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March 7, 1996

arts@large / By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL

A New York Web Noir @ttitude

here are no bouncers in cyberspace. If there were, I'd never get past the door of NYW: The New York Web -- even if I traded in my cybersurfer's wardrobe of tennies and a Dilbert T-shirt for a jet-black ensemble of imported designer threads.

Fortunately, the only requirements for drinking up the clublike atmosphere of this delectable new Web-based magazine of culture and fashion are Internet access, which I have, and a downtown-to-English dictionary, which I seem to have misplaced along with my youth.

The NYW site was launched on Jan. 22 and already is receiving as many as 20,000 "hits" per day, according to its 25-year-old publisher, Stephan Moskovic, (pronounced STEF-on MOSS-ko-vik) in an interview from the zine's loft office in Tribeca.

NYW strives to capture an attitude-clad moment of "latter-day cool," and Moskovic said that it was not intended to be a comprehensive guide to the city it repeatedly refers to as The Big Snapple.

So, the only three categories in the "Groove Culture" music section are Alternative, Hip-Hop/R&B and Electronic Dance, and there are no mentions of old-school favorites like the Metropolitan Opera or AC/DC.

To create a distinctive product, Moskovic said, he deliberately sought to staff the project with talented newcomers to the net. For example, his editorial director, Wayne Sterling, 27, had been the fashion editor for the "street culture" magazine Oneworld and a nightlife columnist for the new-art quarterly Arude.

"When Stephan showed me what existed on the net," Sterling relates, "I didn't particularly like the editorial grayness and the sense of 'lets just do this for doing it's sake' laziness that too many sites had. It was almost as if they were congratulating themselves for just existing. But they weren't interested in working for the viewer."

"For us," Sterling said, "it was about doing something that would be positively shiny in terms of its newness."

Shiny -- and seductive -- it is. NYW is ravishing on the screen.

Moskovic was introduced by chance to the graphic designer Gilles Guerlet, 24, while strolling the streets of Soho. His decision to hire Guerlet, a veteran of the French fashion magazine Biba, as NYW's creative director, has paid off handsomely.

Unlike the eye-searing day-glo palette and jumbled composition of so many Web pages, Guerlet has given NYW a look that is simple and crisp. Icons are clever but clear. Many of the pages are black and white, with a daub of color or a silver-toned photograph for accent. Often there is a twist, perhaps a photo turned sideways or a block of text that dances off-center.

Yet NYW's strong design elements enhance, rather than interfere with, its readability. To emphasize its magazine-like feel, Guerlet has deliberately avoided scrolling pages. While I tend to resent Webzines that force me to jump ahead to see the end of a story, I regularly found myself diving into stories of limited interest just to find the next onscreen surprise.

At least for now, NYW's style is somewhat stronger than its substance, although the music and fashion sections, in particular, have flashes of insight and spirit.

One article judiciously analyzes the retrorocker Lenny Kravitz's visual aesthetic, and an overview of hip-hop music in 1995 reports that "a lot of the best material this year was caught between simple love credos and complex crime scenarios."

Another fun feature, scheduled for frequent updates, is called "VIP/RIP." For the record, as of this moment, Joaquin Phoenix and Bali are in, Leonardo DiCaprio and Milan are out.

Often, however, the writing struggles to communicate, tangled as it is with insider lingo, odd word choices and baroque constructions. Try this excerpt: "Like the deconstruction that left the safe haven of hermetic academia only to be ravaged as a pop-buzzword fit only for Belgian fashion designers, be prepared for the inevitable trickle-down of this virulent body of ideas into everyday culture."

There are other shortcomings. The culture section needs more than two book reviews; theater coverage would help. Some of the night-life material is obnoxious, including the tongue-in-cheek counsel to "spend all your money on clothes." Also, NYW takes the usual stab at creating reader-feedback areas with a chat room, a newsgroup-style forum and an e-mail box, but all are lightly trafficked.

NYW makes a mistake, I think, in putting a model in a bikini on its first home page, even if the shot is a "spoof" of a 1936 photograph, as Sterling asserts. Moskovic said: "We're not too crazy about political correctness. I think you have to provoke people to go deeper than the surface."

But the image subverts one of NYW's most appealing aspects: its easy mix of gender and race. An article on the hip-hop/soul divas Mary J. Blige and Faith is given the same weight as a review of the most recent album by David Bowie, once known as The Thin White Duke. A super-cool-100 chart, found under "Listed: The Changing of the Guard," is similarly diverse, singling out Fort Greene as its power neighborhood.

The staff of NYW is proud of its non-Web background, but employing a little technology could further enrich the site. For example, if the hot list has any links outside NYW, I did not find them. And a spell-checking program would be a wise investment for anyone who writes regularly about "rythm."

Still, I find irresistible a Web site that draws an unexplained distinction between two jobs, "bon vivant" and "bon vivant extraordinaire." (I would like to know which one has better health benefits.)

Moskovic, a French citizen who came to New York in 1989 and five years later founded Metalab Communications, a Web design and production company, is seeking sponsors for NYW.

He said he hoped to enliven the chat area by linking up with Kokobar, a soon-to-open Internet cafe in Brooklyn, and -- in a neat reversal of the pulp-to-Web pattern -- is close to producing a print version of NYW. The postcard-sized magazine would be distributed free in the promotional racks found in restaurants around town.

If the design is as "dope" as NYW's, it will be well worth a look.

arts@large is published weekly, on Thursdays. Click here for links to other columns in this series.

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NYW The New York Web is published monthly, with weekly and sometimes daily updates. (Source of all images used in this column.)

Matthew Mirapaul at mirapaul@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.

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