Pop Hop’s grand opening is taking place this Sunday, May 20, in Highland Park.  The plan is to have storytelling, live printmaking, music, poetry, readings and great fun beginning at 1:00 pm.  The store sells used and new books, zines, and rad tote bags (handprinted by Mr. Robey Clark, co-owner) to carry all your purchases. Don’t miss it!

Pop Hop
5002 York Blvd.
Los Angeles, 90042

The LAZF is excited to be tabling at this benefit at Chucos Justice Center in Inglewood. We had a great time at FMLY Fest there last year, and we’re big fans of the space.  We can’t wait to check out all that the DIY Punk Rock Swap Meet Room has to offer!  For directions and other details, consult the Facebook invite.

L.A. Zine Fest made a “Guide To L.A.” which was created from our own favorite places and things in the city as well as the answers we got from you via a survey given out at our events leading up to the Fest.  A while back we put up the bookstores/zine depots map, but now the maps of our favorite dive bars, tacos, hangover breakfast spots, coffee shops, record stores and music venues are available to everyone. We hope they help you discover something new and awesome in town, whether you’ve been here for years or are visiting for the first time.

Yumi says, “I’ll be selling my short story comics and illustrated meditation guides–and for the first time ever, prints of my artwork!“

MAY 5TH, 11 am – 6pm 
Mini Comic-Con Opening at the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts

If you’ve been to Comic-Con, you know that the small press section might as well not even be there.  Hoping to bring the comic convention back to its roots,  the *Mini* Comic-Con has rounded up some stand-outs among “the overshadowed vanguard of small press and independent comics”.  While I’m very excited to see a lot of new names on the full presenter list, I immediately pounced on the familiar names, and asked them to flash a little leg–figuratively, of course.  Here you have it: a sneak peak of the Mini Comic-Con! 

Drippy Bone Books

DRIPPY BONE BOOKS will be killing it softly at the upcoming Eagle Rock Mini Comic-Con with dozens of underground comix, art zines, prints and tees!!!
The featured title of the show is F’real Real by Pat Aulisio!
[Editor's note: this is a special early release!]
F’real Real is a collection of short comix and madness from Philedelphia’s master of comix, Pat Aulisio. He is the man behind, Yeah Dude Comics, and co-publisher of Secret Prison.  His work has been seen in the amazing 3D anthology, Math Fiction, as well as his ongoing series Bowman (Retrofit Comics and Hic and Hoc) and his latest collaboration with the great Josh Bayer, The Unforgiving Sword of Conan!
F’real Real is a limited edition, B&W comic on color paper of the art comix freak in us all!

…and because May 5th is FREE COMIC BOOK Day, DDB’s will be offering a free zine, MISS UGLY USA: bad art by Keenan Marshall Keller, to the first 30 customers who make a purchase!!!!

And if all this shit wasn’t enough, Drippy Bone Books will also be carrying the entire i will destroy you catalog for the great Tom Neely, who could not be there!

Rebecca Inducil

Rebecca Inducil has been illustrating comics and doing graphic design for years.  You might know her from the Eagle Rock Center’s Zine Workshop with Daryl Gussin of Razorcake, or you might not.  I’m going out on a limb here, but you can probably expect a lot of animals–especially dogs– in her comic offerings on the 5th. When asked to describe what she’ll be selling at this event, Rebecca responded:

1. a mini-comic about traveling with sine waves

2. a compilation of comics i’ve drawn as therapy to myself (see above)

3. prints of random art i tossed away in my hard drive

4. and MAYBE some canvas bags

Britt Sanders

@sleepybritt: finished work at 4am, now i can’t sleep. i just want to buy shoes online. sux 2 b me

TOMORROW night at Home Room is  DUM DUM Zine‘s first Free/Write/Shop workshop.  According to the invitation, the only requirement is that you bring a piece of your old work or an inspiring object to contribute to the communal inspiration pot.  The night’s theme is KILL YR BABIES: “Kill your best work so you can create new work. Bring your favorite stories, sentences, scenes, paragraphs, and illustrations–cut them up and we’ll use the pieces to create new ones.  We’ll supply the scissors.”

Why should you come to Free/Write/Shop? What should you expect? Let’s hear it straight from the evening’s hosts, Taleen Kalenderian and Liska Jacobs, both editors at DUM DUM Zine.

Taleen: There are music nights, art nights and craft nights all over L.A.  For writers, the setting is so instructive and it usually means you have to drop a couple hundred dollars to participate.  Sometimes we just need a reason to write outside of ourselves, and it becomes increasingly difficult in a time where everyone has a voice–to self-publish, to make zines, to blog.  Writers lose the physicality of instant response, of riffing off one another.  I’m hoping FWS will be the facilitator for us to regain that vibe, and also to prompt ourselves and interact with other mediums that inspire our craft.

Liska: I was sitting around waiting for life to inspire me to write new work. I realized years can slip by that way. Free/Write/Shop is, for me, a way to deconstruct the writing workshop, to bring back the exploration and curiosity that tends to produce new and exciting work.

We’ll see you there! Don’t forget to RSVP on Facebook.

Free/Write/Shop
April 25, 8pm
Home Room
3121 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90057

In L.A.,  Permanent Records is having a midnight sale on Friday night, followed by live performances by Wounded Lion, The Skabbs, and Merx in-store on Saturday evening; Origami Vinyl is having a big ol’ to-do with eight bands, DJs, and tote bags (!!!) for the first 300 customers; Vacation Records will have a ridiculous amount of special releases; Wombleton Records is having a two-day unveiling of  non-RSD related, “hot-off-the-plane” records from the nooks and crannies of Europe and the U.S.; The Last Bookstore’s record shop is offering 30% off all vinyl in the store and DJ sets throughout the day.  Just get some rollerblades and hit them all.

What’s this??

The Pitchfork list of releases for the day turned me on to this sparkling gem of a record.  Behold,  the Smuggler’s Way flexzine, whose pages contain a mixture of writing, art, and five flexi discs with songs from the likes of The Dirty Projectors and Cass McCombs!   Some tracks and info on the zine are available here, but really, isn’t that picture all the information you need?

While working at Meltdown Comics a year and a half ago, I found myself squirreling away a copy of everything new from Portland-based Sparkplug Comics. You could find me devouring their comics while things were slow at the register, or putting down my hard-earned cash for a copy I could call my own.  So when I saw Sparkplug’s application to table at this past LA Zine Fest, I already knew Zine Fest was gonna rule!

If you’re not familiar with Sparkplug, now’s your chance. Sparkplug has 30 days left to reach their goal of $11,800 on Indiegogo and they are almost halfway there! They’ll be using the money to fund the three final publishing projects that Sparkplug founder, Dylan Williams, worked on before he passed from cancer in September 2011: Nurse Nurse, by Katie Skelly, Reich, a series by Elijah Brubaker, and The Golem of Gabirol by Olga Volozova. Depending on your level of contribution, you can choose to receive all three (and then some!) when they are published. And I betcha a million bucks, it’s worth it.

Check out their Indiegogo & contribute today!

We are so grateful to so many people who helped us pull the Zine Fest off, and we’ve been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to thank most of them personally.  But some, we haven’t gotten to yet. And so, without further ado, we’d like to formally and officially thank the following donors for their support via Kickstarter and for their confidence in this project.

Thanks a million Miguel N. Abad, Cactusgirl, Sisi Medina, Sean Cawelti, Dee Keaney, Amanda Ribas, Nate Tepp, Janet Lyuh, Nima Kazerouni, Craig Garrett, Matt Walsh, and Faith Sherrill!

We couldn’t have done it without West Vasquez, Deirdre Jones, Mary Delioussina ,Queta ,Tricia Flynn, Chris Charlton, Levon Jihanian, Carol Haggerty, Jason Tovar, Cheryl Cambras, Peggy Boucher, Katya Arce, Jason Clark, Taleen Kalenderian, Denise Duncan, Corinne Pantaleo, and Tom Walsh!

Linda James, Yumi Sakugawa, theNewerYork, Victor Castellanos, Joseph Hatton, ArsenicAlyss, radmegan, Sanden Totten, Geoff Geis, Sharleen Sweeney, Joe Barragan, Pehrspace, Miranda Barton, LA Coffee Club, and Magdalena Saucedo, without you we are nothing.

Leslie Perrine, Fred Guerrero and The Oinkster, Greg M., Drew Patterson, Carol Wallace, Olivia Sotelo, Fred Dennstedt, Angharad Jones, and Erika Moen are our personal champions!

Three cheers for Maureen Cronan, coco, Hannah Jacobs, Kara Sjoblom-Bay, Shannon O’Leary, Sandi Strang, Devon Iott, Dana Connors, Ava Kaufman, Elizabeth Clements, Christine Haynes, and Joe H.!

If you weren’t able to make it out, be sure to take a look at the L.A. Zine Fest Flickr pool to get a sense of the day. It was awesome!

In order to focus on bringing you a more diverse kind of blog, the L.A. Zine Fest blog will no longer be bringing you daily content. However, we will be actively tweeting and tumbling and facebooking. Whenever we have new posts, we’ll let you know through Facebook and Twitter.

We’re really excited about all the new things we’re working on for you! Thanks for reading and we’ll see you soon!