Ins & Outs magazine was initiated by Salah Harharah, who ran a travel agency from Amsterdam and wanted to model a monthly events periodical after London’s Time Out magazine. Eddie Woods and Jane Harvey, freshly arrived in Amsterdam from London, joined the editorial board in 1978 and put together three issues of the magazine that same year. But instead of the periodical for Amsterdam’s tourist trade that Harharah had in mind, Woods and Harvey turned Ins & Outs magazine into an international underground magazine to which renowned writers, poets and artists contributed, such as William Levy, Heathcote Williams, Ira Cohen, Simon Vinkenoog and Allen Ginsberg.
The magazine was short-lived. Despite being an international literary success, the third issue was the straw that broke Harharah’s camel’s back and he decided to pull the financial plug on Ins & Outs in the summer of 1978. Eddie Woods and Jane Harvey left town a couple of months later. So did Salah Harharah. When Woods and Harvey returned to Amsterdam in 1979 they immediately picked up publishing again. Together with Henk van der Does they built Ins & Outs Press on the foundations of Ins & Outs magazine and opened the Ins & Outs bookstore (after two years turned into a gallery and performance space) in a centuries-old building on the fringe of Amsterdam’s red-light district in 1980. Through their numerous international contacts, Ins & Outs developed into a hotbed of poetry and radical cultural activity in the heart of a town that at the time was going through a rowdy and violent phase in its anti-authoritarian history. A bumper fourth issue of the magazine was produced in mid-1980.
Ins & Outs magazine #2 (the only issue of which a few copies still remain, out of a print run of 2500) features contributions by Steef Davidson, Marijke Mooy, Eddie Woods, Mel Clay, Steve Weiss, Jessie Gordon, Hans Plomp, Bruce Carpenter & Charlz Junod, Ira Cohen, Ganesh Baba, Simon Vinkenoog, Rachel Pollack, and Magic Mike Taylor.