Pop-Up Magazine Inches Toward Normalcy

After a 15-month hiatus, Pop-Up Magazine has returned to the analog world. The self-styled live magazine launched its Sidewalk Issue, its first in-person event since February 2020, in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Brooklyn last week. Using funding from Google, the publisher collaborated with more than a dozen artists to create a series of art installations that scavengers, armed with an illustrated map, could seek out for free. The event runs until June 20. The Sidewalk Issue marks the beginning of a much-anticipated return to normalcy for Pop-Up Magazine, whose live events-based business model left it particularly vulnerable to the pandemic. Because the publication performs its magazine articles as on-stage affairs, it has become nearly synonymous with in-person productions. As a result, it serves as an unofficial bellwether for an events industry looking to return safely but promptly to physical gatherings. As Pop-Up goes, the events industry goes The publication has vowed to return to in-person performances in the fall, confirmed Chas Edwards, the co-founder, president and publisher of Pop-Up Magazine, and it plans to release a series of audio products that pair with photo essays in July. The magazine, which has long clung to a singular format for its performances, will keep some of the new concepts it introduced in the last few months, though its flagship physical performances will still go unrecorded. Edwards' mindset—keep the new that worked, but center intimacy—reflects the perspective of others in the industry. Jerry Shen, the president and co-founder of the virtual events platform Welcome, has seen companies' attitudes about the potential of future meet-ups shift from anxiety to excitement. "It's my belief that it's not fear of another pandemic that will prevent business as usual, but new opportunities created from the pandemic that are fueling innovation in this space," Shen said. Likewise, advertisers looking to navigate the uncertain landscape of post-pandemic events will gravitate toward publishers that demonstrated their creativity and forward-thinking, said Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, the CEO of Hawthorne Advertising. "Ultimately, attracting sponsors will relate to the creativity and innovation events-based companies have to offer. Advertisers will want to know that they’re working with a cutting-edge company with a vision for the future," Hawthorne-Castro said. Like other events-based editorial businesses, Pop-Up Magazine will have to determine the right balance between pre and post-pandemic strategies if it wants to regain its lost momentum. The publication failed to turn a profit last year, but this year it anticipates returning to the financial position it reached in 2019. “We always strive to make things amazing for the medium that you're enjoying them in,” Edwards said. “But the pandemic has forced us to think broader about the ways in which we tell and deliver stories.” The many pivots of Pop-Up In October, Emerson Collective, the organization founded by the billionaire investor Laurene Powell Jobs, announced it was severing ties with Pop-Up Productions, the parent company of Pop-Up Magazine and California Sunday. Eleven staff members across the two companies were laid off. However, thanks to a series of creative pivots, Pop-Up Magazine managed to generate enough revenue to stay afloat. Early in the year, after performing its Winter 2020 production only eight times, the publication cut its tour short and began offering its experiences online for free, an effort largely bankrolled by financial partners Google and Instacart. The publication declined to name specific financial figures. To compensate for the lost revenue, Pop-Up Magazine replaced its Spring 2020 issue with a streaming show that premiered on YouTube in May and its Fall 2020 issue with a week of stories released as videos and audio programming. The publication also produced a $70 "issue in a box," which it sold online in December, and it has launched a membership program. Pop-Up Magazine also began producing exclusive content for private companies, such as Arnold Venture, the Tipping Point and Zendesk. It performed two such shows in the final quarter of 2020, two in the first quarter of 2021 and has between five and 10 scheduled for the second half of this year. The publisher declined to share how much it charges for these performances. The Sidewalk Issue experience In Brooklyn, where I participated in the Sidewalk Issue, the tour begins at the BAM Fisher building, a community arts center in the Fort Greene neighborhood. Visitors enter into the lobby to retrieve a pamphlet, which folds out into a map that doubles as a table of contents. Two participants in the San Francisco Sidewalk Issue. From there, participants could explore the six installations in any order, though all were within a half mile of the starting point. The artworks included an interactive film (Ways to See a Jellyfish), a mural (Work/Life), an audio track (Mike, Bicycle), a print story (Arturo), an “art dispenser” (Where Do We Go From Here?) and a print newspaper (Who Taught You to Love?). Pop-Up Magazine worked with Google to ensure each of the installations was accessible to the hearing and visually impaired, providing transcripts for all audio and scannable QR codes that described the works. A San Francisco participant looks at Work/Life. The pieces grappled with themes related to the pandemic and our collective return to normalcy, a subject matter that allowed the artists to explore everything from social justice to love to washing dishes. Although the distributed nature of the experience made it less intimate than a standard Pop-Up performance, seeing bands of other curious scavengers comb through the same half-mile radius imbued the adventure with a small sense of camaraderie. It was no curtain-stopper, but it was certainly great to be out. How Pop-Up Magazine Takes Print to the Stage—and Across the Country

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With its Google-Funded ‘Sidewalk Issue,’ Pop-Up Magazine Inches Toward Normalcy

The publisher predicts a return to profitability after a devastating pandemic

Mark Stenberg

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Mark Stenberg