Little-Known subTerrain(ean) Facts:

Our Dead Things issue (#40, Summer 2004) resulted in at least two subscription cancellations.

Since its debut issue in the summer of 1988, subTerrain has published 71 issues, a total of 3,836 pages, comprised of … 641 poems, 413 short stories, 93 essays, 97 creative non-fiction/memoir pieces, 23 profiles/interviews, 475 book reviews, 411 illustrations, 144 photographs.

Issue #32, our Downtown Eastside issue was one of our most popular issues.  

During a break-in at our second office (in the infamous Lee Building) all that was taken was our tel/fax machine.  

Issues with covers that are predominantly red and black seem to sell better than others. Issue #12 (featuring the artwork of Maurice Spira) is rare.  

“Subterranean Homesick Blues” is a song by Bob Dylan and is featured on the album Bringing It All Back Home.

Issue #1 was “typeset” using Xerox Ventura Publisher, an early desktop publishing program.  

We once misspelled “pantyhose” as “pantyhouse”—which almost, sorta, worked.  

The catacombs (or underground cemetery) in Paris holds the remains of approximately six million people.

Our Editor-in-Chief still uses a coffee mug from the first office.  

In the spring of 1996 we borrowed a cooler from Jeff Hardill for a launch party. We still have it! (Jeff, drop by when you’re in town!)  

subTerrain has sported three distinct logo treatments.

World’s deepest operating mine: the TauTona Mine or Western Deep No.3 Shaft, a gold mine in South Africa, clocking in at 3.9 kilometres.  

SMUT: Forbidden Works Past & Present was a standing-room-only reading event at the Anza Club to celebrate the launch of issue #13, the Censorship issue.  

Tom Osborne’s irreverent and very funny comic strip, Mr. Pickypants, ran on our pages from 1996 to 2000.  

Deepest spot in the ocean: the Mariana Trench, 36,070 feet beneath sea level.

The first issue of subTerrain was only twelve pages, and had a cover price of $2.

Issue #2 featured a story by our founder and editorial pooh-bah, under the pen name T. Hazer.

“Marginal Pursuits,” the editorial in issue #1 employed the word “bandicoot.”

August 8, 1988: Discovery of the most distant galaxy (15 * 10 ^ 12 light years) announced. Fifteen days later subTerrain magazine is discovered.

subTerrain was launched the same month and year as the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot in New York City. The riot erupted after a police attempt to enforce a newly passed curfew for the park.

The Seikan tunnel in Japan is both the longest and the deepest rail tun- nel in the world.

subTerrain’s first office was in the wedge building at Main & Kingsway, #15 – 2414 Main Street.

August 11, 1988: Al Qaeda is formed. Twelve days later, subTerrain #1 is born.

subTerrain used to run a short story contest called The Penny Dreadful.

Double issue #14/15 was printed on an offset press that we purchased for $200. We thought we would save money by wresting the means of production into our own hands. It didn’t work out so well; we pulled one more issue from the press and called it a day. These two issues were printed on a Multilith 1250 in the back room area of the offices of the Independent Senior and The Northern Prospector newspapers.

subTerrain used to run a poetry contest called The Last Poems Poetry Contest.  

Cicadas spend seventeen years underground before surfacing to mate.

The Subterraneans is a novella by Jack Kerouac, purportedly written in a Benzedrine fueled three-day writing binge.

subTerrain means “underground.”

 The longest escalator in the London Underground (or Tube) is 60 meters, or 197 feet, with a vertical rise of 27.5 metres.  

subTerrain was once threatened with a lawsuit over the name of a character in a short story we had published.