The Thing Quarterly

The long delayed but much anticipated issue 2 by Anne Walsh is about to be launched! And if you happen to be in the Los Angeles area on June 21st from 3-7 PM we hope that you will come and join us at Outpost for Contemporary Art for the launch party as we wrap 1000 of these issues and get them out into the mail to the subscribers.

The full THING office (Will, Jonn, Virginia, Noona and even Anne Walsh) will be traveling down to LA. So if you are in the area on June 21st from 3-7, come by and have a beer, eat some pizza, listen to some records and wrap a couple of issues with us. Outpost is located at 6375 North Figueroa Street in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles.

So if you are down that way on the 21st, come by and say hello.

This is the sort of thing that we imagined when we first began talking about what THE THING could be. We wanted it to be a surprise; we wanted it to constantly reinvent itself; and we wanted to be able to follow ideas and concepts even if they didn’t make any sort of business sense. So when we realized that we had some extra funds after Kota’s issue, we decided to turn it immediately into another issue… a surprise issue. We were both fans of Tucker Nichols’ work and felt that he would be the perfect person to work on an issue. And after just a few meetings and discussions with Tucker, we began production over in England with several thousand beermats, all of which contained copy from real businesses that Tucker had encountered on a recent trip to Eureka, California. (By the way, in England Coasters = Beermats. And we found that England seemed to be the place to go to have beermats created).

And so, on April 18th we had a secret wrapping party at an undisclosed location in San Francisco. The party, which was organized by Virginia White (THE THING’s amazing intern), took two cases of Sierra Nevada and a couple of six packs of Pilsner beer, 6 pizzas from Little Star Pizza, and about 12 to 15 records (which were played and replayed). Those present at the secret party were Wendy Wagner, Leigh Anna MacFadden, Brett MacFadden, Scott Thorpe, Lisa Hamilton, Holly Link ,David Suisman, Elana Bober, Lewis Stringer, Whitney Richards, Kendyll Pappas, Erin Healy, Max Schroder, Hannah Herschend, Brian, Hugo Herschend and Tucker.

Images by Lisa Hamilton, Virginia White, Tucker Nichols and Jonn Herschend. But we can’t remember who shot what.

It’s finally in production! It’s a long story, but the short of it is that we wanted Anne Walsh’s issue to be perfect and had to shop it around for just the right manufacturer, which took a long time. But we finally found one and started making them last week.

We are preparing for a wrapping party in Los Angeles on the 21st of June at the Outpost for Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. We anticipate that this issue will be in the hands of the subscribers by the end of that month. We’ll have more information on the wrapping party coming soon.

We realize that it has been a long wait for issue 2, but we are very excited about it and really appreciated your patience with it. In the mean time, we hope you are enjoying the surprise issue by Tucker Nichols.

On Friday February 15th, Chronicle Books hosted the wrapping party for Issue 3 of THE THING by Kota Ezawa. The invitation was extended by Christina Amini and Michael Carabetta, both of whom work at Chronicle. Christina is an editor in Chronicle’s entertainment division (and a co-editor of the amazing book Before the Mortgage), and Michael is the Creative Director for Chronicle. We met both of them both back at the wrapping party for Miranda July’s issue of THE THING in August, and they invited us to hold our next wrapping party at Chronicle’s new lobby (which is not even a year old).

The wrapping party was a sort of barn raising. A good number of Chronicle employees, friends and subscribers came down and helped to get Kota Ezawa’s issue 3 packed, stamped and loaded into the truck. Kota even came and helped to make boxes. In the end, we were able to get 1,000 issues wrapped and packed. It was no small feat, but it seemed to go very quickly.

Virginia White, our one and only amazing logistical coordinator at THE THING, helped to orchestrate the entire night: including 20 pizzas (from Goat Hill Pizza), 1 truck, 8 tables, 5 tape dispensers, 20 roles of tape, a portable record player (at the very last second, because our official THING portable record player stopped working) and a keg of Trumer Pilsner.

Thank you to everyone who came out and helped to get issue 3 off. We are very excited about this issue. All images by Corrine Schulze

If you are in San Francisco on Friday, February 15th, and looking for a way to perhaps wrap packages, tape boxes, drink beer, eat pizza, and listen to music on an old portable record player, then you are in luck because we will be doing all of this at the same time at Chronicle Books for the Wrapping Party of Kota Ezawa’s issue #3 of THE THING.

That’s right, Chronicle books is hosting the THE THING’s Issue #3 wrapping party in their very spacious lobby (which is not even a year old … it’s very nice). And we will be there wrapping from 4:00-7:00 PM. And we will have free beer and pizza (for a while at least). And you can bring a record and listen to it. And we will be very excited to say hello to you if you stop by.

Wrapping Time:
Friday, February 15th, 4:00-7:00 p.m.
680 Second Street, San Francisco, CA 94107

About Chronicle Books
One of the most admired and respected publishing companies in the U.S., Chronicle Books was founded in 1967 and over the years has developed a reputation for award-winning, innovative books. Recently recognized as one of the 50 best small companies to work for in the U.S. (and the only independent publisher to receive this award), the company continues to challenge conventional publishing wisdom, setting trends in both subject and format, maintaining a list that includes illustrated titles in design, art, architecture, photography, food, lifestyle and pop culture, as well as much-admired books for children and ancillary products through its gift division. Chronicle Books’ objective is to create and distribute exceptional publishing that’s instantly recognizable for its spirit, creativity, and value. For more information about Chronicle Books, visit www.chroniclebooks.com

We are very excited about issue #2 because we are manufacturing it from the ground up.  However, this is also taking a lot more time than we would like.  We thought we were ready to go at several points, but we started over because we want it to be dead-on right.   The good news is that we are close now to beginning production.  There are still some details to be worked out, but it is looking like it will be shippping out in mid-March.  We greatly appreciate your patience with this issue and are looking forward to getting out and  into your homes.

We’ll send out more updates as we get closer to getting it out.

Photos by Corinne Schulze

On Wednesday August 15th, THE THING had its first ever wrapping party at Southern Exposure. We weren’t sure what to expect in terms of participation, but we were completely blown away by the end of the evening. About 250 amazing people from around the Bay Area (and one person from Thailand) came to help wrap Issue 1 of THE THING by Miranda July.Thank you!One of the visions we had about THE THING when we were first thinking of it, was that there would be a sort of social aspect of it when it came time to send it out, like a barn raising. A group of us would pack it and send it out into the world. But the amazing thing about the wrapping party on Wed. night was that it took on a life of its own and suddenly become a sort of force that now seems to be driving the future of THE THING.Not only did we witness incredible innovation in the assembly line, but the entire night’s wrapping was completed in the course of an hour. (The beer and wine may have helped this). The second amazing aspect of all of this is that THE THING has received invitations to set up wrapping parties in other locations around the city and the country for issues 2 and 3! We are still trying to get our heads around how this happened.The day after the wrapping party, we sat down at La Taquaria for our sixth carnitas burrito that week and we discussed the fact that THE THING has a life all its own, and it is sort of leading us along. We thought it was a publication that would be made and sent out with the help of friends. We thought that the best part of THE THING would happen when it arrived at your door and you went to open it. But it turns out that it’s also a sort of public thing on the other end, the end that sends it out. So on both sides of the US mail there is an event that is taking place around THE THING: a party to send it out and a sort of excitement that we think happens when you see it in your house. It’s very exciting for us to think of THE THING existing in this way.Here are some pictures from the wrapping party. They were all taken by the amazing photographer Corinne Schulze.

THE THING has been living in Southern Exposure’s gallery from the 7th to the 18th of August as part of the Free Enterprise Residency. We set up our editorial office in the store front and went to work. Lots of really great people came down and helped, including our kids, who helped to make robot outfits.Photo by Corinne SchulzeScout and Hannah mechanize the processOne of the benefits, aside from sharing a working space with the awesome Southern Exposure crew (Courtney, Aimee, Jaren, and Maysoun) was that there was a secret back door into Mission Pies and we were right down the street from La Taqueria. We ate a lot of burritos and a tried to match our weight in pie consumption.Kendyll Pappas, Whitney Richards and Casey Ramirez help with touch up on Issue 1Anina takes over touch-up work on Issue 1Ilan Schraer in a focused moment of postcard productionWill experiences a quite moment with a robot looking onWhile it is true that the robots where a tremendous help, there were many others who took time out of their day to drop in at Southern Exposure and help get THE THING in shape for shipping. We want to say thanks to Forest Kelly, Baniel Pelt, Gisela Boehnisch, Jenn Selden, Laura Mappin, Elizabeth Adams and Suzanne Husky. Without their help, and the amazing support from the Southern Exposure crew, we most certainly would not have been able to get THE THING out the door.

Suzanne Husky paints the wall with flowers

From August 7th to the 18th, THE THING will move its editorial office to Southern Exposure’s store front on the corner of 25th and Mission Street in San Francisco. This is part of Southern Exposure’s Free Enterprise residency program. We will be working in the office from 10:00 AM to 6:00PM Tuesday through Saturday. There will be a flipping of rolodex files, a drinking of coffee and a telling of jokes by the water cooler. We will also be working up some posters for publicity, which we hope to distribute around the city. We will also be preparing Miranda July’s thing for shipping. Come by and say hello. Sign up for THE THING in person, or share a quiet joke by the water cooler.

On August 15th from 6:00-9:00 PM the public is invited to help wrap issue #1 of the thing, by Miranda July. Food, drinks, music, and wrapping paper will be supplied. Come help to send off the inaugural issue of this quarterly publication.

Come down and join us, or stop in and say hello.