The tales continue nationwide as Minneapolis-based, Three Dollar Bill’s publications The Source and LivingOut are nowhere to found, and advertisers and former employees are pissed. Apparently, local GLBT fashion/personal ad magazine, Lavender, has been calling around the country trying to check out what happened to the competition.
“A few weeks ago, CSFP publisher Tim Toonen received an e-mail from someone with Lavender Magazine & PowerPages Directory, LGBT publications that, like Three Dollar Bill headquarters, are located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This individual asked about the activities of The Source in Nashville, indicating that their efforts to contact Three Dollar Bill were unsuccessful, including the fact that when calling the Minneapolis office, the message received was that the mail box was full.”
Also in Nashville, Three Dollar Bill continued to sell advertising right up until the publication disappeared:
“Several of last year�s Nashville The Source advertisers were contacted in June and July about advertising in the next edition of The Source . Well-respected advertisers in the GLBT community, such as OutLoud! and Bart Durham, are not planning to risk any money on The Source this year. �We weren�t interested, of course,� says Joe Brant, with OutLoud! Department Store. (The phone number for the sales representative who contacted Brant now forwards to the same voicemail box which has been full for several weeks.)” [Link]
The last issue of LivingOut in Minneapolis was June 1, 2005, and according to their publisher that was the last time anyone has heard from Donna Gimbut.
In Chicago, it seems that advertising was sold, but nothing was ever distributed:
“After being approached by sales people from The Source , she bought a $500 ad in July of 2004. �They asked for the money upfront,� Hundt recalls. There were several errors on the proof The Source sent her, but when she tried to fax them the corrections, the fax number was not working. Their Chicago phone number had been disconnected. Hundt has since contacted the Better Business Bureau, the Chicago Attorney General, and the Minneapolis Attorney General, but she still has not heard from The Source or seen one copy of the directory distributed in Chicago.”
I think that Three Dollar Bill is screwed.
Here’s the history of the LivingOut saga:
The State of the Queer Press in the Twin Cities