Note From The Editor

Websites, Zines, Shows, Merch, and the Work Behind Making America Punk Again

Here's something you probably don't think about when you visit MAPA. This shit takes a lot of work. That's not a complaint. I started Make America Punk Again because I wanted to do this. I wanted to find punk again. I wanted to find bands, find shows, meet people, build a local scene, put out a zine and eventually put on affordable punk and hardcore shows. I knew that would take some work. I may have underestimated exactly how much, because when you look at MAPA, you see a website. Behind that website is a ridiculous amount of other shit happening, and most of it happens before you ever see it.

THE WEBSITE IS THE EASY PART, SORT OF

Somebody has to build the website. Right now, that's me. Pages have to be designed. Articles have to be written, edited, formatted and posted. Photos need to be found or taken. Links need to work. Information needs to be updated. Then there's the stuff you don't see. Fixing something that suddenly doesn't work. Moving something two pixels because apparently I've decided those two pixels are going to ruin my fucking day. Realizing something that looked great on my computer looks like complete shit on a phone. Changing it, changing it back, then changing it again. The website is never really finished. That's the nature of what we're trying to build. MAPA isn't supposed to be a website we make once and leave sitting there. It's supposed to be alive. New bands. New shows. New articles. New scenes. New people. That means somebody has to keep feeding the damn thing.

THEN THERE ARE THE ARTICLES

The articles you're reading don't magically appear either. Some are based on my own experiences. I've been around punk for a long time, so I've accumulated a lot of stories, opinions, mistakes and questionable decisions to write about, but even those take time. I write them, rewrite them, remember something I forgot, move things around, cut things,  add things, and try to figure out whether something actually happened in 1983 or if my 40-year-old memory of it is full of shit.

Then there are articles about things happening now. Those require research. Who are the bands? Are they still together? Where are they playing? Who is putting on the show?Does that venue still exist? Is the information current? What is happening in that scene? That's work. And if MAPA is going to cover punk outside my little corner of New England, there's an even bigger problem. I don't live there. I can't tell you what's really happening in a basement in Ohio, a VFW hall in Pennsylvania or a little club in Arizona. The people who live there can. We'll get back to that.

FINDING THE SHOWS

One of the things I want MAPA to become is a place where you can find punk and hardcore shows you might otherwise miss. That sounds easy. It's not. There isn't one magical national punk calendar where every DIY show automatically appears. You have to look. There are venue calendars, band pages, promoter pages, social media, and so on. One show leads to another band. That band leads to another promoter. That promoter leads to another venue. Then you discover something happening twenty miles away that you never knew existed. That's actually one of the reasons MAPA exists. The information is out there. It's scattered all over the fucking place. Finding it takes time. Keeping it current takes even more.

THEN THERE'S THE PRINT ZINE

Yes, we're making an actual paper zine, because apparently running a website wasn't enough work. The MAPA print zine has to be written, edited, designed, laid out, photos and artwork have to be prepared, and then it has to be printed. Printing costs money, every copy costs something, and because I want the zine to be something we can actually hand to people at shows, record stores and other places without charging some ridiculous price, we're trying to keep it simple and affordable. The zine isn't supposed to make us rich, it's supposed to get MAPA into somebody's hands. That's the point.

AND THEN I DECIDED TO MAKE MERCH

Because apparently I enjoy creating additional work for myself. There are MAPA shirts and other merchandise available through the website. A lot of the designs are mine. I come up with the ideas, work on the graphics and turn them into something I think people might actually want to wear, but I don't want MAPA merch to eventually be nothing but my designs. Some artwork and design ideas can come from other people in the punk community. Some can come through collaborations with punk artists, independent businesses and other people we work with. That's important to me. MAPA should look like the community around it. If an artist contributes something, they should be credited according to whatever arrangement we've made with them. If we're working with a punk business, I want people to know who they are. Again: Community, not corporation.

SO YEAH, WE SELL STUFF

Let's talk about money. MAPA costs money. There's no clever way around that. The website costs money. The domain costs money. Printing zines costs money. Printing flyers costs money. Making promotional material costs money. Putting on shows will cost money. Rooms can cost money. Insurance costs money. Equipment costs money. There are always little expenses you don't think about until you're staring at another bill, and time has value too.

A lot of hours go into MAPA. Right now, most of those hours are simply donated because I want this thing to exist, but the bills still have to get paid. That's one of the reasons we sell MAPA merchandise.

WHERE DOES THE MERCH MONEY GO?

Back into MAPA, that's the idea. When you buy a MAPA shirt or other merchandise, you're not funding my new yacht. For one thing, there is no fucking yacht. You're helping pay for the project, and whatever else MAPA needs to keep moving. As MAPA grows, there will undoubtedly be expenses I haven't even thought about yet. The goal is pretty simple: MAPA helps support MAPA. If the project eventually brings in more money, that gives us the ability to do more. Then put the money back into doing it again.

BUT THIS ISN'T A MERCH COMPANY

This matters. I don't want MAPA to become a T-shirt company with a punk website attached to it. The merchandise exists to support the project. The project doesn't exist to sell merchandise. There's a big difference. You don't have to buy anything to be part of MAPA. If you want a shirt and buying one helps us keep doing this? Fucking awesome. Thank you. But there are plenty of other ways to contribute that might be even more valuable.

WHAT MAPA REALLY NEEDS IS YOU

Here's where all of this gets bigger than money. There is only so much one person, or a couple of people can do. I can write articles, I can research bands, I can hunt down shows, I can design shirts, I can work on the website, I can make the zine, I can look for places to put on shows, I can keep doing all of that, but I cannot tell you what's happening everywhere and I shouldn't. MAPA will only work if other people become part of it. We need people who know their local scenes. Send us bands. Send us shows. Send us venues. Tell us what's happening in your town. Write a scene report. Interview a local band. Send photos from a show. Send old flyers and tell us the story behind them. Write about punk history you actually lived. Show us your DIY project. Send artwork. Design something. Tell us about the punk-owned business we should know about. Tell us what we're missing. And if there's nothing happening where you live? Tell us that too. Maybe we can help connect you with somebody else who's sitting twenty miles away thinking exactly the same thing.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A WRITER

This is worth repeating. You don't need journalism experience. You don't need to call yourself a photographer. You don't need to be a professional artist. You don't need to have been involved in punk for forty years. Maybe you're seventeen and went to your first punk show last month.

Good. I want your story too. Give us something to work with. The people actually living the scene should be the people helping tell its story.

DON'T JUST CONSUME. PARTICIPATE.

This is really what MAPA is about. Punk has never worked particularly well as something you simply consume. You listened to the record. Great. Now go see the band. Now tell somebody about the show. You read the zine, now write something. Find out there isn't a show in your town. Put one on. Start connecting people.

See something MAPA could do better? Tell us. Better yet, help us do it. That's how this becomes something more than a website I've spent an unreasonable number of hours staring at.

THIS ONLY WORKS IF WE MAKE IT TOGETHER

I'm putting the time into MAPA because I believe there's something worth building. A website isn't a scene. A zine isn't a scene. A shirt definitely isn't a scene. Even a show by itself isn't a scene. People are the scene. All these things are tools for bringing those people together. The website helps people find things. The zine puts information in their hands. The merchandise helps pay the bills. The shows put people in the same room.

And the people? That's where everything starts. So yes, Buy a shirt if you like one, you're helping us keep this thing going. But more importantly: get involved. Send us something, tell us what's happening. Help us make MAPA better than anything I could build by myself, because Make America Punk Again isn't supposed to belong to one guy sitting behind a computer.  If this works, it belongs to the people who participate.

We all work together.

We all support each other.

We all support the scene.

The work is real. The time is real. The cost is real, but if we can get enough people involved, maybe what we build can be real too. Get involved. Support MAPA. Support the scene.

Make America Punk Again.