Pop-Up Magazine: Like a Magazine But Without All the Reading

In other words, pretty rad. One after the other, speakers got up and told us about cool things, sometimes accompanied by photos or video on the big screen behind them. Like a magazine, some of it was dull, and I would’ve liked to have paged past it a little quicker, but there was enough good stuff that I didn’t mind too much.

Jennifer Maerz talked about the music of Ty Segall (but forgot to mention he’s playing at the Peacock Lounge this Saturday). Brandon McFarland totally misrepresented Lil Wayne as a lesser lyricist than MF Doom (ERRONEOUS). Christian Bruno told those of us that didn’t know that Market Street was once a glittering cultural Mecca, before BART construction drove pedestrians away and businesses out of business (HEINOUS). Lisa Margonelli told us a bunch of fascinating things about termites, cracking herself (and us) up the whole time.

The highlight was Todd Lappin’s Q&A with Megan Prelinger of the Prelinger Library. It could turn out that the library doesn’t even exist, and their performance would still be my favorite because their descriptions of the thing were so oddball and funny, and somehow deadpan even though they were clearly giggling.

Do try to get in on the next issue of Pop-Up Magazine. I learned a lot of interesting things, and laughed a fair amount. It was like reading a pretty good magazine without any of the heavy lifting.

Photo by jordanfischer.

Related:

I Fucking Hate Reading at SFist

How Lil Wayne helped me survive my first year teaching in New Orleans at Oxford American

One Response to “Pop-Up Magazine: Like a Magazine But Without All the Reading”

  1. sarah says:

    This event was insanely great and I dearly hope I can become a subscriber. Hats of to the New America Foundation for existing and making stuff like this happen. Srsly.

  2. [...] over at Mission Mission has this post reviewing the Pop-Up Magazine show the other night. To quote: One after the other, speakers got up and told us about cool things, sometimes [...]