Places shape people. Churchill said that, or something like it, and it's incredibly true. In the summer of 1995 when I started the reading series that would eventually blossom into the Curriculum Vitae Road Show, a traveling circus of zines, spoken work performers and various hangers-on, I had a beautiful space. I was working in a coffee shop bookstore that should have been on the National Register. This place had high tin ceilings, beautiful brass banisters, books everywhere, and the overwhelming aroma of coffee. There was even a small stage in one corner. Perfect. On a good night we could draw almost 100 people in a town of less than 5,000. Then things happen as they often do. The store closed and I moved to another venue. M's Cafe in Franklin, Pa. A little dingier, with a basement setting and a toilet prone to clogging. Attendance fell dramatically. Somewhere along the line, Amy and I got the idea of not only expanding the Roadshow, but moving it out of the cafe ghetto. This year we still did gigs at cafes, but also went to big media monopolies like Media Play, which was like guerilla poetry and zines in a Wal-Mart. We did a gig in a century-old candy store, an alumni room at a university and failed to get into an oil-boom era hotel (complete with bar, natch!) before the wrecker got to it.
For us, this roaming worked. We were trying to expand the notion of the zineshow beyond disaffected, suburban, trust fund punks (not that there's anything wrong with that) and changing our venue had a lot to do with that expansion. People who weren't comfortable in a dingy coffee shop became very comfortable in Media Play and vice versa. However, I see spaces all the time that cry out for permanent residence by me, my friends, our zines and music. There's a triangular service station in Franklin that sits next door to the town's beautiful but extremely elitist theater. The service are would make a perfect performance area, I say to myself, with rooms above so performers could stay. In the area in the front, I could sell zines and music and coffee. And I think, hey, I managed restaurants, I've prodded music gigs, I could do this. Spaces are seductive. I see places I want all the time. Preservation magazine, with its beautiful train depots and villas for $1 is like porn to me. But spaces are more than just fodder for woolgathering. They're necessary. The choice of your space helps to define not only what your audience or clientele is going to be like but what you're going to be like as well.
Space really is the final frontier. Part of the reason that our movement is so ephemeral is that we have so few spaces; we don't have enough Gilman Streets or Nuyrican Poetry Cafes. As zinesters, scenesters, hipsters and the scene itself continue to grow up, we need to start thinking about community. One of the things I like best about Maximum Rock & Roll's BYOFL was that it told me where the "places" were in different towns. I knew that if I went to the Beehive in Pittsburgh or to the Middle East in Cambridge, Mass that I would meet people who felt similarly to the way I feel.
So I say we culture bomb America and take back these forgotten spaces that are there for the taking. Let's buy up or squat in the beautiful historic spaces in the back of historic preservation magazines. Let's use them for infoshops and performance spaces. Let's keep pushing until city councils bring back mixed use zoning and refurbish old industrial sites into meeting and living places. Find a space in your own town and claim it for our sad little community as we limp towards revolution.
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