An interview with Kara Herold
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INTERVIEWS
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| Cyber trendsetter, former editor of Mondo 2000, an interview with R. U. Sirius. |
| Tiffany Shlain, founder of the Webby Awards |
| Three years on, and QOÖL happy hour at 111 Minna on Wednesdays keeps drawing a crowd. Thanks to Jondi and Spesh. |
| Jenny has a one-on-one with the hot Silicon Valley bachelor, Craig Newmark |
| Jamie Zawinski was one of the first faces around Netscape. Way back then. Then he was one of the initiators of the Mozilla project. And now he's in the process of buying the DNA Lounge. |
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The Red Worm has no time for buzz words. Read an interview with the fellow behind the Buzz Saw. |
| An interview with David Buckmaster, mayor of Silicon Valley's San Carlos |
After the launch party on Saturday at El Rio, what's up for Grrlyshow? Will it be touring around the country? Have you targeted specific audiences?
Grrlyshow will be touring around the country with other cool girl-produced films this fall, after I recover financially from the film. I hope to take the film to small towns across the country where girls don't have access to alternative culture. My grandfather was a traveling Baptist evangelist so I guess proselytizing is in my blood. We just have different topics and goals.
What do you want guys to take away from the documentary? And girls?
I want both girls and guys to see that making one's own media is important, both politically and spiritually. Content in the mainstream media is dictated by corporate advertisers whose main purpose is to target our insecurities so that we'll buy their product. DIY (Do It Yourself) media is about finding one's own strengths and personal tastes and then standing behind that. That's subversive in a world where we see 60,000 ads a day that try to convince us that we're lacking in someway.
I remember a few years ago I'd bought A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World and I read it from cover to cover in one sitting. I'd never realised that there was a real world of grrl zines. How long have they been around?
A Girl's Guide To Taking Over The World inspired me to make this film. I can't really say exactly when girl-zines emerged. Ms. was like a girl-zine when it first started but zines weren't named yet so it has always been called a magazine. I think Riot grrl-zines influenced girl-zines in general. Riot grrls were punk rock grrls who "organized" through zines, music, and meetings to "fight" sexism in the punk scene and society at large. Part of the strategy was to make their own music and write their own zines because the boy punk scene (and the world) wasn’t listening. A whole network emerged as a result with thousands of zines and bands appearing daily. Soon thereafer many more girl-zines appeared that weren’t necessarily punk but had the same DIY look and the "personal is political" attitude that the Riot Grrl zines championed.
Barbara from Plotz traded her zine at shows but was more interested in doing a zine about "what it is like being Jewish" or asking bands what they wear to the "Bar-Mitzvah."Sabrina Margarita Sandata from Bamboo Girl also has a punk background but her zine covers topics like Asian American mental illness and her trip to the Philippines. Zines like Bust and Bitch are feminist girl-zines which may have been influenced by the Riot Grrls feminist do-it-yourself zinemaking activity but their roots are also in academic feminism.
What's your favorite movie theatre in San Francisco?
I don't go to the movies much because I’m partially deaf and I can't distinguish the words from the background music. I watch films with subtitles. I do like the programming at El Rio Outdoor Cinema, ATA, The Roxie, The Castro, and Yerba Buena Center For The Arts.
Websites that you check back with faithfully?
I’m not a faithful web reader. In fact, the only thing I read on the web is Bust. That may change, though. The cool thing about the web is that it’s cheaper to produce so there is less of a consideration for pleasing the financial backers.
Any magazines that make you cringe?
All mainstream magazines make me cringe. So often the advertisers dictate the content. Sassy magazine was a mainstream magazine for girls that included content beyond fashion and beauty "My Brother's Gay, Big Whoop" or "What The Heck Are We Doing In The Persian Gulf" but there was a moral majority boycott and all the advertisers pulled out. Sassy was then sold to the Peterson company that owns Teen and Guns and Ammo.. It turned out to be just like Teen and then it eventually evaporated. (Did we really need more of the same?)
Zines for guys, do they exist?
Guys make zines. They're all over the place. But they're not called guy-zines for the same reason History isn't called guy-studies
Is there someone I should be interviewing? Let me know at susan@posthoc.com And tell me why.
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