Blog: Not Hardcore Enough

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I headed into TOWN yesterday for the ZINE SYMPOSIUM being held on Gower Street. I've been to a few SYMPOSIA before, but these have all been for INTERNATIONAL STATISTICS. I wasn't expecting THIS one to be held in a five star hotel next to a BEACH somewhere exotic (although i WAS expecting it to be filled with a similar sort of nice, EARNEST, and slightly socially awkward person), but i DID think it would be similar in organisation. Being in Bloomsbury I thought it would be in a nice airy HALL, with STALLS arranged around the edges which we could wander past. I took with me a huge pile of CDs, thinking I could say "hello" in person to all the various fanzine editors who would be there, passing over some of our new releases, and saying "thank you" to those I knew who'd supported us. I looked forward to a pleasant hour or so strolling round relieving myself of CDs and mixing with like minded TYPES.

It wasn't QUITE like that... for a start it was in a SQUAT, and the stalls for the fanzines were squashed together in two rooms in the BASEMENT, so everyone ended up queuing for AGES to even LOOK at anything, simply because someone at the front had stopped for a chat. It also turned out to be an awful lot more HARDCORE than i was expecting - I'd envisaged rows of TWEE fanzines surrounded by badges, hairclips, and shoulder bags, but everything seemed a lot more STERN and ANNOYED than that. My first impression was that it was like wandering around the "market" area at a RALLY in 1989, with LARKS pretty much frowned upon, and Vegan Chocolate Cake there to be eaten out of DUTY, rather than FUN.

HOWEVER after a wander round i realised that this was VERY MUCH an FIRST IMPRESSION, especially with the CAKE, as i noticed MANY fanzines were for Vegan Cookery, and remembered that just because _I_ am in my thirties, working in London with easy access to both Veggie Food AND my own kitchen to cook it in, doesn't mean that EVERYBODY is in that situation. I looked around me and realised that i was very much one of the OLDEST people there (apart from the Socialist Worker guy in one room, the Feminist Literature woman in the other, and a chap with a LINUS badge on, i WAS the oldest!), and that for most other people there this was often a HARD FOUGHT position on their own identity. As i THEN wandered round the building again it was MOVING to see all these people coming together from all over the country to express SOLIDARITY with each other, to find that they WEREN'T the only ones who felt this way, to make new friends and to buy each others lovingly prepared and printed MISSIVES on the subject.

It was LOVELY, in fact, but in the end a bit too HARDCORE for me. I realised that the music of The Validators or Johnny Domino or Frankie Machine (all of which I had with me) was probably NOT quite what they were after, and felt like a well meaning but interfering teacher who's popped into the Anarchist Revolutionaries After-School Club to offer to help write the posters, so ABSENTED myself.

I went round the corner to Planet Organic instead and bought some Vegan Organic BEER. MUCH more my level!

posted 17/4/2005 by MJ Hibbett

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