Ambrose Nzams keeps Joint Custody’s shelves stocked with new and used zines, including Demystification, Nzams’ own zine that he co-created with Paula Martinez.
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At the D.C. Punk Archive, history isn’t bound in thread and shelved. It’s found in stapled sheets of printer paper stacked in file boxes, many of which remain unsorted. Since taking over as archivist earlier this year, Katie Lichtle-Mullenix has instituted twice-monthly volunteer nights to process the more than 50 boxes formerly belonging to Mark Andersen, co-founder of the local punk activist collective Positive Force. During a recent Wednesday night session at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, archival CDs by Lungfish, Del Cielo, and of course Fugazi played from an AV cart while a dozen community members pored over Andersen’s correspondences, flyers, and collected zines—artifacts of a DIY print culture that continues to evolve alongside the District’s punk scene.
D.C. musicians and scenesters have made zines (a catch-all term for self-published pamphlets and magazines) since at least the 1970s, ramping up with the development of accessible printing technology. John R. Davis, once the drummer for Q and Not U and now special collections curator at the University of Maryland, catalogs the history in his upcoming book, Keep Your Ear to the Ground: A History of Punk Fanzines in Washington, DC. It traces the role of self-publishing in supporting the development of D.C. punk and indie music by connecting fans to each other and to allies in other scenes.
Titles that surfaced in the Andersen collection on that volunteer night, such as Dischord Records’ State of the Union zine from 1989 and at least one issue of the McLean periodical Sweet Portable You (published 1989–2000), offer an anti-corporate, street-level view of the music, art, and politics of their day. In D.C. proper, all that paper provided an urgent expressive outlet. Disaffected Washingtonians have never had federal representatives to call, but generations of punks have turned to printers and copiers to make themselves heard, if only by their underground peers.
“[Zine culture] really shows what the DIY scene was focusing on, and often you’ll see themes that keep repeating,” says Lichtle-Mullenix. One example of this is the feminist punk movement of the ’90s: Riot grrrl not only got its name from a local zine published by members of Bratmobile and Bikini Kill, the movement’s ethos was spread with the help of those zines. “I think the first step for a lot of alternative people is to start a zine, to have a voice,” Bratmobile’s Allison Wolfe told Washingtonian in 2016. “We did that.”
Lichtle-Mullenix offers another example: “During the [George W.] Bush era, there’s a lot of focus on pushing against that.”
D.C. music has never abandoned print. You can still find pages and pages of it on merch tables at shows, or, if you’re looking for a curated selection, at a record store like Joint Custody, near the corner of 16th and U streets NW. Ambrose Nzams, a hardcore punk with more than 20 years of experience in the scene, keeps the shelves stocked with new and used zines in addition to vinyl and vintage clothes. (Since the recent federal occupation of the District, the shop also began offering new “U.S. Out of D.C.” T-shirts; proceeds go to local mutual aid organizations including Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network and Remora House DC.) Nzams buys new zines direct from their makers, usually after encountering them on social media. He buys used ones from collectors, just like secondhand LPs.
Over the past few years, he’s witnessed a surge in both markets—a “paper boom,” as he calls it. Nzams attributes it to the growth of online marketplaces and what he sees as a wave of punk nostalgia in the wake of COVID. Collectors are snapping up old zines and show fliers in addition to records, and he believes more creators are firing up their printers now than at any other time in the last two decades, both in town and internationally. A shelf by the front door at Joint Custody holds some of the evidence for sale, including D.C. publication Shining Life Press’ recent Fanzine Compilation, which assembles dozens of one-page zines submitted by hardcore punks from around the world. The shop also sells Demystification, Nzams’ own zine that he co-created with Paula Martinez (the masthead credits the two as “co-conspirators”). Not every booklet on display deals directly with music, but it all aligns with hardcore punk’s antiestablishment bent. Styles range from hand-folded printer sheets to slicker, coated-paper offerings, but Nzams doesn’t consider one style more authentic than another.
“I don’t think of zines as an aesthetic—there’s an ethos,” he says. “We are in control of the means. No one can tell you what to do.” For the shortest explanation, see the spine of Demystification, which reads: “WE CAN DO ANYTHING.”
Zine-making also supports the more genre-diverse elements of the District’s DIY music scene. Jordan Bennett and Audrey Borah co-edit and self-publish the glossy, colorful Haus Magazine, named for Tuba Haus, a student rental turned DIY house venue in College Park. With an irreverence inspired by Big Brother—the anarchic skateboard magazine that ran through the ’90s and early 2000s under the editorial direction of Jackass co-creator Jeff Tremaine—Haus features musician interviews, photography submissions, comics, and political essays. The editors have also released special issues spotlighting the Boyds, Maryland, music venue the Garage and local shoegaze band Pinky Lemon. Bennett says the mag aims to get college students who attend Haus shows into local music and counterculture, and to give featured bands a break from the drudgery of online self-promotion. It also serves as a more durable counterpart to platform-bound digital media.
“In 20 years, people aren’t going to be able to find some YouTube video because it’s just buried in all of the slop,” says Bennett. “They aren’t going to be able to find some photo ’cause it’s on a laptop they left at their parents’ house under 50 boxes. But once you see Haus Magazine, it’s right there, and it’ll always bring you back to the moment.”
Some makers, like Nzams, see zines as a means of preserving community. Others see the form as proactive community building and support. In May, New Hampshire zine maker April Landry traveled to D.C. for Liberation Weekend, a music festival and fundraiser for trans advocacy organized by local punk band Ekko Astral. Landry brought 60 home-printed copies of Liberation Zonked, a zine she made compiling comics, trans resources, and conversations with artists from her home scene. By the end of the weekend, she’d given them all away. In the face of the White House’s ongoing campaign against trans rights, she sees zine-making as a vector for the in-person, face-to-face community-building that can keep people safe. The more people who get involved, the better.
“There can’t just be one really strong node holding a scene together,” says Landry. “It’s better to have a hundred really small nodes.”
This November, MLK Memorial Library will host D.C. Zinefest, bringing together zine-makers and readers across all subjects. And, for its part, the Punk Archive doesn’t just collect historical zines. At events like their summer rooftop concerts, Lichtle-Mullenix distributes copies of educational zines including Punk at D.C. Area National Parks, which features a research essay tracing the history of D.C.’s Fort Reno concert series by Dr. Rami Toubia Stucky, and Maximum Preservation, a series of instructional pamphlets on protecting your own archival materials by librarian and Punk Archive co-founder Michele Casto. Both are the kind of black-and-white booklets you could feasibly print yourself at the library. Lichtle-Mullenix considers it an important example to set for patrons; if you have a library card, you too can make zines.
“You get 20 [free] prints per day. Just keep coming back, and you can make quite a few, especially if they’re one-pagers,” says Lichtle-Mullenix. “That’s why it’s important for the library: So we can get folks to vocalize their opinions and especially speak up for D.C. in trying times.”
During a recent set at the Black Cat, Jared Cunanan of emo band Cuni announced that he’d done just that. Included on the band’s merch table were free Red Cards from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, which enumerate the rights of anyone detained by ICE (a timely resource considering the wave of immigration enforcement flooding the city and surrounding suburbs under the White House’s federal takeover of D.C.). Cunanan, with help from his girlfriend, printed the info cards for free at the library, then cut them by hand. He wanted to offer showgoers a souvenir that could tangibly support the community—something more substantial than just another band T-shirt.
“It makes the subculture something greater than whatever genre is popular or which big jeans are fashionable at the moment,” says Cunanan. “Instead, it makes it a mission.”