DIY zine workshop & LAN club
We print game zines on the copier all afternoon, then wheel the tables aside and LAN on stations we soldered ourselves. Same room, same toner smell, two shifts.
COPY № 4701 — Stations
Three benches, all built from parts that turned up in the donation box. None of them match. All of them run a full night without a hiccup, which is more than we can say for the copier.
The oldest bench, and the one everyone fights over. Built from a case someone rescued off the curb, a mechanical board with three replacement keycaps, and a 144 Hz panel we found for the price of a coffee. Bring your own headset — the loaner pair has been chewed by the shop dog.
Two chairs, two screens, one shared plug strip held together with gaffer tape. Made for co-op runs and for the pair who show up every Friday to trade the controller. The left chair squeaks. We know. We like it. It stays.
A fat glass monitor on a milk-crate stand, wired for split-screen. Nobody asked us to keep a tube around; we kept it anyway. The colors are wrong in a way that feels right, and the input lag is a rumor. Best seat for four-player couch nights.
02 — On paper
A metal shelf by the door, stacked with folded, stapled game zines nobody paid us to make. Guides, tier-list rants, hand-drawn maps, one long love letter to a boss fight.
Short runs of 40 to 60 copies, folded on the bench, stapled twice on the spine. Match reports, speed-route sketches, a monthly page of reader complaints about our tier lists. Everything fits in a back pocket. Everything is free to read on site.
not for sale — for readingPull anything off the shelf, read it in the corner chair, slide it back when you leave. Want to take one home? Trade a zine for a zine, or drop a doodle in the swap box. The shelf polices itself; it has for two years and counting.
a zine for a zineMade something? Photocopy it here, staple it here, shelve it here. First-timers get a five-minute crash course on the folder and the long-reach stapler. We keep spare toner and a tin of pens; you bring the words and the bad drawings.
yes, even the messy first one03 — Evenings
Three fixed nights a week. The copier cools down around six, the tables roll aside, and the room switches from a print shop to a LAN floor in about twenty loud minutes.
Play a session, then make a one-page zine about your best round — screenshots taped in, a scrawled scoreboard, an honest note on the run you botched. We print the batch and shelve it before anyone goes home. Tuesday, doors at four.
The big one. Every desk lit, the CRT in the corner running four-player couch games, a running scoreboard chalked on the door by score and finish time only. Fourteen seats, first come. Latecomers get the squeaky chair.
Once a month: bring the mouse you never bonded with, leave with someone else's spare keycaps. No cash changes hands — it is a straight trade table. Whatever nobody claims goes into the donation box that builds the next desk.
04 — House rules
Taped to the wall in marker, argued over, occasionally rewritten. Short enough to read while the toner warms up.
The staple box by the folder is shared. Refill it if you empty it; the shop runs on trust and spare boxes.
No copies after twelve. It overheats, it jams, it sulks for a day. Fold and staple by hand instead.
If your zine covers a match, tell the truth about the round you lost. Nobody trusts a clean scoreboard.
Cable tidy, chair pushed in, cut scraps in the bin. Leave the desk how you found it, ready for the next hand.
05 — Back issues
Three stories from the club, folded into three back issues. We keep every run in a shoebox behind the counter; ask and we will dig one out.
The night the copier ate forty pages of a boss guide, so the author redrew the whole thing from memory on the whiteboard and we photographed it. That crooked photo run is the most borrowed zine on the shelf. Nobody has ever asked for the clean version.
We built the Corner CRT bench in one weekend out of a monitor a member hauled up four flights of stairs. It weighed more than the table. The housewarming zine had a page just for the people who carried it, listed by finish time, slowest first.
First peripheral swap night. Eleven mice came in, eleven left, none the same ones. One keyboard did three laps of the table before someone finally adopted it. The swap zine mapped every trade with arrows; it looks like a subway diagram now.
06 — The wall
The long wall by the shelf, layered with clippings taped up over two years. Peel one corner and you will find three older nights underneath.
07 — Reader mail
The questions that land in the swap box most often, answered the way we would over the counter.
Yes, that is half the point. Bring your pages, use the folder and the long-reach stapler, and shelve a copy before you go. A member will walk a first-timer through the copier settings so nothing comes out streaky. Toner and pens are on the house.
It is an old machine and it runs hot. Push it past midnight and it jams, then sulks for a full day while it cools. So we cut the print shift at twelve and fold and staple by hand after that. The LAN floor keeps going regardless.
Not to play. If you want to help patch a desk, there is a bench with an iron, safety glasses, and someone who has done it before. We fix cables and swap parts, nothing dangerous. Curiosity is enough; skill turns up after a few evenings.
One shared speaker, one shared queue on the clipboard. Add a track, wait your turn. Keep it low enough that the Twin desk can still trash-talk across the room. Headsets for anything competitive so the whole floor is not stuck with your match audio.
Straight trades only, once a month. Bring a mouse, keyboard, or spare keycaps you are done with, label it, set it on the swap table. No money moves — you leave with whatever you agree to trade for. Unclaimed gear goes to the box that funds the next build.
Hold a station for a Print & Play night. Tell us the date, the desk, and whether you are bringing a zine to shelve. We reply from the counter, not a call center.