Radar Magazine officially launched, after a few test issues, in 2005 amid much tittering in the New York press. Here was a contending heir to Spy for people who enjoyed reading anytime other than the white noise of Jon Stewart before bed. But Radar and its mixture of high and low brow culture soon lost out to highly partisan culture publications like Us Weekly and Vanity Fair; its death and existence quickly forgotten under massive coffee table books about modern art, dead movie stars and Asia.

After two years of biding their time online, Radar is back, and evidently, so is the fine line between being a neo yuppie and just writing about one. Unfortunately, the magazine’s latest issue toddles back and forth between the divide with all the poise of a two-year-old in mom’s heels.

Lindsay Lohan, glock in hand, graces the signature minimalist cover with a photo possibly swept up from FHM’s cutting room floor. The feature, a sappy, celebrity tear-jerker, carries premonitions from Mama Lohan of how Lindsay is destined to be the next Lady Di, sacrificed to paparazzi in hot pursuit. Party photos with Socialite Rank regulars and a story on how Brittany Spears continues to disgrace her hometown give Radar extra sleaze factor for bikini days.

Celebrity aside, the issue still trumps everything else your average copy of Jane, GQ or any other glossy has offered up in the last few years. A refreshing absence of the indie-angst rampant in your average start-up and a budget that can afford decent writers yields a good magazine despite the obvious and premeditated glitterati bait.

Features on the ascension of Chicago’s Gangster Disciples street gang in the U.S. military and author Charles Webb’s madcap bohemian existence are worth a purchase. The design is clean with apt graphics, lending an aristocratic air that perfectly befits the magazine’s content.

If you've lately found yourself becoming more allergic to buying paper products, you can read each issue as it's gradually posted online. Print features often run abridged on the website, and naturally, the web features and reviews are timely in a way the monthly hardcopy can never be.

The tag on this issue’s spine is “Don’t Shoot the Messenger.” But celebrities don’t just mail personal photos into the mag, so whose number, exactly, does Herbie’s reluctant driver have besides Mark Ronson’s narc kid sister?

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These discourses of Radar Magazine were written by Hunter Stephenson and Tiffany Rainey for ignore Magazine, copyright 2007.