i miss katrina. she lives far far away in minneapolis. when we were near we hung around each other lots. we drew pictures, listened to music, played dice in her backyard and drank a disproportionate amount of pbr tall boys. she is a talent and I have many of her quickly sketched drawings on backs of bar napkins and scratch paper strewn about my house. they are little pieces of sunshine that i look upon fondly. it was a treat to work with her on this project.

marc parker likes making zines. he is the zine librarian at the Independent Publishing Resource Center. he also maintains the web page of zinethug.com. past titles that he has created include: Azmacourt, Big Fucking Deal, Cubist Ants Shall Inherit the Earth, Lazybones (a.k.a. Crazybones a.k.a. Kimosabe), Rainy Day Fuck Fest, Fuck Me, Tomatoes for Jalapeno, Fiction from the Venerable Ben Joseph, Lady Fingers, No Call No Show, You Just Don't Know!, the p:ear zine anthology, Tell It Like It 'TIZ, and a few others. at last count, fifty-seven was the number of zines he's made, not including ones created in the course of "Zines 101" workshops. seems like a lot, but considering he started when he was 16, not really. currently he is working on a graphic novel.

kyle is a graf artist, a painter, a doodler and a dj. he always spins music that i want to dance to and i am super excited about the piece that he has added to the project. he goes by dj block monsta and if you're a portlander he will be spinning this friday, the 27th, at club 720 on hawthorne.

he recently decided that he could die happy after getting up on stage and dancing with the immaculate sharon jones.

kris searle is one of a kind. an aficionado of the blues, a talented player of many instruments and a great story teller. he is also my part time blues banjo teacher. he is the only artist who composed a musical track for the project and i am so excited that he did.

he is starting up a great new compilation project highlighting pre world war II blues musicians. each compilation will contain twenty tracks from a specific genre. he just finished 20 blushmen and it is a lovely collection of songs.

marly is an amazing illustrator. she did lovely portraits of the rats for my birthday. here are a few works she did for the cafe. i am happy happy happy that she decided to do something for echo.

i have known ali for a long time, she was my best friend in high school. we went to college and became busy with our lives. she, and an amazing gentleman named evan, wound up settling down in a cute little bungalow in north portland with a hankering to open up a cafe. i had made a home in minneapolis with a good job and a loving community of queers surrounding me at all times.

one day i decided to move back to portland and began with feelings of obligation to arrange my homecoming.

by the time i got to portland ali and evan had opened that cafe. it sits just a few blocks down from their house. she gave me a job and we settled into the familiar feeling of having the other around.

she's an amazing chef. eat her food here: little red bike cafe

she's also a damn good writer:bike blog.

photo by a.m.

about banjo:
a teller of tall tales, a connoisseur of comics, a respectable rock & roll revelationist, and hopes that he's alive long enough to see the first real live super hero, or at least some wanker in brightly colored outfit frolicking around pretending to be one...

you can find him here: www.banjosays.blogspot.com

or at his weekly radio show here: www.praradio.org

or through his new zine, 'darnell the easter opossum'

Justin Hocking is the Executive Director of the Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland, Oregon (www.iprc.org). He has an MFA in fiction from Colorado State University, and taught writing and literature for several years at the college level. His short stories and essays have appeared in Open City, Punk Planet, Thrasher, Foulweather and The Nieve Roja Review. He also edited the best-selling 2004 anthology Life and Limb: Skateboarders Write from the Deep End, and has written and published twelve children's books.

He also really loves moby dick.