THE HISTORY OF $PREAD A TIMELINE
March, 2004—Rebecca and Rachel meet organizing a benefit for the Prostitutes of New York (PONY) and hatch the idea for a sex worker magazine.
May, 2004—Rachel and Raven meet at a barbecue in Brooklyn and Raven jumps on board.
June, 2004—We coin our infamous name and come up with our illuminating tagline.
July, 2004—Call for submissions goes out.
September, 2004—First $pread benefit at a random sports bar where the bartenders refuse to turn the baseball game off.
December, 2004—Second $pread benefit at Rififi; one $pread-ster gets drunk and almost loses all the money.
January 3, 2005—The New York Press gives $pread its first media mention.
January–March, 2005—Production Deathmatch: $pread Publishing Novices vs. Design Software, Printers, and Customs Canada.
March, 2005—Launch party for Issue 1.1 at the Slipper Room. New York Post gossip columnist creeps us out with his plastic leprechaun. We begin to understand the reality of publishing when we lug sixty pounds of magazines to the post office in a suitcase. Time Out New York quotes Raven saying, “It’s not intended to arouse, but people are aroused by all kinds of things, so maybe someone will be turned on by sex workers fighting for social justice.”
May, 2005—$pread takes a road trip to Stella’s Forum XXX conference in Montreal and mingles with sex worker rights activists from around the world.
May, 2005—First one hundred subscribers!
July, 2005—Mailing Deathmatch! After two days of organizing mailings by zip code, we end up sorting envelopes of Issue 1.2 in the bulk mail center parking lot in the hot July sun.
November 7, 2005—$pread hosts a sex worker fashion show at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn.
January 6–8, 2006—$pread staffers go on our first annual retreat to a cabin called the Otter House in upstate New York, beyond the reaches of cell phone reception.
January, 2006—$pread hosts the Sex Worker Olympics at the Slipper Room to launch Issue 1.4, the one with Rich Merritt, our first cover dude.
January, 2006—$pread goes to the Independent Press Association’s Annual Conference and Utne Independent Press Awards in San Francisco where we receive the “Best New Title of 2005” award. We drink with publishing idols from Bitch, Venus, and Lip.
February–April, 2006—Taxes Deathmatch: $pread’s grant from Citizens for NYC has staffers and interns running around the city to help sex workers do their taxes. In an ironic twist of fate, $pread fails to do its own taxes on time.
March, 2006—Sex TV produces a ten-minute featurette on $pread.
March 29, 2006—$pread’s first birthday! We launch Issue 2.1 (the one with a mystery $pread girl’s hot body on the cover) at our Sex Worker Visions art exhibition at the LGBT Community Center. We all wear tiaras and eat birthday cake.
March 30, 2006—$pread cosponsors the Sex Work Matters conference with CUNY and The New School.
May, 2006—We conduct our first readers’ survey and are surprised to discover that johns read $pread too!
June 3–4, 2006—Second $pread retreat at the Otter House. On the agenda: “Strategies for avoiding burnout and hatred.”
July 1, 2006—$pread gets its first office in a creepy building owned by a religious cult. We paint a pink city skyline on the wall and spray-paint a gold dollar sign on the door.
July, 2006—Printer Deathmatch: Issue 2.2 is late because our printer decides to go gambling at Mohegan Sun instead of printing our magazine. When we finally get the issue, we find two articles missing all the “i”s and resolve to switch printers yet again.
July 9–12, 2006—$pread launches Issue 2.2, the one with Buck Angel on the cover, in Las Vegas at the first Desiree Alliance conference.
September, 2006—Bitch prints a feature length interview with $pread, and subscriptions go through the roof.
October 21, 2006—We launch our first themed issue, “The Relationships Issue,” at a strip club/veterans hall in Philadelphia. The bartenders teach us some mean pole tricks.
October, 2006—The Village Voice crowns us “Best Sex Worker Support System of 2006.”
December 3, 2006—$pread throws a benefit party at the Delancey. Confused stockbrokers mingle upstairs while our friend Rose Wood fucks herself in the ass with a bottle of whiskey in the basement.
December, 2006—Clamor magazine (who runs our online store) goes bankrupt and almost takes us down with them. Thanks to our generous fans, and a grant from the Louis Rabinowitz Foundation, we get back on our feet.
February, 2007—Printer Deathmatch: Our printer adds its own page twenty-nine to Issue 2.4. Eventually we get a whole new print run.
April 8, 2007—$pread cohosts Easter at Avalon with Transmission, an experimental Easter service focusing on Mary Magdalene.
March and April, 2007—Sex workers in Toronto, Chicago, Minneapolis, and New York decorate dildos and send them in for “One Nation Under Dildo,” the opening night exhibition for our art show Sex Worker Visions II.
May 1, 2007—We launch Issue 3.1, the Money Issue, at the opening gala for Sex Worker Visions II at Arena Studios, where everyone scrambles to bid on the decorated dildos.
October 20–21, 2007—$pread drives to Baltimore for the Mid-Atlantic Radical Bookfair and presents on how activists can support sex workers.
November, 2007—$pread’s first international launch party in Toronto to launch issue 3.3, the one with the DC Madam on the cover.
January 19–21, 2008—Another $pread retreat, this time in snowy Albany. We give up on our dream of commercial viability (aka ever paying staff) and decide to focus, instead, on stepping up our outreach program and increasing community distribution.
February, 2008—Mailing Deathmatch: After finally being approved for periodical mailing privileges, we spend three days transporting copies of Issue 3.4 back and forth between the office and the bulk mail center in an attempt to comply with insane post-office rules, breaking boxes, spilling magazines on the sidewalk, and pleading with angry cab drivers.
February 24, 2008—We break our record for outreach mailing, successfully packing up and sending over 500 magazines to sex worker programs across the country.
April 1, 2008—We say goodbye to the creepy cult members who populate our office building and move downtown. We get a table stuck in the elevator.
July–August, 2008—Our friends at Different Avenues help us kick off our voter registration drive, Grind the Vote 2008, with a party at Be Bar in DC. For the New York edition of Grind the Vote, at which we also launch Issue 4.2, we host a burlesque show at the Slipper Room.
October, 2008—Moving Deathmatch: When the photography studio we’re renting from goes out of business, we head back uptown to the creepy cult building.
November, 2008—$pread’s first Boston launch is a dance party to celebrate Issue 4.3, the one with Craig Seymour on the cover.
April, 2009—With the original editors and art directors gone, $pread struggles with staffing shortages, and Issue 5.1, the Alt Porn issue, makes it to press three months late.
May, 2009—In Our Own Image, a documentary about the making of $pread, premieres at Bluestockings Bookstore in New York.
August, 2009—$pread finally succeeds in leaving the creepy cult building and resettles in a converted warehouse in Brooklyn. There are still no windows, but we paint it “Gem Turquoise” and make it home.
November, 2009–January, 2010—We come up short on printing costs, and launch a Twitter donation drive that doubles $pread’s donor income for the year. This brings tears to our eyes and Issue 5.2, “The Family Issue,” to newsstands (finally).
January, 2010—A guest editorial collective is formed to collaborate on an issue about race and racism in the sex trades, and work begins in what will be the longest production cycle in $pread’s history.
January 15–18, 2010—$pread’s next retreat takes us to New Jersey where we hang out with a half a dozen cats and ponder if there is a future for the magazine.
January, 2010—$pread wins the Naked Truth People’s Choice Adult Entertainment Award for “Favorite Sex Industry Magazine.”
May, 2010—Launch Party Deathmatch: We celebrate the launch of Issue 5.3 without Issue 5.3.
August 21, 2010—At $pread’s fifth anniversary reunion we decide to call it quits, but only after we publish the two issues currently in production. Sadly we later abandon one of them.
June, 2011—Members of the final issue’s guest editorial collective talk about its production on a panel at the Allied Media Conference.
July, 2011—$pread closes down its physical office.
August, 2011—Issue 5.4, the Race Issue, is finally printed.
November, 2011—The Race Issue is launched in San Francisco.
January, 2012—We say goodbye to $pread with a reading hosted by Red Umbrella Diaries at Happy Ending.
