Distribute it Yourself

The Long Island punk rock community is known primarily for its loud music and raucous participants. But resident musicians have been branching out from their beer-soaked roots as of late.

In Northport, located along the island’s North Shore, three people – Chris Arena, Alex Dolan-Mescal and Tom Cleary – sat inside the West Palm Saloon. They gathered around their makeshift library, consisting of a box of books, while waiting for the next band to come on stage. They identified themselves as members of the Shouting Shorelines Collective, handing out Xeroxed magazines bound in a stenciled piece of a Trader Joe’s grocery bag.

Shouting Shorelines is a large zine collective based in Suffolk County’s Huntington Station; Arena, Dolan-Mescal and Cleary are only three of a continually changing group of people who identify with the collective. Along with their publication, covering Long Island punk news and lifestyle, the collective is branching out their project through a makeshift lending library, a portable bookshelf through which any concertgoer can peruse.

Zines are common in many underground music circles. Shouting Shorelines is, as far as they know, the only collective who has started a mobile lending library in the local punk scene. Arena says that he and his peers hope to share access to literature otherwise inaccessible to others in the punk community. Shouting Shorelines say they are happy to be able to make any impact on their hometown DIY community.

“We had access to a number of radical books and decided that people should [also] have access to them,” Arena said. “With rent being so high [on Long Island], a space where people could come and check out books was out of the question.”

Readers borrow the books on an honor system. Show-goers can take a book, sign it out in print, and send a written confirmation regarding their check-outs to the collective – its email address is conveniently printed on each book.

Much of Shouting Shorelines’ catalogue is sourced from a communal squat called the Hobo House. The collective also actively accepts donations and seeks free books from Craigslist.