UPCON 2001
Friday, June 22
Malinda and I arose a few minutes before 4:30 AM, finished packing up the car, and drove off into the dark streets of Columbia. The cats seemed noncommittal regarding our departure.
From South Carolina, we had to stop by and pick up our friend Julia in Blacksburg, VA, before heading on to Ohio. We arrived at her place around 9 AM, giddy from early morning driving, and chatted briefly with David (Julia's boyfriend), before adding Julia's belongings to the car and continuing on our journey. No momentum was lost.
The next leg of our journey extended into a winding drive on I-77 through the wooded wilds of West Virginia. The highlight was seeing a McDonald's billboard that had been "modified" to spell out the word "shit." It was good to see some people in West Virginia had the right idea. The down side of this part of the trip included rain, tolls, and traffic.
We crossed into Ohio, which wasn't much of a momentous occurrence, and ended up in, that's right, more traffic. Yay, Ohio.
The remaining leg of the trip involved a series of stints on 4 of Ohio's many interstates. More tolls, more traffic. We finally straggled into the town of Bowling Green, spurred on by the soothing sounds of death metal coming from the college radio station, sometime after 7 PM.
Bowling Green seemed to be a relatively quiet small town, although there was a fair amount of porch partying going on as we later walked the streets. Saturday night downtown would also prove to exhibit a diverse population, although it was hard to tell how much of it was because of the conference.
The conference was being held on the campus of Bowling Green State University, and dorm space was conveniently made available to attendees. So, we checked into our dorm, and Malinda and I then explored the campus a bit. We walked through the cemetery, which held graves dating back to the mid-19th century. The conference was to be held in Olscamp Hall, across from the cemetery, and only a short walk from the dorm.
After we got back from our stroll, we ate dinner, showered, and fell into the blissful sleep of the road-weary traveler.
Saturday, June 23
After an early morning walk, we returned to our floor of the dorm, now bustling with zinesters, all sharing one communal bathroom. I was excited about the conference, and a little nervous.
We gathered up the zines and headed over to Olscamp Hall. It was a little after 10 AM, and the first workshops had already started. The conference room slowly filled up as I searched for Fred Wright, who I was to share a table with. I'd only seen vague pictures of him from his website, so I didn't really know what he looked like. Luckily, he was giving a presentation at 11, so I planned on heading to that. In the meantime, we strolled aimlessly about, consuming free bread products that were offered in massive quantities, spilling out of large plastic bags onto the refreshments table. The VG Kids! also had a table set up nearby, and were selling various vegan goodies and natural sodas.
Fred's talk turned out to be quite interesting. He reported his findings from the dissertation on zines and e-zines that he's recently completed. We all sat in a circle, and Fred filled us in on what he had discovered from his interviews with zinesters and the analysis he did of zines on the Web. We asked some questions, which he answered, and then our time was up. Fred is planning on posting the dissertation on his website, which will only be available for a limited time, before Kent State pulls the plug on it. I highly recommend taking a look.
Fred was accosted by numerous people after the workshop, so I had to linger around, eventually following him and some other people back to the conference room. After Fred answered everyone's questions, I finally got a chance to introduce myself.
Fred had brought along his friend Rob Socha, who was selling copies of a new comic he wrote called "The Buck-Toothed Ghost." I set up my display and settled in for the afternoon. Fred and Rob were both really nice fellows, and so, as Rob consumed mass quantities of coffee, we all chatted and got to know each other a bit.
The conference room filled up quickly, and sales were fairly brisk. Since my zine is still relatively obscure (even though I've been doing it off and on for years), I was surprised and pleased to sell a fair amount of copies. Maybe my plan of offering free buttons in order to make people feel guilty enough to buy the zine worked after all!! Ha, just kidding. We all traded a lot, taking turns meandering among the tables, looking at all the cool zines and other items on display. With 3 people, it was easy to keep the table staffed if someone wanted to go to a workshop or just wander around.
Later in the afternoon, I got a chance to talk with Chris Dodge, librarian for Utne Reader and creator of the excellent website Street Librarian (as well as a fellow Reader's Guide reviewer). It was good to finally meet Chris face to face, after corresponding with him for quite awhile. We ran into him again at a presentation by staff members of the Salt Lake City Public Library. They maintain a growing zine collection, which has received a lot of positive support. It was refreshing to see some librarians with an interest in zines.
Around 6 PM, we packed up and headed back to the dorm. After a picnic on the lawn next to the dorm, we headed downtown for the evening's entertainment. The show at the beautiful historic Clazel Theatre featured a performance by spiral objective states, followed by a screening of the Lost Film Festival, which included over 2 hours of independent films. We knew we were in for a treat when, upon entering the theatre, we were greeted by a person on stilts, leading another person on a leash who was handing out scraps of paper and instructing us to write our dreams on them.
After the show, we walked back to the dorm, and once again fell into exhausted sleep.
Sunday, June 24
I didn't manage to get up for the morning walk, so Malinda went on her own. After breakfast, I checked out of the dorm and headed over to the conference, while Malinda and Julia went to use the phone and get some ice. A lot of people were milling about in the conference room so I decided to hang around the table. I never expected to run into anyone from South Carolina, but I ended up meeting 3 people who had either grown up here, or lived here at one time. I also met Allen Claxton, who co-edits The Toucan with David Edwards, who actually lives in the same city as I do. Yeah, it's a small world. I did note, however, that the people I had met from South Carolina had all moved away from the state.
The only workshop I attended on Sunday was a presentation by the librarians at The Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University. After the talk, I spoke with Nancy Down, the reference/catalog librarian, about some cataloging issues. She was nice enough to offer me a tour next year during the conference, since we couldn't stay for the one this year.
Malinda attended a lot of the workshops and learned quite a bit, which benefited both of us because she then shared her new knowledge with me. Just a sample of the information she absorbed includes: how to properly prepare for mass action protests, various ways the government conducts surveillance and how to counter it, the workings of a cooperative infoshop (the Wooden Shoe in Philadephia), and examples of the use of zines in the classroom.
After 2 lively afternoons in the conference room, people started packing up early on Sunday. By 3 PM, the room had emptied out significantly. With almost a 9 hour drive back to Virginia ahead of us, we decided to skip out a little early, too.
I don't think I can adequately describe how exciting and fun the whole weekend was. It was virtually perfect. Everyone was so nice, and it was intriguing to meet some of the people whose zines and comix we've been reading. The amount of planning that Jason and Jen did was obvious, because everything ran so smoothly. Some speakers didn't show up, but other than that, the con seemed to progress flawlessly. The performance and the film fest on Saturday night were both thought-provoking and a lot of fun, and seemed to promote unity within a diverse group of people.
Seeing an underground that thrives this much really gives hope for the future. Even just participating in this one weekend a year makes it worthwhile to live outside the mainstream on a daily basis. Simply knowing that there are so many others out there creating and doing projects on their own, deliberately choosing to ignore the mainstream media and their stranglehold on culture, helps me to hold onto my convictions. The levels of peace, equality, and positive attitudes at the conference transcended anything we could have hoped for.
I can't wait until next year.
L to R: Me, Rob (with Nilla Wafers for eyes), and Fred.