Postcard announcing bOING bOING #2
This postcard advertising bOING bOING #2 was sent out in 1989 to the 50 or so people who ordered a copy of bOING bOING #1 from the pages of Factsheet Five. I found it today in a box of junk I was cleaning out.
(If anyone still has one of these cards and sends me a scan of what's on the front, I'll send them a Boing Boing T-shirt.)
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Wow! BB #2 reminds me the times when I went to Compendium bookstore in Camden Town to buy BoingBoing and other favourite cyber culture mags/books...
I didn't even know Boing Boing was a zine back in '89! How cool is that? Now if we could only see scans of those issues, that would be great! F5 was a great zine review magazine and I certainly do miss it.
BELLANATRIX, Here's a Flickr set of almost all the issue covers. Scans of the issue contents? We have... some ideas...
Having issues creating an account, sorry.
No way! I had no idea you were in Boulder back in the day! I was here in '89 (still am) and would have loved you then as I do now!
Jenn Zuko
I have an old paper version. Does it count for a t-shirt ?
Cheers.
Just bought bb#1 - someone was wearing their Terence McKenna/Subgenius/RAW influences very much on their sleeve! Delightful read anyway, good brain food on a Sunday morning. :)
What's Paul Di Filippo up to these days?
Ribofunk and Steampunk Trilogy were both awesome.
I loved the old bOING-bOING!
I don't remember how far back my collection goes, but I still have 'em.
I'd love a Kata Sutra t-shirt. :)
Aaaaah, FactSheet 5...."Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron", "Hate"...I remember the comic books, Factsheet 5...but none of the zines?! Slinging agar at Genetech, driving a 1969 Suzuki 2-stroke, Toronado was originally a Saki bar....and on
Remember that book, "Gen X"?
I feel somewhat devilish saying this, but it's true: I VASTLY prefer the old bOING bOING zine to the current bOING bOING blog. Reading my back issues reminds me of how much I miss it. It was very sarcastic and funny and fresh and while it so thoroughly thrived on pranks, there was a genuine kindness and total benevolence to the whole affair. The writing was truly captivating, particularly when Gareth Branwyn and Carla Sinclair contributed awesomeness. The cynical snark of today is so much less fun than the World's Greatest Neurozine.
cynical snark?
Compendium in Camden was amazing!!! Many trips were made when I was a kid in the 80s, before we could surf the net for alternative media... Really cool books and zines on all sorts of topics! Things change but Compendium was amazing!
BB now is a blog. It's not a magazine. Sure, it still has a character of sorts, but without the discipline of press deadlines, layout issue and proof-reading, it's not anything LIKE reading a small-press magazine, so anyone attempting to compare the two is on a hiding to nothing.
#11 : I agree. The magazine was somehow more subversive. The blog -- not so much. * Completely * mainstream now.
I do still have my copy of the Happy Mutant Handbook, which was my first exposure to bb. (back when the handbook first came out...) but no zines or post cards.
D Faris, maybe "mainstream" has just gotten a lot odder since 1989? Actually, I do think that's true to some degree. In addition to the inevitable maturation that kids, houses, etc have brought, the world has moved to accept the network, neuroscience, nanotech, smart drugs, many of the things that seemed so fringe in 1989.
Wow, what happened between issues 4 and 5? Did someone get fired? Was some drug discovered?
@ #13 posted Gilgongo
I think the difference is not the media but, as Terence McKenna would have pointed: some of BB bloggers do not even know what DMT is (and probably never flipped the pages of Happy Mutant Handbook)...
Anyway I love BB blog and think it's doing a great work to push "alternative" thinking" (just a little bit less alternative than 20 years ago)...
but still it would be nice to see how BB blog would change after all the writers would have experienced a "trippy" weekend...
Here's a scan of BB #2:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brightblightcafe/421950920/in/set-72157600000879612/
If I'm not mistaken, that issue features a diatribe I wrote against furniture though I could ne mistaken; it was a long time ago. -
cheers...
Antero Alli
www.verticalpool.com
I don't people realise how cringe worthy it is to describe something as "mainstream".
Particularly when comparing something "independent" and "alternative" from 1989.
And I've read some of the original BB... and yeah, it's focus was different, much like the world was very different.
The evolution from the zine to now seems pretty obvious, and the roots of the contributors are still quite obviously on show.
Good job, I say, even though I don't always agree with the "cynical snark" (@11 strevalex - wtf?) you guys post!
Thanks for your comments, everyone. I'm proud of bOING bOING and its contributors and equally proud of Boing Boing and its contributors.
@Mark
You took one of the most interesting cybezines to the level of being the MOST influential blog ever created (BB is so influential that its contents look mainstream but just few years ago would have considered "alternative"!!):
I think no one in the publishing history ever achived this!
Thank you for creating BB: the very first time I flipped its pages I decided to start my own publishing company!
#21 : Cringeworthy? Perhaps, but now that bOING bOING is listed on the home page of YAHOO, would you say that bOING bOING has become mainstream, or would you say that the rest of the world has tuned in, turned on, and dropped out?