By Bruno Bornsztein, April, 2003 — Mark Baumgarten’s toilet has a thick, brown rope tied around its base. The rope snakes off the water-stained porcelain to the left and lies in a coiled heap below a huge window. The rope, Baumgarten says, is more than 50 yards long.

The view from the bathroom, a whitewashed, wood-walled segmentation of his sixth floor apartment/office, is expansive. The Minneapolis skyline is framed on one side by rows of grain elevators, on the other by the redbrick buildings of the University of Minnesota.

The rope, Baumgarten says, is his fire escape. The building has none, and his mom wanted to make sure he had a way out in case of emergency, he says.

And although there’s been no emergency, Baumgarten, 24, says sometimes he still feels like he needs to escape.

The reason?

Lost Cause Magazine, a local music magazine that Baumgarten started last year.

Lost Cause is a free, 22-page, black-and-white monthly that manages to hit stands around the Twin Cities and Minnesota around the first Wednesday of every month. Baumgarten is the editor and publisher.

Each issue has three or four features, a new band section, dozens of music reviews and, to round it off, a back-page cartoon.

On this day – just a week before deadline – the magazine is far from complete.

“Right now, I’ve got nothing,” Baumgarten says.

Sitting down at the coffee table (which houses on top, piles of compact discs and, underneath, piles of clothes), Baumgarten pulls out a cigarette and starts looking for a light. At the same time, he starts explaining.

In college he studied journalism, worked as the arts editor of the Minnesota Daily and freelanced on the side, he says.

After college, Baumgarten was sure he would take a job with whomever would offer him one, he says (standing and searching through piles of papers for a cigarette lighter), but that didn’t turn out to be true.

Outdoor Magazine offered. He rejected. And nothing since then has gone as he expected.

With relief, he finds a matchbook, lights the cigarette, inhales deeply and slouches back down in his chair.

“I don’t want to f—ing write about $500 sleeping bags,” he remembers thinking. “I don’t want sell camping equipment.

“I was in college, I had a career track, I probably could’ve found a job. But I didn’t want to work for any of those places.”

So he started telling everyone he knew he was going to start a music magazine with his friend Dan Haugen, he says. It was going to be half local music, half local media watchdog, he says.

At first it was a joke, he says, but eventually he told so many people that there was something at stake in not going through with it.

So he sold his Chevrolet Blazer, trading his “SUV-guilt” for $6,000 in startup money, and broke the news to his friend Haugen.

“Hey Dan, I sold my car, we’re starting a magazine,” Baumgarten told him.

The watchdog half of the idea dropped out immediately, Baumgarten says. But the magazine remained politically conscious, he says.

“Good music journalism can be really political,” he says. “But people don’t respond well if it’s too overt.”

Baumgarten’s politics – his dissatisfaction with mainstream media and its “stale” music coverage – come out in his editor’s notes. The notes, usually written in the early morning hours before deadline, also expose some of Baumgarten’s deepest emotions. This has earned them the nickname “emo-editorials,” he says.

The editor’s note in the first issue reads: “You see, all real music comes from desperation. Everyone knows about desperation. It’s the thing that makes us throw rocks at a girl’s window … We were desperate, and this is what we made. Hope you enjoy it.”

The magazine’s name was Baumgarten’s idea. He says he chose it because he thinks anything that’s really worth doing is a lost cause. The obstacles to success are huge and the chances of succeeding slim, he says.

That’s what he likes about covering musicians, he says. They do what they believe in despite the odds. Of all he bands covered in Lost Cause, probably none will ever “make it,” he says. But they work at it because they believe in it, and that’s worth writing about, he says

The first issue came out in July 2002. Baumgarten now has more than 10 writers working on each issue of the magazine, which circulates to an audience of more than 10,000, with thousands more reading online, he says.

“The magazines are moving,” Baumgarten says. “They’re not sitting on the shelf.”

He sits upright, a smile spreading on his face.

“People that read it f—ing dig it,” he says.

Haugen says local musicians are the most devoted readers, a fact that Martin Devaney, local bandleader and songwriter, confirms.

“People in the music scene definitely pick it up the first couple of days it’s out,” Devaney says. “It’s a good conversation piece.”

The magazine is unique because of its substance and credibility, Devaney says.

“It’s not gossipy, and it’s not just reporting on the big bands,” he says. “And there’s nothing else that’s exclusively devoted to local music.”

But Baumgarten needs more than just the respect of his readers. He needs to sell ads. The SUV money ran out last month, he says, and he can’t sell enough ads to cover the magazine’s costs.

He works for a catering company as a “banquet captain” to try to make up the difference. A desperate look crosses Baumgarten’s face as he describes the weddings and sorority luncheons he organizes – “horrible events,” he calls them.

He says he’d love to be able to pay his writers but, for now, no one makes any money.
“As long as everyone works for free, it’s OK,” he says.

But money’s not the only problem. Every month, Baumgarten assembles the magazine almost singlehandedly. He invariably ends up writing, editing and doing layout late into the night to get the magazine out on time.

On the wall, across from a huge black-and-white Bob Dylan poster with the words “Don’t Look Back” printed on it, a dry-erase board lists the stories that need to be finished for the next issue.

“It’s like having a huge school project every month,” Baumgarten says. “I love it so much, but it’s such a labor.

“Every month at this time of the month I think the next issue will be the last. I told myself when I started, if I was making enough money after a year, I’d keep doing it.”

That deadline is coming soon, and Baumgarten still doesn’t know what he will do. He’s been thinking of leaving the Twin Cities, he says.

“This week I’m really into Chicago,” he says. But he sounds decidedly unconvinced, like his chances of moving are about as good as him ever making use of the “fire escape.”

He pauses, looking around and then taps cigarette ash onto the sombrero of a porcelain Mexican statue he calls “Senior Fuegos Pants” – Mr. Fire Pants.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Baumgarten finally blurts out. It sounds more like a justification than an admission.

“This is not the life my parents wanted me to live. When I was a kid, I didn’t know people like me even existed,” he says.

But then the real admission comes: “When you decide to do something you want to do, you’re gonna hate some of it.” It’s clear he’s talking about himself.

“Writing is pretty much all I’ve got.”

Optimism returns, and Baumgarten starts thinking aloud about the contents of the next issue. He puts his feet up on the couch, begins to smile and reclines.

As he does this, the words on the Dylan poster appear over his head, like a halo: “Don’t Look Back.”