zines

I have come across all my old Riot Grrrl and Anarchist zines from way back when. This is just a small sampling of the zines I found. It's been fun reminiscing and thumbing through these zines from across the country and a few are even from out of the country. Most rant and rave about modern pop culture and praise the underground whether it be music, clothing, people, or activism.
Here are a few of my favorites. One is a DIY (Do It Yourself) craft guide with sample on the inside. Another is a collection of poems and photographs that are made to look like they are in a composition book some copied onto lined paper. Another has cool screen prints and includes stories, poems and yet more art. An other is full of short stories, the cover is made out of a brown paper bag and includes "A Pirate's Guide To Vancouver".


And yet an other is a limited edition signed piece of art. Every edition of Hello Nothing. is different and is signed and is a limited edition series. This one is 29/99 and is made into a small little envelope that holds a canvas patch and small little strips of paper with different quotes. These zines are each unique and much blood and sweat went into physically cutting and pasting the pages together and then going to Kinkos to make photocopies or steal photocopies as so many zinesters did. Oh the days of Kinko's copy keys and cards.

So much effort went into making a zine as well as distributing it and advertising it. Many zines and distro catalogs included small little bits of paper sometimes copied onto the back of some other paper that was an ad. Each little ad contained so much information and was almost a mini zine itself. Sometimes a distro, record label, or zine would put all these little ads together and cut and paste them on a regualr size piece of paper.
Even I ran a short lived distro, here is my ad on one of those cut and paste ad sheets. Along with all of the paper waste that went on with making a zine there was so much thought that went into using the least amount of paper for ads and even reusing old paper to copy ads onto the back to cut down on paper waste.

Every time i recieved a zine it felt so personal. some would personalize the zine for you by hand writing your name onto it some where. All were always hand addressed. And sometimes zines would be accompanied by a hand written letter or note from the author, editor or distro. A zine was like a persons baby, holding so much of themselves inside of it.
Zines in the 90's were full of people speaking out and speaking their minds. As well as sharing ideas and propaganda and personal life experiences. Zines offered individuals with a forum to share what was on their mind and who they were.
Zines seemed to have become so popular that even clothing companies were making their own "zines". Amongst my zines was this FOXY "zine". I don' know if I would call it a real zine since zines were much more DIY and usually much more rough around the edges. But I guess Foxy wanted to jump on the underground bandwagon and make their own.

When I was looking through all of these zines I realised that blogs are really just the new zine, with a lot less paper waste. Blogs offer anyone and everyone to speak there mind, share pictures and stories and anecdotes, write short stories, share art or speak about whatever seems important to share with the world. Just like zines it is hard to know who actually reads them or if anyone really is. What is it that makes us feel that we need to have a forum to share our innermost thoughts with perfect strangers. Why do we even want to share? And does anyone actually read it anyways? Do we really need the validation? Is this a way to get validation? I don't think we will ever know the answers to any of these questions.
So I write on and read on...