In late winter of 2024 myself and a few friends were working on putting together the first Baltimore Zine Fest. We decided we wanted it to be outdoors, as we had no real venues that we could connect with to host such a radical free event, we landed on Herring Run park. Prior to this myself and others agreed that our anarchist and punk scenes needed a event that wasn’t just a punk show, we needed more community events. I’ve always been inspired by the Anarchist Book Fairs and wanted to replicate a similar experience with BZF but never had the time or energy to organize something like that until last year. With my small group of friends and a few months of preparation, flyer making, and outreach we settled on a date, time and location, the turnout was great and the event was a success. We had originally planned for BZF to be a once or twice a year event with only a few people organizing thinking that’s all we could collectively manage until someone suggested that we make it a monthly event… this idea was simply not do-able, or was it? at first i was pretty opposed to the idea but after multiple people stepped up to help it seemed less and less impossible. July came around and we hosted BZF 2 which went just as smoothly as the first event and the ball kept rolling. Our biggest hurdle last year was finding a venue that we could host at during the winter months, thankfully the infamous punk house Bone Orchard (formerly The H.O.L.E.) opened up their space to host us and then later we booked Red Emma’s free school space for the remainder of the winter. A few months after the first BZF i was told someone in Philly was inspired by our event and had started their own Zine Fest. Now Philly Zine Fest (@Phlzinefest on instagram) happens once a month at Clark park, we consider them close friends we probably would have never met without this event. Baltimore Zine Fest has grown into a bigger community event than i could have anticipated. It has dedicated people who make and print flyers, maintain the social media account, help set up, transport tables and tents, all of it is volunteer based and no one makes any money from doing any of this but it couldn’t be done without everyone’s help. if you told me five years ago that once a month people would come up to me with new zines they made and give them to me for free i’d probably say “i wish!” Now every month i come home with a handful of new zines by local writers and radicals and it fills me with excitement and joy. I write this to hopefully inspire others to start their own “zine fest” or whatever you want to call it. Thank you for one year of continued support! BZF will always be a free radical community space for people to vend, skill share, dance, play music, hang out, organize, take a nap, or anything else you can think of.

follow: @Bmorezinefest on instagram for the next one, see you soon.

-Sylo

Special thank you to Zac, Nova, 7, Toby, Motley, Cole, our friends in philly (and DC), all of our vendors and to everyone who shows up.