart! amazingly thoughtful interviews & wonderful art selection.

@stegosaurusbex

Apr 18, 2024

⭐

Haloscope magazine

such a cool fashion/beauty/culture mag. I just wrote a piece for them and had suuuch a great time working with the EIC. Id highly recommend pitching them! Great experience

@magdilettante

Dec 13, 2023

📰

Spike ART MAGAZINE

It’s from Berlin/Vienna, but published in English. The mix of visually splashy art and poetic essays is total brain food. Spiek Art mag also dives into the philsophical "what does this even mean?!" of the art world. Perfect if you’re into deep deep dives and not just surface-level stuff. It always fires up my imagination!

@chilly_olive_heron

Nov 20, 2024

☕️🗞️

The Paris Review

So I’ve been debating which is more annoying: including this pretentious literary magazine which I authentically love OR excluding it and going with a more “relatable” choice. Performative relatability is my favorite thing to make fun of in my videos so I opted for the former! I’ve loved it since reading this piece (The Unravlers) by the amazing Stephanie Danler. It’s impossible to love the Paris Review without getting shit on for it though. My friend Rebecca saw it peeking out of my purse when we were getting drinks recently and accused me of planting it. My other friend, Michael, accused me of only liking it because it contains the word “Paris” which aids in my quest to appear chic and not from Idaho (which I am). And I said, “Michael, that’s absolutely ridiculous and also correct.”

@delaney-rowe

Sep 1, 2023

📰

drain magazine

edited by ed davis

@cowgirl

Dec 20, 2024

📚

the baffler

Also: macguffin, dissent, Blau, interview and: Just picked up a copy of the first shadowbanned magazine (pictured) at secret riso in Bushwick and she is GORGEOUS

@cl0e

Mar 28, 2025

⛳

the golfer’s journal

quarterly mag with phenomenal photography and wonderful writing

@mattwillcox

Mar 20, 2025

🏹

GUT MAGAZINE!!

Simply the best publication ever ever ever for the lovers of everything gross and sexy and porous and sweaty and hot and funny Unfortunately comes out whenever they put an issue together last one was more than 3 years ago :~( but its The absolute best chef kiss

@ispitonurgrave

Jan 16, 2025

😃

Interview by warhol

Love that over exaggerated style of the mag and it’s a huge spread! Worth every penny imo

@mollyhunter

Jan 16, 2025

😃

playboys before 1974

i bought this issue (not my picture) some months ago and I still haven’t gotten through it. i enjoy looking at the ads and what people back then were talking about leisurely. i feel like people think playboy is just smut but it really was just a men’s magazine. the playmate photos are tasteful and lively, and even their interviews can tell you a lot

@chiawase_

Jan 17, 2025

📕

MACGUFFIN MAGAZINE

a favorite magazine atm, all of their issues are yesss

@cowgirl

Feb 14, 2024

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The Perfectly Imperfect Guide to Magazines

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