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February 6, 2008
Tripe Down Memory Lane
I recently received an email from an old friend, who had been looking in a box full of Stuff From A Former Life. He came across several issues of Snappy Jack News, a scooter fanzine of sorts I produced for most of 1985 in San Francisco. He was missing Issue No. 4, and was hoping that it had some cool pictures in it.
I produced the early issues of SJN in my room at the Civic Center Hotel, a fleabag at 12th and Market. It was the kind of place that organized the clientele by floor, and the bathroom was down the hall. When I told a friend (who by a twist of fate now lives in Albuquerque) I was on the 5th floor, he cooed "They must have loved you to place you up there." He lived on the third floor. Later, I moved across the street to 23 Franklin Av, above the parking lot that was the staging area for motorcycle rides that met at Dudley Perkins. Interesting stuff went on in that parking lot, since it was a convenient place for the prostitutes sex workers to take their johns.
At first, I typed up the galleys for SJN on a typewriter. Later, I rented time on an Apple /// or a Lisa at a little desktop publishing place on California between Polk and Van Ness. Headlines were done with Letraset sticky-back letters and occasionally whatever stick-on lettering I could get my impoverished hands on. I was a big fan of zippotone and Letraset tapes. Page layout was done with spray mount. The biggest expense was having half-tones made of the photos. They looked like crap if I didn't do that much. Fortunately for my finances, I often imposed on friends in the printing biz to do the photowork for me.
Reading the articles in No. 4, I am reminded that I spent a fair bit of my weekends riding up and down and around San Francisco's hills, and then writing about it later. Plus ça change, plus ça même chose. I begged and cajoled my friends to contribute to SJN, and they did, sometimes. Walter Alter could be relied upon to provide a stream of consciousness, but I ended up writing most of every issue. I credited folks as they wanted to be credited, and offered advertising in exchange. And now, immortality.
Snappy Jack News, Jun-Jul-Aug 1985 4.4 Mbyte pdf.