Issue 16: Available Now
It’s here!
Stock of Issue 16 has arrived at Escape Towers. We’ve already begun to ship them out.
Subscriber copies will be plopping onto UK doormats imminently. International copies will take a little longer but are already shipping.
The digital edition is available for instant purchase and download.
And, as previously reported, there’s a little launch event in Glasgow on Tuesday 25th June.
About Issue 16:
The new issue is subtitled Footloose and Fancy-Free. It looks at mobility, travel, movement, being fleet of foot. Important Escapological concepts, I’m sure you’ll agree.
It features an interview with eccentric art pop legend Momus (pictured below) who seems to live wherever he likes (Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, Osaka, Edinburgh, Montreal, London, New York, Athens) without concern for those practicalities that trouble regular mortals. Our other interview (we like to do two) is with journalist Lydia Swinscoe who lives semi-nomadically, moving from home to home and city to city quite spontaneously. When we spoke she was in Sri Lanka and her next stop… who knows?
There’s Escapological writings on travel and internationalism, loads of stuff from me, and columns from McKinley Valentine, Tom Hodgkinson, Apala Chowdhury, David Cain and more. Tom’s column is a particularly good one, telling the story of his walking club with his old schoolfriends, which I’m not sure he’s written about anywhere before.
There are Escapological film reviews for the first time, a particularly amusing Workplace Woe, a great letter from a financially irresponsible Escapologist, deep reviews of new and old books (including Jenny Odell’s incredible How to do Nothing), musings on the Old [pre-social media] Web, and our unusual “review of a walk,” this time by Canada’s Tom Gibbs from his honeymoon in Lisbon. That cover image is from Lisbon too, actually, but those are my feet and boots, not Gibbs’.
Anyway, it’s a very strong issue and here’s where to bag your treasure.
We Are the 85%!
Remember the “we are the 99%!” mantra of the Occupy movement? Maybe we should borrow (okay, scav) this.
85% hate our jobs according to a 2022 Gallup poll. This is an increase on the 80% I reported in my book, Escape Everything!, in 2016.
At the time, many people found my figure ridiculous. It wasn’t. It was found in research. And now similar research suggests the figure has increased.
Another way of putting it is that only 15% of people actually like their jobs. These will be people working (and doing well enough to survive or already independently wealthy) in the arts, people who make a genuine difference in direct social services, evil people at the top of the tree who do whatever the like, and (I would say) idiots in denial.
Anyway, I don’t have a job (so I’m in the 5% or something) but Escapologists who still work against their will could start saying:
“WE ARE THE 85%”
Put it on your protest signs. Wear it on a badge. Print it on the coffee cup you drink from in the office.
When people ask what it means, tell them.
Tell them about our magazine is you like. But mainly tell them what it means to be in the 85%. That you go to work not because you love it but because you have to.
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Take the Wednesday Off
Stock of Issue 16 will arrive at Escape Towers tomorrow. I’ll ship the subscriber and pre-ordered copies immediately. The envelopes are already printed.
And you know what? Let’s party.
If you’re in the Glasgow area (or can get there easily and responsibly), we’ll meet at the new Third Eye bar at the CCA on Sauchiehall Street.
Tuesday 25th June from 7pm. Yes, that’s a work night. Why not take the Wednesday off? And then never go back?
We haven’t booked the room or anything so grand. We’ll just get a biggish table in the back section (surrounded by the new murals) and let merriment commence. I can’t imagine more than ten people will turn up, so this will be nice and cosy.
The CCA is the perfect place for this get-together. It’s where we first launched New Escapologist in 2008 (it was actually the second issue) and it’s a proper hub of the local art scene. The new bar is run by the venue (rather than a private tenant) so any money spent on beer or snacks goes directly into supporting said art scene. I approve of this.
If you bought a copy of Issue 16 in advance, let me know and you could collect it in person. If you’re yet to buy a copy and would like to buy a copy, bring a tenner in cash.
I’ll have some copies of I’m Out and The Good Life for Wage Slaves with me too. Also a tenner or free if I’m drunk.
Informal. Easy. A hang.
Come along. All welcome.
Parakeets!
I like parakeets. Perhaps its because green is my favourite colour. Or because they look a little bit exotic here in Scotland. Or perhaps it’s because they’re Escapologists.
I assumed their being so far north was a symptom of climate change. They look like hot weather birds after all. But apparently the Himalayas is their natural habitat and they’ve been in the UK since at least the 1970s.
A naturalist writes:
Over the years, I’ve heard many myths about how they got here in the first place. “They were released by a stoned Jimi Hendrix, who let them out in London’s Carnaby Street…”; “They escaped from the film set of The African Queen…”; “They made a bid for freedom when their cage broke during the Great Storm of 1987…”
And the truth?
the parakeets’ presence here is rather a letdown: as popular cagebirds, it was inevitable some would escape.
That’s not a letdown at all! Either way, they’re Escapologists. Godspeed, parakeets.
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The Narcotic Tingle of Possibility
Here’s Rolf Potts (author of Vagabonding) on escape planning:
The question of how and when to start vagabonding is not really a question at all. Vagabonding starts now. Even if the practical reality of travel is still months or years away, vagabonding begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility.
The June issue of New Escapologist is at the printers. Order your copy today.
