Zine Scene: Quimby’s of Chicago

Ask anyone in Chicago where the best place is to get independent books and zines, and they will surely have just one answer: Quimby’s. Located in Wicker Park, this bookstore carries almost everything independent, artistic, off-kilter, silly, or profound that you can imagine, and it boasts an intelligent and capable staff to help you navigate it all.

This indie mecca carries a vast array of independent and mainstream books on every topic, as well as magazines and comic books, but its zine section is what really makes Quimby’s the go-to place for indie fans.

Filling up nearly a third of the well-ordered and spacious store, the ample zine section boasts everything from professional-quality arts and literature mags to tiny one-dollar stapled mini-comics. Such variety is overwhelming at first, but after a bit of browsing, it becomes clear that Quimby’s is the place to shop for zines.

Around each corner is a new and intriguing little book, or pamphlet, like the brilliant The CIA Makes Science Fiction Unexciting, an educational booklet on US covert operations, or The East Village Inky, which details one writer’s daily life in New York. Personally speaking, I don’t think I’ve ever left without a full-to-bursting shopping bag.

For the truly confused shopper, Quimby’s also maintains a top-ten list of new arrivals and the Quimblog, which breaks down all new zines, upcoming events, and generally anything else writer-ly that’s going on in and around Chicago.

Quimby’s bookstore, however, is the sort of place where, even if you don’t find what you were looking for, you’re more than likely to forget whatever it is that you originally sought and find something else entirely.

Opened in 1991 by Steven Svymbersky, who later sold the store to the owner of Chicago Comics, Quimby’s has grown into a Chicago institution. Its employees are, as its mission statement will tell you, “specialists in the importation, distribution, and sale of unusual publications, aberrant periodicals, saucy comic booklets, and assorted fancies as well as a comprehensive miscellany of the latest independent ‘zines’ that all the kids have been talking about.”

The store is a top draw for independent writers and artists as well. Past visitors include Chicago-based writer Joe Meno, Jessica Max Stein, and Adrian Tomine. This June, Quimby’s will host an event with Daniel Clowes, artist and author of Ghost World and Eightball. These events are a vital part of the store’s support for independent writers, and they are great for writers meeting other writers and building that essential independent-media community.

Quimby’s proves that for the zine community to live and thrive, it needs more than writers. It needs a wonderful, supportive, dynamic, creative entity to sell those zines. Quimby’s of Chicago is all that and more.

– Mallory Gevaert

Zine Scene is a biweekly column about writers’ and artists’ adventures in the world of independent publishing.

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