I have always loved magazines. It started when I was a kid with Highlights and Sports Illustrated Kids before I transitioned to SI, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, GQ, Premiere and so on.
I’ve written for many magazines over the past two decades, and each month I still receive a stack of mags in my mailbox. There is just something about turning the pages through a long feature or photo spread that will forever give me a major dopamine hit.
Not only do I read magazines, I also collect them. I can spend hours on eBay shopping for old issues of ID that feature Amber Valletta or Rolling Stone back issues with stories about favorite actors and musicians of the ‘80s and ‘90s.
All that to say, I was very excited to spend Sunday afternoon at Bygone Magazines.
The pop-up shop, open until the end of the year at 216 N. Main St., is operated by lifelong friends Grant Bumgarner and Micah Cash. While attending Columbia University, Cash fell in love with NYC’s boutique magazine scene and pitched his friend on the concept.
When can you visit Bygone Magazines?
The shop is open through the end of 2025 for the following hours:
- 5:30 to 9 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays
- 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5:30 to 9 p.m., Saturdays
- 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Sundays
After months of discussion followed by months of assembling an inventory of magazines dating back nearly a century, the shop opened in late September in the Tulsa Arts District.
Bumgarner said the reason he loves flipping through old magazines is because they can be enjoyed without a bunch of companies mining your data as you click and scroll through stories. There’s nothing like the experience of holding the pages in your hands and taking it all in, including the car and cigarette ads, he said.
“We wanted to do something super analog in an increasingly digital world,” Bumgarner said. “We try to make everything analog. We only spin records or play cassettes or CDs. Everything in here is print. We don’t have an Instagram. We don’t have a website. We don’t have any social media of any kind.”
The store features a substantial amount of back issues of National Geographic and Life, plus old copies of Collier’s, Saturday Evening Post and other random titles.
Bygone also shelves numerous new issues of publications ranging from Art Forum, Vogue and Popular Mechanics to Asimov’s Science Fiction and beyond.
In the center of the shop is a table of local publications, including Liz Blood’s Pokeweed and back issues of This Land Press. The day I visited, I picked up the last copy of the newest edition of The Taliaferro Times, Booker T. Washington’s student newspaper. I highly recommend the Dubai Chocolates review by Nova “The Stapler” Stewart.
While the shop will soon close its doors, Bumgarner hopes another Tulsa business will take a similar approach and invest in offering vintage and current magazines. He hints at the possibility of future pop-ups, but said there are no plans set for 2026.
Bygone has met its goals by becoming a community spot for creatives to gather, Bumgarner said. The temporary space turns back the clock to spotlight a cultural era that changed journalism and how people consumed information about world events. It’s brought in people who grew up with magazines and those who have only heard about them.
“It’s been really fun,” Bumgarner said. “I mean, we’ve gotten to see a bunch of Gen Z kids come in and be like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ like they’re looking at dinosaur bones when engaging with a magazine. It’s been a blast.”
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