Richmond ZineFest 2007

I almost didn't go to this, but I thought it would be cool to see what kind of underground paper culture is floating around Richmond. The Richmond zinefest was held at the Firehouse Theater and at The Camel and according to the people I talked to, it was the first such festival in Richmond in about 14 years. As it turns out, about half the zine publishers were from out of town. Knowing nothing about zine culture except a vague reference from a 1990s Harvey Danger Song, I decided to learn more about zines from the people at the 25 or so tables.

I talked to most of the participants and picked up a lot of free schwag. The setup was rather like a flea market or comic convention, with each zine person sitting behind their own own table or half table. Some people had tee shirts and stuff for sale, but a lot of people gave me free stuff because I was talking to them.

You know this was a Richmondy event because RVA Magazine was there and it was at the Firehouse Theater (co-founded by Harry Kollatz Jr., aka senior writing editor of Richmond Magazine and guy with the funny hat who is always fan walking in Carytown). The guy from Patchwork Collective was manning the info table, and the Zinefest program he had put together was about as DIY as you can get.

Keywords for noobs:
* Zine -- a Do It Yourself(DIY) magazine-like publication, usually 10 to 50 pages containing original art, poetry, opinion pieces, doodles, and random whatever.
* Distro -- sort of a zine middleman; a person who publishes lists of available zines and will send them to you. Examples include PaperChaseDistro.com, , parcell press , Valiant Death (records and Distro). Zineworld ("A reader's guide to the Underground Press") seems to be a good place to start... they review zines of all quality levels as well as writing articles on how to do zine stuff.

* PerZine -- someone who writes a zine about their PERsonal experience.
* Tower Records -- Apparently Tower used to be zine central, but now that they have filed for bankruptcy.
* Tabling -- I saw this on a flyer... not sure if it is zine scene lingo but it works... it's a verb... "who will be tabling at that event? Oh, I have a bunch of people who want their own tables"

As some of you may know, I originally intended sceneonerichmond to be a "newsletter" for the Richmond <>< scene. When my co-conspirators in the sceneone project bugged out in 2004, I started this blog in 2005. Even as I am now mostly internet presence, I have always had a place in my heart for making and distributing paper information pamphlets around Richmond. Here are some things I learned about the craft in case there are others like me who think about this kind of stuff...

* Frequency -- most zine kids are far less productive than they originally intended. The distro people told me it was fairly normal to have zines be created bi- monthy (that is... every other month). Some people put out zines only once a year. One guy shared a table with another "zine buddy" told me he put out two zines in August 2006 and started a third that didn't get done until last week.
* Media -- Most people published in 8" X 6" staple-bound "fold copy paper in half" format, and several mentioned to me that they relied heavily on the Staples copy center honor system or friends who had access to "free" copy machines. Several people went beyond the low-fi DIY norm and actually had impressive art and copy. The twine guy (28 Pages Lovingly Bound With Twine) was using a wooden spoon to get the twine the right length. I was also particularly impressed with the stuff at the substanceInk table (these guys were VCU art students). The other people who set the curve at this festival were the folks from Young American Comics. Not only that but, they gave me their price list for making buttons. Buttons!
* Content-- HOW TO tips like Gardening ... musings about love... documentation of experiences... Richmondy stuff... anarchists calls to arms... stories about a particular location... absurd anecdotes... tripped out doodles(brains melting, etc) ... personal poetry... artsy comics


My overall memory of this event was that it was a lot of down to earth people who are trying to build community by putting a little bit of themselves on paper. Many of them got into "the zine scene" by first reading other peoples' stuff and saying, "I can do THAT!"

I am struggling for a pithy conclusion here. I guess I'll just say that I also got the feeling that zine-ing can't be that hard. I have even though of a name if I ever do catch the zine bug... " ZineOneRichmond!"


-RCU