The Joy of Mail
And how I’ve recently rekindled it in my life. Plus a new raffle and still more stick figures in peril!
I’ve always loved mail. When I was a kid, it seemed like magic that you could scribble a name and address on an envelope, drop it in a box, and be fairly certain that it would arrive at its intended destination. And receiving mail felt like getting a surprise gift even though it wasn’t Christmas or your birthday. Just the sight of our local mailman approaching our house on his daily rounds was enough to get me excited.
When you enter adulthood, you learn that mail for grown-ups isn’t as much fun. Bills, fundraising appeals, government notifications, insurance forms — pfeh. Fortunately, I also became a zine publisher during my 20s, which was great from a postal perspective because email and electronic payments didn’t yet exist, so people would mail me fan letters, send me their own zines, send checks or well-concealed cash for back-issues and merch, and so on. I developed a near-Pavlovian pleasure response upon seeing a handwritten envelope in my daily stack of mail, because I knew it was probably zine-related mail instead of the boring grown-up mail. Mail still felt like magic.
A bit later, as I turned 30, I became a freelance journalist. Most magazines and websites in those days still paid their freelancers by mailing out paper checks, so any day could be payday! Yet another reason to be excited by the mailman’s daily approach.
Nowadays, of course, First Class mail has largely been supplanted by email, text messaging, and e-payments, but that hasn’t dimmed my fascination with all things postal. I have a section of a vintage mail chute mounted in my apartment, and over the past several years I’ve written about the history of mailbox design, a mailman who wears throwback postal uniforms, the wide range of “Return to Sender” pointing hand designs, and the design of Air Mail envelopes and security envelopes.
Still, mail as something to be actively enjoyed on a daily basis has largely faded from my life (and, I’m guessing, from yours). I still feel a little tingle of anticipation when our local letter carrier arrives each afternoon, but that tingle is now mostly muscle memory, and the daily delivery is almost always a disappointment. (Still, it could be worse: Denmark is preparing to end letter deliveries altogether!)
All of which leads me to a really great idea that my friend Rob Walker has come up with. As you may recall, he’s the guy behind The Art of Noticing, and we recently interviewed each other. Like me, Rob has paid subscribers and free subscribers; the latter group can read only the first few paragraphs of Rob’s paywalled posts. So he recently offered some of his free subscribers a deal: He would comp them a three-month paid subscription, and all they had to do was ask — by regular mail. A fun experiment, no?
And it worked! Rob received dozens of letters and postcards. As he recently wrote when describing this little project, “I can’t begin to describe how pleasing, how energizing, it was to get so much cool mail all at once.”
I loved this idea so much that I asked Rob if I could steal it, and he said sure. So a few weeks ago I sent a note to Inconspicuous Consumption free subscribers with a high rate of engagement (i.e., they open most of the emailed IC posts, even though they can read only the first few paragraphs) and offered to comp them a three-month paid sub as long as they made the request via a handwritten letter in a hand-addressed envelope. Using a typewriter was also acceptable. But no computer printers!
A few days later, I received a letter. Two more showed up the next day, another two the day after that, and so on. The final count, after two weeks, was two dozen — not bad! The experience has even revived my old Pavlovian emotional response to seeing a hand-addressed envelope in my daily pile of mail.
Naturally, I’m hoping that at least some of the people who took advantage of this offer will enjoy their three-month trial subscription so much that they’ll upgrade to paid status when their three months are up. But even if nobody ends up doing that, I’ll have had the fun of receiving a bunch of letters from IC readers.
That fun has come in many forms. As you can see in the photo above, for example, some readers put a bit of extra creativity into how they addressed their envelopes; others used some particularly interesting stamps; still others wrote some really nice things in their letters. Then there was the reader who said he knows I hate the color purple but had nonetheless written his letter in purple ink because it’s his favorite color. Sort of a “Sorry, not sorry” move. That made me laugh.
And there were some enjoyable little surprises. As I opened one reader’s envelope, I noticed that his rubber-stamped return address included a Mets logo, even though the address was in California. Then I read his letter and learned that he’s a native Brooklynite and lifelong Mets fan who now lives in Anaheim.
Another reader seemed to capture the spirit of the entire enterprise by using a Pete Seeger stamp and then drawing a little word ballon that had Seeger saying, “Unplug!,” which is sort of like telling people to send physical letters instead of emails.
This experiment has gotten me thinking about other ways to incorporate mail into Inconspicuous Consumption. With that in mind, I’m happy to announce a raffle: If you would like a checkout code for a free IC T-shirt (any of the ones listed here; note that all of the designs are available in many colors and styles), please send your raffle entry in the form of a handwritten or typewritten letter, sealed in a handwritten or typewritten envelope, to this address:
Paul Lukas
776 Westminster Rd.
Brooklyn, NY 11230
I’ll select a random winner from all the entries I receive by next Saturday, September 20th. Then I’ll send the discount code, along with a little bonus prize, to the lucky winner — by regular mail, of course.
Stick Figures in Peril, Continued
Last month’s post about stick figures in peril continues to inspire reader submissions. The latest one comes from Chris LaGrow:
“That’s from 2018 — pre-pandemic,” says Chris. “I worked at Walmart as a side job, and that sign was in the ‘Employees Only’ area. It always made me laugh.”
Meanwhile, reader Claude Jacques sent in another example of stick figures who need to find a restroom, pronto:
Claude says he took that photo at the La Spezia train station in Rome in 2018. The three lines over each figure’s head add a nice bit of Keith Haring-esque urgency.
Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. You can contact him here.
I mostly work from home now, and I still check for the mail with great anticipation and, mostly, disappointment. I do still order a fair number of CDs from independent musicians, so they are a nice find when I get one.
Your mention of a mail chute reminded me of something I hadn't thought of in years. I worked in IT for Bank of New York's Mutual Funds division from 1988-1993. For the first few years I worked there we were located at 90 Washington Street in lower Manhattan.
It was always difficult to get data cables run from floor to floor, since at the time the cables we used were primarily thick coaxial cables, so at one point if was decided that the mail chute, which was rarely used, would be repurposed as a cable channel. It seemed to represent the change in the way we communicated pretty well.
If you want to forge some excitement over mail, I have personal examples
Get children (oh boy I ordered them a cute outfit! Grandma sent money!)
Start a collection (can be as easy as trading cards or cancelled stamps)
Send old school thank you notes when possible (practice what you preach, be the good you want to see in the world, etc)
Your mileage may vary on the above