I am about as unfamiliar with the New Brunswick DIY scene as anyone who is not from the States—and that is okay. I had the opportunity to discover the sheer dedication of artists and activists who are involved in this community by interviewing the team behind You and I, Our Stories Zine. It’s safe to say I’m glad I got to discover this scene, which is now on my bucket list for when I travel to the US.
Here’s the conversation I had with founder and editor Brea Yumiguano and collaborators Caelan Kopacz and Angie Pino over a very dysfunctional Zoom call. The virtual connection was poor, but the intellectual conversation was stronger than the forces trying to stop us, including a little something called “different time zones.”
Building a Zine Around Community
Q: What motivated you to start You and I, Our Stories and how did you assemble as a team of editors? And, sidenote, when did you realise your initials spell out the ABC?
Angie: Being part of this project is my way of giving back to a community that accepted me as I am, documenting all the good and bad within this scene.
Brea: You and I, Our Stories is really focused on the people of New Brunswick and the people in the underground scene. I felt that there were a lot of people that weren’t aware of the scene and its history and New Brunswick in general. I wanted to bridge that connection from the community to the students and students to the community because there’s an important need to document this scene and people. A magazine is a wonderful way to go about it because of how flexible and artistic you can be with it.
Caelan: I wasn’t in the scene for very long, but there’s always been a very big communal draw of it for me. It’s interesting, especially post-COVID, the scene has been taking a really big rise again and getting back into the swing of things. You had all these zines, coverage of the music scene, especially in New Brunswick. And I feel, as Brea said, there’s not much coverage of that anymore. We wanted to kind of bring that back, both in a contemporary sense, but also to highlight what has gone on in New Brunswick historically. It’s between Philadelphia and New York, which have huge scenes in and of themselves. But New Brunswick has its own character. It’s important that we showcase who’s in the community, what’s going on around it, and how that influences the scene.
Q: Can you define what the New Brunswick DIY scene is for the uninitiated, and how your zine contributes to this space?
Brea: I’ve done a lot of historical investigation and the scene is very unique here in New Brunswick because of its style and its form. Basements are only really seen in the northeast because of the way that weather patterns and geography affect home construction. Some people have basements out in the west, but that’s mostly for tornado safety. And so those are more intense and smaller. They’re not really meant for multiple people. So the fact that basements exist in the first place gives New Jersey a very particularly unique form of congregation. Then we turn those spaces into music and community learning spaces that you don’t really see anywhere other than the northeast. Normally, what you would see are outdoor venues playing hardcore or alternative music, but in this case all this music is being literally pushed underground or into garages and so that’s where they fit.
Q: Can you speak to the structure of the zine? What are the key elements across editions, and what tends to fluctuate between them?
Caelan: One of the things that we want to do, especially across future editions, is just [make] everything more standardized in terms of format, especially since it is the three of us involved. What fonts are we using? What size is everything gonna be? How is that gonna look? It’s also interesting stylistically because there is a handmade aspect to magazines of the music scene. Ours aren’t completely handmade, but in the design of the pages themselves, it kind of steps out because we all have a specific style. It evokes a DIY feel, all these different people coming together to contribute to that scene.
Brea: I definitely second that motion, just because of how all the pages are strikingly different from each other. It mirrors how the actual scene looks. You go to the scene and a lot of people look very alternative. It’s not the person that you would see in an office working a 9-to-5. They might be, but they look and act and behave very differently across different venues and time periods. The zine style is also the reflection of us as our own personal authors, where the pages are very colourful. There’s like a lot of texture and design put into it specifically to represent ourselves.
Q: I feel like both of you have read my questions because you keep going into the next question. In terms of design and style, how did you arrive at this collage-heavy style with show photography, geometric shapes and overlapping elements? In other words, I am asking: who is the InDesign/Canva/other platform whiz? And do you buy into the specificity of which design platform is superior?
Brea: I really don’t care what design platform you use—as long as it works for you and you’re able to use it, I don’t mind. Personally, I use Photoshop a lot because the tools are more useful for my style and in terms of ease for formatting and margins. I avoid InDesign because it’s complicated and I can only do so much about it. For our flyers for our show or posts on social media we use Canva if we want to do something simple. Anything else, you have to get training for it and that’s a very powerful tool. I think if I learned it more, I would use other platforms more. I don’t want to investigate InDesign any further. Let other people investigate. I’m gonna stick to my Photoshop.
Caelan: For me, I really wanted to use a lot of show photography. In a lot of the designs and collaging them together to represent the DIY aspect and because I think the scene is really built around different people and history. You do have the artists and the people playing on stage, but you also have the people who are going and attending the event. You don’t have people who are doing sound, you have people who are photographing the show. And so it was really important for me to capture, at least visually, all the different ways people are involved in the scene. There are also so many products like pins, stickers, pieces of ephemera, and collaging all those items together was another way to evoke that DIY aspect.
Q: The zine is not limited to spotlighting events and artists but also includes assistance and assurance resources. Who is your central target audience, and how do you balance writing about culture with addressing the everyday political and social realities young people face?
Brea: Initially when I started it, I wanted to focus on the music scene, but after seeing how much attention it got and conversations that I was having with people, I wanted this to focus on the New Brunswick community. That’s just for this initial issue, I believe. I made an effort to make this represent as many people from the city itself, and from the surrounding areas as much as possible. Community, there’s different forms of it that I think we aren’t noticing or recognising as much. That’s why I changed my direction with the zine, from just simply music to music, political, historical, and local.
Caelan: When I went to one of my first shows in the New Brunswick area, I remember after one of the artists that I’d seen play, they had this little table of things and it wasn’t merch, but all these different products. They had condoms, they had Narcan, they had pads, they had tampons, they had different readings for how to unionise your workplace. It was in a place that was hosted by a family business. I felt that the magazine could reflect that whole idea of the music scene, and attachment to the people of New Brunswick. An important part of documenting the scene is how the scene also gives back and how we can also give back.
Angie: The scene is composed of a very diverse group of people, so when you go to a basement show, you see many different ethnicities, races, ages and styles. That means countless different experiences and struggles. Our primary audience is the dwellers, people that attend the shows, but that also means underrepresented groups, including the “weird” kids looking to just have fun. Sometimes young people prefer to steer away from news to protect their mental health, but if you have your peers talking about it, you get to be informed while also finding comfort within a crowd.
Q: I really liked the “People, People and Us” section. You spotlight issues ranging from evictions and ICE to anti-immigration sentiment and university complicity with Israeli institutions. Why was it important to include these calls to action alongside your coverage of music and the New Brunswick community? How can a zine help sustain attention on issues after the initial momentum around them begins to fade?
Angie: As much as the initial moral panic has subsided and some of the inhumane choices the government has made have lost momentum, they are still actively happening. We see posts of people being taken by ICE, congress looking to ban abortions (even medically necessary ones), and the videos or posts might not be viral anymore, but it’s still happening. We just wanted to remind people that the fight isn’t over.
Brea: I’ve kind of been talking about this during this whole weekend [at the time of the interview]. Essentially, it is my belief that what happens in a university community is a problem for students and a problem for the community that lives in that city. City problems are conjointly university problems, university problems are city problems. You cannot separate them. Regardless if you wall off your entire university and they keep the wall of the university from the community, the two are not inseparable. Once you do that, you’re denying services to a city that provides the university water, the electricity, and some public transportation. It also provides them police, mental health services, medical services. When a university blocks off its library, its roads, schools, its dining halls, that is a subtraction to the city’s efforts and to the resources of the community. We included those because I want people to realise that community problems are university problems. And university problems are community problems. We need to bridge this gap of students and residents, that they are very similar, and they need each other. The more that we separate ourselves, the less power we give to each other.
Val: Okay, that was so profound. I’ve never thought about it that way. Everyone needs to follow that line of thought. It’s not just for students or staff or whoever’s interacting with the university on a daily basis.
Brea: Thank you. I’m at an activist organisation right now for the Sunrise Movement here in Maryland, and we were doing some training. I specifically have been bringing up university students a lot. It’s not the first time I’ve said it and it won’t be the last, I promise.
Q: Could you please speak to your show on September 4 and how you hope to combine the zine’s online presence and physical editions with in-person community events?
Brea: I want to congratulate Caelan because they’ve been doing a ton of crazy good work on ideas to post on Instagram. We have an upcoming post about the timeline of historical shows. It was all Caelan, and it includes historical shows, local bands, local venues and more. A lot of people reached out to us about that. As far as the in-person, I am excited to bring people in. I’m specifically working with political organisations to come in to talk to us. To bridge that gap, we have to forcefully put people in awkward communication and awkward situations because when someone’s trying to get you to join an organisation, it’s a little weird. Sometimes you’re not used to that sort of thing or talking to someone who does left field type of things. That’s why I want them to get people used to their appearance, to them showing up to shows. We have a Safety Squad, Food not Bombs, Bring Morty Home, and Climate Revolution Action Network. All organisations, I believe heavily in their message. Safety Squad wants a safer community and scene; Bring Morty Home has been working tirelessly for months to find Mortimer Wortman, who’s been missing for nearly 300 days now. Climate Revolution Action Network is a huge organisation based in New Jersey. They help pass bills and recommend policy, amongst other things. And Food not Bombs is one of my favourite ones. They help provide assistance and food to unhoused people in New Brunswick and surrounding areas. They do a really good job on identifying their needs, what kind of assistance they need, and what resources they’re lacking.
Caelan: There’s so much to documenting things digitally, especially right now there’s an uptick in music journalism. You see this advertised through Instagram. I’ve seen so much about the both historical and contemporary in terms of New York’s music scenes and Philadelphia’s music scenes, and why not the contemporary New Brunswick music scene? We’re also going to have the history available to people. People have all these historical posts about bands but what about the people that are here right now? What about the venues that are here right now? Usually people find shows through Instagram. That’s how people in one way are connected through this digital space. So to be able to display a venue or honour a band who’s been around this past year helps staying connected with people.
Q: How do you view your zine through a community lens with the awareness that there are many initiatives, events, and publications existing as avenues for expression and community? What do you say to people who are starting to create zines or physical media and are looking to involve others?
Brea: Just do it. Make mistakes, fuck up, waste a lot of money. There’s no right or wrong way to make things. Fuck margins, love margins. It doesn’t matter.
Caelan: Also, it’s DIY! You’re doing and learning things for the first time. As long as you learn through it and are bringing your community together to do good. Even if the font is off or you think something looks imperfect, you’re still making something happen and it’s better to do something than not do anything.
Angie: Just do it! Many people are looking for creative outlets to express themselves, and many people are looking for relatability in other people.
Q: What do you see for the future of the zine, and why should readers follow your next steps from here?
Brea: It’s a little hard to see what the future looks like. I think we want to focus more on Central Jersey. My home is in New Brunswick. I love the city but I’ve documented a lot and I can’t be the only one to do that. I need to have other people get in there. I would love for more people to get into the scene, regardless if it’s in New Brunswick, not New Brunswick, in New Jersey, not in New Jersey. I want people in the scene. I want people documented. I want people doing unique weird things that I will never think of. If they get there first, that makes me want to do something just as weird and just as interesting. If I get there first, I hope I inspire someone to do something. As far as the actual future of our zine, we’re probably going to write about more events in Central Jersey and work on the history of New Brunswick. One of the bigger things that I’m more focused on right now is our community voting form, where we are voting for their favourite venue and band in Central Jersey. That is still being worked on. We might include South Jersey and the Shore. It just depends on how much energy there is within those two regions of New Jersey, just because of the wide range of bands potentially in those areas. We don’t want to overstretch our limits here, but we also want to include as many people as possible.
Caelan: I’m excited for us to also be able to bring opportunities for people to participate in documenting the scene. Obviously adding to the team is going to really help us a lot, but I’m just excited to see other people share in creating and documenting the scene itself. It’s going to be really awesome to see who else we’ll find who can be part of this.
At this point, all of us got sidetracked comparing how long it took to make our respective zines, with the general consensus landing at about six months-ish. We also chatted about the length of zines and how You and I, Our Stories Zine is on the longer side, as it was intended to have an active and continual conversation.
Brea made a note about accessibility and sustainability of reading zines, saying that, “We’re trying to implement shorter zines by cutting up certain parts of our misprints to format into smaller zines. Some people just want to buy smaller zines. We want to give those people opportunities to do so. But I do like the longer zine because of how much there is in there. People can really sit with it. The music section is so huge. Overall, it was a happy accident.”
Rapid Fire Questions
Best basement show you have been to:
Brea: Hot Dog Night 2 @ Sunday School
Caelan: Mudhouse
Angie: Halloween Mudhouse 2022
Up-and-coming artist/band from New Brunswick that people need to know about:
Brea: Lawns
Caelan: Trichor, Lying Season, Kouskous Heaven
Angie: Kouskous Heaven and Trichor
What kind of zines do you love to collect?:
Brea: political /informational/know your rights zines
Caelan: zines stumbled upon going to bookstores or basement shows, lesbian-based zines
Best part of zinemaking:
Brea: getting it all together (final checks)
Caelan: the amount of growth when you are learning how to design a zine
Angie: writing about what you’re passionate about and making crafts for the goodie bags (I made 60 bookmarks from scratch in one sitting)
Worst part of zinemaking:
Brea: finding out you fucked up
Caelan: getting delayed
Angie: editing and reviewing, looking for typos. So tedious.
What to look out for in this edition:
Brea: It is a love story to New Brunswick. In the six years that I spent in New Brunswick, I have been in all of these spaces. This is a story through my eyes because I am one person. I have very limited experiences. I want people to look at this as a history of what I saw and how I see these places, these people and these interactions. I want them to start noticing and listening more, to keep moshing and put themselves out there. I want them to talk to people that they might not regularly talk to. You need to be uncomfortable. I need you to talk to people you will never talk to just so you understand that that’s a person, a son, a daughter, a queer person, a dad, a mother, a sister, a brother, a sibling. That’s the way I see this zine: a story of people.
Caelan: I think really taking the time to look at the pages and to think about how these spaces are lived in. We have so many layers to this community.
Angie: For people to remember that art is political is our first priority. This is not just another fun zine that’s gonna collect dust on a shelf. This is a reminder that going to shows is more than drunkenly bouncing to a heavy tune, it’s rioting against the people with power that are threatening our democracy. It’s raising funds for campaigns, it’s finding like-minded people that understand where you come from and where you wanna go. Any punk or hardcore scene was created to protest the misuse of our resources and to inform the rest of the world that we, as the future, won’t be silenced.
Be sure to pick up You and I, Our Stories #Issue 1 if it’s in a basement near you! Also make sure to check them out on Instagram. I know I will be watching the New Brunswick scene being documented on Instagram from my non-basement in Sydney.