June 14–21, 2001

naked city

Finders Keepers

Davy Rothbart’s new FOUND magazine revels in the discarded scraps of everyday life.

by M.F. Di Bella

Found objects: A flyer promoting Rothbart’s magazine.

Every so often the private foibles of ordinary people come up for grabs — not via the National Enquirer or the nightly news, but through pure happenstance: a Crayola-ed love note is accidentally dropped in an elevator; a dog-eared photograph is left in a library book; a meticulously folded note, once surreptitiously passed during sixth period, falls from a backpack onto the floor of the 42 bus. Such items make the finder an inadvertent voyeur, privy to a stranger’s most intimate (or banal) moments.

So, thought Davy Rothbart, why not catalog these existential tumbleweeds? The freewheeling author, National Public Radio personality and self-styled Star of the American Road has transformed the concept of found art into a journalistic enterprise: a magazine called FOUND, the first issue of which debuts this week.

"My idea, which has been brewing for some time, is to have people send me discovered notes, sketches, etc. plucked from the street, subway, bus stop, public library, dead letter office… all to be compiled in magazine format," says Rothbart, who until recently split his time between his current home in Chicago and a cousin’s basement apartment in East Falls (his mother’s family hails from Cheltenham). Over the past few months, he’s discussed his concept for the magazine over the phone and in person; his conversations, like the magazine, reflect a unique take on the world.

"Some collect coins, baseball cards or antiques," he says. "I collect people, their experiences, their souls."

Six months ago, he called from a pay phone in Valdez, NM: "If you could picture my locale at the moment: downtown Valdez, a main drag with a post office and one bar, no traffic lights, a dog chained to a spare tire on the outskirts and two town drunks (one 6-foot-7, the other a dwarf). Even here, which might as well be the end of the earth, I can picture a thousand unique stories from the mundane to the heart-wrenching to the implausible."

	On the road again: Rothbart finds some of his best material in small-town America.

Last week, from Berlin, NH: "I’m at a pay phone outside a Laundromat here, a vacant, industrial small town with an almost apocalyptic feel. This is the threshold of the American experience and I love it… This is what FOUND stuff is all about."

A magazine seemed the best way for Rothbart to synthesize his love for the kaleidoscopic American experience with his own Road Warrior excursions. "This is truly a quest to soak up Americana. I want to peer into the lives of every American and feel them as deeply as I can…." FOUND items, though they always maintain "an element of mystery," point to a unifying thread that runs through disparate lives: from the orange farmer in Lakeland, FL, to the high school student in Missoula, MT, to the CEO of Starbucks.

"Certainly this is not a novel concept," he acknowledges, "as many artists and performers have worked along these lines. Also, it is not uncommon to see a kind of FOUND exhibit in the average American home: a note or photograph under a magnet on the refrigerator, a hilarious or bewildering object someone came across and felt compelled to showcase. I want FOUND to be a sort of composite of all these displays."

The quarterly print and online publication will be very much interactive. Readers will be encouraged to scrounge up their own FOUND pieces and will be given credit for their efforts if their piece is selected for publication. A FOUND item will be treated as a work of art, to be titled and given context with one simple, stern stipulation: "No invented stuff, please. Have some integrity."

While such items can be entertaining and often hilarious, some of them can be stark, obtuse and even devastatingly sad. "Sometimes, when finding or receiving an item, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. One day someone sends me a secretary’s ridiculous instructions on how to coddle her boss, and the next I get a disturbing letter from a transsexual to his/her former male lover who is now in love with a woman… Everyone is bleakly yearning for something, and nowhere is this more apparent than in a FOUND item."

On a recent redeye layover in Philly, Rothbart discussed some methods of "finding" during a brief FOUND tour of Sixerland.

"As my old grade-school teacher would say, everyone can play. Some of the best spots to find items are: Kinko’s, bus/train stops, subways, public libraries, cafés and the sidewalk. I’ve also found that the best time to find things is generally when you’re not really looking."

Strolling down South Street at 4 a.m., we uncover these little gems: a postcard from Cincinnati written entirely in Polish; a prayer book from a fourth-grade student at a local Catholic school with the following entries: "May 11: Please God, help my Uncle Kenny get out of jail…" "May 13: Please help the media missionaries."

"At times I feel like a drifter. Life in America can be heartbreaking, orphaned, hopeless and sad… people dreaming lonely impossible dreams wishing on 747s they take for stars… FOUND items help me to connect and relate to people’s joys and sorrows."

When asked if FOUND items could be seen as intrusive or even exploitative, Rothbart responds, "The moment an item is lost or left behind, it belongs to the world…

"This is a personal mission; I literally get high off of other people’s experiences. Every time someone sends me a new piece and I glimpse someone at their most raw, that’s when I feel most alive."

The first issue of FOUND, featuring a number of odd and/or heartbreaking scraps of existence along with a short story from acclaimed novelist Charles Baxter and an interview with cartoonist Lynda Barry, is available at The Book Trader, 501 South St., 215-925-0219; and both Robin’s Book Store locations: 108 S. 13th St., 215-735-9600, and 1837 Chestnut St., 215-567-2615. For more information, visit foundmagazine.com.