I found something interesting this past weekend while meeting Zephronias for lunch.

Buslines are full of fuckery. Left with free time by their scheduling SNAFUs, I wandered down Valencia Street towards Paxton's Gate, a collection of three stores. One of these is focused on non-digital/science-oriented toys, while another is pirate-themed. The third, and seemingly the original, is a landscaping and natural history store filled with preserved heads, epiphytic plants, and all sorts of interesting botany and natural history books.

I'd just finished looking over the sock monkeys in the toy store when I noticed the "Denim for Allah" sticker on a sign outside.

I did a double take, looked again. I asked the bike store clerk what the sticker was about and if they sold them.

"We don't," she said, "But the zine shop in the back might?"

Zine shop?

Down a cool, polished hallway of wood and plaster was a door and an intercomm system "Press 03 for Gote Blud", a hastily-taped note said.

Huh. Okay.

They didn't have any stickers.

What they had instead was a pair of bearded guys and a long trough filled with old amateur press association releases. And in the back corner was the science fiction section.

This wasn't the stuff of Astounding or Galaxy. These were hand-bound, stapled folios filled with natter - conversations back and forth between issues by the publishers. Book reviews. Short stories. Bad fanfiction about Kirk and Spock. Old filk pieces from the 60s and 70s.

"I have boxes more," the owner said. "But most people are just interested in the music ones."

So now there's a Kinko's box, rather battered and stained with bits of vine from the epiphytes. But inside are five APAzines, all filled with the conversations and proto-catbox chatter of decades ago.

I still haven't decided what to do with them.