Love is pain. Money is god. And consumerism solves everything.
Shallow? Pretend you don’t long to be swallowed by the bovine in a vehicle of German origin or rendered unconscious by the overwhelming stench of walnut in the dash? Or to blow more green on your quiver than it costs to equip a hospital for fly-blown spastic infants in the Sudan? Or to dress in savaged jeanery, each piece of denim the cost of a small Bangladeshi glaucoma clinic?
Which leaves Stab magazine in an awkward position with regards to the forthcoming retro revolution. Y’know what I’m talking about: tight little pants. Long rugs. Single fins. A place where the sun never shines and colour and smiles are a crime against god. Where high priests of cool deal their brand of ascetic nostalgia with all the earnestness of the Taliban.
Thing is, we dig throwing around the green. We dig
riding high and mighty in some successful brother’s truck, tossing
coins to street urchins as they run alongside. We dig the comfort and
joy that comes from a well-oiled credit card. We’ll happily pollute the
ocean in a monster jetski if it gives us a chance to blow the fins.
But we’re also into the Sprout and Glass Love spin. Sure is nothing finer than pulling up to some secluded cold-water point in horse and buggy, sanding your giant single fin in the rain, killing a bear and sleeping in its fur, and singing the nights away with guitar, weed and folk songs around the campfire.
The contradictory nature of Stab is reflected in this magazine. From a golden wave adventure in North Africa to Dorian, Rastovich and Oz talking about the men they’ve stabbed and Matt George mouthing a 63-year-old Norwegian’s acorn nipples in the frozen tundra of Africa’s highest peak, it’s a magazine that’ll lift, shift and separate.
A little retro-futurism for the peoples. Make love and war. – Derek Rielly.
