I don’t think that I can read Monocle Magazine anymore.  It is still an amazing record of Zeitgeist and fortune teller of new urbanization. I love the magazine, but it has gotten to a newsstand price point for an individual magazine that seems frivolous and indulgent: $18 per issue with tax. That is not a typo. 

The quality of the magazine has not changed since I discovered issue #1 years ago in Hamburg (I still have issues 1-3). The writing is clever and timely, the paper that it is printed on is suburb, their City Guides, Livable City and Soft Power editions are fantastic and in the latest issues, there must have been 4 mentions of Basel, CH, my spiritual European home city. 

While $18 ten times a year is not a major financial commitment, I can do a lot of good with that cash: give to Heifer International and MSG more, buy a book a month from my local independent bookshop, send my kids $20 out of the blue, a Moroccan mint tea with my wife at our local coffee/tea shop. 

I hate that it has to be this way because I want to support what they do, it is just a cost thing for me at this point. Maybe I will look at a subscription price instead of getting it at my local newsstand, but that is another issue in itself.