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An interview with one of the brains behind The Newsstand

via The Newsstand
via The Newsstand
If you’ve walked through the Lorimer Street L/G stop in the past few days, you might have noticed that the newsstand there looked a little different. McClure’s potato chips instead of Skittles, hand-stapled zines instead of Maxim. It’s not a hallucination, it’s The Newsstand, a new use of the formerly vacant space, headed up by ALLDAYEVERYDAY. We spoke to Jamie Fallkowski, who’s in charge of the project, about how it came to be, why they did it and whether they care about being pigeonholed as hipsters.

“We noticed that the space had been vacant for a few months and thought it was an ideal location to do something unexpected,” Fallkowski told us. And it is pretty unexpected, with zines from publishers like Desert Island and Hamburger Eyes, instead of the usual suspects like Star and ESPN: The Magazine. Fallowski told us that it took some time to coordinate with the MTA, but after reaching an agreement on a short term lease (June 15 – July 20), they were excited to go ahead with it.

Then they partnered with the 8-Ball Zine Fair to curate it and pick who to they would initially stock. “Zine culture continues to thrive and grow in a time where most self publishing is being done online,” Fallowski said, and ALLDAYEVERYDAY was committed to finding a way to bring a larger awareness to it.

Of course, this was bound to be greeted by angry blog commenters fretting over idea of more hipster invasions, but Fallowski shrugs it off. “To simply call the space ‘hipster’ can feel a bit like a lazy headline but probably a good way to drive conversation…for every one article that goes for the easy angle of hipster we get exposure to hopefully more people that are excited that a place like this exists, even if it is temporary.” There are still plenty of places to buy Maxim, Fallowski points out, and says he sees The Newsstand as “just an opportunity to try something new in a setting like the subway that is such an iconic part of New York City. “

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