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ON THE ROAD AGAIN?
Monk Magazine changed the face of travel publishing forever. According to its co-creators, the trip is far from over.
It's a very rare travel magazine - in fact, it's a very rare magazine, period - which can honestly claim that its contents are anywhere near revolutionary. After all, close to one thousand new titles are launched every year. So it's hardly a stretch to say that in our hugely overloaded media environment, it wouldn't make much of a difference to the world if many of the magazines we read today suddenly weren't there tomorrow.
But consider Monk magazine: in the mid-80s, two men who were living in San Francisco - James Crotty and Michael Lane - figured they'd had enough of the rat race, and decided to move out of their trendy Castro apartment and into a '72 Ford Econoline van, with the intention of traveling to nowhere in particular and seeing the country. Early into the journey, they began using their solar-powered Macintosh to create a newsletter for the family and friends they'd left behind. Before long, the Econoline had been traded in for a motor home, which became known as the Monkmobile after the two started selling ads for their newsletter and having it professionally printed as they toured America. The Monks, as they became known, frequently referred to themselves as pioneers of "dashboard publishing," and as their reputation grew, so did their media empire. Most issues of Monk concerned themselves with documenting a specific city or state, so it only made sense that a guidebook series would soon follow. Near the end of their run, television and film projects were pitched, the Monks nearly co-starred in a travel-related broadband project during the dot-com era, and then, in 1997, they officially called it a day.
The two work as media consultants and freelance writers now, Crotty in New York City, and Lane in Los Angeles. Young Pioneers spoke with them recently about their years in the Monkmobile, and about their plans to relaunch Monk magazine, this time with a European focus.
JAMES CROTTY
Young Pioneers: From what I understand, Monk officially folded in 1997. Is that right?
James Crotty: Well, it never officially ended, because we were the "try-quarterly." That's T-R-Y. The fact that we've not come out officially since 1999 is not a problem for the die-hard Monk reader.
YP: So you're saying you'll probably put out another issue?
JC: Yes. In fact, with the original Monk subscription, for $100 you got a lifetime-after-lifetime subscription. We never wrote a letter saying, "Monk is over." There would be no point, because we knew it would be coming back.
YP: So what are the two of you doing now?
JC: Basically, after [the magazine] ended, I took two years off. I'd done this Monk thing for a long time, and one of the things I noticed was that I was really, deeply immersed in subculture, but I didn't know enough about classical culture ñ the culture that hip culture is rebelling against. So I went and got a Master's degree at St. John's College in Santa Fe. For two years, all I did was read. And periodically, just to keep our chops going, we've done freelancing. There's a dozen or so places we've done stuff for. Trips magazine. Traveler's Tales did some stuff with us.
YP: Can you talk a bit about what Monk is going to look like when it relaunches?
JC: When we bring Monk back it's going to be in a different format, because we do want travel to be a big part of it, but Mike and I - sort of like Rolling Stone uses music, we use travel as a lens to look at a lot of different things. And we felt a little hemmed in by being a consumer travel magazine. We think our forte - especially my forte - is social commentary, and Michael's forte is storytelling. And together we do profiles, but we each have our unique abilities. There's just a magical coming-together because we each supply each other with things we don't have, so when we bring Monk back we want to open it up to other writers. We want to make it a little broader. The new slogan is going to be Monk: Look Deeper.
YP: I can't wait to see it.
JC: I'm real excited about it, and frankly it's been in gestation for about three to four years. I mean, Monk, when we started, was totally from the spinal cord. It was totally without a business plan or anything. The technology and our desire to travel and see old friends merged, and we were able to do this thing that came from the ethers. It wasn't even conscious, what we tapped into. But this time we're going to do it from a more settled space, and be based in an actual place, and have staff, and do it the right way. But as you know, the magazine business is not great right now. The problem is there's too much media, so if we are going to do media in this completely over-saturated world, then we really want to say something that is just absolutely essential with every issue. And I think we did that when we did Monk magazine. I think there was something that people looked forward to and they really treasured, and I want to make sure that we do the same kind of thing.
YP: When you look back on the Monk years, are there any particular feelings or emotions that come to you immediately, like, say, stress? Or freedom?
JC: Actually, no negativity. I go through so much negativity now that I live in an apartment. I never went through negativity! I mean, I did get pissed off about some things, but it seemed like the journey had such vast reservoirs of good will and magic, that even though the hardships were insane... I don't really think there are two other people on the planet who could have done this. I don't think so. Maybe there are, but I don't think they could have done it for twelve years solid.
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ISSUE 01 / SPRING 04
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