Sneaker Freaker is one of those magazines that you have to see up close to really understand what it’s about.
A whole magazine about… shoes?
Well, yeah. But it’s kind of more than that…
Founded in Melbourne in 2002 by Simon “Woody” Wood as a ruse to get his shoes for free, copies of the very first issue now sell for over 300 bucks on eBay (that is, if you can find a sneaker head willing to part with their copy!)
Eighteen issues later, Sneaker Freaker is distributed in 43 countries to legions of die-hard fans, has a dedicated Spanish edition based in Barcelona (with a Russian edition on the way!) and collaborates on designs with labels like Asics, New Balance and Lacoste.
This, friends, is niche publishing at its finest.
A visual feast of the latest and greatest in kicks as well as interviews with key figures in the streetwear industry past-and-present and meticulously researched in-depth historical pieces, this really is a definitive round-up of everything you ever wanted to know about sneakers and probably a little bit more.
Issue number 18 comes out today (with a limited edition 3D cover!), so we’ve asked Woody to tell us a little bit about some of his favourite mags…
1. The Face
The Face was so cool I moved to London. How’s that for a magazine’s impact?
From witty fashion to catty pop stars and even natty sneakers on the regular, The FACE was always ahead of the game. Always. Throw in Neville Brody’s quintessential design and you have a magazine which inspired me more than any other. I simply can’t fathom how it folded… I guess there’s a lesson for us all in this tough game.
How iD mag survived is beyond me, but I guess it’s like Coke and Pepsi, you’re either one of the other and I’m as one-eyed as it comes. My biggest magazine regret was ditching my Face collection before I moved back to Melbourne. Such tragedy!
2. Hot Rod
I buy 13 car magazines a month and Hot Rod is my favorite by far. They’ve been around since hot rods were invented and consistently been on the precipice of performance, design and manufacturing for the awesome American aftermarket car scene. Hot Rod is clever. Well written. It has a point of view.
The design is no-nonsense and the cars are always progressive and iconoclasts in a world that could easily degenerate into a retro graveyard for baby boomers. I guess you could say that Hot Rod is the perfect synthesis of 50 years of Californian Car Culture. If they offered me a job sweeping floors I’d be on the next plane to LA quicker than Lara Bingle can say goodbye her Aston Martin.
3. Playboy
I seriously selected Playboy for the articles. I guess everybody does. Actually, they probably don’t even have words anymore, just bazonga-sized boobs and well manicured lawns so I guess I’m talking strictly in the past tense.
In a previous job, I had the pleasure to collect nearly all the 60s and 70s Playboys I could find. Naked women are one thing… and Playboy has those, but when you get Norman Mailer and others of his ilk writing about sport, contemporary social issues and racial politics while at the same time espousing a libertarian ‘playboy’ lifestyle, it’s a pretty heady brew.
Add a timelessly cool sense of art direction and you have a magazine that was not just a sign of its sexy times. Sadly it’s now a pathetic shadow of its former self.
RIP Playboy. The internet gone done you wrong.
4. Vanity Fair
Is this a corny choice? I hope not because I love Vanity Fair.
I could do without their campaign to invent an entire class of whitebread NYC Ivy League royalty, but how can ANY magazine truly be compared to Vanity Fair?
The recent Hollywood issue was incomparable, with never-seen-before features on De Niro and Raging Bull, a wicked insider piece on the reclusive John Hughes (Pretty in Pink) and the Bling Ring, a bunch of teens who pilfered Hollywood celebrities. In this day and age where magazines take five seconds to read, VF still takes a good few hours to get through and is a shining light for an industry that thinks 140 characters is where life is at.
The fact that they have 120 pages of advertisements and start articles in the front of the mag and make you treasure hunt’ to find the last few paragraphs is an irritation that I can definitely live with. RIP Dominick Dunne.
5. Street Machine/Wired
Fifth place was a tough one.
I was going to stump for arch-techno mag Wired, but that wouldn’t be totally honest. And I like to be honest. Even if that means channeling my inner bogan who likes to read Street Machine. Don’t get me wrong, I love Wired for the 13 colour printing experiments and I love a gadget and the way the mag is edited is another level.
Have you seen their new Adobe-built online version? I feel like a middle-aged Luddite, it’s such brainiac next-decade material.
But it’s a lay-down Misère to pick one of the most influential mags of the past decade, so I made it a dead heat with Street Machine just to prove how eclectic my interests truly are. Street Machine is an Aussie mag where burnouts and tubbed Pro Street Monaros with 6.71 superchargers rule. The writing is a little formulaic, but I like to get an insight of where the suburbs are at and you won’t find a better example than Street Machine.
RIP carbon footprint!
I read with great interest this top 5, especially considering it included not only some of my favorite magazines (S.M. & Vanity Fair), but also because it was very different to see car magazines being mentioned on the site. I am an avid reader of different magazines, and a great fan of Mag Nation and often feel as though the magazine world looks down upon less “cultured” magazines like Street Machine. As someone who buys S.M. with reasonable regularity, I would find it difficult to say with honesty that I felt comfortable buying it along with say Monster Children, Frankie or T-World (all of which I also buy). Simon even touches on the notion when he says about channeling his “inner bogan” when talking about S.M.
I think what I am trying to say was that it was good to see/read/know that perhaps there isn’t as much of a second class status for those magazines (and by extension their readers) as I had thought. Or at least that there are people willing to ignore that if it does indeed exist.