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the very first time i started making the tape i really was just making it for myself. I didnt really ever plan to sell them or make copies of it till i was completely done and i let my friend listen to it but she didnt know any of the bands on it so i would have to like do these little explainations about where the band was from or just a story about seeing them live. She liked all the music on it and she liked hearing the stories so then i thought, well its a pretty good tape, so i made like 2 more of it for myself and another friend. It had on it songs by Leonard Cohen and Desroyer that i ended up taking out cause i wanted to make it more of a local-band mixtape. When i had it all done, i titled it "romance" cause i thought it to be a pretty romantic tape. A friend of mine really liked it and then i asked all the bands on it if it was okay that i make like 20 more or so and sell em for donations out in LA. They all said okay, which was actually a bit suprising but i suppose its really no big deal in the long run. I also asked if they were interested in putting together a mini-zine for it and some wrote back some stuff, others said no but it was just a little little thing so i didnt mind too much when they said no. Then i made a bunch of little fabric pouches for them. Joann's [fabric] was closing down so i bought a bunch of buttons and fabric for like dirt cheap there with the money i made while working at the movie theater. I've also used old tennis shoes, old clothes, a telephone, and i found some cardboard boxes to use as casings. Id spend the weekends decorating the tapes and printing and folding the zines and stuff and then go out to like The Smell and Pehrspace and The Clinic and Old Baldy and just lay them out there and pretty much gave a lot of them away. I had a sign out that read "ports o call mixtapes $3 donation" and a lot of the people were really cool about giving $5 or more to help me make another one which was really fun because it that was able to balance out me giving some for free. Its really funny how im writing this out like "this is how it happened" but its really not like that at all. its a very long, very fun, process with my life really making an impact on what happens to ports o call. its not like ports o call is some solid, time-framed thing, its just me doing something in my bedroom that hopefully people might like.
