Art by Brian Wallsby

Maureen Tucker had a front row seat to punk rock history being conceived before her very eyes. An average high school girl from Levittown, Long Island, her life was saved by rock ‘n’ roll when she heard the Rolling Stones on the car radio. From the Velvet Underground to Andy Warhol to Nico and Edie Sedgwick, Moe was there—making history herself as the first female drummer in one of the most revolutionary bands of all time.

It was rumored that Maureen joined the Tea Party in the southern state she now calls home, but thank God I interviewed her before the Tea Party was ever even conceived. I hate talking about politics.                                     

ORIGINS

I started playing drums when the Rolling Stones came along, because they were too much for me! I was driving home from work and “Not Fade Away” came on the radio. I almost died. Actually, I had to pull off the road. I was on the Hempstead Turnpike in Levittown and I pulled off the road, I just couldn't believe this. Holy shit, I thought. What's this?

I went directly to Sterling Morrison's wife's house—she was my best friend—and her sister flipped out too. So I zoomed directly to her house and I said, “Kathy! Listen to what I just I heard! Let's go get it!"

We ran to the local department store, bought the album, and went home and played that thing until it was white. We were just like, “Oh my God, this is phenomenal!

Then, a while later, I said, "Well this is no fun. I've got to have something to do while I'm listening to this,” so I bought a snare drum. I was about 19 or 20. About a week after I got the snare drum, Dot Parker's sister bought me a little cymbal with a little stand that you could hook onto the snare drum. So I had this cymbal and this snare drum, and boy, I would sit there for hours, like eight hours, no kidding, and just play that thing over and over. And just play it and play it. That's how I started.

I didn’t know of any other girls that were playing drums, but it never occurred to me to care. It wasn’t an issue. There was never any question by anybody. There was never a remark or a comment by anybody, including other musicians. No one ever said, "Oh a girl playing drums, that’s not cool." It was just no big deal. It seems they make more of it today than they did then.

JOINING THE VELVET UNDERGROUND

I didn’t really audition for the drumming job in the Velvet Underground. I don't know if I'd call it an audition! See, I’d known Sterling Morrison since I was twelve, and Sterling was friends with my brother and my brother had become friends with Lou Reed at Syracuse—they both went to Syracuse University.

That's also how Sterling met Lou. And Sterling had been playing with Lou Reed, John Cale, and Angus MacLise for about six months to a year. Then they got a job where they were going to get paid and Angus thought that was not right, so he quit. So they had this job and they needed a drummer fast. And Sterling knew that I was banging away on drums in my room, so he said, "Oh, Tucker's sister plays drums…."

I’d met Lou once or twice before he came to see me play in my room. He was waiting for my brother or something—he was just hanging out in my living room. But I'd never sat and talked to him. When he came to see me play, I didn't have enough time to decide if I liked him or not—but I came to love Lou.

At Syracuse, Lou and my brother, Jim, were great friends. They spent their college years hanging around a place called the Orange, drinking beers and bullshitting, ya know? That's where they met Delmore Schwartz, as well as a couple of other people, like Garland Jeffries. But I never went up to visit them because I was still in high school, ha, ha!

So Lou came out to hear if I could actually play anything and it was just supposed to be for that one show, at Summit High School in New Jersey. And I was a nervous wreck when we played that show. We were allowed to play three songs and we had practiced them at John Cale's loft. We played, “Waiting For My Man,” “Heroin,” and I think the third one was “Venus In Furs.” We were playing with this band, the Myddle Class, who were a bunch of real handsome boys and the place was packed because they were a local sensation. But the audience was just stunned after we played.

Our set was only about 15 minutes at the most and in each song something of mine broke. All my stuff was falling apart! The foot pedal broke in one song, the leg of the floor tom started going loose. I thought, Oh shit, I'm going to ruin this!

Lou probably didn't even notice. I'm sure he didn't. I'm sure he was nervous enough as it was—not that he was nervous about playing, but this was like playing a supper club, the audience was sitting in upholstered seats. And I had these horrible drums—I only had a snare drum when I first started trying to play. And then my mother saw an ad in the local newspaper for a drum set for 50 dollars, so she bought it for me. It was fine. I was just fooling around, but you can imagine this total wreck of a drum set.

But I just kept playing, hahaha!

ANDY WARHOL

We played that show and then immediately got a job at the Café Bizarre, where you weren't allowed to have drums because it was too noisy. So Lou said, "Well, just come and play the tambourine…"

So I went and played the tambourine to “Heroin,” and it was kind of tricky, haha! From then on, I was just there. But there was never any official, "Okay, you're in the band…"

I believe it was Barbara Rubin that brought Andy Warhol to see us play at the Café Bizarre. It was about the third or fourth night we were playing there and I was impressed by Andy. I knew who he was; of course, I knew he was hot shit at the time. Andy was always in Time magazine. And I thought, Oh, that's cool, ya know?

I'm not much into art. I'm very bad at art as a matter of fact, I don’t know nothing about it. I know what I like—and I did think the tomato soup cans were kind of cool, but that's really all I knew about Andy. Apparently he had been looking for a band to play with this idea of having a multimedia show. I guess you can call it a show. And Barbara Rubin thought we would fit the bill.

Andy liked us immediately and we just talked about his idea for the multi-media show, which, at that time, was still just an idea. Then he asked us if we wanted to do this, and we agreed.

The Café Bizarre fired us shortly after Andy came to see us. The manager or the owner said, "If you play another song like the “Black Angel’s Death Song,” you're fired!" So we launched into another song like that and we were fired. Which was fine with me, because it was Christmas week, and I didn't feel like spending Christmas Eve at the Café Bizarre. I was glad we got fired.

I lived on Long Island; and I would come in to the city every weekend to hang out at the Factory. It was just great. It was like a bar, ya know? A good place to hang out with all sorts of interesting people, like Ondine, Gerard Malanga, Ronnie Cutrone, and all those other people, and they were funny as shit. I’d just lie around and watch Andy make drawings, ya know? Andy was great. I really, really liked him a lot. We had a lot of fun. So we really had a good time at the Factory.  

I was totally naïve. I had never been anywhere or done anything and here I was sitting in the Factory with Andy Warhol. I was very insecure and shy—that’s why I wore shades on stage, I was embarrassed! And Andy could have very easily made me feel like shit, just by not talking to me. That would have done it, ya know?

But he was never like that. Andy made me feel not just welcome—but very welcome, and that meant a lot to me. I liked him a lot. I used to call him, “Sweets.” Andy was famous for being cheap and I would drive in for the weekend from Long Island and I needed money for gas to get home. In those days it took two dollars to fill the tank and I'd say to Andy on Sunday afternoon, "All right Sweets, I need some money…”

Andy would be like, "Oh, oh, just a minute…"

And he would wander off somewhere, hoping I'd go away! It turned into this shtick and everybody would be waiting for me to start the fight with Andy and chase him around the Factory. You know, "You son of a bitch, give me some damn money!"

"Oh, oh, oh just a minute Mo…"

Andy had these silver balloons he was making. I guess it was art, something I didn’t know shit about. So when he first was doing the silver balloons, I came to the Factory on the weekend and he was just finishing them. There was maybe four or five of them floating around, I walked in and Andy says, "Oh Mo, look at my beautiful balloons…”

I said, "Who do you think's going to buy this shit?"

Andy said, "Oh, oh, oh, oh no, people will like them…"

Then the next day, or a week later, he sold them for $3,000!

Boy Andy worked like a dog. He was always working, if not actually creating art—he was on the phone, planning something. He’d say to Lou and John, “You have to write a song every day." I don’t think he said it every day, but I remember it as a joke, but not really a joke. Ya know, "How many songs did you write today Lou?"

They’d say, "Two."

And Andy would say, "Only two?"

Andy Warhol, Maureen Tucker, and Lou Reed

NICO

Nico came in pretty early, the reason I'm saying that is because we have pictures of her singing with us in the Factory when we were just fooling around. And that was real early, at the old Factory. Andy didn't bring Nico up to me in particular. He didn’t push her on us, because we wouldn’t let anyone push us into anything. I'm sure he just said "Hey, maybe she should sing a song…"

And we said, "Well, we'll try it..."

I think the songs Nico did sing were great, and none of us could have come anywhere near singing them the way she did. But Nico and I didn't really have anything in common. I didn't dislike her, but we never really sat around talking. She was from a whole different world than I was. I mean, I was this goofball from Levittown ya know? I mean how cool can you be if you’re from Levittown? And she was this Nordic beauty!

About ten years ago, well, it was probably twelve to fourteen years ago, I was living in Arizona and playing with some kids, we had a little band and we got a job to play a gig in California. And when we got there, we saw Nico's name on the Whiskey a Go Go marquee, and I said, "Oh, should I go?"

I hadn't seen her in almost 20 years and, as I said, we were never great friends, we weren't enemies, but we weren't friends. I really didn't know if I'd just get a bored, "Hey, how're you doing?”

But I said, "Maybe I should go say hello to her…?"

So I went back to the Whiskey when I knew she'd be coming in to do her show and she was just thrilled to death to see me. It was so nice. I'm so glad that happened, especially since she died. She really was happy to see me. So after her show—and mine—we met back at the mote. Nico, me and a couple of her people and a couple of my guys sat around drinking beers and talking—and it was really nice.

Right when Nico came into the Velvets is when we played the Psychiatrists Convention at the Delmonico Hotel. Holy shit, that was so funny. Why they asked us, I don't know. It wasn't like a concert; it was like dinner with two hundred psychiatrists and us—these freaks from the Factory. We played maybe two songs or something, and afterwards people like Gerard Malanga and Barbara Rubin assaulted the audience with their tape recorders and cameras, going to tables and asking these ridiculous questions. And the psychiatrists were flabbergasted. I just sat back and said, "What the hell are we doing here?"

I guess all these shrinks thought maybe they'd take notes or something, ha, ha, ha!

It didn’t get much publicity, there was one little story, it was just something like, “WARHOL'S NUTS GO TO PSYCHIATRISTS CONVENTION!” And it got mentioned in the New York Times, but it wasn't a big affair. I mean they were just having a convention and I guess they needed some entertainment, so they got all the freaks from the Factory, ha, ha, ha!

THE DOM

We used to play at the Dom on St. Marks Place and we had a great time there because it was just us, We rented the space and we would play three or four times a night for a half hour and in between sets we would play records—whatever we wanted. Of course, we brought our own record collections. Lou had a great singles collection, things you never heard of, but each one had this wonderful guitar solo or great bridge or some other great hook. I remember playing River Deep Mountain High so loud that I can't even describe it. It was incredible cause it was big, and, oh man, we played whatever we wanted. So all night we'd hear the music we loved and when we weren't doing that, we'd make music.

We played at the Dom for like a month, and all our friends from Long Island would come in on the weekend and we'd have our own Levittown party, ha, ha! We played every night and there were always people at the Dom. It was always full. And then on the weekends, of course, it was packed. And Andy would be in the balcony with his lights and stuff and we'd run up there in between sets and give him some shit, ha, ha!

It was fun, we had a good time.

But then my drums got stolen, my 50 dollar drum set that my mother bought me. We go there to play and my drums were gone—someone had stolen them. So me and our helper, who had a station wagon, drove around looking to steal some metal garbage pails to use as drums. We found a pair, but they were kind of yucky, so I said, "No, let's keep looking..." So we found the cleanest pair we could and stole them and that's what I used for three or four nights, maybe a week. But that’s the only thing I've ever stolen in my life, as a matter of fact.

The garbage cans sounded great, though. They really did. And I used mallets and we had little contact mikes that we under each drum. The first night the drum was under this pile of yuck that had come off the sides of the can, so we cleaned it up, of course. And the next night the pile of yuck was smaller, and the next night, it was even smaller. Each night I was beating more shit off the inside of the garbage can, so the pile was getting smaller and smaller every night.

Then Andy used our earnings from the Dom to buy me another used set of drums. I always got the shit. The drummer always gets the shit, ha, ha, ha! But we had a real good time at the Dom—it was just like sitting in your living room.

After we played the Dom, we went out on tour. I think we even went to California and stayed at the “Castle.” That was a lot of fun, but not California. We didn't like that peace and love shit, ha, ha, ha! We didn’t like hippies. And we weren’t big fans of the San Francisco sound. We weren't into that stuff, ya know?

Not at all.

When we played the Trip in LA, the sheriff locked our stuff in the club. I don't really know what happened, it wasn't something we had done, it was something the club had done. I just know that when we went to pick up our stuff and it was locked up and we couldn't get it. That got resolved after a few days, but in the meantime, we were in the “Castle” for a couple of weeks, waiting to go play the Fillmore in San Francisco.

And none of us got along with Bill Graham, the owner and promoter of the Fillmore Auditorium, he was a real shit to us. First of all, he threw Sterling out, and when we went on, he said something like, "I hope you fuckers bomb!"

He hated us cause we were from the East Coast. We didn't do anything to him to make him hate us. He just didn't like us from the start and we didn't like him either, so fine.

Unfortunately he is known as the inventor of the light shows and shit, sorry, but we were doing that first. I don't really give a shit except that his reputation is that he started the light show, when he had like two spotlights and maybe a strobe light.

But he didn't start all that, Andy did.

When we were on the road, everyone completely respected me going to Catholic Church on Sundays. I mean they'd tease me and go off on a trip, but every Sunday morning, I’d say, "I need a car to go to church..."

So they'd tease me a little bit, but they respected that a lot and I never had any problem because of it. And when Andy was going to start making a movie now, they’d say, "Oh Mo, we're going to make a movie now..."

And I'd say, "Well, see you," cause I didn't want to see that shit, ha, ha, ha!

The first record we did with our own money. And then we shopped it around. We just recorded it—and then the idea was hopefully a record company would buy it. We didn’t we didn't have a hell of a lot of time; the first record took eight hours. And then, when Verve bought it, they gave us a little more studio time, like five hours or something in California.

Our record company, Verve, never paid royalties and they never distributed us. We’d go play somewhere, in Philadelphia or Boston, and people would pack the place and love it and then say, "Oh we can't find your record!" Everywhere we went, same old thing. I don't know why they signed us? To keep us off the streets? It was a mystery. I mean, why did they sign us? For tax reasons? So they could write us?

So we got screwed by Verve.

THE ROAD

It was also scary touring middle America in those days. John Cale’s hair was about shoulder-length and people would actually say things to him on the street— a guy punched him in Chicago, of all places. Just for having long hair. People were so unhip.

Our bus got stuck in Ohio once and luckily there was a gas station right there. So our big bus pulled in and out pops these thirteen lunatics, and the attendant called the police immediately. So we get out and we sent the most normal person, Sterling Morrison, out to talk to the guy, "Hey do you have a distributor?"

Everybody was out of the bus to stretch our legs and the next thing we know there's State Police surrounding us, saying, "Who's in charge here?"

Someone said, "Andy..."

Someone else said, "No, don't send Andy out!"

We told the cops, "Hey it's broken, we're stuck! What are we going to do?"

It wasn't dark yet, but it was obvious we weren't going to fix it by nightfall. The guy had to send to Detroit to get a part for us, so it was going to be overnight. And the cops told us, "Well you be out of here by noon tomorrow!"

And we had done absolutely nothing wrong. So we go to a motel and we got two rooms. The girls were in one room and the boys were in the other. So we're sitting there, in the middle of nowhere, and there was a honky-tonk bar down the street, so Sterling and I went to get a beer. When we got back, we all went in one room to drink beer and watch TV—and the manager called to complain—cause they were very pissed off that the girls were in the boys' room.

It was nuts.     

When we got back from California, Albert Grossman, Bob Dylan’s manager, had stolen the lease to the Dom and renamed it the Electric Circus. It was supposed to be ours and while we were gone, Grossman had somehow wrangled the lease from the landlord. He said, "Oh they left town," or something. So when we came back, he was running it, so we didn't like Albert Grossman too much either, ha, ha!

We were the Velvet Underground with Nico for about a year, when we were doing the Andy thing. I would say it was about a year, maybe a year and a half. I don't think there was a point when someone said, "Nico’s out of the band..."

We just kind of drifted.

This is a pure speculation on my part, but I don’t think Nico thought of herself as a singer at that point. I think she saw herself as a movie person and a model—and singing with us was just something to do. And maybe having sung with us, she thought, Hey this is neat, I'm pretty good at this! And then she pursued it further, but that's just my opinion.

About that same time, we broke away from Andy. It was just time for us to leave, and stop fooling around—and be a real band, ha, ha, ha!

I don't really know what happened between Lou Reed and John Cale either. I think they just clashed—not all the time—but towards the end there it was just too much of a fight going on. It was about music, but I don't know specifically if John wanted to try this and Lou didn't, or what. But I was hurt by John leaving the band. It was very painful for me. I really like John, not just musically—so it was just a shitty situation.

John still wanted to continue having a band; I guess he thought; Now I’ll do my own stuff… So it wasn't a matter of, “Should we be in John's band? Or Lou's band?” It wasn't like that. It was just like, “Well alright, we'll continue as a band…”

But life's such a drag when that happens.

All throughout my playing with the Velvets, I never thought of it as a career. I never thought of being a musician as a career. It was just that we were having fun and making good music. After the band was over, it was time to get a job.

So Andy hired me to do some transcribing. I'd go to the Factory at Union Square and listen to the tapes and type them up. Andy was making movies and all this shit's going on—and I was sitting there typing away. After about three days, Paul Morrissey came over to see how I was doing and he noticed all these blank spots on the pages. I was leaving blanks.

So Paul said, "What's this?"

I said, "Oh I'm not putting in these disgusting words."

I mean Bridget Polk was cursing and other people were talking dirty on the tapes, and it bothered me, ya know? So I was leaving blanks, where the dirty words went. I was leaving the proper number of spaces for the letters so they could fill it in later.

But Paul went and told Andy, and he comes running up and says, "Oh, oh, oh, Mo you're not putting in the curse words?"

I said, "No, no, you know I don't like that kind of talk."

So he said, "Oh, oh, well could put in the first letter?"

I said, "No, no you'll have to go back and figure it in."

Andy said, "Oh, okay,"

So they had to go back and fill in all the dirty words. 

@Legs__McNeil

Deejay NDN. Photo via Facebook.

When will society move on from branding sports teams with weird outdated colonial imagery? Knowing that it’s a bad idea to name your athletic club after a race of people who have been forced into oppressive residential schools and then into a sterilization program as recently as 42 years ago is not really a progressive concept. But some people just don’t seem to get it.

I grew up in Nepean in the west-end of Ottawa and played hockey for the Nepean Chiefs, our logo was a black chief with a black and red diamond-shaped headdress. At the time I didn’t think much about it. We kicked ass (especially with me in net) but that probably had nothing to do with our name or logo, in the end it was a just minor hockey team and we could have been the Bears or Tigers or, I don't know, some scary other animal.

In August 2012, when Ian Campeau aka Deejay NDN (say it out loud) of the Ottawa DJ all-First Nations group A Tribe Called Red started a social media campaign against the Nepean Redskins football team to get them to change their stupidly racist name, my first instinct was: “Duh, change that stupid name.” Unfortunately, many in the rest of my city didn't agree as radio hosts, newspaper columnists, and people I knew from high school were all: “If the Nepean Redskins name is racist, everything is racist!” It's a kids’ recreational team, not even a “historically relevant” team like the Washington Redskins, people.

Over a year later, after Campeau officially filed a human rights complaint, the Nepean football team caved and changed their name to the Eagles. Meanwhile, a basketball team in the city named themselves the Tomahawks. They eventually settled on “The Hawks,” but come on, get it together Ottawa!

Anyway, some people in Ottawa have not let this go. Some have continued to harass Campeau on social media including one guy who said he would go to his house wearing a head dress and do the tomahawk chop in front of him. Campeau went to the police about that and had to go again this past weekend when someone named “Corey” from rural Ottawa threatened him on Facebook. I spoke with Deejay NDN in Ottawa about what happened and his thoughts on racially charged sports teams.

VICE: Can you explain how these threats have been delivered?
Ian Campeau: I was getting ridiculous unsolicited hateful messages on my personal Facebook and when I replied, the reply was like mad racist and “whatever, wagon burner,” so, I contacted my lawyer because there's stipulations in the agreement that we have with the Nepean football team and if this guy is affiliated with the team then that reflects poorly on the agreement that we have. So, I called my lawyer and she was like: “You need to report that as a hate crime, because it clearly is, so I went to the police.”

Was this “Corey” affiliated with the Redskins?
That hasn't been determined, but this was a just in case sort of thing.

Are the police going to be taking any action to make sure this doesn't escalate any further?
They asked what kind of outcome I would like to see, and I said that I would like for this guy to be contacted by the police and basically be told to smarten up. It's amazing when you send a message on Facebook to somebody you don't know and you don't have the settings put the way you want, you are putting where you sent the message from. So, all three of his messages were from the same address in this rural place, so I guess that's where he's from.

And that's around Ottawa?
Yeah.

What’s up with Ottawa? I grew up playing with the Nepean Chiefs and we also have the Nepean Redskins.
I don't know I don't think it’s Ottawa, I think it’s society in general. Because I grew up here, because you grew up here, we see it happen more often. It's a turning point in society and we're all starting to wake up and see how First Nations are being treated differently and how their images are used as opposed to any other race in North America.

Do you think we've actually hit that turning point?
Yeah, I think so. With Facebook and Twitter we are able to confront a lot of the racism that was typically hidden away. There are a lot of different factors that are happening right now. We're the first generation not be forced into residential schools. So, there's no real surprise that Idle No More or even A Tribe Called Red are happening, because again, we're the first generation that wasn't forced into residential schools. There's this consciousness that is happening right and we're all waking up and confronting this racism. And before we were put on the reserves and we weren't really allowed to leave and this was just 40 or 50 years ago. Now that we're allowed, we're growing and becoming doctors and lawyers. 50 years ago it was illegal to even consult with a lawyer if you were First Nations. So, there are all these leaps and strides that are happening right now and this is our civil rights movement. That's exactly what's happening.

But despite all these things there are still dumb people who go out dressed up like First Nations at your shows in “red face” as you guys called it.
These sort of things have to happen in order for a civil rights movement to happen. We have to take control of our own image and say: “You can't dress like that, that's our image.” And, “You are not allowed to use these words, you are not allowed to say that.” It's going to be a lot of confrontation because it hasn't happened before and because we were forced on reserves, which are out of walking distance of any town or any city, on purpose. The struggle is different now. Before we were out of sight and out of mind, and now with social media there is a level playing field where we are able to confront this racism and discuss problems and even publicly shame people that come out mad racist by outing them on Facebook or Twitter; so there are repercussions for calling me a wagon burner in a private message.

Would getting rid of racist names of major sports teams like the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians make a big difference?
Absolutely. There are no other races being exploited like this for a sports team. Other people argue that you’ve got the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Boston Celtics, but those are all cultures; they’re not races. If you identify with any of those your race is Caucasian. And the biggest difference of all, between those and the monikers of Native teams, are that those teams were made by people who identified with that culture. So, the Fighting Irish is named by an Irish priest, the Celtics' owner was Irish, the Minnesota Vikings' owner was of Scandinavian descent, so that's the major difference. My hockey team on my reserve was called the Warriors with feathers and stuff and I'm totally cool with that, because they’re First Nations and they are allowed to use that.
 

@joelbalsam

All photos by the author

"Fucking cops in Cuba are always busting everybody’s balls."

A man mutters this to me in perfect English as I walk down the once-elegant Calle 23 in downtown Havana. He is the very last customer waiting in a Kafkaesque line that wraps around the block and doubles back on itself twice. The afternoon is stiflingly hot. Two police officers are hassling a nearby teenager because he took off his T-shirt.

"But that’s why things here are so safe," the man continues, much louder this time. I’m confused until I realize another cop is standing behind me. He wandered over after spotting a Cuban nacional talking to me—an American gusano. "Very safe, very safe. You know, because the police do such a good job!"

The officer gives him a long, hard stare, then wanders away. I take my place at the end of the line next to my new buddy, who says his name is Yaniel.

Along with several hundred other Cubans, Yaniel and I are waiting to get into Coppelia, the iconic ice cream parlor created in 1966 by order of Fidel Castro and named for his then-secretary’s favorite ballet. Located across the street from the Habana Libre hotel, a one-time Hilton from which Fidel directed the revolution for three months in 1959, Coppelia has been called the "ultimate democratic ice cream emporium." But, as I quickly find out, that isn’t exactly true.

When the Cubans around me spot a foreign tourist standing with them in the endless queue, they’re quick to inform me that the line we're in is for people using Cuban Pesos—which is to say, most Cubans. As a woman in curlers and a tube top explains, people holding Convertible Pesos, the country’s other currency, aren’t forced to endure such Socialist indignities. Foreigners, like me, carry Convertible Pesos.

She then points to a tiny building surrounded by a well-kept patio and leafy trees offering respite from the blistering mid-summer sun. There is no line at this Coppelia stand and, sitting in the shade are several happy, relaxed-looking people, enjoying their ice cream.

This, in a nutshell, is what having two currencies has done to the already dysfunctional Cuban economy for the past 20 years. The good news is that the government is finally attempting to fix it. The bad news is that millions of Cubans could lose their life savings in the process.

Kooks and Coops

Cuba is the only country on earth that prints two currencies. When the Soviet Union fell in the early 90s, Havana's subsidies from the USSR were cut off. As a result, Cuba suffered a devastating 35 percent drop in its GDP. The situation on the ground was dire. In Con Nuestros Propios Esfuerzos (With Our Own Efforts), a 300-page volume of everyday survival strategies distributed in the early 90s by the publishing arm of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, Cubans were offered helpful instructions for how to make shampoo out of rum and "sausages" made of nylon stockings stuffed with seasoned grapefruit rind.

Desperate for hard currency, Fidel Castro grudgingly legalized use of the US dollar in 1993. People working in the tourism industry were allowed to earn—and keep—tips given to them in foreign currency. In addition, a resolution by the National Bank of Cuba permitted some Cuban citizens to own foreign currency; the list included government officials, artists and athletes paid overseas, airline and fishing vessel crews, and employees of foreign embassies or organizations.

Castro’s ultimate goal was to get greenbacks into the state’s coffers. In order to capture as many of the now-circulating dollars as possible, the Cuban government promptly opened a network of so-called "dollar stores," which carried otherwise-impossible-to-find goods available only to people who used American dollars to pay for them. The Cuban government would purchase, say, cans of Pringles and bottles of Gatorade from American manufacturers thanks to a humanitarian loophole in the then-30-year-old US trade embargo. Then the government would sell the Pringles and Gatorade to citizens at a 240 percent markup. The state kept the profit.

However, the trade embargo made it all but impossible for the Cuban government to do much with their American dollars, especially after the US Federal Reserve fined Swiss bank UBS $100 million for its dealings with the regime. And so, in 2004, Fidel Castro once again outlawed the US dollar and popularized the Convertible Peso, or CUC, which had been in limited use since 1994. CUCs (pronounced "kooks") are worth one US dollar, and are used primarily in domestic tourism and foreign trade. Cuban Pesos, or CUPs (pronounced "coops"), are worth 1/24th of one CUC—about four US cents—and are what the government uses to pay Cuban salaries. (The government owns just about everything in Cuba, and so nearly every Cuban is a government employee.) Doctors, who are employed by the national health system, earn a little less than 800 CUPs per month. That’s about $30.

Thus, in theory, a cabdriver who gets tipped by foreign tourists in CUCs can earn a cardiologist’s monthly income in a single shift. And since it’s against the law for anyone with a professional degree—doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc—to ply their trade in business for themselves, a domestic brain drain has decimated Cuba’s educated class.

"Basically, the incentive structure that shapes people’s behavior has become completely perverted and dysfunctional," says economist Arch Ritter, a professor at Ottawa’s Carleton University who has been studying Cuba for almost 50 years.

People with access to CUCs live far more comfortably than those without. Buses that accept CUCs look like the ones you take to pick up your rental car at American airports. Buses that accept CUPs are Soviet-era, exhaust-belching beaters. Essentials like cooking oil and toiletries are easily purchased with CUCs, while CUP earners like Mario, a parking attendant I met one afternoon behind the Habana Libre hotel, ask tourists if they have extras. After I gave Mario a Right Guard Sport Stick and two bars of Irish Spring, he noted that we both have a 36-inch waist. So he asked for my belt.

Cuban President Raúl Castro has quite rightly called the dual currency "one of the major obstacles to the progress of the nation." However, he has also said, "I was not chosen to be president to restore capitalism to Cuba. I was elected to defend, maintain, and continue to perfect socialism." So it’s no surprise that the government has announced plans to split the difference and do away with the CUC while retaining its hold on industry and commerce in the country.

How do you eliminate an entire currency? Castro has released few details about how or even when Cuba intends to begin taking CUCs out of circulation. But Ritter explained it this way: "They’ve got to make people want to hold the CUP, through the forces of supply and demand. You increase the CUP’s demand by letting people use it to buy a wider variety of goods. Then, you also limit how many CUPs are available, so its value goes up. Likewise, you reduce demand for the CUC by increasing supply, which would, in time, bring its value lower."

In Cuba, however, economic decisions aren’t made based on supply and demand, and "the market" as Adam Smith knows it does not exist. Instead, reforms are made with the stroke of a pen, so the government could simply, say, change the exchange rate between the CUC and the CUP from 24-to-1 to 12-to-1. This would instantly halve the life savings of countless Cubans who’ve spent two decades socking away CUCs, to say nothing of the Zimbabwe-like inflation that could strike the economy after such a move.

Or, the government may just take everyone’s savings outright.

"My guess is that when the government does the reform, it will expropriate some part of the population’s wealth accumulated in CUCs," says economist Daron Acemoglu, co-author of Why Nations Fail. "This is exactly the sort of expropriation that Argentina did."

In the years following the collapse of Argentina’s economy in 2001, the government nationalized private pension funds, swiping roughly $24 billion of the citizenry’s money. Argentinians' dollar-denominated bank accounts were frozen, and withdrawals were severely limited before everyone was forced to convert their savings into comparatively worthless pesos. The result were protests, a flood of court cases, violent riots, a worsening economic crisis, and a two-week period in which Argentina had five different presidents.

Raúl Castro has declared that the transition will not hurt holders of either CUCs or CUPs. But the concept of protecting individual wealth has no place in Cuba—a fact specifically stated in the Cuban Communist Party's Lineamientos (Guidelines). And as Mauricio Claver-Carone, executive director of the right-leaning Cuba Democracy Advocates points out, the Cuban government could really use the money.

"The Castro regime seems to undertake these currency operations when it's suffering from a hard-currency crisis," he explains. "The anticipated currency swap is simply another episode in a long series of asset confiscations by the Castro regime."

Expropriations and nationalizations of private property have occurred repeatedly since the beginning of the Castro era. People leaving the island in the early days of post-Revolutionary Cuba were forced to give up their property and assets in addition to their rights as citizens. Those who stayed were soon relieved of 42 percent of their wealth in a top-down currency revaluation. In recent years, the CUC has been devalued in pursuit of stabilizing government debt, and hard currency accounts have been periodically frozen and restricted when it has suited the regime.

The economy of Cuba’s main benefactor, Venezuela, is thought by many economists to be in the midst of collapse. Just as the Soviet Union's was 20 years ago.

MUCHO RESOLVER
Carlos, like 4.6 million of the 5 million people in Cuba’s labor force, works for the state. A lighting and set designer who lives in the "upscale" Vedado section of Havana, the 74-year-old has accompanied traveling Cuban theater and dance productions all over Latin America and Eastern Europe. The government pays Carlos relatively well for his work; he earns roughly what a doctor earns. Yet even though he is relatively privileged by comparison, Carlos’s monthly salary covers perhaps half a month’s worth of expenses. And so, displaying the optimistic, opportunistic trait known in Cuba as resolver, Carlos makes up for the shortfall by earning CUCs on the side.

Carlos runs a small bed-and-breakfast—known in Cuba as a casa particular—out of his art-deco townhouse. He rents out two rooms—he could rent more, but the government imposes limits on how many rooms can be occupied at once—and charges 30 CUCs a night per room (the authorities also set maximum room rates). On paper, this means Carlos can multiply his monthly salary several times with just a handful of bookings. The reality, however, is another story.

Over the course of the three nights I stay with him, Carlos explains how it works. He pays about 300 CUCs a month to the government for the right to run his casa, whether or not he rents a single room. In other words, Carlos needs to fill one bed for 10 nights a month just to break even with the government, to say nothing of his own expenses. Still, the fact that he’s even still in business means Carlos is ahead of the game. One woman I met selling salsa CDs along Calle 12 in Vedado told me she'd set up her home as a casa particular, but was forced to shut down after just two months because she’d gone broke paying the government fees.

Attracting guests presents a whole other set of challenges. Advertising in Cuba is against the law, and few people are permitted Internet access in their homes, making it all but impossible to attract tourists looking for accommodations. Carlos is among the lucky Cubans who has internet access in the form of an old HP laptop and creaky dial-up connection, allowing him to maintain a web page to market himself to tourists.

First legalized in 1997, casas particulares generate intense competition among Cubans eager for precious CUCs. Mercedes, a rheumatologist who rents me a room in her perfectly preserved colonial mansion in the touristy hamlet of Trinidad, has to contend with dozens of other nearby casas. But in addition to going head to head with each other, small-business owners like Mercedes and Carlos must also compete against Gaviota S.A., a government-run tourism operation overseen by members of Raúl Castro's inner circle.

A division of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, Gaviota’s tens of thousands of hotel rooms across the island generate the equivalent of almost a billion dollars a year. The money goes directly to the government.

But the big hotels that divert business away from people like Carlos and Mercedes also give other people—housekeepers, bellhops, bartenders—the chance to obtain CUCs for themselves. And state-run entities (particularly ones with bars, restaurants, and plenty of cash on hand) offer opportunities for all manner of graft, theft, and other types of financial chicanery that make up a robust underground economy in Cuba. It’s impossible to put a dollar value on the amount of money that’s stolen or hidden from the state, but economist Arch Ritter estimates that at least 95 percent of Cubans do it.

Isoyen worked at a Soviet-built, Gaviota-run beach hotel on Cuba’s Caribbean coast until he was furloughed earlier this year. When I met him, he told me it wasn’t the loss of his CUP salary that he missed—it was the CUC tips he received from tourists. A college graduate, Isoyen can only use his accounting degree to work for "the people," making self-employment in his chosen field an impossibility. Living with his parents makes running a casa impossible, so he plans to use his resolver—and the CUCs he socked away—to open an ice cream stand.

For the elderly docents working at Havana’s Museum of the Revolution, resolver means engaging in a bit of basic arbitrage. After showing me Che Guevara’s gun in a glass display case, one of them tries to sell me a three CUP note bearing Che’s likeness as a souvenir. She asks one CUC for the bill. That’s a tidy 88 percent profit.

THE LONG CON
Resolver can mean a lot of things.

"My friend! My friend!" someone calls out as I walk down Calle E my first morning in Havana. "Where you from, my friend?"

His name is Rafael, and he says he’s a medical student, though he seemingly fails to understand my English only when I ask about the specifics of his education. He’s bald and wiry, and he has a homemade 13 tattoo on the webbing between his right thumb and forefinger. I like him immediately.

Rafael claims to be a licensed tour guide. He even has an official-looking ID card pinned to his shirt. He charges me 20 CUCs—the equivalent of a month’s salary at a typical government job—for a two-hour walking tour in which he listlessly points out a few local sites like the Plaza de la Revolucion and the clinic where soccer legend Diego Maradona supposedly kicked his cocaine addiction in the early 2000s.

We then go to lunch (I pay for it) at a local cafe where Rafael manages to triple his tour fee. For starters, he collects a commission from the restaurant manager for bringing in foreigners with CUCs—and, as I find out later, Rafael’s clients are charged five CUCs for a mojito instead of the usual 24 CUPs, a 500 percent markup. Rafael also sells me a bundle of cigars that he describes as "special, only for Cubans," for 35 CUC. He’s telling the truth—they aren’t for export. However, I also come to learn they sell to locals for 25 CUP per bundle. (That’s about 1/35th of what I paid.) For his final trick, Rafael gently talks me out of the Everlast speed bag and hand wraps I brought to donate to a local boxing gym, explaining that he would walk them over for me, as the place is "very hard to find."

As we part ways, Rafael turns to me with an earnest look on his face. "My friend, please don’t tell anybody else this is your first day in Cuba," he says. "They will take advantage of you."

TRUSTING RAUL
Cuban citizens hope that Raúl Castro will tackle financial reform as artfully as Cuban citizens tackle financial survival. But the historically awful performance of the Cuban economy under the tutelage of the Castros doesn’t inspire much confidence. Nonetheless, Ernesto Hernández-Catá, former Deputy Director of the International Monetary Fund, has hope.

"This is part of a reform movement orchestrated by a few brave people in the Cuban government," Hernández-Catá tells me. "It has been accepted by Raúl, who is not a saint, to be sure. But whereas Fidel was a crazy ideologue, Raúl wants to leave behind an image of a guy who is sober, is reasonably intelligent, and wants to improve the lives of his countrymen."

Whether it turns out to be a failure or a success, the general consensus in the West remains that, while monetary reform is a positive development, Cuba needs to overhaul its entire financial system from top to bottom before real change can take place. While Secretary of State John Kerry called Cuba’s latest slate of reforms a good start—on top of the economic liberalizations, Cubans can now travel outside the country without an exit visa—he said Havana must do more.

And, not surprisingly, Mauricio Claver-Carone of Cuba Democracy Advocates doesn’t see life improving much for Cubans.

"The Castro regime will always end up capturing income made in Cuba, one way or another," he says. "That's the nature of totalitarianism."

@JustinRohrlich

Mohamed poses for the camera while Ibrahim takes a hit from a glue bottle behind him.

On an ordinary night, after the sun sets over Hargeisa, Somaliland, Mohamed packs up his shoe-shine kit and heads to the storm drain where he lives when he’s not working. All things considered, it’s a good spot for the 12-year-old to sleep—the discarded snack wrappers and plastic bottles help keep him warm, and when the sun creeps in each morning the shadow of a nearby skyscraper shields him from the heat.

The skyscraper, which was built in 2012 and houses a company whose business is to bring high-speed internet from neighboring Djibouti, is one of the many symbols of Hargeisa’s relative wealth. The city itself is the crown jewel of Somaliland, a self-declared republic in northwest Somalia.

Although Somaliland’s sovereignty has yet to be formally recognized by any other country or the UN, it has its own democratically elected government and a 30,000-strong military. Its nascent borders contain valuable natural resources—the Turkish oil company Genel plans to drill for oil there in the next two years—and the bustling northern port city of Berbera, which are two good reasons Somalia doesn’t want the region to secede. The government in the terror-torn capital, Mogadishu may also be clinging to the hope that Somaliland’s peace and prosperity could spill over into the rest of the region. But whatever the contours of this convoluted political landscape, at the very least Somaliland feels like a separate nation; houses in Hargeisa fly the tricolored flag the region adopted in 1996 instead of Somalia’s sky-blue standard.

Just a few decades ago, Somaliland was a broken place. Under the rule of Siad Barre, a ruthless dictator who took control of Somalia in 1969, nine years after the end of European colonial rule, Somalilanders were brutalized and disenfranchised. Barre forbade any explicit mention of the clan lines that have long divided the region from Somalia, and his troops infamously opened fire on protesters outside Hargeisa’s soccer stadium in 1990. After Barre was ousted in 1991, Somalia fell into a deadly civil war that is still being fought 23 years later. For over a decade, Hargeisa remained a tattered, smoking shell of a city.

Slowly, however, things started to change. The city has been bombing-free since 2008, which by the standards of its geopolitical neighborhood is a minor miracle. The region’s relative safety has persuaded thousands of wealthy Somalilanders who fled the unrest for the US, Europe, and Asia to return to their homeland, bringing their Western cash with them. The now autonomous region has its own currency, 16 universities, and more than 200,000 students enrolled in primary and secondary schools. If southern Somalia is a nation by name only, then Somaliland is its antithesis—a country in all but name, at least officially.

No matter how prosperous Somaliland might become, it’s doubtful that any of that good fortune will trickle down to Hargeisa’s homeless children—young outcasts living completely on their own who are at best ignored and at worst abused and treated like vermin. They are a near-constant presence, crawling around the shadows of alleys and squares in a city where poverty and wealth butt heads on nearly every street corner: shiny new office blocks sit beside ancient shacks, currency traders have set up open-air stands where they display piles of cash, Hyundais brush past donkeys down the city’s sole paved street.

Behind that street is a café that serves up coffee and soup to midmorning breakfasters. This is where I first met Mohamed. “Salam,” he said quietly after I introduced myself.

Mohamed told me that if he sleeps too close to the skyscraper that shields him from the light of dawn, a security guard beats him with an acacia branch until he bleeds. I noticed that he had an old lemonade bottle tucked under his filthy sweatshirt. It was filled with glue, perhaps the only escape he has from his harsh existence. He took huffs every few minutes as he spoke to me: “I could stop. I could definitely stop. But it’s hard… And why?”

According to the Hargeisa Child Protection Network, there are 3,000 to 5,000 homeless youth in the city, most of whom are Oromo migrants from Ethiopia. Around 200 a year complete the voyage through Somaliland and across the Gulf of Aden into Yemen, where they attempt to cross the border to Saudi Arabia and find work; many more don’t make it.

For more than four decades the Oromo have been fleeing persecution in Ethiopia, where they have long been politically marginalized. Mohamed arrived in Somaliland as part of this ongoing migration. Five years ago, he told me, his family made the 500-mile trek from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to Hargeisa. The Somaliland government claims up to 80,000 illegal immigrants—mostly Ethiopians—reside in its territory. Many of them trickled in through the giant border of Ogaden, a vast, dusty outback on the edge of Ethiopia’s Somali Region (the easternmost of the country’s nine ethnic divisions, which, as the name implies, is mostly populated by ethnic Somalis). Some travel in cars arranged by fixers. Others make the long journey on foot. Almost all won’t make it past the border without a bribe. Given their options, a few bucks for freedom seemed liked the best deal for Mohamed’s family. But after their migration, things only got worse.

Outside downtown Hargeisa’s central market.

A short time after his family arrived in Somaliland—he’s not sure exactly when—Mohamed’s father died of tuberculosis. Quickly running out of options, he left his mother in a border town called Borama to try to eke out a living, working whatever job was available some 90 miles away in Hargeisa. 

Instead Mohamed ended up where he is now, wandering around the city with his friends and fellow Ethiopian migrants Mukhtar and Hamza (all three have adopted Muslim-sounding names to better blend into the local population). Their days mostly consist of shining shoes for 500 Somaliland shillings (seven cents) a pop and taking many breaks in between jobs to sniff glue.

On a good day, the boys will combine their meager earnings and pay to sleep on the floors of migrant camps on the outskirts of town, where persecuted people from all over East Africa live in corrugated shanties in the desert. If they don’t shine enough shoes, it’s back to the storm drain. “I live in the walls,” Mukhtar said. “No one knows me.”

Though they fled Ethiopia to escape persecution, the Oromo migrants often endure even worse treatment in Hargeisa. The first time I met Mohamed’s friend Hamza he was plodding through the crowd at an outdoor restaurant, offering shoe shines in the midday sun. An older man dressed in a cream apparatchik suit like a James Bond villain sitting next to me shouted at the child, who cowered, turned, and ran away. “Fucking kids,” he said to me in perfect English. “God can provide for them.”

Reports by the local press on Hargeisa’s growing homeless- youth population have done nothing to help the kids’ reputation. The authorities have told journalists that street kids are the city’s gravest security threat amid a backdrop of tables covered with gruesome shivs, shanks, and machetes supposedly confiscated from the wily urchins. “The grown-up street children have become the new gangsters,” local police chief Mohamed Ismail Hirsi told the IRIN news agency in 2009.

Officials are similarly apathetic to the notion of helping the young migrants get out of their rut, likely because Somaliland and Somalia are already dealing with enough horrific humanitarian crises without having to worry about another country’s displaced people—in 2012, the number of Somalis fleeing their own country topped a million.

Somaliland boasts “a vibrant traditional social-welfare support system,” according to its National Vision 2030 plan—a grand scheme unveiled in 2012 that aims to continue to improve the region’s standard of living. The plan also acknowledges that “there are, however, times when vulnerable groups such as street children, displaced people, young children, and mothers are excluded from traditional social safety nets [and] the government... has a responsibility to intervene.” So far, the only evidence that the government intends to follow through with the plan is a struggling 400-capacity orphanage in Hargeisa. Unsurprisingly, government officials in Somaliland refused repeated requests for comment on this issue or any other issues pertaining to this article.

At the Somaliland government’s last count, in 2008, the region’s population was 3.5 million, but with so many people flooding in from the south and Ethiopia each year, it’s impossible to say how many hundreds of thousands more live there now. It’s hard to assign all the blame to the burgeoning nation’s embattled and overwhelmed authorities; there’s simply no room and too few resources to think too deeply about glue-addicted kids roaming the streets.

One claim that the government can’t make is that these kids have chosen to live in squalor; for them, there are no viable alternatives. Somaliland offers no government-funded public education—schools are generally run by NGOs, and other private groups rarely accept Oromo children as students. Even if they did, enrollment would be a nightmare because the vast majority of these kids are without identification, homes, or relatives living nearby. They’re often left on their own to scratch out an existence in a city that hates them and offers them next to nothing.

Ismail Yahye, who works for the Save the Children campaign, used to be a Somaliland street kid himself. He despairs at the pipe dreams they are fed before relocating from Ethiopia—many leave home believing the rumors about how life is so much better in Somaliland.

“The main reasons they come here are for economic prosperity and job opportunities,” he said. “They pay bribes at the border and come by foot. They can’t return. They’re trapped.”

The Hargeisa Child Protection Network reports that 88 percent of the city’s homeless children have suffered some form of sexual abuse or harassment. All of the boys I met denied having been raped or abused during their time on the streets, but my fixer told me he strongly believed that they were too ashamed and scared to admit to any such incidents.

Mukhtar stands outside the Ethiopian café where he shines shoes every day.

In this very unfriendly and inhospitable city, a Somali American named Shafi is one of the few residents who goes out of his way to help the kids. In another life, Shafi was a drug dealer in Buffalo, New York, a job that landed him in prison before he cleaned up his act and decided to return to the city of his birth to do good. Now he provides Hargeisa’s street urchins with the occasional meal, helps them organize games of soccer or basketball, and finds safe places where they can stay at night. But he is only one man and knows he can’t save them all. Most still end up sleeping in the drains, left to die of starvation or diseases like tuberculosis and typhoid fever. “I’ve carried quite a few dead children through these streets,” he told me.

Many kids earn small amounts of cash doing menial tasks like shoe-shining and washing cars. Others find work running alcohol, which is illegal in the Muslim state. If you ever find yourself at a party in one of Hargeisa’s sprawling, plush villas, chances are the gin in your gimlet was smuggled into the country by a kid who sleeps in a gutter.

It was with Shafi’s help that I was first able to meet Hargeisa’s Oromo children. He told me the best place to find them was around the convenience stores they visit daily to buy fresh glue. On our first attempt and without much searching, Shafi and I found a couple of kids who appeared to be homeless hanging out in an alley near a school. We spoke with them for a bit, and when I felt that everyone was comfortable I pulled out my camera. Before I could take their photos, a guy who said he was an off-duty cop appeared out of nowhere. He approached us, shouting at me in gravelly Somali and quickly confiscating the bottles of glue from the kids.

“He called you a pedophile,” Shafi translated, adding that it would benefit me to reimburse the boys for their stolen solvents.

After the cop left, one of the boys grew somber. “I hope I stop using,” he said. As he spoke I noticed the painful sores etched across his face. “I just miss my family. I haven’t seen them in years. I’m alone and no one helps me.”

The stigma that surrounds these children is such that even those trying to help them are treated with suspicion—as are reporters hoping to tell their story, as I found out the hard way one night while Shafi and I were trying to track down Mohamed and his friends.

It was a typical breezy fall evening, full of the usual scenes: men sipping tea and debating loudly, women and children hustling soup and camel meat, a mess of car horns cleaving the air. Shafi was sure the kids were nearby, but that didn’t mean much because they usually try to remain hidden so as not to cause a scene.

It didn’t take much time to spot Hamza’s tattered bootleg Barcelona soccer jersey peeking out from behind the edge of a wall. As we approached, more kids appeared from behind parked cars and emerged from alleys, and some even popped out of a nearby storm drain. Within minutes more than two dozen homeless children had surrounded us, clamoring for cash and posing for pictures. An empty square in the middle of town had suddenly transformed into a glue-sniffers’ agora.

Our time with the kids didn’t last long. A couple minutes later an old man who was lounging outside a nearby café decided he’d had enough, sprung to his feet, walked over to us, and began hitting me and the kids with his walking stick.

Some of the children scattered. Others stayed, presumably with the hope that holding out for the payout from the Western journalist would be worth the licks. In a surreal moment, as the old man continued to swing his stick and scream, one boy, who said his name was Hussein, walked over and, huffing on his glue pot, told me about his hopes and dreams. “I want to be a doctor,” he said, staggering about and staring straight through me. “Sometimes I dream when I get hungry. But there’s no food here, no help. I expected a better life. I don’t now. But sometimes, I wish.”

Just then, a scuffle broke out—the old man had lured a couple of his friends into the argument, and they came to the collective decision to grab me and smash my camera. Shafi and my driver, Mohammed, struggled to hold them back.

Two cops arrived on the scene soon after the scuffle. Instead of punishing the old man for attacking the kids and trying to destroy my camera, they dragged me off to a festering cinder-block carcass covered in graffiti that serves as the local jail.

“You cannot photograph the children without their permission,” the more senior cop said, pointing to my camera. “They do not want you to photograph them.”

Shafi translated as I tried to explain to the policeman that that the kids were clearly desperate for someone to be interested in their plight, and that they were even posing for pictures. That’s when I stopped, realizing that the subject wasn’t up for debate. It was clear that writing about or photographing these street children was taboo.

In the end, I compromised by deleting most of the photos I had taken and then sat in a corner of the jail while my driver, Mohammed, and my captors read one another’s horoscopes outside the gates.

A couple hours later I was released. Mohammed was waiting for me outside, and he immediately pulled me aside to tell me something that I had already accepted the moment I entered the jail: my reporting on the children had come to an end.

Mohammed looked unnerved. “We can leave now, Insha’Allah… The kids thing is over. They are invisible.”

Media Works, the film production company founded by Hoyu Yamamoto, specializes in producing Yakuza movies, almost all of which are based on true events. They produce dozens of movies a year, making up 80 percent of all Yakuza films put out each year. Unfortunately for them, gang expulsion laws were passed two years ago in an effort to prevent Japanese entities from working with the Yakuza.

Now, Media Works faces the difficult position since they rely highly on authentic Yakuza stories. Kunihiko Shinoda, chief editor of the magazine Document, faces similar challenges. We decided to go out and find out how they deal with their new circumstances.

Astana. All photos by the author, aside from the one of the horse ass.

Before Kazakhstan’s ascent to the global stage as an oil-rich, ambitious, modernizing player, it was one of the world’s most stubborn bastions of nomadism. Today, the country’s newly minted capital, Astana, is home to a plethora of skyscrapers and modern art seemingly designed with a quarter bag and a tub of Legos. But amid the rabid growth, Kazakhstan is eager to preserve its heritage. To that end, designers have cobbled together 500-foot futuristic pleasure domes in the shape of a jauntily tilted nomadic tent; artists have dappled the streets with Technicolor stone camels, topiary yurts, and spindly modernist sculpture of horse archers; and chefs and diners alike have actively curated a taste for the heavy, intricately sourced, and almost excessively meaty nomadic cuisine. One especially popular dish—which was recommended to me by a Kazakh friend before I arrived—is the horse.

A topiary yurt

Much of the country’s culinary tastes are shared across Central Asia. Kazakhstani restaurateurs go heavy on the beshbarmak (boiled mutton in sheep’s head broth with optional flat noodles, potatoes, and/or onions) just like many Kyrgyzstani or Uzbekistani foodies. But unlike most other Central Asian cuisine, the Kazakhs were always a bit heavier on horsemeat. Actually, that’s an understatement—they’re the world’s number one per capita consumers of horsemeat and number three in absolute production behind China and Mexico. So, eager to see what chefs in the gaudy nation’s flagship city would deliver, I found a swanky restaurant downtown and ordered the qazy: an intestine sausage made not of offal, but finest horse rib meat, sliced into thick wafers and served alongside mysterious, off-white fleshy rings.

Qazy and qarta. Image via

The qazy went down fine. A little tough and dry—as one would expect from a draft animal—but still rich, mealy, and slightly smoky. After devouring the main course, I was left with the mysterious flesh-Os. Rather than ask a waiter what was on my plate, or even think through the possibilities, eye it over, or (and, in hindsight, this would have been practical) give it a smell test, I popped a single ringlet into my indiscriminate maw. It tasted exactly how a pasture smells. After about a minute the earthy scent of decomposed hay had crept its way up my nostrils. At first I suspected I might be having a stroke. Then, with the aid of a friend's guidebook containing useful phrases and information, I realized I had unwittingly consumed qarta: boiled and pan-fried horse rectum, served unspiced and unadorned.

Like many nomadic culinary traditions, Kazakh food uses every part of the horse. Also on the menu at many modern Kazakhstani restaurants are zhal (smoked horse neck lard) and quyrdak (a mélange of horse, sheep, and cow heart, liver, kidney, and other various innards). But unadorned rectum is still fairly rare in this world. One of the only well known examples being (thanks to foodie shock-jock Anthony Bourdain) Namibian coal-cooked warthog anus.

Sheep's lung, eaten raw, at the Osh Market.

There’s a popular tendency to view such offal dishes—especially more extreme cases such as this—as the bastard child of necessity. They’re meant to be an exercise in primal efficiency, an expression of frugality, and the result of just a smidgen of poverty. Maybe there’s an occasional grain of truth in that view, but for the most part it’s knee-jerk bullshit deriving from an irrational gut feeling: the gag reflex. The fact is, many in Kazakhstan are one or more generations removed from nomadic circumstances, many are increasingly wealthy, and they’re still noted for their love of offal—qarta especially. Not because they’re muscling through a cultural obligation, but because there is something—I came to understand after my initial shock—special, unique, and appreciable in eating rectum.  

Before we get to the effectively redeeming culinary qualities of horse rectum, let’s be painfully clear exactly what we’re talking about. The horse rectum is not the tight, muscular tissue of the anus proper like you’d find in Korean dalkttongjip (stir-fried and spiced chicken sphincters). But it’s not the equivalent of the almost entirely spongy American chitterling (made up of the small intestines) either. Qarta consists of the last few inches of the digestive tract, just before the muscular sphincter. It’s a particularly large and complex segment with a layer of strong tissue on the outside, and gradations of tender mucous membrane tissue and fatty mass on the inside.

The common provenance of qartaand chitterlings from within the intestinal tract does lead to similar problems with fecal smell or taste. Chitterlings often solve this problem through judicious rounds of blanching, followed more often than not by deep-frying (which, as This American Life recently proved, is a great way of hiding the stubborn flavors of pig anus). But in the case of qarta, one simply washes the rectum without removing the fat, turning it inside out to scrub down the interior. Although the chef has the option of smoking the rectum for 24 hours and/or drying it for 48 more, many have turned to simply boiling the tissue on a slow fire for two hours, cutting it into rounds, simmering it in meat bullion for half an hour, and serving it garnished with salt, green pepper, and dill. Believe me when I say that this short cleaning and cooking process hardly dulls the taste issues inherent in a lot of intestinal cooking. But Alma Kunanbaeva, a Kazakh nomadic food anthropologist at Stanford University, expressly cautions against over-stewing the rectum.

Horsemeat sausages

Partially explaining the taste issue, Kunanbaeva stresses that qarta was originally meant to be eaten in combination with qazy, the way I first consumed it (although preferably not eaten in isolation at the end of the meal). However, Kunanbaeva explains, “the European influence to have appetizers, especially to follow alcohol [vodka became very popular under Czarist and Soviet rule], turned this qazy and qarta into separate offerings.”

Even outside of its original paired context, qarta retains some power and pull of its own not for its taste, but for its texture when artfully prepared. It’s a dish that takes time and effort, as it should ideally come from a young horse immediately after slaughter and must be idiosyncratically cooked to ensure it doesn’t become overdone. But when executed properly, that structure of rectum, the layering of soft and hard tissues and dense and varied fat, is what Kunanbaeva thinks makes it an irresistible dish: “The combination of a crunchy inside, chewy in the middle, and melting into [the] mouth” just does it for many folks.

Almaty meat market

Appreciating food for its texture as opposed to its taste is not something my palette has been well trained for. But the taste of melting fat and the crunch of crispy, fried muscular tissue, with just a hint of spice and meat drippings, played out against that horse pasture background, forces a concentration and appreciation I don’t often experience in meats. That said, it’s getting harder and harder to find good qarta. In many places restrictions on horsemeat—like California’s 1998 ban on slaughtering, exporting, or selling it for human consumption—have killed horse-based cuisine. Others have health concerns about intestines. But even in countries that have gotten over the squeamishness, Kunanbaeva warns, “the modern obsession with safety of food changes the palette … [Kazakhs] are cooking quarta to death trying to achieve the falling apart protein of over-dried and then overcooked meat that they’re accustomed to.” The result is gloppy and disappointing. Still, whether it seems viscerally off-putting or you’re averse to the specific pasture odor, if you’re looking to move past taste and learn to appreciate the value of mouth feel in food, order the horse rectum.

New wind turbines are at the centre of this dispute. Photo via.
 

Ed's note: In an earlier version of this article, the headline incorrectly referred to Esther as a single mother. We regret this error.

The bitter winds of winter may be wonderful for turning the blades on the giant wind turbines that dot more-and-more of the southwestern Ontario landscape, yet their presence is sparking not only electricity, but also controversy, conflict, and a lawsuit that could ruin a family who’s daring to stand up to an American energy giant.

Esther Wrightman, 32, of Adelaide Township, west of London, Ontario, was shocked when the lawyer’s letter arrived in December to tell her that NextEra Energy Canada plans to go ahead with a lawsuit for defaming the company name in a video and blog she posted earlier in 2013. She explained to me that the suit, which NextEra launched against her last May, had remained dormant until recently.

The letter, “felt like a personal attack. After all, they got what they wanted. Their turbines have all been approved (in Wrightman’s area), and construction has started. Their attitude is ‘Just get her, just take one more kick’,” she said, wearily. Farmers’ fields that would normally be buried under a winter snow blanket are instead grey with the “massive amounts” of gravel being laid down for the turbines’ foundations, she describes.

Next Era is a Florida-based electricity giant that owns major American interests such as Florida Power and Light and describes itself as the largest generator of wind and solar power in North America, with over 100 projects in the U.S. and Canada. 

The company wants to meet and plan the course of the lawsuit by the end of January, but Wrightman is still waiting to see if she will be getting some pro bono legal help. “There’s no way we can afford lawyers,” she said. Her husband is receiving a disability pension and her job is only part-time, working in her father’s plant nursery business, she explains.

The controversy arose over a video Wrightman posted to YouTube that shows NextEra workers chopping down a tree with an active eagle nest in the Haldimand, Ontario area, north of Lake Erie in January 2013 while Esther and a group of activists yell at the NextEra crew. She changed the company’s logo to read “NextError” and “Next Terror.” 

The company asked her to take down the logos several times and sent her a “cease and desist” letter before launching the suit, according to the company’s statement of claim for the court. Wrightman’s video is a “mutilation” of NextEra’s name and logos, and suggests the company is a terrorist organization, according to the statement. Her actions aim to support Wrightman’s “business interests” in raising money to fight wind developments, the suit claims.   

Wrightman said people in her area called the company “NextTerror” before she posted her “parody” online, in her statement of defence. The statement says the company has earned the nickname by bringing a state of “fear, terror of invasion, worry, anxiety, and destruction” to her community. For instance, she claims if landowners refuse to sign easements, NextEra has threatened to take legal action against them, and has threatened to get their land expropriated if needed for the wind projects. Agents have threatened to put power transmission lines from the turbines in front of houses or over barns, the statement adds.

NextEra intimidates people by excessive use of security guards and police protection, at open house meetings, while taking down an eagle’s nest, and while surveying roads, she told the court. Wrightman also describes how individuals with information or signs are forced to remain outside at public meetings, in some cases escorted out, or material removed and objecting individuals are publicly berated. In at least one case, she claims the company hired a videographer to film people objecting to a wind project at an open house. The videographer taunted and filmed residents, until police told him to leave the grounds, according to her statement. Esther insists the lawsuit is “frivolous” and really is just another form of intimidation used by NextEra; simply as an exercise in SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation), designed to stifle opposition.

NextEra simply wants Wrightman to remove the altered logos on her videos, said company spokesman Steve Stengel in an email to VICE. The company “has stated repeatedly that Ms. Wrightman can bring this litigation to an immediate end by removing the defaced name and logos from the websites she controls, while otherwise keeping her stories completely intact,” he wrote.  

“NextEra supports the speech rights of Ms. Wrightman. This lawsuit is a measured response to protect the goodwill associated with NextEra’s name… without impinging on Ms. Wrightman’s ability to freely express her opinions,” according to Stengel’s mail. He said filing the suit was “a last resort. “

He refused to comment on any of Wrightman’s specific accusations about intimidation tactics at public meetings.

While NextEra is giving Wrightman a SLAPP in the face, another blow is being administered by, of all groups, the United Way of Canada. The power company promises in its court documents to donate any winnings from the lawsuit to the United Way, and this, the august dean of Canadian charities, shocked Wrightman’s father by declaring itself ready to accept the money. In a letter to Harvey Wrightman last November, one of United Way’s vice-presidents, Sylvain Beaudry, states the group will accept the damages, though the United Way is “totally unaware” of the suit and has not been in contact with the company or its lawyers. When contacted by VICE, officials at the charity’s headquarters in Ottawa refused comment.               

Wrightman, a low-income mother of two, couldn’t believe that attitude. “We’re renters here, and could be using United Way services ourselves.” If the suit goes against her, “United Way could be getting my income paid to them for years and years to come,” she said. “This is Robin Hood in reverse,” added her father. “The United Way can jump up-and-down and claim they remain impartial, but these moral choices are going to come up, especially for organizations such as this.”

Donations to the United Way will be drying up in the area, says Marcelle Brooks, owner of a 100-acre organic farm that will be “smack-dab in the middle” of two wind turbine developments in Lambton County, north and east of Sarnia, 92 in NextEra’s Jericho site and 46 in a project by Suncor. She wrote to the United Way’s Beaudry right after his letter to Harvey Wrightman, but still has not received a reply.  “We donate. They are very much part of our community. We are not wealthy around here, though.  Many of us use the food banks. It feels like they are exploiting the very people they are providing a service to,” she emphasized.

Both Wrightman and Brooks say NextEra throws piles of money around to silence opposition in host communities. Not only do they use the lure of lucrative land leases to farmers, but they also donate to local agencies such as conservation authorities that could be potentially silenced in their objection to wind projects. “They’re just buying the community,” said Brooks.

Municipal council members are also individually threatened with legal action if they pass bylaws unfavourable to the company, Wrightman claims. NextEra lawyers have been known to show up and use the public’s question period to threaten councils with legal action, she adds.

Opposition to wind turbines in southwest Ontario centres around health effects, said Brooks. Her neighbours have seven children, three of them with autism. The youngest has “intense sensitivity to sound” and the parents are afraid the low-frequency sound that some scientific studies have associated with wind turbines could have serious effects on the child, Brooks reported. 

Similar fears fill many of Esther Wrightman’s waking moments. It may be a funny time of year for new growth in farm country, but as one of NextEra’s turbines sprouts only 1600m away, she weighs the options and considers the future for her family. They’ll probably be forced to move, as she told me. Convinced that reports of headaches brought on by living near the giant windmills are genuine, she worries what could happen to her daughter who suffers from migraines. “It kills me to leave. I grew up just across the road, but we have no choice.”

As far as the lawsuit, Wrightman remains defiant. She refuses to remove the video from YouTube and has moved her blog to an Icelandic web site. Iceland has recently enacted tough privacy legislation to protect bloggers who wish to avoid legal attacks such as the one she’s experiencing, she explained.

Whatever the outcome, Harvey Wrightman has faith in his daughter. “Not everyone can handle this kind of thing. I don’t think I could. But I know her, she’s very strong. She sleeps well at night.”                   

image via

Last month, three days before Christmas, Virginia couple Melissa Delp and Daniel Janney left Delp's two kids, both under 13, with their friend Alexander Edwards for the night. Then there's a blank in the police record, but cops say when the parents got home, their kids had been tattooed against their will. Search warrants said the kids' names had been inscribed on their right shoulders. The sitter has been arrested and is being charged with a crime called "malicious wounding," along with abduction and felony child abuse.

Low res mugshot of Edwards via

The few times I've ever been tasked with babysitting, I got through it by eating pizza and watching TV.

Alexander Edwards is a different kind of babysitter than me. First of all, he favors much more direct interaction with the children than I would. Also, he apparently got close enough to them that he felt like his judgement about what kinds of tattoos they would want superseded their own opinions on the subject.

image via Flickr user GrorillaSushi

I'm sure this will come as a shock, but Edwards wasn't a pro. He was using a home tattooing kit, and unless he was a prodigy, the artwork probably wasn't stellar. Maybe his reasoning was that the low-quality ink his kit came with was going to fade soon anyway, so the ink wouldn't be permanent. Home kits like these are for practicing on grapefruits, not the unblemished skin of innocent children.

Stories with headlines like the LA Times' "Mom comes home to find sitter has tattooed her children," don't convey the way in which the alleged parents took the situation from bad to worse when they decided they didn't care for the job the sitter had done inking their kids. After Edwards' arrest it emerged that they had tried to allegedly remove the tattoos with an allegedly hot razor blade, maybe because they hadn't seen this video, or hell, maybe because they had seen it:

Major L.T. Guthrie of the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office says the attempt at removal, "didn’t help the situation any. It added more scarring." So Delp, the kids' mother, and her boyfriend Mr. Janney were also arrested, and they now face malicious wounding charges of their own.

The one nice part about this story is that an enterprising tattoo remover named Michael Mucklow of GO! Tattoo Removal in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, is earning some publicity for himself by offering to perform removal procedures on the victims for free. He told UPI,  “It breaks my heart to know they have gone through something like that,” and despite his experience with tattoo regret he said, "I can’t imagine what it’s like.”

Now granted, I don't know what laser tattoo removal can do for the blobs of scar tissue on these kids' shoulders after their legal guardians basically branded them (allegedly). Maybe a skin transfusion is really what the doctor ordered, but Mucklow's idea is definitely on the right track.

@MikeLeePearl

Three years ago, an uprising against the Assad regime turned into what looked like a straightforward civil war between Syrian government forces and rebels. However, over time, what had started as a largely secular opposition movement began to take on more of a radical Islamist tone, with two al Qaeda offshoots – the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra – becoming the dominant forces on the ground across the rebel-held North.

ISIS's policy of kidnapping journalists has made it almost impossible to report from within Syria. But one VICE filmmaker managed to secure unprecedented access to both al-Qaeda factions battling Syria's government forces, creating this remarkable portrait of the foreign volunteers and local Syrians willing to fight and die to establish a new caliphate on Europe's doorstep.

Wreckage from the drone strike near Jism, Yemen

The wedding convoy was traveling through the mountainous landscape of al-Baydha when one of the vehicles broke down. It was mid-afternoon, around 185 miles from Yemen’s capital of Sana’a, and the convoy—traditionally called a zafa—was heading to the groom’s village of Jism. There were about 70 people packed into the 11 vehicles, most of them relatives.

Once the collection of cars and pick-up trucks had come to a halt, several men noticed the drone flying high overhead. The distinctive buzz had become a familiar sound throughout the past year, so they assumed it was simply conducting surveillance.

The flash of a missile launch proved otherwise.

Two rockets smashed into a pick-up truck, sending pieces of shrapnel flying into the other vehicles and their occupants. Two more missiles thudded into the ground next to the convoy. Those who could, fled on foot.

Depending on which report you read, between 12 and 17 people died in the attack on December 12, 2013. The youngest was 20, the oldest 65. Now, their families want answers, and in this forgotten corner of the Arab Spring, the government is feeling growing pressure to respond.

Ahmed al-Shafi’i (far right) with his son Zabanallah and the seven children of his deceased son, Aref

There is no running water or electricity in Jism, and schools, health clinics, and paved roads are non-existent. The Al-Abu Surayma tribe that populate the village are semi-nomadic; members move around the area to find better pastures for their goats. The simple, haphazardly built stone building where I spoke to Ahmed and Zabanallah al-Shafi’i can be quickly dismantled and rebuilt.

Ahmed's son, Aref, was 30 years old and married with seven children when he was killed by the missile strike.

"We found him with another body in a car," said the deceased's 70-year-old father, his voice steadily rising. "The others were just thrown—one here, one there. Just how the drone left them, ripped into pieces."

The villagers brought Aref’s body back to Jism, where they laid him alongside the other corpses in the mosque. "Women started screaming when they saw what had happened," Ahmed told us. "They were wailing from one side of the valley to the other. If you had heard it, it would have tormented you."

Initial Yemeni government reports asserted that up to five of the men killed in the strike had been militants. However, as word began to spread that several innocent civilians had also been killed, the government reached out through mediators to the victims’ families. In keeping with tribal custom, money and rifles were offered to the families as a kind of out-of-court settlement for their losses.

Although the Yemeni government has not released any official statements, the governor of al-Bayda province apologized for the missile strike in a meeting with tribesmen, and Human Rights Minister Hooria Mashhour condemned the attack. This was followed by a unanimous vote in parliament that called for the banning of drones.

So were there actually any al Qaeda members among the dead? The militant group’s Yemeni franchise, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is undoubtedly active in the area. In Rada, a town 45 miles of dirt road away from Jism, AQAP’s black-flag insignia is daubed on plenty of walls, and locals there told us that the group had entered the town after the drone attack to capitalize on anger and attract recruits.

Ahmed al-Taysi's brother Salem died in the attack; he is pictured here with his brother's children.

The road to Sana’a was blocked every night in the week following the strike, and residents of Rada began to grow accustomed to the sound of AQAP clashing with the army. Last week, 12 soldiers were allegedly killed during an al Qaeda attack in al-Bayda.

While the residents of Rada and Jism who spoke to us denied that the people killed were members of AQAP, there were indications that at least one of the men present in the wedding convoy was a militant. US and Yemeni officials revealed that the target of the strike was Shawqi Ali Ahmad al-Badani, an AQAP operative said to have masterminded a plot that resulted in the closing of 19 US embassies around the world last summer. However, the name that some locals mention instead is Nasr al-Hutaim, a low-level AQAP member who had reportedly been arrested by the Yemeni government in early 2013 and had subsequently returned to the region. Locals said it was his truck that two of the missiles struck, but it's believed that al-Hutaim himself was not inside the vehicle when it was hit.

Zabanallah al-Shafi’i, another of Ahmed's sons, was quick to deny that his younger brother Aref—or any other victims of the drone strike—was associated with AQAP. "Terrorists? The people here are Bedouins," he said. "The drones are after a bunch of goat herders. There are no training camps here. We don’t know al Qaeda.”

Nasser al-Sanea—a local journalist who was the first reporter on the scene after the attack—believes drone strikes will cause Americans more harm than good. "Every time drones attack, there is an increase in sympathy for al Qaeda," he explained. "Say you hit four? Well, you’ve just recruited dozens."

Abdullah al-Taysi, who was injured and lost his son Ali in the strike.

The anger in the region over drone strikes is stoked by a deep resentment of the Yemeni government. In 2011, the country saw an unprecedented number of people take to the streets in an Arab Spring demonstration against President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 33-year rule. Camps were set up in all of Yemen’s major cities and, after months of largely peaceful protests, Saleh stepped down in favor of his deputy, Abd-Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Ahmed al-Taysi lost his brother Salem in the strike. He now has to provide for Salem’s wife and six children, as well as his own four children. He crouched next to a rock as he spoke of his disdain for the Yemeni state, Salem’s orphaned children staring silently into the distance.

"The state has done nothing," he said. "Nothing. There’s nothing here."

"The primary man responsible is our president—the man we elected," said Sheikh al-Salmani, a local tribal leader. "We gave this man the legitimacy to rule over us, but he doesn’t care that his people are poor, he doesn’t care that his people are hungry, he doesn’t care that his people are treated badly in neighboring countries, he doesn’t care that his people are being hit with US drones."

Salmani continued: "We were expecting a country with a bright future, but nothing has changed in Yemen. We live in terrible conditions. But go to the officials’ villas and you’ll find millions of dollars of the people’s money."

And even when that money is offered back to the people, not everyone in Jism wants it. Abdullah al-Taysi survived the strike; his son Ali died. While talking to us, al-Taysi opened his shirt to reveal his shrapnel wounds. “We don’t want it,” he said of the government’s financial offer. "What will it do for me? If they gave me America and everything in it, I wouldn’t get to see my son come back."

What al-Taysi and others like him do want is accountability for the killings, a change to the country’s drone policy, and a government that is more responsive to the needs of its people.

If that doesn’t happen? "All of the tribes will join al Qaeda."

Follow Abubakr on Twitter: @abubakrabdullah

Valerie Scott has been apart of the sex work community for over three decades. All photos by the author.

There has been a lot to say about sex work in Canada this past year. There are ongoing debates about the criminalization of sex work after the monumental Supreme Court decision to strike down three major prostitution laws that were ruled as dangerous. And now a new structure called the Nordic model might be introduced which would criminalize pimps and johns, instead of the sex workers, and in many ways would erase a lot of the progress that has been made on behalf of advocates for sex workers, such as the Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC).

It seems clear there are quite a few misunderstandings about who sex workers are, what they do, and how they operate. Even the clearest of debates seems to have two different conversations happening at the same time: It’s a service! It’s a sin! It’s a right! It’s a crime! We wanted to speak to a pro who has been at it for years who could help shed some light on this mostly foggy subject.  

I sat down with Valerie Scott, a former prostitute who works as the legal coordinator at SPOC, at her apartment in Downtown, Toronto. She spoke candidly about her experience in the industry and what she thinks about today’s state of affairs.

VICE: How long have you been in the business for?
Valerie Scott: Decades. Since I was 24 and I’m 55 now.

How did this all start for you?
I used to be a dancer back in the days of burlesque, and that was fine… but I got tired of travelling from city to city every week. I would rarely see my apartment and after about six years of that…. the constant on the road… I knew of a relatively new way of working. I put a [sex work] ad in The Globe and Mail, I kept it in for seven days and I received 93 replies. They had to respond to P.O. box number at that time.

So people wrote letters to you?
Yes, and I discarded the ones with poor grammar unless it was obvious the person’s first language was not English, just general poor grammar ones—I would assume they didn’t have a good job. I would meet with them first in a restaurant or another pubic place and then we would go to a private location. I can’t tell you where, because that would be illegal for me to do so. And I got so many regulars from that and I would put an ad in maybe twice a year and just have my regulars. They would book you. Some would see you once a month, some twice a month, some once a week.

And what kind of men would typically respond to your ad?
Some really neat guys—you know, high-powered executives, regular working guys. About 60 percent were married; some confirmed bachelors—back then they would say, confirmed bachelors means gay. No, confirmed bachelors aren’t necessarily gay. And I met one disabled guy and I had no issue with that. He had to take off his leg before we had sex, big deal. But disabled people communicate with other disabled people, so he told his friends, and I had quite a clientele of differently abled men. I don’t find it repulsive or a problem at all.

Have you ever had wives come try and find you or men who have fallen in love?
I’ve had no wives, but I’ve had men fall in love with me and that can be a dangerous scenario. You don’t want that. There is something that happens when it is a service and I don’t know what it is to articulate it, but you can’t fall in love with your clients, it’s not possible.

So typically there is no real emotion involved?
Well, there is emotion, but it is friendly sex.

Is there anything about sex work, like say sleeping with a married man, that you think could be seen as unethical?
No, because, look, wives and girlfriends never need worry. For us it’s not an emotional falling in love with your husband kind of deal. It’s a service. It’s safer sex. Let’s face it: guys can’t always keep it in their pants; guys got to spread that sperm around. It’s innate and I’m not giving them a pass on that, but it is a fact, so I think it is more responsible for a guy to see a sex worker where it’s clean; there’s no muss there’s no fuss. Opposed to having an affair with an office colleague or someone they meet in a bar. I’m never going to call a client, period. I’m never going to call a client at home and cry, “You didn’t call me on my birthday,” that’s never going to happen.

So what was a turning point for you where you decided to start fighting for rights of other sex workers?
There was an election and Brian Mulroney became Prime Minister, and within six months, not even, he brought in the communication law which criminalized soliciting sex work] and I heard the justice minister at the time on the radio talking about how this law was going to cleanup the streets... I was cleaning my bathroom window at the moment and that was it.  There was a woman who I would hear on the radio occasionally, Peggy Miller, she was of the same mind. She put together a group that was known at the time as The Canadian Organization for the Rights of Prostitutes. And she’d just begun to be in the media and they treated her like a clown. The idea of sex worker speaking was very odd and strange. So I got in touch with her.



It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster for sex-workers and for SPOC this past year. What bothers you most about how this is being handled?
Really the hypocrisy of politicians making laws about sex work. So they know sex work but they don’t know how it works. Like I don’t know how the reporting business works and I don’t know how to report. I would never presume to pass a law about reporters or any job I’m not part of. You have to bring people who are involved in the profession together in a meaningful way, none of this tokenism. I can’t tell you how many parliament subcommittees I’ve spoken at—it’s all for show. It means nothing to them.

What’s really the biggest thing SPOC wants to see changed?
We now have changed the ability to work with each other. We want to be able to operate small brothels. We don’t want mega brothels; five [women in a brothel] seems to be about the acceptable number that has been banding around sex workers rights groups. Five women could work together, rent a place, and share expenses. If [one woman is] with a client, someone else would be answering the phone.

What would the Nordic model do for this?
The Nordic model will only set up the same circumstances that the Supreme Court of Canada has just ruled are unacceptable. It makes no sense. It’s terrible.

Who do you find has the biggest problem with making sex work legal?
They tend to be religious fundamentalist and radical hardline feminist. I don’t worry about the hardline feminists, but I do worry with the radical religious fundamentalists.

But aside from religious fundamentalists, there are a lot of regular people too who don’t necessarily agree with what you do.
I don’t worry about them killing us; they just disagree with us. I just think it’s because sex means something different to every single person. With ordinary people I think they’re more concerned about things like, “Oh, will a brothel open next door to me.” They see the 10 percent of sex work, the visible minority of sex work, that takes place on the street—a lot of those women are drug-addicted, and not really very together. That’s what [the naysayers] think of as sex work.

What do you think people aren’t considering?
They don’t think about the other 90 percent of us who are indoors, who are ordinary people, who may even be members of their family that they just don’t know are sex workers. I have to laugh when I hear people say: “Oh, I’ve never met a sex-worker before” and I have to say, chances are you have, you just don’t know it. Chances are there is a sex worker in your family, you just don’t know it. Even if it was your great, great aunt Mable who always had lots of gentlemen friends, she may have been a sex worker.

Why do you think some people get so angry over these laws, and sex work in general?
Because it’s about sex and anything to do with sex riles people up, they lose their minds; they lose their ability to think logically.  

Could you ever see brothels ending up in regular suburban neighbourhoods?
No. There are multiple by-laws that would prevent that. You can’t just go and open a brothel in any neighbourhood. And besides that, a lot of people have sex five or six times a week with different people and no one says anything. The fact that money is involved is the only problem.

Maybe sex and money don’t mix well?
Actually they mix very well [laughs].

What are some of the other misconceptions about sex workers?
That we live in penthouse apartments and that we’re walking around in ball gowns and dripping diamonds and speaking six different languages and that we have hot and cold running champagne and we make $5,000 a day, easy. Or, that we live in rat-infested hobbles with needles in our arms—with some big bad pimp telling us what to do [laughs]. The average Canadian sex worker earns around $40,000 a year.

What are some common myths about pimps?
Sure, some girls might have what you think of as a traditional pimp, but not the majority. Pimps don’t get you clients; they stay away from that. They are just there for emotional support. There are some drugs, but here’s the other thing: drugs are not cheap. It doesn’t make sense to get someone hooked on drugs on crack or any kind of drug and then expect there to be a lot of money leftover. So that doesn’t even really make sense.

What has changed the most about the industry from the early 80s to today?
A lot. What with the internet and cell phones. When I began there was no such thing as a cell phone and no such thing as the internet. And the thing about sex work is that sex work is so resilient and sex workers are so resilient. We can operate under just about any regime, any technological change throughout history.

Why do you think the sex industry is so resilient?
In order to stop sex work, you’d have to stop money, and you’d have to stop sex. No army, no government no religion in history has been able to eradicate sex workers. And if these prohibitionists think they are going to institutionalize the Nordic law, they are delusional. 

@angelamaries

The author. Image by Jordan Rein

In a genre where supposedly Anything Goes, where the boundaries of narrative and potential reality are not only immaterial, but also intended to be shattered with pure acts of what-the-fuck, I’ve always been baffled by how 90 percent of science fiction works seem exactly the same—a glorified romance novel, unnecessarily set in a world where, like, computers can erase minds.

A LIST OF THINGS I NEVER UNDERSTOOD OR LIKED ABOUT SCIENCE FICTION

Dialogue

Why so much goddamn talking? The Earth is being pressed upon by black magnets piloted by a race of people made of lasers from the eyes of God, and here’s a four-page scene featuring two dudes having a conversation about who stole who’s Space Lamborghini. Dialogue is fucking stupid 90 percent of the time in the first place, but when written by someone with Asperger’s it becomes instant skimming material. Please stop.

Having a Premise

The worst thing about most science fiction is how the author gets an idea they like, and then that’s the book. Like, there’s an underwater city ruled by a blue cube that holds its citizens in eternal fear threatening to explode the glass walls that contain them if they don’t work tirelessly on building a machine gun powerful enough to kill the moon, but then people just run around trying to figure out a way to stop the cube’s cruel reign, and nothing interesting happens besides the idea on the back of the book. Call me a dick, but I don’t want one fun idea, I want 500.

Generally Shitty Writing

I imagine the thinking behind a lot of science fiction is that the ideas and conceits are so fantastic that it doesn’t matter how plain the writing is. I guess the crudity is supposed to be part of the appeal, but sometimes it’s nice to not feel like I could read one out of every 18 sentences and still get the same feel out of the book. Why can’t the language be as weird as the ideas?

Everything Human

It’s really dumb how every character, no matter how insane or unusual in concept, ends up communicating exactly the same as a human would. Here’s a toaster with a death wish who learned how to sexually reproduce with lizards! By the way, he sounds exactly like your cousin Richard! Getting away from humans is the reason I started reading in the first place.

HOW GARY F. SHIPLEY DEFIES THE THINGS ABOVE

Gary F. Shipley’s new book, Dreams of Amputation, is a novel overflowing not only with ideas, but a different type of speech. From the first sentence you know you are walking into a world where you will not be led by the hand, and where even the characters will not be sure exactly what or where they are: “He wakes in a container, head like a sawn circuit, throat rattling like a battery cage, Dock Code Report flashing tortured symbols from the wall screen: the amp’s back.”

So begins what in essence serves as a story brought on in full barrage, equipped with mazes, tunnels, replicant people, goat heads, paranoia, riots, brain manipulation, new disease… Shipley moves fluidly between scenes of various styles, grafting Tarkovsky-like passages of exploration with damaged circuits of putridity and fear, sometimes not far from the clipped feel of Burroughs’s Nova Express. Where so many other books would get caught in one mode or another, Shipley keeps the eye inside the mind alive, spitting other eyes out of the eye itself.

I’m not sure how to tell you what this book’s about—or even what exactly happens—but that doesn’t really matter because it’s less about plot and more about amassment and shape. There are characters and recurring set pieces, but much of the pleasure comes from Shipley’s great array of authorial control. The plot’s trajectory alters over and over, even in mid-stream, providing the reader with more of an experience than a narration, and one designed to pull up a hidden layer of the world, shedding wicked light not on who we are, but what is right underneath us.

An Excerpt from Dreams of Amputation

I know how we got here. I know how once social beings became solitary animals unable to function in direct contact with others. I see the blood-splattered boots clumping down the hallway and up the stairs; I hear the murmuring of a thousand internal voices panicking in silence, getting their last words in, processing the information before the information processes them.

It is not a narrative of decline or of progress, although having the two sides was no small comfort to most. If it is to be viewed as a tale of our ascendance, then it should be compared to the enchanted climb of the cordyceps-infested ant, as alone in the canopy we sit, our bodies little more than roots to a deranging idea still in hibernation. The bony growth will one day erupt through my skin and discharge its poisonous spores aloft with me attached to them; I will ride my way out of here on the back of a toxin puff, each of its spores wearing my smile forever.

21^st Century Cunt Factory—built with its doors open—churned out legions of sincere insurgents, those that mutinied against the utility of deception, mutinied against what had made them clever. They herded like stinking, bow-legged cattle and lauded the retard for his glass-skulled honesty – as if he’d overcome the ability to hide it. (“Dare’s not an ance a falseness inim. E is what e is.” You could be barbecuing your neighbors’ pets, fucking their toddlers through their soiled nappies and pissing up their front doors, but as long as you weren’t trying to hide it – well shit, that’s alright then. “The man carn elp what e is. E never tried ta be uver’n what e woz. E woz a right lazy cunt, mind.”…)

Logic wasn’t their strong point, but luckily for them it was hideously out of fashion, stooped in the inglenook, head bowed, talking to itself, enraptured with neglect, diseased by the shit it ate.

Rat-eyed, thin-lipped parents self-tutored (sometimes there is no decent substitute for proper schooling) in controlled blubbing began killing their children in elaborate ways, ways specifically designed to baffle authorities and garner sympathy for themselves. What a glorious stage while it lasted: endless spin-off deals, 24-hour coverage, newspapers stained with their tearless resolve, their feigned gullibility. The innovators had it easy, but it wasn’t long before everyone tired of the spectacle, and then it wasn’t about truth or guilt, it was about whether or not they were playing the game. Do we like them? Are they trying to be liked? Can they give us the performance we demand of them? “Not a fucking tear. Who’s she trying to kid? Why doesn’t she cry for us? Doesn’t she care what we think? People like that deserve everything they get; bring it on themselves – no other way to see it.”

It was the performance that mattered, and the rules were firmly established: these are the prescribed dramatic equations of grief, sincerity, intelligence, talent, sanity, happiness… The self-loathing of the masses escalated exponentially as the heroes came to resemble the worshippers. Within a few years we had the first wave of drive-by self-abusers: daft, middle-aged housewives fattened on the dream of youth opened their veins on unsuspecting pedestrians, showering them with warm gummy blood and putting the blame on them. Self-styled vagrants popping up everywhere from city centers to the smallest village market place. They emptied their bowels into their trousers, and decorated their faces with the excrement – blacked them up like minstrels, brown and crispy-coated like racist confectionery.

The streets were crowded out with over-realized objects.

Long-decayed sharks flaunted their gray skins to the pinks, and smiled the soil of a thousand half-eaten dinners…

As a boy I saw footage of the now legendary Marvin the Magnificent, who’d attracted little attention at the time, but has since come to be regarded as something of a trailblazer among my select circle. His act was simple but brilliant: he ate himself. His show was called ‘Marvin the Marvin Eater,’ and attracted fairly good ratings to begin with, but before long (a pair of legs and nine fingers down) poor viewing figures meant that his first attempt ended prematurely. A month later he decided to continue, viewers or no viewers. A small network took him up and he set about completing his meal. Despite obvious pressure to get on with it, he took his time: he was a craftsman. He was, however, forced to rush the final stages for two reasons: (1) the ever-present threat of incapacity, and (2) the network threatening to cut him off. His elaborate system of plug-ins meant that his head could be sustained by tubes attached to synthesized organs stored in an adjoining room. This allowed him to consume all but his head, esophagus and stomach (by this point tearing under the strain), pause for a minute or two, and then, with some assistance, tuck into what remained. Inevitably, it all ended up as undigested slop dripping through the back of his ribcage onto the floor. He managed to eat the lips off his face before the show came to an end.

Now there was a parasite that took host-sickness to the next level.

@blakebutler

Video and photos by the author

In Switzerland Wednesday, delegates from more than 40 countries gathered at the Geneva II conference to discuss the extraordinarily theoretical possibility of peace in Syria. Meanwhile, more than 1,500 miles away, the Syrian conflict continued to bleed over the border into Lebanon, further destabilizing the region.

In the past few weeks, the Al Nusra Front in Lebanon, believed to be an offshoot of the jihadi group Al Nusra Front fighting in Syria, has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings that have led many people in Lebanon to fear another civil war.

Even before the latest outbreaks of violence escalated tensions, the country was already in a precarious position due to decades of civil strife. Hezbollah’s support for Syrian President Bashar Assad has inflamed the already tenuous relations between Lebanon’s Sunnis and Shiites. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the streets of Tripoli, where seemingly endless cycles of revenge shootings occur on a daily basis.

Residents have grown so assustomed to the daily barrage of bullets that Sheik Isbilal Radwan Al Masri, a Sunni leader in Tripoli, casually answered interview questions before growing fed up with the noise, picking up a nearby rifle, and firing off a few shots of his own. He then returned to finish the interview

Al Masri said he's concerned about the large numbers of Syrians who have sought refuge in Lebanon. Estimates say there could already be 1.5 million in the country, which is more than one-fourth of the Lebanese population. Resources are already depleted, and the influx of refugees shows no signs of ebbing.

The Syrian refugees with whom VICE News spoke did not care to discuss the spread of the war. Rather, they wanted to discuss their desperation and hardships, especially those of their children. Many expressed disappointment with the international community. “Our country has been destroyed, [my children] don’t have a future, and I cry for them because they’re destroyed,” said a Syrian refugee who gave her name as Ahmed. “We don’t have anything to hold on to that gives us hope, and in the end the children have to eat grass.

"The whole world is silent. Why?”

Many refugees also decried the lack of assistance and negative treatment they’ve received in Lebanon. Fady, a young father from Al Qusayr living in a camp in the city of Ersal, said that animals have been receiving better treatment then people.

“Being a refugee means you have no value—anyone on the street could hit or kill you and keep walking and you’re not even recognized by anyone,” he told us. “You’re nothing and have nothing. You have no rights.”

Giorgi Nebieridze is a Georgian photographer who currently lives in Berlin and enjoys taking unedited pictures of his "drug-addict friends" on color film. This is a collection of shots he took, mostly in Georgia's capital of Tbilisi, before moving to Germany.

"Even though the Soviet Union collapsed ages ago, Georgia still has difficulty becoming a proper independent eastern European state," he said. "Booze and cigarettes are almost free there, but you can never get any party drugs, so young people mix drinks with homemade synthetic drugs. Everyone, everywhere in Tbilisi is drunk as fuck all the time.

"It’s a great place to visit if you are interested in heavy metal bands that you would never hear anywhere else. But it's also a place where hospitals are so creepy they can make you sick, even when you have no health issues," he continued.

"I take pictures everywhere, even in nightclubs—there's no such thing as 'photographs not allowed' here, mainly because everything in Georgia is on the verge of being illegal."

Which I guess doesn't matter if all the cops are drunk.

See more of Giorgi's work here, here and here.

Image via

The Obama administration's relative silence on the issue of marijuana legalization has been good for the cause. But in a recent New Yorker article the president's stated position on the topic evolved. “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol,” he said, adding, “It’s important for [state-level legalization] to go forward because it’s important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished.” He tempered this support by gingerly detracting from legalization advocacy, saying that those who claim marijuana to be a panacea are “overstating the case.” He also referred to “some difficult line-drawing issues” between weed and other illicit drugs, paying homage to the classic, perhaps arcane argument often wielded by conservatives. As cautious as he was in stating it, Obama’s support for legalization, and more strongly decriminalization, may actually be more damaging to the effort than his silence. If we’ve learned one thing from the past six years of Obama, it’s that conservatives find it easiest to irrationally rally against him on social issues like this one.

Until now, the state-level legislative efforts to legalize weed have not included retroactively reducing the sentences of those currently imprisoned on marijuana-related charges, as pointed out by a recent LA Times piece: “It’s far easier to sell voters on the financial benefits of creating a lucrative new marijuana industry than it is to persuade them to open up the prison gates and set convicts free,” writes Matthew Fleischer.

The economic benefit of legalization has gained bipartisan support because it’s hard to argue with the revenue opportunity, and advocates are doubling their efforts while the overall fear of marijuana is at an all-time low. By publicly focusing his interest in legalization on the social issue of disproportionate prosecution of poor minorities, Obama threatens to cast the debate back into a less quantifiable realm, giving his opponents an open chance to fight him on it.

Thus far in his tenure, Obama has dealt with the most pig-headed opposition when he has argued for social change, which Republicans can easily angle as liberal, or even socialist, drumming up the support of a fearful and ignorant constituency. The most poignant example is his landmark healthcare reform, which continues to face sensational arguments that attribute the legislation to an unidentified ulterior motive on the part of his administration.

Most media call these arguments political because it wouldn’t be quite as proper to shed light on the obvious reason that Obama faces so much opposition in conservative American circles—he’s black. Obama even acknowledges this in his New Yorker interview, saying, “There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President.” What those same folks will like even less is the idea of a black president who wants to free other black men from prison. Obama merely acknowledged the injustice of the way we currently prosecute marijuana offenders, but it won’t take too much effort for pundits to spin that into an accusation of racial favoritism, or perhaps something even worse (they can be so damn creative). We can already see the vestiges of unreasonable interpretation from Fox News.

The most important takeaway of Obama’s statements for state-level legalization efforts is that the federal government will likely remain hands-off as previously stated, and that legalization in Colorado and Washington state are being viewed as experiments that could potentially influence federal law. With 58 percent of the country favoring legalization according to a recent Gallup poll, and a national atmosphere that is softening to the idea of cannabis as a medicine, it feels like the war is all but won, but it’s dangerous to underestimate the contrarianism that has mired so many of Obama’s efforts for social change. Having the president’s imprimatur on the issue might be symbolic for people who have advocated against the misguided, costly, and racist war on drugs, but it might also signal the beginning of the backlash. It’s immensely important that prior marijuana offenders see the benefits of the move toward legalization, but in the current climate, it could mean the difference between bipartisan support and a liberal uphill battle.

@ImYourKid