Gil Nagle (he/him) and Connor Roberts (he/him)
Age: 24 and 24
City: Bellingham
Lived here for: 2 years, 1 year
Originally from: San Francisco; Camarillo, California
Notable: Creatives, recovering Californians, co-founders of the ‘zine ‘Slackage’
What brought you to Bellingham?
Connor: So my girlfriend and I were living in Los Osos, California, and her uncle lives up here in a very nice house on Chuckanut. And he asked us to house sit for him. We packed up our van, drove up — and while we were house-sitting for a couple weeks, found jobs, a place to live and it just worked out great.
Gil: A buddy I knew just from childhood, who goes to Western, invited me to move to Bellingham. And then, just out of happenstance, another friend who I went to school with at [Loyola Marymount University] also invited me to move here, just randomly. Since I had two separate invitations to the same place, I just thought I should roll with it.
What gave you guys the idea to start a ‘zine?
Gil: It was Connor’s idea. I didn’t even know what a ‘zine was.
Connor: We just wanted to foster something where fellow creatives in town could put something, without having to pay for it or be anywhere. Kind of just try to make our own community and have people meet and share things without having to go to a gallery or something per se.
How would you describe ‘Slackage’ to someone who hasn’t seen it yet?
Gil: I would say it is a glimpse into the creative process, celebrating the rough edges that is kind of inherent with making art, and to kind of humble expectations for what one works to create.
What do you each bring to the ‘zine?
Connor: I’ve just been doing the formatting, and inputting my own art and the imagery. And Gil does pretty much all of the journalism aspects.
Gil: One thing that really attracted me to work with Connor, is that we realized that we had a very similar aesthetic and interest that we liked. With my constant creativity, there’s never really been anything centric. And Connor offered the ability to make things centric and to be able to format things cohesively, and to make it digestible.
Where can people find ‘Slackage?’
Gil: We have six places on the regular. We have Elizabeth Station, Ritual Records, Avenue Bread (downtown), Third Planet, Stones Throw (Brewery) and Harris (Avenue) Café.
What other forms of art do you work in?
Connor: I’ve been doing graphic design for many years. But my main goal right now is trying to become a tattooer. So I’m spending all my time working on flash sheets and stuff, trying to get my chops up.
Gil: Give me a pen and paper, and I’ll just go. It could be poems, drawings. I’ll write songs. I produce music. I do sound engineering stuff. We met through graphic design. That’s the avenue that we got connected. Pretty much any kind of medium there is, I’m down to give it a try.
What would you like to do, for your life’s journey or your career?
Connor: Me and my partner want to get some land, do the whole farmstead thing. Do tattoos, live on a farm with some dogs and some chickens. Live it up.
Gil: I have really enjoyed doing ‘Slackage,’ and it’s honestly been trajectory-shifting. It brings so much value to me, to be connected with other creative people and to have that connection be authentic. It makes me feel so secure and like, understanding how I orient myself in the world. So I’ve continued to take the energy that we started with ‘Slackage’ and I am taking my interviews to a podcast format. ‘Almost Beachglass Interviews’ is what I’ll be moving forward doing.
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