The 'San Francisco Review of Whatever' includes a logo designed by Caitlin Galloway. (Collage by Sarah Hotchkiss)
In her editor’s note for the very first issue of the San Francisco Review of Whatever, Elisabeth Nicula bounces from topic to topic in pithy paragraphs, covering tennis, constellations, Trevor Paglen’s recent Altman Siegel show and the magical act of piecing together of a magazine.
It’s a warm-up for the pages that follow: a delightful back-and-forth volley of macro and micro views, San Francisco seen through the windshield and in the rear-view mirror.
The slim volume, just under 50 pages, is the brainchild of Nicula, Christa Hartsock and Jim Fingal. Hartsock and Fingal previously published the leftist tech magazine Logic (now Logic(s)) and have a professed affinity for the power of analog media.
“Logic Magazine really cemented the love for what a small magazine can do,” Fingal says. “Just the process and the experience of producing it, but then the experience of creating and engaging with your audience.”
Claudia La Rocco’s ‘Exit Interview’ catalogs the places and people she misses upon leaving the Bay Area. (Courtesy San Francisco Review of Whatever)
The Review of Whatever creators’ meet-cute involves a synthesizer shop (ROBOTSPEAk in the Lower Haight) and a vague internet awareness of each other that crystallized into a group chat and real-life friendship. “It took us a while to start talking about actually starting the magazine,” Hartsock says.
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“I was shooting the shit on Twitter,” Nicula explains. “I was thinking about the LA Review of Books and the New York Review of Books and the New York Review of Architecture and I said on Twitter, ‘Why doesn’t San Francisco have a review? San Francisco needs a review of whatever, too!’”
People on the internet agreed. And just over a year ago, when Fingal expressed an interest in getting back into publishing, Nicula pitched him on the idea. Now, what started as a fun name jokingly put forward is a three-times-a-year print publication that has arrived in mailboxes and on bookshelves, and will be celebrated with a release party on Friday, Feb. 28 at Et al. gallery.
Sean McFarland’s ‘CLOUD INTERLUDE,’ an excerpt from ‘Cloud Book,’ 2023. (Courtesy San Francisco Review of Whatever)
Back in February 2024, Nicula wrote what now reads like a manifesto for the Review of Whatever in an essay for The Back Room, Small Press Traffic’s online publishing platform. In it, she argued for a rebellion against grant-writing language in art, against playing our perceived roles, and for criticism as an act of attention and care.
“Normal life deserves beauty in describing, ardent feelings, pleasurable clarity, and true likeness,” she wrote.
The “whatever” reviewed in the first issue lives up to its name. “Whatever” includes the Bay Area (seen from Maine and one of its own hills); the shapes of Berkeley’s People’s Park, Donald Judd and Christo and Jeanne-Claude; tennis as a metaphor; a collection of essays by Susan Stryker; and San Francisco fashion.
Also featured: a “CLOUD INTERLUDE” spread, photographed by Sean McFarland; a list of “knitting WIPs and why I haven’t finished them” from Megan Riley; a verbose ad for the Richmond District’s Scenic Routes Community Bicycle Center; and a back page of classifieds (“Have you had your daily recommended dose of bloops? Cheaper than US healthcare”).
A spread containing Sofía Córdova’s poem ‘Felt from the outer rim.’ (Courtesy San Francisco Review of Whatever)
Hartsock dreams of a future in which someone picks up a copy of the Review in their bike repair shop, then meets up with someone from the classifieds looking to trade fruit for jam.
“Part of the idea is to be a little bit Luddite and part of it is to retreat from the internet,” Nicula says. “I think we all perhaps also see print as a different way to connect with people, and maybe a more interesting and healthy way to connect.”
As Hartsock points out, print is just slower. All three creators wear multiple hats, including holding down day jobs, art practices and other publishing projects (Nicula also helms Smooth Friend, which publishes experimental and creative nonfiction).
“When I think about the internet, I think about monetization and feeds and the speed at which information has to move,” Hartsock says. “That’s not the speed at which I want to think. Print is creating a space where you can sit with something and be consumed by it instead of also having the distraction of whatever else.”
Also, Fingal says, “People will pay for print objects and then you can pay writers.”
In the first issue, the contributors are local (or recently transplanted) artists and curators, poets and writers. Their references are specific, and will be especially evocative for those familiar with the icons and landmarks of this city: the 49 bus; the Harm Reduction Therapy Center; the Joe DiMaggio Tennis Courts in North Beach.
“A big goal for me with this magazine is to show San Francisco as those of us who live here experience it,” Nicula says. “There’s these over-narrativized, usually hyper-politicized views of it, but there’s something very authentic and livable happening beneath all that — and also difficult.”
It’s a big undertaking, but a fruitful, ongoing one. San Francisco has long been a city that excites words, specifically criticism. But the pieces in the first issue of the San Francisco Review of Whatever rely on neither boosterism nor gloominess. They are complicated, authentic, poetic, rigorous and sweet — just like San Francisco itself.
The launch party for the ‘San Francisco Review of Whatever’ will take place Friday, Feb. 28, 2025 at 6 p.m. at Et al. (2831A Mission St., San Francisco).
lower waypoint
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