When Liz Lapp lived in bigger cities, some her favorite haunts were newsstands, like the iconic Casa Magazines in the West Village of New York City. She liked the feeling of holding a physical product while reading instead of scrolling on a screen, whether she was perusing sports coverage or art and photography journals.
But once Lapp and her husband moved to the Morongo Basin, she couldn’t find a place that sold that many magazines other than the Barnes & Noble in Palm Desert—and while the former advertising executive is well-versed in the ins and outs of digital media, Lapp is adamant that physical products still have a role to play.
“I took a closer look at what’s happening for independent print, and independent print … is doing some really, really amazing things,” she said. “They’re going ad-free; they’re doing more calls for artists.”
By July 2023, Lapp opened Hi Desert Times in downtown Twentynine Palms. The shop is located in the newly renovated Corner 62 retail complex. Lapp calls her magazine shop “an oasis” where shoppers are consistently wowed—not only because they can discover so many types of magazines they hadn’t heard of, but because they see others they didn’t know were still in print.
“There’s a lot of excitement, and there’s a lot of curiosity,” she said.
Operating a magazine store in the year 2024 may sound like a risky business proposition, but Lapp has found success by keeping a highly curated assortment of more than 100 titles. Her clientele is roughly 30% repeat customers, primarily Lapp’s fellow desert-dwellers who have become friends. She also sells zines, printed art from local makers and a handful of books from local authors like Desert Oracle’s Ken Layne. But she’s conscious of keeping the focus on periodicals that people might not find elsewhere.
Lapp works with a distributor to get an array of magazines from all over the world. She steers away from mass-produced titles that can be found in supermarket checkouts like Rolling Stone or Time. But she does stock some more locally flavored popular ones like Los Angeles magazine and Atomic Ranch.
The selection includes literary magazines like The Drift, American Chordata and the London Review of Books. She also stocks some familiar titles like The New Yorker, I-D and Essence. But some of the funnest finds are newer niche publications like The Bitter Southerner, which looks to disrupt stereotypes about the American South, and the art and design magazine Plastikcomb.
“I don’t carry things that either people are reading online or have a subscription for, or you could find at a grocery shop—not to say that world shouldn’t exist,” Lapp said. “But I’m saying if you’re going to come all the way down to Twentynine Palms, I’m going to give you an experience.”
Part of that experience is simply the refreshing nature of enjoying a physical product in a phone-dominated world; the Pew Research Center found last year that 86% of people get news on their smartphone. But at the same time, trust in news is at record lows, according to Gallup’s October 2023 media confidence survey. In contrast to a bright screen flashing update after update, a printed magazine can only be created after multiple rounds of planning, creating, editing, designing and printing—a process that requires a considered perspective that might not be reflected in the average Facebook post.
“I feel like print a lot of times is more of a trusted media right now, from what the landscape is out there,” Lapp said.
As Hi Desert Times approaches its one-year anniversary this summer, Lapp hopes she will be able to play a larger role in the community as the shop finds its base. She already hosted a launch party when local artist Bunnie Reiss was featured in Hi-Fructose magazine, selling copies that Reiss signed in-store. The event drew 300 people, and the magazines sold out—indicative of the fact that having words, photos and images all come together in a physical periodical is still something to celebrate.
“There’s nothing like being in print,” Lapp said.
Hi Desert Times is located at 73552 Twentynine Palms Highway, No. 2, in Twentynine Palms. The store is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday through Monday, with hours extended to 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. For more information, visit www.hideserttimes.com.
Edited on March 29 to clarify the location of Casa Magazines in New York.
