I present the following with more than a little embarrassment, but history is history and youthful folly has its way with all of us.
One day during the summer after our ninth-grade year, I went over to my friend Matt Bailie’s house to ride bikes and listen to music. There’s nothing unique about that. That’s what we did most days during those summers, but the latest Freestylin’ Magazine had just come out, and inside was a two-age spread on ‘zines.
Opening the magazine to those pages, Matt said, “We could do this.”
So, we did.
Rad Rag, our first attempt, was done on a coin-operated copy machine at a local drug store. I walked up and down the strip mall it was in changing ones for dimes from sympathetic merchants to pay for it. As such, we couldn’t do two-sided copies, so every page is blank on the back (also hence the odd number of pages).
Anyway, here’s where it all started: the first zine we ever made as teenagers.
More of these as I scan them all for the anthology, Collecting the Kid: Zines, 1986-2026.