SEPTEMBER MINI ZINE 0.2
Hello and welcome to the second issue of Wanderer’s mini zine–September is here. It’s the start of the ..’ber months which hints another year meeting its end. That icy cold wind starts to get a little more bearable and we see the first hints of spring, the yellow wattle starts to blossom, whales start cruising to warmer waters off the unceded land of the Dharawal people. I don’t know about you but my hands have been extra cold this month. I’ve been rocking fingerless gloves in the studio pretty much every day. It’s the first winter I’ve ever really dabbled in the glove realm, and I don’t think I’ll be doing another winter gloveless ever again.
August was lots of fun for us, we frequented La’s even more than usual. The calibre of gigs they’ve been hosting, especially this past month, has been pretty top tier in our books. CLAMM was an honest fave. It’s exciting to see Wollongong is now a proper stop on Aus live music tour circuits.
Another thing that has felt so great this last month was releasing the first issue of this mini zine! Many hours of folding have gone down in the studio and we wouldn’t have it any other way. As I mentioned in the last issue, this mini zine is something that I’ve wanted to do for such a long time. A sort of street press style zine and a guide to lead you through the month. Providing the missing link to make sure all these great events are seen, heard and unavoidable to miss by putting them in one tangible place.
It’s been so cool to see how everyone is responding to it. I’ve had multiple friends message me personally saying they’ve recently deleted Instagram or are trying to stay off their phone more, and that this little piece of paper has helped them to feel more a part of the community. This is one: the best compliment to receive, and two: the whole point of why we wanted to do this in the first place. I could go on and on (and probably will in future issues), but making this mini zine feels really important, we haven’t been able to make our printed media this accessible and free before, so it feels really special to be able to place these bits of paper in places and encourage people to support the creative scene in that exists in Wollongong–sometimes a little beneath the surface. So thanks for picking this up, reading it and being part of our community.
Ahhh this community is the best! Speaking of community, in this issue we speak to Q of Van Q. You know that orange shop in the “Times Square” of Wollongong that is the intersection of Crown Street and Keira street. That’s Van Q. What was once a bank then once an adventureware store is now a hub that holds a magnitude of vintage and second hand clothes and also serves as a space for DIY gigs and markets.
Coming up this month there’s a bit of a running theme of country centric gigs and events, plus the inaugural blossom from winter hibernation with Holy Pav’s Bloomfield Festival happening over 3 days from the 5th to the 7th in the Shoalhaven. And maybe the event that’s the closest to our hearts is the Strange Folds Zine Fair happening on the 6th of September, if you’re into print you must come down to Wollongong Town Hall from 10am-2pm to grab yourself some zines, we will be there selling all our print issues.
If you’ve read this far we appreciate muchly, so much so that you get to know some very special information about our 9th issue… just keep the 11th of October free, that’s all we are gonna say for now x
See you next month, get to some gigs and if you have an event coming up for October be sure to send through an email to lewis@wanderer-magazine.com
WOLLON-GUIDE
WEEKLY
MONDAY Ryan’s 2-4-1 meals, Ciro's $20 pizza night
TUESDAY Trivia @ La's, $10 burger night at Papi's, $5 Tacos @ Bar Cabron
WEDNESDAY North Gong Shnitty Night, Wing Night at Gringa
THURSDAY Joker Poker @ Principle Brewing, Free Live Jazz @ The Servo
FRIDAY TBH Friday’s Free Music
SATURDAY Dicey's Saturdays Free Music, RGBM Live Music
SUNDAY RGBM Live Music
SEPT 4: Giant Hammer at Society City: with Olivia’s World, Expensive Music Band,
Fuses and The Figureheads at VanQ,
Principle Brewing Trivia Night
SEPT 5: SARAH BLASKO AT ANITAS THIRROUL,
TBH FRIDAY’S w/ Nana’s Pie, Del-Slakers, Kylan Daffy
SEPT 6: Strange Folds Zine Fair, Wollongong Town Hall,
Project Contemporary Artspace PROJECT 30 Opening Night (open Sep 3 - 21),
Hot Tubs Time Machine at Franks Wild Years + Loaded & True
SEPT 7: BROOKLYN COMIC at LAS, All Her Years at Franks Wild Years + Nick Moses
SEPT 10: SYCCO at La La La’s
SEPT 11: The Working Title Film Premiere at Society City
SEPT 12: Wollongong Art Gallery HERE + NOW V: There’s No Place Like Home Opening Night (Open Sep 13 - Nov 23)
SEPT 12-13 - Illawarra Nature Festival - live music by Russell W. films, talks, Q&A panels (free entry) - RSVP
SEPT 13: The Mary Wallopers at Anita's Thirroul,
YAKKA GOES COUNTRY at Thirroul Railway Hall
SEPT 14: The Inadequates at Franks Wild Years
SEPT 18: LIMP ZINE Wollongong Zine Club at VanQ + Rent-A-Rack Event,
Emily Duncan EP Launch at Society City
SEPT 19: LAHGO AT LA'S,
Club Laundrette ft: Washing Machine DJs - All night long,
SEPT 20: NO APOLOGIES AT LA'S WITH L.O.W.
Quality Used Cars at Thirroul Railway Hall
SEPT 24: Servo Sketch Club w/ live music ft. Jake Meadows at The servo
SEPT 25: Ally Row at Franks Wild Years + Rowan S. Kaine
Hot Pursuit at Howlin Wolf
SEPT 26: TBH Friday’s w/ Annabelle Scobie
Sort It Out, Lightyears, Del Slackers, Fat Bald Idiot at La's
Arugula at The Servo w/ Sevilles + Cool Jumper
SEPT 27: Globe Lane Hootenanny w/ Ricky Albeck and the Belair Line Band and many more
Melt at Vanq w/ These Guys
SEPT 28: Cam Little at Principle Brewing,
Darcy Gilkerson At Franks Wild Years
INTERVIEW WITH QUIRINE VAN NAPSEN OF VAN Q
Waiting at the crossing on the corner of Crown and Keira St, your eye may glaze over the all-too-familiar fast food, clothing and convenience franchises. But the bright lights, lamp-headed mannequins and 7-foot koalas of the vintage shop Van Q are hard to miss. The shopfront stands out, boasting colour, character and style. This is all an extension of owner Quirine Van Nispen, or simply ‘Q’, who brims with personality, humour and youthful energy. Perhaps unknown to many passersby (or many residents of the Illawarra area), Q and her vintage shop attracts lots of young creatives in the Illawarra community with its Rent-A-Rack market events and casual DIY live music shows. I spoke with Q about what these events are all about and why she loves to host them.
Who are you, what part of the Illawarra are you from and what do you do?
Q: I'm Q or Quirine Van Nispen, I'm from Northern Illawarra, I have a vintage shop and I'm a jewelry maker.
What's something unique to Wollongong that you couldn't go without?
The escarpment and the ocean.
Absolutely, I agree. How long have you been in the area for?
13 years.
Where were you beforehand?
Oyster Bay, Bondi and Holland originally.
Well my attention was first brought to your shop through the DIY gigs that you host here. What inspired you to start putting on these shows?
To inspire people to do what they love doing. I feel like I really wanna help people... and if not help, it just makes me happy. It's probably just because I want fun and creativity around me.
What was the first show that you put on? Van Q has been in a couple other spots around town and when you moved to this space, you started hosting music shows?
When we were in Thirroul, we did art shows and sometimes there was music with it, but it was all quite small [in there]. It was just community basically… friends and artists. I know Phil Lally [Ape Rib, Tumbleweed] who's a sound technician and Rahnee, his daughter is an amazing musician that you should look up; Rahnee Bliss or KidSkin. She wanted to do a pop-up shop here for the opening when we moved to this place. There were all these designers that she curated, then she and the band G.U.N. played. They were doing some sort of open mic so anybody could jump in which was really nice. Phil put his sound system here and said it could stay.
From there, Peter Meakin who was in The Summer Guppies and now Saint Slime would come here to hang out, he liked the space and started organising open mics. Then I realised it's so much hard work and Pete was really busy performing with the Guppies and didn't always have time and I've already got this business to run, it's just an extra thing that is really hard to get people coming to. So with that I thought, If you wanna play here, it's fine, you organise it. And that worked really well and that's what started happening. So if you wanna do a gig, it's your gig and I'll just share a post and make sure everything's ready.
Open the door.
Open the door. Yeah, haha.
Do you have any wisdom to impart on 'doing it yourself'? Any lessons learned?
Maybe just think about what kind of sound equipment you need, when it's a start up band, they don't always know. But in general, it's just a guitar, a drum, and a voice and those mics are always set up.
As well as these music shows, you regularly host the Rent-A-Rack events—I participated in one of those not that long ago—where typically kids can come in and buy and sell their clothes. Why do you think vintage fashion resonates so much with young kids?
It's a point of difference, finding something that is different, weird or just cool. The style is more unique. It also brings you back into a different time. That you can bring that back.
How do these Rent-a-rack events support the young community?
There was a market that was so famous where everybody gathered near Moore Park. I found it so cool that all the kids were buying clothes at Vinnie's and then they were re-selling it at that market. You could find really cool stuff because it was pre-selected [curated]. But then it changed when the fees became so high for the initial setup of that market. So I figured because so many people come in to ask if I [can] buy [their] stuff and I cannot afford to buy everybody's stuff, I thought why not do these markets? Then people have the opportunity to sell their things without me being involved. You just pay a little fee to cover costs.
What have you learned about Wollongong from owning Van Q?
In the beginning when I moved here, everybody was looking at a distance like oh, what's that? It was really hard to start, but now I’ve found it's an awesome community. I really like that with the different bands in different genres, it’s the best way to see different audiences and, how they're all interlinked.
With the different types of music you see here, as you were saying–I know a lot of bands that I like to see that play here or around here, have a quite aggressive, emo/screamo sound. I'm interested in what you think of that music...
Hahaha, I love it because it's so honest. There is an energy coming from it. I always sit up front here cause I have to keep an eye on things, but I know it's good when I get drawn back there [to the music]. There are a few bands, who are so cool and so energetic and it just keeps you alive. Then there are others that put a different spin on it. I think that Wollongong is pretty raw, pretty rock and roll–a lot of emos–I like that about Wollongong, that it's quite raw. But I also see a lot of other bands. This weekend we had Saint Slime, Peter's band and this other really cool band, they were funky, but then still raw, that's always a really nice surprise as well. I feel like there's always an element of 'grrr' but then they put it in different spots, then they combine it with different kinds of music. I find also, it's not so "rah rah rah"...
Yeah, I find that a lot of that music is very honest, very sincere. It really is all about trying to be yourself or bare yourself to people watching. I think one thing as well is that music doesn't always find the right audience, so when you have a place like this where kids can come and put the show on themselves, but not have to worry about everything else that goes with it, it makes it all easier and also easier to get the audience they want.
Yeah. I've noticed that relaxedness makes them feel happy, they can give themselves easier. But I think we should maybe not put that in because that's the secret hahah.