Sticky Zine Fair 2014, done, dusted, and with heart on sleeve.

{1, 2, 3, we are all set up, our zines unfurled. Let's begin this year's Sticky Institute Zine Fair.}

Zine box packed (including new titles): tick
Float of small bills to change a $50 note used to purchase a $3.00 zine in the first hour of the fair: tick
Hand-written price labels: tick
Printed price list: tick
Calculator = big dreamer/mathematically challenged: tick
Paper bags for purchases: tick

In all zine fair preparation, one thing has to be forgotten; it is the way of things. Halfway between home and the tram stop, carrying a box of zines, I recall that one thing: deodorant. I have neglected one of the niceties key to manning a stall. Leaving Louise to perch with our stock propped between her hip and a brick wall, to the small local milk bar I dash. Scanning the shelves, I find the Keep Your Self Nice section of Emergency Requirements. Ear cleaners, cotton buds, Aeroguard, eucalyptus oil, Oral-B toothpaste, dental floss, tampons, and, there, pushed a little way back from the front row assembly, one dusty stick of ‘Brut’ for $4.60. In momentary panic and applying the usually foolproof principle of Better Something Than Nothing, I purchase said stick of Brut*, for Men, for me, not a man, with an earmarked-for-change $5 note. An unwise decision, a fool’s choice, my own comedy of errors, but a hiccup now out of the way. For if it is true that you will forget one thing to take with you or do in readiness for a zine fair, it is also true that one blip is inevitable before all runs smooth. All good planning has one blip built into the fabric, and smooth was the rest of our zine fair course.

Zine fairs are curious things that, from a stallholder’s perspective, float on a sea of nerves tied to excitement. Stalls are set up, goods arranged, and hopes high. Some zines are fanned out, others are stacked, some, a jumble, others, a neatness. If there is one similarity between stalls it is that every surface of table is used. No, the one similarity is Love or Enthusiasm, or Whatever-It-Is-You-Want-To-Call-It. This is, to me, what links all manner of zines, from the colour copies to the black and whites, the stapled to the glued, the perfectly square to the loosely folded, the personal to the political to the Just Because bandits and the Why Not a Zine About Cats crew. Regardless of topic and regardless of means, zines are made with love. I’m sure of it. And manning one’s zine stall is hard work. You’ve stapled your heart to the table for everyone to see. Or not see. (And such a procedure, that’s painful, right? Even if we have made some seventy-plus different zines over the years.) To man a zine stall requires nerve. And it is tricky not to adopt an over-eager expression akin to a puppy seeking adoption. In between ‘pick me, pick me’ hopefulness sits a vacant far-away stare (which I demonstrate below). Four hours is a long time to sit behind one’s folded lorikeets and collaged tumblers in the Swiss Alps. The mind wanders — It’s been awfully hot lately. I wonder if anyone will pick up the last copy of Fallen by the wayside and other songs I don't believe I know. (They did.)

So to all those who stopped by our stall and said hello, both those we knew and those new, to those who purchased a zine or two, and those who stopped to talk about collage, ideas, source material, birds: thank-you. To Sticky Institute, too, a big thank-you for organizing yet another Festival of the Photocopier. It was swell.

* At the second milk bar between home and tram stop, I purchase a small deodorant for women with inoffensive scent. Why I did not head here first is between me, a muddle, nerves, and the frazzle of summer. Later, in the bathrooms of the Town Hall, I leave on the shelf my curious Brut purchase for Anonymous Pits In Need. I hope it came in helpful. Brut: the essential Australian fragrance not for me.


{This. This is stallholder glaze.}


{The neat formation.}


{The early afternoon. From behind the stall table. It looked like this. Sort of.}


{...and this. Over the shoulders of GORE journal, as captured by my Mum, Pasadena Mansions. (Thanks for coming along, guys. XO)}


{To this. The last throes! A zine fair draws to a close.}


{Farewell, beautiful Melbourne Town Hall. You've been marvellous.}


{Tram-ward. Homeward. Crash-ward.}

+ Two (familiar) grinning loons as drawn by the ever-clever Pasadena Mansions (who is no doubt making her own zine of drawings this very moment).

+ We've been here before. From a recent Elsewhere post, early tables sat behind: “Sticky Institutes's The Festival of the Photocopier 2013, 2011, and 2010; IMPACT 7's mini zine fair at MUMA 2011; The Wonderful Paper Things Fair 2011 and its twin The Wonderful Creative Things Fair 2011 at St Helier Street Store + Gallery; The Emerging Writers' Festival's Page Parlour 2012, 2011, 2010. (Did I miss any? The Secrets of the Photocopier 2008 exhibition perhaps, and impromptu tables after talks and workshops, and launches in libraries too.)”