The first time you came across 
Rookie’s website, it was already 
a graveyard. It was March 2020, 
you had a surplus of free time 
on your hands, and you were 
reading interviews with Elizabeth 
Meriwether, the creator of the 
sitcom 
New 
Girl. 
Upon 
first 
glance, Rookie’s website appeared 
anything but dead: an online 
magazine by and for teenagers.
Created 
by 
Tavi 
Gevinson 
in 2011, the vivacious teal-and-
white site features thoughtful 
art and writing pertinent to the 
current zeitgeist. As you read 
further, you were charmed by 
the frank yet playful writing by 
Emma Straub; you spent the rest 
of your night scrolling through 
the interview series “Why Can’t 
I Be You?” It was easy to get lost 
in the mix of readers, journalists 
and celebrities remarking on pop 
culture, feminism and adolescence, 
with their art sharing honest 
experiences of friendship, sex, 
art and life: things that felt so 
prescient but seldom acknowledged 
genuinely. Upon further inspection 
of the website, it becomes clearer 
that Rookie folded in 2018; a thin 
red banner sticks to the top of the 
screen, stressing as you scroll that 
“THIS IS AN ARCHIVE. THIS 
SITE IS NO LONGER BEING 
UPDATED.” Upon realizing this, 
you were overtaken by a passing 
wave of loneliness for the next few 
days: How could this adolescent 
hub of imagination, whose pulse 
was so loud to you that it seemed 
almost deafening, already be dead 
before you could see it alive?
You found Rookie a few weeks 
before your 18th birthday, at the 
tail end of your legally-bestowed 
childhood — before the reality of 
the pandemic set in, and when 
momentary relief from the absence 
of in-person work outweighed long-
term devastation for many. You 

read the essay “A Fork in the Road” 
by Upasna Barath when you began 
to question your college major, 
listened intently to the Rookie 
podcast with Lisa Hanawalt while 
re-watching “Bojack Horseman,” 
and 
scrolled 
through 
issues 
archives, desperate to know more.
You spent days clicking through 
the origins of the Live Through 
This category, overcome with 
respect for the authors who 
managed to so eloquently make 
maps for those who came seeking 
to overcome traditional and new 
growing pains after feeling around 
in the dark for so long. The content 
was fun, but also took readers 
(mostly teenage girls) seriously, 
while simultaneously accepting 
them as they were, all at the same 
time — you know how rare this is. 
You never felt like a good teenager. 
You never broke out of your shell, 
reading Rookie late into the night, 
the brightness of the screen searing 
your eyes, while days that were 
supposed to make the high school 
experience worth it, like prom and 
graduation, passed in quarantine. 
So much of high school was spent 
feeling like you weren’t close 
enough to the ideal person, and 
until you finally do make it there, 
you assume you are worthless. 
Reading Rookie Magazine felt 
different, though, because it was 
always full of love for its readers. 
Not conditional, like everything felt 
back then, not because you were the 
best, or you took up the least space, 
but because you were alive and 
thoughtful and full of love.
You still don’t know if you can 
articulate why Rookie was so 
fascinating to you, beyond the 
obvious joy and acceptance of its 
art. Rookie was never about the 
“best” piece of writing; it was about 
finding beauty in the stories that 
teens expressed out of love for their 
communities and craft itself, quietly 
firm expressions of humanity that 
made you feel a little less alone, in 
their explorations of everything 
from writer’s block, birth control, 

graduating high school and much, 
much more. Scrolling through 
issues made you see the impact 
that magazines could have on 
their audience: Unfamiliar with 
this philosophy, you were freshly 
done with architecture college 
applications and receiving your 
International Baccalaureate Visual 
Arts grades — to you, art was still a 
zero-sum game. Rookie is the first 
place where you began to question 
the competition you were instilled 
with.
Gevinson writes that Rookie 
“had been founded, in part, as a 
response to feeling constantly 
marketed to in almost all forms of 
media; to being seen as a consumer 
rather than a reader or person.” 
Viewing the reader as a consumer, 
and therefore, the writer as a 
producer removes the human 
irrationality that is critical to art. 
The words of Rookie impressed 
you because they made your, and 
so many others’, inner worlds real: 
They took off the pressure to be 
something widely-loved and easy 
to stomach. This active defiance 
of artistic worth made all the 
difference; 
suddenly, 
speaking 
didn’t seem so alienating anymore. 
Slowly, you made your way through 
your first year of college and began 
to release your grip on the ties you 
held in your childhood so tightly 
that your wrists burned. The 
archived website wasn’t a sign of 
what you missed anymore, but a 
memory that shows you what art 
can be. 
Now you carry a little bit of 
Rookie in your pocket wherever 
you go. Sustaining the magazine 
was clearly an exhausting amount 
of labor, and Rookie struck gold 
with its investors that allowed 
the site to remain free of charge 
(though it was overwhelmed with 
adertisements and influence from 
large media companies hoping to 
bend the site to their will), but you 
can’t help it: The childish part of 
you still waits, still holds out hope 
that history’s reiteration of Rookie 

will appear soon. You can’t help 
it; you scramble when you see a 
new New Yorker essay by Tavi, 
you press play immediately for an 
episode from Barath’s hibernating 
“Wait for It” podcast, you sift for 

Roxane Gay’s Goodreads reviews 
because you know how funny she is 
from the Rookie podcast. Because, 
my god, you don’t think you’ve seen 
a purer labor of community care 
that you can understand. Rookie is 

dead now, and you are long gone, 
but spirits are celebrated. If you 
see young Tavi and the old Rookie 
team, make sure to give them your 
thanks for giving you a place to stay 
for a while.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
6 — Wednesday, December 7, 2022 

The first time you came across Rookie’s website, it was already a graveyard

MEERA KUMAR
Daily Arts Writer

Chasing ghosts at 
Borders

There’s a track on Jon Brion’s 
unparalleled 2004 soundtrack to 
“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless 
Mind” that’s been playing in my 
head lately. “Bookstore” runs 
only 52 seconds, but its character, 
formed from eerie strings played 
in reverse, is unforgettable. In the 
movie, the track plays as Joel goes 
to meet Clementine at a bookstore 
where she works. 
The logo is never shown, but I’ve 
always known it was a Borders. 
The warm colors, those angled 
shelves rising just to chin level — 
the setting of the bookstore chain 
is etched into my memory. But 
I’m one of the last kids who grew 
up with it. Fifth graders today 
have no memory of the place I’m 
about to describe. And when they, 
like I once did, watch “Eternal 
Sunshine” in late high school or 
early college and think they’ve 
found a niche and unknown 
brilliance in it, that scene in the 
bookstore will be nothing more 
than that: a scene in a bookstore. 
It’s more to me.
***
The carpet in the kids section. 
That’s what I remember. The 
space-themed, cosmic blue/purple 
carpet with yellow stars and rocket 
ships, flattened in the center lines 
of the aisles where people walked, 
where they stopped to tilt their 
heads at the spines on the shelves. 
The shelves were taller then, if 
only because I was smaller. 
There was a little platform 
where 
they’d 
give 
readings, 
where authors would presumably 
sit and leaf through their new 
picture book to a crowd of adoring 
kindergartners, though I never 
went to one of those. My Borders 
was in Grosse Pointe, Mich., just 
down the block on Kercheval 
Avenue from Starbucks and Ace 
Hardware. There used to be a 
Jacobson’s 
department 
store 
across the street, but it closed 
before I was born or soon after 
and I only know because my mom 
mentions it whenever we drive by. 
I went there to look for Percy 
Jackson 
and 
Warriors 
books 
— the two series that held my 
third-grade class in a pop-literary 
chokehold. I have a Harry Potter 
box set somewhere that I know for 

a fact was purchased by my dad at 
the 2007 midnight release of “The 
Deathly Hallows,” the one my 
brother commanded him to camp 
out for in his stead. 
Those are the things I saw 
myself. Here are some I didn’t.
Borders was founded here in 
Ann Arbor. The first store opened 
in 1971 at 209 S. State St. — now 
the site of a CVS — but the owners 
relocated a few years later to 303 S. 
State — now the site of the MDen 
— and in 1994 to the corner of 
Maynard Street and East Liberty 
Street — now home to Knight’s 
Steakhouse, 
Sweetwaters 
and 
Slurping Turtle.
The Liberty location would 
remain the flagship Borders for 
the next 17 years. The space used to 
be a Jacobson’s department store, 
which my mom would find funny. 
But 
the 
company 
quickly 
expanded beyond Ann Arbor. 
They opened their second store in 
Birmingham, Mich., sometime in 
the mid-1980s, just a few minutes 
away from where I went to high 
school. When the founders sold 
the company to Kmart in 1992, 
there were 21 Borders locations 
across the U.S. That number rose 
to the hundreds as the company 
opened franchises, airport stores 
and went international. 
By the mid-2000s, Borders was 
the ubiquitous bookstore chain. 
Some had cafés and sold Starbucks 
coffee. They sold CDs and CD 
players, branded mugs and toys 
 
— Bakugan and Beyblades, if I 
remember correctly. They had an 
endless assortment of bookmarks 
and, of course, they sold books. 
Real, physical books. And that 
might’ve been why they didn’t last.
There were over 500 Borders 
locations in the U.S. in 2010. A year 
later, there were none.
The company had been bleeding 
money. They hadn’t turned a profit 
since 2006. It occurs to me that 
my memories of Borders were all 
from this time when things were 
turning bad, though I never knew 
as much. I can think now only 
of the quiet among the shelves 
and the smell of fresh paper. But 
behind the scenes, the model was 
failing.
Amazon arrived in 1995. As he 
is wont to do, Jeff Bezos killed a 
source of happiness. 

Design by Leah Hoogterp

puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com

By Rich Norris
©2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
12/07/22

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Patti Varol and Joyce Nichols Lewis

12/07/22

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, December 7, 2022

ACROSS
1 GI on the lam
5 Annual festival in 
Austin, TX
9 Tot’s crumb 
catcher
12 Rural strolling 
spot
13 Short dog, for 
short
14 Forearm bone
15 French 
preposition
16 Rationale
17 Gloomy aura
18 Nissan sedans 
since 1982
20 Put away, as loot
22 “Blade Runner” 
actor Rutger __
23 Lives
24 Take away
26 Brought up
27 “Night” author 
Wiesel
28 Finance guru 
Suze
30 1815 classic 
whose title 
character is 
played by Anya 
Taylor-Joy in a 
2020 film
34 Common interest 
group
35 “Same”
36 Campus bigwig
37 Novelist Morrison
38 Derby town in 
Surrey, England
39 Frigg’s husband
40 Steakhouse order
42 Steakhouse order
44 Database 
systems giant
47 Jousting weapon
48 Revenue source 
in many a free 
app
50 Counterpoint 
melody
52 Kid’s plea for 
permission
53 Fairway chunk
55 “__ girl!”
56 “Law & Order: 
SVU” co-star
57 Storm rescue op
58 2007 U.S. 
Women’s Open 
winner Cristie
59 Lil Wayne’s 
“__ Carter V”
60 File partner
61 “Grand” ice 
cream brand

DOWN
1 “Sad to say ... ”
2 Greet from 
across the street, 
say
3 Phrase of unity 
in the Pledge of 
Allegiance
4 Itinerary for 
touring speakers
5 Health club 
amenities
6 Crosses (out)
7 Winter getaway 
need, maybe
8 Brunch dish 
with ham and 
peppers
9 Malaise, with 
“the”
10 Cove, e.g.
11 Gets thinner, in 
a way
14 Food named for 
how it’s baked, 
and a hint to 
each set of 
circles
16 Flatbed scanner 
relative
19 Blues-rocker 
Chris
21 Lumberjack 
competition 
projectile

24 Mortgage 
balance, e.g.
25 Nonsense
26 Ulan __: former 
Anglicization 
of Mongolia’s 
capital
29 Matterhorn and 
Weisshorn: Abbr.
31 Treated, in a 
way
32 Primary way in
33 Dudek of “Mad 
Men”

41 Matterhorn or 
Weisshorn
43 Courtroom VIPs
44 Footnote abbr.
45 Jazz drummer 
Max
46 Sleep 
disturbance
49 Operatic icon
50 Tie up at the pier
51 Patches, as a 
driveway
54 Part of a moving 
story

SUDOKU

Sudoku Syndication
http://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/

1 of 1
6/4/09 2:22 PM

2

1
7

1
4
5

2

1

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5

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9

7
3

2

5
1
8

2

1

8

3
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2
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4

WHISPER

“Please submit 
something to 
the Daily 
Whisper.”

“Unpopular 
opinion: wasabi 
peas are an elite 
snack.”

WHISPER

By Hoang-Kim Vu & Christine Simpson
©2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/30/22

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Patti Varol and Joyce Nichols Lewis

11/30/22

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, November 30, 2022

ACROSS
1 French “Thank 
you”
6 Political alliance
10 Strongbox
14 Starters
15 New York school 
named after a 
Scottish isle
16 “Grand slam” 
awards acronym
17 African herbivore
18 “Double 
Indemnity” genre
19 Filmmaker 
Ephron
20 Shoplifting?
23 Huffy mood
24 Pacific Northwest 
st.
25 “Lady Bird” 
Oscar nominee 
Metcalf
29 Insider trading?
32 Male with horns
35 Road goo
36 Cushioned seat
37 La madre de su 
prima
38 Family docs
41 Food with altered 
DNA
43 Martin’s “The 
West Wing” role
44 Lobby group for 
seniors
46 Big primate
48 Erodes
50 Money 
laundering?
54 Depress
55 Group of whales
56 Greeting Down 
Under
60 “I did nothing 
wrong!,” or an 
apt title for this 
puzzle?
63 Essential nutrient 
for the immune 
system
66 Pulled strings?
67 Bushy-tailed 
canines
68 Field
69 Aware of
70 Singer Patsy
71 Dollop
72 Blast from the __
73 Snow vehicles

DOWN
1 Gas station 
shops

2 “__ Frome”: 
Edith Wharton 
novel
3 Hands-on 
healing practice
4 “Do my eyes 
deceive me?”
5 “My time to 
shine!”
6 Using only ones 
and zeros
7 Least strict
8 “Put a lid __!”
9 Deterrent in a 
parking garage
10 Parodies
11 Before now
12 Pro
13 “Wheels down” 
stat, for short
21 Jupiter or Mars
22 Suede property
26 Spanish wine 
region
27 Deduce
28 “Zounds!”
30 __ chart: 
corporate 
diagram
31 Move one’s tail
32 Males with 
antlers
33 Jeweled 
accessory
34 Like cornstalks?

39 Spot for fast cash
40 Mud wrap venue
42 Possess
45 Human-powered 
taxi
47 Competitive 
video gaming
49 Appetizer served 
with duck sauce
51 Brooklyn NBA 
player
52 Family-style 
Asian dish
53 Journalist Tarbell

57 Carter of 
“Designing 
Women”
58 Modify
59 Agreements
61 Mama’s mama
62 Ozone-
destroying 
chemicals: Abbr.
63 Zig counterpart
64 Not online, online
65 Prefix for 
classical and 
gothic

JULIAN WRAY
Book Beat Editor

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

