THE MAGAZINE, San Francisco - Group of four posters

San Francisco, CA: The Magazine. Light shelfwear. Very good. Two 8.5 x 11", printed on color stock paper; one 11 x 14", printed on medium stock paper (R. Crumb); and one 13 x 19", printed on a glossy medium stock paper (Lee Conklin). Designers include: R. Crumb, Jim Osborne, Irons, and Lee Conklin. The Magazine, a specialty retailer in the heart of San Francisco dealing in back-date magazines, ephemera and erotica, opened in the Spring of 1973. The owner and proprietor, Trent Dunphy, began with the front half of a small shop at 839 Larkin Street (currently the home of The Shooting Gallery alternative art space) with magazines standing in cardboard boxes on saw-horse tables. The original idea was not only to offer back issues of popular magazines to readers, collectors and aficionados of print media but also to provide a place where fans of erotica of all stripes could find a wide range of old and current material. And, it provided a place where magazines and books could be traded as well as bought or sold. Over the intervening years, as used bookstores steadily reduced the space they once allotted to old magazines, this little shop flourished. After its first decade, the shop moved south one block to 731 Larkin Street and occupied two storefronts for the next ten years. Finally, in 1993 the shop moved to its current location at 920 Larkin Street between Geary and Post in a handsome old shopfront which had been the optometry shop of Dr. Maurice Weiss for more than sixty years.