Publishing on the Fringe : O.C. ‘Zines Offer a Peek Into Some Oddball Obsessions and Unsung Lifestyles

Don’t look for this magazine in a pediatrician’s waiting room.

True, the cover does picture a little girl on a tricycle. But she is out of focus and seems pensive as she peers out of a hazy, black-brown gloom that suggests apocalypse--or at least anarchy. Above her is perched the magazine’s title . . . or maybe it’s a warning: Cringe.

Inside is a print version of shock radio, a graphic mimicry of the quick-cutting, party-down-dude delirium of MTV. Cringe’s 40 pages move abruptly from screened photos of daredevil snowboarders to cartoons to a polished sketch of a deer carcass.

Articles range from a plea against wife beating to 80-word interviews with six women about their cars (not forgetting to ask about their IQs and bra sizes). Advertisements in Cringe, far from providing anchors to familiar ground, compete with the editorial content for outrageousness.

Cringe is a “ ‘zine,” one of an estimated 20,000 homemade magazines nationwide, a couple dozen of which are produced in Orange County. Its creator, 25-year-old Joe McElroy of Huntington Beach, is part of an underground army of writers and graphic artists who savor the versatility of the print medium, toiling quietly in garages and bedrooms to produce idiosyncratic publications.

In part a rebellion against the staid predictability of the mass media, in part a logical outgrowth of easy desktop publishing, ‘zines offer peeks into fringe cultures, oddball obsessions or unsung lifestyles. Articles and ads run to the young and underground in books, music, videos, clubs, fashions. Some are slick; others, a couple of badly typed sheets stapled together. Text is often packed densely onto the page, reflecting the editors’ limited budgets for extra pages.

Some ‘zines are free. The cost of many is about the same as mainstream magazines--$2 to $4. One Los Angeles ‘zine comes out on a floppy disk that can be read on a Macintosh. Circulations range from a handful to the thousands.

“One thing that many ‘zine publishers have in common is a deeply felt frustration,” says Cari Goldberg Janice of Albany, N.Y., co-author of “The World of Zines,” a catalogue of more than 400 such publications. “People want to have a voice, and many are angry at what the mass media fail to cover. So people realize that with a home computer and cheap photocopying, it’s quite easy to start one on your own.”

Although pass-along, word-of-mouth distribution is vital to ‘zines’ health and mystique, in Orange County the six Tower Records locations serve as a primary source. In August, ‘zines accounted for about 20%, or $5,900, of total magazine revenue in the Orange County stores, says Doug Biggert, head of magazine sales for the 73-store Tower chain.

“ ‘Zine sales increase every year. Compared to them, normal magazines are boring,” says Biggert, who at any one time is surrounded in his west Sacramento office by 100 or so ‘zines sent by people who want to get on the record stores’ shelves.

His test for acceptance?

“If I could sit down with it in a dentist’s office and be interested enough to read it for a half-hour, it’s in there,” Biggert says, although he trusts associates to sort through the dozens of music ‘zines, most of which come out of California.

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Technology Works is one such music ‘zine. In 1988, its editor, Paul Moore, was spending Thursday nights as the host of his own weekly radio show at UC Riverside. After several years he began to supplement the program’s focus on “techno-industrial” music with a two-page bimonthly newsletter that he produced and distributed haphazardly among friends and at concerts.

He quit the broadcast business six months later.

“I found out that more people saw the magazine than heard the radio show,” Moore says.

Since then, Moore, a software engineer by day, has spent 15 hours a week publishing Technology Works. He hopes to make his ‘zine turn a profit in part by raising his current rate of $40 for a full-page ad.

“When I started, I gave away ad space to friends and people I wanted to support,” said Moore, 28, who lives in Fullerton. “Now I’m trying to get the ‘zine to support itself.”

Technology Works--the title is a sardonic comment on the merit of such projects as the NASA space shuttle--features interviews of techno-industrial artists and reviews of their music. It’s a genre, Moore says, that in the ‘70s was based on “factory noise” but now has evolved into guitar-based bands that use drum machines. At first, he knew of only two other competitors. But in the past two years, Moore has seen about 40 come and go.

Moore, who uses seven free-lance writers, prints out his 40 or so pages on a laser printer, pays a printer for 1,000 copies, then folds and staples them by hand. He uses four distribution companies to send most of the ‘zines around the country and Europe; the rest he gives away at Los Angeles clubs.

He also has begun selling T-shirts and stickers with his ‘zine logo.

“Readers call up and think I’m a company,” Moore says. “But it’s just me operating out of my apartment.”

The ‘zine editor has made friends through his publication and says another benefit is the hundreds of compact discs that bands send him to review. Still, the publishing grind can seem never-ending, Moore says: “There hasn’t been a three-day weekend in a long time where I said, ‘Now I can relax.’ ”

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The surf, skateboard and snowboard lifestyle is the hook for Cringe.

“I’m not making any money on it, but that’s kind of how I want to keep it,” says Joe McElroy, who works full time as a T-shirt designer.

Cringe, primarily a vehicle for surf and skateboard photos and art, was born as a graphic design project at San Diego State in January. Since then, McElroy has put out five issues, one of which used a binding method that’s doubtless unique to publishing: a safety pin. An issue last spring featured a 1972 snapshot of McElroy’s family as the cover art.

For his latest 40-page issue produced last month, McElroy paid a commercial copier $1,200 to print and staple 600 copies, which he distributed through his mailing list of 200 “boarding” shops--stores that sell surfboards, skateboards and snowboards.

“I have three or four photographers, and a couple more do art,” says McElroy, who designs Cringe on a Macintosh computer at work after hours. “I usually publish issues when there’s an industry event, like a trade show or a snowboard contest. Or sometimes I have a party.”

Erratic publishing schedules are typical among ‘zines, says Goldberg Janice, the national ‘zine tracker, who adds that although there are doubtless a few dozen ‘zines in at any one time in Orange County, their life span is inherently limited.

“ ‘Zines usually last about a year, sometimes longer,” she says. “People burn out and throw all their energies into the first issues, and what with collating, stamping, mailing, it gets expensive. Most ‘zine publishers are in their 20s, and being that age, there’s so much more they could be doing.”

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One of the things that Alec Orrock, 23, of Laguna Hills, likes to do is show videos of new animation from Japan to fellow fans of the genre. But, like Moore, Orrock found that when he began to produce a publication to supplement his program, the ‘zine quickly stole the show. His ‘zine, From Side to Side, has a circulation of 70, twice the number that attend his monthly video presentations. He spends more than 40 hours a month on it, versus 10 hours to assemble the actual video shows.

“In the United States, you have basically two types of animation: Disney and Warner Bros.,” says Orrock, a computer science student at Saddleback College. “But in Japan, you have vast array of types, from little kids to adults, dealing with science fiction, comedy, drama.

“I started the magazine in 1990 when it became apparent we needed an English-language programming guide,” he says. “It developed from just a few pages to 60 or 70 pages. It grew as people heard about it.”

The ‘zine, which features cartoons, reviews and news on Japanese animation projects, costs $24 for six issues. Orrock and a friend design it on a personal computer at home, then use the business service center at Office Depot for copying and stapling.

One of Southern California’s slickest ‘zines, Answer Me!, takes a freewheeling approach to subject matter. It is the creation of professional typesetter Jim Goad, and its editorial content is divided between rants such as “The Family Must Be Eliminated” and “I Hate Men,” to reportage, such as his article on Orange County’s Vietnamese gangs.

In contrast to the misspellings that plague much of ‘zinedom, Goad issues a “Typo Challenge,” daring readers to find an error in his 99-page publication. Also unlike most ‘zine creators, Goad is a professional journalist, who wrote for Playboy and various music magazines.

Answer Me! is something of a print version of Howard Stern-variety talk radio.

“I really have no philosophical agenda,” Goad says of the eclectic and provocative subject matter he dishes out, such as interviews with white supremacist David Duke and a 57-page article detailing 100 unusual suicides. “To me, it’s just something that I’m interested in.”

Still, Answer Me!’s relatively clean layout and in-your-face hostility must be striking a chord. A couple of months ago, Biggert of Tower Records phoned Goad to order 2,000 copies of the third issue.

“He called me back to say, ‘It’ll really be offensive; do you really want 2,000?’ ” Biggert recalls. “Then he called me again and said, ‘I have Hitler on the cover; are you still sure?’ ” Biggert assured him that he would stand by his order, “and we were basically sold out of them a week later.”

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The granddaddy of Orange County ‘zines is possibly Free Lunch, a poetry journal published three times yearly. The 4 1/2-year-old ‘zine features the work of 20 or so poets each issue, and editor Ron Offen has devised a subscription policy that has endeared his ‘zine to often cash-starved poets.

“I give them away free to people I call serious American poets,” says Offen, 61, of Laguna Niguel. “But (the poems) have to have some merit. If someone’s writing Hallmark verse, they’re not serious.”

Offen spends 20 hours a week reviewing the five to 10 poetry submissions he receives daily. Only about 20% of new poets win the free subscriptions--the others must pay $12, although each poem is returned with a criticism by Offen. He receives private donations to pay for most of Free Lunch’s printing bills.

“Poets don’t get anything for nothing,” says Offen, a school librarian. “They don’t get paid for their work, so I thought they deserve something. Also, I’ve been doing poetry magazines most of my life, and I know there’s so little chance of making it commercially.”

Correspondent Mark Ehrman contributed to this story.