ARTHUR - the magazine

plus the fucking cops made the taco truck near my work stay away from this area for a few days

For a while, I've been thinking that those two cities cater to different age demographics

How do you see it split?

yah jay's ny sentiments make a lot of sense to me, but then i've only visited ny. san francisco has a similar "omg, people are WALKING... on the STREET" feeling to it, but you know, i've only visited.

i'm pretty sick and tired of l.a., but i'm ready to grant that it has more to do with my neighborhood and state of mind than anything. in my (limited) experience, the easter you go (before the end of the san gabriel valley), the better it gets.

i meet so many douches here though. more than in salt lake city, utah! don't know what that says about me or means...

xp
I'd say LA maybe feels a bit empty when you hit early adulthood and becomes awesome again in your mid-30's?

OTM

or: it's a bad place to move after going to college in some shithole to try and meet people. i'm sure n.y. is just as bad or worse. i dunno

this might be a challops but people in l.a. get SO defensive when they're compared to people in ny. hence that 400+ reply in l.a. weekly to mr. babcock's screed. and responses i've heard in local crowds to ny bands here...

l.a. gets a weird bad rap

yeah, i would totally hate living in a city that hugs the ocean and is relatively affordable and has all kinds of commensurate cultural shit going on

Have you ever lived there?

?

what the hell is a challops?

"challenging opinion". the phrase was originated on glenn beck's television program in the late '00's

Have you ever lived there?

no, just visited. but i like it!

what don't you like about it??...assuming that you totally and completely hate it

What relatively bothers me in LA and what might make the Brooklyn grass so much greener is how hard it is to spontaneously hang out. Everything feels really atomised and for a city that prides itself on its laidback carefree attitude, a lot of things require planning I find.

A lot of that is related to the constant driving I guess

WELL WHY DON'T YOU GO ROLL UP AND SMOKE THE LATEST COPY OF ARTHUR, YOU SHIFTLESS HIPPIE? LET'S LET IT "ALL HANG OUT"! LET'S JUST GROOVE W/THE SPONTANEITY PROGRAMM!

I'd like to see if the reporter really 'fabricated' your obnoxious quotations. I don't buy it for a fucking second.

Arthur's response

fyi interview was not tape-recorded, journo was going from notes, and then the quotes got chopped up

but thanks for sharing

i didn't know jay was your brother. is he really your brother? wait, is your name actually shakey babcock?

lolz I wish

my name is actually Rusty Shackleford

hey, by the way, i keep forgetting to mention that i dug that album you sent me. that was you, right? yeah, very weird and cool. i was a little scared that it was gonna be some indie flaming lips kinda bummer trip, but no way it was decent!

oh but yes Jay and I are brothers. and Quitty from the Tight Bros/Nudity/a million other Olympia bands is our cousin. and Ev and Ryan from 12 Rods are also our cousins.

and now you know the family tree

I sent you a record? Great! even better that you dug it. I am not into bummer trips and the only good Flaming Lips is oooooooooold Flaming Lips

my brother looks like this.

http://a739.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/55/l_4e620128eb9062dbd19cb35ace2a9922.jpg

"quebecor, who i work for, pretty much prints everything in existence"

We used to print there, but now we've switched to Transcontinental, who are in Boucherville, Quebec. Because Quebec PRINTS EVERYTHING EVER. (One of the funny things is that some of our issues, we can't sell in Canada, but we can print 'em there).

and this:

http://a570.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/64/l_066f11729b0fa0ed6649f3492161ff51.jpg

my name is actually Rusty Shackleford

weird, that's my name, too!

i saw your ex-band play at cafe du nord circa 2001?

it was fun. there was a saxophone and stuff

you guys committed!

i don't ask for anything else

also, best flyer artwork ever!

aw thanks

why ain't Dan been posting lately, Scott?

I was gonna say - isn't that dan bunnybrains?!?

I wish everyone used their real names.

danny is busy on a top secret project that will blow the musikal underverse away. for real. and he is busy opening up a new store space in hudson.

dell - yup, dale pendall is on the list, fer shure.

tl;dr

the interview just reads like the usual thing where someone gets bored of living somewhere but makes up some b.s. grandiose reasons for why they're moving. i do this all the time re: richmond, va., except in that case all the grandiose reasons are true

n/a - yup, it does read that way, doesn't it?

kinda yeah

ny vs. la, sydney vs. melbourne, seattle vs. portland, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

i don't mean that to be rude at all -- hell, i was an arthur subscriber and adherent -- but the thing is that any city, any town, any lugar is at best a muttly mix of neutral charges, plus charges, and minus charges. and when people leave a place, any place, they often try to encapsulate, crystellize, codify their experience in that geographic/cultural/political/social landscape too glibly, reductively, authoritatively in a way they would not if they still lived there. seeking closure through final judgement. metropolitan post-partum.

contributing to the characterization of a departed city is, i am certain, a predominantly biographical act. if homages (any stripe -- encomium or excoriating) are read as treatise on their location, taken immediately as what they're written, they are sure to come off as grandiose. if they are taken as personal narratives of leaving proxied through places they are ostensibly about, they can offer a whole lot more.

remy - coke v pepsi, blahblah. totally agree.

oops meant mackro not remy

remy - yup

Has anyone on here with a subscription already received the latest issue (the one with Spiritualized)?

I'm still waiting on mine...

http://www.arthurmag.com/

01/09/2009
A NOTE ABOUT ARTHUR MAGAZINE'S FUTURE, FROM ITS EDITOR/PUBLISHER.
Hey gang--

I am done with self-publishing Arthur, which I've been doing since July, 2007. It's too much work for one person to edit, publish and manage a national magazine, month after month, year after year.

If/when a publishing partner appears, and so on, Arthur will return to print.

That could be in three days, three months or three years.

Or never, given how the internet plus leveraged capital has hollowed out almost all existing analog mass media in favor of stuff that, in almost all cases, is qualitatively worse for almost everybody.

Anyway, we're gonna hibernate the mag for the time being, and focus on the stuff that doesn't have as much financial risk or management burden. Thanks to the work of a lot of Arthur folks, the arthurmag internet presence will upgrade and expand greatly in the coming days. Also, two new cds and a dvd are being prepared, the book(s) are on the way, and so on.

We're staying busy, staying focused on what we can handle, and pushing homegrown counter-culture forward. We hope you can, too.

And if you need more Arthur mags right now...well, there's 31 back issues available in the store.

All love and R.I.P. Ron Asheton,

Jay Babcock
editor/publisher, Arthur Magazine
edi✧✧✧@arthur✧✧✧.c✧✧

Hmmn.

Open an Arthur Store on the Mendocino Coast, have a little club next door, and all will be good.

Eazy - Hahahaha! Indeed