The entire Lookout magazine collection (and more) is available online

[HAPPY ZOMBIE UNICORN]

I just found out an extremely cool initiative called “East Bay Punk Digital Archive (EBP-DA)” , and I wanted to share it with you. 

From the project’s website: “The East Bay Punk Digital Archive (EBP-DA) is a project spearheaded by Stefano Morello and funded by the Digital Initiatives,  Lost & Found, and the New Media Lab at The Graduate Center, CUNY. It aims to preserve and make available – to researchers, subcultural participants from around the world, and a general public unfamiliar with the topic – the subjugated knowledge produced by participants in the punk-rock commons that loomed in and around the San Francisco Bay Area between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s.”

At the moment the website has available (for free) an amazing collection of Lookout magazine, Tales from the rat house and Berkeley sucks, with releases spanning from 1985 to 1999. 

You can find them here: https://eastbaypunkda.com/s/east-bay-punk-digital-archive/item-set

I think this is a great project, probably both for those who personally lived in or around this subculture, and for those like me that were born a few years after the first Lookout magazine was published, and few thousand miles away from where it was printed. 

I just started to dig into this, and already found some really cool stuff, have fun! 

Larry Livermore and Stefano Morello IG posts (the project artwork kicks asses as well): 

 

[dallasthemenace]

i saw larry post about it, ive been meaning to check it out. it seems to be an ongoing project. i hope some cometbus material finds its way into this collection...

[HAPPY ZOMBIE UNICORN]

15 minutes ago, dallasthemenace said:

i saw larry post about it, ive been meaning to check it out. it seems to be an ongoing project. i hope some cometbus material finds its way into this collection...

That would be absolutely the best! 

[pacejunkie punk]

Can you view the issues from your phone? I can’t figure out how to do that. Maybe it only works from a computer?

[HAPPY ZOMBIE UNICORN]

17 minutes ago, pacejunkie punk said:

Can you view the issues from your phone? I can’t figure out how to do that. Maybe it only works from a computer?

Yes, the website says that currently it is only available with “Google Chrome 49+, Mozilla Firefox 46+, Internet Explorer 11, Microsoft Edge 13+“

[HAPPY ZOMBIE UNICORN]

One of many “pearls” you can find in here, from Lookout #33 summer ‘89:

[pacejunkie punk]

I’m glad Larry got used to the name, he had no idea how often he was going to hear it over the next thirty years 😄

[pacejunkie punk]

I hope they add Absolutely Zippo on here (as well as Cometbus)

[pacejunkie punk]

Omg just read issue number one of Lookout and I totally get now why he pissed off his neighbors 😲 You don’t move in and expose the whole town’s illegal industry as an outsider even if everyone knows about it. He’s also praising the area at the same time he’s putting it down, it’s a little patronizing. Poor Larry 😄

[Todd]

I used to own a couple of Lookout magazines. They fetch around $30 a piece nowadays, so I sold them off knowing that this archive was in the works. I've read through the first 25 already, hope to finish the rest this weekend. 

[Hermione]

This is extremely cool!

[HAPPY ZOMBIE UNICORN]

23 hours ago, Todd said:

I used to own a couple of Lookout magazines. They fetch around $30 a piece nowadays, so I sold them off knowing that this archive was in the works. I've read through the first 25 already, hope to finish the rest this weekend. 

Same here, I have almost finished the Lookout magazines and read a couple of the Berkeley sucks. Getting your hands on these zines is very difficult and/or expensive in Europe, it’s amazing to be able to read this, and it’s actually giving me a better understanding of the social and political context where the scene emerged. 

The long as hell reports about the weed harvesting situation in the Mendocino mountains are simply hilarious, I love young Larry so much 😂

 

[pacejunkie punk]

Let’s post fun Green Day references here that we find in the issues as we read them. Here’s a great one from Lookout #30 (1988):

”A similar fate befell the Lookouts, by the way, as drummer Tre Cool found himself confined to quarters for the more mundane crime of bad grades (yes, it’s really true, you vicious rumor mongers; in addition to failing algebra, he’s also in danger of flunking band)”

😂