Race Riot! Tour Recap: Pittsburgh! @ The Mr. Roboto Project on Sept 26, 2012 

It was a five hour drive from Philly to Pittsburgh, but Osa made it go by quickly by driving the entire way and playing a bunch of music. We arrive ahead of schedule and- just for fun - drove up an enormous hill in Pittsburgh that made us feel like we were in San Francisco.

POC Zine Project founder Daniela Capistrano at the top of the hill on Winebiddle Street.

We drove down the hill, singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in unison until we arrived at Meghan’s home.

This is Mimi (left) and Anna (right) after we just finished having an amazing vegan meal cooked by Meghan, who is one of our Pittsburgh volunteers & allies.

Meghan (who you’ll see further down in this post) and her partner were refinishing their  floors but that didn’t prevent Meghan from being a gracious host. She brewed us big pots of tea. We sat on the porch and talked about the rest of the tour, getting tattoos, relationships, gender complexities, travel and more. <3

We soon realized it was time to head to the venue, The Mr. Roboto Project, an all ages, Do It Yourself (DIY), non-profit volunteer run cooperative venue and show space in Pittsburgh, PA.

Meghan (pictured below on the left) gave additional support by covering the door to handle donations AND played drums in her band at the end of the night! Awesome! Osa and Anna are being silly in this pic.

Margaret from City Paper dropped by just to give us copies of the paper that had our write-up in it. We really appreciate her support!

We started setting up our merch table. We arranged special places for our zine partners for this tour, SlushPilePress, For the Birds Collective, Maximumrocknroll and the free poc zine giveaways from IOH Collective.

Jude Vachon from Carnegie Library tabled at our event last night as well. Jude has been a terrific ally for both of our Pittsburgh tour dates. Read Jude’s interview with Daniela Capistrano about POC Zine Project.

An attendee at The Mr. Roboto Project took photos and we’ll share those (probably much better) ones at a later date.

For now, here are some shots of the readers, in the order that they presented: Osa, Anna, Cristy and Mimi. We used our projector and it was pretty dark, so enjoy the mysterious quality of these fuzzy images.

Osa read “Black Punk Scene That Never Happened” from Shotgun Seamstress issue #2, which is part of the compilation you can get now from Mend My Dress Press. You can also read issue #2 here for free.

We’ll be uploading our first VIDEO (of many) very soon, which will feature Anna reading in Pittsburgh. For now, here’s a peak of her in action at Mr. Roboto.

She read excerpts from THE SWAN THE VULTURE.

During Cristy’s portion, she read excerpts from her upcoming book SPIT AND PASSION and joked that our merch table was the “Race Riot! mall” for all your shopping needs.

Mimi recommended Punkademics during her reading.

Attendees asked a lot of questions, which we love. It’s why we’re on tour - to encourage discussion and share ideas.

Here’s a photo of one of the attendees, Bekezela Mguni (left), and Osa (right). We are taking at least one photo of an attendee at every event because we want to document who we’re meeting! <3 

We want to end this post by giving a very special THANK YOU to Heather Manning, who helped us with booking (along with Meghan) our event in Pittsburgh. Heather had to work and couldn’t attend last night. We can’t wait to see her on Oct 4!

Meghan also gave us beds and a lovely couch to sleep on last night, which we really appreciated. <3

Next stop: Athens, Ohio, where we’re doing our first of five academic tour events at Ohio University! If you’re in the area today from 4-6pm, come through!

ABOUT POC ZINE PROJECT

POC Zine Project’s mission is to make zines by people of color easy to find, distribute and share - community and activism through materiality. We are touring through 12 cities from Sept 24 - Oct 7.

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All tour dates: http://bit.ly/PeEgaR

TOUR RECAPS ARCHIVE

Oct 7: Death By Audio - Brooklyn

Oct 6: University of Maryland + Brickhaus - College Park and Baltimore

Oct 5: St. Stephen & the Incarnation Episcopal Church - Washington, D.C.

Oct 4: University of Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh

Oct 3: Skylab - Columbus

Oct 2: Rachael’s Cafe - Bloomington

Oct 1: University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign + UCIMC - Champaign

Sept 30: multikulti - Chicago

Sept 29: University of Michigan + 3rd Death Star - Ann Arbor

Sept 28: The Trumbullplex - Detroit

Sept 27: Ohio University + evening potluck with Cindy Crabb - Athens

Sept 26: Mr. Roboto Project - Pittsburgh

Sept 25: The Wooden Shoe - Philly

Sept 24: 538 Johnson - NYC - Brooklyn

Sept 14 - Wellesley College pre-Race Riot! tour panel