Portland Zine Symposium

So I suck (and couldn't find my camera cord) and never bothered to give a summary of the Portland Zine Symposium, so here goes:

I took the Greyhound out there. It was 3 days of traveling with 5 or 6 (I think?) bus switches. Really long and boring, but overall not bad. The worst part of the trip was the stop in Laramie, Wyoming (where Matt Shepherd was murdered). My friend, Zach, (who ended up coming with me) just had to point out that that's where we were just as my shaved-head-rainbow-belt-wearing self was getting the stink eye from a couple old white guys in cowboy hats. A happy realization, let me tell you.

Anyway,
Portland looks kind of like this:

There are a lot fewer hippies (and a lot more yuppies) than I expected. A girl that I met at the symposium told me that a lot of the hippies had migrated to places like Olympia.

When we got there, I got in touch with someone off the symposium forums who was offering couches to sleep on. So we ended up staying with this girl named Liz and all of her roommates at a punk house on the SE side so I didn't find myself needing to stab anyone. We got in on Friday night and went to the open mic/potluck they were having at the IPRC. I got a bit buzzed and then decided to get up and read something that I had written for the zine I'm working on (and didn't manage to finish in time to bring it to the symposium). Drank free wheat beer.

The next day, the symposium looked like this:

People here were pretty friendly for the most part, but there definitely was some pronounced hipster cliquishness going on.

This is my friend who came with me:

when this picture was taken I was making fun of him for being a nerd and posting on a programming forum in the middle of the symposium. Obviously he remained unfazed by my mocking.

Someone was giving posters out for free. I like this one in a "haha crimethinc-style propaganda" kind of way:

The best part of the whole symposium was a workshop which was supposed to be a discussion about queer zines, but ended up being a bunch of us queers and trannies sitting around and talking about a bunch of really interesting (to me) things.

The end.