BY: ANDREW COLTRIN

The next year we moved to Tucson. For me it was a return to my hometown. For Jessica it was a leap of faith that being around family would be good for us. We had weighed the option of moving to North Carolina where her mom is, but none of those plans worked out. We loaded up a Penske truck and may dad and grandpa Amtraked it up to Oregon to help us drive everything down.

We staked our claim at a crappy apartment complex and I landed a job at Bookmans, while Jessica took a sabbatical from software engineering to go to massage school.

We only had one car at the time and I rode the bus a lot. One of the things that happens when you ride the bus is that parking lots become the enemy. Especially in summer. Parking lots are these huge, desolate sources of merciless blackbody radiation that you always have to cross to get between the bus stop and wherever it is you’re going.

It might have been heatstroke, but I began to see parking lots from the distanced perspective of an armchair anthropologist from the year 3100. Because the parking lot had no relevant function in my own life, I began to wonder about the curious customs of the great civilization that had left behind these monumental earthworks. Unsuitable for agriculture and prone to flooding, perhaps these structures served some ceremonial purpose. I wondered if it was something I could write a book about.

I decided I probably couldn’t, but maybe I should try making a zine.

My Grand Unified Field Theory of Parking Lots never came together, but I started thinking more about the things around me as being cultural artifacts. And each of these artifacts could lead to some kind of meaningful interpretation of the lives of the people who created and used them.

This was part of the strange inner dialogue I had going on during my first year at Bookmans. I suppose I was really trying to come up with some kind of meaning for my own life. Sifting through the books on the trade counter, pricing them in the back room, shelving them on the sales floor. I was constantly in touch with so much information. There was obviously some meaning in there. There had to be signs. I was looking for signs.

I absolutely had to start doing a zine again. But how was I going to fit it all in? Spare moments only came in fits and starts and life was a constant struggle. Could I even come up with enough content on my own? And I really wanted to make an impressive, thought-provoking zine. Something even better than if it was my old semi-autobiographical, ranty fiction.

I wanted more people involved, and I wanted real stories. I wanted cultural artifacts, and, following a fascination I had developed for one of Bookmans’ non-fiction sections, I wanted true adventure. I came to the conclusion that I needed to form an art collective.

I sent emails and asked friends if they’d like to join my art collective because I wanted to make a new zine about true adventure and cultural artifacts. I have some really trusting friends because I’m sure they had no idea what the hell I was talking about. The first round of collective members included Jessica (who gave me the name Bony Landmarks), rogue scholar Dr. Verno the Inferno, genius illustrator Irvin Stafford, and, for moral support, Luke Porter. Luke, Irvin, Verno and I all had worked at the same movie theater in the mid '90s (coincidently Marty Ketola, Bookmans’ resident public access cable personality and filmmaker, worked there, too).

I badgered submissions out of everybody I could think of. I got some. I found weird illustrations and clip art from old books. I got burned out on the project. I got lost in a freak show of my own mind. I was at a standstill. I had my collective and my vision, but I was having trouble getting the final oomph to put it all together. That was about when Microcosm Publishing’s “Cocoon Zine Tour” rolled into town and stopped at the now departed Readers’ Oasis for an evening.

The tour consisted of Portlanders Dave Roche reading from On Subbing, Jack Saturn reading from his We Ain’t Got No Car, and Microcosm Impressario Joe Biel showing his zine documentary "$100 and a T-shirt." The documentary had a lot of footage from the 2002 Portland Zine Symposium, and there, in that scene there - where it sweeps through the crowd of people and tables - there’s a guy in a green plaid shirt and a woman holding a 19-month old; that’s my family! We’re next to famous!

It was the moment that pushed the first zine over the hump and into layout phase. Within a couple of weeks I was charging a print run of 100 copies to my credit card.

We’ve managed to put out 3 issues so far. It takes about a year to complete an issue. And every time I almost want to give up. I couldn’t do it without the help of the other collective members. They get so excited about their parts of the project. They want to see the next issue.