Where’s the Lansing Car Zine?
I just saw a headline that said my local metro area, Lansing MI,
was the world’s biggest producer of cars. (Or that it’s going to be
shortly…I forget…a couple plants are coming.) We’ve always
been huge mondo carworld though. Everything is made here.
Nearby in Detroit there was the world’s biggest factory, an
amazing colossus: The Rouge River Plant. Coal went in and
cars rolled out! I think it was the only such plant in the world,
all in one, totally vertically integrated. A couple square miles,
I think. They just dozed it.
Anyway, I’ve never seen a single underground car rag/mag/zine
around here.
Man, what ripe pickins. Especially for gossip! And helpful insider
info and contact stuff! Or even just for buffs. Especially! It sure
would be something to see a zine made about cars from someone
who worked on the line and knew all the nuts and bolts. So it would
be not only that the Olds Rocket was a great engine but that the
piston milling machine really kicked butt, too. Or something.
The ONLY thing close was the Michigan Voice back in the 70’s
edited by MMoore and columned by BHamper with stories about
the line. Line never seen or heard from again!
(Would this be too close to home? Leg-break territory or something?
Actual potentially helpful newsworthy journalism perhaps? Is that
why it’s not done? People are car INSANE around here and car GURUS
but not a single zine on cars. It would be EASY to wipe the floor on
the car mags with a car ZINE.)
(Speaking of off-limits publishing, I just heard something on the radio
about how the Vietnam War is starting to get more fiction about it due to the
distance from it now. But that there’s never been any good/serious fiction
about either Washington, DC, or Hollywood. Weird. [Excepting ‘Miss Lonelyhearts’.]
Of course fiction is what our culture used to get closest to the truth until
it got finally fully commodity-celebritized 20 years ago.)
