A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH DUB MAGAZINE'S EDITOR JOHN JARASA


When a magazine has coined a term, you better recognize. If you are a baller and everyone aspires to be one, you are rolling 20s and if you are rolling 20s, you are rolling on DUBs. It is a no brainer why MTV Cribs has a DUB car special episode. How a magazine rises this fast in such a relative short period of time is a testament to its knowledge of the pulse of the back alleys as well as main street. Apart from Maxim, DUB Magazine is "the" publishing success story. And along with Maxim, the only publishing success story in two decades. I sat down with DUB Magazine's Editor, John Jarasa and the following is commercial free, unedited and in his own words.


FRED JUNG: Who is the average DUB reader?

JOHN JARASA: DUB reader, average age is twenty-seven, twenty-seven and a half is our median age. Ninety-two percent of our readers are male. Twenty percent are Asian. But then of course, the largest majority reader we have is either Latin or African-American.


FJ: Where do you envision DUB in 2010?

JOHN JARASA: In ten years, it would be the goal for the magazine to probably distribute 500,000-600,000 issues and going monthly.


FJ: Is that attainable via the current growth rate?

JOHN JARASA: Yeah, definitely, Fred. Just last year, we were doing 87,000 issues and then currently, we are at 150,000. We are growing rapidly. As demand for the magazine increases, we bump up the circulation accordingly. If you have seen MTV Cribs, we do the car edition with them and every time we do that, every weekend we're getting thousands of extra subscriptions. So a lot of the co-promotional things that we do with magazines, with broadcast networks, really increases our circulation.


FJ: And what do you attribute to DUB's success? After all, you and I go back to Robin Leech and Lifestyles.

JOHN JARASA: Exactly, I think a large part of it is the need to be unique. Back in the days, like you said, Fred, this is nothing different. Everybody had a Bentley. Everybody had a Benz, but no one took it to the proportions that they are doing now. If you remember way back when, Liberace was flamboyant with his clothing, his jewelry, with his cars and he was one of the few people to really take it that far. Whereas now, a lot of these entertainers or people who can afford it, they want to do it. They want to be flashy. They want the spinning rims. They want to make a statement.


FJ: Who has the better rides, athletes or musicians?

JOHN JARASA: Better cars, wow, when you talk in quantity, I would have to say, it would be the Hot Boys or they formerly called themselves the Cash Money Millionaires. In terms of quantity, those guys have roughly fifty to sixty car amongst them.


FJ: They're like Jay Leno.

JOHN JARASA: Yeah, yeah, they have more than Jay Leno. Jay Leno's are more high priced, more exotic. But these guys, everything they use in their videos, that's their cars. As far as being exotic, it would be a toss up between Wyclef Jean of the Fugees, him and Busta Rhymes. Busta Rhymes has the Lamborgini Murcielago as well as the Diablo. Wyclef Jean has a Mclaren F-1. It is crazy. A lot of people too, they don't realize that they are a lot of entertainers out there that go far beyond just the rims. You think a lot of times, they put TVs. They put rims. You have people like Wyclef Jean. They are serious collectors. You've got Funkmaster Flex, who collects the vintage vehicles.


FJ: DUB also sponsors car shows.

JOHN JARASA: OK, we do the D-Day Car Show, the West Coast's only celebrity car show. So far, we have been doing it twice a year. Plans for this year, 2003, is to take the show national and to hit five spots nationally, which includes Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona, New Jersey, Chicago, and Washington D.C., and Los Angeles, of course. The one in Los Angeles will either be at the Irwindale Speedway or in San Bernadino at the National Orange Fairgrounds. It is the West Coast's only celebrity car show and concert. What we are doing is we are bringing you over seven hundred vehicles, but included in the seven hundred vehicles, we have cars from Shaquille O'Neal. We have cars from Brian McKnight, the rock band Korn, Verne "Mini Me" Troyer, "Sugar" Shane Mosley, and on top of the cars and celebrity vehicles, we have celebrity performances like rap stars. We like to, as a precursor to the concert, we do an extreme show with jumping ramps and motorcycles. The key thing about our show is you have a lot of people that bring celebrities to shows, but they are cornered off. They are in a VIP room. Whereas in our shows, they are walking around. You will run into "Sugar" Shane Mosley. "Mini Me" Troyer rolls around in his little golf cart. People actually get to see them. It is a full, hands on experience for our readers.


FJ: DUB is a household name in not just the barrio or ghettos, but middle America.

JOHN JARASA: Definitely, as far as I am concerned, I think it is an honor to work for DUB. I have worked for other automotive magazines before, but nothing to this scope. This has been something that I have seen grow from day one where we used to say that we were from DUB Magazine and we wanted to do this and we want you to advertise and we would get the cold shoulder and get ignored. Now, it is a whole different ballgame where people are starting to realize the publishing power that we have.


FJ: It is uniquely So Cal.

JOHN JARASA: (Laughing) Right, it is completely Southern California.

Fred Jung is the Editor-In-Chief and was just asked to leave Joe Millionaire's chateau. Comments? Email Him