After the Fire: Why GEEZER Matters Now
A CommonX X-Files conversation with the founders of GEEZER Magazine about Gen X, print journalism, and aging without hardening in a culture obsessed with speed and youth.
Punk-style graphic combining GEEZER Magazine and CommonX branding, featuring bold typography, high-contrast black-and-white elements, and Gen X–inspired collage aesthetics.
Guests:
Laura LeBleu
Paul von Zielbauer
GEEZER Magazine
There are conversations that happen in the middle of the fire — urgent, necessary, loud.
And then there are conversations about what comes after.
Our recent discussion with Laura LeBleu and Paul von Zielbauer of GEEZER Magazine was the latter. It wasn’t about reclaiming youth, resisting age, or yelling at the world for changing. It was about staying awake. Staying human. And refusing to be flattened into a demographic.
In other words, it was very Gen X.
Not nostalgia. Not rage. Not a brand.
GEEZER isn’t nostalgia bait, and it isn’t grievance culture dressed up as cool. It’s a print-only magazine built on a simple but increasingly rare idea: Gen X doesn’t want to be marketed to — it wants to be spoken with.
Laura LeBleu’s path to GEEZER makes that clear immediately. Growing up in El Paso, Texas, she wanted to be an ice skater. Geography had other plans, so she became a writer instead. Along the way she’s been an Emmy-award-winning TV producer, lead singer in an Italian band, voice of a virtual character, stilt-walking circus ringmaster, NYC cabaret performer, and a minor gay icon. Writing, though, was always the throughline.
The idea for GEEZER came to her in the shower. (She admits she’s had many good ideas in the shower — this is just the one that stuck.) The magazine carries that same energy: confident, playful, sharp, and uninterested in pretending that aging is tidy or polite.
A bullshit detector perfected by time
Paul von Zielbauer brings a different, complementary gravity. Raised in Aurora, Illinois by European war-refugee parents, Paul’s life has been shaped by movement, curiosity, and a refusal to accept the surface version of any story.
In his twenties, he rode a bicycle from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, back when most Americans still thought of Vietnam only as a war they’d seen on TV. He later spent eleven years as a journalist at The New York Times, where his reporting was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. As the Great Recession was getting started, Paul left the paper to launch a business that helped volunteers build playgrounds for disadvantaged children overseas.
That same impeccable timing — and quiet seriousness — now shows up at GEEZER, where he works diligently in the basement until Laura tells him it’s okay to come upstairs.
Together, Laura and Paul embody something unmistakably Gen X: a finely tuned bullshit detector shaped by watching institutions wobble, media flatten complexity, and authority repeatedly fail to earn trust. Not cynical — discerning.
Why print is the point
Choosing print in a digital-first world isn’t nostalgia. It’s resistance.
GEEZER slows the reader down on purpose. It refuses outrage metrics, algorithmic churn, and the idea that everything must be consumed instantly or forgotten. Print demands attention. It asks you to sit with ideas. It treats the reader as a person, not a product.
In a culture obsessed with speed, that choice isn’t retro — it’s radical.
Aging without hardening
One of the most resonant themes from our conversation was this: aging doesn’t have to mean hardening.
GEEZER isn’t about yelling at clouds or pretending we’re not getting older. It’s about staying sharp without becoming cruel, curious without becoming naïve, and engaged without burning out. It’s about middle age not as decline, but as clarity — the moment when you finally know what matters and stop pretending otherwise.
GEEZER doesn’t promise answers. It offers company — in strength, vulnerability, rage, humility, joy, and a ton of other nouns.
Why this matters now
At a moment when media feels louder, thinner, and more polarized by the day, projects like GEEZER matter precisely because they refuse spectacle. They trust readers to think. They trust stories to breathe. And they trust that a generation raised on disruption still has something essential to offer — not because it’s flashy, but because it’s lived.
Our conversation with Laura LeBleu and Paul von Zielbauer wasn’t about age.
It was about meaning.
GEEZER stands as proof that Gen X isn’t done yet — it’s just more intentional about how, and why, it speaks.
Beautiful, but not always pretty.
And very much alive.
Our Episode with Laura and Paul will be available on YouTube and all other Podcast platforms after the release of Dame Claire Bertschinger on Thursday, February 26th consistent with our commitment to release episodes twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
You can check out GEEZER Magazine here.
Black-and-white trucker hat with mesh sides and the word “GEEZER” embroidered in bold black letters on the front panel.
Be sure to follow Paul Von Zielbauer and his work entitled “Aging with Strength” on Substack here.
You can also follow Laura LeBleu and her journey on Substack as well — here.
To learn more about Dame Claire Bertschinger please visit: Claire Bertschinger – Making a difference…
To Learn more about the Interview with Dame Claire Bertschinger heard from around the world Exclusively on CommoX — Read Here.
SPY Sunglasses promotional graphic featured in CommonX article, highlighting eyewear designed for performance, style, and independent culture.