Re: [Paddlewise] magazine recommendations

At 12:06 PM 12/1/99 +1100, Nick Gill wrote:
>I'm going to a be party pooper and say don't bother subscribing to any. Of
course I haven't seen all those you list, but I've yet to come across a sea
kayaking magazine that I get much out of. SK for example, occassionally has
useful/interesting articles, but their rarity makes the magazine of too
little value to hand over money for it.
>
>I get far more useful and interesting info from other kayakers and simply
my club newsletter - and increasingly the listserver and specific web sites. 

You know, I hate to say it, but I've come to agree with you. If I happen to
run across a copy of SK on the newsstands, I'll probably buy it if I
haven't seen it, but only rarely does it have anything that makes me want
to put it into the "keep" stack. The messages on paddlewise are meatier,
and often more informative, and very much more real and unsanitized.

But, this is not a criticism pointed entirely at SK, or even mostly at it.
I suspect it's just me, but I rarely find a magazine these days that's
worth the money. I used to subscribe to Backpacker, for example, until I
got turned off by the fact that favorable reviews on products usually were
accompanied by big ads for same. (At least SK avoids that little game.) I
happened to pick up a copy of Backpacker while I was getting a muffler put
on my van a couple weeks ago, and found it incredibly yuppieized and inane.
At least the price was right.

I do have to admit that Backpacker served a purpose for me. The muffler
shop has a very friendly cat, that happened to knock a cup of hot coffee
over onto the magazine in my lap. It saved me a scalding.

To get back to the original question, which magazine? Frankly, I like Canoe
and Kayak a lot more than SK -- granted, it does not go into the detail
that SK does, but is much more generalized and focused on touring. But,
that's a subjective opinion, and my own, not shared by any others. Your
mileage may vary. Buy some samples at the newsstand and get your own response.

-- Wes


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