Difference between revisions of "Talk:Hitchhiking Zine"

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Revision as of 17:38, 22 November 2006

moved from User Talk:Guaka

I was hoping no one would think it was presumptuous to post a picture of myself, but it was the only one I had of a Liftplaats. I also didn't think about the file name, that's just the name my camera gave it. I'll keep that in mind next time. I do have more pictures. I'll look through and see if I can find anything useful.

It's great! It's very illustrative and I hope other people will start adding pictures as well. I'm looking forward to it!

On another note, I'd like to know what you think about a project I want to work on and maybe get some help. While I was traveling around Europe and Morocco for the last two months, practicing my own style of "budget travel" and talking with other travelers, I had an idea. I only paid for one place to stay for the entire time I was in Europe, and slept in parks and other improv places nearly the entire time. Food was similar, I generally didn't pay for much of it. While doing all this I realized that guide books like Lonely Planet (especially LP!) didn't really have any place in a rucksack like mine, the only useful information it really provided was maps and sometimes a bus route or something. But anyway, me and some other travelers I met thought that it would be really cool if someone made a DIY travel 'zine guide instead of the typical guidebook.

I thought long and hard about the magnitude of such a project, and started taking notes on the sort of information I thought useful that didn't create bloat and take away all the adventure from travel. Needless to say, I didn't get near enough information for a zine because I was too busy traveling to write about traveling. I decided the only practical way to do it would be online open content, like a Wiki. I thought about starting my own, and I still consider it, but it would take ages to build a wealth of knowledge like what already exists here. So, my question is would you be interested in working with me to edit down a "cream of the crop" of this wiki for printing in zine format? I'm thinking 50 sheets, center folded. Standard photocopy zine format. I would want to do it for non-profit of course. Hitchhikers don't have money for guides! If you're interested, I have a little experience with zine pressing and we could mail them out for like $2 a peice or something to help fund this site further and the pressing of the zines. Just let me know. --Zac Stewart 23:49, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I guess you might have heard of CouchSurfing? :)
I've actually started the CouchSurfing Wiki in August. One of the things happening on the CS Wiki is the CouchSurfing Guide. I think your ideas fit perfectly well to it. Just check out some pages. I started adding dumpster dive info, and many articles have links to the Hitchhiking Wiki. You are very welcome to participate. It's not yet Creative Commons now, but I think it will be. I just didn't want to take that decision on my own. I just suggest people to use a template on their User profile stating that their contributions are available under both CC and GFDL.
Also, Amylin will be arriving at the New Zealand CouchSurfing Collective soon, she had her own zine for a while! And she's hitchhiking a lot these days! :) GuakaTalkCS 00:44, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Let's start Hitchhiking Zine (rename if you wish) :) GuakaTalkCS 00:46, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Awesome. You have the same mindset I have on this. Me and my friend Derek were talking about this throughout our trip about how if we wrote Europe on a Shoestring we'd review the best dumpsters and places to get food for free, and best parks and stuff instead of restaraunts and hostels. This could really go places. I don't know of many works of this nature since Ken Welsh's Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe. I had done some scratch work and though Travel or Die kept in the zine tradition (spinoff of Skate or Die) but I'm not really concerned about titles and stuff. Content and organization is more important at this point of course. I do have some good design/production ideas, but again, that's not important at this point. --Zac Stewart 08:15, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi. Good idea. More info on how to get around for free is definately needed. There is also this website on Europe with the same idea. Though not a wiki, it uses random editors and has some good info. Worth to take a look [1] Robino

Organization

Alright, I've given some thought to what information needs to be included and how it needs to be arranged. I think this zine needs to be a little more comprehensive than the Hitchhiking Wiki. Not because the Wiki is lacking, but because it's a slightly broader project. Instead of having just information about getting to and from places, I thought it would be helpful to include specifics in each town about eating, sleeping and a LITTLE bit about seeing and doing things. Not like an LP guide, giving addresses and coordinates on a map for each museum, but just mentioning what there is to see and do amidst a breif description of the town. Listing all the attractions with directions to get to them and map coordinates is a complete waste because never have I seen a city that didn't make it impossible to miss every attraction. All mentioning them would do is give you some idea of what sort of city it is to help you decide if you want to go or not. All rambling aside, here's how I thought the templet would look. Please modify it if you have an improvement.


_________City_________

Brief introduction: history, attractions, etc...

Information Internet access, tourist office (if helpful, ie free maps, etc...), public toilets.

Eat Good dumpsters, stores that give away/throw out leftover food at closing time, soup kitchens...

Sleep Well-reviewed parks, alleys, places where you wont be bothered by either drunks or police, homeless missions, your house!

Get Out Information for all directions, how to get to the motorway/highway, public transportation (if needed), places to stand, sign suggestions, maybe wait times.

_______________________


I'm not sure where we should start compiling information. We could start another free wiki, or we could just try to format the pages in this one to include that information. After we figure that out, I think we should just get as much information as possible, and then vote on what gets included in the pressing via nominations. I'd like to include as much as possible, but we're going to have to keep it under 50 pages probably. It gets too difficult to bind once you have too many. In the future (or even now, if everyone thought it was a good idea) if it goes well, we could publish several zines, one for each continent or something.

To start with, I think it would be best to just have a Europe zine, simply because we have the most information on Europe. I don't want the zine to get a Eurocentric review, but it would be difficult for us to publish one on South America or Africa based on the information we have right now. Starting with Europe would let us get our feet wet without too much painstaking effort for a first attempt.

Let me know what you all think.

Zac Stewart 18:53, 19 November 2006 (UTC)