Ceil Diskin has been making art since the 1970s. Walk into her Montclair apartment and it looks like a museum, decades of work that most of the town has walked past without ever knowing it existed. That gap, between what Montclair actually contains and what its residents notice, is exactly what Eighty-Six’d Magazine was built to close. Since February 2025, the DIY print magazine out of Montclair has been finding people like Diskin and putting them on the page, one issue at a time.
What Is Eighty-Six’d Magazine?
April Acerno started Eighty-Six’d in February 2025. Kyle Seagraves joined a couple of months later as vice editor-in-chief, creative director and photographer. Both had circled the same idea for years before they ever met: that a town this specific deserved a magazine as specific as it is.
“I always loved print magazines,” Acerno said. “I subscribed to every indie magazine as a kid because I had a really boring childhood. I think both Kyle and I love analog things, love the idea of putting out something physical every month. And in Montclair there’s just so much to cover.”
Seagraves grew up in that coverage area. “I was born at Mountainside, and I grew up in Montclair for about 20 years,”he said. “I moved downtown for about 13 years… It’s a cultural hub. It means a lot to me that so much happens here that you might not even realize is going on right under your nose. That’s why we started this, we’re trying to highlight all these people who don’t get a chance, or people you have no idea exist, literally right under your nose. There are so many places in Montclair you can delve into for a day and come out with 100 new friends and a new hobby or two.”
The name is restaurant slang: to 86 something means it is no longer available. Acerno expected her first readers to come from the restaurant industry, her own circle of friends, so the name felt like an easy fit. “Now people think it means we’re banned from somewhere,” she said. “It’s a badge of honor.”
That instinct, that the town’s most interesting people are also its least visible ones, shapes how the magazine actually gets made.
How Does an Issue Come Together?
There is no staff, no office and no budget line for either founder. “We are putting out an issue every month because I guess we’re masochists,” Acerno said. “But it’s a very DIY grassroots process. There’s nothing fancy about what we’re doing.” She keeps a running list of interesting people she meets in Google Keep, a note taking app on her phone, and each month she and Seagraves pick eight or nine of those names to chase down, mixing art, food, culture and events. “It’s just a good month of scrambling, chasing these people, getting them to do an interview with us, take some photos, a lot of back and forth, a lot of collaboration, and then putting the layout together, sending it to print, and starting the whole process over again.”
Outside voices get in too. “We love contributions,” Acerno said. “The more voices from our community that are together in one issue, the better.” Writers, artists, photographers, poets and local historians have all landed in the magazine’s pages alongside Acerno’s own reporting.
That scramble currently points toward issue 12. “In our upcoming issue, we have an article on Ironbound Farms,” Seagraves said. “That was definitely one of the most rewarding little field trips we’ve been on. Everybody was so happy to have this voice, and it’s great how well people reciprocate that… Charlie at Ironbound is a great time. He’s just the right kind of crazy.”
That kind of reciprocity doesn’t happen by accident. It’s built into how the magazine treats the people it covers.
Why Won’t Eighty-Six’d Magazine Charge Its Subjects to Be Featured?
Across all 12 issues, Eighty-Six’d has never billed a single person for a feature. Acerno said that surprises people. “We never charge for a feature, and I’ve learned that’s unusual. A lot of media will say, ‘We’d love to feature you, but you have to…’ and we hate that. We want to put someone in because we think they’re fantastic. We would never want to take their money.”
She traces that surprise to a shift in how exposure now works. “The influencer market model has changed things,” she said. “People are used to it being very transactional. I’ll give you a lump sum of money and you’ll make a 90-second reel for me, and that’s the exchange. We don’t like that at all.” Instead, the magazine covers its costs through subscribers and advertisers, and treats a feature as a gift rather than a transaction.
The payoff has been momentum neither founder expected. “The most surprising thing that’s happened is, whenever you start something, you don’t know if people are going to like it or not,” Acerno said. “But we’re at a point now where people are approaching us a lot, asking if they can contribute, if they can contribute, if they can work with us. It’s very touching, because to me, this is just a little hobby that we do every month.”
That trust is exactly why the magazine keeps finding the people other outlets miss.
Which Overlooked Montclair Talents Has Eighty-Six’d Magazine Put in Print?
Some of Acerno’s favorite work has been the least glamorous. “I love the journalistic pieces,” she said. “We did an article where we talked to some restaurant workers in the area about their experience with the U.S. health care system, which is uniquely complicated. Those are the really fun ones for me.”
Then there is Diskin, the artist from the magazine’s most recent issue. “We interviewed this woman for our last issue, Ceil Diskin,” Seagraves said. “She was a wonderful artist who’s been in the game since the 1970s, and you walk into her apartment and it’s like a museum itself. There’s no way you would know about it at all unless you met this person and sat and talked with them… We’ve interviewed so many people who’ve been doing this for the past 40 or 50 years with amazing talent, but you would never know about it if you didn’t take the time to sit down and talk with them. Those are some of the most special moments for me.”
Metalworker Charlie Spademan got the same treatment. “You’ve probably seen his work but you wouldn’t realize it’s his,” Seagraves said, “because it’s like some structural design or just a grand sculpture and you’re like, how’d that get there?… His studio is at Lackawanna, and he’s built work around Glen Ridge, wrought iron supports, pieces like that.” Acerno added that his work shows up closer to home too: “In our schools.”
That momentum has already spilled off the page. On July 11, Eighty-Six’d threw a live event, 86 Fest, at Bolero Snort Brewery in Carlstadt, turning the magazine’s community into a music festival crowd for a night. The next chance to see that same community in one room comes July 18, when Eighty-Six’d hosts an art show at Montclair Brewery featuring several of the artists it has profiled along the way.
Copies sell out most months, but new issues turn up at Eastside Mags and other stores around Montclair. Past issues also show up at bars around town, left out for anyone to pick up and read while they’re there. Subscriptions and single issues are available through the magazine’s Instagram, @eightysixdthemagazine, where Acerno and Seagraves also take pitches for who gets covered next. If there’s a Montclair talent hiding in plain sight in your own life, that Instagram DM is exactly one of the ways Eighty-Six’d has found the last dozen issues worth of people.
Image credit: Eighty-Six’d Magazine
