Enola Dismay
Listen to an interview with Enola here:
https://archive.org/details/2Zines.Zines.Zines
No Gods No Mattress #23Touring with the band Healers: Fresno, LA, cats on tour, San Diego, Tuscon, Auston, NO and MartiGras with demo/parade with cop effigie on fire. Queer parties and thinking of building a shack/home.
Emma / Dig it Distro & Press
punx in sobriety zine, a zine “called no sleep till you lose your shit,” trans women/trans fems & mental health zine, and the anthology which doesn’t have a working title yet;
Erick Lyle / SCAM
On The Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of The City
Erick Lyle’s On the Lower Frequencies is at once a manual, a memoir and a history of creative resistance and fun in a world run rotten with poverty and war. Whether handing out fake starbucks coupons for free coffee, dropping flyers on mall-goer’s heads that say “aren’t you glad this isn’t a bomb?” or having punk shows in laundromats, Lyle (formerly known as Iggy Scam) has shown the world over the years that you can resist consumerism and have fun and have a sense of humor at the same time.
Lyle, an icon of the samizdat zine scene of the 1990′s, is equally at home on mainstream radio, where he has done several commentaries for This American Life. His “Secret History” traces the evolution of cities, for sure, and of neighborhoods, and of dissent, but also of his own thinking under the pressure of experience, from his early focus on the more outre forms of resistance, through more contemplative times as he becomes preoccupied with the passage of time and starts to articulate an affirmative vision of the type of society he’d like to live in and fight for. In writing, for example, on Reagan’s death he feels relief that came from realizing that by the time Reagan had actually died, his teenage rage had ceased being the motivating factor in his life, that what keeps him going is the sense of what he wishes the world actually looked like, inter alia, public art, squats, free breakfast programs, illegal peace demos in san francisco, punk holidays (joey ramone day, in which people gather and do a secret santa exchange of mixtapes), even a booklist.
But he never seeks refuges in the abstract. In one of the book’s key set pieces, “The Epicenter of Crime: The Hunt’s Donuts Story,” Lyle celebrates the history and passing of a donut shop that was once a nerve center in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood. On one level, it’s an epitaph for a beloved hangout. On another, it’s a metaphor for the racial and economic tensions that can accompany gentrification. And on yet another, it’s an untold history of an entire neighborhood via a single retail establishment.
Scam gives the reader inspiration for living defiantly in these times.
Scam: The First Four Issues by Erick Lyle
Scam was equal parts an introductory guide on how to get things for free and punk memoir. Youths experienced trainhopping, house shows, and cross country tours that sought out swimming holes. Community was sought and celebrated through generator punk shows on Mission Street, hunting for cans of beer on Easter, and Food Not Bombs. Angst was manifested while stealing electricity from lampposts, squatting in Miami, selling plasma, tagging freight trains, wheatpasting, spraying salt water into vending machines, returning stolen merchandise, and dumpstering as seen through the lens of a young punk. Scam has gone on to inspire a generation of imitators, the highest form of flattery.
Scam #1
The first issue of Scam finds Erick Lyle, having recently turned 18, living in a punk house, paying minimal rent and working a crappy job. I hate to overgeneralize, but it’s about what people would expect from an 18-year-old who has a crappy job and lives with a bunch of punks. There’s lots of how-to style articles on topics like how to scam CD stores by ordering from Columbia House, and writing to companies, complaining about the quality of products you’ve never tried, to get free food. There’s also a ton of short blurb reviews covering everything from the new (in 1991) Screeching Weasel album to Danny Bonaduce. The highlights of this issue are interviews with Sam McPheeters (of Born Against) and Ben Weasel (uh… if you don’t know who Ben Weasel is, you can probably stop reading here). The recipe for Ole’ (that’s “O-lay”) Chickenhead wine doesn’t look bad either (it involves frozen orange juice concentrate and a balloon), but as I’m on hiatus from drinking, I’m going to have to let someone else who’s bold enough to try it let me know how it goes.
Scam #2
Coming in at over 100 pages, Scam #2 (known as the “Mutiny in Miami” issue) is the longest part of the compilation. The style of “Mutiny in Miami” is totally different from its predecessor: it’s less how-to-manual (although there are a few) and more of a flowing narrative of Lyle’s life. The tongue-in-cheek reviews of Seventeen magazine have given way to reviews of Bound for Glory by Woody Guthrie and Muhammad Ali’s autobiography. The interviews have shifted focus to local Florida bands.
Honestly, it tends to ramble. Lyle writes some beautiful passages about digging through trash piles and staying up all night, but the issue is a little hard to read due to the length of some of the stories (handwritten, even four 8 ½-by-11 pages can get hard to read), but overall the content makes it worth the slog through Lyle’s layouts (now I know why my elementary school teachers always made me skip lines). The highlights of “Mutiny in Miami” include the descriptions of the abandoned Mutiny Hotel (where Lyle is squatting) with press clippings from its heyday as a cocaine smuggler’s paradise in the 1980s, and the descriptions of the lesser-known parts of Miami. There’s also a story by Ben Weasel. If you’re into that kind of thing.
Scam #3
The third issue is fairly similar to “Mutiny in Miami.” It doesn’t have the heart, though. During the time between #2 and #3, it seems that Lyle secured a working typewriter (or maybe a few different ones), for which I am fucking grateful. I hate to say it, but the issue sort of falls flat compared to the other three issues included. It doesn’t have the sophomoric humor of the first, the wistful beauty of the second, or the strong ideological stances of the fourth. It isn’t bad, but it lacks the unifying theme of all the other issues. I’m just going to mention the highlights, which include an article on Alex Trebek and the Hobo Underground, an article about being broke, and how to scam a free trip to Europe.
Scam #4
Issue 4 is mainly written in San Francisco. It has a much more activist feel than any of the other issues included in the compilation. Though Lyle’s activism is definitely evident in the first three issues (working to establish a Food Not Bombs program in Miami, etc.), this issue features numerous interviews with people from across the country working to change their communities. He interviews graffiti artists that give away free vegan burritos in San Francisco, a person who began a bike co-op in Philadelphia, and the people who began the San Francisco needle-exchange program. Lyle himself has begun a community newspaper for his neighborhood in the Tenderloin, and has begun using vandalism to express a deeper meaning than “Fuck the pigs.” There are still some interesting interviews with bands and a couple of good stories, but as a whole the issue is much more dedicated to activism than music. Highlights include: an article on living in the San Francisco Landfill, an interview with the Biotic Baking Brigade (political pie throwers!), and a search for urban fishermen in five American cities.
Scam #5 1/2: Epicenter of Crime: The Hunt’s Donuts Story by Erick Lyle
Scam was always the zine in which the Miami punk, Erick Lyle, showed us examples of creative resistance and fun in a world run rotten with poverty and war. Whether it was handing out fake starbucks coupons for free coffee, dropping flyers on mall-goer’s heads that say “aren’t you glad this isn’t a bomb?” or having punk shows in laundromats, Erick has shown us over the years that you can resist capitalism and have fun AND have a sense of humour at the same time. It’s nine years later and this issue is no exception. This issue finds Erick, more than ever, preoccupied with the passage of time, in the form of obsessing and waxing poetic about the history and demise of one of the Mission’s strangest and most beautiful corner stones, Hunt’s Donuts. Imagine a place where you always look first when something is stolen from you to find a simple crook pawning it inside the donut shop, where “Open 25 hours” somehow makes sense, where you never imagine that the dream can come to an end. A fun little foray for those of us obsessed (or soon to be) with classic Bay Area history.
Scam #6 In the Streets of Buenos Aires
Scam #6 is a first-person travel essay about stencil art in Argentina! Erick has taken his chapter from the book Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority, and turned it into a zine making it more accessible for those not ready to take the leap of book-ownership. We’re treated to the story of Buenos Aires, interviews with radical stencil artists, & the political motivations of street art in Argentina. After a serious economic collapse in 2001, as a result of borrowing from the IMF. Most street rioting ensued from all kinds of people and stencil art was used to spread messages.
Scam #7
Erick seeks to quash the myth that Miami is a 24 hour party and/or police state. Visitors know little of his city except for what they’ve seen during Art Basel or the FTAA protests, and Erick attempts to shed some light on the real Miami. He’s assigned to cover Art Basel for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and takes the opportunity to profile Take Back the Land, a Miami-based group of activists helping the homeless squat bank-foreclosed homes. Erick briefly interviews Shepard Fairey who’s in town painting a mural for Art Basel, and he also shares his thoughts on the FTAA protests in 2003.
Scam #9: The Story of Black Flag’s Classic First Album, Damaged!
Based on an expanded version of a story Erick Lyle wrote for the LA Weekly to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Black Flag’s Damaged, this zine includes primary interviews with Henry Rollins, Greg Ginn, Chuck Dukowski, Dez Cadena, Kira Roessler and others around the band, including Mike Watt, Joe Carducci, Raymond Pettibon, Ed Colver, and Dave Markey. But what it really contains is the story of an excited, young Erick Lyle discovering a vent for his rage and pent-up emotions that a magical, impossible-to-replace historical album could encapsulate. And in 64 pages he successfully lays out the importance of these people, their place in time, and the aftermath of it all. Excellent punk journalism that gets to the heart of the matter without simplifying it.
cover art: Josh Bayer
Erin Fae
Mess of a Dreamer: a Taylor Swift fanzine — issue #1
I have a lot of feelings. Taylor Swift has a lot of feelings. We make a good pair.
I never felt called to make a proper *fan*zine before but then I fell hard for Taylor and needed to put all my intense thoughts/feelings about Taylor Swift into something tangible.
What’s the zine made of? Feminism, music as resiliency strategy, intense longing… and a whole lot of Taylor Swift feelings.
Oh, and this zine isn’t just for Swifites; try it out today!
* 94 pages
* quarter size
* text heavy
* cut & paste
* effusive magic filled
PLEASE NOTE: UNOFFICIAL Taylor Swift zine. This is *entirely fan made.* It does not pretend to be any official Taylor Swift merchandise. it’s just pure Taylor Swift fan love and commentary. This falls under FAIR USE law.
The latest issue of Imaginary Windows. This one is about embodiment and place, circus, femme identity, longing and more. There is also a recipe for making your own laundry liquid, some stories about magic and a bit of fermentation love.
I made this issue at a residency at the Roberts Street Social Centre in Halifax, Canada. It was fueled by quiet songs, root beer, community support and a whole lot of handstands.
* 50 pages
* quarter size
* text heavy
* cut & paste
ella funt
my new zine is officially ready to roll! it’s called “ella funt” & it’s about the whole situation in which i had a baby. specifically, it addresses: how my partner & i decided to have a kid, our struggles with trying to get pregnant, all the hinjinks around being informed that i wasn’t pregnant when actually i was, pregnancy topics like weight gain & gender preference, & it ends with being diagnosed with pre-eclampsia & having to start high-risk maternity care. the second issue will pick up where this one leaves off.
it’s forty quarter-sized pages & pretty text-heavy–more than 10,000 words. the text is broken up with little fabric swatches left over from the quilt i made for ramona while i was pregnant.
Ellie June Navidson
Spider Teeth: wherein our protaganist flies to Thailand to get a brand new cunt.
Super thick zine with a lot of details of getting surgery, but also about way more than surgery: it’s about finding a way to tell the true story of her life without reinforcing cultural assumptions and the problematic macro-narrative that has been created about transwomen, and also telling the truth, finding ways to tell her story so it can be universally understood. – Cindy Crabb
Everyday Magic
This 50 page illustrated zine explores how to create a healing connection to the natural world through an engagement with plants, nutrients and microorganisms. It’s not a traditional cookbook but a how-to guide covering: nutritional basics, sprouting, fermenting, gardening, foraging, medicinal herbs, flower essences and more! Read a review.
Everyday Magic #2: Between“It could be infinitely worse. And it could be infinitely better. Between these possibilities we live and between these possibilities we practice.” The apocalypse. Practicing magic on stolen ground. Ritual as emergence. Resiliency and active hope. The relationship between queers and magic.
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From the introduction: “i want to believe in a woo that is centered in justice. i want to practice a spirituality where personal transformation is tied to collective healing. i want to talk to stones and listen to trees and march downtown and dance on the port and call it all magic. .” Read a review here.
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Four stories of healing. From dirt: “there was something that changed in me those four months on the farm. my arms grew stronger as my mind grew quieter. i was terrified of the dark but in the morning i woke, like the roosters, with the sun. i felt in my body a slow unwinding, a measured trusting. there was a new security in bones, a soft relief in gravity.”
Read a review here.
Activist Journeys 