Much has been writen in more mainstream publications of late about the demise of the gay bar. While that may or may not be true, there is a certain importance to preserving and documenting queer spaces. These would be the music and performance venues, the hook-up spots and the assignation destinations for our twilight lives. In WASTED Charolette has created a fanzine and memoir to the lost alternative music spaces for queers in London around the turn of the Millenia.
Though we never wholely forget, we were reminded once again about Queers Read This, the leaflet produced in 1990 anonamously for the NYC Pride March.
This reprint from 2009 had the wonderful forward:
QUEERS READ THIS was distributed as a leaflet at the June 1990 Pride march in New York City. Anonymous queers offer this republication of QUEERS READ THIS as a contribution to the militant queer tendency. We are excited to find a text almost 20 years old that so eloquently expresses the deep anger and the desire lor conNier that we leel every day living in a straight world The authors define straightness as different from heterosexuality. Straightness is a force in the world and inside each of us that we must purge (p2). Straightness is normality. The norm for queer people is to take oppression lying down. These authors urge us to fight back. They ask why, when we are being bashed and killed. we freak out at angry queers who carry banners that say BASH BACK (p15). Of course. we could not agree more. The culrural references in this leaflet are, at times, outdate, but the rage is timeless. – July, 2009
From Sheytls to Yarmulkes is the newest zine to come to the QZAP digital archive. It's a look at the lives of a handful of Conservative and Orthodox transgender Jews and an analysis of the how religion and gender identity do or don't fit together.
New in the digital archive as of last week is The V Files #20. The V Files was the magazine put out by the amazing folks who used to run Club V in London in the mid to late 90s. The zine itself is focused mostly on music of the indy/alternative/"brit pop"/thank-god-not-fag-disco variety as was the club nights at the time. So strap in and strap on for loads of interviews, name drops, playlists before mp3s and a ton more.
We were going to hold off for another week or so before showcasing this zine, but it sounds like Toronto Pride is once again policing it's own community and forgetting it's roots, so we pushed it up a bit. The Compton Cafeteria and Stonewall were fuckin' riots, Y'all. Never forget that every gain the queer community has made over the past fifty years is because we took to the streets, we fought cops and capitalism, bigotry and greed with bricks and fire and our blood and our lives. When we loose sight of that every 'gain' that we achieve begins to be eroded. As such, it's important to call Shame On Pride to all the corporate Pride™®© events that prioritize money and sponsorship over peoples lives. Shame on you, Toronto Pride. Shame on you, San Francisco Pride, Shame on you, PrideFest, Inc. in Milwaukee.
Speaking of pride (with a little 'P',) QZAP has always been proud of our roots in Queeruption, Gay Shame, Lah-di-dah, and the other anti-assimilationist and queerpunk events and communities. This weekend we're going to have a small presence at Filth Fest in Milwaukee, WI. It's the third year for this queer punk fest, and they're raising money for Project Q, the local LGBTQ+ youth org. Our pals Pansy and Lauryl Sulfate and Her Ladies of Leisure are playing, so it should be pretty cool.
Part of what made/makes ACT UP so effective was that it was a coalition (the "C" in the name) of diverse groups that were all focused on pieces of the AIDS crisis. One of those groups was YELL, the Youth Education Life Line. YELL was comprised of young folks from middle-school to university age who were concerned with a myriad of issues that affected them. One of their outreach stratagies was making and distributing the YELL zine which had info about safer sex and harm reduction practices, news about zaps and actions that folks did in their schools, and how to be involved in activisim around HIV/AIDS.
June 1 is kinda sorta the official start of Summer in the Northern Hemisphere. With the advent of summer comes all the fun things like days at the beach, drinking orange soda, cruisin' hotties, reading trashy novels and celeb zines, and all the summer jamz. To kick off summer QZAP style, we'd like you to check out Psycho #1 Fan by Seth Bogart. Yeah, that Seth… from Gravy Train!!!!! and Hunx and his Punx. He's so dreamy!
