Before blogging

submitted by Max Sparber

Jun 30 2008 — 2:00am

There were zines, and the Twin Cities was home to a massive zine scene. Stevens Square looks back on the scene. (via) Anyone have zine memories they want to share?

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5 Reader Comments

chuck Jun 30 2008
1:42 am

That’s actually kind of exciting.
I’m sure I have a Hit it or quit it somewhere in a box with my rock posters.

sandburg Jun 30 2008
7:26 am

I don’t really know if zines should be seen as a predecessor to blogs, or as obsolete– at one point, I had a zine and a blog, and so did some other people I knew. Zines were just more fun to make and distribute. There are still a lot of zines still being made, as well. (Hit It or Quit It is still being made too, or at least I remember reading on Jessica Hopper’s blog that she had a new issue like, last year.)

I’m not old enough to have old-school zine memories from the 80s/90s, so all mine are from around the 2000s.

Anyway, me and a few of my friends who all did zines piled into a car and drove to Madison for the first zine fest there in 2004, and amassed a huge collection of zines and other stuff. It was fun. I still have them all. What was remarkable was that it was 6 teenage girls in a two-bedroom hotel room and we didn’t kill each other. Sadly, I don’t think any of us do zines anymore. I should try to track them all down.

When I first heard about the zine fest again, my immediate reaction was “Shit! I need to make a zine quick!” But seeing that it’s in two weeks, and I don’t feel like I have anything interesting I’ve written recently, I don’t think that’s going happen. I do have a button machine, though, so I might try to come up with some stuff to trade.

At the first Minneapolis Zine Fest, apparently Ericka of Pander Zine Distro (RIP!) liked one of the photographs I was selling and bought it, which I thought was pretty cool.

One of my zines was called “Anurachy!” and it was about deformed frogs.

andyst Jun 30 2008
9:08 am

Ha, that’s always my first reaction when I hear about a zine fest, too: “shit, I’ve got to do one now!” It’s why my career as a zine creator was so spotty and probably disappointing — surely as spotty and disappointing as my blogging career has turned out. Heh heh.

Jerad Jun 30 2008
10:03 am

I remember how cool I felt as a suburban 8th grader reading the first (and to my knowledge, only) edition of Metro, compiled by some BBS-user named AJ. It had poetry, stories, and an ad for the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I was in city envy heaven and things would never be the same.

mnblrmkr Jun 30 2008
11:16 am

What was remarkable was that it was 6 teenage girls in a two-bedroom hotel room and we didn’t kill each other.

Sounds like a movie.