Homocore Anthology

HOMOCORE was a queer punk zine, published in San Francisco from September 1988 through Spring 1991. This paragraph on the first page of every issue may be the best introduction.

Review in Razorcake #152:

   Let me just start off by saying that I feel that the Homocore Anthology is already a landmark event in this year’s independent publishing sphere, and will remain a landmark event for queers, punks, and zine people of all stripes. Seven issues may not seem like a lot, but those seven issues make up almost 300 full-size pages, and like any zine worth its weight in newsprint, those pages are crammed with often tiny text (cut out by hand, line by line, with a razor blade) and not-so-tiny images. 

   Homocore originally ran from 1988-1991, and has been more or less out of print since. It reacted and reacts to the normalizing tendencies in both the queer and punk worlds (“…too weird, not butch enough, not femme enough, not S&M enough, too S&M, not “straight” enough. We wore the wrong clothes and we hated disco.” (from the introduction)) that we are still faced with today, in much the same language, in much the same places. It rejects the notion of a homogeneous gay or queer community just as it rejects the notion of a homogeneous punk community.

   It bites the hands that feed (because it needs to, or because the hand likes it) and in return feeds out a shocking amount of information: bands, zines, news, events, struggles, and a letters section that grows with each issue. The treasure trove of zines and bands alone is enough for a lifetime of now-archival searching, and that trove is a testament to the necessity of preserving out work despite the seeming immediacy and completeness of the digital realm. It’s also a testament to the primacy of one’s relationship to the material world, something I find myself more and more alone in my “queer” “community” by the month.

   Radical joy and radical rage exist alongside of and inside each other. Nothing is censored. Everything is here. I found this collection endlessly inspiring, reading it in-between hours standing at the copy machine producing a new edition of Willow Wilderness Hour’s excellent lord, the boy is naturally queer, one of the most unflinching and radical works of queer poetry I’ve read, let alone had the privilege of producing, in recent years, and pondering my own work and place in the world of gay letters. Homocore Anthology reminded me exactly what I’m about, why I spend those hours swearing at the copy machine, and for what?: for those modes of being together we have yet to invent, and are indeed inventing, one razor blade-and-pasted line at a time. Essential reading no matter how you swing. -jimmy cooper 

***

No apology for 1988 cringe:
"You don’t have to be a homo to have stuff published in HOMOCORE. One thing everyone in here has in common is that we’re all social mutants; we’ve outgrown or never were part of any of the 'socially acceptable' categories. You don’t have to be gay; being different at all, like straight guys who aren’t macho shitheads, women who don’t want to be a punk rock fashion accessory, or any other personal decision that makes you an outcast is enough. Sexuality is part of it, but only part.”

HOMOCORE was not the first well-known queer punk zine, that honor generally goes to Toronto based JD's, published by GB Jones and Bruce LaBruce. GB and Bruce coined the phrase "homocore"; I stole it from them (with credit).

1980s San Francisco mainstream gay and lesbian culture did not welcome punk or queer weirdness; LGBTQIA2+ was far in the future. We were too weird, not butch enough, not femme enough, not S&M enough, too S&M, not “straight” enough. We wore the wrong clothes and we hated disco. There was much discussion of assimilation vs. radical queers.

Us queer punk weirdos were scattered about the Bay Area and often knew each other. I hung out at Bound Together Books, an anarchist bookstore, still there today, in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Joey Cain from Bound Together told me of an Anarchist Gathering in Toronto in July 1988. I flew up with Joey and a few others and I can barely remember details—it was a non-stop swirl of amazing people. While angry punks battled police downtown, most of the queer folk—a large portion of attendees as it turned out, a surprise to all—mostly networked. I stayed at Bruce LaBruce and Candy's house, got a HOMOCORE HITS tape, zines, etc. The first HOMOCORE appeared back home a few months later.

LETTERS, LETTERS, LETTERS…

All but the first issue are dominated by letters from readers. Letters, to me, became the reason for HOMOCORE’s existence. Few people write letters these days, but in the time of HOMOCORE that's what we had. More effort than email but letters were a lot of fun, and a medium with much leeway for expression. This was close to mail art's peak, where you'd get some weird shit in the mail, the envelope nearly unreadable with drawings and stylized writing, and upon opening, one or a dozen tiny scraps of annotated paper, tiny flat objects, that might take an enjoyable hour to puzzle it all out. More often it was blunt, illegible pencil on yellow lined paper.

Written letters require organizing your thoughts enough to make them tangible; with your hands and eyes and brain involved. The process and outcome are different than electronic means. Receiving a letter in the mail is and was kind of a big deal; the writer had put some effort into it. Each letter, hand written in pen or pencil, were typed into the computer by some shitworker (MAXIMUMROCKNROLL zine called their volunteers shitworkers, in some Communist way of not inflating egos. We were mostly fine with egos, but we liked the other connotations it brought). This work is underappreciated and I fear that in my bad record-keeping I'm forgetting people who, without their work, HOMOCORE would not have existed, really and truly.

What stands out today is how queer, and gender-queer, many of us were. And poor! 164 Shipley and 666 Illinois, our group-living warehouses, were half runaways and outcasts. AIDS and bigot policies were killing people, but in all this ruinous shit, we collectively produced some pretty great culture. Mutual support was all around us.

-Tom Jennings, March 2026

288 pages, full-size, perfect bound book.

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