A little bit of WTF comes to mind but I can’t describe how much I love the thought of Sir Ben Kingsley, Oscar award winner and thespian, even knowing something like Minor Threat even exists!

Growing up in the punk / hardcore scene during the early 90s was one of the greatest experiences of my life. The energy surrounding the movement, constant traveling, keeping in touch with friends around the world and the live music during this period are things that can never be duplicated. Some of my most exciting memories were grabbing the newest issues of Maximum Rock ‘n Roll and HeartattaCk from my P.O Box (we all had one back then) and instantly flipping through to find the latest 7″ releases from my favorite bands and to find out which bands my favorite writers were hyping. None of us needed MySpace, because we already had one of the most intricate social networks ever created.

These days are now being archived thanks to the Punk Zine Archive, a group of dedicated folks who remember what it was like to find out about new bands from the members themselves, usually while they were looking for a warm spot on your floor to fall asleep before their next show a few hundred miles away. The group are scanning some of the best ‘zines of the time in, digitally preserving them in PDF format and offering them free to download, with permission of course.

The following Maximumrocknroll, Flipside, Suburban Voice, and HeartattaCk punk zines are presented in PDF format for the zine archive. All of these punk zines are out-of-print, and each zine has given me permission to post this information online. All of the pages are included in an attempt to recreate the zines for the Internet, so people can read them for free. It won’t be perfect, but at least you don’t have to shell out big money to read these old punk zines or deal with crooks who sell copies of the zines, but they tell you the zines are original. This punk zine archive only exists because people have supported these zines. Maximumrocknroll, Suburban Voice, and HeartattaCk still have issues that are for sale, so feel free to contact them to pick up an issue (or two).

Read more: Punk Zine Archive

For those who haven’t kept up, the arts and crafts scene has evolved. Crafts no longer means 80 year old ladies going to Michael’s (or comparable stores) to buy new crocheting patterns of the grand canyon or the American flag. Younger and younger folk are getting involved, twisting and turning traditional forms of craft-wizardry into fresh new styles and directions. Our favorite for today, the Punkey Monkey dolls from crafster Clarity Miller. Featuring heaps of punk attitude, safety pins and dyed hair, the ‘Sid & Nancy’ pair of the Punkey Monkey series is brilliant for any fashionable punk these days. The dolls are stuffed with 100% polyester and aren’t recommended for children. Well, maybe for punk children.

Read more: Punky Monkeys at Elsewares | More from Clarity Miller

Wow. My friends, the future is here and this is possibly the greatest use of this here interent thing I’ve ever experienced. Yellow Arrow is a communal, social internet mobile mashup technology, allowing users to create mobile tours, viewable over the internet, but more precisely, mobile phone tours to be conducted in real-time whenever you find an “arrow” in presumably any country that Google Maps covers. To beautifully demonstrate the power of Yellow Arrow, an interactive mobile walking tour and online documentary about the Washington DC punk/hardcore scene was created, where physical and virtual users are able to take the walking tour of where everything happened in DC punk, watching 10 mini-documentaries, featuring interviews with Alec Mackaye, Brendan Canty, Cynthia Connolly, Ian Mackaye, Ian Svenonius, and many many many more who were there when it all began and who graciously share their fondest memories with us.

Read more: Capitol of Punk – A walking tour and online documentary about DC punk