Dublin Zine Fair of Joy

The time has come yet again for a zine fair review. Well the time was slightly before now, but I tried to upload some video's on here and it didn't work, so I gave a guttural scream and swore I would never touch technology again! Or rather I gave up and briefly watched Jeremy Kyle. Anyway...

This year, the zine time fun has been sparse. Not that zining is a pass time that absolutely overloads my calendar (what with the gala dinners and all) but this year there has been next to nothing. I did do the anarchist book fair, and got to meet a wide range of weirdos with an appreciation for DIY shit, and if I'm honest, one or two proper weirdos... I had chocolate peanuts on my stall for sharing and one guy kept coming over and just sort of... touching them... So only wrapped sweets from now on.


Anyway. The Dublin zine fair was organised by the lovely Sarah Bracken of Baby Beef fame, held in the Ranalagh Arts Centre and filled with lovely ziney people. And even a band. I got quite an impressive haul actually...

Take a moment to salivate over the ziney goodness. Now on to location.



I didn't know that Ranalagh was posh, and I still am not entirely sure if it'd considered so by anyone else, but we were right next to a super posh supermarket and there was no where to put burnt out cigarettes ANYWHERE. Also no one was smoking. That's a sign of affluence if ever I saw one. I went looking for a lighter at one point and had to venture down a dark alley before any smokers revealed themselves. Like troll creatures we hide from the light.


I was wedged in between Last Bus and Loserdom and tried not to bash elbows too much. It was a good and bad location because on the one hand, I had really high standard or really great old school zines all around me. On the other hand, my rag had to measure up. At times I wanted to strangle them both as their welcoming smiles and colourful publications made people skim past my monotone stall. Also I was reading a book, which probably didn't help.


But Gypsy Rebel Rabble started playing nice and early and made me relax and just enjoy the day. I never have much faith in acoustic music, but there are always people who you could hand a tooth pick and some string to and they'd macgyver an epic tune. These lads are those types and are thus practically over equipped when given functioning instruments.





That was all in real time. Terrifying.


So I did my usual buzz of going around and taking pictures of the various stalls. I usually have a terrible time trying to remember which lovely individual was attached to what lovely stall, so this time I had a plan. A devious plan? No not really, I decided that if the stall had a card, I would take it and use it to give the details of the picture. Simples! 

Or not... Bollocks.


Sarah did give out these:

Which had information about everyone on the back:

Including little old me:

But even with this information on a plate I'm still finding it impossible to match people with pictures. 


Also, if I'm honest, my camera and I have had a tenuous relationship for some time now and lied about how much battery it had before I left the house. So halfway through snapping it suddenly dropped to the mechanical equivalent of a spluttering cough. Though that may have something to do with all the recording I was doing. Long story short, I didn't get as many pictures as I'd hoped for. Of course, some tables are easier to recognise than others...

Philip Barrett's stall for instance is still my favourite and stick out like a well drawn thumb. Got my hands on the last copy of 'Matter 12#', Phil's self penned comics and stories. 

And I occasionally gave myself a hint as to the identity of the table owner, as above. Patrick Brown according to the photo. Really lovely guy, great for a chat a trade.

There was no one at this table, unless you count the utterly terrifying doll creature.

Look into its evil eyes...

But again I gave myself a hint by taking a picture of their card.

Emma Elisabeth apparently, and she can't be all the evil because she also has dolly mix. I'm disappointed I didn't get to chat to her because I just hopped on her blog there and her stuff is really nice.

Then we have the Escapism crew, who I did chat with repeatedly. The girl at the stall was completely mental, and I thoroughly enjoyed having the chats with her. I even bought both Esc zines, which you can have a look at here.

Also on their table was showcase comics, which look really amazing but at a whole 4 euro were slightly out of my price range

Oooh look! Other people who do stuff in black and white. Like some other very talented person I know (me. I'm talking about me).

I may have gotten slightly over zealous with the record function on my camera...

Yeah, sorry about that... From terrible recordings back to terrible photos. 

Photo to prove that people did in fact attend. And to the girl in the centre, that is the best facial expression I've ever seen.

That's what I like to see, big piles of zines and people milling about hungry to paw through them.

I have no idea what this is (spaceship?), but I'm an origami freak and I immediately want it. 

Also, this is really bad, but Eavan just rang me, and now I want to go out for pints... So I'll fill the rest in later, and if you happen to hop on in the mean time and see your stuff, drop me a comment and it will make the filling in all the easier!

Right, pints have been had, now back to work. Here we have... woman hiding behind vintage suitcase...

The lovely 'Superhilbo' (adorable blog here) helped me out hugely by giving me info on these two pictures. This is what she said:

"Hey Pepper! Nice round up of photos and vids from the day, fair play to ya. If it helps, the second and third pics from the long list of photos, have Albedo 1 and Superhilbo (respectively). The table highlights Issues of Albedo 1 and Longstone Comics 'Smiling at the Sky' comic...

...Superhilbo was sold out so empty space in pic! (good thing even though its a gawping space!!) :)"

Don't know if you noticed but eh, she complimented my blog... Not bad yo.

The woman who created this bizarre tea bag zine contraption had the most gorgeous baby ever. Also she needs to contact me because I want one of those tea bag zines.

Lunch was brought in for Anto (of Loserdom fame) and consisted of a giant lunchbox of veggie deliciousness in the form of cous cous and moussaka and such other complicated things. I didn't happen to see anyone give him a giant slice of watermelon, so turning around and seeing him slicing it up with what looked like a fucking hunting knife gave me a bit of a fright. Or rather a fucking heart attack.

He might look innocent...

But he will kill again.

Now for some more Gypsy Rebel Rabble! Enjoy x