All titles available at Portland Button Works website and Etsy shop. email alex at brainscanzineATgmailDOTcom for wholesale pricing.
Stolen Sharpie Revolution
a DIY Resource for Zines and Zine Culture
Author Alex Wrekk
with contributions by Sugene Mine, Jerianne Thompson, Sage Adderley, Jenna Freedman and illustrations by Steve Larder
Format 4.25” x 5.5” paperback
Pages 152
Price $8.00
ISBN 9780981794112
Since 2002, Stolen Sharpie Revolution: a DIY Resource for Zines and Zine Culture has been the go-to guide for all things zine-related. This little red book is stuffed with information about zines. Things you may know, stuff you don’t know and even stuff you didn’t know you didn’t know! Stolen Sharpie Revolution contains a cornucopia of information about zines and zine culture for everyone from the zine newbie to the experienced zinester to the academic researcher.
Stolen Sharpie Revolution consists of thoughtful lists and step-by-step how-to guides on everything from definitions of a “zine,” where to find zines, why they are important, how to make them and how to participate in zine culture. This book has everything you need to get started creating your own zine, or to figure out what to do with the zine you just made.
Stolen Sharpie Revolution serves as both an introduction into the wide world of zine culture and as a guide to taking the next step to become a part of it.
Copy Scams- Copy & Destroy 10″ record, zine, and digital download code
$10 retail
This 10″ record has 7 pop-punk songs about zines, a zine filled with lyrics, stories, lists, and more. Plus, a download code to get the album digitally that includes Copy Scam Live At Leeds (Zine Fest).
1. Intro 2. Stuff and Things 3. One One One One 4. 24 Hour Zine Challenge 5. Hate To Go 6. Up For Trades 7. Copy & Destroy
“The Copy Scams are a the band equivalent to a 24 hour zine!
Steve was visiting Portland from the UK and thought it might be fun to start a band while he was in the US. While he was in Portland he lived in a closet in the basement of the Spiral house and tricked housemates Alex, Paul and Marc to form a band in three weeks before the 2010 Portland Zine Symposium.
The decided to be a zine themed bank and In those three weeks they wrote 4 songs about zines, practiced, made a lo-fi recording, then played a show to end the Portland Zine Symposium weekend.
Giz missed the show because he had to fly back to France so he convinced them they needed him as a second guitarist and that they needed to do a UK tour.
Steve wrote more riffs and 3 more songs were written with the help of the internet. In the autumn of 2012 Alex, Paul, and Marc flew over to the UK from the US and Giz came over from France where they sorted out the new songs and recorded them and re-recorded the old ones then played a couple shows before going their separate ways again.
What you have here is 7 fun pop-punk songs about zines by folks who make and love zines.”
lead vocals : Alex
drums & back-up vocals : Paul
bass : Marc
The Copy Scams – Copy & destroy 10″ vinyl record, zine, and digital download code. available here in the US, here in the UK, here in France. You can listen free online, but you don’t get the cool zine and other stuff that come with the vinyl.
Brainscan zine #31 by Alex Wrekk
Color cardstock cover 20 pages 1/4 size with clipped ,$2 retail
“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.
Brainscan #30
40 pages, 1/4 sized, 5 color risograph printed on recycled paper! $3 retail
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 # 29 / No More Coffee # 4
split zine-a fiction zine that pretends to be a perzine
44 pages, half sized, 2 color risograph printed card stock covers, $3 retail
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.
Alex Wrekk 