We’re always excited when we have a new issue of The anonymous Sex Journal in the shop – the small zine is a risoprint housed in a plastic sleeve, each issue is limited to 500 numbered copies and each issue has a different illustrator.  

The magazine is not edited but compiled by Alex Tieghi-Walker. People send in sex stories based around one theme via the magazines’s website www.theanonymoussexjournal.com. The stories are published unedited and can be funny, disgusting, moving, weird, nasty or simply beautiful. What the stories all have in common is honesty.

Issue 6: The Coming of Age Issue just came in and we had some questions for founder Alex Tieghi-Walker.

You can buy the issue online here.

Neptún is an art magazine from Reykjavik, it mainly features Icelandic artists. Editors Kolbrún þóra Löve and Helga Kjerulf both lived in Amsterdam in recent years and frequently dropped by the shop for a chat and to drop off new issues. In their latest issue they feature a couple of Amsterdam-based artists. We enjoyed a short interview and discussed the latest issue of Neptún.

On 1 May 1980 a new magazine with a murky cover but a blaring red-blue logo appeared on London’s most up-to-date newsstand, in Great Marlborough Street, Soho. Contrary to the magazine conventions of the time, the Face had a title which did not tell you what it covered, almost no adverts, and was launched during a deep recession. Once distributed beyond Soho, the first issue sold 56,000 copies. The early 80s were a feverish time in Britain for new things, from youth cultures to design companies to political ideologies, and the Face – which tried to feature all of them in a fresh way, both glossy and gritty, while operating on a shoestring – remains one of the era’s most mythologised products. It never sold more than 130,000 copies, modest for a magazine distributed internationally, and it was published for 24 years – a good but not outstanding run. Yet it was consumed and is remembered with intensity. I was a Face reader from the mid-80s until near the end, and the feel of its best issues – forbiddingly stylish, but full of exciting information; insidery, but open to the world – was already loitering in my memory before I opened this elaborate history.

This Is Badland is a fresh new title produced in Neukölln, Berlin about the Balkans. It aims to initiate cultural connections and new dialogues with a first issue full of art, photography and interviews from a rising generation of creative talent.

When my colleague Marc mentioned the expected arrival of The Skirt Chronicles in our store, my curiosity was immediately ignited. For me, the title raised expectations of a book filled with research, curatorship and textiles.  And here it is, on my desk. It’s beautiful. Its design breathes a kind of austerity, although the magazine has no less than 134 pages. While perusing quickly, the striking content also left me quite confused. I saw photos of windows, an elegant fashion shoot in Paris, a recipe of a pasta dish and an essay about the position of black women.