Zines on Toast tour comes to a close

I made it to New York! Tonight is the very last show of the Zines One Toast tour! The reading is at Blue Stockings books at 7 PM. Be there!

Then, let’s go have a beer to celebrate the awesome month of touring with my UK friends and see them off back to their tiny island next to Europe!

This month has been amazing. We have read zines to people in 19 cities and have visited 22 states! We have been awed by The Olympic National Park, The Redwoods, The Grand Canyon, Zion’s National Park, The Rocky Mountains, The Black Hills, The Crazy Horse Monument, The Badlands, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and even Las Vegas! We have had readings at zine libraries, infoshops, houses, zine fests, record stores, craft shops, books stores, art schools, universities, and even an outdoor monument! We have seen lots of animals: Deer, bear, mountain goat, squirrels, antelope, prairie dogs,  and countless dogs and cats at the houses of our fine hosts!

I’m sure this tour will spark many zines but until then you can check out my photos here.

I’ll write some more about the trip later. Until then, I’m hanging out in Brooklyn and headed home to Portland on the 1st. Apparently Paul has attempted to grow something resembling a beard. We’ll see if it is still on his face when he greets me at the airport….

Zines On Toast tour has made it to the bay area!

So much has been going on! The 10th Portland Zine Symposium was awesome! The Copy Scams were pretty good. We didn’t make total fools over ourselves and people genuinely seemed to dig us!  We might be  making some more tapes when we get back if anyone else wants so copies…. We might even get a digital version at some point. I also took a million photobooth pictures with friends and it was great!

Monday after the symposium I finished up with my work at the rest of the tour crew headed to the Olympic peninsula for camping. I met them on Tuesday in Seattle for our show at ZAPP. The next day we explored Seattle a bit and headed to Olympia. I stupidly updated my google phone which messed it up and I had to have it wiped. I literally lost ALL of my contacts! Both the backup assist and the google back up didn’t work. ugh.

Next we headed home so I had one night more with Paul. Then we headed to the Redwoods for camping. At night we sat in a field drinking cheap wine and staring into the Milky Way. The UK kids had never seen the Milky Way before. In the morning we walked through some forests making Ewok sounds. We drove down to Oakland where we ate some Ethiopain food that kicked our ass and crashed out after some good beer.

Today we were at the San Francisco Zine Fest. It went pretty well. It’s nice to have a table with 5 other people so we can all get some time to get away. Tomorrow we have our reading/discussion about zines. It should be fun!

If you haven’t already you should check out our blog about the tour on ZINESONTOAST.ORG and see what we all have to say!

Symposium stuffs!

Does anyone have any neat Portland Zine Symposium trivia? I’m working on submitting something to the 10th Anniversary zine. You know, like the Portland Zine Symposium has been held in 4 different location on the PSU campus and how the 2006 Portland Zine Symposium ruined 3 relationships (that we know of!) Any more to add?

We are scheduling a Zinester Feud at Floating World Comics after the symposium on Saturday. Is is based on the game Family Feud (or Family Fortunes for our UK friends) For this to work we need to compile survey answers from you , the zine public. So, even if you can’t make it to the Portland Zine Symposium you can influence it! Please go here and fill out the survey. We are also going to try to stream it like we did with with the 24 hour zine challenge!

So, the band that we have started since Steve has been in town has a show! On Sunday August 29th after the Portland Zine Symposium! You should come! We are also working on a 4 track recording to be released only on cassette! 5 songs about getting caught stealing copies, lists of things we like/dislike, the 24 hour zine challenge and more!

After that, I head out for the Zines On Toast tour!

Zines On Toast, Portland Zine Symposium… Zines! zines! Zines!

So, It’s August and the end of this month brings a bunch of stuff to a close. Here’s some stuff about some things:

24 Hour Zine Challenge:

I made a 24 hour zine about all of the post boxes I have had. There are short stories about who I shared it with or things that happened including Paul’s stalker that worked at the postal outlet! It is Brainscan 25.5 and I’ll have them for trade only at the Portland Zine Symposium and on the Zines on Toast tour. Fellow zine symposium organizer, Derek, reviewed Brainscan 25.5 on his blog Overglued.

On of the contestants did some interviews at the event. You can check it out here and see what we had to say.

The Portland Zine Symposium is August 28-28! There are no full tables left BUT there are some half tables left. So, if you are in Portland you should register your table soon soon soon. I think we are pretty close to having a full workshop schedule but there are  few panels that could use some extra folks. I’d like to have a panel on Zine Ethics. If you or anyone you know would like to be on the panel let me know.

Zines on toast! We have finalized all our tour dates! Please come out and see us if we are in your area. I’d love to meet! Here are the finalized dates and locations!

26 Aug- Portland, Oregon (7PM Reading Frenzy-921 Southwest Oak Street)
28 Aug- Portland, Oregon (10-5 Portland Zine Symposium-PSU Stott Gym)

29 August- Portland, Oregon (11-4 Portland Zine Symposium-PSU Stott Gym)

31 AUG- Seattle, WA (Richard HUGO HOUSE 1634 11TH ave)

1 Sept- Olympia, WA (7PM Northern 321 4th Avenue)
4 Sept- San Francisco ,CA (San Francisco Zine Fest-County Fair building)
5 Sept- San Francisco ,CA (San Francisco Zine Fest-County Fair building)
7 Sept- Santa Cruz, CA (Sub Rosa 703 Pacific Avenue)
8 Sept- San Diego, CA (2754 sNOWDROP sT)
12 Sept- Salt Lake City, UT (rAUNCH RECORCDS 1119 E 2100 S)
14 Sept- Denver, CO (27 Social Center, 2727 W 27th Avenue)
16 Sept- Minneapolis, MN (Minneapolis Center for Book arts 1011 Washington Ave South)
17 Sept- Milwaukee, WI (Cream City Collectives 732 e Clarke St.)
18 Sept- Chicago, IL (Quimby’s Books 1854 West North Avenue)
20 Sept- Columbus, OH (Wholly Craft 3169 North High Street)
22 Sept- Asheville ,NC (Firestorm cafe and books 48 Commerce St.)
23 Sept- Chapel Hill, NC (Internationalist books, 405 W Franklin Street
24 Sept- Richmond, VA (Chop Suey Books 2913 West Cary Street)
26 Sept- Baltimore, MD (Atomic Books 3620 Falls Road)
27 Sept- Philadelphia, PA (Wooden Shoe 704 South St)
28 Sept- New York, NY (Barnard College Library 3009 Broadway enter campus at 117th st)
29 Sept- New York, NY (Blue Stockings Books 172 Allen St)

It’s been awhile…

Let’s see, what I have I been up to?

I got a space phone! Ok, not a space phone but it is an HTC Incredible and it is, incredible. I like to say that it is made of Unicorn horns and rainbows. It can do all sorts of neat stuff and it takes amazing photos for a camera phone.

My friend Steve from Rum Lad zine came through town with his band and then took a 3 day Greyhound trip back to Portland when dour was over! Oh, the dirty dog. Oh the stories he has told.  He’s been here a week and is going to be staying with us until the zine symposium and after that we leave on our zine tour. I set him up at what used to be my shipping table and he has spent the days drawing as I have been catching up on button orders. It has been nice to have an officemate. We can complain and/or laugh about e-mails and whatnot. We have been joking that we are in the Brain-Lad office! This is what I see when I look over from my desk:

Steve is so metal that he can't stop making horns with his hand!

Sometimes when I look over I see this:

OJ has been stealing Steve's chair a lot.

Steve, Paul, Marc and  I have started a zine band! We are called the Copy Scams and we hope to play at least one show. We have the skeletons of 3 songs and lyrics for 1.5. The last time I sang in public was with Paul at the Powell’s reading and before that was when I was in a band 10 years ago. This should be… interesting.

I think I made about 3,000 buttons in the past week and still got up to the Riverhouse twice to see my mom and swim! The weather has finally been warm enough. My friend Tiphanie was in town for the last trip and we took the neighbor’s inflatable boat as far as we could walk up stream and went down the river. It was super fun!

I’ve also been putting a lot of time into organizing the Portland Zine Symposium. We are having 2 meeting a week now. Let me know if you are going to be in town because we need lots of volunteers! We also need workshop leaders and people who want to put panels together. Please check out the site if you want to help out.

Another thing that is symposium related is the 24 Hour Zine Challenge! The Portland Zine Symposium and the IPRC are hosting a 24 hour zine event at the IPRC! This is a fund raiser for the Portland Zine Symposium and we are asking people to sponsor zine creators in their endeavor to create a zine in 24 hours! I will be hosting the event as the IPRC staff member but I am also a participant! I would love love love it if you would sponsor me. You only have to pay up if I finish the zine in 24 hours, And, as my mother who is sponsoring me said, It’s a pretty good bet that I will. If you donate $20 to the Portland Zine Symposium by sponsoring me you will receive a copy of my zine! So, if you want a copy of this exclusive limited print run Alex Wrekk zine AND you would like to help support the Portland Zine Symposium GO HERE.

Another project I’m working on is  the Zines On Toast tour! We have most of our dates confirmed, a poster almost done and press release almost ready to go out! I’ll be posting dates soon. We are starting the tour right after the Symposium and heading north then south then east. Stay tuned!

So, on Friday my sister, Paul and I went to see the Swingin Utters. It was one of those “old Time’s sake” sort of things but somehow by the end of it I had been elbowed in the head by a skinhead and had blood pouring down my face. out of 18 years of going to show these are the three injuries I have incurred: 1) my nose broken at a Swinging Utters show around 98 or 99. 2) a sprained ankle at a Bouncing Souls show that my sister had also asked me to go to for “Old time’s sake” 3) A split forehead from this recent Swinging Utters show.

From this I have learned three things, I won’t be going to any more shows that my sister wants to go to, The Swinging Utters are dangerous for me, and I’m getting old. I figure after 18 years of shows and dancing in pits that if that’s all I had hurt then I’m ahead of the curve.

Facial scars build character right? Actually everyone who has seen it thinks it's pretty cool. I'm sure it will fade, but it's wicked!

I’m going to see if Paul made fire on the grill to cook food yet. Grilled tofu, corn on the cob and various grilled veggies are in the future!