Offsite – Zine Club Chicago on Marz: Chicago-Style Traditions, Feb. 27th!

Feb
27
7:00 pm

Zine Club Chicago on Marz: Chicago-Style Traditions Zinemaking Hangout
Life on Marz Community Club, 1950 N. Western Ave. in Logan Square/Bucktown
7 – 9 p.m. Thursday, February 27, 2025
Free!

This month, Zine Club Chicago is paying tribute to the distinctive ways our city loves to celebrate with a free zinemaking hangout in collaboration with our friends at Life on Marz Community Club! Y’all are invited to help create a group zine on the theme Chicago-Style Traditions.

This month’s theme is inspired by one of our favorite local holidays, Paczki Day, which Marz Brewing commemorates with the annual release of their Paczki Stout. This unique seasonal beer will be available during our event!

Please join us for Zine Club Chicago on Marz: Chicago-Style Traditions Zinemaking Hangout, 7-9 p.m. Thursday, February 27 at Life on Marz Community Club, 1950 N. Western Ave. in Logan Square/Bucktown. Free!

We’ll provide all the zinemaking supplies! Just bring your creativity. Life on Marz Community Club, our favorite locally owned taproom and café space, offers awesome alcoholic, CBD, and non-alcoholic beverages from Marz Brewery and more, plus some very fun snacks, for purchase. The taproom also will be holding a DJ night that evening, and we encourage y’all to stick around for an awesome selection of music spun by Rent Control Records!

Zine newbies and longtime enthusiasts alike are always welcome at Zine Club Chicago. This free event series is produced by Cynthia E. Hanifin and sponsored by Quimby’s Bookstore. Anna Jo Beck designs our visuals and created our logo.

Facebook event is here. More info on the Zine Club Chicago social media channels: @zineclubchicago

Image description: A flyer featuring paczki on a plate and this text: “Zine Club Chicago on Marz: Chicago-Style Traditions; 7-9 p.m. Thursday, February 27; Life on Marz Community Club, 1950 N. Western Ave; Free!; Info at quimbys.com

Zine Club Chicago Online: Show Us Your Stacks, Feb. 18th!

Feb
18
7:30 pm

 

A red-and-blue infographic flyer, with the image of books and zines stacked in a wicker basket, and text that reads: “Zine Club Chicago: Show Us Your Stacks; Online! Free! Zoom info on quimbys.com; 7:30 p.m. CT Tuesday, February 18, 2025”

Zine Club Chicago Online: Show Us Your Stacks
7:30 p.m. CT Tuesday, February 18, 2025
Online! Free!
On Zoom, RSVP details below

Whenever self-publishing fanatics gather, one question always seems to come up: How do you organize your zines?  Whether you’re a meticulous cataloguer, a creator of haphazard piles, or something in between, we want to know about the ways you arrange, display, and categorize your personal collection.

Get your home stash in order (or leave it messy), BYOS(tacks + Snax) and join us on Zoom for Zine Club Chicago Online: Show Us Your Stacks at 7:30 p.m. CT Tuesday, February 18, 2025!

** RSVP required ** We want to make sure that our online Zine Club Chicago events are a safe space, so we won’t be releasing the Zoom link publicly. If you’d like to attend, please email zineclubchicago@gmail.com to RSVP by 9 p.m. CT Monday, February 17 (the evening before our event). We’ll email you the Zoom link by 5 p.m. CT on Tuesday, February 18.

Zine newbies and longtime enthusiasts alike are always welcome at Zine Club Chicago. This free event series is produced by Cynthia E. Hanifin and sponsored by Quimby’s Bookstore. Anna Jo Beck designs our monthly flyers, created our logo, and made our Zine Club Chicago Shout-Outs site, where folks can peruse and recommend zines we’ve discussed at our events.

Facebook event is here. More info on the Zine Club Chicago social media channels: @zineclubchicago

Image description: A red-and-blue infographic flyer, with the image of books and zines stacked in a wicker basket, and text that reads: “Zine Club Chicago: Show Us Your Stacks; Online! Free! Zoom info on quimbys.com; 7:30 p.m. CT Tuesday, February 18, 2025”

Recommended Reading: Vibrant Voices on the Page

A pile of books and zines that tell personal stories, available at Quimby’s Bookstore in Chicago.

The world is a flaming mess right now. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, I’m right there with you. Whenever I’m struggling, I know that I can find respite in personal narratives. Reading about another person’s challenges, triumphs, sorrows, and joys reminds me that, as Adrienne Rich wrote, our stories flow in more than one direction.

Our shop is, of course, packed to the brick walls with vibrant voices on the page. Here are a few of the tales in which I’ve taken solace lately.

Every single issue of Lucinda J. Williams’ Bookshelf Voyeur series is a pure delight. Her latest release, #8: On Scrapbooks, delves into the fascinating lives that the zinemaker first encountered within a collection of turn-of-the-century ephemera.

Anxious Critters #1 and #2: I adore this pair of sweet zines about the relationship between creator Alex O’Keefe and her housemate: A very cute bunny named Ivy.

Although I’m a native Chicagoan, I’ve lived a good chunk of my life in small Midwestern towns, each with its own unique DIY community. Punks in Peoria: Making a Scene in the American Heartland by Jonathan Wright and Dawson Barrett takes a compelling look at how the hardcore punk movement played out in one central Illinois city in the ’80s and ’90s.

When someone I know returns from a trip, the first thing I ask is what they ate during their journey. April Malig chronicles her culinary adventures, with words and gorgeous colorwashed images, in April’s Eating Zine #5: Everything I Ate in Japan (Part One: Toyko!) and April’s Eating Zine #5.5: Everything I Ate in Japan (Part 2: Osaka, Kyoto, Fukuoka, Atami!).

I love a pocket-size zine, since I like never want to be without a story to get lost in. Ker-bloom! always delivers a perfect bite-sized tale presented in a beautiful letterpress package. Issue #171 begins with the epic statement: “Sometimes it pays to be a known Lord of the Rings nerd.”

So perhaps you’d like to add your own story to the glorious chorus of voices in this universe? We’ve got two of my favorite books about writing in stock right now. 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round by Jami Attenberg and many of the writer’s literary friends — including Carmen Maria Machado, Roxane Gay, and Kiese Laymon — just came out in paperback. Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos is the book I would put into the hands of any storyteller who wants to deepen their own practice.

If you do decide to share your story with the world, please consider putting it into a zine and consigning it with us! You might want to grab a This is Going in My Perzine sticker to give folks a heads-up. 🙂

—   With love and solidarity, C.E. Hanifin

New Stuff This Week

 

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Zines

Zines by Chuck Melnychuk, $3 each:
Branta #1 The Zine of New Honking Birds of a Feather
Melnychuk’s Borsch Recipe Zine
Make the Gods Weep

Hi-Fi Anxiety issues #26-28.5 $10 each

Sherl Stepped Sideways $3

Comics

Grixly issues #67 + #68 by Nate McDonough & friends $3 each

New stuff & restocks from Joe Sikoryak:
Awful Tooth #1 A True Tale of Dental Denial $4
When We Were Trekkies #8-$10 $5 each

Graphic Novel

Joe Galaxy December 2024 Space Wonders and Horrors by Massimo Mattioli (Fantagraphics) $34.99

Film Books

Black Coffee Lightning: David Lynch Returns to Twin Peaks by Greg Olson (Fayetteville Mafia Press) $24.99

Mayhem & Outer Limits Books

Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World by Dorian Lynskey $32

All Directions Point Home by BHM $24

Fiction

Tominic Dorito vs the Unreliable Narrator by Jesse Mack $12

Poetry

Haiku by Bill Albert (Grilled Cheese Publishing) $10.95

Eleven Austin Poets #1 edited by Tom Jennings (Udumbara Press) $9.99

New stuff & restocks from Pig Roast Publishing:
On High at Red Tide by Gabriel Hart
Abuser by Morgenrede
No Lands Man by Lisa Carver
Rockin’ Out On the Machine by Jeff Schneider
Blaze Kimber by Adam Johnson
…and more.

From the Archive

I was organizing the basement, particularly a flat file cabinet and the piles of stuff that had amassed around it. I was reminded that we tend to hire people that are artists and writers (often they’re people who have consigned their work with us too). If you work here you find yourself doing a variety of tasks including making signs, and we have a nice collection of them. It would be impossible to show you all the signs we’ve amassed over the years in one post, so I’ve selected a few of my favorites today.

Former Quimby’s employee Gabby Schulz made this hilarious sign when we were having a tiki-themed day. The part that really slays me is the “So to speak.”

If you’re a Peter Bagge fan, you 100% will find this clever AF. Aaron Renier didn’t work here but made us this awesome sign anyway. So great.

That devil cabbage! Gabby made both the weed one and the Harder Drugz signs above, and they are little nuggets (ba ha ha ha) of hilarity. I love the tiny character portraits on both that serve as amusing commentary.

Here’s former Quimby’s employee Corinne Halbert’s contribution to the weed bag (THE JOKES NEVER END I CAN’T HELP IT). The fact that it has a tab of LSD on it is quintessential Corinne, and is a nice little inadvertent shout out to her book Acid Nun.

We sure seem to have a lot of signs about the drug books we sell, ha ha. I’m sure there’s more in the collection. Why didn’t I wait until 420 to whip these out? Because they’re awesome and you need to see these little pieces of art and history right now.

Did you know Quimby’s used to sell DVDs? And when I started here in 2001 we had VHS tapes! Over time we phased out selling that stuff because it stopped moving for us. But there was a moment when we had it, and when it got cheap to burn your own stuff people were more prolific in consigning that type of thing with us. We had to keep the discs behind the counter because otherwise they’d get stolen though. And god forbid we get some design book that came with a disc! Forget about it. Former Quimby’s mini-comic sommelier Neil Brideau (of Radiator Comics) made this sign for us, and it’s very telling of an era.

This is the flat file I was telling you about. The labels on the files have zero bearing as to what’s in the drawers, but they are hilarious: “Satanic Sex,” “Manson,” “Naked Wings.” And so on. I laugh out loud every time I look at them. I hope they stay on there forever.

xoxo

Liz

@caboosezine