why metraboy?
back when i was a freshman in high school, i didn't have a car.
since the metra trains run from evanston to chicago, and then you can pick one up from chicago to crystal lake, i would often take the train home. on the weekend it was extra sweet, because five bucks could get ya round trip.
usually i would have some sort of schoolwork that i would work on while riding the train. other times i would write things in my small notebooks (somewhere along the line, i decided that full-size notebooks were not for me. i don't know why), little observations about life or even just comments about the interesting people i would see on the train. there always seemed to be someone who looked interesting on the train, whether it was the timeless guy in a jean jacket, smoking a cigarette, or a girl who i wished i could get the nerve to talk to. sometimes i would write letters to friends. once i met a girl who played in the fighting illini marching band and we talked shop.
but i would always get back to my writing. i liked to think of myself as some sort of young robert fulghum. or at least that was what i strived to become.
anyway, during my freshman year my pal nate informed me that he was writing a zine called geek like me. after he told me this, i got to thinking that i should take my writings from the train and collect them into a zine of my own. i finally found an outlet for all of these things that i used to write.
somewhere along the line my friend sarah called me "metraboy". i think it was the first time that she rode the train with me. or maybe just a time that i wrote her a letter my sophomore year while riding a train somewhere. i wish i still had the email where she coined the term. but anyway, "metraboy" i became. like the great deep throat before me, i finally had a handle. i think that i even wrote my name on the wall in a few trains.
well, as i began to think more an more about creating a zine, i finally figured that the most appropriate name that it could have was "metraboy". i would restrict the writings so that everything that was in my zine would be material that i wrote on the train, to keep the integrity of the project.
well, like all good ideas, it took me forever to realize this one. i took a class in intermediate composition my sophomore year, and when the prof said that she wanted us to do an "experiemental, different" paper for the final, i knew what i had to do.
"metraboy" would be my final.
it took me about three days of solid work. and i did a press run of three. nate got one, sarah got one, and i kept one.
and that was that.
until, for another class, i decided to learn web publishing. i combined that with the idea of a web diary that i got from a punk planet columnist named jane hex and metraboy online was born.
i hope you enjoy reading.
love,
metraboy