American Gentrifier

JANUARY 12, 2005

As Gawker noted in November, the American Gentrifier cover below appears on the flip side of the Winter 2005 issue of Stay Free!, the lefty cultural mag edited by the brilliant and hilarious Brooklyn resident Carrie McLaren.

That’s me holding the baby; it was the first time I’d ever worn a Baby Bjorn, and it may well be the last. (The wife and baby are models too.)

I had nothing to do with the concept or design of this cover; I simply showed up at the photographer’s studio and did my best imitation of an emasculated Park Slope husband. The issue is being distributed free throughout Brooklyn at cafes and other establishments. If you’re rarely or never in Brooklyn, you can buy the issue for $2.95 at a number of bookstores around the country, including one of my favorites, Manhattan’s St. Mark’s Bookshop. The issue is also available via the Stay Free! website. 

Carrie apparently thinks I look like the archetypal clueless yuppie, because this is the second time she’s enlisted me as a model for one of the parodies that appear on her magazine’s back cover. Four or five years ago, I appeared on the back of Stay Free! in an anti-S.U.V. parody:

Don’t you love how my belt doesn’t match my shoes? Carrie just marched me around the streets of SoHo posing me in front of parked S.U.V.s. They were everywhere. I was surprised to discover just how many of them there are. I have a driver’s license, but I rarely drive, so I’d never really had cause to notice them. 

Carrie had this ad made into postcards, which you can buy on the Stay Free! website.