Category Archives: Art

Zine review – Ashcan #1

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Ashcan #1

2012-05-23_19-44-03_939

Edited by Sean Castillo
Published in SF in October 2008

I scored my copy of Ashcan #1 at the Urban Craft Center in Santa Monica. Their collection of zines is kinda sparse, at least compared to the likes of Powell’s and Reading Frenzy, but it holds a wealth of classics for those willing to sift through its disorganized stacks. Ashcan wasn’t the oldest there, but it caught my eye.

The zine is half interviews with bands and the progenitor of a skateboard company, half short stories, comix, and zine reviews. Really interesting to read the interviews, both for the snapshots of their subject’s respective scenes and the funny anecdotes that always surface when you talk to a band. The two short pieces, A Few Thoughts on Pornography by Dustin Heron and illustrated by Amos Goldbaum, and White Powder by Justin Allen with illustrations by Kevin McCarthy, aren’t particulary ground breaking in their subject matter. Porn and blue collar labor have both been covered by innumerable authors, but that’s because they’re both ubiquitous and most everyone can relate. A fresh perspective on either is always interesting and both author/illustrator pairs kept me reading. How We Manage, written by Alexander Zeddemore and illustrated by Daniel Kaufeldt, accurately distills the agony of trying to find gainful employment post graduation, and the schadenfreude laden experience of going back to a maligned former employer to see what has changed, and what hasn’t.

Ashcan doesn’t seem to be particularly active any more, issue #3 came out in August of 2010 and not much looks to have happened since. There’s still an online presence at if you’re interested though.

http://ashcanmagazine.com/
ashcanmagazine@gmail.com
660 4th St. #420
San Francisco, CA 94107

Random snapshots March/April 2-month combo edition

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I’ve been enjoying the hell out of the sunny weather that’s been gracing us lately. Here’s some stuff that’s caught my eye while walking around this lovely city:

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Soooooo…. I thought this was a Kei car that had been imported, but apparently it’s a North American market model. This Suzuki X-90 was parked in the bizzare quasi-urban Cascade Station shopping area.

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Sixth generation Country Squire in woody trim. First generation Panther platform cars are one of my guilty pleasures. I think I like them so much because to me they’re iconic of their time. When I think of the 70s or 80s my point of reference is movies and television, and these cars (along with the competing Chevrolet Caprice) were ubiquitous on film. Fleets of taxi and police liveried LTDs teemed through city scenes, meanwhile in the suburbs families were piling into the last American full size station wagons to grace the screen before their displacement by SUVs and the minivan.

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Part of a collection of Nash and AMC cars that have been parked in the same vicinity for the entire time I’m lived in Portland.

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Slap tags! I’m glad they’re popular here, usually way more visually interesting than marker or scratch tags.

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Some terrible lazy sprayed tags. Only posting because the one on the right is the biggest example of that tag I’ve ever seen. Whoever does it usually sticks to street signs and such, working in marker. There used to be tons of smaller ones all around PSU. I’m assuming the maker got busted because they haven’t popped back up.