Portland Zine Symposium 2003: A Travelogue
Our trip to Portland was by far the most fun I've had in a long time. It made me realize how much I like to travel and see other places, as well as meeting and interacting with new people. Being stuck here in Wichita Falls for the past year had, I thought, begun to slightly hamper my continuing development as a person. But getting out of town for a while made me realize that while I might be a little out of practice with my social interaction skills, I'm definitely not a lost cause just yet.
Our friend Jennifer was nice enough to
offer to drive us to the bus station on the day we were leaving so we wouldn't have to hassle with a cab.
We waited there for about an hour and a half before our bus showed up.
And actually the most travel-related stress came at the very beginning of
our journey.
We discovered about 15
minutes before our bus was supposed to leave that ants had invaded our food bag. And I mean A LOT of ants.
We had to throw out 3 separate bags of food that somehow the ants had
gotten inside of (they were sealed ziploc bags -- i don't know how they did
At any rate, we cleaned
up the ant mess and then there was some confusion about our bus.
I had specifically asked the people working at the station if they would
announce our bus leaving. They
never did. I tried to find out what
was going on, and they told me that another bus might also be going to Amarillo
at the same time because our bus was so full.
Finally I found the driver and we ended up getting on the bus in the nick
of time. Unfortunately, because it
was so full we ended up sitting across the aisle from each other instead of
right next to each other.
Things improved after
Amarillo. We reboarded and got
seats together for the overnight trip to Denver.
The bus was still pretty full at that point.
Luckily we were both able to sleep fairly well on the bus throughout the
trip. This made a big difference.
We got to Denver close
to 8 AM. Our next bus was supposed
to leave for Salt Lake City at 8:45. However,
even though that time was listed, it became apparent that no bus was leaving at
that time. I talked to the Info
Desk people and they told me that the bus wouldn't be there until 10:45.
They had no further information. So
helpful! So we lost a couple of
hours off of our itinerary, sitting around the station waiting for the bus.
Oh, and someone was bringing an automobile tire on the bus!
We left Denver and
headed through the Rockies. It was
amazing! Now I know why westerners scoff at the mountains in the East.
There's literally no comparison. The
Rockies are huge, and we drove right up them.
There was snow on top of some of the mountains and our ears kept popping.
We reached Salt Lake
City that night at around 10:45, I think. We
had about an hour before our bus left again for Boise.
As we reboarded the security guard searched our bags. This was the only time our bags were searched during the
trip. I didn't even know they did
that for buses. The search was
pretty cursory and we were soon on our way for another overnight trip.
We slept like rocks the whole night, waking only to stop for bathroom
breaks. We awoke to find ourselves
on the road through southern Idaho. It
looked different than I had imagined. Flat,
with mountains in the background. I
think a lot of places must not be getting rain, because we passed through a lot
of brown dried up land.
We reached Boise at about 7:45 or so that morning, due to reboard an hour later for the final leg to Portland. This is where we lost some more time. Our driver was unfamiliar with our particular bus, and actually had to receive some training prior to leaving the station. The a/c was obviously not working from the time we left, even though it was the same bus we had been on all night and the a/c worked fine then. One passenger alerted the driver, who claimed that the a/c WAS on. We drove a little farther from Boise and it started to get very uncomfortable in the bus. More people complained, and finally after way too long, the driver radioed in. He didn't tell us anything until we stopped to pick up a passenger. At that point he told us we were turning around and heading back to Boise to get a new bus. None of us believed him that the a/c wasn't working. We all decided he just didn't know how to operate it.
We
lost over an hour because of this. After a few hours, the bus stalled out after going up a hill.
Luckily the bus restarted and we made it to Pendleton, Oregon.
At this station a mechanic arrived and started swapping parts from
another bus into ours. Apparently
we'd been losing transmission fluid since we had stalled.
Someone talked to the driver and told us that this was the 7th bus that
month that had conked out on him. So it appears that it was the driver
that was cursed, not the bus or our trip.
Finally we were on our way in the final stretch.
We drove along the Columbia River, which separates Oregon from
Washington. Steep mountains rose on
either side of us, and we saw an occasional waterfall shooting out of the
mountain sides. It was probably the
most beautiful stretch of the trip.
We made it into Portland at around 7:30 PM, about 3 1/2 hours after we were
supposed to. Not too bad, and
actually all the delays were not nearly as bad as they might sound.
For the most part, we were enjoying the trip and getting to see new parts
of the country.
From the moment I
stepped onto the streets of Portland, I knew I'd love the city. Even the
bus station was clean and contemporary looking unlike the majority of the shoddy
broken-down stations we passed through along the way.
We claimed our bags and headed out to the city bus stop right
outside the Greyhound station. We were in the northeast part of downtown
and we needed to get to the southeast part of the city, across the Willamette
River. Luckily we'd thought ahead and knew what bus we needed to get on
(courtesy of Kate). The bus
cost $1.25/person, and that allows you to move between two zones of the city (the
bus line divides the city into I think three zones). You also get a transfer when
you board that allows you to ride any other buses between two zones for the next
two hours. We rode over the Hawthorne Bridge, one of ten that cross
the Willamette in the city.
Rather
than mess with changing busses, we had decided to take just one and walk the
remaining eight blocks to Kate's house. This gave us a little preview of the
streets. Between our first impression outside the bus station and this
walk, we were both impressed with how clean the city was! Certainly
cleaner than Wichita Falls, and there are a lot more people living in Portland!
We also noticed how many trees there were, at least in the southeastern part of
the city. We walked by some interesting little shops and restaurants, most
all of which were independently owned small businesses.
We rose refreshed the next morning and had breakfast.
Simon took us on a tour of the back yard and the garden out there. Then we went with Kate on some errands. We walked over
a couple of streets to this store Fred Meyer which is kind of like an urban
K-Mart, but with natural food and a nice produce section. We picked up a
couple of things we needed. The store had a better selection of natural
food products than the natural food store here in Wichita Falls! Next we
went to the local library branch for storytime. Actually, Malinda and I
checked our email while Kate and the kids attended storytime. The branch
was very nice, with large windows and a high ceiling. I picked up some
cool bibliography pamphlets they had out and some flyers for programs they have.
On the walk back, we marveled at the amount of flowers in
bloom. It
seemed
that every yard was overflowing with roses, herbs, and wildflowers! Once we were
back home, we had lunch and prepared for the zine conference.
Kate's friend and fellow zinester Rhonda came and picked us up in her
minivan. We drove downtown to the campus of Portland State University and lugged
our stuff into the student center. Tabling was from 2-7 PM that day, with
no workshops. So we set up our stuff and talked with some people we knew.
The table area was in an upstairs ballroom with a wall of windows that we were
facing. It was nicer than the Bowling Green location, which was lacking in
any windows and was just kind of dark in general.
We left a little early because we wanted to get dinner before
coming back for the zine reading/open mic night. They were locking up the
ballroom at night so we could leave all of our stuff there. We caught a
ride back with Kate and Rhonda. Then we walked to Paradox, which is a
vegetarian/vegan restaurant/diner around the corner from Kate's house. The
food was great! I had a big veggie sandwich with toasted tempeh and tofu
guacamole and Malinda had a "meatloaf" sandwich. We also had a
tasty artichoke dip appetizer that came with big toasted slabs of bread.
From the restaurant we caught the bus back downtown. We
decided to walk again rather than change buses. This was the first time we
were able to get a close look at the downtown section of Portland. This
section held a lot of the fancier stores, and more chain and brand name stores
than we'd seen in the southeast part of town. Coffee shops flourished on
virtually every corner. I guess the stereotype of the coffee-loving
Northwest is at least partially true. As we walked, we came across a bike race with all girl riders. We watched that
for a little while then continued
on down to the campus. The zine reading was really good -- funny and
touching. It was over by 10 PM and we headed back out into the streets. At
our bus stop we realized that it would be a long wait, so we decided to walk
home. We walked across the Hawthorne Bridge and continued up Hawthorne
Ave. before finally cutting across to Belmont and heading to Kate's street.
It only took about 45 minutes to get from the center of downtown to her house,
and we weren't walking fast either.
Saturday morning we rose
fairly early and ate breakfast with the family.
The zine symposium tabling was due to start at 10 AM.
But first we had to stop by the post office to pick up the package of Zine
World copies that the editor had sent us to sell at our table.
We took the bus down to the post office and then reboarded to continue
downtown. The bus is one of those
kneeling buses, which means it can lower down to the curb in order to allow
people with wheelchairs to get on. Someone
in a wheelchair got on a few stops before ours, and it was interesting to see
how it works. One row of seats
flips back and then a wheelchair can be locked into place.
Pretty cool.
We walked the remaining
blocks to the university. The
farmer’s market and the Iranian festival appeared before us outside of the
building where the symposium was being held. Both of these events were in full swing by the time
we got there, and the smells coming from the food vendors reminded me that I
could probably eat some more. The farmer's market was huge and very well-attended. People
were selling virtually anything and everything you could think of. I bought a half pint of blackberries for a dollar, and we
walked inside to the tabling area. Malinda
headed to a workshop on stenciling and block printing at noon.
I stayed at the table until she got back.
Then I was off to a DIY bike repair workshop at 1:30.
The workshop was so helpful and Shelly of Chainbreaker zine, the
facilitator, was really enthusiastic and did a great job of explaining the
intricacies of bearings and other important bike details.
Tabling ended at 6 PM
that day. A lot of people had come
through the ballroom, and Malinda and I made a trading run near the end of the
day. We went around and talked to a
lot of nice people and traded our zines for theirs.
We even ran into some people from Columbia, SC!
They were as surprised to meet us as we were to meet them.
There were people from all over the U.S. and Canada, all celebrating
underground publishing. It was
totally inspiring!
Bruce, Kate’s husband,
had gone to the farmer’s market earlier that day and offered to cook us a
feast. We couldn’t turn down an
offer like that, so we agreed to meet back at their house around 7 PM. As we walked to the bus stop, we ran into Androo and Maria
and their friend (sorry, I can’t remember her name!) on their way home, too.
We had met them earlier and traded for their zines.
We decided to go along with them a different way home, and that was cool
because we got to talk a bit and see some other parts of town. It
was interesting hanging out with them for a little while. We had
heard of Androo frequently over the years, through the zine grapevine.
His comix are pretty popular, and we’d seen a few here and there, but
never corresponded. He and Maria
and their friend were really cool and we had a good time talking to them.
It’s always fascinating to meet the people
behind the zines and comix, especially after so long, and finding that they are
really nice and cool to hang out with.
Bruce and Kate had made
pasta with an excellent vegetable sauce, salad, and bread.
We hungrily gobbled it down with good fellowship over the table.
After dinner, we went for a walk to see the chicken house, but the
chickens weren’t out in the yard. It’s
quite common for people to have chickens in their yard in Portland, for some
reason. The people right across the street from Kate’s even had a
few. We came back to Kate’s and
Bruce played the banjo for a while. Malinda
and I eventually went to bed, although we were entertained for a while prior to
that by Simon and his antics, who quite obviously was not interested in going to
bed quite yet. He’s quite a kid!
We had plans to meet
Greig (the IPRC librarian who we met last year at UPCON and correspond
frequently with) and Kate Lopresti (publisher of The Constant Rider and
enthusiastic champion of public transportation) for breakfast at 9 AM.
We had our stuff all packed up and ready to go so we could duck in and
grab it later that evening. We said
our goodbyes to Kate, Bruce, Simon, and Nathaniel because they’d be going to a
neighborhood potluck that night and wouldn’t be around when we came back for
our bags.
It was good to hang out with Greig and Kate over breakfast. I ordered tofu rancheros with soy mozzarella that looked and tasted suspiciously like real cheese. The waitress assured me that it wasn’t, though. Ok, I ate it anyway, although with some misgivings. Oddly enough, although I expected the tofu to be seasoned and scrambled, it was merely heated up and cut into cubes with no seasonings (?). The salsa and the beans were really good, though, and so were the potatoes. Malinda really enjoyed her oatmeal and fresh berries, too.
Afterwards, we walked together down to the IPRC
(Independent Publishing Resource Center) and Greig gave us the tour.
It’s truly an amazing space. There
are five rooms: an art gallery (that also houses
director Pablo’s desk), the
zine library which archives over 4000 cataloged independent publications, a computer lab with
three workstations, a production room with photocopier, mimeograph, and
bookbinding materials, and the printing room with four letterpresses.
Anyone can use the facilities for a fee of $5/hour or a yearly rate of $40-100
(sliding scale). The staff is all volunteer, and they facilitate workshops
on topics as varied as bookbinding, computer publishing techniques, Web
publishing, distribution and promotion for independent press, letterpress
printing, printmaking, and graphic design concepts. It was really cool to see this place, and it just floored me to know that
it’s possible for things like that to exist and succeed.
After the IPRC tour, we
headed down to PSU for the conference again.
Tabling was from 11 AM to 4 PM, but we were expecting our friends Jay and
Steph from Seattle to show up sometime in the afternoon.
We pretty much just hung at the table all day.
Malinda did go to a workshop on Gocco
printing and screenprinting. I
think she wants a Gocco printer now. They’re
pretty cool, essentially portable screenprinting devices that use flash bulbs to
expose the screens.
Jay, Steph, and their
kids Grey and Asher showed up sometime after 3 PM.
Activity in the ballroom had actually been pretty high for the last day
of the conference. The years we
attended UPCON in Ohio, the last day was always pretty slow because people were
heading home. I guess maybe that
was partially because most of the people were from out of town and Bowling Green
isn’t exactly an exciting town to hang out in for longer than a couple of
days. At the PZS there were a lot
of local people, and Portland is such a cool city that out-of-towners weren’t
in a big rush to leave. Except for
us, unfortunately.
We said our goodbyes and
headed out to find Jay and Steph’s car. We
all piled ourselves in, and headed over to Powell’s City of Books, which spans
an entire city block downtown. I
sold ten copies of Thoughtworm to their zine buyer and we browsed around for a
while. Then we headed over to the
International Rose Test Garden, which is essentially a park full of the widest
variety of roses that I’ve ever seen, which isn’t saying much, but trust me,
it’s a lot! We hung out here for
a while in the amphitheater, catching up on things.
We hadn’t seen Jay and Steph in about five years or so, so there was a
lot to talk about.
We left the garden and
headed over to a Thai restaurant recommended by Bruce.
There was virtually no one there, and the food was great. After that, we went and picked up our stuff from Kate’s and
went to a nearby park. We rode on a
teeter-totter and a swingset, then walked around a bit before sitting down near
the duck pond. It started getting
dark, and we left to go get some ice cream at Scooter’s. They serve vegan soft-serve ice cream with sprinkles, which
was awesome!
After we finished our
ice cream, Jay and Steph dropped us off at the bus station.
We had a while to kill before the bus came.
And let me say that the employees and the procedures at the Portland
Greyhound station were much, much more professional than any of the other bus
stations we visited. Our first bus
driver for the trip home was a talkative lady who showed more compassion and
care for the passengers than any of the other drivers we had.
She was also no-nonsense about stopping for breaks.
I felt like we were on an express route, which was good, because I
wasn’t really interested in prolonging the drive home at all.
We slept well all night and arrived in Boise on time.
Our next driver, Mervin, was also quite nice and even loosened us up with
a joke involving a Greyhound bus driver and some Mormon missionaries.
Mervin was also a very considerate driver, and made sure to keep us
informed of everything that was going on in his calm, deep voice that was
somewhat reminiscent of James Earl Jones’s, except not quite so deep and with
a Utah accent. He even told us a
few more jokes and was generally quite humorous.
We had a brief layover
in Salt Lake again while they serviced our bus, before heading on to Denver.
While we were sitting on the bus waiting to leave, I heard a guy on his
cell phone describing how he and his friend had just recently gotten busted for
cocaine and paraphernalia while driving to Las Vegas. He blamed his friend for speeding, and mentioned that his own
bail had been around three grand, which his family paid, but that his friend was
still in jail because he couldn’t make bail. I thought it was kind of odd that he was talking so loudly
about his situation in a crowded bus, but I guess maybe I’m just a bit more of
a private person. At any rate, we
reached Denver early the next morning on time again.
Everything was going so smoothly that I didn’t want to jinx it by
mentioning this fact. Our drivers
were so much better than the ones on the way there.
As we passed through
southern Colorado into Texas, the terrain flattened out quite a bit and the sky
began to loom expansively overhead, as it has a way of doing in Texas.
I was having ambivalent feelings about being back in Texas.
Portland had blown me away; I couldn’t believe that a place could
become so appealing in such a short time frame.
As if I needed any more perspective on this, it made me realize again how
much my town doesn’t have going for it.
We reached Amarillo and
had another layover while they serviced the
bus. Amarillo had looked kind of
interesting at night when we stopped there before, but appeared less so in the
daylight. We were about to start on
the last leg home. The trip back
had gone as smoothly as we could’ve hoped and that was a blessing.
I think that if we had had the troubles we had on the way up while coming
home that it would’ve been much more bothersome.
On the way there, there wasn’t much that could’ve diminished our
excitement.
We rolled into the
mighty metropolis of Wichita Falls around 11
PM. Malinda called a cab while I
claimed our bags, which thankfully were both still stowed safely under the bus.
We made it home by 11:30 and stepped inside to find a row of ants
traveling across the hallway. They
hadn’t left, but I won’t bore you with the details of our efforts in
eradicating them. Suffice it to say, we didn’t immediately fall into bed upon
our arrival home. The cats were
happy to see us, though!
All in all, it was the
best trip I’ve taken in recent memory. It
was so good for me to leave Wichita Falls.
I could’ve stayed away a month, a year…who knows how long.
In another town, around friends and newly made acquaintances, I felt more
alive than I have in over a year. I
felt engaged, inspired, and aware of my surroundings.
I guess there’s not much more I could’ve asked for.
For more information, visit the Portland Zine Symposium website.
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