My Time in the Mosh Pit
Zine, Katie Victoria Green, Stale Bread Collective, @stalebreadzine, $2
The author of this Montreal-based zine recently completed a cultural studies PhD studying contemporary punk rock scenes, and this considerably more DIY publication offers the context of this dissertation scholarship. As the zine’s subtitle explains, it tells the story of “why I researched punk culture & why you should start.” Green is clearly passionate about her topic, and seems to have abated the potential burnout six gruelling years of PhD work can invite. Green herself frames the zine as a mechanism to “re-discover a sense of pride in [my] accomplishment.”
Green studied the role of venues in local punk ecosystems and the impacts of venue closure, recounting some personal experiences and anecdotes along the way. This is not a regurgitation of Green’s dissertation, but rather a personal supplement to it, one that leaves space for Green to be blunt about her emotional investment in her subject. This includes her personal experience participating in the life of a key local DIY venue and then mourning its demise, plus interviews with scene veterans in Vancouver who can still point out where all the old venues used to be.
Though her researcher credentials are in hand, Green is anything but a dry writer. She shows this as she paints vivid pictures of walking Vancouver neighborhoods with her interviewees, or pointing out a street-side peacock to Dick Hebidge in Porto, Portugal. The passion for her subject is evident here not in over-analysis but in a richly articulated pride in the punk scenes in which she has embedded herself and her work. This is a must-read for anyone academically inclined toward punk.
