Pie Shop
“The Whole Damn Pie Shop” 1981-1986
Number 10, Summer 1984
Number 11, November 1984
(click on the images above to see the entire issue)
A number of the current writers for this OB Rag published a left-wing magazine in San Diego during the first half of the eighties. Called “the whole damn pie shop,” the magazine proudly announced on each front cover:
Our name is from a quote of a Brixton, England demonstrator who when asked in 1981 if he wanted a larger share of the pie, replied, “No, we want the whole damn pie shop!”
Describing itself as an independent left and progressive newsletter, the Pie Shop was initially sponsored by the Borderlands Education Committee, an OB group. Current and occasional writers for the OB Rag blog, Frank Gormlie, Rick Nadeau, Michael Steinberg and Gregg Robinson, all wrote for the Pie Shop. The publication ran for about five years, from its inception in 1981 through the end sometime in 1986. For the last several years, its publishing run was 5,000, and it was mainly distributed along the coastal communities of San Diego County, as a free left-wing alternative of-sorts to The Reader.
The core staff arose mainly out of a household on Muir Street in northwest OB, which included Rise Burdman, Louis Cooper, Ruth Rominger, and Frank Gormlie; Rick Nadeau joined them to make up the initial “first circle.” The magazine, irregularly published – but usually coming out every other month, was initially typeset at Larry Remer’s Newsline, and laid out the old-fashioned cut and paste way on light tables in the workroom of the Muir Street house. By late 1984, with staff writers of Nadeau, Gormlie, Cooper and Rominger, contributing writers included Gregg Robinson, Michael Steinberg, Galen Ellis, and other activists from San Diego’s political scene; artwork and camera work was provided by Burdman, Jeff Stone, and Mike Williams; Bob Holtzman worked on distribution along with Cooper. For a while, the Pie Shop was laid out in an extra room provided by Jeff Stone and Carole Landon-Stone.
The Borderlands Education Committee, the Pie Shop sponsor, grew out of an OB collective that set out in 1979 to do educational work primarily among Anglos about the history of Mexico and of Mexicans and Chicanos in the Southwest, as well as the plight of undocumented migrants. After approximately a year and half of doing educational work with a narrated slide show and 30 page pamphlet, the Committee folded its work into the Pie Shop.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I voted NO on Prop 8 but am at my wits end hearing folks insist how African-Americans should not have voted for Prop 8. Here is my response to a blog log that could not understand how on earth someone who is the target of discrimination could possibly hold an opinion differing from their own. Here it is. “I must comment regarding African-Americans championing Prop 8. As an important but much maligned segment of our population that has consistently been the target of much racism, hatred and myriad other forms of bigotry, African-Americans turned to faith as a means to console themselves in the face of constant injustice. Religious faith is conservative in its values regarding homosexuality. Therefore, it is not a huge stretch to see African-American support for Prop 8. When people say that an entire segment of Americans should not vote for something they believe in because they themselves were at one time discriminated against, it discounts their beliefs and is in itself a form of prejudice.”