Sarah Buitendach: Living vicariously through a 20-year-old

Two decades ago, a fella called Mark Zuckerberg launched this outlandish internet contraption called TheFacebook. I was not the earliest adopter of this universe-tilting social-media tool and so this is certainly artistic licence, but I do not find it difficult to imagine my awkward 21-year-old intern self, sitting in the Style magazine offices in Craighall, “poking” my friends on the new network. A day of PC-bound writing perked up by the occasional, completely irrelevant, cringe-inducing FB status update. What a vibe. Sarah is… really loving the new P. Diddy tune. Sarah is… so, so tired. Work is hectic.

 Those “wild” early magazine years were broken up by late-night nachos at Catz Pyjamas in Melville and later-night drinks down the drag at Tokyo Star, where my sister was an emo bar girl. This made me briefly edgy by proxy — but otherwise, I was anything but. A surviving polaroid taken of me that year for the magazine has me in a strange Victorian-sleeved outfit, lime-green eye shadow, and an asymmetrical hairstyle that was never fashionable.

By comparison, back then, Joburg was hitting its cool stride. In the warm-up years to the 2010 Fifa World Cup, there was something undeniably electric about our town. It had the fizz of a place starting to flex its potential. Who could imagine that, in hindsight, the maintained roads, neatly paved sidewalks, and intact water pipes of that moment would seem so exceptional?

Nevertheless, while I was having awkward pictures taken, over the neatly cut verges and up Jan Smuts Avenue, an instantly chic new magazine — Wanted — was manifesting. Imagine emerging into the world so stylish and smart from day one. For a youngster raised on Fair Lady, Garden & Home, and Time, it was mind-blowing to consider that you might combine the seriousness and smarts of a newspaper with the sexiness and frivolity of a magazine.

I’d not even glimpsed a Financial Times back then, so had zero concept of the How to Spend It model on which Wanted had been based. Because my parents were stalwart Business Day subscribers, we all read it from the start. My mother was wont to raise an eyebrow and say of a fashion shoot, “And what is this? Why is this man wearing a pair of jeans on his head?”

Back then, the magazine would have drinks evenings for the city’s hot crowd (I think at the sadly shuttered Hyatt). The team would run report-backs, complete with social snaps of the functions, and I’d study the photos to get to the bottom of who was “in” enough to have cracked the nod. Founding editor Gary Cotterell created an aura of complete desirability around the brand. But he did it in a chic, very South African way. It was ours, but easily competitive with overseas titles too.

A friend recently gave me a pile of Wanteds from around 2011 and 2012. Flicking through them for this column, I was struck by how they have become an unexpected but unparalleled archive of exceptional local talent. It is amazing to consider that so many of the businesses profiled back then — Dokter and Misses, Tonic, and Black Coffee, for example — are still part of our creative landscape. And, to be reminded of the restaurants, hotels, shops, and “taste makers” that have come and gone is also a valuable trip of sorts.

Nostalgia can be a tricky thing. Distorted and overly rosy recollections seem to come with the territory. Where Wanted is concerned, this is not the case. For two decades it has served as an important (and exuberant) chronicle of our society, and there is value in this that, even as I type this, we don’t fully comprehend. Happy birthday to the coolest 20-year-old around.