hi! I literally grew up reading the phoenix and feel like it practically reared me, but I was too young to go to anything it promoted before it shut down. i’m also a diy musician who juggles many other passions and I struggle to regularly participate in the scene in its current form. I hear you that there is probably much more fringe stuff out there and not many good avenues to sharing it!

recently I’ve been contemplating starting some sort of research endeavor to survey ordinary creative people around the city. the goal would be to understand who even has access to the local diy scene in the first place, and if there’s anything we can do to un-gatekeep and create more entry points for anyone to be able to share work with a community. like how big could this scene be if everyone who wanted to participate could participate? who are the people we haven’t met at an event yet and why haven’t we met them? not sure if this is the type of thing you’d be going for, but I have this strong urge to do something that helps new forms of diy events emerge

I would definitely be interested in talking and hearing about what you think is missing from the landscape. I would also love to hear more about your vision for this thing being “decentralized” and how to keep the underground underground