Remember the zine era? Those stapled, Xeroxed, cranked-out-in-someone’s-basement homemade magazines lined the shelves of independent bookstores and music shops through the 1990s.
One of the best places to browse and discover a new zine was at See Hear, inside a gritty basement storefront on East Seventh Street between First and Second Avenues.
It’s hard to imagine now, in our message- and media-saturated world, but See Hear contained a treasure of independent voices that, in an era before blogs, tweets, and Instagram, would otherwise never be heard.
Testimonials to the store’s incredible variety and the thrill of discovering something new there are all over the web. Just a few months ago, Alex at Flaming Pablum paid homage.
See Hear is firmly etched in the 1990s for me. Yet they opened years earlier. This ad comes from the February 1986 issue of the East Village Eye.
Zines still exist, but See Hear does not. They shut their doors in the early 2000s [Top photo from Yelp].
Ephemeral New York 