A few weekends ago, on Sunday 3rd May, Flick & I did the London Zine Symposium, there and back in a day... again. She just about missed the coach and I had to hold it up under unbearably tense pressure, panicking down the phone, animated & excitable, standing on my seat watching out the window for the approach of her boyfriend's car whilst the bus driver waited next to me, drumming his fingers on her empty seat. Once again the symposium was at the Rag Factory on Brick Lane although this year we were in a much nicer, sunshine-y building, white tiled like a bathroom with a shower in the toilet! There was much more room for wandering around between stalls although it did feel a little stilted to have the tables divided between two rooms.
I love the food in the Spitalfields area. In the morning I went on an epic mission for my beloved almond croissants, taking in two markets before I finally tracked down a stall that had some left. Later on we bought the delicious salad, pitta & tahini lunch provided by the zine people for £1.50 and ate sat outside on the curb in Brick Lane, people watching. There were vegan cakes, workshops, readings and the Footprint Workers Co-op were down from Leeds with a load of copy gear, putting together the pages from the collaborative zine. For a while I was chuckling to myself about the nature of zine events being crammed full of socially awkward people... how ironic that so many of them come together in such a tight squish of a place where they have no choice but to interact. An amusing observation until the moment I realised, I too am one of the socially awkward at times! Reluctant to make smalltalk, unsure of what exactly is to be done with flailing alien arms yet altogether far too aware of the comparative height of chair to table and whether anyone else is as freaked out by it as myself. Oh dear. Fun times though, all bumbling about together!
Chris of Herman Peaks totally had the best t-shirt at the symposium! I picked up some ace stuff; Tukru's new zine, 'Your Pretty Face is Going Straight to Hell #8', the cover of which features a unicorn sicking a rainbow! Chris Taylor's entire back catalogue of 'Cognitive Dissonance' comics - amazing, you MUST buy them! I read them all on the coach on the way home. I never really considered myself to be one for comics before but these are something else... witty, dry, wrong... awesome! What else? More of Scott Smith's zines - whilst reading these it is entirely possible to pee yourself laughing (TENA Lady ahoy!). And lots of little bits & pieces from the 60+ stalls that were there on the day.
hello, forgot to pick up one of your zines last month, i've heard good things about number three..do you have a shop? i'll look now...
Posted by: scott | June 01, 2009 at 09:43 PM
Saw your stuff at London Zine Symposium was ace :) x
Posted by: Sam | July 29, 2009 at 11:26 AM