Bøker av Aaron Cometbus

Tired of handwringing reports about “lost” and “disappearing” New York? These dispatches show a different side of the city—resilient and flourishing despite the naysayers and high rent. Like a modern-day Joseph Mitchell, Cometbus visits projectionists studying Chinese in their booths, prophets whose pulpits are illegal sublets, and personal assistants who rule the roost once their bosses are out of sight. Readers get a tour of the downtown photographers and the uptown UN missions, complete with a survey of their trash. Punk scientists make their living counting cards at casinos while Albanian waiters keep hidden horseshoe diners open all night. Cover art by Eisner Award winner Nate Powell.

In 1963 the paperback revolution was making good literature widely available for the first time, yet only a handful of stores took the trend seriously enough to devote themselves to the cause. Rambam, a closet-sized shop on a corner of Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue was one.The owners had a falling out, as partners often do, but the results were glorious instead of tragic, with ripples that birthed much of the culture we take for granted now. Underground comics, New Age publishing, used record stores, and poster art all came from Rambam's big bang, as each new business with visionary (but ornery) partners formed and then split again.The Loneliness of the Electric Menorah is the social history of one of America's most legendary streets, and a family tree of the movements it fostered: the paperback revolution, the graphic novel, Slow Food, New Age, the Free Speech Movement—and even the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Radical subcultures in an unlikely placeTold in personal interviews, this is the collective story of a punk community in an unlikely town and region, a hub of radical counterculture that drew artists and musicians from throughout the conservative South and earned national renown. The house at 309 6th Avenue has long been a crossroads for punk rock, activism, veganism, and queer culture in Pensacola, a quiet Gulf Coast city at the border of Florida and Alabama. In this book, residents of 309 narrate the colorful and often comical details of communal life in the crowded and dilapidated house over its 30-year existence. Terry Johnson, Ryan "e;Rymodee"e; Modee, Gloria Diaz, Skott Cowgill, and others tell of playing in bands including This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb, operating local businesses such as End of the Line Cafe, forming feminist support groups, and creating zines and art. Each voice adds to the picture of a lively community that worked together to provide for their own needs while making a positive, lasting impact on their surrounding area. Together, these participants show that punk is more than music and teenage rebellion. It is about alternatives to standard narratives of living, acceptance for the marginalized in a rapidly changing world, and building a sense of family from the ground up. Including photos by Cynthia Connolly and Mike Brodie, A Punkhouse in the Deep South illuminates many individual lives and creative endeavors that found a home and thrived in one of the oldest continuously inhabited punkhouses in the United States.