Saturday, July 5, 2008

Magazine Street


I'm in the beautiful state of Washington this Fourth of July weekend, and flew up from the Bay Area yesterday. I forgot to bring something to read on the plane and decided to pick something up at the airport, but since the flight to Seattle is just over a couple of hours, I headed to the magazine racks.

It's been a few years since I've bought a magazine at a newsstand, so I was astounded at how expensive they've become. It was $5.95 for the latest issue of Sports Illustrated with Tim Lincecum on the cover, or the latest issue of Rolling Stone with Barack Obama on the cover, and even news magazines like Time and Newsweek had cover prices above five bucks. That's even higher than a grande mocha or a gallon of gas!

I remember when magazines were all in the $2-3 range, and UK imports like Mojo and Uncut were around $7.95 (usually with a free CD). I think paying $5 or more for less than 100 pages of which 75% are ads is a bit steep -- does anyone buy magazines anymore?

I didn't end up buying anything to read, and made do with Alaska Airlines' inflight magazine. There are apparently a lot of golf courses on Maui, and Ruth's Chris isn't one of the ten best USDA prime steakhouses in the U.S.A anymore -- they probably stopped paying their bills to the beef lobby.

Now I just need to find something to read on my return flight!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I was taken aback when I went to go buy a Harper's and it was over 6 dollars! That's insane. Luckily there's the library.