noah | February 19, 2009 10:30 am

The story of how the 1986 documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot went viral in the pre-Internet days, a tale that’s full of fan-made boxes, bands passing VHS tapes around on tour, and the old days of community-access TV: “In the first years of Heavy Metal Parking Lot’s existence, viewers may have been drawn primarily to the simple joys of laughing at shitfaced teens, but time has transformed the video from a mere and increasingly distant moment-a pirate transmission from the past, reminding us how life was once lived otherwise.” [triplecanopy; HT Andrew]