FOUND Magazine has a knack for revealing the beautiful underbelly of America, the forgotten parts of our everyday lives. Highlighting things like the hateful note you left the person parked in your precious parking spot, your laundry list of to-dos, that love note you didn’t find the courage to send, or those rejection letters that you didn’t want to hold onto, FOUND is the curated hamper for everything not worth collecting.

That is unless you are Davy Rothbart. The Michigan native started FOUND as a way to lovingly disclose those items that resemble the many insignificant moments we all have. But at times, the items that make the final cut reveal some stark realities about human nature –- hatred, deceit, unrequited love, you name it. Rothbart's taken his day-job commitment to exposing forgotten memories as a contributor for public radio's "This American Life" to the cutting room and now straight to the streets.

FOUND’s fifth issue, the Crime Issue, includes a 20-page spread titled, My Life as a G Man: The Misadventures of Elmer L. Jacobson. It follows Elmer, an overly ambitious FBI mess-up, by way of his letters and scraps dated between 1937 and 1956. Discovered in a nondescript dumpster in Northwest Indiana, Elmer’s two decades were dangerously close to being lost forever in the landfill. Luckily the vast files of the former agent –- personal correspondence, mug shots, newspaper clippings, charged letters from J. Edgar Hoover, postcards from Iceland concerning a dead dog (code perhaps?) –- were all cut, pasted, and saved for posterity to scrutinize and adore. D.C. is all over these pages, and a wonderful, handmade "write-in candidate" political flyer is riddled with the kind of cheekiness that Washingtonians love to hate.

You may be familiar with The Book Inscriptions Project, a collection of readers' to-and-from dedications from inside inscribed books (often pulled from used book stores or estate sales), takes a glimpse into why people give everything from paperbacks to rare books as gifts and how entire texts necessitate an abridged sentiment. Famed local site PostSecret, that last stop for brutally honest anonymous postcards (and seen in the weekly edition of the CityPaper), plays off similar ideas. FOUND has that same kind of maudlin charm, but Rothbart's theme-based selections, including Dirty FOUND, an offshoot mag that accommodates the endless amount of finds sent in that contain explicit subject matter, collect these keepsakes en masse, creating a more comprehensive catalog of secrets made public.

Voyeurists obsessed with pictures of people they don’t know can stop by the release party for FOUND's Crime Issue tonight at the Velvet Lounge at 9 p.m. and pick yourself up a copy of FOUND. Rothbart will be sharing a trunk-load of his new finds along with a bunch of his old favorites.

Velvet Lounge is located at 915 U Street NW.