Gil from Free Spirit put this awesome gig together, and is putting some of the proceeds towards the zine library! Go and bring a stack of zines (that you made) and you get $2 off the door price.

So, I mentioned these fancy new cards briefly in my last post, but I want to show off mine! This is the front; on the back there is room for our contact info and yours.

Again, this does not change anybody’s current membership and we will continue to accept one-time-donations for memberships. If you’d like to switch over, though, it is greatly appreciated! We are asking just $12/year ~ basically, a dollar each month for access to nearly 15,000 zines!

Special thanks to Chelsea Dirck for drawing this year’s cards! :)

Created in the latter days of September 2011, the lady-centric Bay State Badass zine has been inducing lulz, inspiring reflection, and spreading knowledge of bike laws and safety not only throughout the Commonwealth, but the country. Entertaining and educating from Cambridge to Brookline, from Minneapolis to Kentucky, the Badass has received rave reviews from over a hundred friends and randos, and elicited approval from at least two lawyers.

So here comes this event!

3PM, Sunday December 4th at Papercut/Lorem Ipsum
1299 Cambridge Street 02139
If you ride your bike and wear your helmet to the party, you get a Papercut sticker!

In case you didn’t get one at a Critical Mass ride, proffered to you at an intersection, or thrown into your bike basket when you weren’t looking, Team Smash Em Up now invites you in from the cold to experience the Badass.

Music!
Funz!
Foodz!
Frenz!
BADASS KNOW YOUR RIGHTS ON A BIKE PRESENTATION!
A zine for every attendee!
Accepting submissions for a second issue.
Also accepting $5± for Papercut.

What people are saying about the Bay State Badass:

I wish I could find a way to secretly pass this out to the teenage girls I teach bike safety to! – JP
Woah, rly?! This is amazing! -Cambridge
This is great! The alternating internet troll and librarian dialects make me swoon. – Ohio
I lolled; I will forgive you for the Katy Perry references. – Pittsburgh
0mg this zine! Lulz. – Ithaca
Immediate laffs – Delaware
This is so great. I want to call her and tell her how great this is, but she’s probably asleep. – reported but not confirmed in Allston
Lulz, amazing! – Everyone

A little late, but we just wanted to thank everyone for coming out o the opening! We had a great crowd come out to see the new space, as well as some amazing performers including our friends The Low Tide, Hi-5 Magazine, The Inman Review, and new friends We Avalanche and Adrian Emberley. We already feel so welcome here in our new space in Inman Square!

Zine-Making Space

Our new space now features a zine-making area, where folks can utilize our typewriter, old magazines and other craft supplies to create their own DIY publications!

Hours

The hours that we are open have stayed the same. Although the bookstore will have their own hours, we do ask hat patrons do not take zines outside of the library without a librarian formally checking it out for you.

Membership

New to the library? We are now offering yearly memberships for folks who would like to help us become more sustainable in the long-term. We will also allow folks to sign up as members using the old, one-time-donation system — and this does not affect  the membership that you have now.

We hope to see ya’ll at our new space soon! Be sure to sign up for our listserve to be alerted bout upcoming events and workshops.

The Papercut Zine Library has moved into Lorem Ipsum Books! Come join us for a night of celebration; complete with music, readings, friends, and general merriment.

The Lucy Parsons Center is holding their opening earlier in the day, so we’ll also have a group bikeride from JP to Cambridge. Don’t miss out!

RSVP on Facebook!

So we’re about 1/2, or maybe 1/3 of the way there, depending on how you look at it. The majority of our catalogued zines are safe and sound at our new location, with just a few hundred zines and the furniture to take care of over the next few days.

It’s sad to see the art come down; off the shelves and off of the walls. Our space in Somerville has awarded us with some amazing opportunities over the last year and a half, and we do not take this for granted. We hope that our friends over in East Somerville will keep checking out their zines, and that all of our patrons will see how we continue to grow and flourish in our new space.

We want to thank our volunteers, once again, for all of the help and support during this move. We could not have done it without you!

Sincerely,

Kimberly/PCZL

As you may have heard, the walls of the Papercut Zine Library in Somerville are currently displaying many fine works of incarcerated artists, as sent to local prison abolition/prisoner support groups Boston Anarchist Black Cross and Black and Pink. These pieces are all for sale, btdubs, and for entirely reasonable prices.

As you may have also heard, Papercut Zine Library is leaving Somerville at the end of the month and moving into the Lorem Ipsum bookstore in Inman Square in Cambridge, aspiring to be operational again November 1.

Between Papercut, Boston ABC, and Black and Pink, here is an opportunity to show some love for three longstanding projects– all in the same room. Though their focuses and work differ, all do concrete work to share and avail information, develop relationships, and generally build a new world in the shell of the old. So turn out and earn bragging rights for being present at one of the few remaining hurrahs of the Papercut Zine Library at 226 Pearl Street, 02145. Join us this Saturday the 17th from 7-10pm in celebrating the end of this joint exhibit of magnificent, thought-provoking, and frequently fun art! There will be refreshments, some live music, and hopefully you!

Photo by Shawn Musgrave at the Dig

Friday, 9/16 at 7pm – RSVP on Facebook

Steve Almond, Tomas Moniz, and Jeremy Adam Smith are touring in support of Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood, which PM Press published just a few weeks ago. “If buying a gender-neutral pacifier is the most radical thing you’ve done as a parent, Rad Dad will nudge you back on track,” says the SF Weekly.

Steve Almond lives in the Boston area with his beautiful and endlessly patient wife, Erin, and their chocolate addicts-in-training children, Josie and Judah. He’s also written some books: Candyfreak; My Life in Heavy Metal; Rock n Roll Will Save Your Life; and The Evil BB Chow.

Tomas edits and writes for the zine Rad Dad, which won a Best of the Bay award from the San Francisco Bay Guardian and an Independent Press Award for Best Zine. He lives with two amazing daughters, a bunch of chickens, bees, a cat and dog in south Berkeley.

Jeremy Adam Smith is the father of Liko, age 7; author of The Daddy Shift; coeditor of Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood; founder of the acclaimed blog Daddy Dialectic; and a 2010–11 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.

It is our great pleasure to announce that Papercut will soon be sharing a space with our friends at Lorem Ipsum, an independent bookstore in Inman Square.

An exhibit featuring works by incarcerated artists opens this weekend and runs through September. The show, put together by local prison abolitionist groups Black and Pink and Boston Anarchist Black Cross, will be on display at Somerville’s Papercut Zine Library, located at 226 Pearl St. The space is open Saturdays and Sundays 2-7PM and by appointment. There will be a closing party Saturday September 17th at 7PM.

Highlighting prisoners’ own experiences, the exhibit sheds light on the conditions in which an ever-growing number of Americans find themselves. Incarcerating 2.3 million people, or nearly 1% of its population, the United States incarcerates a larger number and percentage of its populace than any other nation, beating out both China and Soviet Russia. 7.2 million, or around 3% of the US population, are under some form of punitive supervision. Courts disproportionately dole out punitive sentences to racial and/or sexual minorities. Black adult males, for instance, are almost 7 times more likely to be imprisoned than white male defendants. Exhibited alongside the art are these and other statistics to provide an objective context for the works.

Part of the show focuses on works by incarcerated LGBTQ people. Trans and queer people are more likely to be imprisoned than straight people and, once behind bars, encounter rampant harassment and abuse. Taken as a whole, the artwork displays a breadth of emotion and subject matter. Ranging from political indictments to some light-hearted moments, the works offer a window into how individuals can use art and creation as tools of survival in the midst of degrading and potentially violent conditions.

Given that parole in Massachusetts is in precipitous decline in the wake of the Parole Board’s gutting, there is a need to ask basic questions about our state, the values it’s founded on, and where to go from here. Boston ABC and Black and Pink hope this exhibit can provide an opportunity to ask these questions, and inspire action.

For more information on the groups behind this exhibit:

http://www.blackandpinkart.org/

Selected Sources:

http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=35912

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/pjim06.pdf