by MATTHEW WOODLEY

It all started one snowy Chicago night in 1999 when freelance writer and ticket scalper Davy Rothbart came upon a scrawled note stuck under the windshield of his car. “Mario, I fucking hate you,” it read. “You said you have to work then whys your car HERE at HER place?? You’re a fucking LIAR. I hate you I fucking hate you, Amber. PS Page me later.”

The letter gave birth to Found Magazine, a scrapbook of the discovered—love notes, grocery lists, corporate docs, photographs, résumés, doodles and poetry, much of it sent in by Found fans. With issue #2 just out, Rothbart has set out on a whirlwind 45-city tour. He’ll be at Casa del Popolo this Monday, Nov 4, stirring up more attention for the Michigan-based publication.

There’s something innately attractive, as recent media exploits have proven, in looking into other people’s lives. But unlike the set-up world of Web cams and reality TV, Found’s beauty is in its realness, in what it leaves to the imagination. “I get high,” Rothbart writes in the magazine’s intro, “off driving around this country and talking to people, watching them, listening in on their conversations. Feeling them. There’s no better way to really feel someone than to read a note they’ve written filled with subtle shades of what they want and what they’re most afraid of.”

Each found object in the mag is accompanied by an anecdote of the discovery. “Poor Mario,” writes Rothbart, “catching blame when he was probably at work and not with this other girl. I thought it was a pretty amazing love note, though really: Amber, trying to be all full of bitterness and bile, but giving herself away with her sweet coda—page me later.”

Found has scraps from all walks of life. There’s a report card from a lacklustre Grade 3 student named Jane, a receipt for a 40 of vodka and pack of smokes paid for by scratch-and-win tickets, and a carefully written sign on loose-leaf that warns, “CAUTION DOOR WILL SWING OPEN AND NAIL YOU!” Some of the entries are several-page stories, while others are simply five-word lists that say it all: “Beer, meat, dog food, baloney.” Long lost photos make their way into the pages as well, like the one of a Brazilian couple sitting on a porch, dated 1889, found in a Portuguese dictionary in a used bookstore.

The magazine also has an online version, at www.foundmagazine.com, especially worth visiting for their not-fit-to-print audio section. For those out there with neat found stuff, bring it on down to the Casa—Rothbart always turns the stage over to the audience for some show-and-tell. Some highlights to date: a teenager’s diary from 1963 where details of JFK’s assassination mix with schoolgirl crushes, and a guy in Michigan who showed up with an apple pie he baked from a scrawled recipe that he found in a parking lot, which he shared with the crowd. :

The Found Magazine tour finds itself at
Casa del Popolo (4873 St-Laurent) on Monday,
Nov. 4, 8pm, free. Copies will be on sale