It was a tough year for the seven co-organizers of the San Francisco Zine Fest — in the best way possible.
Poring over nearly 500 applications from local publishers, the organizers of the Bay Area’s premier exhibition for the indiest-of-indie publications knew they’d have to dole out more rejections than they’d sent in previous years.
Metreon City View, which has hosted the Fest since 2022, can usually hold about two thirds of the applicants. At this year’s event, which is happening this Sunday, there will only be room for less than half.
“I don’t know exactly what happened,” said Lauren Davis, an SFZF co-organizer, grinning with pleasant surprise. “There’s definitely been an explosion of interest in zines in the past year.”
Zines — small batch, independently published mini magazines — are popping up all over the city. Aside from Zine Fest, San Franciscans are throwing zine parties in their apartments, joining zine-making clubs, selling their wares at local bookstores like Green Apple Books and Silver Sprocket, and collaborating with local businesses like Bird and Bear Coffee to host zine-centric events.
But you probably already know that. You might even publish your own zine.
Of course, zines are nothing new. Underground publishing saw its heyday in the 1980s and ‘90s, when anti-corporate and DIY movements flourished in New York, Los Angeles, the Pacific Northwest, and the Bay Area. Zines are such a part of this city that the main branch of the San Francisco Library features the (unfortunately named) Little Maga/Zine Collection, a cache of printed ephemera from even further back: their earliest zine is from 1924.
Over the decades, the popularity of alternative media has fluctuated in response to the political and cultural climate. With screens and algorithms now such a dominant part of our daily lives, zines are serving as a kind of rebuke to the insatiable corporate appetite for AI and the loneliness of life online.
“The internet has gotten very weird in the last couple of years. I think that a lot of stuff with the Trump administration is making people very nervous,” Davis speculated. “So there’s a lot of desire to return to print media.”
As Mikaela Payne, another SFZF co-organizer puts it, “The physical form of a zine is the antithesis of AI slop.”
The niche nature of zines also presents a refreshing contrast to the algorithmic flattening of culture that defines our era. In fact, shucking the mainstream and publishing work from the margins of society is sort of the whole point of zines, say the organizers. Since SFZF began in 2001, topics have always leaned toward the strange and specific. This year, among the 231 exhibitors, there will be zinesters selling work about queer and trans culture, library science, personal musings, a post-work future, disability justice, being a child of immigrants, and even the ups and downs of being a queer mortician.
“When we talk to people about what a zine is and what it can be about, the only answer I can give is that it’s about a viewpoint that’s different from the norm,” Davis explained.
In San Francisco, the zine scene is informed by tech culture “for better or worse,” Davis told me. Some zines are about tech, and how it can be subverted or examined in unexpected ways.
As government surveillance and Big Tech-approved hate speech becomes the norm online, sharing progressive, non-normative ideas can simply feel safer in print: Zines’ small circulation makes them inherently ephemeral, hard to find and trace. Plus, AI can’t scrape what it can’t access.
Others are touched by tech more indirectly; Davis says she’s seen a lot of zines lately that are created by tech workers who often don’t feel “artistically fulfilled in their jobs.” These folks are turning to print — something that’s tactile, uncomplicated, and nostalgic — for solace.
With zines having a moment in the culture, the co-organizers expect this Sunday’s event to have a bigger audience as well. The organization’s online following has “exploded exponentially,” said Payne, noting their posts on Instagram have captured nearly 90,000 views in the past month.
The only problem with a booming zine scene? Where to put all the new publishers and readers.
“We already moved into a bigger space,” Payne said, referring to the Fest’s move from the quaint County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park to the cavernous City View following two online “Cyberfests” during COVID. “I don’t even know how many bigger spaces are available.”
