Bumrush

I started putting together The Riot Act in college in 1995 – original tag line "Hard News, Extreme Sports, Alternative Politics" – and published a zine with cut heds and decks and columns I printed on my Mac and pasted on blue-line graph paper under photos clipped from surf and skate and ski and news magazines, plus whatever kinetically dynamic shots I could shoot and develop myself. The inaugural cover shot featured a main photo of a wetsuited surfer dropping pig-dog into an overhead left, with Frank Sinatra's smiling head, collar and bow tie pasted over Kelly Slater's dome – cut line "My Kind of Style."

I wrote dry, angry assessments of current events and culture that were occasionally funny. I reviewed and recommended books and music old and new, and I re-typed up cool, edgy, better work I found published elsewhere and printed it (with full attribution, because I have ethics).

There were fresh bright acerbic zines at the record stores, the proliferating coffee shops, at the bookstores and news stands – back when these things were. And there was political violence blazing in weird hot spots around the country.

I was broke. But I'd print some of my issues in color to keep for myself and my future records, and a bunch in black and white to leave around campus. Small-scale night time pamphleteering runs on my skate or my bike with a stack and a staple gun in a backpack. I had email then, but I published simply as owenman and edited under the alias Joe Cripes and didn't offer any contact. You picked up the thing around campus and hopefully passed it along or kept it on your coffee table for a few weeks, I hoped.

I graduated and moved to L.A. and continued to write the thing, but the move ended my zine-publishing run. I went into journalism as an editor and writer for other properties, and it's mostly gone well as a career ever since.

Thirty years later, it's time to self-publish again, I'm compelled to comment and distribute resources, and confront the moment. We are living through an astounding time.

In Pursuit of Profligate Democracy, and Democratic Profligacy

Hard News, Kind Life, All Free.

Tam armis quam ingenio

The National Riot

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