In an unfortunate turn of events, Goth Help Us San Diego was dissolved on Monday, September 10, 2007. Goth Help Us International seems to be taking a new direction as they have updated their bylaws and excused the San Diego chapter after a year of good works. The Goth Help Us, San Diego chapter was considered to be the flagship chapter of Goth Help Us and the chapter received some notable public exposure. With talk of a new direction and rumors of a religious direction for the new Goth Help Us vision, it may be rocky times for other Goth Help Us chapters in the near future. Full Story »

By: Chris Stead

Goth Help Us is a humanity based group focused on what the Goth culture can do for humanity, as the motto says, “Serving humanity from the underground up.” Started by Rebecca Hohm in mid-July of 2006, this organization that has been around for a mere 1 year has been growing by leaps an bounds. It is understandable with the fact that Goths are generally emotionally driven people, and helping humanity is something that gives an emotional being an outlet. Aside from the overall goodwill that is felt by people that are helped by this organization, Goth Help Us is also empowering Goths to redefine how the mainstream views our subculture. This has been demonstrated quite well by the San Diego chapter which we talked about in the May issue. Rebecca was good enough to give us some of her time amidst her increasingly busy schedule of good works. Full Story »

By: Chris Stead

Synchonicity is the best way to describe the chain of events that occurred to make Goth Help Us San Diego happen as it did. A negative act with positive repercussions. Goth Help Us as a whole is still a new organization and at the precise time that was necessary to get everything moving in the right direction, a wrong was done. Jim Howard, the current president of Goth Help Us San Diego, and a small group of friends and family were accosted on the street by a number of drunk, belligerent people. As Jim was assaulted it was made clear that he and his group was chosen due to their subculture affiliation. This can be otherwise known as a “hate crime.” The courts will not recognize this attack as a hate crime at this time.

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By: Chris Stead and Rebecca Davis

Okey dokey folks, Rebecca come up with yet another fun and fairly easy project this go-round. If you have a bunch of stuff laying around that you would really like to have framed and hanging on your wall, then this is the project for you. Being that I spent several years working as a professional framer, hopefully I will be able to shed a little light on how to best accomplish some of the trickier parts of construction. No, we are not going to tell you how to frame anything and everything. There isn’t enough space in this single article for that. This one is specifically for producing a shadowbox, or a deep-framed piece to display 3-D objects. Let us know if you want to know more, though, let us know in the comments section and we will come up with a new, spiffy framing project to do.

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By: Chris Stead and Rebecca Davis

This month Rebecca was talking to me and telling me that she realizes that lots of Goths have a ton of jewelry. With this in mind, they need some place to store it. Personally I am guilty of being particularly bad about how I store my silver. So, the solution is, of course, a jewelry box! This one takes some prep and a little bit of forethought, so it’s probably best to give yourself a bit of time to gather everything that you will need for the project.

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By: Chris Stead

Creating your own Gothic Candle Holder

This month Rebecca shows us how to take an old piece of architectural salvage and turn it into a candle holder that can be hung on the wall. Before you dive headlong into this project, there are a few things that you are going to need to find and buy. You will want to find an appropriate piece of architectural salvage, some wire and either tea light holders or shot glasses to hold candles in. Now, here’s how we did it:

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By: Asherra

In the past few years the gothic community has been relatively blessed with the popularity of classic Victorian Christmas decorations featuring a dark pallet of rich velvets, deep reds, blues, and greens. Simple decorations for elegant holiday décor including white or cream colored lights, velvet table runners with gold or silver lacing, and beautiful velvet bows. Last year I even managed to find a beautiful tree topping angel decorated in silver wings and a black velvet dress (Of course I lost it in my move.) This year our luck is running out! The holiday fad this year is (dare is say it?!?) RETRO! Yes, that’s right folks. This year expect to see strings of large multi colored Christmas lights, kitschy miniature ornaments, and a definite lack of black. While you may still be able to find ornaments and decorations to suit your gothic style, the pickings are going to be definitively sparser. Later on in this article I will give you a few crafty ideas to add to your décor collection however at this point, I’ll start you off with a few general decorating tips.

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By: Chris Stead

This month Rebecca graced us with a re-vamp of a message board. If you’re not familiar with message and photo boards, they are boards, covered in batting and hung from a wall where you can put messages, photos, fliers or whatever. We are not going to make one from scratch. This would involve machinery that most people don’t keep around their houses. Instead we found a message board at a junk shop that could be recovered, revamped and remade into a Gothy accent piece. Here’s how:

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By: Chris Stead

So, you want to Goth up your house but you are running on a tight budget? Do you think that this is an impossible task? I say absolutely not! This is exactly what thrift stores were made for! Now before you go out and start shopping wildly for anything and everything that you can find for near nothing at the thrift stores there are a few things that you need to know in preparation.

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By: Chris Stead

This month we have two projects to help you Goth up your living space, one small and one a little larger. Let’s take a look.

Pillow coverings:

Anyone can come up with cheap pillows. But how do you take those cheap pillows and make them into something that you would actually want around your house? There are just a few simple steps to follow to take old, boring pillows and make them much more exciting. Full Story »

By: Chris Stead

Last month we took a look at Shannon’s story regarding the start of GOTHIC. She had so much to say about her organization that we couldn’t fit it all in one article. This month we get down to some of the basic questions that you might ask if you had the opportunity.

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By: Asherra

As a full fledged, black eyeliner wearing, JTHM reading, coffin purse toting Goth, I understand the significance that All Hallows Eve holds for the Gothic community. Goth’s are known for their love of the spooky, impeccable grasp of vintage noir, and no holds barred Halloween parties. However, Goth’s are NOT known for having an over abundance of money. In fact, most of us are downright broke.

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By: Chris Stead

We have all heard the stories about children being preyed upon while on the Internet. Internet predation is becoming a larger problem each day and the police don’t have enough manpower to combat this issue on their own. Now there is a group called GOTHIC, which stands for Goths Out To Help Internet Children. This organization specializes in tracking Internet predators and reporting the information that is gathered to the police. Shannon Hunter runs this organization, which has been running for about 2 weeks now.

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