Au revoir, Shosanna

Hmm, never did say a proper farewell to Beats before. I guess cause their status wasn't sure yet... but now I guess it's safe to say it's done.

It's a shame, cause for a free mag, Beats was pretty good. And during our peak (I'd say mid 2008) we were doing pretty well and had a nice little niche.

I wrote about one of the highlights a few entries ago--the Jackie Chan interview. Well another favorite story would have to be the Olympic issue. Me and 4 interns, with the help of no PR, tracked down the HK Olympic athletes via facebook, google, and forums and interviewed about 60% of the cats. I think that's probably the most fulfilling and important feature I ever did at Beats.

Then to top it off we had a great, great cover that's probably the best cover for a free English mag in HK that year. Others liked it, too.

Anyway, Beats has come a long way during its three year lifespan. It started as a crappy clubbing magazine with 8 page cover stories devoted to some random obscure ass DJs every month. Then about five months in, Scott Murphy came and turned it around. He had a vision--to make it a pop culture magazine and that's what set it apart. Mr Murphy, along with Miss Lam, took the mag out of the gutter and made it good.

I'd like to thank Scott and Peter Guy for giving me an opportunity. The Murph, especially...I'd say he had a big part in helping me improve my feature writing and I'll always be thankful he let me handle the film section by myself. I remember in 05 and 06 I was in LA watching these HK flicks all the time, little would I know two years later  I'd be in HK working closely with movie distributors and kinda be "in the inside". I still get invites to premieres and screenings because Murphy trusted me with the film section. At BC, I never got to go near the distributors--everything went thru the boss.

RIP, Beats.

We had a good run, man.

BTW, I'm kinda disappointed that the final issue of Beats happen  to have one of the ugliest covers of all time (the Megan Fox cover) and had one of the emo-est editor's note in the history of HK publication. That thing reads like a Dashboard Confessional song. Which is a no no if you're a fan of Al Bundy.

BTW part 2, that awesome Olympic cover was drawn by artist Coco Wang. I don't think she ever got paid for her work. Because you know, we all had the misfortunate of working for... him.