Here at Dad Grass HQ, we're suckers for the printed word. Especially glossy periodicals. You remember magazines, right? They used to come in the mail. The bigger, the better. The best ones were made with high quality paper. They were filled with groovy pictures and articles you could actually sit down and read. Print's not dead! Thanks to publishers like Mountain Gazette (our co-conspirators on the new Safety Kit Dad Stash), we can all take a break from doom scrolling and top-ten lists to revive the mellow sensibility of the casual read.
We assume you're pretty used to listicles, so we're passing along Mountain Gazette's list of reasons NOT to subscribe to their magazine. If you're asking us, we think you should.
1. You f*cking love paying for advertising.
Don't we all? There's nothing more satisfying than paying for pages upon pages of masterfully crafted promotion. The thicker your magazine is with coupons, new gear announcements, and 1/4 page ads breaking up your reading experience, the better. Press releases reformatted as journalism? Yuck.
Unfortunately for you (and maybe us), Mountain Gazette only has a few, limited ads by choice. They're grouped in the front few pages and the back few pages, and that's designed to keep your reading experience uninterrupted. These aren’t advertisers. They are partners. They believe in their mission of delivering insanely amazing content and don’t need to flash their sale in your face. Their partners, like them, believe in integrity.
With Mountain Gazette, you have to suffer through 120+ pages of ad-less long-form writing, stunning photography, and original art. Likely not your cup of tea, but we won't judge.
2. You judge the quality of a mountain town by its film festival.
Celebrities and influencers know: a mountain town is only as good as its film festival. The lesser known, the better. Or, maybe its the better known, the better. You'd know better than we would.
Mountain Gazette judges a mountain town by its storytellers, its hospitality, the heritage of local businesses, the knowledge tucked away in the minds of its local community, and the character of its people.
3. You hope your magazine can help you run a marathon. (it can't).
Subscribe to Mountain Gazette and you're on your own when it comes to hot tips about outdoor life. They won't help you calculate your critical gel intake, how to *anything*, or the best places to *travel, run, ninja camp*. If you need a magazine to know Whistler is a good place to ski then, well, we’re worried about your ability to identify the good in anything.
What you will find: an abundance of thoughtful writing about the nooks-and-crannies of mountain town culture, one-of-a-kind adventures, interviews with the unsung and legendary figures in outdoor culture, art commissioned specifically for our pages, and galleries of photography that transport you. No gear guides. No resort guides. Why? They respect their readers’ intelligence.
Want some advice? Don't subscribe if you need advice.
4. You like tiny articles, punctuated with photography suffocated by small pages.
"Each issue is more coffee table book than magazine" (Fall, issue 196 subscriber).
Their articles can run up to 20,000 words long. They publish twice-per-year so no pressure to speed reed through. Take your time or crush the whole mag in a night. We won’t judge. Their 11x17" paper dwarfs the standard size used by competing outdoor mega mags. Each issue is unique and nearly two feet wide when fully opened.
That’s a shit-ton of real estate that they can devote to floor-to-ceiling photo features and writing that isn't suffocated by a small format or persistent advertising. Mountains and landscapes look better on our paper.
Who the HELL wants all that content? It seems wild, and it might not be your cup of tea yet. When you're ready you know where to find them.
5. You like skimming the same sh*t, written by a new unpaid intern, year after year.
It's a media model, but it's not ours. They publish fearless, uncensored editorial written by career professionals and edited by the best damn copy editor in the business. Don’t test Kim. She’ll drop that clever grammar trick quicker than Cody Townsend in an icy chute. Cody? Yeah. He subscribes, too. Their contributors include veteran outdoor photographers and award-winning journalists from the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Bloomberg, San Francisco Chronicle, X Games, Vice on HBO, and countless outdoor publications. They're known to discover untapped talent, too. They like the scrappy kids with something to say.
🤘 Stories and long form essays published in the past year:
- Roadtripping through Pakistan
- Finding a reclusive former pro skier on the run
- An in-depth look at skinny dipping
- Surviving a New York City snowstorm
- A young son fearlessly follows his father up K2
- A macro look at the desert
- Riding with the Crazy 8's winter motorcycle group
- A tragic backcountry skiing trip in Chile
- An inside look at the people fighting fire in the West
- Racism in the weird world of birdwatching in New York
- Skateboarding in the Mountains
- A shitty stopper passed through the climbing world
…and god damn it they made a list. Just subscribe.
You can sink your teeth into these pieces, and the dollars you pay for a subscription go towards paying for high quality editorial and photography, printed at equal quality.