When the alarm went off on Saturday morning, I had some serious decisions to make. "Do I actually get up and make breakfast for Christopher and myself, or do I roll over and die?" I asked.
I stumbled out into the living room and found Mr. Rees lying in the sofa bed half-awake, giggling to himself. “I’ve had some amusing dreams,” he said. He seems to be a gentle kind of loon; I like him a lot. He has tea and toast, I guzzle a glass of mango smoothie, and we head over to the zine fair with J., only 30 minutes behind schedule, none of us very much awake.
St. David’s Church is a fantastic place to have the fair and workshops. It has a really great “weekend community event” vibe, and two-thirds of the tables are already set up with zines, comics, art, a button-making station and records.
We grab a spot next to the Benn Ross CDs and save some room for Jud and Pineau from Dependent (they are even later than us). I figured that with a couple of us working the table, I’d have time to get a decent breakfast or lunch later in the day. No such luck–if it wasn’t for Jud giving me a cookie around 3pm and HCAP selling baked goods, I’d have gone from 3am Friday to 7pm Saturday with only the mango smoothie in my belly.
But busy is good, and it was busy. Despite the complete downpour all afternoon, the hall was filled with people all afternoon. It was amazing to see so many people taking part in the activities and workshops and just checking out the wares for sale and trade at each table.
Speaking of trades, my favourite part of the day was when someone asked me if I wanted to trade some seven inches for her zine, since she didn’t have money to buy anything. A lightbulb went off over my head! I grabbed a stack of singles and went from table to table, bartering for whatever people thought the music was worth. At the end of the day, I ended up with a huge stack of zines, silkscreened patches, buttons, stickers, handmade cards and best of all, a beautiful red sock puppet. Well, he wasn’t so much a sock puppet as a red mitten puppet with dental moulds for teeth and buttons, the kind you put your band name on as opposed to the kind on your good shirt for church, for eyes. I love him and promise to give him a good name soon.
Thank you everyone for being brave enough to take home some of the music I love and for giving me some of your amazing projects. I now have Christmas gifts for at least six friends.
I also really dug how the zine folks asked for one-page submissions for a HPX zine–apparently it’s going to be available at the library by tomorrow. For about an hour, I sat at my table gluing bits of paper together, talking with Christopher, making my zine page. Super fun.
The whole day was heartwarming. Cheers to the organizers and the volunteers and to everyone who came out. I've been to a lot of the zine fairs at the HPX over the year, and I felt this was the best organized and the most fun and community-minded.
When I got back home around 7pm (big thanks to Daniel for the ride home and for sitting at the table for me so I could barter my little heart out at the end of the day), I needed to lie down and eat in a big way, especially if I hoped to get through the entire evening all the way to Chixdiggit (not scheduled to hit the stage at The Attic until 1:15am, and known for playing every request ever made to them).
