[ubermonkey]

Nowadays I think people just lump it into the same category as other mass-market brown-paper-cover mags from gas stations like Penthouse and Hustler, but Playboy really was different.

Hefner set out to create a respectable, top-tier publication -- by design -- that just happened to also include nudity. "Golden age" Playboy pictorials were pretty tame and generally tasteful, and they were in a magazine that'd have (as noted) top-tier fiction, excellent reporting, and high-profile interviews.

[dhosek]

I was going to say that the print magazine was defunct, but apparently they‘re relaunching it as an annual. I don’t think that the literary side of things continued during their online-only era, but I could be wrong.

There used to be (not sure if it’s still there) a newsstand near one of the “L” stations in downtown Chicago that sold primarily porno mags, but it’s been a long time since I’ve boarded by that station and whenever I’m near there, I always forget to check to see if it’s still there. It was the subject of the first poem I wrote in my Chicago sonnets sequence¹ although that one remains unpublished.

⸻

1. Most of these are in print only, but links to those that are online can be found at https://dahosek.com/publications/