JUST ADDED TO AFTER PARTY: THE ALLAH LAS!

It’s been over ten years since the creative community last came together in these numbers to celebrate the ultimate in small press publishing: zines. These small, usually handmade, noncommercial publications have persisted as a useful medium within the creative community because of their convenient size and typically inexpensive construction. For one day only, February 19, 2012, from 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., the L.A. Zine Fest and The Last Bookstore will play host to more than 75 zinemakers and luminaries of the L.A. arts community to celebrate these holdouts of print.

A broad form, zines can contain anything and are not limited to text or graphics. In Los Angeles in the 1940s, zines contained the writings of science-fiction fans and recorded essential elements of the early days of the culture; in the 1970s and 80s, punk zines like Flipside and Slash reviewed records, shows, and told stories of the punk scene from Hollywood and the South Bay to East L.A. The 2012 L.A. Zine Fest will showcase what Zine Fest organizer Rhea Tepplim calls “the diversity of the L.A. art crowd”: illustrators such as Tom Neely and Igloo Tornado (Henry + Glenn Forever) and Andy Ristaino (Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time) will present their work alongside art zine publisher/maker Drippy Bone Books. Record label No Girls Allowed Records, whose artists play the Smell and Pehrspace regularly, will have a table, as will The Devastator, a quarterly humor publication whose contributors have also done
work for Drawn & Quarterly, The New Yorker, The Onion, and The Daily Show.

Organizers of the Fest say it’s not just artists eager to share their work who want to see the Zine Fest realized; they’ve received an outpouring of support from local bookstores, record stores, and arts outposts. When the Zine Fest was having difficulties finding a venue, Josh Spencer, owner of The Last Bookstore, was the first in line to help.

“I can’t imagine how boring my life would have been in the late 80s/early 90s without zines,” says Spencer. “When I heard that these underground paper publications were still around in this age of blogs…it was a no-brainer to volunteer The Last Bookstore as a location and sponsor.”

The Last Bookstore not only helped the Zine Fest find a home on the second floor of the Spring Arts Tower (right above the Bookstore), but also volunteered to house all the workshops and panels (the last of which will be an interview with the preeminent subculture documentarian V.Vale by Henry Rollins) followed by the afterparty, curated by L.A. RECORD.

The Zine Fest’s panels and workshops do their part to represent the myriad facets of DIY culture
present in Southern California:

·San Diego’s Grrrl Zines A-Go-Go is conducting a workshop on the ways in which zines can be agents of
social change

·Jim Higgins of Meltdown Comics’ Meltdown University gives a talk on making and selling minicomics

·Machine Project’s Mark Allen is moderating a panel featuring representatives of The Smell, Echo Curio,
Sean Carnage, Home Room, Synchronicity Space, and Pehrspace on starting and running your own DIY
artspace

The L.A Zine Fest and workshops and panels associated with the Fest are free to attend and open to the public. The LAZF takes place Feb. 19, 2012 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the second floor or the Spring Arts Tower and in The Last Bookstore at 453 S. Spring Street, in downtown Los Angeles’ Historic Core. All panels and workshops will be in The Last Bookstore, along with live screenprinting by Hit + Run. The Last Bookstore will also be the site of L.A. RECORD’s afterparty for the Zine Fest.