Back in 2010 we showed you some covers of the West German movie magazine Gondel, named of course after Venice’s famed banana-shaped boats. Which is fitting because Gondel later began to dedicate itself to a completely different type of banana shape by turning into a porn magazine. You see, because a banana and an erect penis are both… er… filled with potassium… *someone turns on a blender behind the bar* Anyway, it was in the 1970s when Gondel shifted gears, and theirs wasn’t an uncommon evolution among magazines around that time, as we’ve talked about before regarding the men’s adventure publication Male.

Well, that was fun. Berlin is an interesting city, dynamic, hectic and ultramodern, but also much greener than we expected. Certainly a recommendable destination, though we did encounter an €8 glass of white wine, which makes us happy to be back where the same pour costs exactly eight times less. We’re a bit tired today, so we’re just going to do a couple of brief shares, just so you know we’re still alive. Above is the cover from the West German celeb magazine Gondel (Gondola) featuring Elisa Mainardi. Inside you get shots of Teresa Velasquez, Lisa Gastoni and more, and on the rear cover you get goddess Elke Sommer. Most of the shots are unimaginative portraits that don’t do the subjects justice, but the images are rare, which makes them worth sharing. You can see more Gondel covers here. This issue came out in 1964. 

Above, nine fun covers of the West German men’s magazine Gondel (Gondola) dating from the early 1950s. Gondel contained pictorials, cheesy jokes, short stories, celebrity profiles, and features about jazz. Like many mid-century men’s magazines, as the times became more permissive, it became more risqué, and by the 1970s had everything it had before, plus a boatload of nudity. We'll show you what's inside a couple of these down the line.