When I was seventeen, a friend once pushed a little stack of papers into my hand and said, “Here, read this.” It was a “zine”,, a little photocopied magazine, the first I’d ever seen, one called “Dishwasher”. The premise was that the zine’s author, “Dishwasher Pete” was attempting to wash dishes-and write about the experience- in all fifty states. It was more than just a “Hey, look how wacky I am” kind of thing, though, the little magazine (which had a subscribership of nearly ten thousand at its peak) was more like a treatise on happiness (and the pursuit of) while trying to live under the radar of an overwhelming capitalist society. The stories of Pete’s own misadventures were accented with vignettes of Dishwasher history and dish-related labor struggle.

Now, ten years or so after he stopped putting out “Dishwasher”, Dishwasher Pete has gone back to his original name, Pete Jordan, and has put out a book that collects and expands upon all the issues of Dishwasher. Read the rest of this entry »