By Matthew C. Clark
According to local lore, when founder Steven Svymbersky first opened Quimby's in 1991 he was always intending for it to be the oddball, eccentric books, comics and zine store it is today.
"I really want to carry every cool-bizarre-strange-dope-queer-surreal-weird publication ever written and published and in time Quimby's will. Because I know you're out there and you just want something else, something other, something you never even knew could exist," he said, according to the store's website.
Since then—with the owner changing over to Chicago Comic's Eric Kirsammer, the store moving to its 1854 W. North Ave. location in Wicker Park and that neighborhood transforming into a retail and dining destination for the city—Quimby's has always maintained that mission.
Or perhaps back then they never even knew the definitions and meanings that "queer" would take on. Today the store serves as a hub, both locally and internationally, for LGBTQ authors of essays, stories, drawings and "gay smut."
The store has an open-consignment policy, and will accept any printed matter that's priced under $25, which is partly how it's become known for its extensive collection of zines—a term for self-made, self-published works written on a variety of formats, and usually dealing with content not considered to be mainstream.
Liz Mason, the manager and one of the three employees working at Quimby's, said the store is a safe space for many, including LGBT people.
"We provide such a nice variety of angles on things that's very open minded. And so that allows a space for people to have comfortable dialogue and discussion and that kind of thing," she told Windy City Times.
Robin Hustler is a self-identified queer zine author. Her works include "Power of the Impotent," "Curdled Milk" and "Mirror Tricks," a collection of experimental prose on sex work and prostitution. She said she began consigning at Quimby's at about fifteen years old.
"I knew that it was 'the place' if you made a zine and they would take anything so there wasn't that pressure of 'will they take my teenage junk,'" she told Windy City Times.
She says that zines themselves have always been a queer phenomenon, that 90s queer zine culture was more radical, and a huge part of developing the self-publishing culture as a whole.
"That kind of overt presence in zine culture hasn't been as present but is coming back," she said. "It goes back to radical parts of queer history getting left behind. Queer zines are documents of that radical history."
Edie Fake is a comic author who's been working at Quimby's for about three years. His works include the "Gaylord Phoenix" series, and he is a recent contributor to "Gay Genius" Comics.
He grew up in a home outside of Chicago that always stressed self-publishing, while being conservative in other ways. Quimby's opened when he was 12, and he said the first time he visited was when he was 14.
"It was a major influence. It was kind of as the Internet was just getting started, but there was this huge explosion of zine culture and self-publishers. And so it ended up being really mind-blowing," he told Windy City Times.
"Working there for a while, I think one of the important roles it plays is as a starter culture for media. I feel like people can make a zine and then having a place to distribute it that takes selling zines seriously—like doesn't just shove them in a corner or put them on some lonely, dusty rack—like I feel like myself and my co-workers think a lot about how to give everything the face that it needs," he said.
Part of Fake's job is to read through all the material the store receives, and to help curate the store's LGBT selection.
"I'll come to work and they'll be books that synthesize amazing silkscreen printing with gay graphics and just like weird abstract maps or something. I feel like the idea of all these things coming together paints a really multidimensional picture of what queer culture can be," he said.
"You'll find stuff that you maybe identify with in an LGBT way, you'll find stuff that you definitely disagree with, or stuff that you're like, 'Oh my gosh, I never thought about it that way.' Or stuff that has this overlap where you're like, 'Oh, this is all about queer street artists.' It just kind of sends you into another part of the world that you weren't involved in," he added.
Recently, while reading through a gay Japanese skater zine, Fake came across an image of someone reading "Powers of the Impotent" by Robin Hustle, and told Hustle about it.
While Hustle had no idea how someone in another country got a copy of her work, she loved hearing about it.
"It speaks to the breadth of queer zine culture," she said.
Fake finds that kind of intersectionality to be partly what makes Quimby's so special.
I think that's an amazing part of queer culture itself. That people come from everywhere and define themselves in an LGBTI way… but also we're not one-dimensional characters, where I'm like, 'I'm Edie, I like art, I make zines, and I work at a bookstore and I'm queer,'" he said. "There's so much more going on what we think about as people. It's a place where that can really shine, and people can really start their own discussion about who they are and what they think about."
