For those who don’t know, Kinko’s wasn’t only a ubiquitous copy center from 1970 - 2008, it was also the launchpad for so many young GenXers creative hopes and dreams. When you walked into a Kinko’s (now, FedEx Office), there was no doubt in your mind that this was a place to get work done. With an aesthetic reminiscent of a dystopian shopping center, this no-frills operation, with their computers lined in stately rows, their multifunction copiers—which looked like science fiction to a generation reared on mimeographs—and their helpful, yet vacant staff, it is no wonder that the creativity that was assembled within those walls got out into the world.
But maybe I’m a little ahead of where we need to be. Let’s deviate a bit. I promise it will all tie together.
I continue to find it fascinating that Generation X has been labeled as slackers, the disaffected; the invisible generation sandwiched between the more consequential Boomers and Millennials. I’m of the mind that Black and POC GenXers had a vastly different generational experience than white GenXers. There has been very little media that has captured the spirit, the sheer vibrancy of Black and POC GenXers. Of late, there has been an article hereand there, with the New York Times being particularly uneven in their coverage, but overall—shouts out to Chuck Klosterman—the slacker label has had a nigh indelible run. It is really time for a more thorough accounting of XersOC (Xers of Color). Yeah, anytime you attempt to label something that is diverse, it is almost impossible to craft something that both accurately encompasses the thing under review, and not be corny. I’ve failed on both these counts, but here’s the reasoning.
As stated, Black and POC GenXers (focusing just on the US as this is the origin of the discourse) have had very different generational experiences. Unless I’m mistaken and Black and POC GenXers identify with the characterization—I’m open to corrective feedback—we were in an entirely different lane. I’ll even go further. The “slacker” narrative hit first and had more money and social propulsion behind it that it became the dominant narrative. While I wasn’t fully immersed in white people and white culture, I’ve been the chip on the cookie plenty of times (undergrad, anyone?) and I didn’t know any slackers. And this is taking into account living in Minneapolis, Brooklyn, and London during my formative years. Folks seem to forget that hip-hop is a cultural artificial of GenX. While many of the originators are Boomers, it was GenX that turned hip-hop into the global cultural and financial powerhouse it is today. As my younger relatives would say: #ItBeFactsTho
There wasn’t a GenXer I knew that was lazy. Ever one of them hustled. They were abundantly creative, motivated, and open to cross-pollinating with others. I’d argue that a characteristic of my growing up, my GenX experience, was the refusal of cultural silos. Of course, there was some pretty intense racial segregation, but if you were a non-racist creative, you rocked with whomever enhanced the creative vibe. Once again, I can only speak to and for my experience, but this was how we got down.
Hip-hoppers, who inherited the culture from people who dressed like gender-fluid punk pirates who embraced the misuse of technology, didn’t really care too much for labels. This came later, with the rise of hip-hop journalism and the need to categorize the culture, and its exponents, to make it legible for those not part of the hip hop nation. We were the original remix culture. We didn’t just rehash, we reshaped. Reused. Reinterpreted. An entire folk culture sprang up from the ashes of Black and Brown poverty and reshaped the entire world. That’s super heavy when you think about it. While I’m over her harping on the virtues of hip-hop, we were also fed by the punk and hardcore scenes. Bad Brains. Black Flag. Minor Threat. JFA. These bands were just as important to some hip-hoppers as Run DMC. Hell, rebel skateboard culture is a whole other essay. An old graduate school professor of mine called GenX, “the smorgasbord generation. You bastards took and used it all, but it was never about appropriation. It was always about trying to find a clearer vision and paths for yourselves.” This is a verbatim quote. It struck me because of the transcultural nature of our friendships.
My crew alone had Puerto Ricans (one half of me), Jamaicans (the other half), African Americans, Vietnamese, a lone Czech, a couple of Irish folks, and the Hmong homeys. We were family and you couldn’t tell us anything different. And just like a family, we all had our own styles and ways of being, albeit unified by the language and expression of hip hop. No one tried to act like the other—no one slipped in a random “nigga/nigger” to try and be too down. And unlike many families I’m familiar with, our politics were relatively aligned. Naive, yes, but aligned.
We wanted to change the world for the better.
That’s it. Our desire was just that broad and unspecific. But the impulse to change the world was genuine, if a little earnest.
But how? We were all project/poor kids with zero resources. What could we possibly do? What was being done? Hip hop showed us hood kids could rise up and out of their circumstances and affect the world. Maybe we should start rapping? Get a record deal (yeah, those mattered back in the day), go on a world tour, and then people would listen to what we had to say like we listened to Public Enemy and KRS. It’s kind of hard to start a rap group when not a one of us could rap, so we explored other options.
One day, some of us were in a record store, I think it was a Tower Records, and right next to the magazines, there was this row of multi-colored books ranging in size from pamphlet to over-stuffed Reader’s Digest. Crude pictures, crap photographs, and misspellings made up the form of the thing. But the content? Whew! The content was revolutionary.
Interspersed with information about all kinds of punk and hardcore bands (and a few covering science fiction) was information about vegetarianism, and feminism, queer power, and the straight edge (sXe) lifestyle. If Public Enemy and The Autobiography of Malcolm X awakened my Black political awareness in ways other things did not, these ‘zines awakened me to the possibility of not being so narrow-band with what I cared about. The expanded my politics.
What also impacted us was that there were addresses on the ‘zines we could write to. Whether it was to contribute or to get something in return, that we had a direct line to people who were making themselves known, who were getting their ideas out into the world, touching people like me and my crew…it was heady. It felt as if anything were possible.
We pooled our money, bought a handful, and went back to Kuam’s apartment to plot and plan.
With research in firm hand, we were going to start a ‘zine.
What would our ‘zine be about? We cared about a whole lot. It had to be hip hop-influenced, that was a given, but it also had to speak to larger issues. Before word one of content was crafted, we batted around names. I wish I could remember all of them, but here are a few choice ones: “Boombox,” “Records and Pens,” Afrikan Dispatch.” What we went with was, “Mind Feast.”
It was so bad. I know.
It took us about two weeks to create a first issue. Distribution wasn’t even on our minds. That we said we were going to do something and did it, that was almost enough for us. We had issue one of “Mind Feast” but didn’t have a single clue what were we going to do with it. Earning money from it would’ve been nice, even though that wasn’t our goal. But there was no way we were going to make money from one issue. We talked about sneaking into the library or teacher’s lounge at school and using the mimeograph machine to make more. But most of us were an incident or two away from expulsion, so we decided against it. Gordon (R.I.P.) said his half-brother worked at a place called Kinko’s that had machines that could make copies for us “super-fast.”
Other, more well-funded schools, had copiers. Not ours. We cranked and inhaled toxic ink on the regular.
When we decided to go to the half-brother’s Kinko’s it was like prepping for a religious pilgrimage. We checked and rechecked “Mind Feast” to make sure the pagination was correct. We made sure the scotch tape holding our poorly shot photos in place didn’t have any bubbles. We shared what we hoped would happen when “Mind Feast” finally hit the world—we were absolutely sure that our words, our photos, our crude drawings would fundamentally alter our collective reality. We were going to make a difference. Everyone would be touched by our nigh-holy fire. We were going to change the world. Distribution never entered our minds.
As we approached the establishment, the blue, lowercase letters with the red dot over the “i” was more impressive than it should have been. But to a group of project kids, anything not covered in piss and badly scrawled graffiti might as well have been a living Nagel drawing.
We all hesitated before I strained to open the heavy glass door, struggled while holding it for my crew to step across and through. Immediate 7-11 vibes, but without the multiple colors offered by snack and candy packaging. It was less mountaintop, and more like the waiting room of enlightenment. But still full of expectation and potential.
Machines everywhere. Machines we had zero context for. Rows of Apple IIc Pluses, their putty-colored exteriors brimming with possibility. Reggie, the half-brother in question, summoned us with the universal head nod and we obeyed, basically drifting over to him. He and Gordon dapped each other. I gave Gordon “Mind Feast” and Gordon ceremoniously handed it over. Reggie went through it a few times and I saw a change in his face. I couldn’t figure out what he was feeling, until he eventually said, “Yo, this is dope, B. For real.” He then got to work making copies. Not only did Reggie make us copies for free, he introduced us to the concept of the saddle stitch. In about any hour we had a box full of the first issue of “Mind Feast.”
Before we left, Reggie was adamant that this was a one-time thing—making our copies for free—but he said he could give us a ‘bulk discount’ and then told us about a software program called Pagemaker. A program that could make laying out our ‘zine, “easy as a muhfucker.”
Holy shit.
“Mind Feast” only lasted one issue. Gordon’s death irrevocably fractured the crew. In our communities (aside from the Irish homies) we were never taught or allowed to grieve in a healthy way, so we exited each other’s lives, figuring that not being reminded of his death was the best way to confront our traumatic loss. But that one issue? We showed it to Mr. Grier, our English instructor and he told us to not give it away for free, which was our plan, but to sell it. He encouraged us not to guide our gifts away for free, otherwise people will take advantage of you and never pay you what you’re worth. A lesson I continue to hold dear. That one issue sold for $2 a pop and made us superstar intellectuals in our school. Our peers couldn’t believe that these badass, always in trouble, frequent principal office visitors could do something like that. We had 60 copies and sold them all in a couple of days. We made $120 bucks and split it evenly. We never intended to make money, but it felt good to make money legally and not via the pettiest of thefts. This brief success set me on my current path of trying to live the life of a creative. I’ve been successful, more or less. Had some great highs, and some painful rejections. I’ve even had a very well-known global arts figure steal and profit from my work. Twice. Same guy. But whatever gets to the public’s consciousness first becomes fact. So, trying to reclaim my ideas looks like theft to those who don’t know. But all in all, I’ve been able to curate a creative existence.
But when I get down about my lack of success, or when my past traumas decide to take residence in my present, I give myself permission to access those feelings that Kinko’s instilled in me. That my words, pictures, and photos could be replicated and put in a form to be disseminated to others, in hopes of finding and linking with the like-minded. In hopes of changing the world.
When FedEx office bought out and took over Kinko’s, I had a very visceral anger. Their blue and orange created by corporate committee logo was more foreboding than the welcoming and unassuming OG Kinko’s. Fed Ex was short for Federal Express. No life. No story. Kinko’s, as the story goes, was named after the founder’s curly hair. Heart. Warmth. Human. Can’t go wrong with that.
If there was an ultimate legacy bestowed by our times engaging with kinko’s is that things are possible. That you can dream, plan, and then execute. Ideas didn’t have to live in your head. They could be produced and replicated, stapled and disseminated.
And it did not hurt to have the hook up.