Culture & Community | Arts & Culture
Palaez and Jensen at the Zine Fair in 2023 hosted at Bradley Street Bike Co-op. Contributed Photos.
If you’ve been keeping up with the nightlife or zine scene in New Haven, you are bound to have heard of Connectic*nt.
What started as a zine publication has grown into a cultural powerhouse, drawing young people from around the state to attend events ranging from zine fairs to bar nights and open mics. The femme and queer-led publication is co-edited by Zoe Jensen (a 2024 Arts Awardee), Iyanna Crockett, and Mariana Pelaez.
The three co-editors met at the University of Connecticut, where they also created zines for the campus radio station, WHUS, and the UConn Women’s Center. Pelaez and Jensen met in 2018 through a campus zine meet-up, where they first collaborated: Jensen made an accompanying artwork to Palaez’s poem. During their time in college, both were very involved in zine creation, DJing, and hosting parties at their apartment.
In June 2021, Jensen wanted to feature her friends’ artwork in a zine and create something physical to connect them beyond the internet, all desires that led to the birth of Connectic*nt. Although the zine was envisioned to be a one-off project distributed to a handful of friends in the midst of the pandemic, the project gained traction after Jensen created an Instagram account for it. The first issue received over 75 pre-orders.
Today, Connectic*nt boasts over 10,850 followers, and the team has distributed over 3,000 issues, both via mail and at local businesses such as the Jitterbus Cafe and Fairy Meadow Flowers in New Haven.
Fostering the growth of the zine community has been especially rewarding for Jensen.
“Zines have always been Mar, Iyanna, and my playtime activity, and now we’re just sharing it with a lot more people, which is really fun,” Jensen said.
Following the regular publishing of the bi-monthly zine, Pelaez saw a hunger from Connectic*nt’s supporters for zine fairs and zine creation workshops—a hunger many New Haven artists attribute to an interest in analogue over digital connection (their website proudly declares “Print is Not Dead,” calling attention to the renewed interest in physical media among young people).
Given the many inquiries from budding zine artists wanting to learn where to begin, the team created a mini-zine, sharing what they’d learned, including surrounding the printing and distribution process.
“Something people our age have been experiencing is all of our physical media becoming virtual,” Pelaez said, reflecting on growing up in Generation Z, and yearning for the magazines that once filled bookstores like Barnes and Noble. “At first, it was really cool. We saw the move from CDs to streaming … I think it got to a point of, like, what do we have? What do we physically have?”
Jensen pointed to an increasing social awareness around the overreach of tech companies, invasiveness of artificial intelligence, and peoples’ fatigue around social media as factors that have drawn people to print media. “It’s already a general sentiment; we’re just being louder about it,” Jensen said.
Pelaez cited a “massive shift to virtual life,” during and after the pandemic, including part of her college experience and a fully-remote job post-graduation, that played into the need for the tangible, whether it be zines or in-person events. “People want things that feel real…[We're] trying to build something people can see and hold.”
The Connectic*nt team has written several articles highlighting local artists and artisans, from business owner Todd Lyon of Fashionista Vintage & Variety to flavor developer Geena Fram of Elena’s Ice Cream.
Jensen’s favorite piece to write was on active transportation enthusiast Matthew Feiner, founder of the Devil’s Gear Bike Shop and the artist behind the “Slow Down” spray-painted street signs featuring Audrey Hepburn’s face.
“One of our friends was in a car crash, and the person who witnessed the car crash was Matthew Feiner, and that’s how I found out who it was [making the signs],” Jensen said. “It was really cool to be able to share his story, and provide a lot more context for people who were already very curious.” The video with Feiner in his studio has garnered 2,500 likes to date.
Writers for the zine have also been able to cover hard-hitting topics, such as a recent article, “7 New Haven Landlords to Look Out For,” calling out several major management companies for their lack of maintenance, appliance malfunctions, and pest problems at their New Haven properties.
“Because of our name, we’re able to take really big swings on stuff and say things that are maybe a little bit more opinionated than some other people maybe can or can’t do,” Jensen said.
Reactions to the article were explosive, mostly of commenters attesting to the claims. In addition to spreading awareness, Jensen said that one of the tenants referenced in the article was able to get a hole fixed in their shared walkway a few days after it was published.
Zoe Jensen (left) and Mar Pelaez (right) DJing back to back in 2024. Contributed photo.
Some of the articles cover less serious topics, but can still be controversial nonetheless, such as a blind New Haven pizza test, which boldly declared that the “‘Big Three’ Aren’t So Big.” The experiment, using friends at her 27th birthday party as its test subjects, featured slices from Sally’s Apizza, Modern Apizza, Frank Pepe’s, One 6 Three, Atticus Market, Zeneli Pizzeria, and Domino’s Pizza, as a wild card.
Pepe’s tied bottom with Domino’s, which led to a barrage of comments. Meanwhile, Atticus came in second place, and the Instagram post was printed out and hung up on the walls of the market.
“People were pissed … people don’t play about their pizza!” Palaez exclaimed.
As a marker of the organization’s fifth anniversary, Connectic*nt released a hardcover, 9 x 12 inch, bubblegum pink fabric-bound book including 100 pages of “stories over the half decade, some standout pieces from contributors, and never-before-seen photos.”
“We’ve been wanting to do this since we hit the one-year mark,” Jensen said. These coffee table books can be ordered online and shipped, or are available for pickup at MINIPNG in East Rock or Story and Soil in Hartford.
Brandon Hoak, co-founder and editor of queer ecology magazine Milkweed & Oysters (which had a tabling presence at Connectic*nt’s Zine Fair on October 4th at Bradley Street Bike Co-op), is a reader of Connectic*nt’s bimonthly zine.
"It's so unique and special to have a grounded, local zine that is so specific to youth and queer audiences,” they said. Hoak finds the undertaking impressive as an artist and self-publisher themself, and praised the “high caliber” of the publication and its Connecticut focus.
As for Connectic*nt’s club nights, dubbed Club C*nt, the inspiration stemmed from a desire to dance to the music they wanted to hear. “We never could go anywhere and hear the music we wanted to listen to, unless [Zoe] was DJing, or if we went to New York,” Pelaez said.
Finding a host venue was not so smooth at the beginning. Jensen had to go door-to-door to bars to find a venue that would host an event with a name like theirs and no history.
It got easier over time for them to pitch their club nights to venues. “Because we’ve done so many [parties], we have the credibility. People know if you host Club C*nt, your club is going to be packed,” Palaez said.
Both Jensen and Palaez spoke highly of East Rock sports bar, Diesel Lounge, who were very open to hosting them.
“You wouldn’t even look at it and think, this is the birthplace of one of New Haven’s biggest queer parties!” Palaez laughed.
“At the end of the night, the owner, Martin [Riggione], came up to me with $400. He just gave it to me and was like, ‘when are we doing this again?’ I did not expect to be paid, did not have that in mind, but he wanted to give us money for bringing people to his venue and just having a great party,” Jensen said.
“[Diesel was] very protective of trans people who were in our space, kicking out people who were being transphobic, were so down for all the craziness that we were playing, and people being nasty on the dancefloor,” Jensen said.
The club nights soon outgrew the lounge, which could reasonably accommodate 75 people. Now, 1,000 people might come to an event. Following Diesel, they’ve booked venues such as Club Vandome, Cafe Nine, and Toad’s Place.
“[Martin] really gave us that solid foundation that we can fully run this ourselves, no one else, and [that venues] can just host it and be mutually beneficial," Jensen said.
Notably, their club nights center on safety, with a zero-tolerance policy for discriminatory language or actions, assigned security, and the promotion of consent, given that young queer people, mostly women, are the primary attendees.
“So many spaces have not been tending to [their guests] in the same way,” Jensen said. “We’re just constantly striving for an environment where people feel comfortable and safe.”
Mia Forgione, a graduate student at Yale School of the Environment and a Southern Connecticut State University alum, learned of Connectic*nt through a friend and first attended a club night in November 2023.
“It was just so lovely to have a space to go to and dance. I think at that time, I wasn’t as much of a dancer, or I didn’t go out as much, so the parties were the first sort of introduction I had to [the club scene],” Forgione said. The experience showed her what it was like to dance with other young people, and “not just to the Top 40 hits at BAR or at Toad’s.”
Forgione describes her love for Club C*nt as two-part: for how it has created momentum around regular dance nights in New Haven, and for its queer and femme-led focus.
Despite the many successful events they’ve hosted, hosting nightlife still has its challenges. “It’s never easy,” Palaez said. “And at the same time, it’s worth every f-cking second of the work because the events turn out so beautifully and people are just so kind and grateful.”
“Things like us pop up all the time, but we’ve been so embraced by New Haven and the entire state,” Jensen said. “It’s why we keep going.”
Learn more about Connectic*nt by visiting their website or Instagram, and order their coffee table book here. The next Club C*nt will be held on October 23 at Club Vandome, a Halloween party in collaboration with local nightlife organizers HEAVEN, Afterworld, and New Raven.
The next call for zine submissions for their November Gratitude issue is open and will close on October 27th.