NEW YORK — Every morning, Sophia Mitropoulos, 30, hops on her bike and pedals through Queens, weaving past auto shops and a lot she affectionately calls "where the ice cream trucks sleep." Her destination: a converted factory-turned-studio where a new kind of sports magazine is taking shape. Inside, stacks of glossy issues wait to be shipped, while a mini print vending machine sits beneath a wall of bold fluorescent slogans. "A day without women's sports is like a day without sunshine," declares one. "Lesbian fans fill your stands," reads another.
This is "Snatch"—named after an Olympic weightlifting move (with a playful wink at its double meaning). It's a women's sports magazine born from Mitropoulos' New York apartment, and it just released its second issue in March. The scene is part studio, part command center: Destiny's Child plays softly from a CD player, a mini-printer churns out "Do not bend" stickers, and a to-do list scrawled on butcher paper covers half a wall. Among the tasks: restock Issue 1, edit YouTube vlogs, migrate to Shopify, and find that first wholesale customer.
Mitropoulos is no stranger to the history she's stepping into. A shelf in her studio holds the ghosts of magazines past: Sports Illustrated Women, Girljock, and Billie Jean King's womenSports—all long out of print, sourced from eBay. These could easily be seen as cautionary tales in a digital age that has swallowed countless publications whole. But for Mitropoulos, they're an archive. Inspiration. A legacy worth continuing.
Now, as women's sports enter a golden era—record-breaking audiences, better TV deals, and a surge in media coverage—Mitropoulos saw an opportunity for a fresh take on an old concept. One where stories aren't at the mercy of corporate whims or social media algorithms. "We could write it down," she says simply. "We can print it out. We can find some pretty pictures and put them together and tell this story." In a world that constantly pivots and scrolls, "Snatch" is an invitation to slow down, turn a page, and step away from the algorithm.