Herstory of SHarecon

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Title:	Herstory of SHarecon
Creator:	April Valentine
Date(s):	2000
Medium:	print, online
Fandom:	Starsky & Hutch
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Herstory of SHarecon, ^{Archived version}

Herstory of SHarecon is a 2000 essay by April Valentine.

It was written for SHareCon and printed in that con's con zine by the same name: SHareCon.

Some Topics Discussed

• the history of SHareCon
• the history of Starsky & Hutch fandom
• the rise of the fandom as new "competition" to Star Trek fandom
• the Starsky & Hutch fandom as one of "sharing"
• Valentine's personal journey as a fan
• slash
• this fandom as the birthplace of song vids

Excerpts

Then, I found out that not only were fans defecting from Trek in their conversations, they were writing SH and doing zines. I don't know when the first Star Wars zine came out but I recall that the first SH zine, Zebra III edited by Lorraine B., came out while the show was still on, in 1977. It contained some of the best fan fiction I'd ever read, including the famous "Mojave Crossing" by the great Connie F. Connie was a writer, an artist, a costumer and a zine innovator from Trek and one of the first to move into the exciting new universes presented by Starsky and Hutch and Star Wars.

Sometime around 1984 or so, I began to think about Starsky and Hutch again. It was off the air but I knew people who were into it and they supplied me with the first tapes and my first slash zines in SH. Those who are new to fandom may not realize what those early slashers had to go through. The theme was unconventional, daring, even illegal in some states. Friendships were broken up over whether someone "saw" characters in a slash relationship or not. Printers were throwing out masters of zines , threatening to destroy photographs of illos. In SH fandom, you could only find the slash if you knew someone who knew about it. It was like a secret society. The first S/H zine was published without names of either authors or artists. One editor published her slash pages on paper with wavy red lines making it practically impossible to read the pages, much less to Xerox them. (You needed a little pair of 3D glasses or even a piece of red acetate to hold over the page would do.) I heard a story that at ZebraCon people were secretly holding a slash party—but it turned out that most of the fans at the con ended up at the party after all.

The first SHareCon committee consisted of, I believe, Maria F., Nancy G., Jennifer H., and I, with help from others. We sent out invitations to a large SH party, letting people know it was going to be an all SH weekend. We held it at the Embassy Suites hotel in Hunt Valley, Maryland, where they had a big room we used for hanging out together and all the sleeping rooms were suites. We stayed up late, acted out stories, fell over laughing, ate too much, played trivia and shared our memorabilia 'til we dropped.

SHarecon has always had plenty of stuff to do. Not only are there episodes and vids and rare TV and movie bits to watch, we also play games. The infamous SH Charades was begun at SHarecon. We also played games like Pin the Bullet Wound on Starsky and Pin the Boo-Boo on Blondie, the $20,000 Torino (after the game show, $20,000 Pyramid), various trivia games—including the difficult and very uncomfortable Trivia Twister in which you couldn't move unless you answered the question right . . . but you weren't sure you wanted to move even if you did. (I put my right foot on the blue circle? Oh no! That means I'll be sitting on Maria's thigh!) We also did Win, Lose or Illo and eventually such favorites as Bowling for Bimbos, in which you had to knock down pins with the pictures of such characters as the Foxy Lady, and one where you dropped a clothes pin into a bucket with a bad guy's face . . . I don't remember the name for that one, but I'm sure that's okay.

Later on, as the originators of SHarecon weren't as involved any more, the title of the get-together mutated into SH:101, so named because we were likening it to a course of study on the college level in Starsky and Hutch. After we passed SH:103, the reigns were taken over by newer, fresher fans and Kim S. held SHarecon in Virginia.

By then, the Internet was going strong. A whole new tier of SH fans was on the scene that year and as I met them all in a group, I tend to remember they all joined the fandom at around the same time, although they'd mostly just met in person at the con. It was great to have new blood in the fandom, new enthusiasm, new writers. I believe the most recent SHarecon was held by me in 1997, again back at our old stomping grounds, the Embassy Suites in Hunt Valley.