Zine, issue three, Marcos Soriano, mapoffog.blogspot.com, $3 US plus two stamps for shipping within the US or $5 anywhere else
Through “Map of Fog,” creator Marcos Soriano chronicles life in San Francisco. The first two issues told true stories of the city including a man having a seizure on the subway, the takeover of the city by “nerds” and a stabbing at a rock show.
Issue three takes a different turn, asking five people who have moved to San Fran from other places to talk about what made them leave home and what brought them to this city.
Interviewee Dorothy was looking for both distance from her parents and a place where she could blend in, as someone who is Chinese and gay. She discusses perceptions of people in different states (including the over-friendliness of people in her hometown of Tennessee and how people are more comfortably stand-offish where she went to school in Ithaca, NY). She is a musician who played in punk bands in the ’90s, largely because of the preponderance of women she found in those communities. Speaking of the change she has seen in music scenes across the decades, Dorothy says: “To
me scenes are directly an offshoot of music, but in current times it seems like the music is almost irrelevant. You’ve got people that look punk but listen to Justin Bieber. That should be illegal.”
Despite the specific focus, I don’t think you have to care deeply about San Francisco or California or any one place to be taken by this zine. “Map of Fog” gives the reader the opportunity to listen in on a conversation and learn a bit about what other people are looking for out of life. While the interviewees are sharing what makes this the city they were willing to settle in, we learn more about the people than we do the place. (Lindsay Gibb)