When I was in NYC recently, walking around and enjoying a beautiful fall day, I ran into an old favorite place that I had forgotten about: Casa Magazines, a corner store at 8th Avenue and 12th Street that is only 400 square feet in size but is crammed full of over 2,500 different magazine titles!
In all the years I’ve been living in or visiting NYC, I’ve never spent a lot of time in the West Village, but I certainly have been to this store on a number of occasions in years past. What’s not to like? A magazine title for just about any topic you can think of. And for someone interested in the arts? I’m very familiar with most of the major art magazines, but in just a few minutes of glancing the other day, I’m seeing Flash Art, Artforum, Gagosian Quarterly, Art Papers, Artists & Illustrators, ArtNews, Frieze, Provincetown Arts and so many others, several of which I’d never even heard of before. I could easily drop $100 or more in here in a matter of minutes, but I hold off, and soak it in. But even that, you get lost in all of the titles and subjects, and yet you do need to be aware of other people in the store, the small amount of floor space doesn’t allow for people to easily pass by, I had to step aside several times in what was essentially a single file aisle.
I didn’t buy any magazines, I have to admit I have a stack of magazines at home that pile up as yet unread. I’m guilty of having taken advantage of those occasional magazine promotions where I can get a year-long subscription on certain titles for $5/year – when you can get a whole year for less than the price of one issue, one thinks “why not?” Until I now realize I have 50 magazines sitting there waiting to be read – or not.
Being in Casa Magazines also brought back fond memories of 30 years ago, when I had a job in NYC that definitely qualified as one of the most boring jobs I’ve ever had (I’m not going to name any names), and it involved a lot of sitting around doing not much of anything. So I would go out on my lunch break and buy business and entrepreneurial magazines on a regular basis. Sometimes I like to think that the year of working bored allowed me to have an unofficial year of “business school” because I tried to absorb all of the business ideas I could from those magazines.
At any rate, my personal recollections and magazine hoarding habits aside, if you’re in the West Village, make sure to stop by Casa Magazines and check it out!
