FauxAmi Interview
Staf Magazine / Juan Jose Moya

by Jürgen Blümlein & Daniel Schnmid 2005 for FauxAmi

Staf.magazine is published four times yearly.
Iis the reference for independent culture (skate. sound. art. skate. street...) in Spain. Staf represents the best of Spanish , european and US underground culture! The mag has its pulse on what's new and hot-from home and abroad. And the best of all "Staf" magazine is free.

The only thing that pains me is that Staf is published in spanish! And it hurts not only me....

"I wish I could read spanish, to see if it's really as cool as it looks!" Glen E. Friedman

Hi Staf guys, hope you had a great weekend.


Yeah, right! we had a great weekend jurgen, we just did the release party of our first book published by staf "thenew.popbooks". its called “cuando las luces de la ciudad se apaguen” and its written by Francisco Daniel Medina (staf magazine writer, musician, Dj…), sooo we just have a good reason to enjoy with the friends, meet old friends, family… and have a nice moment!!! very funny!!!

Well a year ago FauxAmi got an email from the Staf mag- azine in which you asked for pictures from the Skate- boardfever exhibit in Berlin. How did you get notice about the exhibition?

Fuck! Im trying remember where I saw the skateboard fever exhibition first time. I think probably looking on internet contents, and just see your link and click, and wooooooahhh!!! I just see this amazing exhibition, with the art, history and the LIFE of our big love and hope: skateboard!!! I was like wooaaaaahh… we have to try to do this exhibition in our town Malaga, and after 1 year happened. not in Malaga finally, but Barcelona which has been great!!!!

So you guys are really good informed about the skate-scene all over europe?

Spain and our town Malaga has been always more informed about skate all over California, same than others countries I think… USA information is big everywhere. But nowadays, probably cause internet and everybody can be connected each other very easy, Europe scene is well known in spain, and especially in Malaga, where we have friends from different countries, especially from Sweden and finland. Lot of them are living and skating here. And events like bread and butter and especially skateboard fever help to build a culture community around skateboarding and street culture. For me is just amazing I can meet in exhibitions like skateboard fever people from UK, Germany, Sweden, France… with the same passions and dreams than us. Im seeing Europe more like a big country for skateboard nowadays than years ago for sure!!!

How and when did you come up with the idea of making a magazine?

Im doing magazines since 10 years ago with different names: ball of fury, resurreccion, staf…. I love doing fanzines, magazines, newsletters, books… i always wanted inform to my friends, and more people around spain about bands, events, review records never arrive here, no distribution, etc… and with the future I just to start to introduce more elements to my idea of perfect magazine with the tastes I love: skateboard, independent and innovative music, love, street and urban art, graphic design, friendship, illustration, etc… the idea about doing the new style of staf simply comes after to try to do a magazine interesting for everybody in the world (not only interesting for Spanish readers) with the contents I told you before. For me skateboard is a way of life, a culture with influences from music, art, street, sports and life in general. Just try to mix that well and show it to everybody. Everybody say the mix we are doing is cool! And I think they are right!! I mean we are not like others magazines which run a report about skateboarding but at the same time, in others pages they run a article about Outkast and Green Day, which is ok too… but that’s not our idea of skateboarding culture

What does the name Staf mean and how did you come to that name ?

STAF means “STAFF”, the group of people, the group of workers, etc… that’s basically whats staf, a group of friends and contributors around the world doing what they like, with total freedom to do what they want, where they want and when they want!

6.Where are you guys and the magazine located? And how many people are involved?

We are located in Malaga, Spain. Im the only person (Juan Jose Moya) full time doing the magazine, besides that Manolo Trivino works some hours per day with us, and Curro Oñate, he’s the main writer of Staf Magazine. He’s from Malaga, but he lives in Madrid right now. Besides that, we have lot of writers in Staf, such as Francisco Daniel Medina, friend from Malaga too, and contributors around Spain and the World. Right now, I think we are like 20 people, between writers, photographers, etc…

Pictures from the "We live sneakers" Staf exhibition

Did you study journalism and/or graphic design, or are you guys selfmade learners by doing?

I never studied graphic design or journalism. Totally selfmade learners: read, write, see, hear and eat!!! We fail we learn!!! Lose is more than hesitate!!!

You sent us a copy of Staf Magazine with the Berlin article and I was really surprised. The Mag looked great, a cool cover designed by Jeremy Fish and the Mag is for free! It´s not very common here in germany. How do you handle all of the work?

Thanks a lot for the nice words jurgen! Its really hard work, but when you are doing magazines for 8 years, I think its getting more easy in the future. Experience is very important for sure. I don’t know how I really handle all the work, Its just in my mind (the contents, etc…), and everyday I wake up I know what I have to do, coordination is the most important. You have to worry of everything, not only of the 5-6 pages cover interview. Everything is equally important in the magazine, since the cover to 1 review in the black and white pages!!! And when deadline is over, im more and more fast doing this. The magazine is free cause the advertisement. You know, we aren’t rich doing sales, we are doing less money than most of art, skateboard, fashion and music magazines, but we don’t care a shit!. The most important for me is we are 100% free independent magazine, we don’t have to suck any ass for advertise or for sells. The companies call us for advertisement cause they like our work and we send the magazine to the shops cause they want to distribute the free magazine, and people can take it if they want, if not its ok, cause somebody is gonna take it and somebody will like it.

There are also Staf Partys and exhibitions like the we love sneakers or the art sessions (**And now after a year you guys made it happen that the Skateboardfever exhibition came to Barcelona!!). What are the next plans ?*

Yeah, we have been doing Staf Parties for 5-6 years I think. Staf Parties are: DJ Sessions, Exhibitions, Tours to bands (from hardcore or noisecore to electro or pop or rock and roll, we are very open mind to music tastes!). we just try to find whatever reason to have party, enjoy the moments with friends and of course presents every new issue of Staf magazine. We Love Sneakers started 1 year ago. We did it in Malaga and Barcelona in 2005 and it was a great success!!! 2006 will see We Love Sneakers exhibition in different cities around Spain, such as Malaga, Tenerife, San Sebastian, Barcelona, Madrid…. its big collection of sneakers (around 400!!!) customized by tons of Spanish artists. The difference between we love sneakers and other sneakers exhibitions is We Love Sneakers is open to every art ways of expression (not only graffiti or street art, like most of people think is Sneakers related): illustration, comic, painting, graffiti, sculpture, VideoDj…

And now you will have the firts staf book*. *What is it about and who is involved ?

Im very happy how everything has turned very nice with our first book. Its called “Cuando Las luces de la ciudad se apaguen” (when the city lights turn off), and it has been written by one of my best friends (and Staf writer), Francisco Daniel Medina. Its a Novel with 176 pages, and illustrated by Malaga artists: David Medina “Davilock” and Curro Onate “The Beard”. It has been released by Staf, but its kinda collaboration with the writer. Hes amazing writer and he hadn’t any opportunity in a town like Malaga to see released his novel, so we help him with distribution, promotion, etc… Of course we love the book, and it has turned very very nice! I’m very surprised about it and very happy!!! I would prefer the writer explain whats novel about it, but basically its about young people group of friends (skaters, musicians…) are dreaming about his future, and when they are 27-28 they see life is not like they dream about it, but they try to make their dreams reality yet, etc… anyway, its very simple explanation, cause its 176 pages!!! The best is you read the novel, especially if you can read Spanish, hehe!!! You will love it for sure!!! You can get it here: www.stafmagazine.com

The next thing was to see how many great interviews you have with well know artists and Skaters. How do you get in contact with them?

Always by email. I think they answer our interviews and they contribute to our magazine cause they like what we are doing. They are identificated with our philosophy, essence and culture, and I think they are very happy to see somebody from Spain wanna interview them!

In the last couple of months I saw that you web content got bigger and bigger. People can also download the magazine at your web page as a pdf-file. Do you think the web will be more important one day than the printed version?

We wanna do more important the website, but never more important than the magazine (at least I wouldn’t like it), and I don’t think it will be more important than the printed version. I think paper is something special for us and rest of the people, and people love collect the magazine, got it in their hands, read it in holidays, in the beach, in the clubs, in shops… what I like of the online version is everybody can read and see your magazine around the world, not only people from Spain. That’s what I love about STAF MAGAZINE online. I wanted to do online version after got some emails from cities like Hong Kong, Finland, Sweden, UK, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles… very interested to see the magazine distributed in their countries and cities, which I think is just amazing! We are working on the online version of the magazine printed version. I hope its working 100% in December or Christmas.

The Staf DJ - Ex Boyfriends

What about future plans for the Mag? Are you planing on bringing out an english version ?

I (and a lot of people all over Europe) would really enjoy that because I would love to read the interviews!
we are getting ready for 2006 with 4 new Staf issues and 1 special photo issue for December 2006. i would love to do English version, but not yet, we go slow, sure but slow… hehehe. Anyway im more into about doing more copies of Spanish version and send a few thousands of copies of this to germany, USA, UK, France… some nice spots around the world! That will happen in 2007 or so I think. More projects… mmmm. Yeah we will have the 4-5 exhibitions of we love sneakers for 2006, and I think for the new year the new website will be ready with lot of info, interviews, news, exhibitions, photos, online shop…www.stafmagazine.com . we will be doing different exhibitions for 2006, to artists like Chris Pastras, Andy Howell… in Spain. And we wanna release our next book. 100% sure it will be Andy Howell Book, and we wanna it out in July or so. Besides that, we will be doing our anniversary Staf Parties in July too and we will be in bread and butter Barcelona collaborating in exhibitions, etc… 2006 will be more hard than 2005!!!

*Any Final Words?

Thanks to you guys and keep up with the good work!!
Thanks a lot Jurgen for all your support. I wanna say hi to Daniel and all the fauxami and skateboard fever crew. Barcelona was a great skateboard exhibition and you did an amazing work!!! You rules!!!
You can contact us here:
>>staf@stafmagazine.com

>>www.stafmagazine.com

and the Staf webspecial for the "Skatebaordfever" exhibition in Barcelona you will find here: www.stafmagazine.com/skateboardfever