zines are like magazines, but made by amateurs. Alot of punks make zines. So basically, you manage to make content (interviews, stories, record reviews, or whatever you can think of), then you lay it out on paper, you try to find a friend with a xerox machine, and you copy your zine. Then you mail it to your friends, try to sell it to whoever would like a peek at your thoughts, and voila, you've got the grass roots response to shitty [mai

Zines had their heyday before the easy access to the internet, but many survive today. Some of the longest running zines are MaximumRocknroll, Cometbus,BenisDead,Guttersnipe. After a few years of what looked like potential zine-extinction, some very good ones (in some form or another), have been creeping onto the internet. One particularly hard reading one is the crash site, which you can get to from www.blindwino.com. Zines are basically broken into a few simple categories: 1. Music zines (probable the first, as "zines" comes form "fan-zines". 2. Personal zines. These are my favorite, Cometbus is a good example of this. 3. special interest zines, skate zines, locale-specific zines etc. There are many more, but one of the most beautiful things about zines is that hardly anyone has figured out how to make any money off them. If you are in Portland, visit Reading Frenzy, in Seattle, HypnoVideo.