For five years I have volunteered and chewed the fat at KZSU, but only in the last two have I really felt comfortable pointing the camera toward the people I have met and come to know, toward the place where I spent hours digging through music and setting up live bands. It feels more natural to photograph from the perspective on a community member rather than a visitor.
The Zoo is where I went when I began to reconsider what I wanted to do with my life. Anyone can walk into this little basement freeform college radio station to train as an on-air DJ, listen for hours to the enormous music library, and dig around the innards of the technical infrastructure. For a long time, it was the only place where I felt no pressure, and over the years it has become my community.
Freeform radio breeds eclecticism, eccentricity, chaos. All staff are volunteers and success of any initiative depends on the dedication of individuals. There is utter freedom, which easily morphs into disarray. Loose ends are everywhere - abandoned projects and piles of outdated technology.
Analog radio is almost an anachronism, KZSU is an anachronism - vinyl is alive and well, punk rock is not dead. But it persists because it is populated by people who love, who are obsessed with, music. The DJs who stay - and some stay for more than 20 years - are the ones who would consider being described as "normal" an insult. They are aging hippies, computer nerds, paranoids, slackers, artists, homeless drifters, musicians who build their own instruments, and music snobs for whom mainstream music is not only tasteless but immoral. They come to the Zoo to exercise their creativity, to sate their music lust.