I wrote a submission yesterday for a zine called Zine Chronicity (pun on synchronicity). About those magic moments where unexpected confluences and coincidences reveal themselves, but with zines. So I wrote the following memory out and it made me come back to this blog (neglected since the covid hooha) to rediscover when that was. And George Zine was back in 2009!
Here's my story:
I have been making zines for over 15 years now, and peaked in terms of effort and enthusiasm in the period this story happened. It was a period when I sought to print one zine each month, so they were mostly flimsy and ephemeral and very cheap. Some on particular topics that interested me, some about the local band scene.
On this occasion I had put all my drawings of the blind cat, George, with whom I was living, into an A6 zine with a colour photocopied cover. So his handsome blind tough face was on the cover. It cost me more than usual, over £1 each copy instead of the usual 30p or so.
I got the box from the printers and had that familiar urge to share the zine RIGHT NOW. I sometimes would put some copies of my cheaper ones around cafes and bars, even in phone boxes. I knew these copies would likely go to waste, and had never heard back any success from them, but the idea of a genuine stranger picking one up, like I as a genuine stranger had encountered zines before, was something I usually felt worth the chance. Not on this occasion though cos this one was too pricey (& in fact my most popular zine, all copies are long since gone).
I had taken one zine from the box to check and read. I took it out of my coat pocket again as I stopped at a crossing in town, the opened box resting in my arms. Where Newgate Street meets Grainger Street in Newcastle upon Tyne.
A girl on a bike and with, I suppose, a zinester sort of air about her stopped at the light, as we pedestrians had our turn to cross. Without my brain even registering what I was doing, because it was so natural, I held out my Georgezine and said 'have a zine, it's about a blind cat'. She took it in a smooth exchange and I walked on before the lights changed.
Never saw her again, & wouldn't recognise her, but I later heard through a friend of a friend about this new girl in town, who was getting involved in something they were involved in, who had been raving about this story. How she was stopped at a light and some random guy passed her a zine and when she read it it was amazing or some such lovely enthusiastic comment, and some other words I don't actually remember now.
But that was the moment. At the pedestrian crossing outside what is now a Greggs the Bakers. It couldn't happen there today because the traffic flow has been changed. But in all my years of hoping a zine left (abandoned really) in a phone booth or library or such place might somehow find itself in the new zine fan's hands, there was this one occasion when it did happen. Took 2 seconds. Such a moment did exist. They do.
