Bradley Adita's Comments

outta printsie: 2, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14.
i know that's kind of a big list, but those particular issues looked really interesting.
also, the READ project sounds awesome!

yo dude,

i took a looksy at your website and even though i can only look at the covers, your zines look awesome! although, it's too bad that so many are out of print because there's a couple of those that are unavailable that i'd like to get my hands on.

anyways, i have 3 issues (as of today. just finished and printed my 3rd one) of the zine i do, KID CUTBANK. it's a cut n' paste, personal/politcal zine full of stories, anecdotes, rants and what-have-you. i have 2 issues of HOODRAT MILITA, which is a compilation zine where everybody made their own page(s) and we just put em together and printed it. it's pretty political-natured but there's also a bunch of fun stories and pictures and how-to's and such. i have 2 issues of GASP, which is another compilation zine except it's all poetry-type writing. then i have a few more random ones that my friends have done. you can check them out at the distro website: www.myspace.com/candlelightdistrowb (it's temporary and annoyingly difficult to run).

let me know if you're interested. i'd be into trading as many zines as you'd like.

talk to you soon,

ben/hoodrat militia

ps you can also email me at: hoodrat-militia@riseup.net

hey there bradley adita,
where are you from? well, more like where you at now?i have 2 zines up for trade. my 1st issue of "damaged Mentality" (about my recent brain injury) and "flood" (filling the void and refusing to drown). hit me up if interested!

very snowy and slippery and way too cold!

Well, thanks, dude I don't know. ;)

Hahaha :)

jason made all the flyers because he had a computer & a job at a copy shop. all i remember is spending like an hour trying to choose the perfect typewriter-looking font, & i think the flyers had eagles on them for some weird reason, & everything was pretty unnecessarily fancy. we made a mailing list with all my zine friends & all his zine friends & i think everyone got a registration packet--free. literally a packet, in an envelope & everything. it cost a bundle in postage, but we got funding from the university. in retrospect, it was ridiculous, such a waste of money. no surprise that the UPC/AMC went on to have the most horrifying registration fees ($100 for one person for 2010! what the fuck!). that first year, i think registration was like $3.

all i have from 1999 are some photos & a big laminated poster that says "zine conference" that showed people where to park. i regret it now (especially because this 1999 event seems to be something of a lost chalice of zine fest history), but i was 19 & it just didn't occur to me to hang on to anything. oh well.

yeah, i saw that thing on the allied media conference page too about the first conference in 1999 being called the "midwest zine conference". i thought that was really weird. jason wanted to call it that, if i recall correctly, but we settled on the bowling green zine conference in the end. i thought it was important to have "bowling green" in the title, because the fact that it was being held in such a small town was meaningful to me. but yeah, whatever you want to call it now, that is what eventually became the UPC & later the AMC.

jen angel was in no way involved in planning or conceptualizing the first event in bowling green. she attended, but the event was thought up by me, & organized by jason & myself. i left ohio to move to portland the month after the event happened, & jason got in touch some months later to let me know he wanted to plan a second event, with a new, more expansive name, & that jen had moved to bowling green & wanted to help out. it's entirely possible that jen suggested adopting the name of the chicago event she'd attended years before, but i never heard anything about it, & as she wasn't involved in the planning of the first event, whatever connections exist between what is now the AMC & that chicago event came along well after the bowling green event was already chugging along.

nothing against the chicago events that took place in the 90s. just clarifying that there was zero connection between those events & the original bowling green event, whatever name-borrowing may have transpired later.

sorry, i realized later that i didn't mention what year we organized our first event. it was 1999. we had never heard of the underground press conference in chicago--we didn't know there had ever been any kind of zine conference event before, anywhere. we knew about comic cons & things like that, but the first bowling green zine conference was actually a riff on riot grrrl conventions that happened in the 90s. it was jason kucsma's idea to broaden the focus to zines in general, though, due to who his contacts were, that mostly became political/punk zinesters. if he knew about some zine event that had happened five years before in chicago, he didn't tell me about it, & we were together almost everyday for a year, organizing. in fact, when we heard about MUMS (midwest underground media symposium), which happened in kansas city in may 1999, it was a surprise to both of us & very disheartening for jason. he thought our zine conference was the first of its kind.

that first event was the only one i organized because i moved away from ohio after that. it's possible that jason learned about the chicago event at some point down the road & adopted the name. but as far as he ever told me, he was merely building on what we had done with the bowling green zine conference & broadening the focus still more, first to include all underground press (not just zines) & later all alternative media (not just print).

just setting the record straight, since you seem to be interested in folks knowing their history. i think that's important too, & this is the history of the bowling green zine conference/underground press conference/allied media conference. no intentional connection to the chicago event whatsoever. at least not at the inception.

saw your post in the chicago zine fest thing about how the allied media conference originated in chicago in 1994. that is actually not true. i was one of the two original organizers of the first of what became the allied media conference (& was at the time just the bowling green zine conference) & neither one of us had ever heard of any chicago allied media anything, nor were we attempting to organize a generalized media event. we were definitely just organizing a zine conference. it evolved into the underground press conference & then the allied media conference, but at its inception, there was no connection to any events that has previously happened in chicago. just setting the record straight.

send me your e-mail address! mine is shortandqueer@yahoo.com

cabbage patch kids* im not a child abusr hah

hah like definitely after the holidays!! i wanna throw some kids around!XDdm

happy to trade zines...mail-art
send addy to
TScannell5448@msn.com
tim scannell
port angeles, wa

hah, that's kinda close by me casa.=d
yeah, i do shit with my fam like every x-mas eve.=]
i realized i have you as amyspace friend too.

haha, seriouslY?!?!?! where at, man???

juggling cabbage patch dolls sounds like something i want to learn how to do.X-)

Perhaps. What are you looking for? I write all kinds of stuff!

dude juggles, unicycles, and is generally a nice guy. and he knows Calvin Chaos! big time zine cred points for that!