The Crack, March 2008

Website: www.thecrackmagazine.com
Cost: free
60 pages plus cover
Strapline: AN ABUNDANCE OF NORTHEAST music: fashion: clubs: cinema: theatre: comedy: queer: art: dance

Recipes: none. There's two restaurant reviews though.

Favourite article: none. I couldn't find one I liked.

I shouldn't be too hard on The Crack, really. It's a glorified listings magazine rather than a paid-for glossy, focusing on what's on in the north east. There's lots of short articles relating to forthcoming events, a bit of a style section, and two two-page spreads (on the Gateshead International Jazz Festival and the forthcoming production of Equus at the Theatre Royal). That's all topped off by the important stuff - lots and lots of listings, grouped together by theme.

In the main, it does what it says on the tin. It really does contain an abundance of information about music, fashion et al, all laid out in logical fashion, so it's easy to read and find what's on in the theatre or cinema, say, on any given day.

I don't know if it's me, though, but I don't open it with sense of excitement that I used to. I've no idea how long The Crack's been going, but I've been in Newcastle 10 years, and from what I can remember of the late 1990s (given that I probably can't tell you what I had for tea last week you'll have to judge for yourselves how reliable my memory is) it was always around.

The comment articles seem very world-weary these days, out to knock anything and everything off its pedestal. Bizarrely, however, the restaurant reviews get more and more sycophantic - I nearly fell off my chair with excitement when the Flatbread Cafe got a truly awful review a couple of months ago. It's starting to look tired (both in terms of content and design, especially in comparison to the zingy website), and in places irrelevant, I think.

Part of the problem could, of course, be that I'm long past my time as a student - and I suspect that they make up a large part of the target market for this publication, assuming they haven't all wandered off to web 2.0, and are twittering themselves to death in a heap somewhere on Facebook. I'd like to think that thirty-somethings are relevant in this day and age, and I'm certain there must be some out there with a better grasp of the meaning of the words 'social life' than me, but I'm not sure The Crack is catering to them.