Brainscan by Alex Wrekk
An introspective look at Alex Wrekk’s July of 2002; including writing on the planning of the Portland Zine Symposium, the IPRC’s high school zine camp, and the actual event of the Zine Symposium. A weekend full of houseguests, communication, connection and late night porch sessions. It also includes volunteering at the Rock ‘N’ Roll camp for girls where Alex helped teach workshops on zines. This zine also contains reflections on zine community involvement and evolution over the years, thoughts on the guerilla mental health awareness workshop at the Zine Symposium, and an update on Joe & Alex’s DIY wedding. It also includes a preview to Brainscan #20, a travel zine. This zine is surprisingly text heavy for Brainscan but still has high contrast cut and paste layout. Includes the text of very limited Brainscan 18.5.
64 pages, Black and white, offset printed, 6.5’x5″
Brainscan Zine #21: Irreconcilable Differences
I haven’t made an issue Brainscan in four years and I hope that this zine helps to explain why. Brainscan 21 explores my recognition of being in an emotionally abusive relationship, the attempts on both parts to right wrongs, the failure to do so, and gathering the strength to take the next step.
What if your private life in your relationship is vastly different than what other people see? When do you know you are in an emotionally abusive relationship? How to you gain the strength to get out of it? What do you do when you know you can’t handle the burden alone? What do you do when you feel so alone and terrified of the consequences of leaving, when if it means losing friends, a home, a job and a way life that you love?
These are just some of the ideas explored in this zine through a three year personal narrative that also challenges you to examine your relationships with power, to identify how you express the power you have, and also how you relate to the power that of others possess. But most of all this, zine is about revelation, rebirth, and growth.
44 pages, half sized
Brainscan Zine #22 IUD: a practical body modification
Intra Uterine Devices (IUDs) are the most widely used form of reversible birth control in the world and the second most widely used form of birth control behind sterilization. IUDs are also the most effective form of birth control. When searching for a form of birth control for my partner and I found that the IUD made the most sense for us. Since being fitted for an IUD almost a year ago people have had lots of questions.
In typical Brainscan zine fashion, I’m writing about what’s going on in my life. This zine just happens to an informative look at the history and procedure in a clinical sense, as well as a person account from exploration to procedure to afterwards and I’m very happy with my decision!
If you or anyone you know have had an interest in IUDs this zine might answer some of your questions. 32 pages, 1/4 sized, affixed color covers, gocco printed envelopes. Numbered and limited to 1000.
Brainscan #23 contains a few stories taken from a one off zine I did as well as a few new stories. My favorite one is about a situation I was in while visiting NYC and met and Ex-Boyfriend and his wife…and hilarity ensues. Interspersed in the zine are “travel stories that didn’t really go as far as the travel written about” These are almost like postcards written about silly situations and fun, and not so fun times. Some of the stories included are about high school road trips and Salt Lake City urban legends, touring with a band, spending a summer using auto drive away to move other peoples’ cars, and both the Cut & Paste and Copy & Destroy zine tours in 2003.
The last two issues of Brainscan have been very focused on single subjects, but this one is about amusing stories and life experiences woven with my usual high contrast cut and past layout expressing the play between words and images… as some people call it, typical Brainscan zine. If you like Brainscan you will probably like it. 40 pages ¼ legal. This is the first printing and leftovers from the zine symposium, later versions will have a different into, but the content will remain the same.
BRAINSCAN 25-This zine has been five start and stop years in the making. I finally finished it in October of 2009 at the Anchor Archive zine residency in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Brainscan 25 Chronicles my Saturn return as a love story, an ending, and a new beginning with someone from my past. The Saturn Return is the time between ages 27 and 30 when the planet Saturn is in the same place it was at your birth. It is usually seen as a harbinger of change and a test of character where individuals are forced to evaluate their life in relation to their values. Brainscan 25 documents my life between 2004 and 2006 which was full of upheaval and questioning my path and choices in life. The linear story is spliced with narrative flashbacks from 1996-1999 full of punk shows, travel stories and the difficulty of dealing with emotions and the insecurities of growing up. Text heavy with high contrast cut and paste layout and photocopier art.
Brainscan 25 is 80 pages, legal sized (8.5″x7″) transparency acetate and cardstock covers, and an envelope containing a 16 page epilogue.
BRAINSCAN 24 is a mini zine with answers to questions I’m frequently asked and random facts like how I was made in Canada, am left handed, and was the very first Aquacadet. 32 pages and 1/8th legal (3.5″ x 4.25″)
a 24 hour zine challege zine about post boxes
At the IPRC on July 11, 2010 the Portland Zine Symposium sponsored a 24 hour zine challenge. A 24 hour zine challenge is when you make a zine in 24 hours.
Well, this is the zine I made that night. You are not supposed to have any idea what you will put in your zine before you start so I had no idea what would come out of this. What did come out of those 24 hours, besides sleep deprivation delirium, was some photocopier artwork and stories about all the post boxes I have ever had. The count is 4 and each was a distinct time in my life that I wrote about including the secret admirer who wrote love notes to my boyfriend I shared the post box with and stories about long lost penpals.
32 pages 1/8th legal with black covers hand stamped in silver.
Brainscan Zine #26: What’s the Deal with you and Microocsm
I’m just going to say that this zine is not for everyone. 26 is my leave favorite number and I ended up writing about my least favorite topic that just will not go away!
In 2006 I wrote the zine Brainscan #21: Irreconcilable Differences. This zine was about my personal experience of realizing I was in an emotionally abusive relationship, finding the courage to move on and challenging other people to identify power and how they use in in all of their relationships. In Brainscan 21 I did not name name because I did no think it was useful, but in this zine I do. Several other people have approached me with issues they have had with the same person and I thought it might be helpful for people to hear a bit more of my story tying my personal experience with Joe to my business experience.
This zine is based on this blog post http://alexwrekk.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/so-whats-the-deal-with-you-and-microcosm/. People have kept asking me about it so I thought I would put it in zine format. The blog post is about my least favorite subject: my history with Microcsm Publishing, Joe Biel and his attempted and failed accountability processes plus input from a few other people. To lighten the load I also talk about some of the other stuff I have been involved with and things I’m looking forward to next year. 32 pages 1/4 sized and uncharacteristly text heavy. $2
Back cover illustration by Steve Larder
THIS IS A LISTING FOR 2 ZINES: Brainscan #27 and #28
This is a listing for both of the zines I have made in 2011. They were each released already but have been repackaged and reprinted.
Brainscan #27
A tiny zine that reads like a snapshot. 1/12 legal sized (3″x4″) 28 page mini zine, A single story wrapped in photocopier art. This zine takes place in an elevator between a 9th floor divorce lawyer and the ground and a bike ride home. It explores disappointments and the human inability to consider endings.
“We rode 9 stories down in silence like shedding 9,000 stories of our own”
Brainscan #28
1/6th legal (4.25″ square) 28 pages with color covers and color fold outs. This is my 24 hour zine for 2011. It was created in 24 hours at the Independent Publishing Resource Center. The theme was to answer the question “what do you do?” I explored the fact that most people want to know how you make money. I have a sort of strange income to some people so this will answer the question. I also talk about the cats that live in my house and how I have learned to love cats, even though I always thought I was a dog person. I also answer the question “how long have you and Paul been together?” in a fold out time line that includes color photos of us from years past.
This was originally sent to the people who sponsored me in the 24 hour zine challenge. also made 50 copies to trade at the Portland Zine Symposium. After the sleep deprivation of creating a 24 hour zine I wasn’t sure if wanted it to be an issue of Brainscan. I decided to go for it and after a bit of tweaking and reformatting I’m re-releasing it as Brainscan 28.
Brainscan Zine #29 / No More Coffee zine #4 – a split zine
a fiction zine that pretends to be a perzine
Released at the 2012 Chicago Zine Fest
Brainscan #29 – Ben Spies (no more coffee zine) threw out the challenge of fiction to my land of perzines and this is the grim result. These three short stories are my stab at fiction wrapped in the usual high contrast cut and paste layout you would expect in and issue of Brainscan. One story is about leaving a hometown for greener pastures only to make a stop half way there to visit an old friend and includes thoughts and reflections about the past. The second story is about a weird housemate and his strange perception of the world through Woody Allen tinted glasses and odd notions about art. The third story is about weighing the value of our short lives against the rock wall embankment of a cemetery. I admit that the voice is similar to mine and the subject matter doesn’t stray too far from what you would expect to find in an issue of Brainscan, but it was a really fun experiment and I’m glad that Ben talked me into doing this split.
No More Coffee is a zine of fiction for people who stay up too late. Stories like these are how I get the black bile out of my system, so to speak. Alex and I agreed to do a fiction split not knowing how morose it would end up, but we’re on similar wavelengths, I guess. I’m still writing fiction because I love it and because I’m too scared to write about my own life, but even if these stories never happened, the people in them did. “Photographs of the Dead” is about what the residents of a suburban apartment complex doesn’t know about their neighbors. “Exit 121” is about an impetuous woman living at a truck stop. The untitled story is about Sunday breakfast at a diner.
44 pages, half sized, 2 color risograph printed card stock covers
Brainscan zine #30 Squeaking in at the end of 2012 makes this 30 issues in 15 years!
40 pages, 1/4 sized, 5 color risograph printed on recycled paper!
This zine started to be about how awesome 2012 was going to be until the end of my year was almost ruined. I started the zine with the realization that I had grown 2 inch in my 30s somehow and how growing older is great because you get to grow more into yourself, even if you didn’t know what you wanted to be when you grew up. I wrote a bit about growing up non-Mormon in Utah. I also write about how I am uncomfortable teaching and how maybe some people just aren’t meant to teach just like not everyone is meant to be self employed.
Due to a lot of circumstances and privileges in my life I am able to have a lot of adventures. Some of them are travel related and others are ridiculous projects I have been able to be a part of. In retrospect I outline some of my adventures fro each year starting in 2008. Some of the projects have included: traveling to France and the UK, traveling the east coast alone, going on a US zine tour with friends from the UK, attending lots of zine fests, starting a zine themed band called The Copy Scams, touring with the Copy Scams, starting a website for Stolen Sharpie Revolution, and starting a brick and mortar zine distro and button shop called Portland Button Works.
The end of the zine wraps up with the how my business partner left Portland and left me a giant mess to clean up when I got back from a long planned trip to the UK. But, I prevailed and overcame and now the distro and shop are stronger and better for it.
Brainscan zine #31 by Alex Wrekk
Color cardstock cover 20 pages 1/4 size with clipped corners
“I’ve lived in Portland, Oregon since 1999. I was 22 when I moved here and I turn 37 this summer. This city has seen me grow and change and become more myself. I’ve called other cities ‘home”. My first 10 years were spent in Texas, the next 12 in Utah. I’ve written about both Utah and Oregon as home, but something has changed recently.”
This zine was completed for the 2014 Chicago Zine Fest. It explores the concept of family, growing up and into ourselves and making our own home. I reflect on the years I have lived here and how me and the city of Portland have changed over the past 15 years and how running a brick and mortar shop that sells zines fits into that.
TRAVELSCAN – a Brainscan 24 hour zine
“There is a lot of privilege in being able to have adventures”
This is my 24 hour zine for 2013! It’s all about traveling: How to save money for travel, how to find cheap tickets through patience and flexibility, how to find veggie friendly food, packing, getting around a new city, where to stay, where to go, how to be a good houseguest.
Other random bits include: some of my travel stores, awesome travel deals I have found, and the kale salad receipe that I keep in my notebooks to make for my hosts when I travel.
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Neckmonster #2 – my personal zine. About midsummer 2002, when a lot of people died. Also, ruminations on the Southern Girls Convention and starting college. My friend Dan contributed to this issue.
Neckmonster #3 – my personal zine. “I don’t know dude, I just don’t know and it’s awesome.” About being in college and getting a tattoo. My dad contributed to this issue.
Neckmonster #4 – my personal zine. Mostly recipes and crafty stuff. A guest piece from my friend Lindsey, who had a son that year, and tales from the PDX zine symposium of 2003.
Neckmonster #5 – split zine with my friend Will. Weird layout. Handwritten musings on how theories of physics relate to my emotional state by me. Typed musings on life by Will.
Neckmonster #6 – my personal zine. Lots of photos; travel, crazy weather and a Meskwaki pow-wow in Iowa (part of an anthropology class I took).
Neckmonster #7 – “bai lei.” my personal zine. The China issue! Chronicles my travels around China in 2005. Guest comic by Rachel.
Neckmonster #8 – my personal zine. All-to-brief overview of events of my life in Philadelphia, a broken ankle, and some obituaries. Also two pages about doing Vans Warped Tour, though I could have written a whole book on it.
Neckmonster #9 – “More fun in the new world” (NCKMNSTR9). my personal zine. Stories about blackouts, driving drunk people home, grad school, and more.
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Doris:an Anthology of zines and other stuff 1991 – 2001
My First Book!!! Back in Stock finally!!! the first issues of Doris 1-18 – raw and sweet. secrets, wandering, trying to figure out the world.
Including a short story from before I wrote zines. It’s got the Anti-Depression guide in it, and a million other things.
The Encyclopedia of Doris: stories, interviews, essays.
My New Book!!! This has issues 19-27 of Doris, plus a bunch of new writing and other writing that was never published. Apple Crisp, Audre Lorde, Abiku, Anarchy, Abortion, Boats, Boogers, Caty’s Farm, Consent, Depression, Death, Elephants, Girl Gangs, etc.
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Squatting on Cape Cod in the winter, freedom dreams, learning to build houses, raising lambs, death, reparations, and the usual way doris talks about a million hopeful and sad things all at once.
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This issue talks about ways we create lives outside the mainstream structure, how we find and build community, and what that can mean to our ability to survive, heal and thrive. Touring, living with bees, book reviews, how to start a study group. Plus a bunch aboutcommunity accountability models of dealing with sexual assault – both critique and reflection of situations I have been in and what I felt was needed or not needed. Also an interview with the group Support New York and lessons they’ve learned from many years of doing accountability work.
Doris 29This issue of Doris includes: “How I Quit Worrying and Learned to Love Being Queer,” plus stories and comics about mini horses, voting, helping start a Rock and Roll Camp for Girls, and more!
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is about creating your own reasons for writing, doing things even thought you’re scared, it’s about tour and making friends and living.
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hope and language and shyness and social ecology and truth.
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anarchism and keeping focus and who do you want to be and also about quitting drinking.
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this is about love and my grandma and abortion and menstrual extraction and being in jail and camping.
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these are printed on newsprint and have a lot of stuff about abuse, but also about anarchism and gender and girl gangs and all kinds of stuff.
Doris 15, the DIY Antidepression Guide
Back by popular demand!
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The ninth issue of Cath’s perzine focuses on technology, thealogy (goddess worship), dealing with anti-feminism and “bro” culture, and graduating from university into the real world.
Here. In My Head #10 The University Years (40 pages, 1/2 sized)
This bumper edition of Here In My Head includes stories on living away from home, academia, making friends, the Student’s Union, and graduation.
Here. In My Head. #11: A 24-Hour Zine (24 pages, 8″ x 3″)
This issue was created for the 24 Hour Zine Thing, and features pieces on being creative, self-esteem and self-empowerment, contraception, minor annoyances, and small pleasures.
Here. In My Head. #12
Features writings on self-improvement and new year’s resolutions, plans for the future, misogyny in rock, identity, and developing a sense of self. Full colour cover.
Here. In My Head. #13 (40 pages, 1/4 sized)
The latest issue of Cath’s feminist perzine discusses shyness, social anxiety, self-esteem, privilege, confidence, sharing your voice, and thoughts about being a ‘proper’ adult.
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Here. In My Head. #14 (40 pages, 1/4 sized)
Made in 24 hours, this issue of my feminist perzine features writings on mental health recovery, being a “bitch receptionist”, my favourite Tori Amos music, things I wish I could tell my teenage self, and the Suffering Artist myth. Full colour cover.
Here. In My Head. #15: Life with a Chronic Digestive Disorder (48 pages, 1/4 sized)
This zine is all about my experiences living with IBS, and includes topics such as triggers, shame, body image, coping techniques, tips and tricks, and how to be an ally to chronically ill people.
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Here. In My Head. #16 (32 pages, 1/4 sized)
Written and assembled in 24 consecutive hours, this issue of my feminist perzine features writings on the process of recording my new EP ‘So Far From Whole’, thoughts on being a multipotentialite/scanner, on being considered boring, and my favourite music.
Here. In My Head. #17: EP Tour Diary (56 pages, 1/4 sized)
A tour diary of my ‘So Far From Whole’ EP UK tour, featuring personal reflections on the experience, gig reviews, tweets, ephemera, and a list of my favourite service stations. Check out the companion video tour diary here!
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Dig Deep
The first issue of Dig Deep! In the intro of this zine, I write that I’m working to figure out how to live a life that’s important to me, and this zine reflects a lot of that. Inside are stories about the idea of home, a spontaneous dance session on an empty train car, & the projects that I do to create the life that I want to lead. There are stories about my public library & a rundown of the out-of-town libraries that I’ve visited. There’s also a list of zine love, ten word reviews, & a sweet cut and paste layout!
Quarter sized (4.25″ x 5.5″), 32 pages. Written October of 2010.
Dig Deep #2 starts with a piece about my favorite t-shirt – the history behind the shirt itself & also my adventures while wearing it. Following that is an account of my trip to Paris with one of my best friends, revealing the best & worst parts of it all. I also write about my struggle in dealing with the ever-present street harassment happening on the streets of Chicago (ugh), and then end the zine with a piece about the emotions I felt when pushing past my fear to do something that I’ve always wanted to do. There’s also some lists of things I’ve done since my last zine, things I want to do in the near future, & the books currently checked out on my library card.
20 pages, 4.25″ x 3.5″. Written in March of 2011.
Issue 4 of Dig Deep! In this issue, Heather dives into two things she is insanely grateful for: her friends and the awesome projects she’s involved in. Heather writes about her wonderful female friendships in a way that is both endearing and enviable. She also outlines a bunch of projects in her life that bring her happiness, like a zine reading club, a postcard project, and one of Heather’s pride and joys: the Chicago Zine Fest. This zine will leave you feeling positive and hopeful, and wanting to go hang out with your best friend and then buckle down and get shit done. (Thanks to Kerri of Deafula zine for the description!)
3.25″ x 4.5″, 48 pages. Written in July of 2012.
Issue 5 of Dig Deep is another well-written, honest, and insightful zine from Heather. #5 recaps Heather’s experience embarking on Bad Zine, Everyone’s Fault zine tour in the summer of 2012. In her retelling of the tour’s events, Heather perfectly portrays just how meaningful of an experience it was, while also tenderly showing the emotions of what it’s like when “real life” continues to go on while one is adventuring away from home. Heather was a super important and supportive influence in my own decision to go on a zine tour in 2013 – I think everyone should read this zine so that they too can experience that (loving) shove they need to do something that might be scary and terrifying, but in the end is so rewarding and worth it. (Please note the trigger warning for suicide. And thanks to Kerri of Deafula zine for the description!)
Quarter sized (4.25″ x 5.5″), 20 pages. Written in March of 2013.
The newest issue of Dig Deep has stories about friends, projects, adulthood, keeping your head up, etc etc. You know, the usual. (How do I write a description for my own zine, anyway? It’s the worst! A real description written by someone else is coming soon!)
Quarter sized (4.25″ x 5.5″), 32 pages. Written in March of 2014.
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Eric Levitt
The very first issue of Gross Process, formerly Doom Clouds, moves on to a new time in my recovery. This issue is all about winter survival, prepping for the winter, xmas & hanukkah, worsening mental health, home, shitty landlords, chosen family, punk and ‘accountability’, partner abuse, decolonizing ideas around justice and dealing with community violence, vulnerability, love & my mom.
Written and published in November 2014.
Gross Process II is about the complexities of gender identity and the trans/* umbrella, gender and gendered violence, trauma recovery, numbing with drugs, intimacy, ptsd, dealing with doctors, and feelings of hopelessness because of abuser apology. It’s about challenging the way we think about and treat survivors in our own communities, punk spaces, being a maker and art as a direct community action and a tool for healing. It also includes DIY recipes for depressed people!
This issue is about surviving a horrible winter with depression, appreciating summer, working/not working, motivation, trauma recovery, regaining sexual agency through gay hook up apps, getting diagnosed with ptsd, gender & transition, mortality and fantasy.
Written and published in the late summer/early fall of 2014.
In It, Together, Forever – Doom Clouds III
This issue contains heavy reflections on intimate partner abuse, trauma memories/journals. It also has writing on consent, alternative structures of support & mutual aid for survivors of abuse. Text Heavy.
Written in the fall/winter of 2013/2014, published in December 2014.
Saturn Return(s) – Doom Clouds IV
Gross Process IV: Saturn Return focuses on surviving Saturn return. How do we create the lives we want to see for ourselves? This zine focuses on not only prioritizing our goals but our dreams and how to make the lives we want in a world that makes us feel undeserving of the best. The zine is also about dealing with ptsd and insomnia as a survivor of violence, exploring spirituality through magick, and also includes a list on how white punx can be accountable to black and poc punx in the scene (and ugh, also everywhere). Made in the fall of 2015.
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Erick Lyle / SCAM
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
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Imaginary Windows no. 6 by Erin Fae
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
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Ghost Lungs
ghost lungs no. 3 (spring 2014).
40 pages at ½ letter size. this zine is about fatness, binding, & healing. images of whales and deep sea diving, translucent cover.
ghost lungs no. 2 (winter 2012-spring 2013).
36 pages at ½ letter size. the pages of this zine are made from the atlas i used the first time i drove across the country by myself. journal entries from the last five years about travel, sadness, wanderlust, friendship, & finding that quiet space in yourself.
“They say that when you lose something you ought to retrace your steps in order to figure out where you last held it…” In this issue, Em revisits the last few years, leaving their hometown, people close to them dying, being in a relationship of repeated sexual assault, reading Borderlands, asking their friend what it’s like to be wealthy, depression, restlessness, living in Birmingham, New Orleans, the Midwest. writing. trying to make meaning. moving back to their hometown.- Cindy Crabb
ghost lungs no. 1 (summer 2012).
46 pages at ¼ letter size. collaged and text-heavy. it has writing about queerness, names, my grandma dying, failure, desire, & survival.
here’s a little review from ravenswing zines: spooky organs
Activist Journeys 