Every Kiosk or newsstand is a cluster of daily journals and magazines graphically screaming for at- tention, looking like a packed collage with a baroque horror-vacui aesthetic.

Kiosks are interfaces for printed communication, since
the pre-internet they were diffusors of pornography and mainstream personal investigation of sexual desire. Which adolescent never stood in front of that corner where the erotic magazines are? Staring at the covers with a crooked gaze, their head pointing in another direction, but their eyes uncomfortably turned to look towards framed breasts ‘n bulges. Frequently the persons working inside are familiar characters from the neighbourhood. They wouldn’t mind if you’d buy some gay or lesbian erotic magazine together with a bigger issue of Whatever-Today to wrap it inside. Neither would they remember if you spent too much time looking discretely at the covers of sexy magazines; they’d instead erase the browser history once you paid your sus- picious papers, minding nothing else except for what is to be seen from that window – most of the time half covered by a customer’s fuckface or by the inexpensive souvenirs hanging from above.

Occasionally spots for gambling or betting, aside from magazines and newspapers they mysteriously trade all sorts of superfluous things. Birthday cards, stickers, key- rings, little collectable items that change with a generation but that uses the Kiosk to spread. We got assigned in the 90s with Garbage-Pail Kids, “Pogs”, and as issues for thematic collections (like minerals, or dinosaurs) that would last a season at their best. Kiosks seem often like functional places poor of intimacy, therefore so trust- worthy you’d let them the keys of your house to be picked up later by some- one else.