Go pick up issue #24 of Stay Free!, the published-locally, thinking-globally magazine on “politics and perversions” of mass media and American culture. This is the first issue since the one with the “American Gentrifier” fake cover that got on the radar of virtually everyone in the Greater Prospect Heights Area (just ask around at the next “baby’s first birthday party”). It will be hard to top the “Local Bodegas Now Stocking Brie” issue, but publisher Carrie McLaren and crew (including Charles Star) did put together a brilliant send-up of “Ask your doctor about…” drug ads. Somehow Stay Free always manages to tread the line between stories of national interest and Brooklyn interest. How do they do it?
Issue #24 includes:
* Bill, the founder of flash mobs, looks back on his legacy
* How stadiums turn public money into corporate profit (interviews
with Andrew Zimbalist and Neil deMause)
* A brief history of McDonald’s commercials
* Restaurant reviews by Eugene Mirman
* The Federation of Black Cowboys
* Negativland’s Mark Hosler interviews a man who makes robots for
Christian theme parks
* Interview with Jeffrey Meikle, on the cultural history of plastic
* Carrie McLaren on the advertising and the idiot consumer (historically)
* Interview with Mark Peters, candidate for Brooklyn DA
* More
Pick up Stay Free! on Vanderbilt Ave. (Amorina, Half Wine Bar, Hibiscus, Housebroken, Le Gamin, Soda), Underhill Ave. (Bar Sepia), Washington Ave. (Cafe Shane, Ripple), Flatbush (Biscuit, Prospect Perk, Sugarcane) and Dean St. (Freddy’s).
