It’s RIP to the magazine but worry ye not for the web site will still very much live on!

It is with a heavy heart and slightly misted-up eyes that we have to announce the closure of Cooler Magazine. The paper version not the web site that is. Thankfully our virtual incarnation is very much alive and will continue to radically enhance the screen of your laptop, tablet or mobile device, not to mention inside of your brain, whenever you visit it. But our printed words and the dreamy pictures that have for so long accompanied them will be no more.

Cooler Magazine has been going since 2005. A sleazy brofest of an era when no other boardsports magazines for girls existed, and the so-called unisex mags barely featured women at all unless they were wags and/or topless and wearing g-strings (with the odd honourable exception, Whitelines, Huck, for example). [A quick reminder on why we need girls only editorial spaces here]

Since then we’ve printed 44 issues. Never did we stand at the altar of celebrity or chat about diets or (we hope at least) do anything that would make our readers feel bad about their bodies. In a sea of women’s magazines that are still all too ready to make you feel shit about yourself, we only ever wanted you to feel as awesome as we firmly believe you are.

Be they surfers, snowboarders, skateboarders or cyclists we were and have always been about positive role models, deep (ish!), creative thinking and sharing the stoke, with exercise as a happy accidental by-product of doing the action sports that you love. These are sentiments our web site will continue to embody going forwards.

We didn’t know the last issue was our last before it went to print or we’d have penned a proper printed goodbye. Maybe our designer Kirsty subconsciously knew though as she made the spine black when all previous issues had been white.

We like the fact we went for the mash up cover though. It featured our trademark mix of street fashion fused with big boardsports loving. It starred the snowboarder Jenny Jones, surfers Stephanie Gilmore and Kassia Meador and skater Lois Pendlebury. They’re probably four of the raddest and most inspirational women we’ve ever featured in the mag, both in terms of talent and their ridiculous levels of creativity. So it’s fitting they should adorn our final cover.

I love magazines but I’m not a refusenik about the internet. I easily read more sane and awesome writing than I ever did before cables and wifi replaced printers and paper as the main method of getting others’ thoughts into our minds. And the great news is we’ll get to do more of that in the future. It’s by no means the end, just a fond farewell to the magazine.

Massive thanks and fist bumps to those that have helped us along the way, and of course the biggest thanks to you the readers.

Ride on and keep tuning in to coolermag.com we’ve got some truly big adventures on the horizon.

Sam

Ps A note for subscribers. You should have already received a letter from our mailhouse. If not please wait a couple of days and then if you still haven’t heard contact [email protected] or +44 (0)1795 414628. Thanks!