(no subject)
i never made a big post about chicago zine fest so i'm finally going to do that now. then i'll catch up to where i am. i'm so behind on pictures/posting/updating about my life.
i almost thought too much time had passed to do a zine fest update, but i like to have everything documented here because i've been doing it for ten years. it's a pretty rad archive to look back on and be able to find everything.
chicago zine fest was a really huge endeavor that my close friends and i put on. we brainstormed the idea last year while all tabling together at the milwaukee zine fest and were having our first meeting as soon as we got in the car for the drive home from milwaukee. it just made sense to try to put on a fest in chicago because half the tablers and attendees at milwaukee were from chicago and most people brought up the fact that chicago doesn't have it's own fest. being the type of people that we are, we decided right then and there to tackle that mountain.
the first zine fest happened in march of 2010 and went better than any of us could have imagined for a first time event. over 600 people came, almost 100 people tabled, we had an art show, a film fest, a zine reading, and workshops. it was a really important event for strengthening the zine community in chicago. throughout the year, that momentum in the zine community seemed to maintain itself with lots of readings, zinesters reading at the beginning of punk/acoustic shows, and benefits for the second annual CZF. by being an organizer for CZF, i really started to feel like i was a part of something big in chicago and an active part of a strong community. that's a feeling i had lacked for most of my first year and a half there despite my efforts to feel otherwise.
planning the second zine fest was another big undertaking because the first one sold out relatively quickly and we felt like we needed to make it grow in size to accommodate everyone who wished to participate. we added three new organizers into the mix, bringing it up to myself and 6 other people who met once a week for three hours for 8 months. that's a LOT of hours we put into this thing. we decided to try to double the size of the fest so it wouldn't sell out. however, despite opening registration a few months earlier than the year before and having twice as much table space, it sold out within three weeks with almost 200 tablers from all over the world! we started to get pretty nervous about how big/out of control this thing could get.
we planned some new events this year, including a youth zine reading, a Q&A with aaron cometbus and al burian, a karaoke night, an outerspace themed afterparty, and a film fest curated specifically for CZF. we really had our work cut out for us, but with 7 of us, a year of experience and a template for organizing, it was way easier to plan and pull off. it still completely took over our lives until it was over though.
of course, the weekend of the fest came and went in the blink of an eye. 5 people crashed at my house from pittsburgh, portland, omaha, and toronto. we ate a lot of food. we made a big brunch. we all dressed up for the after party and took silly photos. everyone sold a lot of zines. the reading was amazing. karaoke was way more fun than i imagined. and it was totally overwhelming! the day of tabling was packed the entire time. i'm not really sure how organizers will reconcile that next year or if they'll even be able to. it might just have to be accepted that there are small zine fests and a few really big ones and the big ones will be overwhelming/chaotic/anxiety inducing events. in a city like chicago, i don't really think there's any way to make that different, nor do i really think it should be. some might argue for otherwise.
overall, i'm really proud of what we pulled off and really happy to hear all the recounts of the fun weekend people had in chicago. i'm super stoked to have helped set up this model for a really successful event and can't wait to just attend it next year! the other zine fest organizers are some of the best friends i made in chicago. i really think that working on projects with people is key to becoming really close friends with them. it's such a bonding experience.
here are photos of the event:
my houseguests helping me fold and staple my zines. i was running around like a crazy chicken for the entire week before the fest, and trying to put out three new zines of my own at the same time. somehow i pulled it off, but had to pull a few almost all-nighters and had to enlist the help of my zinester friends more than a few times =0)
we didn't really know what to expect for the al burian/aaron cometbus Q&A. it was a daytime event during work hours, and also was during spring break for the campus it was on. it definitely could have been really poorly attended but it was a pretty full house!
fellow organizers leslie, johnny and jen watching/listening to the Q&A from the front info table on friday
victoria at the reading at 826CHI on friday night
cindi crabb at the reading
super well attended! leslie and i hosted the event.
over at quimby's for karaoke. you might not know that i'm a total stick in the mud. dancing? nope. karaoke? definitely not. fun? pssshhhhhh. but watching this karaoke was a blast with full crowd sing alongs which i definitely participated in. it started at 9pm and went all the way until 2am! people were lovin it.
two of my favorite ladies of all time! amy leigh from toronto and jen twigg from chicago/baltimore/dc
jose getting rowdy on the mic
zine fest organizers crammed in the quimby's photobooth. that's jen, leslie, johnny and carrie.
we had to be up bright and early the following morning to go set up for the main day of tabling. i walked over to leslie/neil's house and tip toed around all the columbus folks crashing there.
we powered up with some oj
and were ready to go
the calm before the storm. a huge help this year was just hiring a table company to rent the tables from and do all the set up for us! last year we scrounged up all the tables, hauled them, and set them up ourselves. what a headache! arriving to a perfect floorplan felt amazing.
i had just gotten my new camera the week before and didn't have time to read the manual or figure out how to adjust certain settings, so my pictures from zine fest are pretty bad. sorry!
we had two floors this year. the first floor and the 8th floor. we did our best to plan it in a way that people would definitely make the trip up to the 8th floor. we had all the workshops up there and also some big name tablers up there to try to draw some of the crowd up. it seemed to work because both floors were packed all day. a lot of people were wary about being placed up there but most of them expressed how happy they were by the end of the day. especially with the huge windows and views of the city. phew.
buddies visiting my table, dan, dominic and daniel
seriously, this crowded almost the whole time
three excellent comic artists giving a talk about the switch to becoming a full-time artist - liz prince, john porcellino and aaron renier
after the day was done and we loaded out, we picked up four gallons of vegan ice cream and got ready for the after party
a donation from chicago soy dairy
at the afterparty, i didn't get candid shots because i set my camera up on a tripod for 'prom pictures.' daniel brought a flash and a stand with an umbrella so we could get some pretty rad looking shots for people. it was a huge hit! here's me standing in for a light test
and now i'll barrage you with some of my favorite of the prom pictures. 200 of them were taken with lots of people standing in. i'm just posting some of my friends and myself here. the rest are posted on the CZF facebook page. so many.
jen, leslie and me
johnny and sarah, siblings!
me, jen and leslie again. we were the after party committee! we broke up all the CZF tasks into committees for planning this year and it worked super well. i was the only member of the graphics committee (doing all the formatting for graphics, as well as any forms and computer stuff that need to be made), i was also on the PR committee, the window display committee and the fundraising committee.
grand rapids gals. emilja and two others. emilja makes amazing comics in a zine called ship of fools!
columbus! richard, maryn and andy
exhibitor services committee. haha. jen, leslie and neil. neil is one of the other organizers. he wasn't in any of the previous photos for some reason!
johnny
liz mason, quimby's manager extraordinaire with her amazing homemade outerspace outfit! liz rules.
eric ayotte and leslie. eric curated the film fest for us and runs the gadabout film fest and the instant gratification movie challenge in bloomington
sara, leslie and me. my chicago indie comics comrades.
all of the zine fest organizers! me, matt, neil, johnny, carrie, jen and leslie
sarah and carrie
krista! k kountzzzzz
amber (montreal), bri z. (kent, oh), heather (chicago), and miranda elizabeth (toronto?).
i don't know who the girl on the top left is! the others are shira (DC), bri z (kent, oh). and amy leigh (toronto)
j. bee (dc) and jami sailor (chicago)
wearing amy leighs weirdo glasses
with eryca from LA (formerly of chicago)
a mishmash of people, matt (chicago) andy and richard (columbus), i have no idea who is behind andy. eric (bloomington) and amy leigh (toronto)
dan bress (baltimore) and daniel
amy leigh, eryca, alex wrekk (portland), miranda elizabeth and bri z.
dance party
alex looks like she only has one leg in this photo
lindsay and steve. steve was the dj for the night!
jenna and shira, two of the organizers of the new dc zine fest
two of my all-time favorite people, dan bress and daniel.
i almost thought too much time had passed to do a zine fest update, but i like to have everything documented here because i've been doing it for ten years. it's a pretty rad archive to look back on and be able to find everything.
chicago zine fest was a really huge endeavor that my close friends and i put on. we brainstormed the idea last year while all tabling together at the milwaukee zine fest and were having our first meeting as soon as we got in the car for the drive home from milwaukee. it just made sense to try to put on a fest in chicago because half the tablers and attendees at milwaukee were from chicago and most people brought up the fact that chicago doesn't have it's own fest. being the type of people that we are, we decided right then and there to tackle that mountain.
the first zine fest happened in march of 2010 and went better than any of us could have imagined for a first time event. over 600 people came, almost 100 people tabled, we had an art show, a film fest, a zine reading, and workshops. it was a really important event for strengthening the zine community in chicago. throughout the year, that momentum in the zine community seemed to maintain itself with lots of readings, zinesters reading at the beginning of punk/acoustic shows, and benefits for the second annual CZF. by being an organizer for CZF, i really started to feel like i was a part of something big in chicago and an active part of a strong community. that's a feeling i had lacked for most of my first year and a half there despite my efforts to feel otherwise.
planning the second zine fest was another big undertaking because the first one sold out relatively quickly and we felt like we needed to make it grow in size to accommodate everyone who wished to participate. we added three new organizers into the mix, bringing it up to myself and 6 other people who met once a week for three hours for 8 months. that's a LOT of hours we put into this thing. we decided to try to double the size of the fest so it wouldn't sell out. however, despite opening registration a few months earlier than the year before and having twice as much table space, it sold out within three weeks with almost 200 tablers from all over the world! we started to get pretty nervous about how big/out of control this thing could get.
we planned some new events this year, including a youth zine reading, a Q&A with aaron cometbus and al burian, a karaoke night, an outerspace themed afterparty, and a film fest curated specifically for CZF. we really had our work cut out for us, but with 7 of us, a year of experience and a template for organizing, it was way easier to plan and pull off. it still completely took over our lives until it was over though.
of course, the weekend of the fest came and went in the blink of an eye. 5 people crashed at my house from pittsburgh, portland, omaha, and toronto. we ate a lot of food. we made a big brunch. we all dressed up for the after party and took silly photos. everyone sold a lot of zines. the reading was amazing. karaoke was way more fun than i imagined. and it was totally overwhelming! the day of tabling was packed the entire time. i'm not really sure how organizers will reconcile that next year or if they'll even be able to. it might just have to be accepted that there are small zine fests and a few really big ones and the big ones will be overwhelming/chaotic/anxiety inducing events. in a city like chicago, i don't really think there's any way to make that different, nor do i really think it should be. some might argue for otherwise.
overall, i'm really proud of what we pulled off and really happy to hear all the recounts of the fun weekend people had in chicago. i'm super stoked to have helped set up this model for a really successful event and can't wait to just attend it next year! the other zine fest organizers are some of the best friends i made in chicago. i really think that working on projects with people is key to becoming really close friends with them. it's such a bonding experience.
here are photos of the event:
my houseguests helping me fold and staple my zines. i was running around like a crazy chicken for the entire week before the fest, and trying to put out three new zines of my own at the same time. somehow i pulled it off, but had to pull a few almost all-nighters and had to enlist the help of my zinester friends more than a few times =0)
we didn't really know what to expect for the al burian/aaron cometbus Q&A. it was a daytime event during work hours, and also was during spring break for the campus it was on. it definitely could have been really poorly attended but it was a pretty full house!
fellow organizers leslie, johnny and jen watching/listening to the Q&A from the front info table on friday
victoria at the reading at 826CHI on friday night
cindi crabb at the reading
super well attended! leslie and i hosted the event.
over at quimby's for karaoke. you might not know that i'm a total stick in the mud. dancing? nope. karaoke? definitely not. fun? pssshhhhhh. but watching this karaoke was a blast with full crowd sing alongs which i definitely participated in. it started at 9pm and went all the way until 2am! people were lovin it.
two of my favorite ladies of all time! amy leigh from toronto and jen twigg from chicago/baltimore/dc
jose getting rowdy on the mic
zine fest organizers crammed in the quimby's photobooth. that's jen, leslie, johnny and carrie.
we had to be up bright and early the following morning to go set up for the main day of tabling. i walked over to leslie/neil's house and tip toed around all the columbus folks crashing there.
we powered up with some oj
and were ready to go
the calm before the storm. a huge help this year was just hiring a table company to rent the tables from and do all the set up for us! last year we scrounged up all the tables, hauled them, and set them up ourselves. what a headache! arriving to a perfect floorplan felt amazing.
i had just gotten my new camera the week before and didn't have time to read the manual or figure out how to adjust certain settings, so my pictures from zine fest are pretty bad. sorry!
we had two floors this year. the first floor and the 8th floor. we did our best to plan it in a way that people would definitely make the trip up to the 8th floor. we had all the workshops up there and also some big name tablers up there to try to draw some of the crowd up. it seemed to work because both floors were packed all day. a lot of people were wary about being placed up there but most of them expressed how happy they were by the end of the day. especially with the huge windows and views of the city. phew.
buddies visiting my table, dan, dominic and daniel
seriously, this crowded almost the whole time
three excellent comic artists giving a talk about the switch to becoming a full-time artist - liz prince, john porcellino and aaron renier
after the day was done and we loaded out, we picked up four gallons of vegan ice cream and got ready for the after party
a donation from chicago soy dairy
at the afterparty, i didn't get candid shots because i set my camera up on a tripod for 'prom pictures.' daniel brought a flash and a stand with an umbrella so we could get some pretty rad looking shots for people. it was a huge hit! here's me standing in for a light test
and now i'll barrage you with some of my favorite of the prom pictures. 200 of them were taken with lots of people standing in. i'm just posting some of my friends and myself here. the rest are posted on the CZF facebook page. so many.
jen, leslie and me
johnny and sarah, siblings!
me, jen and leslie again. we were the after party committee! we broke up all the CZF tasks into committees for planning this year and it worked super well. i was the only member of the graphics committee (doing all the formatting for graphics, as well as any forms and computer stuff that need to be made), i was also on the PR committee, the window display committee and the fundraising committee.
grand rapids gals. emilja and two others. emilja makes amazing comics in a zine called ship of fools!
columbus! richard, maryn and andy
exhibitor services committee. haha. jen, leslie and neil. neil is one of the other organizers. he wasn't in any of the previous photos for some reason!
johnny
liz mason, quimby's manager extraordinaire with her amazing homemade outerspace outfit! liz rules.
eric ayotte and leslie. eric curated the film fest for us and runs the gadabout film fest and the instant gratification movie challenge in bloomington
sara, leslie and me. my chicago indie comics comrades.
all of the zine fest organizers! me, matt, neil, johnny, carrie, jen and leslie
sarah and carrie
krista! k kountzzzzz
amber (montreal), bri z. (kent, oh), heather (chicago), and miranda elizabeth (toronto?).
i don't know who the girl on the top left is! the others are shira (DC), bri z (kent, oh). and amy leigh (toronto)
j. bee (dc) and jami sailor (chicago)
wearing amy leighs weirdo glasses
with eryca from LA (formerly of chicago)
a mishmash of people, matt (chicago) andy and richard (columbus), i have no idea who is behind andy. eric (bloomington) and amy leigh (toronto)
dan bress (baltimore) and daniel
amy leigh, eryca, alex wrekk (portland), miranda elizabeth and bri z.
dance party
alex looks like she only has one leg in this photo
lindsay and steve. steve was the dj for the night!
jenna and shira, two of the organizers of the new dc zine fest
two of my all-time favorite people, dan bress and daniel.