Roman Candle Magazine

Only three years after issue one, the second issue of Roman Candle magazine is finally done. Sticking with the vague theme of ‘stuff I find interesting’, this one features…

— An interview with photographer Chris Shaw about his stint as a night porter and the alchemy of the darkroom.
— A chat with artist Dick Jewell about found photos and club culture.
— A conversation with E-Man from the notorious NYC bike messenger crew, the X-Men.
— An interview with photographer/film-maker Harvey Wang about capturing the overlooked side of New York.
— Bongwater/Shimmy Disc man Kramer on debunking the paranormal and the time Peter Hook took him for a spin around the back streets of Manchester.

This is all served up alongside short stories courtesy of Alex Appleby and Harry Longstaff, a brief chat with Jonathan Richman about his side-job making bread ovens, some words about Bob Dylan from Rivendell Bicycle Works main-man Grant Petersen and some spiel about the mysterious 35mm photos which have been adorning Jandek record sleeves since the 70s.

Available direct here, the central library site, Rare Mags, Village, Unitom and Catalog.

Trailer for the Super 8 bike film I’ve been lazily cobbling together for the last ten years. The Whistling In The Dark should hopefully be finished this year.

It wouldn’t be a wild overstatement to say that the Whole Earth Catalog might just be one of the most influential publications to come out of the counterculture movement.

First published in 1968, this printed database of items and ideas—featuring information on pretty much everything you could ever need, to help you do pretty much anything you could ever want—was a vital resource of the pre-internet age, famously described by Steve Jobs as ‘Google in paperback form’.

Lloyd Kahn was one of the key figures behind it. As ‘shelter editor’, he was responsible for the parts of the catalogue devoted to buildings—writing about the tools and methods needed to put a roof over your head.
But the Whole Earth is far from the whole story for Kahn. Taking inspiration from Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome concept, in the early 70s he created Domebook—a vital tome for those who wanted a dome as a home—before turning his back on the hemisphere to publish perhaps his most famous book… Shelter.

Released in 1973, this unique book was an oversized, info-packed guide to DIY house-making that has sold over a quarter of a million copies.
Even that isn’t the full story. More than just a writer and publisher, he’s also a skateboarder, bike rider, surfer, carpenter, forager, gardener and about 500 other things—and whilst he might be 88 years old, he still lives with the same curiosity for life and the world that made his work so inspirational in the first place.

I caught him whilst he was watering the plants in his greenhouse to talk about life in the 1960s, working on the Whole Earth Catalog and how he’d make a house today…

Read the full conversation here.