Iffy Books | 404 S. 20th St., PHL

Zine Camp 2022 in Rotterdam: Virtual Zine Swap
2022-11-05 - 2022-11-06 | WORM (Rotterdam), Boomgaardsstraat 71, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Virtual Zine Swap & IFFY Books
November 5–6, 2022
12:00–20:00 [Rotterdam time]
Also this year the Virtual Zine Swap is active again. This is a program which can accessed both at the physical location and online!
The idea is that you upload a PDF or HTML of your zines for others to download, and also download zines yourself! We want to encourage the swap aspect of zine festivals but also in a safe and easy way for everyone, including those who are unable to join IRL.
This year we added special zines from IFFY books. This philladelphia collective is focused on hacking, free culture and permacomputing.
In order to take part in the physical location, please bring a USB with your own contribution, but also plenty of space to download other’s zines. The online version will be accessible via a username and password which will be released via our socials on the evening of Friday 4th.
Let’s get swapping!
https://zinecamp2022.hotglue.me/?misc

✏️ The Writing Room at Iffy Books
2022-11-09 17:00 - 20:00, 2022-11-16 17:00 - 20:00, 2022-11-23 17:00 - 20:00, 2022-12-07 17:00 - 20:00, 2022-12-14 17:00 - 20:00, 2022-12-28 17:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Want to get some writing done?
Come co-work with other writers from 5–8 p.m. at Iffy Books. Writers and projects of any type are welcome. The session will be organized into three 40-minute units of silent writing with 10-minute breaks and accountability check-ins in-between.
BYO coffee, water, computer chargers, notepads, etc. See you there!

🎥 FFmpeg Workshop
2022-11-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Thursday, November 10th at 7:00 p.m. we’ll host a free workshop on FFmpeg, an essential command-line tool for transcoding audio and video files (i.e., converting them from one format to another).
Here’s our zine on FFmpeg, which covers Windows, macOS, and Linux:
• Screen reading PDF
• Print-imposed PDF
Registration (optional but helpful):

☀️ Solar Circuit Bending Workshop at The Chocolate Factory
2022-11-12 12:00 - 14:00 | The Chocolate Factory, 2201 Margaret St., Philadelphia, PA, 19137, United States
On Saturday, November 12th from noon to 2 p.m. we’re running our Solar Circuit Bending Workshop at The Chocolate Factory (2201 Margaret St., PHL). It’s part of a music & electronics festival called Velocities, which runs from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Hope to see you there!
In this workshop you’ll build a tiny solar-powered musical instrument. You’ll start by building a simple oscillator circuit using two NOT gates to generate a square wave. Then you’ll add a push switch and a potentiometer to adjust the pitch. Beginners are welcome! Each participant will get a free kit with a breadboard and all the components.
This workshop is full!

Saturday November 12th, Meantime will host Velocities, a one time special event in the Philadelphia Blumenthal Chocolate Factory. Highlighting analog culture, the event features a vendor marketplace curated by Now+Then Marketplace, modular synth sounds by Modular on the Spot Philly, and a series of workshops and musical performances!
The event takes place on the first and second floors of the currently vacant, concrete-frame factory whose historic structure was the birthplace of the iconic SnoCaps, Goobers and Raisinets among other candies. The market section will host 40 local artists, artisans, and collectors with handmade and vintage products, including vinyl, books, art, and fashion, as well as local food and non-alcoholic beverage vendors. Attendees will be invited to adventure through a modular synth garden with Philadelphia-based musicians creating unique sounds in the reverberant space. Musical equipment manufacturers and artists will be on hand to help guests see, touch and test-drive new and vintage modular components at the synth swap meet. Workshops led by Iffy Books and Sound Museum Collective are open to the public throughout the day on site. Rounding out the evening , attendees are welcomed to a quadraphonic performance by artists including draft/ patch/ weave, Chris Powell, Tina Kalakay, and Phil Yeah.

Event info on Eventbrite

🪡 Hands-On Darning Workshop
2022-11-13 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Sunday, November 13th at 1:00 p.m. we’ll host a darning workshop and mending session. Total beginners welcome!
Register:

Bleeding Control Basics
2022-11-17 19:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Presented by Philadelphia SRA, Bleeding Control Basics will go over first aid as it applies to severe bleeding. We will cover scene safety, injury assessment, basic bleeding control, and tourniquet application. This class doesn’t provide any kind of certification, and is just meant to provide essential information to as many people as possible.
This workshop is free.
Register:

🐘 An introduction to Mastodon & the fediverse
2022-11-19 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Are you looking for an alternative to Twitter? Join us Saturday, November 19th at 1:00 p.m. for a Mastodon/fediverse onboarding session with Nelson Chu Pavlosky (@skyfaller@jawns.club). Nelson is an admin and mod at jawns.club, a Philly-centric Mastodon instance.
You’ll learn about Mastodon‘s history, how it works, and how it fits into the wider fediverse. We’ll help you get set up if you don’t have an account, and we’ll recommend people you might want to follow.
➡️ Video Link
Register (optional but helpful):

💾🌾 Permacomputing Meetup
2022-11-20 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Our next permacomputing meetup is on Sunday, November 20th at 1:00 PM EST. You can join us in person at Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St. #3E, PHL) or via Jitsi audio stream.
➡️ Jitsi Stream Link

Closed Thursday, 11/24
2022-11-24 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
We’ll be closed on Thursday, November 24th. On Friday we’ll open at noon and close at 9 p.m.
Photo by CakeWalk

◼️ Philly ABC Monthly Letter Writing Event
2022-11-28 18:30 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Monday, November 28th the Philadelphia Anarchist Black Cross is hosting their monthly letter writing event at Iffy Books. Come out and write letters to anarchist prisoners!
What is Anarchist Black Cross (ABC)?
ABC chapters around the world autonomously support people who are imprisoned for their thoughts and actions for justice and freedom from oppression, also known as political prisoners or prisoners of war. It is an extension of the work begun by the Political Red Cross in the late 19th century supporting political prisoners in Tsarist prisons or labor camps. PRC not only provided aid, but many times assisted in the planned escapes from prisons or places of exile. In 1907, the Anarchist Red Cross formed and branched out internationally to support both anarchist and socialist revolutionaries in prison and exile, since revolutionaries with these movements had begun to be excluded from the PRC’s support. With the rise of a new dictatorship in Russia, the ARC reorganized in 1919 as the Anarchist Black Cross. During the Spanish Civil War and WWII, ABCs comprised mostly of Russian Jews aided anarchist comrades fleeing from fascist persecution as well as those arrested in the resistance movements throughout Europe.*
In 1979, Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, an anarchist political prisoner in the US at the time, issued a “Draft Proposal for an ABC Network” in hopes that it would initiate a united mass movement rather than individual collectives. This proposal influenced the growth of ABC for over a decade, and in 1995 several groups banded together to form the ABC Federation of which Philly ABC is still a member. In addition to roughly a dozen chapters across so-called North America, there are chapters in South America, Europe and Asia. As anarchists, we support a diversity of tactics and aim to support current political prisoners as they see fit. Most chapters on Turtle Island prioritize support for Black and Indigenous liberation struggles in addition to people from anarchist and other anti-authoritarian movements.

Reading Group: 'Parable of the Sower' by Octavia E. Butler
2022-11-30 19:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
For our November reading group we’ll discuss Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. See you there!

💾 Philly 2600 Meetup
2022-12-02 18:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
The Philly 2600 meetup in December will be at Iffy Books on Friday, 12/2, starting around 6:00 p.m. See you then!
The January Philly 2600 meetup is at 30th Street Station.
The Philly 2600 meeting is a monthly gathering of local hackers, phreaks, nerds, geeks, activists, tinkerers, developers, infosec professionals, and other interesting people.
Philly 2600 has been meeting since the early ’90s, and was one of the first 2600 meetings started by 2600 Magazine. 2600 meetings are open to all technology enthusiasts who want mingle, teach a topic, learn something new, or hang out with like-minded people. We meet in a completely public and open area to keep things as safe and accessible as possible.
➡️ Philly 2600 Code of Conduct

📘 Reading & discussion with Mary F.E. Ebeling, author of 'Afterlives of Data: Life and Debt Under Capitalist Surveillance'
2022-12-03 14:00 - 16:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Join us Saturday, December 3rd at 2:00 p.m. for a reading & discussion with Mary F.E. Ebeling, author of Afterlives of Data: Life and Debt Under Capitalist Surveillance (University of California Press, 2022).
➡️ Video Stream Link
What our health data tell American capitalism about our value—and how that controls our lives.
Afterlives of Data follows the curious and multiple lives that our data live once they escape our control. Mary F. E. Ebeling’s ethnographic investigation shows how information about our health and the debt that we carry becomes biopolitical assets owned by healthcare providers, insurers, commercial data brokers, credit reporting companies, and platforms. By delving into the oceans of data built from everyday medical and debt traumas, Ebeling reveals how data about our lives come to affect our bodies and our life chances and to wholly define us.
Investigations into secretive data collection and breaches of privacy by the likes of Cambridge Analytica have piqued concerns among many Americans about exactly what is being done with their data. From credit bureaus and consumer data brokers like Equifax and Experian to the secretive military contractor Palantir, this massive industry has little regulatory oversight for health data and works to actively obscure how it profits from our data. In this book, Ebeling traces the health data—medical information extracted from patients’ bodies—that are digitized and repackaged into new data commodities that have afterlives in database lakes and oceans, algorithms, and statistical models used to score patients on their creditworthiness and riskiness. Critical and disturbing, Afterlives of Data examines how Americans’ data about their health and their debt are used in the service of marketing and capitalist surveillance.
Registration (optional but helpful):

🎵 Modular 101: A Crash Course in Modular Synthesis with Jerry Kaba
2022-12-08 19:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Modular Synths 101: In this crash course you will learn the basics of sound design with a modular synthesizer. We will cover all the basic components from shaping sound waves to the end of chain effects, a little synth history, and debate west coast vs east coast style! No experience needed. This is an introductory workshop! There will be a number of synths to explore and practice your newfound wisdom on!
Register:

🌅 UnTechCon 1 Meetup at Iffy Books
2022-12-10 06:00 - 12:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Join us at Saturday, December 10th at 6:00 a.m. (yes, really) until noon and participate in UnTechCon 1! It’s a virtual unconference organized by Geeks for Social Change in the UK.
We’ll have coffee and donuts!
UnTechCon 1 FAQ
Learn more and buy tickets for UnTechCon
Register for the meetup:

❄️ Philly Makers Syndicate Presents: A Holiday Vendor Bender!
2022-12-10 15:00 - 21:00 | First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, 2125 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Philly Makers Syndicate presents: A Holiday Vendor Bender!
3–9 PM, December 10th at The First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia
– 25+ vendors and 4 bands upstairs between two rooms at The First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. There will be hot food available in the connecting hallway between spaces.
– The church has a BYOB WITH A STRICT NO GLASS POLICY. That said, there will be a Spike-Your-Own-Hot-Cider donation bar to benefit The Coalition for Black Trans Economic Liberation.
– The inside area and bathrooms are fully accessible with wheelchair accessible ramps to get in/out for patrons and vendors. There are also bathrooms down the stairs and to the right.

◼️ Philly ABC Fundraiser
2022-12-11 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Sunday, December 11th we’ll host a fundraiser for Philadelphia Anarchist Black Cross. Stay tuned for more details!
What is Anarchist Black Cross (ABC)?
ABC chapters around the world autonomously support people who are imprisoned for their thoughts and actions for justice and freedom from oppression, also known as political prisoners or prisoners of war. It is an extension of the work begun by the Political Red Cross in the late 19th century supporting political prisoners in Tsarist prisons or labor camps. PRC not only provided aid, but many times assisted in the planned escapes from prisons or places of exile. In 1907, the Anarchist Red Cross formed and branched out internationally to support both anarchist and socialist revolutionaries in prison and exile, since revolutionaries with these movements had begun to be excluded from the PRC’s support. With the rise of a new dictatorship in Russia, the ARC reorganized in 1919 as the Anarchist Black Cross. During the Spanish Civil War and WWII, ABCs comprised mostly of Russian Jews aided anarchist comrades fleeing from fascist persecution as well as those arrested in the resistance movements throughout Europe.*
In 1979, Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, an anarchist political prisoner in the US at the time, issued a “Draft Proposal for an ABC Network” in hopes that it would initiate a united mass movement rather than individual collectives. This proposal influenced the growth of ABC for over a decade, and in 1995 several groups banded together to form the ABC Federation of which Philly ABC is still a member. In addition to roughly a dozen chapters across so-called North America, there are chapters in South America, Europe and Asia. As anarchists, we support a diversity of tactics and aim to support current political prisoners as they see fit. Most chapters on Turtle Island prioritize support for Black and Indigenous liberation struggles in addition to people from anarchist and other anti-authoritarian movements.

⚡️ Beginner Circuit Workshop
2022-12-11 15:30 - 17:30 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Sunday, December 11th at 3:30 p.m. we’ll host an electronics workshop for beginners! We’ll use A Beginner’s Guide to Circuits by Øyvind Nydal Dahl as our guide, and we’ll have kits for sale with all the components you’ll need. We’ll also have parts everyone can share.
Stay tuned for more info and registration!
Register:

💻 Command Line Beginners Meetup
2022-12-15 18:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Thursday, November 13th from 6–9 p.m. we’ll host a meetup for folks who are learning about the command line. Bring a laptop if you have one! Any OS is fine: macOS, Windows, or Linux. We’ll have drinks and snacks!
This will be an informal meetup, without a set program or start time. We’ll have a few command-line experts on hand to answer questions and demonstrate whatever tools people are interested in.

☎️ PhilTel Payphone Install Party
2022-12-17 14:00 - 17:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Saturday, December 17th starting at 2 p.m., the folks at PhilTel will install a free payphone on the wall outside Iffy Books and we’ll have a party to celebrate. See you there!
Iffy Books is located at 319 N. 11th St. #3E, PHL (third floor). At the entrance, ring the doorbell labeled “Vox Populi” and we’ll let you in. We encourage wearing a mask.
The entrance to our building has five steps up to a landing where you can get on the elevator. Send an email to iffybooks@iffybooks.net if you’ll need help with a mobility device, or if you have questions.
PhilTel in the news:

As last pay phones disappear in Philly, new project envisions a free network of cloud-based kiosks to make calls (Philly Voice)
PhilTel wants to bring pay phones back to Philadelphia, for free calls (Philadelphia Inquirer)
A volunteer collective is setting up free pay phones in Philadelphia (CNN.com)
Free pay phones coming to Philadelphia for people without cell phones (KYW Radio)
Volunteers in Philadelphia have plan to reinvent public phones (CBS Philly)

💾🌾 Permacomputing Meetup
2022-12-18 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Our next permacomputing meetup is on Sunday, December 18th at 1:00 PM EST. You can join us in person at Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St. #3E, PHL) or via Jitsi audio stream.
➡️ Jitsi Stream Link

✨ Iffy Market at Black Box
2022-12-21 16:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Iffy Market is on! Presented by Iffy Books and Bonk, with help from Vox Populi.

When: Wednesday, December 21st from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Where: The Black Box space at Vox Populi, across the hall from Iffy Books Address: 319 N. 11th St., PHL (3rd floor)

Books & Zines:Dead Drop DistroHere and Now ZinesIffy BooksPrayers ZineSam StoneThe Wooden ShoeViscera PVD
Art:Big Baby PokesDre GrigoropolJuan Tang HonLost MiragePet Riso
Fashion:Bee Daddy & SonsBunny EnoHello Pepper WorldKayChainz5000
The entrance to our building has five steps up to a landing where you can get on the elevator. Send an email to iffybooks@iffybooks.net if you’ll need help with a mobility device, or if you have questions.
We have three all-gender restrooms on our floor.
See you there!

Bleeding Control Basics
2022-12-22 19:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Presented by Philadelphia SRA, Bleeding Control Basics will go over first aid as it applies to severe bleeding. We will cover scene safety, injury assessment, basic bleeding control, and tourniquet application. This class doesn’t provide any kind of certification, and is just meant to provide essential information to as many people as possible.
This workshop is free.
Register (optional but helpful):

🌧 Closing at 8 p.m. due to unpleasant weather
2022-12-23 14:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
We’re closing up an hour early tonight (at 8 p.m.) so we can get home before the worst of the cold. See you next week in our new space!

Closed December 24th & 25th
2022-12-24 - 2022-12-25
We’re closed December 24th and 25th. Sorry for the inconvenience!
We’ll reopen Wednesday, December 28th in room #2I, our new space on the second floor.
