As many of you know, I’ve been gone for almost a week doing the following: Attending the PDX Zine Symposium, celebrating my fourth anniversary in Seaside, OR, and attending my brother’s wedding. This was such an amazing, packed, week of wonderful events! Because over 500 pics were taken I’m currently weighing through them and posting them on my flickr page.

I’ll start at the beginning: The Zine Symposium
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Basically, my sister’s lengthy interview-bases zine, Ten Feminists, killed. She sold so many copies! Perhaps it was the hand painted cover and/or it was evident she had spent a year on it. She charmingly was selling it for a sliding scale: $3-4 dollars–even though it was worth much more. Everyone paid $4 and I felt like I could only fleetingly piggy back on her success. We sat next to the twins from Fuzzy Lunch Box fame who I wished I could have talked more with since the zine I traded them for is excellent! We also sat right next to the door with the handmade sign: Food. We thought we would get a lot of foot traffic if we sat near the food door but alas, it actually made us less visible.

I wasn’t as exuberant this year. Last year I was much more hungry for the ‘zine experience’ of meeting, shaking hands, trading (hoping to God it’s not a poetry zine), and getting to know fellow artist submersed in the DIY culture. Some zinesters were very friendly, others were reserved and obviously reluctant to trade. I looked up TugBoat Press who thoughtfully reviewed “Kindergarten Underground” last year and thanked them–also submitted “Kin” and “Ten Feminists” for review. (Incidentally, check out this spread on Stranger Danger Distro!)

I tried cute incentives this year…like giving anyone I traded with a flower pin. Some people were very into it but many seemed confused and unwilling to put it on. There weren’t any prints/tees that I HAD to have like last year. Sure, I rummaged around the bin of used t-shirts that had the 2007 Zine Symposium logo on it and cheerfully coughed up $5 for a gently used Old Navy Tee. There were really cute shrinky dinks for a quarter and plastic pendants I couldn’t resist. But the high quality prints, the quirky photos, a lot of that was missing this last year. Perhaps they were pushed out for vendors who were more ‘zine-y?’