The Fall 1975 issue of Plain Brown Wrapper. The body hair issue Phil S. and Gerald had been writing in for since Spring. Rick's Focus essay refuses to have the political argument -- "the hair is not a statement, it is just hair" -- and points at what the camera actually sees. Lucia Sorrentino (Midtown legal secretary from Bensonhurst) on the cover. Mara Callahan in a Gramercy hotel room on two consecutive Tuesdays. Sofia Ramos at her Grand Concourse window until her shoulders burned. Twelve more women on the Square.
The Summer 1975 issue of Plain Brown Wrapper. Rick Tedesco pays off the venetian-blinds promise from his Spring letter -- the sublet on West 49th, ten days of shooting into bars of horizontal shadow. Angie Tramonti (Red Hook switchboard operator) on the cover with a rotated centerfold you turn the magazine clockwise to read. Deborah K. in her clawfoot bathtub in Washington Heights, Yolanda Cruz in her grandmother's vanity mirror in the Bronx. On the Square expands to twelve women in twelve doorways. Rick reviews Pamela Mann.
New magazine in the archive: Plain Brown Wrapper, Rick Tedesco's mail-order underground quarterly from West 42nd Street. Spring 1975 is the rebrand issue -- first one under the new name after four mimeographed issues as Rick's Underground. Legs and stockings. Color printing for the first time. Lorrie Moretti (dressing room attendant at the Melody Burlesque) on the cover with a centerfold pullout, plus Karen Jansen the ER nurse and Nikki Vasquez the punk guitarist. First NYC magazine in the collection.
The third issue of BEALE Magazine, February 1969. Two months late because the press broke. C.H. Holloway writes about 1968 from the front stoop on Looney Avenue -- the fire, the tanks on Beale, the cornbread. Reverend Bobby profiles Isaac Hayes before Hot Buttered Soul, catching the twelve-minute Walk On By sessions at Stax after midnight. Delphine Watkins from the Stax front office, Mae Frances Pryor from the North Memphis stoop, and Geneva Boone from a Tunica cotton field.
The second issue of BEALE Magazine, October 1968. Three weeks before the election. C.H. Holloway on Nixon, Humphrey, and Wallace. Reverend Bobby on twenty years of WDIA radio. Doretha "Dee" Simmons at sunset on the Mississippi bluffs, Vernita Clarke in Loretta's salon chair, and Jackie Ann Wooten in her kitchen on Walker Avenue. The letters page has real letters now, including one from the issue one cover girl who is not happy about the pool table story.
The third surviving issue of Kudzu Magazine. February 1976. Del Crenshaw starts year two with a print run over six thousand, three pickup trucks on the back roads of Abbeville County, Purvis Bowen's secret bass fishing spots on Lake Hartwell, and three new Southern girls -- including a 38-year-old Piggly Wiggly manager who insisted Del print her real age.
The first Black-owned publication in the Dusty Mags archive. Published in August 1968 by Vietnam veteran Curtis "Curt" Holloway, four months after Dr. King was assassinated five blocks from where Curt was working. B&W newsprint, sixty cents, Beale Street girls, Inside Stax, the urban renewal demolitions, and a publisher's letter that explains why nobody else was going to tell this story.
The second surviving issue of Del Crenshaw's Abbeville newsprint magazine. December 1975. Tommy Reeves at the Reeves brothers' deer camp on the Saluda River, Del's year-end awards (best truck stop coffee, the rooster on the Cadillac, the funeral with the country band), three new Carolina girls (Reba Lynn the bartender, Gail Mae the peach orchard heir, Joanie the bookkeeper getting back at her ex-husband), and the first real reader mailbag with a letter from Luanne Culberson herself.
A B&W newsprint men's magazine from a former five-and-dime on Court Square, published by Delbert "Del" Crenshaw on a one-color press in Greenwood. Truck stops, bait shops, and the back of pickup trucks. The first surviving issue (Vol. 1, No. 5, October 1975) is the seventh magazine in the archive.
The coal market collapsed, three advertisers pulled out, and Earl Tackett sat at his desk thinking about quitting. For about ten minutes. Then he poured a Wild Turkey and made the best issue of Split Rail yet. Jolene Adkins at Cranberry Creek, a wood heat survival guide, and a Power Wagon that hauled a goat.
Darla Calhoun at a Permian Basin windmill, Lorraine Del Rio behind the bar at the Crystal Pistol, a chicken fried steak crawl from Amarillo to Brownsville, and a publisher's letter that proves Buck Callahan was born to make magazines. The second issue of Longhorn is now online.
A shed in Raleigh County. Seven issues wrapped in garbage bags. Earl Tackett's one-man magazine operation from coal country — B&W interiors, newsprint stock, and writing that hits like a freight train. The fifth magazine in the Dusty Mags archive is now online.
The second surviving issue of Bud Kessler's Midwest magazine features a Brandy Old Fashioned guide, the Ford F-150 road test, and four women who agreed to pose in a bar, a laundromat, a county fair, and a lake dock in the dead of a Wisconsin winter.
A Round Rock storage unit yields the complete archive of Longhorn Magazine -- sixty-seven issues of Texas swagger, rodeo queens, honky-tonks, and Lone Star Beer. The first issue is now online.
The second issue features cover girl Linda Thurston in old-growth forest, a two-part I-5 tavern guide, the K5 Blazer road test, and classifieds that are a perfect time capsule of 1971 Oregon.
A storage unit in Milwaukie, Oregon. Four boxes of magazines, negatives, and production materials. The complete archive of the Pacific Northwest's most obscure gentleman's magazine, untouched since 1974.
Why I started scanning my collection of obscure girly mags, and why the little regional titles nobody saved are the ones that matter most.