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Conceived in San Francisco 42 years ago, the publisher of Rolling Stone has decided to close its cozy SF office at 1700 Montgomery due to cutbacks. Founded by Jann Wenner way back when, this most recent snip to the ailing music mag (Rolling Stone is down 21.6 percent in ad pages for 2009) is slight but significant. According to Portfolio, "a Wenner spokesman confirms the shutdown but says only two employees were laid off as a result; a third staffer who worked in the office, an ad sales rep for Rolling Stone, is relocating to Los Angeles. Said spokesman goes on to say, "the business just is not in San Francisco now." Well then.
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RS abandoned SF many years ago and did so like a shrill ex-lover. It's easy to believe that SF businesses have not buying ad space.
Just another indication that our gated community for the pretty and privileged that we like to pretend is a city continues to slide into complete and total irrelevancy...
"for the pretty and privileged...."
get out of the marina much?
Dude, I live in the Haight. Even our homeless are more attractive than your average Middle American planet with hair.
well you know they're not really homeless. they're just playing a part.
i donno, i see ugly people all the time. and there are definitely tons of underprivileged people here - the pretty and privileged people in SF spend a lot of time complaining about them.
I respectfully disagree.
By petty and privileged The AYM is calling up the image of a 28 year-old liberal arts graduate with skinny pants and a truckers' hat buying his groceries at Rainbow whilst tweeting about the American Apparel protest/DJ session he's going to do on his blog tonight for the benefit of his five friends and that chick he just met at Ritual Roasters. You're comment about the Marina is way off. At least they know their privileged, types The AYM rails against haven't got a clue.
And The Rolling Stone having an office here is about as sensible as Skiing magazine having an office in Dubai.
...you left out, "while tuning up his big wheel for the next hilariously ironic event."
i understand now where you and TAYM are coming from. i'm acquainted with some of those types. it gets really annoying when they don't understand why i don't want to "go out" every single night of the week when they don't work for an income and somehow think that going to art school full-time is as wearing as working for a living.
that being said, not everyone who wears skinny pants, shops at rainbow, and wears skinny pants is privileged. there are plenty of working class kids here who just want to "fit in" with their privileged hipster peers.
Yeah? Well tell them to stop. There's nothing ironic about working class people ironically mimicking themselves in the name of fashion. I'm sure Marx is turning in his grave at the state of class relations in this city.
it can also just be an issue of practicality. people who aren't even "hipsters" will find themselves in striped hoodies and skinny pants just because those clothes tend to be much more affordable than any other contemporary fashions.
C'man, Oskarv! Striped hoodies and skinny jeans are more affordable than other contemporary fashions? If these people were *rilly* working class, I'd suspect that they'd be shopping more for durability and long term use than some stupid looking jeans that are going to be out of fashion in less time than it would take these fools to earn the money to pay for them. That makes the kind of fiscal common sense that doesn't.
In this town, where the nervous pursuit of chic has turned everyone into a god damned fashion lemming, a blatant look like those retarded looking skinny jeans is only "in fashion" for like 20 minutes at most. Seriously. I see anyone in skinny jeans these days and I just assume they're from Concord or Sacramento or someplace equally hideous.
San Franciscans KILL style through their mass desperation to constantly be on its cutting edge.
i guess i've gotta hang out in the haight more often. what you're describing sounds hysterical.
But, but there's a ski slope in Dubai!
http://www.skidxb.com/English/default.aspx
I honestly don't get the correlation between Rolling Stone - which has essentially turned into Tiger Beat with an occasional political article - leaving and the decline of SF. Rolling Stone hasn't had anything to do with SF, even tangentially, for about 30 years.
Exactly!
Um, OK, I think. Wait, what?
we will all mourn the loss of this shitty, shitty magazine.
Not I, said the rumproast...
Now if we can just kill off the Comical...
Sliding into complete and total irrelevancy? Sure, one can make that argument, but it may not include the closing of an office of some magazine that no one reads as an indication of it. Nope. Can't be done.
I'm sure Rolling Stone used to be one of those cultural markers; one of those things that commented on, boosted, critiqued, and created popular culture. My friend, those days have long since passed. I've bought exactly 2 copies of Rolling Stone in my life, and one of those was because a buddy wanted to see a then 19 year old Britney in her underwear. Need I say more about either the magazine or my friend?
And dude, don't fetishize working class kids. My friends and I all grew up very working class and no, we did not buy clothes for its durability or quality or whatever you want to envision us wearing. We did waste our money on fashionable clothes, or as close to it as we could manage. If that meant buying working-class clothes like Dickies or Ben Davis or boots, so be it. But again, that was dictated by the fashion at the time, not our innate maturity and appreciation of the dollar.
I will say this: it does seem to be "cheaper" to be fashionable these days than when I was a teenager in the 90's. Yes, you have your silly 17 year olds with silly branding on thier jeans with $300 sunglasses (as if it were still 2005), but you also have those kids in $40 Levi's and $10 plastic sunglasses, and both groups, I'm sure, feel superior to the other. Good on them. Better than the latter trying to play catch-up with the former.
If either of you had really been working class teenagers you would have dressed in ridiculously expensive casual wear that you and your crew either shoplifted or bought from a man with a limp who was a mate of your older brother who had recently given up wearing such expensive duds because he'd just discovered Echo and the Bunnymen and heroin.
A.) I wasn't a working class teenager, nor did I ever pretend to be one, unless you count my mod on a Vespa in bowling shoes teenage persona as "working class", which, I guess, technically it was back in like 1962, 30 years before I adopted it.
B.) When did teenagers enter into this scenario? We're talking about twenty and thirtysomething art school losers and similar. These folks, unlike teenagers, MUST economize. Are there any actual teenagers in this city? Where? I guess I sort of filter them out of my line of site, like women, tourists, and members of the Westboro Baptist Church.
C.) I get that the DIY ethos is a bit more challenging these days since cranky old folks like me got to the thrift stores first and looted them of all the good stuff, leaving nothing but poor quality 80's crap behind. I could claim that my aesthetic perhaps hasn't evolved except I'm typing this while wearing Vans and a hoodie.
C.) Rolling Stone magazine is crap, on this I agree. Thing is, it was founded in SF when SF was the center of something. The fact that the magazine is shutting down their local desk is more a sign of the death of print journalism than it is of SF's inevitable decline into preciousness, but still, SF is really the center of nothing these days. Maybe Jennifer Siebel's acting career...
E.) $40 Levis? Where?
D.) You seriously need to take 95% of what I write with a couple dozen grains of salt. Hyperbole is my best friend.
you can get $40 levi's at the levi's store!
working class isn't all that glamorous. i remember getting REALLY excited when I went to my aunt's house, because she bough named-brand coca-cola.
Um, I went to art school and do not own, nor have I ever owned a pair of skinny jeans. I also am not desperately trying to fit into an archetype. Plus, we're neighbors! I live in the Haight too! Don't hate on your neighbor!
there's always freak exceptions. ;)
Emu, I love all my neighbors, except for the hippies, the hipsters, the Boomers, the gutter punks, and the USF students.
re: "occasional political articles," if you've ever read matt taibbi's brutal indictments of thomas friedman, he fits in here just fine.