How a San Francisco print zine evolved into a thriving local blog
Stuart Schuffman became a local celebrity through his Broke-Ass Stuart media brand.
If Stuart Schuffman were in his early twenties today, he’d probably be a TikTok star. Instead, he came of age in the early 2000s—an era when creative ambition required a printer, a stapler, and a backpack full of photocopies. His now-iconic brand, Broke-Ass Stuart, started not as a website or a video channel but as a black-and-white zine he hawked to coffee shops across San Francisco.
That zine, Broke-Ass Stuart’s Guide to Living Cheaply in San Francisco, became an unlikely cultural touchstone. What began as a DIY travel guide for the perpetually underpaid turned into a full-blown media brand, complete with books, TV shows, a website, and legions of readers who grew up on Schuffman’s irreverent humor and local-bohemian ethos.
Today, more than 20 years later, he can’t walk through San Francisco without being recognized.
The Zine That Started It All
In the early 2000s, Schuffman was working at a candy store in North Beach when a chance encounter sparked an idea. A customer handed him a business card that read Travel Writer—and something clicked.
“I said, ‘Hell, I want to be a travel writer,’” he recalls. “So I decided to become one and made a zine.”