C is for...

Catalogs!

Every once in a while I think back to a time when everything wasn't so easily accessble to everyone. With the internet, nothing is sacred.

I grew up in a rural town but still had access to some "culture" with our state capital, Lansing only 25 miles away and a just little further, East Lansing, a college town. E.L., as we called it, didn't offer a lot either. I would say that it doesn't live up to what the term "college town" normally evokes in people minds (i.e. lots of culture, activism, counterculture, art, etc...). My parents very rarely took us to either of these places anyway. When I got my first car at 18 though, I would drive there multiple times a week to comb the used CD/record shop, Tower Records and the clothing stores that offered types of clothes I could never find in my hometown.

But in the meantime, I was exposed to underground/counterculture through 2 main sources - Thrasher Magazine, where I first heard about zines in the early 90's & was led to punk bands I would have never found on my own at that time. The other was Sassy Magazine, again exposing me to zines, alternative and punk bands, left leaning views and the kind of fashion I would actually wear. Sadly, I sold my entire collection of Sassy to finance my move back to Minneapolis. I still have my collection of Thrasher but don't know what to do with it. I can't bear to just throw all of them away!

The joy of going to the mailbox and finding a new catalog is missed. Sitting there circling everything for a wish list you would give your parents but rarely receive... Knowing that if you got that one amazing thing, you would be the only one in your school if not county with that amazing thing.

Of course, catalog ordering sometimes backfired. In the late-90's we were in the throes of a Black Label habit - we could get cases of 40s at our local grocery for under 20 bucks. And cases of bottles that came in really sturdy cool flip top boxes. This was before we had ever dreamed of coming to Minneapolis and had no inking of the Black Label Bike Club (don't know if they were even an official bike club yet anyway). I ran across an ad for Black Label t-shirts, I immediately ordered 3 - 1 for me, 1 for C and 1 for our friend. They never came. Imagine the disappointment! Especially since we may even have been ahead of the curve with our BL t-shirts! They would be bonified "vintage" by now! Worn to threads throughout the years...

Or the time that I went through a brief hippie-like phase. I got this kind of deadhead catalog and did my circling and only this time - my mom did get me the desired items, some of them at least. When they arrived, they reeked of patchouli smell and weren't quite what I had expected. I used them but the desire and the reality didn't quite match up...

In those days, there were no options for ordering zines over the internet. I hold onto letters, schwag and personalized envelopes from old zine heros - Aaron Cometbus, Jane Hex, one of the guys who ran Wow Cool distro, Al Hoff, who knows who else. Again, I haven't been able to toss them, I think the nostagia from this time period is high. It was a period of discovery, of travel, of dreams that hadn't quite been squashed yet or still seemed possible to attempt anyway.

The punk community is still keeping the mail order life alive, just barely, but it's still happening. I kick myself when I page through my old Factsheet Five collection and note all of the great zines that I missed ordering and have most likely disappeared altogether save any that may have been donated to one of a selection of zine libraries throughout the world.

I long for those times of discovery and freshness. When life doesn't feel fresh and exciting anymore, it's just a drag.