Where magazines refuse to die

So much to read
London, ON
February 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

It's a scene that has played out countless times in countless stores over countless decades: Someone stands in front of a magazine stand, and ponders the possibilities.

Digital content distribution has, of course, ruined the party for traditional magazines. The very idea of killing trees, turning them into glossy mags, then trucking them cross-country so you can toss them into the cart alongside your OJ and greek yogurt is increasingly laughable. While regular old books are managing to hold off ebooks, it's a different, more troubling story in the magazine space. Indeed, "magazine" barely registers as a media type now.

So when I came across this scene on my way to the OJ and greek yogurt aisles, I had to steal a fast photo. Composition was haphazard - the geometry is all wrong - but I needed to shoot before a) the magazine-seeking stranger caught on to me; and b) store security caught on to me. Spontaneous shooting in public doesn't always afford us the luxury of time.

As I tucked my phone back in my pocket and headed toward a date with some OJ, I thought about why this particular photo needed to be taken on this particular day. The answer is, again, time. We're running out of it. Someday, perhaps soon, I'll walk back into this very same store and the magazine aisle will be a fraction of what it is now. Or it won't be there at all.

Maybe I'll remember what was once in this spot, or maybe I won't. Because stuff like this tends to slip into history with barely a whisper.

And that, honestly, frightens me. We're losing our sense of place, the experience of browsing along an endless wall like this, of picking up a dog-eared copy from a waiting room table.

Which, I think, largely explains why moments like this seem to matter to me as much as they do. If we don't remember experiences like these, who does? And what do we lose in the process?

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