The SLAM Dome Interlude (Part 3??)
Gary Payton's photoshopped head, Big Brother magazine, Winona Ryder, Ivana Trump, and more (??)
Hi everyone. Welcome to my newsletter companion to “Cover Story,” a basketball book I wrote which is set for release on October 19th and is available for pre-order here. If you want to tell your followers about my book, feel free to share this tweet or this Instagram post. If you’re not a newsletter subscriber, click here to make sure you get every post in your inbox.
As someone who grew up idolizing everyone who worked at SLAM, a personal highlight of working on “Cover Story” was the opportunity to interview the many people involved in the very beginning of the magazine and the many successsful eras that came after it, including Dennis Page, Cory Johnson, Tony Gervino, Russ Bengtson, Scoop Jackson, Ryan Jones, Ben Osborne, Susan Price Thomas, Lang Whitaker, photographers Clay Patrick McBride, and Jonathan Mannion, and Atiba Jefferson.
Aside from sharing their favorite cover stories with me, those who worked at SLAM had many fond memories of their work office, which became a part of the magazine’s mythology. Described by those who worked there from Santa’s workshop to a teenage boy’s bedroom, the SLAM Dome is the only workplace to receive its own chapter (two, actually!) in “Cover Story.”
The SLAM Dome chapters cover an assortment of stories that sprung out of an office (which has changed locations over the years) where the most influential basketball magazine was made every month.
They were born out of a bunch of random anecdotes which didn’t necessarily fit into any standalone chapters but were too important to the overall narrative to be left out.
They include stories about Russ and Tony’s love of sneakers, Susan’s memories of a Coney Island photoshoot with Stephon Marbury, Lang’s (in)famous Rasheed Wallace post-game interview at Madison Square Garden, SLAM’s rivalry with Dime (as I type this sentence, I believe someone from SLAM is emailing to tell me “there was no rivalry, Alex.”), and much more.
In my conversations with SLAM’s (second) editor-in-chief Tony Gervino, we reminisced about some of the best covers during his run with the magazine, but also talked about his least favorite covers. One cover story which didn’t make it into the book is a brief tidbit about the Gary Payton SLAM cover pictured above, which Tony nominated as the worst SLAM cover ever. I’m not sure if anyone noticed (or cared), but Payton’s head is photoshopped onto the rest of his body in the cover photo. As the story goes, none of the pictures from the shoot was cover-worthy, and this was the only way to salvage it.
Tony also has a healthy dislike for the Grant Hill cover below. The JUST LIKE MIKE. ONLY BETTER cover line was Russ Bengtson’s idea to push the envelop a bit on the newsstand but never really sat right with the editor-in-chief.
Tony played an instrumental part in setting the voice and tone inside the pages of SLAM, and many of the magazines he drew inspiration from were—surprise!—not in the sports section. So when I hit him up to share his three favorite non-SLAM magazine covers, these were his picks:
Tony’s first pick is the debut issue of Big Brother, a skateboard magazine which he said made Thrasher seem like Vanity Fair. “It was all voice and attitude and never took itself too seriously,” he explained to me. One of the magazine’s sections actually inspired something directly in SLAM, but I’ll leave that for when you get the book (go pre-order another copy right now why not). Tony even went as far as calling Big Brother the most influential magazine when it came to SLAM.
This 1994 Rolling Stone cover featuring Winona Ryder pictured above also made Tony’s list. “Everything about it was counterintuitive,” he said. “From the moody lighting to the blank stare to the (lack of) styling, it was if the editors knew she was so unbelievably hot they could've literally done anything with her and make it appealing.”
Tony’s last pick is a Spy magazine cover featuring Ivana Trump which in his words is both “cruel and breathtakingly creative.” Reading this satirical publication founded by Kurt Andersen and Graydon Carter made Tony think seriously about joining the publishing industry. “It was sarcastic, audacious and featured the best writing and editing in history,” he explained. “It existed tangentially in the world of celebrity and burned it down every issue.”
After graduating from college, Tony even wrote the magazine begging for a job. Kurt Andersen, the editor-in-chief, responded with: "Thanks. Your ideas are great. But we barely pay our editors and they still never leave."
To anyone who wants to read more about Spy, there’s an entire collection of full issues on Google Books. Tony also recommends the book “Spy: The Funny Years.”
I’m interviewing a bunch of people for my next book “Prehistoric” the rest of this week (I’m about to get an email from my publisher saying “Alex, please focus on promoting this book first.”) so there will no newsletter on Friday. See you next week!
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