I went to Book Court in Brooklyn last night for the Grantland Quarterly second release. Why? Frankly, because I grew up reading newspapers, watching The White Shadow and buying Run DMC on cassette. It’s my duty. The collision of sports, pop-culture and extremely smart human people is nowhere better represented on the interweb than Grantland. Mr Simmons has created the digital (and Quarterly print) equivalent of Grand Royal, the nearly underground and mostly slept on publication of perhaps my greatest childhood influencers, the Beastie Boys. The similarities go right down to the amazing attention to design and packaging. The two sided cover of Grantland’s second Quarterly featuring original artwork from none other than Mike Monteiro of Mule Design AND a copy of the rare 70s Nike poster of George “Iceman” Gervin (I bought that same poster at Foot Locker in Richardson Square mall in 1980) is the greatest bonus gift since the Beasties included a 7” flexi-disc of Biz Markie covering Bennie and the Jets on Grand Royal issue 2.
While listening to Andy Greenwald and the panel discuss Grantland, the one clear takeaway was that all the writers appreciate the editorial freedom to pursue what they are most passionate about. What a fascinating concept, hire really fucking smart people and get out of the way. I just hope that my collection of Grantland Quarterlies continues to grow and doesn’t end up at the bottom of a stack of collectibles. The world wide interweb of information needs more people raising the bar on the level of discussion around all of our popular culture or we will end up inhabiting a world of AOL chatroom comments. The other Grantland writers on last night’s panel were: Rembert Browne,
Chuck Klosterman - Chuck had a fascinating take on “faith out of context, the Tim Tebow factor” (my title) that I won’t try to recap, but hope he writes about in the future.