The Launch Party Reviewed

by guest contributor Jonathan Mittiga

On an otherwise forgettable Friday evening, I attended the launch party for the premiere issue cracks in pomo: the zine. At first, I was reluctant to attend: in a state of spiritual depletion, I had whimsically decided on the previous night  that I should retreat from the city for the weekend. I left for work on Friday morning with my cumbersome, stained sack intending to take a train going anywhere after finishing for the day…And yet the promise of free cigarettes at some kind of panel/reading enticed me to postpone that train to midnight. 

I arrived at the Catholic Worker Maryhouse (the correct address that was posted in the flier–not the St. Joseph House that shows up when typing “Catholic Worker” into Google Maps) and placing my bag on an unclaimed folding chair sought the evening’s cigarette sponsor, Hestia, set on the table in the back of the small auditorium alongside a bowl of Masa seed oil-free tortilla chips (the other sponsor), next to stacks of boxes of the Catholic Worker newspaper. Hot air from industrial fans circulated throughout the room. I politely stepped outside to light up my Hestia, attempting to keep the room as cool as possible (and smokefree). 

I encountered another hip, postmodern-weary bohemian lighting up on the sidewalk, and a woman who wasn’t exactly hip, but who was a resident of the Maryhouse for nine years, with whom I made small talk. What was this place? I asked myself. We spoke about her son, her sisters, and how she would never smoke a cigarette (even out of curiosity). I told her cigarettes were healthier than ice cream, then went inside woozy. 

Fisting a seltzer, I sat in the front row while a harpist played an experimental piece. Then, the panel began. A handsome man, the cracks in pomo graphic designer, introduced himself as Adam, “...but my friends call me Wafers3D,” and urged audience members to “buy a hard copy.” He then introduced the panelists: Stephen Adubato, the main man: curator and editor of cracks in pomo, who also hosts the Cracks in Postmodernity podcast and Substack blog; Brennan Vickery, artist and author of “Shriek of the Devil: The Gays and Satan”; Nicholas Adubato, undergrad student studying Philosophy who wrote “Where did all the ties go?”; and Matthew DeNicola, who snapped photos for the zine. 

Postmodernism is abbreviated as PoMo, and the referred “cracks” are the fissures formed by the pressure that postmodernism covertly burdens society with. The zine, the podcast, the Substack are all aimed at plunging into the spirit of the times, and to equip readers with an awareness of both the emptiness and excitement spurred by postmodernism, and what it all means. Could my feelings of spiritual depletion be a symptom of the cracks in pomo? And maybe the cure is smoking more than one Hestia cigarette?

The main man explained the zine’s development: Stephen originally created Cracks in Postmodernity as a Patheos blog in 2017. When he was informed that “people don’t actually read anymore,” he decided to reach those who prefer the simulation of eavesdropping on a fascinating conversation by beginning to record the Cracks in Postmodernity podcast in 2021 (and moved to blog over to Substack). Successful as they were, Stephen sensed the missing component was community. Instagram is an icebreaker, but it is not a replacement for the real thing. He put it succinctly: “community is crucial.” And putting out a physical product might be the catalyst to jumpstarting such a communal experience.

Stephen explained how the founder of the Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day, had similar questions about the issues facing society during her times. She sought to make sense of her questions first through her activism as a Communist, then went on to seek a “higher truth” through Catholicism. She later found a way to combine her faith in Christ and with her passion for social justice, and thus dedicated her life to serving and responding to the needs of the poor. Dorothy fostered community wherever she went and gave herself to others completely for the sake of love. (Servant of God Dorothy Day is currently undergoing the process of canonization.) “That is what it is all about,” Stephen stressed. We have to ask ourselves “how are we living our lives?” and  “how should we change ourselves?”

Finding like-minded friends with similar questions was part of the journey. For readers and listeners of Cracks in PoMo, there is a shared awareness that asking these big questions about life, culture, and our society really matter. 

Wafers3D asked Stephen when he first got “hooked on crack,” and audience members chuckled. Stephen pointed to a poster of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the wall and recalled crying when he learned of MLK’s assassination in 3^rd grade, asking himself “why is there evil?’ and “where does the impulse to do evil come from?”

Stephen then took over as host and turned the questions on Wafers3D: what was the inspiration for the design? Wafers3D wanted the cracks in pomo design to be punk, but Stephen kept rejecting his maximal punk ideas. He took that as a sign to think differently. Instead of using Adobe InDesign, as would any prototypical graphic designer, he decided to design with the free program Microsoft Pages. 

On a closer look, the cover model has six fingers. Wafers3D reassured the audience that he is not indeed in the Illuminati; he just likes weird, ornate hand symbols, and wanted to make his own. “That’s the sign for a Cracks in PoMo disciple: hold your hands up, then grow a sixth finger.”

To further establish a sense of community, the panel ended with interaction, as Stephen hosted a game of ‘Hot or Not,’ polling the audience’s opinion on a few trending topics: Twitter's rebrand as X, dressing up for Barbie, Bitcoin, and slonking eggs were not hot. Twitter anons and Lana del Ray working fast food were hot. So too were Hestia cigarettes and the Catholic Worker. 

The community celebrated a successful launch with an after-launch party at KGB Bar, around the corner from Maryhouse. KGB bar was named after the Soviet intelligence agency because it was a hangout for socialists and Communists in the 1930s. A few years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the end of Communism, the building was sold, and was converted into a bar for punks, hipsters, writers, and communist wannabees, just in time for grunge and gentrification. Some Soviet memorabilia still lines the walls from those good ol’ days, when communists were taken seriously, and smoking was encouraged. 

Maybe that moment when the bar was sold, and the communists became writers and the writers became poseurs, was a moment of spiritual and cultural transition, from modernity to postmodernity. And maybe, we ourselves are the cracks. 

Jonathan lives in New York. He blogs at plermpt.substack.com.

Listen to the recording of the zine launch, and access the full zine online.

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