Check Out Zine Fest Houston, Tomorrow at Lawndale

Hey, folks — it’s been very quiet around here, I know, and I’m really sorry for that. There are multiple reasons, some of them personal and some of them having to do with current Web technology rapidly outpacing this little Website; I’m working on both sides of that, and I’ll hopefully post something more about the latter part soon. The TL:DR of it, though, is that no, SCR isn’t dead, not yet, but it’s probably going to have to undergo some changes in the near future.

For right now, though, I’m posting because I’m psyched — as always — that Zine Fest Houston has rolled around again. The event has had a special place in my heart for a long, long time, and while it brings some pain & sadness now that Shane’s no longer around (miss you, man…), I’m happy as hell that ZFH has continued to survive and thrive, with awesome people keeping the ball rolling every year.

I know it probably seems a little antiquated in this era to focus on anything to do with actual printed publications, but like the festival itself, zines in general have a special place in my heart, too. I wouldn’t have ever even thought of starting SCR, in either its online or now-long-dead offline forms, if I hadn’t fallen in love with all the quirky, entertaining, wonderfully intense zines I first happened upon back in college. (I donated some to the Zine Fest Houston library a few years back, but I couldn’t bring myself to part with all of them; I’ve still got some of my favorites in my library at home.)

Of course, all of the above is my stupidly long-winded way of saying this: Zine Fest Houston is happening tomorrow, Saturday, September 7th, from 12-6PM at the Lawndale Art Center, and you should go. You should bring your kids, should you have any, and maybe you (and they) can fall in love with some oddball, obscure, passionately weird zine yourself/ves.

This year’s theme is “Zine Cuisine”, and there are talks and film screenings and panel discussions revolving around — yep, you guessed it — food, not to mention plenty of cool-sounding food vendors & trucks. There’s also a zine-making workshop for kids (well, “youth”, which may mean tweens/teens, I’m not sure) early in the afternoon, which sounds like something I would’ve jumped through fire to be able to do at that age.

And naturally, there’ll be plenty of booths & tables set up by artists, publishers, craftspeople, and whatever else, including very awesome people like poet/artist/writer Sara Cress, the Manvel Comics crew, Rene Cruz, J. Michael Stovall, Isaiah Broussard, and dozens more I’m sadly blanking on right now (sorry!).

Oh, and the whole thing is free. (Okay, not the food, I’m assuming, and definitely not the badass zines and artwork you purchased from the cool person with the green hair, but getting in is free.) So go by, check it out, grab some neat things to read, all that stuff. Trust me on this one…