Photos by Sunny Ali

Before my friend Prik moved back to his homeland, where people dislike weed culture, he distributed his pipe collection to his crew. I was the happy recipient of four pipes. I didn’t inspect my new collection until I sat down to test them. Laid out in front of me, each pipe had numerous design flaws. They were all awkward to hold, and except for one pipe, they were ugly as shit and covered in little beads and horns. My favorite pipe, the Claw, was supposedly a sidecar bubbler, but it had massive structural flaws. Curved spikes surrounded the bowl piece, making it a pain in the ass to light.

I hated the pipes’ designs, but I smoked out of them because they worked. Soon the pipes were fixtures on my coffee table. When my friends visited, they described my pipes as ugly, but that made me love my collection even more. I saw each pipe as an amateur artist’s failed attempt to make something beautiful. I imagine Prik received the pipes from friends who were giving their imperfect works away for free. The flawed pipes reminded me that it’s hard to create a pipe that works well, looks great, and stands apart from the spoons for sale on Saint Marks.

Like any glass collection, my pipes have fluctuated based on my income level and the state of my clumsiness. At the very least, I always have a bong, a spoon, and a chillum. I always spend more on glass than I can afford. (For me, that means $200 for one pipe.) I envy my friends with high-end collections; smoking out of an ornate piece makes the session more ceremonial. 

Last week, I received an invitation to a glass show in Philly that came with a caveat: If I wrote about the event, I couldn’t mention attendees’ names or addresses. Paraphernalia is still illegal in Pennsylvania, and the organizers didn’t want to draw attention to the volume and value of their exhibition. These restrictions sparked my interest. On Friday, I hopped on a bus to Philly, scooped up my frequent collaborator Sunny Ali to take photos, and headed to the gallery, where I found pipes on sale for thousands of dollars.

On the first night, the exhibition was packed. JOP!, one of the resident pipe makers, told me, “We knew there would be a turnout, but we didn’t expect 400 RSVPs to be gone in 30 minutes. There’s even a secondary market, and people are selling their free RSVPs for a hundred bucks.” The crowd looked like any standard collection of weed enthusiasts—white dudes with a variety of different haircuts. In any other setting, it would have been hard to tell who was a serious pipe collector ready to drop thousands of dollars on a single glass piece.

The high prices seemed excessive until you examined the quality of the work. Most artists had a defined style and signature detail, like JOP!’s chickens or Salt's eyeballs, and each collection had its own theme. Coyle created a series of banana and monkey-themed pipes crafted entirely in black, white, and bright yellow glass, and Germ showcased a collection of long, slender pieces. “I did some research, and I found these old glass pipes from the 1700s and 1800s called whimsies,” Germ said, geeking out like a fine artist talking about his craft. “These elongated pieces are representations of those old pipes using contemporary techniques and designs, but with the same sort of shape. We all think this shit started in the 80s, but really it started in the 1780s!”

Every piece demanded appreciation. With towering structures resting on delicate stems of glass, some appeared to defy the laws of physics. Others had defined shapes that appeared finely carved, although they had been fashioned from molten glass. “The craft has changed. The work has tightened up. Techniques have been shared more,” JOP! said, as we smoked cigarettes in his studio. Some pipe makers wanted to keep their methods a secret, because they didn’t want a competitor to jack their style, but most pipe makers were willing to socialize with other artists. In the last few years, exclusivity has diminished, and the community has begun to nurture self-made artists who show promise—getting into the craft no longer requires connections. “You can go on YouTube. A dude can sit at home and learn how to blow glass without ever firing up a torch,” JOP! said.

The internet has also given OGs a new platform to promote their work and gain notoriety outside the small, insular world of high-end glass. After years in the game, they’re creating colorful, complex pieces that look crazy when they're photographed from the correct angle—in other words, they are creating Instagram gold. Exposing their work to thousands of followers has brought them widespread appreciation. Artists who started out selling $24 pipes are now making stacks at galleries. Marble Slinger, who has been blowing glass for 17 years, spent the early chunk of his career selling simpler pipes for modest sums. “Back then it was huge if you could sell a pipe for $420. Now I sell pipes for $10,000, and that’s not so unusual,” he said. Of course, people aren’t paying for the same old glass. Technology has given us the best glasswork anyone has ever seen. “The pipes we have today are made out of colored glass, which wasn’t as available [in the past], and with equipment that didn’t exist back then,” Marble said. 

The pipe makers agreed that the current glass renaissance is a culmination of several elements. The internet has allowed more exposure to artists, and the spread of legalization has brought new and returning smokers out of the woodwork. Some of these folks have a lot of money to spend. At the gallery show, there didn’t appear to be any millionaires among the crowd, so I was curious to see what high-end collectors looked like. One of the organizers introduced me to Zach, an awkward white dude in his late 20s who had long hair, glasses, and tattoos peeking out from under his jacket sleeves. After he told me that he planned on picking up a couple of thousand-dollar pieces at the show, I asked Zach about how much money he had poured into his collection over the years. He humbly shied away from his pipes' monetary value and instead told me what they meant to him: “It’s just exciting. You'll see something new and you'll just fall in love with it from seeing a photograph, and you'll think, I’d like to have that. It's like that with all art, but this is art that's actually within a price range that you can [afford]. Even at the highest end, it's still pretty acquirable compared to other types of art—and it has a function, and it’s a function that’s really close to my heart.” 

There is one aspect of artful pipes that nobody can deny—they’re all working pipes, and that makes them more functional and practical than most art. “You’re talking to a guy who spent $18,000 on a pipe,” Marble said. “Anyone who’s spent anything close to that on a painting has just hung it on their wall. He's kissed this [pipe]. He's put it to his lips. He's gotten high through it. He's shared it with his friends. No one is passing a painting around the room.”

Zach agreed. He has a particular affinity for Elbo’s microscopes and has gone to great lengths to attain them.  “I once flew to Florida for like four hours just to get this one [$1,000] microscope piece that I really wanted,” he said. I asked Zach how he had the disposable income required to maintain an expensive collection. He told me he owns a liquor store. “People like to drink,” he said.

Seeing Zach’s artistic devotion made it hard to accept that collecting is still a borderline illegal craft. Decriminalization and legalization have come far, but there are still instances like this show, where smokers have to hide their passion from a world that still partially sees their hobby as drug addiction. But things are headed in the right direction, and it won’t be long before the high-end glass trade is happening in public, with price tags ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 and more. When a $1 million dollar piece finally comes out, you can be sure it’ll have a bowl in it, and its lucky owner will pack it up, pass it to his homeboys, and hope nobody drops it. 

Special thanks to Max Tubman.

T. Kid is VICE's Weediquette columnist. Follow him on Twitter. 

An anti-mining banner at the roadblock reads: “Defend our Mother Earth from the rats.”

In 2000, engineers from Radius Gold, a Vancouver-based mining company, discovered a belt of gold deep inside the Tambor mountains in southern Guatemala. The Guatemalan government promptly issued the company an exploratory license, and for more than a decade, Radius studied the region as a possible base of operations. The proposed mine lies just a few miles from the village of San José del Golfo and from San Pedro Ayampuc, a small city. Few locals, most of whom are of indigenous Mayan descent, were consulted before Radius moved in. Few of them knew anything was happening at all. They certainly didn’t know they were living atop what would become a literal gold mine.

It wasn’t until early 2012 that townspeople began to grasp the scope of what was happening just down the road. They watched as truck after truck, loaded with heavy equipment, rumbled down the winding jungle roads that were normally used as routes for colectivo buses and small pickups carrying crates of chickens. In February 2012, Radius obtained final permission from the government to build its mine, which it hoped would pump out as many as 52,000 tons of gold a year. Fearful of what might happen if a big foreign developer started digging into their soil, the community decided to intervene. They formed a human roadblock, manned in rotating shifts by people sitting on plastic chairs. They held banners, and cooked on-site meals for protesters in a makeshift kitchen under a lush canopy of vegetation. The mine has yet to extract a single ounce of gold, and March 2 of this year marks the second anniversary of this roadblock, known as La Puya, which translates to the Point—as in the tip of a spear.

A shooting victim shows a wound from the April 2013 attack near the Escobal silver mine.

The human roadblock was the culmination of decades of frustration with the destructive and lucrative mining industry in Guatemala. The industry has benefited the national coffers since the country opened up to foreign mineral extraction in the mid 1990s. But that wealth rarely trickles down to those living in close proximity to the mines, who are the most affected by the damage to the local ecosystem. In San José del Golfo and San Pedro Ayampuc, where most residents earn a living as sweet-corn farmers or chicken ranchers, the fear was that the arrival of large-scale industrial mining would suck up and contaminate the local water supply, drying up natural springs, depleting the water table, and polluting it with arsenic.

I visited La Puya in July 2013, after hearing about the many attacks the roadblockers had withstood over the course of the previous year. Five months after La Puya was formed, Radius Gold sold its exploratory license to Kappes, Cassiday & Associates (KCA), a mining company based in Reno, Nevada. The human roadblock drastically increased the risk of the investment, but the structure of the sale was such that Radius wouldn’t be paid in full until the mine started producing. This incentivized both companies to get rid of the activists and start digging up gold. In December 2012, the mining companies hired police and private security who arrived en masse at the roadblock and delivered an ultimatum to the protesters: Clear the road, or be removed by force. Steadfast and resolute, the protesters didn’t budge—even when the security detail fired tear gas to disperse the crowd. Instead, the roadblockers lay flat on the dirt road, holding flowers up to the riot-gear-festooned police.

Members of La Puya meet with Guatemala’s president, center, and interior minister, right.

That official attempt to move the roadblock was somewhat chaotic but still respectful of the rule of law, oversimplified as a case of the state wielding its power as a cudgel against protesters illegally blocking a road. But months earlier, Yolanda “Yoli” Oquelí Veliz, one of the leaders of La Puya, had gotten a far more acrimonious visit.

On the night of June 13, 2012, as she was driving home from the roadblock, two masked gunmen followed Yoli on motorbikes and shot at her multiple times. “I still have the bullet in my back,” Yoli told me when I interviewed her at La Puya’s camp on a calm, sunny day in July. She craned her neck and pointed at a raised mound of flesh near her kidney.

Although many are undocumented, attacks like the one Yoli survived are all too common. Anti-mining encampments pepper the Guatemalan countryside, and attacks by private security organizations have been reported all over the country. One such case occurred in April 2013, at southeast Guatemala’s Escobal silver mine, which is owned by the Canadian-founded company Tahoe Resources. Tahoe’s head of security gave orders to open fire on protesters who had been blockading the road near the mine, according to an investigation by Guatemalan newspaper Siglo 21 a month later. Six people were badly injured, and the head of security was recorded on tape giving the order to shoot, allegedly saying, “Kill those sons of bitches.”

Guatemala’s president, Otto Pérez Molina, right, and interior minister, Mauricio López Bonilla

Following the attacks, people from nearby villages began setting vehicles on fire. Riots broke out. Guatemala’s president, Otto Pérez Molina, imposed a “state of siege” for 30 days, a legal move that gave the military the right to impose martial law on the areas around the mine. The community’s blockade was dissolved, and Tahoe has been extracting silver on a commercial scale since January 2014, having begun operations in September last year. According to the company’s press materials, Escobal is now poised to become the largest silver mine in the world.

Guatemala sits atop a wealth of natural resources—nickel, gold, silver, and titanium—that lie beneath the country’s rich volcanic soil. In 1960, the Canadian-owned and -operated International Nickel Company (INCO) became the first transnational mining company to arrive in Guatemala. That year also marked the beginning of a 36-year civil war between the government and a slew of leftist guerrilla groups fighting over land distribution, indigenous rights, and economic equality. The conflict ended in 1996, after sweeping neoliberal economic changes were enacted and many regions of the country previously controlled by rebels were opened up to the mineral-extraction industry.

Since then, the government has granted more than 400 licenses to multinational corporations, and the terms for these companies are exceptionally favorable. The government rarely receives more than 5 percent of a company’s earnings, and under the leadership of President Pérez Molina, corporations pay the government only 1 percent of the value of the minerals they extract. They also get to use local water at no cost. Mineral exploitation is a technical term for the process of mining, and in a very literal sense, communities like those near La Puya are being exploited for their gold, their water, and their wealth, with mining often leaving behind a thoroughly pillaged landscape that is utterly bereft and toxic.

A farm overlooking the Escobal silver mine

On June 12, 2013, I was invited, along with ten representatives of La Puya, to the National Palace in Guatemala to speak with the country’s president and its interior minister. The goal was to strike an agreement between activists and the government. The demonstrators at La Puya are the only community-based activists to have been invited to the National Palace for such a meeting. Unbeknownst to them, however, the president had also invited KCA in an attempt to open up dialogue between the two opposing sides. Yoli was furious and refused to speak with KCA executives. Which made perfect sense, considering her explicitly stated objective was the cancellation of all mining licenses within their territories.

“This decision can only be made by the government of Guatemala and therefore cannot be discussed with KCA,” she told Pérez Molina. He thought about this for a minute before asking members of KCA to leave the room, after which the president, the interior minister, and the representatives of La Puya spoke. One of the main issues discussed was an environmental-impact study previously executed by KCA. The study found the environmental and ecological risks posed to areas surrounding the mines to be of relatively low impact—a conclusion that has since been discredited by several reputable geologists. La Puya successfully argued its case, and the meeting concluded with Pérez Molina’s promising that a second, fully independent study of the effects of mining on the area would be commissioned by the government. In the meantime, KCA was ordered to suspend its operations.

At the moment it felt like a small victory. But as of press time, the promised environmental-impact study has yet to be commissioned, and the scale of attacks against villagers near the mine has increased.

The day shift at La Puya’s encampment

I returned to Guatemala in early December 2013 and visited San José de Nacahuil, a tiny village about 15 miles from La Puya. On September 7, 2013, 11 people were killed and 28 more were injured there when masked gunmen with automatic weapons stormed the village’s main street and opened fire on businesses. Authorities and local newspapers reported that the shootings were gang-related, but the community disputed this charge.

I drove up to San José de Nacahuil on a single-lane road and talked to local residents. They showed me the cafeteria where ten of the victims from the September 7 attacks had died. Bullet holes riddled the wall. Later, an elderly woman led me to a spot where gunmen had allegedly chased a man and shot him before dragging his body back to the café and dumping him with the others.

According to many residents whom I interviewed, police invaded the small community hours before the massacre, to intimidate and harangue them. After the police had left, the gunmen arrived, tracing the same route as the officers and targeting the same businesses the police had visited.

The community of La Puya in peaceful resistance

Villagers believed that there had been an escalation of the mining corporations’ intimidation tactics, which now bore all the hallmarks of police collusion and a militia-style subjugation of locals fighting against the degradation of their environment. Their strategy was now one of preemption; police and thugs had shifted their attention from disbanding already-established roadblocks to disrupting nearby communities that might rally to the cause.

It seems that the resistance to mining efforts in this area of rural Guatemala—and the associated violence—won’t be stopping anytime soon. La Puya might be celebrating its second anniversary, but some protesters are facing criminal charges and trials as their attackers go largely unpunished.

Yoli, the woman who was shot in the back near La Puya, went to court in February 2014, along with six of her fellow protesters from the roadblock. They were charged with kidnapping, coercion, and intimidation, allegations that their supporters claim are false. As of press time, a verdict has not been reached, but to the mining companies it’s something of a victory: It has kept Yoli in a courthouse, far away from the roadblocks.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Death's scary. I understand that, but when you break death down, it's the most normal event in the world. It's the only thing we all have in common. (If you're ever stuck at a bar in a deeply conservative corner of America and need something to discuss with a scary conservative bartender, bring up death.) Death itself isn't scary—what's scary is that death signifies how quickly our accomplishments and occasional acts of kindness will be wiped off the earth. Being forgotten is the true horror, which is why nothing scares me more than stories like this one about a roofer discovering a mummified woman, who had been dead for at least five years, in her foreclosed house. Her bills had been paid after she died, and nobody noticed she had died until the bills stopped being paid and the bank sent a roofer to fix a hole in her roof. In other words, nobody cares when we die. 

Still from America trailer

Have you been sitting on the edge of your toilet seat waiting for filmmaker and alleged campaign-finance lawbreaker Dinesh D'souza to direct his follow-up to 2016: Obama's America? Well, you can sit back and relax, because he's made another movie. This one is called America, because why the hell not? It will show an alternate reality where George Washington was killed in battle and America lost the Revolutionary War. From the looks of the trailer, it seems like most of the changes will take place at our country's national parks, where the monuments will turn to rubble, presumably forcing our rangers to spend their days sweeping like mad men. Also, Joseph Stalin will probably rule the world with communism, behind an impenetrable wall of forced abortions, and breed with a time-traveling Hillary Clinton to produce Barack Obama, because Dinesh loves facts. 

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

I'm not going to climb on my virtual soapbox and rant about how science is terrible. It's not. It's awesome, and it allows me to reheat leftover pizza and read theories about what the fuck happened on True Detective from pretty much anywhere in the world. But—and this is a but big enough to make Sir Mix-A-Lot consider sitting this one out—every now and then scientists do a tad too much digging for my liking, like when they revived the largest virus ever discovered, which they found in a 30,000-year-old piece of ice. Sure, folks behind the discovery are touting the virus's uniqueness as opposed to its fear quotient, but I certainly wouldn't mind if we left a giant undiscovered virus alone.

Follow Rick Paulas on Twitter. 

Since 2010, Chicago-based artist Jason Lazarus has maintained a growing archive of images deemed “too hard to keep” by their owners. Submissions have included photos of friends, family members, pets, high school graduations, objects, and places that are too difficult to view again. Lazarus returns these shadow images to the light in the form of books and exhibitions culled from his archive, but their dark pathos remains attached.

We invite VICE readers to contribute images to Too Hard to Keep, and VICE will publish a selection of the results. Please indicate whether the photographs you submit to the archive may be exhibited in the future, or are private photographs that are only to be displayed face down. Send photos, photo albums, photo objects, or any other large submissions to the repository:

Jason Lazarus
THTK
1516 N Kedzie Ave, #3
Chicago, IL 60651

Jan-Bert Vroege

Candidates from the Dutch political party Democrats 66 (D66) have been using Grindr as part of their local elections campaign in Amsterdam. It makes perfect sense, considering politicians are already all over social media, but the internet went wild for this story because Grindr is generally better known as a platform for sharing dick pics, not political policies.

I gave Jan-Bert Vroege, one of the D66 candidates using Grindr, a call to ask him why he took to the app to reach out to potential voters.

VICE: Hi Jan-Bert. Why did you decide to use Grindr as part of your campaign?
Jan-Bert Vroege: We have a small event coming up next Sunday about gay issues in one of the districts in Amsterdam, and a few members were wondering how we could get some attention for it. Then we came up with the idea to put it on Grindr so people could find out that way.

Were you already on Grindr?
Yeah, I already had a profile, so all I did was change my photo to a big logo of the D66 party and change the headline to "Let’s have a date on March 19."

Some people have said it’s a great way of attracting attention to our party, what with the election coming up. Others had lots of questions related to all sorts of issues—not just gay ones, but general things relevant to the people of Amsterdam, like lack of housing or problems with car parking. They started to ask questions and it turned out to be a very good medium to communicate with the general public.

Have you been messaging specific people?
I don’t send messages out, I just reply when I receive one. It’s not just about getting your message out there; it’s more about listening to what people want to say to you.

How long have you been using as a promotional platform for the party?
We started on Monday night this week. The first night, everybody was asking me why I was on my phone the whole time, and by the end of the evening I'd received between 35 to 40 messages. I was thinking, Woah, what’s happening! Every day I get between 30 to 50 messages from different people.

Are there any other political candidates using Grindr to attract voters?
Yes, we have six gay candidates all over the city, so everybody can contact them. There are two elections coming up: one for the neighborhood and one for the city council, so we want to reach out to everyone.

Why did you target the gay community specifically?
It’s not just gay issues we want to talk about; it’s all of them. We wanted to show that the D66 is a party who are into new technology. We wanted to show that we understand the gay community and that we're the party that has a long history of tackling these issues. We were the first party to work on gay marriage, and we’ve been working on equal right for gays over the past 25 to 30 years.

It’s a big issue for D66, and most of the gay community know where we stand on gay issues. People on Grindr aren't only gay, but they’re citizens of Amsterdam and they have the same problems as everyone else in the city. Most of them aren't even into the gay problems.

Being a dating app, I imagine you get other messages traditional political campaigns wouldn't?
It’s mostly politics. People sending us messages to say that they like the campaign and tell us they’ll vote for us. But there are an awful lot of tourists in the city who use Grindr and don’t know who the D66 are. They don’t know about the elections, so they have other types of questions.

Yeah. So do you see this as a political technique that could become more popular? Will you carry on using it after the elections? 
I don’t know. Maybe. It’s good to do it once. Somebody told me that we are the first in the world ever to do this. But imagine it in a few years: If everybody uses Grindr for political, marketing, or advertising reasons, it won't be as popular as it is now. Perhaps if another new piece of technology came along then we’d use that.

We’re always finding new ways of communicating with people, but Grindr is the most popular at the moment.

Follow Caroline Christie on Twitter.

All illustrations by Claire Milbrath.

Going off my Zoloft and birth control simultaneously in 2014 has resulted in a brand new habit for me: Tinder—that, and a tattoo of my best friend’s name on my wrist. Anyway, my newfound Tinder usage doesn’t mean I’m fucking every guy within a ten-kilometer radius. In some ways, that would be a lot healthier. What my app-fueled dating spree does mean is that during every spare moment, whether on the streetcar or waiting for my food to meet me for dinner, I’m swiping left or right (mostly left). Even culling my list once in a while means that, currently, I have 150 possibilities—aka dudes I’m interested in enough to swipe the digital faces of who are interested in me too. That, in and of itself, is titillating. Tinder’s “It’s a Match!” buzz is just about enough for most women.

Tinder was first described to me as “Grindr for straight people.” I scoffed at the possibility of this, and suggested that they might as well have called it: “Raper.” Give my GPS coordinates to a city of men I don’t know—yeah, right. Tinder, however, is much more demure. Furthermore, women use this app; therefore, it’s always going to be used for dating more than anything else. Yes, I know, some women want casual sex too. I have no doubt that plenty of women are on there to have sex as quickly and efficiently as possible. But I hear far more stories about how so-and-so met her boyfriend on Tinder than I do anything else. As for myself, until last weekend, I had received far more messages on OkCupid reading just “Sex?!?!” than I had on Tinder. Frankly, I was starting to get a little offended—where the fuck were the Tinder perverts? Was I not good enough for them?

Getting pervy is a little tricky on Tinder since the app doesn’t allow you to send your newfound love interest any pictures directly—you have to exchange phone numbers for that. This technical drawback is what led to a very gracious and direct offer from a stranger this past Saturday night:

1:18 AM: Hey Mary Ann, how’s your weekend? Would you like to come over sometime and have your pussy licked?  My apologies if I’m being too forward and you’re not looking to hook up, but that’s all I’m really looking for right now. It’s my favourite hobby, a true passion of mine lol

Needless to say, a few drinks in and in the company of some real jokers, I was laughing pretty hard at this. My pal Nathan convinced me to send an equally ridiculous response of “I love the 8=====0” and he was quick to respond:

2:26 AM: Hah who doesn’t.  I mean I love mine, but probably not others. Blowjobs do look like fun though.  I’ll do that to you.  And I didn’t even offer my cock, yet anyway...I just like to pleasure. Wanna trade some naughty pics?  My number is __________ if you’ll humour me and send a few. I’ll reciprocate of course.

So, I gave this horny guy my phone number and subsequently sent him a picture of a doorknob. I quickly got a pretty odd dick pic in return.



Need I explain that most women are not interested in dick pics, regardless of image quality or dick quality. I tried to confirm this with a party attendee and she of course informed me that she has a treasured collection of dick pics; however, she is just a fucking contrarian and an exception to the normally infallible dick pics rule. There’s a reason why you can’t share pictures directly on Tinder: MOST WOMEN DON’T WANT TO SEE A JPEG OF YOUR FLOPPY DICK, and do not find the penises of strangers inherently sexy. Moving on, however, I allowed Nathan to ask my Tinder pursuer “Dude, what’s wrong with your dick?” and he was not nearly as offended as he should have been:

3:03 AM: It curves to the left for her pleasure...I’ve never had that reaction though, hah.  That’s real time, took it just for you.  Still pretty large though, it’s popular.  Can I get a peek at your pussy? I’ve never seen one I didn’t looove. 

3:09 AM: No love, eh?  You don’t have to look at it anyway if you don’t want.  I just wanna lick you for a few hours. (A FEW HOURS!)  Lemme know if you change your mind.

I replied with a picture of kitchen faucet, and also informed him that this conversation was getting to be a bit much. My friends (especially the straight males ones) were horrified and insisting that this Tinder fellow was sick and twisted, and that I should call the police. 

3:26 AM: Hah ok, sorry for bothering you.  I don’t get the random pics though, what’s the harm in showing a little anonymous bush?

I woke up with a bad hangover, feeling sleep-deprived and guilty about how I had led this guy on. After all, as I informed him in a message shortly thereafter, we met on Tinder.  Normal social rules of etiquette do not apply. He was perfectly honest about what he was after, and I led him on for my own entertainment and entertainment of my friends. I apologized, and assured him that I was sure he would find a nice young lady he could satisfy to his heart’s delight. 

12:04 PM: Aw thanks. I really appreciate the kind words. Best of luck to you. Cheers.

The very next week, from me:

2:10 AM: It’s so funny. Girl psychology  = as soon as you backed down last week, I became more interested in you. But it’s still probably a bad idea that we talk cause you are looking for something 100% casual.

And his response:

2:59 AM: Hmm…You drive a tough bargain my love…Fine, 1 bad movie, 1 dinner at Swiss Chalet, 3 drinks, 4 doors held open, 1 coat over a puddle, and 2 kisses.

3:00 AM: And 3 orgasms

3:01 AM: Phones dying :(

3:01 AM: Gnight!

Yeah, orgasm promises from strangers… not only is the likelihood of this happening for me about as likely as Rob Ford’s sobriety—but it’s also disgusting and slightly terrifying.  Still, he didn’t do anything morally wrong in my opinion, and that’s worth something! For now, I’ll stick to coffee and drink dates with this Tinder gizmo. 

Stay tuned.

All photos by Roc Morin

Sometimes he was Steven Francis Neill, and sometimes he was Neill Franklin. One was an unemployed junky looking to score on the streets of Baltimore. The other was an undercover narcotics agent.

“Eventually, it became somewhat problematic,” the now retired Neill Franklin (which is his real name) explained. “I felt myself getting lost at times between the two worlds. This is one of the reasons for establishing rigid limitations on how long someone remains undercover. We've left some investigators ‘under’ way too long.”

I met Neill for a tour of his Baltimore, the city he grew up in, policed for 34 years, and left upon retirement. As we cruised through a wasteland of abandoned and burned-out houses, it was easy to see why the 55-year-old had moved to the suburbs. Corner boys glared out from under street signs with names suggesting far more idyllic surroundings—Eden, Crystal, and Spring.

We meandered for the next several hours as I interviewed him about the drug war that he helped to wage and now blames for the ruination of the city he once called home. As the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), Franklin—along with 3,500 other former cops, judges, and district attorneys—is on a crusade to make all drugs legal.

VICE: What was it like growing up here?
Neill Franklin: Back in the 60s, all of these wonderful row homes that you see all boarded up and vacant, they had people in them. In my neighborhood, we had doctors, and teachers, and businessmen. We had all of these positive influences within walking distance, but violence chased them away.

How did the violence start?
The drug trade. No, not so much the drug trade, but policing the drug trade. We always had drugs, but we didn’t always have violence in our streets. Back then, there were major drug organizations in the city that divided up different areas among themselves. “That’s your area, this is ours, and if we have problems, we settle them among ourselves.” Violence was bad for business. When the drug war began, though, we started dismantling those organizations. The vacancies that we created were filled by the sons of the men we sent to prison. The sons fought each other over who would fill those vacancies. They went to the street corners, and gangs started developing, and six organizations turned into 600.

So there’s actually an increase in violence after every drug bust?
Yes, that’s exactly right. There’s also an increase in overdoses. People overdose because their dealer got arrested and they have to go to a new dealer. With their old dealer, he always mixes it the same way, so they know what the potency is. Suddenly, though, they’re buying from this new guy and have no idea how potent it is. Too much and they’re dead. The problems of drug use and addiction are real, but the policies of prohibition don’t get rid of them and end up creating a whole bunch of other problems.

Did you consider any of this when you joined the police force?
I had not a clue.

Neill Franklin

What were your convictions at the time?
I really didn’t have a whole lot. I joined pretty much because my older brother did.

Why did you choose narcotics?
It wasn’t like I was on this mission to rid the world of drugs or anything like that. It was just a very exciting thing to do. I noticed there was this shady group of folks who just kept coming in and out of the basement of the police barracks. They were always pulling up in their Cameros, Trans Ams, and Corvettes. I found out that they were narcs—narcotics agents. I put in for a transfer right away, and that was the beginning of my career in drug enforcement.

So what was your fake identity?
My basic character was that of a wealthy kid, no job, kicked out of the house by his father,= but cherished by his mother, with access to cash at times.

Where did your persona come from?
It’s pretty simple. You watch the folks you’re hanging with, take a little from each, and craft a character. I've always been good at emulating others. A natural ability, I guess.

What was your job as a narc?
All you had to do was frequent your local bars, really. You meet people who are doing drugs, and you branch out from there. You arrest those people and turn them into your informants. Then you get more people.

So you weren’t actually going after specific people?
Well, sometimes I was. There was this one guy they wanted me to get at this place called the Duke’s Lounge. The guy’s name was Gant. He never trusted me, from day one. But Nicky and Angelo were two guys I befriended. We flipped them. Then there was Freddy and Ray Charles Brown. I have no idea what happened to them after we made the arrests. It was only later that I realized that the reason they were sending me into that place was because it was a black club and they wanted the black clubs shut down.

So it was racially motivated?
In most cases I don’t think it was. It’s just easier to bust those guys. You give me a squad of narcs and drug dogs, and we’ll go to some affluent white community. I can walk down the streets sniffing cars, do some knock-and-talks, and I assure you we’ll come across some marijuana parties. I guarantee I can come out of there with some drug arrests. But after the first day, after the mayor’s phone rings off the hook—that’s the end of that operation.

As a narc, did you feel sympathy for any of the people you pretended to befriend?
Some of them, I did. These were good people—just like anybody else. I didn’t think that way back then, but these weren’t people out there robbing stores, hurting people.

What did you think back then?
At the time that I started, I really did believe that some of these people were the scum of the earth. Mostly, though, I was just doing the job I was paid to do. I didn’t think that much about it. 

Was there anyone in particular who changed your mind?
No one in particular—just as time went on I came to realize why most of the people use the stuff. I thought, why is smoking a joint any different from someone else sucking down Jack Daniels? Eventually, I started learning about why these policies exist. It really boils down to social control: people controlling other people.

How do you mean?
Well, let’s look at how the drug war began, with Richard Nixon. His main headaches were Vietnam War protesters and the civil-rights movement. You can’t throw people in prison for protesting because of freedom of speech, and you can’t throw people in prison for being black. But you can always criminalize what they do. One of Richard Nixon’s closest aides, H. R. Haldeman, said he remembers Nixon saying that blacks were the real problem and we have to figure out a way to deal with them without appearing to. That was right before he started the drug war.

And did Nixon’s plan work?
Well, look—drug use is relatively the same across demographics. Types of drugs might be different. Methods might be different. But enforcement is obviously different. That’s why we have higher incarceration rates of blacks than Latinos and whites. Generally, blacks lack political and financial power, so there’s no one to push back. There’s no one to come to their defense.

What do you think are the effects of those higher incarceration rates?
You want safer communities? Sending people to prison won’t do it. Think about it—if you put a man in prison, you put his whole family in prison too. You’ve just put that family into financial dire straits. Prisons are not institutions of higher learning. They are institutions of corruption, institutions of violence. People come back to their communities worse off than when they went in. They’ve got a record, so they’re unemployable for the most part except for the drug trade. The drug trade will hire you no matter what. It’s a vicious cycle.

How do you respond to critics who say that drugs destroy families too?
The problem for most people is not the drug itself, but the lifestyle that comes along with the drug in an environment of prohibition. In the world of prohibition, the price of these drugs is hyper-inflated. Therefore, I must rob, I must deal, I must do whatever I can to support my addiction.

What changed your mind about drug policy?
It wasn’t until I retired that I really started taking a critical look at what was going on. A friend of mine was working undercover with the FBI in Washington, DC, and he was assassinated, so that shook me up, got me thinking about how these policies create violence.

What happened?
His name was Ed Toatley, and he used to be my partner. He was one of those talented black undercover agents the department farmed out to everybody. Ed was working with the FBI, buying cocaine from a mid-level dealer. He had bought from this guy before and was meeting him again for one last buy. This time though, the guy decided he was going to keep the drugs and the money. He came up to the car, reached in, and shot Ed in the head.

What do you say to people who make the argument that legalizing drugs will increase usage?
First thing I ask them is, “If it’s legal tomorrow, what drug are you going to use? Cocaine, heroin, meth?” Bottom line is, no one ever says, “Yeah, I can’t wait to go try meth.” Drugs are so easy to get that anyone who wants to use them can get them already. Even in prison you can get them. In all of America, there is not one drug-free prison. If you can’t keep drugs out of a prison, how are you going to keep drugs out of a free society?

Why do you think there’s such resistance to LEAP’s proposal?
There’s that old adage that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. People have been doing it this way for so long.

With alcohol prohibition, it only took 13 years for people to figure out it didn’t work.
That’s right. And that’s because, since it was such a short time, people remembered what it was like before prohibition. In 13 years we went from horse-drawn carriages to guys hanging off the sides of automobiles with submachine guns.

Why do you think people view alcohol differently from other drugs?
Probably because alcohol has such a long tradition in our society. But alcohol is far more dangerous than all the other drugs we have out there. Alcohol eats you from the inside out. Heroin doesn’t do that. Cocaine doesn’t do that that. People think it does, but it doesn’t. It’s the cutting agents that are used that cause you the health issues. If you get pure heroin—no adulterants, baby laxatives, and things like that—you’ll live just as long as anybody else.

As a cop, did you have more trouble with people on drugs or people on alcohol?
It was always alcohol. Alcohol and violence go hand-in-hand. As a cop on the street, in my entire career, I never had an altercation with someone on weed alone. Domestic violence calls, it’s always alcohol. Weed, man, they’re the most docile folks.

So I notice the crucifix you have here. You’re obviously a religious man. How do those views inform your work with LEAP?
I honestly feel that the Lord called me to do this work.

What do you think Jesus Christ would say about current drug policy?
He’d be pretty pissed off about it, if you ask me. Jesus Christ was about two things: Number one was forgiveness, and number two was compassion. So if you’re a Christian and you think that these policies are something that your Lord and Savior would embrace, you’ve got another thing coming. Not only that, but how would he feel about us supporting policies that are the foundation for much of the violence and mayhem that we have around the globe today? Loving people—that’s how you get people to treat themselves better.
 

Roc’s new book, And, was released recently. You can find more information on his website.

In part three of Fresh Off the Boat - NYC, Chef Huang shows us a day in his life in Downtown Manhattan featuring friends and family from various aspects of his life.

All photos via Twitter user Kolastirio Kordalou

Athens's Korydallos prison hospital is making sick people sicker. Reports have portrayed the facility—the only prison hospital in the country—as severely lacking in doctors, nurses, and medicine. It's also hugely overcrowded, housing around 200 prisoners in a space built for 60, causing appalling hygiene and living conditions that have led to the rapid spread of infectious diseases among inmates.

For the past month or so, the majority of prisoners being held in the hospital have been refusing food and medication as part of a protest against the conditions. And in February, photos and videos were posted to the Kolastirio Kordalou (Korydalos’ Hellhole) Twitter account that illustrated exactly what those conditions are like.

I called Michalis, a 45-year-old inmate who’s spent the last four months being treated in the prison hospital. He told me that when he was last hospitalized in Korydallos, between 1998 and 2003, standards were much higher. “Back then, there were 16 to 17 patients, four in each room. As soon as you entered, you had medical tests. Today, if and when you get tested, it’s too late,” he told me.

“For example,” he continued, “there's a 23-year-old who's already been here for a month without getting a check-up. We enter the hospital with a medical condition or a disability and leave with a chronic illness. Do you know why you don’t hear of deaths in prisons? Because when someone is near death, they move him to a public hospital. That’s where his death is recorded."



Michael has been HIV-positive for seven years. The last time he was sent to prison was for financial crimes. This time it’s drugs. He spoke quickly, trying to give me detailed answers without getting distracted by the fuss around the prison phone booth. I asked him about living conditions in the hospital.

“I live in 25 square meters [270 square feet] with 19 others,” he said. “Overall, the prison hospital houses 209 people, aged from 22 to 84 years old, excluding those who come and go. The majority—170 people—are HIV-positive.”

He went on to explain how the conditions have directly impacted patients’ health: “Tuberculosis and hepatitis are everywhere. There are so many types of tuberculosis that the virus has mutated,” he said. “It’s become so durable that it cannot be limited or treated by medications. From midday onwards, there’s only one doctor and a nurse to treat us. If more than two people are sick simultaneously... you’re dead.

“We only get to walk in the yard for one hour in the morning and one in the afternoon—we spend 22 hours closeted. We can't open the windows because the rooms are so crowded with beds. So we've started this hunger strike. And if necessary, we’ll continue with a hunger and thirst strike. The hospital staff are on our side—they know very well that they too are in danger; they have families, they have children."

The day I spoke to Michalis, inmates at the Korydallos hospital had already reached the ninth day of their hunger strike. Now they’ve also stopped taking their medication. During our phone call, I asked Michalis what they hope to achieve with the protest.

"We call for control, preventive healthcare, and de-crowding,” he said. “We recommend that patients with chronic diseases are released after they’ve done two-fifths of their time.

“On the other hand—for people who are going to trial—if the offense is punishable with a sentence of fewer than ten years, we suggest they’re released on bail. For example, there are detainees here awaiting trial for stealing a bottle of vodka or a bicycle. Does keeping them here make sense? They’re at risk. Moreover, they should impose the lowest sentence possible for people with low life expectancies so that they can die at home.”



The Ministry of Justice has suggested that the sickest inmates be released, but prisoners say that it won’t change anything in the long run. And they’re right—it sounds a lot like a token gesture to distract from the real issues at hand. Apart from that, the only other reaction from the Greek authorities has been the prosecutor’s decision to give the prisoner whose photos were published on Twitter a disciplinary action.

Depressingly, while they might have given a stark insight into the conditions inside the prison hospital, the photos haven’t inspired as much outrage as the Twitter page’s administrators were hoping for; a call to rally outside the building in solidarity with the inmates only attracted ten people.

"However, one must not forget the unprecedented features that the call itself had,” said Afroditi Babasi, a member of the Initiative for Prisoners' Rights, shortly after the small protest ended. “For the first time, the prisoners themselves called to society for support and solidarity.”

Last week, Liliane Maury Pasquier, the special rapporteur on equal access to healthcare at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), called on Greek authorities to make immediate improvements to the quality of care provided at the hospital. And Babasi believes that more people of Pasquier’s stature will also start to come forward soon enough, as long as the prisoners’ protest is promoted by other citizen movements, initiatives, and organizations.

"If that happens," she said, "the next gathering will have a massive turnout, exerting the necessary pressure on the government and the ministries, and the prisoners' demands will be heard.”

All images courtesy of Nicky Young.

In the wake of Loretta Saunders’ tragic death, the Mohawks of Tyendinaga—led by activist Shawn Brant—staged a peaceful direct action demanding a federal inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women. Shawn, who is well known for taking direct action against the government, often by staging blockades, vowed in a public letter written to Stephen Harper that Harper had until the end of February to call a federal inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women before he would take action against the government.   

The promised action was staged about 20 minutes east of Belleville, Ontario, near Tyendinaga territory. Shannonville Road near Highway 401 was strategically chosen for its high traffic. Despite a heavy police presence, the protest was peaceful and relatively small. When I arrived on the scene on March 6th, police greatly outnumbered protesters. Protesters said that there were around 80 people on the ground when the action began on February 28th, but that number had dwindled to around 20 protesters within a week. The group had a bonfire going on the side of the road, as well as a tipi obstructing one lane of traffic but not the other on Shannonville Road.

The protesters I spoke with were calm and resolute in the face of risking possible arrest. They believed they were standing up to protest and had no other recourse. They were, simply put, desperate for a sign of good faith from a government that has turned its back on the unspeakable violence faced by Indigenous women and girls in communities across Canada. Several protesters (most of whom asked to not be identified out of fear of arrest) underscored the fact they believed just calling for an inquiry would make a difference; whether they could trust the state to follow through and achieve results was another question altogether.

“We have so much grief in our communities and it needs to stop. People need to be paying attention to the fact that this is such a huge issue now, and it never should have been. You know, not one of those women should have gone through what they went through and their families should not be suffering for it now,” a Mohawk woman told VICE. In reference to the Cheyenne Fox case she continued, “We had a man here yesterday and [his] little girl died about a year ago. The police called it a suicide and it wasn't. Somebody dangled her from a building and the police did not investigate.” She was referring to John Fox, father of Cheyenne Fox, who would later be arrested at the blockade on—of all days—International Women’s Day.

“If they will agree to an inquiry, I think it’s just a sign of good faith,” said the same anonymous Mohawk woman. “The government has made promises before that, of course, haven't been kept. And all these women are still volatile. They're scared to report, they're scared that no one will care. And you know, they're right. That's heartbreaking. And absolutely shameful. How do you look at somebody that's just lost their child and be angry that they're upset. We're all standing out here and the threat of arrest has already been made. We're standing here for women. We're the life-givers, without our women we have nothing. We'll disappear. And I think that's kind of the plan, as heartbreaking as it is. My daughter, she knows now that if something happens to her no one will care. She's 15.”

Protest site.

Most of the people at the blockade Thursday were waiting on Parliament to release a report from the Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women. The report would be an indicator of the government’s position on an inquiry in the face of mounting pressure from Indigenous communities and their supporters. By Friday, the day after VICE left the blockade, the government tabled its report and it was clear that a federal inquiry would not be coming soon. In fact, the government has outright refused to hold any sort of inquiry. Shawn Brant, who said he was expecting a big “fuck you” from the government, vowed to ramp up the blockade regardless. The battle-hardened Mohawk activist has already cultivated a reputation for using his body to clash with the state, and this action was no different.

Late Friday, a week after the blockade began, Brant and a few others moved the blockade from Shannonville Road over to the CN and VIA rail lines nearby. Saturday morningthe police presence ramped up to an almost absurd level and sealed off access to the rail lines through sheer manpower. Several protesters, including Shawn, were arrested. John Fox, father of Cheyenne Fox, was also arrested and subsequently released. It appears the arrest of a grieving father was used to leverage the dispersal of the protest; protesters bargained with police to achieve his release and were told that in exchange, they had to go home.

Shawn is currently being charged with two counts of criminal mischief by Ontario Provincial Police for his role on the road-turned-rail blockade. VICE spoke with Shawn when we were on the scene in Belleville on Thursday, prior to the rail blockade and his arrest.

“Calls by the United Nations, by every premier of every province, mayors, police associations, aboriginal associations, women's organizations, church groups, all of them have said there needs to be a comprehensive federal strategy and a national inquiry. We're not simply going to add another voice to fall on the deaf ears of government, we're putting our money where our mouth is, we're saying you may be able to ignore petitions and you may be able to ignore reports and requests by the United Nations, but you're not going to ignore Mohawk men that want justice for women in this country. That was our intention in coming here,” he told VICE about the strategy behind the protest.

Plainclothes police officers filming the proceedings.

While not all Indigenous communities agree that a federal inquiry is the answer (the hashtag #ItEndsHere started by the Indigenous Nationhood Movement is a social media campaign that initiated a conversation that goes beyond an inquiry).

Brant believes that the inquiry will mean something, at least symbolically, to the people perpetrating these crimes against Indigenous women and girls with impunity.

The unfortunate reality is that sometimes the perpetrators of the crimes are the very people sworn to protect the victims.

“Human Rights Watch put out a report last fall that was tabled before Parliament and identified instances of the RCMP being engaged in the sexual exploitation, assault, and rape of Indigenous women in communities in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. What they found was that they were credible cases and they documented those cases and people were afraid of those complaints because they were making complaints against the people who lived within their communities and were directly responsible [for these crimes]. They found that the police themselves were saying stuff like, ‘if you report this, then you'll go missing like the other ones. 'You won't be found, they won't look for you, nobody cares about you.’ And it continues unabated. The government of Canada's simple response was to have them make a complaint. Have them make a fucking complaint. Well, they don't understand that it's just not that easy… because the RCMP detachment is right within their community, and the person who is committing the crimes is essentially the one who makes the decision whether they live or die, and it's fucked!” said Brant.

The resources deployed by the OPP to monitor, surveil, and eventually disperse Brant and the blockade were, quite frankly, astounding. There were at least two cops to every protester, a fleet of vehicles (including, later, armoured vehicles), and aerial camera drones in use. And those are just the visible resources that what we know of. It’s a sad fact that Cheyenne Fox’s case doesn’t garner that sort of attention, and the way her case was handled is so often the rule, not the exception, when it comes to violence against Indigenous women and girls. Our government spends more time, money, and effort shutting down Indigenous protesters who want their missing and murdered women and girls found than it does trying to find those same victims. It’s a travesty at best that this has not been a priority for Canada, and it is cold hearted calculation at the worst.  

It was clear from spending just a little time around the protest that Brant and his community are at the end of their rope. They want a response from a government cruelly sitting on its hands, while women and girls are literally dying. It seems especially hopeless when the violence and abuses of power are carried out by those with a mandate to govern and to serve the people of this country. Brant explained that the only language the government understands is the language of blockades, so that was how he was prepared to express himself.

“The only thing the government understands is the shit that's rolling down the tracks a quarter-mile away; economic stability, consumer confidence, and corporate confidence in having their goods brought to market. And if we have to fuck that up in order to have them understand… if they have to realize economic loss in order to understand our personal loss, then that's what we're going to do. If that's what makes them and causes them to take action on this issue, then that's what we're going to do. Because I'm sick of it. Every woman in our community knows that they're vulnerable, and we're out here on this little fucking piece of pavement because we want to reassure the women and the girls in our community that they don't have to be scared, that the men in our community know what our abilities are, and if government and if the police won't act in a professional way to protect them like they do the rest of society, then we'll step forward and we'll do it. We'll hold the perpetrators to account and we'll make our communities safe and secure, so that they can be happy.”

@muna_mire

Images by Scot Sothern

1968.

It’s around midnight when I hit Sedalia, Missouri. I’m on my bike, a 1967 BSA Hornet, and I’ve just come 115 exhilarating, two-lane-blacktop miles at top speed, daring the world to try to catch me. It doesn’t look like much is here—a gas station and a couple of stoplights on the main drag. In the summer Sedalia hosts the state fair, though I’ve never been. The attendant at the all-night gas station gives me directions to Black Nat’s Whorehouse and advises me not to go there. I follow the directions and ignore the advice.

Sitting idle, the Hornet thump-thumps like a canon under deep water. I hit the kill button and release the center stand. Black Nat’s is a one-story dump on a corner below the overpass. There are no street lamps, but a blue fuzz from the gas station overhead illuminates the shadows. I don’t know what to expect inside of Black Nat’s. I’ve been told a girl costs $7, and I’ve got two fives, four ones, and a ten in my pocket.

Up on the porch, yellow light pulses through the drawn curtains, and musical notes slip out from under the door. I light a cigarette and ring the bell, and ten seconds later a girl appears and gives me the up and down while I do the same with her. She has black hair in a white-girl hairstyle—loose waves and curls. She’s got red lips and a mouthful of straight white teeth. “I heard that motorcycle,” she says, “and I thought you were gonna be a big man. Hells bells, I’ll bet you ain’t no more than a buck 15.”

“Yeah, well, maybe not, but I've got a big dick, and I’ve got some money to spend. Can I come in?”

She’s wearing a yellow baby-doll nightie and high-waisted panties with rows of ruffles. She’s not wearing shoes but pink socks with the beginnings of a hole at the left big toe. “You know where you are, white boy?”

“Yeah, I’m right here, and I’m not really a boy and can’t help it if I’m white.”

“You got $10?”

“If that’s what you cost I do.”

She’s younger than I am but not by much. She’s tall and skinny, and we’re separated by the screen door. “Come on in, hot stuff.” She opens the screen, and I step into the living room, which is lit with a string of red bulbs and a big shiny jukebox playing Etta James’s “I’d Rather Go Blind.” An old purple velvet couch, two chairs and a table, a three-stool bar. Five Baby Boomer black dudes, hipsters with oily conks and skinny black pants, two other girls, one with a blond bouffant, the other with a loose Afro.

My girl is pulling me through the room by the hand, and I’m having a good time. A guy with a gold tooth blows smoke from a Kool King, and I blow smoke rings from my Kool King. I tell her to hold up a second, and I stop at the bar and ask for a can of Schlitz and I’m so mother-fuckin’ cool I’m dry ice. Guy behind the bar is husky and has short hair with a shaved-out part. He says, “Are you 21? I need to see your ID.”

“Ah... What? Seriously?”

He busts out a grin and tells me, “Shit, cousin, I’m just having fun.” He pulls a Schlitz from thin air, opens it with a church key, and imitates the sound of escaping air, pseww pseww. He hands it to me and tells me I owe him a quarter. I give him a dollar and tell him, "Hold onto it. I’ll get another can on my way out."

Into a short hallway to a bedroom door, and I notice a creepy guy in a hat leaning back into the shadows of the far corner. The girl tells me I need to pay her now, so I give her the ten, and she takes it over and gives it to the guy. We go into the bedroom and close the door. I’ve already got my boots off, and I’m pulling off my socks. “You don’t have to get all naked, big-shot—we ain’t taking a bath together. We just gonna screw.”

“Yeah, well, that’s OK. I just really like getting naked, and it would be real groovy if you got naked too.”

“I can get as groovy as you ever had,” she says. “You go sit on the bed, show me your johnson.”

My pants are on the floor, and I’m hard as gritted teeth. She gives my johnson a pinch, checking for communicable discharge, then she strips naked and gets on the bed.

There is no such thing as AIDS, and herpes is just a cold sore. The clap is around, but it’s an easy fix with a shot of penicillin. Crabs are common, but a few shakes of Sergeant's Flea & Tick Powder stops them dead. Pregnancy is a possibility, but she’s probably on the pill, and maybe I’m an asshole, but that’s her risk, not mine.

She sits next to me, and I ask her name.

“Roxanne. How come you let your hair all long like that?”

“It’s not really all that long. I was just in California. Everybody in California has long hair.”

“Looks too sissy to me,” she says, “and you could be a good lookin’ boy, even if you are all gristle and bone.”

“Yeah, well, I can live with that. Let’s fuck.”

We do it, and I ejaculate way too soon, so I give Roxanne another ten to wait for me to recharge and do it again, more slowly. I try to get her to snuggle, and I beg for a long wet kiss. I’m telling her about LSD and about how cool I am, when there is a knock at the door. The guy with the hat comes in and tells us time's up. Roxanne jumps from the bed and grabs her clothes, the extra $10 hidden in her fist.

“We’re not done,” I tell the guy. “We’re going to do it again.”

“No, you’re not,” he tells me. “You all done, lest you got another ten spot.”

I look at Roxanne, but she doesn’t look at me, and she walks behind the guy and out of the room. I get dressed and get another beer at the bar, but the guy in the hat tells me I’m all done out here as well. I tell him "fuck you" on my way out the door. Then I crank up the Hornet and rev the engine and leave a strip of rubber as if it might restore my cool and leave a lasting impression.

Scot's first book, Lowlife, was released last year and his memoir, Curb Service, is out now. You can find more information on his website.

Jamaica's first medicinal marijuana company, Medicanja, launched this year against a backdrop of reinvigorated debate around ganja law reform among leading policymakers. The renowned Jamaican scientist Dr. Henry Lowe, a leader in THC studies for medical purposes, is running the company, with the University of West Indies and the University of Technology jointly funding the facility.

In addition to studying the scientific benefits of marijuana, Dr. Lowe says the company will produce CBD-based medical products, which fall under legally accepted medicinal use of the ganja plant. Lowe says the plant extract can be used to treat psychosis and severe pain, as well as mid-life crises in men.

This story came from Motherboard, our tech website. Read more at Motherboard.tv. Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons

This weekend, a Malaysian Airlines flight apparently disappeared from the skies. The airplane in question was an 11-year-old Boeing 777 powered by Rolls-Royce Trent engines. Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12:41 Friday night in clear conditions, climbed to 35,000 feet, then vanished from radar screens.

Commercial flights aren’t as closely tracked as we think. There are dead zones over bodies of water and different technology and operational guidelines in different countries. And it’s not unheard-of for planes to disappear mid-flight. It’s happened before, most notably in the 2009 Air France disaster.

In the US, there are multiple systems that monitor commercial flights. The Air Traffic Organization (ATO) is the operational arm of the Federal Aviation Association (FAA). As they say on their website, this branch is “responsible for providing safe and efficient air navigation services to 30.2 million square miles of airspace.” 

You can think about the ATO activities as being divided into branches or sections. The stations we’re most familiar with are the Airport Traffic Control Towers, the towers at airports that monitor incoming and outgoing flights to make sure none cross on runways or in the air. The branches we’re less familiar with are the Air Route Traffic Control Centers and the Terminal Radar Approach Control Facilities. Terminal Radar Approach Control Facilities are typically—though not exclusively—associated with airport towers and help bring planes in for landings, so there are a lot of these stations throughout the country. But there are only 22 Air Route Traffic Control Centres in the United States. 

As a plane flies from its origin to its destination, it passes from one air traffic station to another. But for the most part, these flights are always on a radar screen somewhere, a moving spot with associated flight information, such as airline and flight number, altitude, and heading. This information also helps controllers spot planes that are flying too close to one another, ideally avoiding any mid-air collisions. Any incident that does happen in this closely monitored airspace usually registers as a dot disappearing from a radar screen. 

Things are different in airspace that’s less closely watched, like over the Atlantic Ocean, for example. Radar can only track a plane for so long; eventually it moves out of radar range and flies off the controller’s screen. There are other monitoring methods in place, like satellite navigation systems and air-ground data links, advances that have led to more thorough tracking methods in more recent years. One of these systems is so-called “dependent monitoring,” which uses the aircraft’s known position from its onboard navigational system. The system, called Automatic Dependent Surveillance, or ADS, exists on both Boeing and Airbus airplanes.

But for the most part, transatlantic flights follow preset routes similar to those in the sky over the United States. These defined corridors are designed to keep aircraft flying safely around one another between 28,500 and 41,000 feet. Planes on these routes aren’t tracked like little blimps with identifying marks, heading, and altitude information. They fly under radar control to a certain point, then pass a waypoint after which their next communication point is determined based on speed, heading, and flight plan. So if a plane is struck by disaster between these waypoints, it won’t drop off a radar screen; it will simply fail to show up on a radar screen when it’s expected to.  

This is what happened to Air France flight 447 on June 1, 2009. This plane, an Airbus, left Rio de Janeiro for Paris on June 1, 2009. It never arrived in French airspace when expected. Its arrival time came and went, and Air France executives knew the plane would have run out of fuel. And because it was in a radar dead zone when it disappeared, finding it and figuring out what brought down such a sophisticated plane was a huge undertaking. 

Accident investigators had almost nothing to go on when they started looking into the mystery of Air France 447’s disappearance. The most useful piece of evidence they had was a maintenance report, an automatically generated report sent from the plane to Air France at 10 minute intervals and designed to help ground crews prepare for any maintenance before the plane’s next takeoff. One of these Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System reports gave investigators a rough idea of the airplane’s last position, but it still took five days before any debris was found. And even then it wasn't a full airplane, just pieces of fuselage and a handful of the 239 people who were on board. 

It took almost two years of searching, and help from the team and machines that found the Titanic wreckage, but investigators eventually located the Airbus and, miraculously, its black boxes. Two years after it failed to show up when expected on a radar screen, the mystery was solved. In short: The plane was flying through a storm.

Ice clogged the pitot tubes, the small cylindrical instruments on the side of the plane that measure incoming air to feed the computer airspeed. With airspeed values suddenly gone, the Airbus turned control back to the pilots, who unfortunately reacted by trying to climb to increase their airspeed. At the altitude they were flying, putting the plane in a nose-up orientation caused an aerodynamic stall. The plane fell like a stone, and by the time the crew realized what was happening it was too late. The Airbus slammed belly-down into the Atlantic.

This isn’t to say that the Malaysian Airlines flight will have an explanation akin to the Air France flight—reports of passengers on board flying with fake IDs are raising flags about possible hijacking—but it just goes to show that planes can disappear and the cause can be more complicated than expected.

It’s worth remembering, too, that the systems in place in the US aren’t necessarily standard throughout the world. Standard practices, available technology, and even accepted risks can vary. Unless clear evidence of an explosion turns up, we might be months or years from figuring out why this plane just disappeared from radar screens.

Photo by Giorgi Nieberidze

Cocaine is a hell of a drug, and it's everywhere. Though use of the pricey white powder has fallen in the US in recent years, throughout the Western world people are still basically like, "Hey, cocaine? All right, let's do some of that!" Naturally, the entrepreneurs who distribute the drug are always searching for a way to increase their profit margin, which means they'll splice your "California cornflakes" (a real euphemism according to About.com) with all manner of unsavory additives. We asked Kim Gosmer, a chemist who specializes in the study of narcotics, to tell us what kind of hazardous stuff has found its way inside baggies recently.

I specialized in cocaine research during my time at the Section for Toxicology and Drug Analysis at the Department of Forensic Medicine, Aarhus University, Denmark. The cocaine I worked with included everything from small, impure street samples to high-grade bricks straight from the source. The latter was the most interesting, as it revealed the “science” used to enhance the effect of cocaine by adding adulterants. Most people know that cocaine is often diluted with fillers like as sugars and creatine, and that these dilutions are disguised with caffeine, lidocaine, or benzocaine to mimic the stimulating and local anesthetic properties of cocaine. But only a few are aware that even more chicanery goes into what ends up in your baggie.

Levamisole is an anthelmintic drug, meaning it can be used to kill parasitic worms. The drug was previously used to deworm both humans and livestock, but since it was discovered to cause agranulocytosis (a severe depletion of white blood cells that leaves the body susceptible to infection), it's only been used to treat worm-infested cattle. In addition to being a popular cow dewormer, it has become a very popular cocaine adulterant. [Editor's note: Hamilton Morris was writing about this years ago.] 

All over the world, forensic chemists report finding levamisole-tainted cocaine in increasing frequency from every level of distribution, ranging from the street to huge multi-ton shipments. This means that the adulterant is added in South America before the cocaine has been exported. So the question is, why bother diluting high-grade cocaine that costs almost nothing to produce (compared to street prices) with a compound that's more expensive than other adulterants and diluents? The amount of levamisole found in cocaine is typically not that large, so it’s not to add weight, and it’s neither a stimulant nor a local anesthetic. But it is known that one of the metabolites of levamisole is a compound called aminorex, which has amphetamine-like stimulation properties.

Another possibility could be the fact that levamisole increases the amount of dopamine released by raising glutamate levels in the brain. Since cocaine gets most of its euphoric effect from blocking the dopamine transporter protein—which then increases the available amount of dopamine to interact with the dopamine receptors of the brain—levamisole could potentially increase the effect of cocaine through its release of dopamine. Some people even suggest that levamisole can pass cocaine purity tests, but frankly why would any coke producer care about that? They’ve already been paid by the time the drug hits the market. To me, the aminorex and dopamine releasing theories are by far the most likely explanations, simply because I haven’t heard of any other plausible theories. Essentially, levamisole enhances the rush.

In 2005, levamisole was found in almost 2 percent of the cocaine seized by the DEA. In 2007, the frequency went up to 15 percent, and by 2011 a staggering 73 percent of all cocaine seized by the DEA had been cut with levamisole. The same tendency is seen in Europe and in the samples I have analyzed myself. From 2008 to 2009, the frequency was around 66 percent, and from 2011 to 2012 it had gone up to 90 percent in Danish cocaine. The side effects from levamisole are not necessarily something the average user should worry about, since their exposure is not on a daily basis. Yet the more habitual consumer should definitely take it into consideration.

Kim Gosmer

Agranulocytosis is comparable to a chemical form of AIDS, where the immune system is so severely inhibited that even small infections and scratches can develop into life-threatening diseases. Because you contract an illness from a secondary infection, it is impossible to make a list of symptoms, and agranulocytosis is therefore very difficult for a doctor to diagnose—unless they know what to look for. It's therefore difficult to put an exact figure on the number of lives taken by this tainted cocaine. Several deaths are known to have occurred, and there have been many more cases of agranulocytosis that were discovered before it was too late.

When it comes to the chain of production, this starts at ground level (or level one), with the farmer, who is also typically responsible for the initial extraction of the coca leaves, using a mixture of gasoline and cement to make crude cocaine paste. The paste is more easily transported than large quantities of leaves, but it has a short life span, so the farmer sells it to the second-level “collector.” This guy is either a wholesale dealer operating on his own, or a collector employed by a jungle lab (level three). The cocaine paste is purified by either level two or three to increase the stability of cocaine. A common method for this is the oxidizing of the paste’s impurities with potassium permanganate, a very strong oxidant with a vivid purple color.

In an attempt to impede this part of cocaine production, the DEA began Operation Purple in 2000, the purpose of which was to monitor the world’s shipping and distribution of potassium permanganate in an attempt to prevent cocaine production. To some extent, the operation has been successful. Yet inevitably, the multibillion dollar cocaine industry came up with a way to substitute potassium permanganate, and—surprise—there’s still plenty of cocaine on the market.

At the third level, hydrochloric acid is added to the base cocaine to convert it to the corresponding salt, which is then precipitated to what we know as crystalline, high-grade cocaine. From here, the exporters and importers come into the picture as level four. If you’re lucky enough to know an importer, this is where you might get the good stuff—unless the supply came through Africa. This is a common smuggling route, as it’s easier to traffic cocaine into Europe from Africa than trafficking it directly from South America. But it’s also a place where additional dilution of the product is highly likely. The same goes for Eastern Europe. The opportunities to interfere with the purity and content of the cocaine are almost limitless and really depend on the creativity of the smugglers.

One thing is certain, though: Because there’s so much money to be made in dealing the drug, each level of the supply chain adds some sort of white powder to the cocaine to maximize profits. This usually spirals out of control when the cocaine has arrived at its destination country and is being divided into smaller portions. Everyone wants a piece of the cake, whether it’s the gang members responsible for the “primary” import or their supporters distributing the gear to the dealers.

The average purity of English cocaine is no more than 20 to 30 percent. Given the chemical diversity of available diluents and adulterants used in cocaine, it’s very difficult for a user to assess the quality of a street-level bag. Of course, if you are—or know—a chemistry student, it’s possible to do a purification test, but at that point you’ll have already spent your savings on a sketchy product, and it would take at least ten grams of the stuff to make it worthwhile.

The most reliable street test in my opinion is actually the smell of cocaine, as it has a very distinct aroma that none of the additives possess. Unfortunately, for reference, this requires you to have smelled a lot of different cocaine of certain purities, and very few people have had that opportunity. Personally, I think I could estimate cocaine purity from its scent and from looking at and tasting a few milligrams, but I’ve also handled quite a lot of different batches with known purities.

Flaking cocaine is usually a sign of high purity but is no guarantee, as it depends on the crystallization method being used during production and requires that the cocaine hasn’t been crushed. Cocaine rock, on the other hand, is absolutely not a good indicator. Dealers won’t hesitate to use hairspray to solidify powdered cocaine into bricks after tampering with the purity, so remember that next time you're crushing that block back down to powder.

The superrad new face of HNIC, dude. Photo via Flickr user, JMacPherson.

On Monday, Sportsnet and Hockey Night in Canada went public with plans to revamp their NHL coverage beginning next season. Rogers has announced a lineup of new hosts—what they’re touting as a “Dream Team” to the amusement of hockey junkies across the country—who will handle hosting duties during a hugely expanded slate of nationally televised NHL games next hockey season.

Here’s what we know for now: talk-show host, Montreal Canadiens fan, one-time sports reporter, and CNN ratings flop George Strombolopolous will be the new host of Hockey Night in Canada. He’ll bring his casual stylings to the Saturday and Sunday night broadcasts, which will still air on CBC (although Rogers will be monetizing the broadcast, and—obviously—making editorial decisions).

Don Cherry’s seemingly endless broadcast reign has been preserved, and the iconic Coach’s Corner segments will continue to air on Saturday nights during the first intermission. THUMBS UP!

While former Hockey Night in Canada host Ron MacLean will continue to caddy (or babysit, as you prefer) Cherry during those segments, he’ll have a reduced role on Saturday nights. MacLean will, however, remain the host of Hockey Day in Canada and will supposedly have a bigger role on Sunday night.

In lower-profile alterations, Darren Millard will take over the hosting duties for Sportsnet’s new Wednesday Night Hockey broadcast. We might accurately describe him as the Christian Laettner of this so-called “Dream Team.” Meanwhile podcaster extraordinaire Jeff Marek will host Thursday Night Hockey due to be broadcast on Sportsnet360. He’ll also handle some pregame “That’s Hockey” type duties in the afternoons.

So that’s the new hosting lineup, and while that’s pretty significant for hockey fans, we still don’t know that much about Sportsnet’s coverage plans beyond this small little peak behind the curtain. What analysts will join Marek, Millard, Strombolopolous and company? Who will be calling the games?

There are significant blanks still left to fill in and rumours persist of serious bloodletting still to come for the on-air talent at CBC sports. But we can begin to see the contours of a plan from our new live hockey coverage overlords, and it’s a plan built around the cross-demographic appeal of Strombolopolous.

It’s critical to note here that while Rogers owns the right to broadcast NHL games nationally in Canada, these decisions are still largely about closing the gap with their principal rival: the men Sportsnet’s Nick Kypreos once unintentionally referred to as “those fuckers at TSN.”

Rogers is going to have a mammoth advantage over TSN beginning next season, and they’ll probably need every inch of it. As a result of Rogers’ landmark $5.2 billion broadcast rights deal in November, they’ve monopolized the right to broadcast NHL games north of the 49^th parallel for 12-years. If you’re watching hockey in Canada: you’ll be watching it on a Rogers station (probably on your Rogers cable package, or through a Rogers supported streaming site). The only real exceptions: if you live in Quebec or are watching a regional broadcast of the Winnipeg Jets.

While Rogers has their hand firmly on the “live hockey faucet” in Canada going forward, TSN still employs the most respected names in hockey analysis, broadcasting, and news. Even on this mammoth Strombolopolous announcement, TSN’s Bob McKenzie was the first to break the news, which is ironic, hilarious, and perfect.

It’s not a secret that Rogers was hoping to poach some key personalities from Bell and TSN—broadcaster James Duthie in particular—but TSN retained their principles, locking their entire cast of key players up to contract extensions. Sportsnet may have the games, but TSN is prepared and they know the landscape better.

Last week TSN’s principles completely flattened their Rogers competitors during NHL trade deadline coverage. During TSN’s 10-hour “Tradecentre ‘14” broadcast they averaged nearly a quarter million viewers and more than 3 million people tuned in to at least a portion of the broadcast. That’s 10% percent of the fucking population.

TSN wasn’t shy about slapping Rogers around over their superior broadcast, and numbers. Indeed a Bell PR press release made it very clear that TSN had netted “four times the audience delivered by TSN’s only other competitor on NHL Trade Deadline Day.” That’s a pretty clear shot fired, I reckon.

So can Rogers—who own the games themselves for the foreseeable future, but languish behind their rivals in terms of the quality of their coverage—use their massive structural advantage to narrow that gap? For the moment, surely, TSN’s NHL coverage remains exponentially more polished, and respected by hockey fans. The Strombolopolous hire doesn’t change that equation on its own, but it’s precisely the type of risk Rogers needs to be taking.

Also within this “hockey broadcasting wars” context, the somewhat outside the box Strombolopolous hire suggests a certain level of preoccupation with catching TSN on the coverage side. If the Strombo hire hints at anything, it’s that. It’s suggestive of a promising level of self-awareness—even if the description of Strombo as a “hip, urban guy” misses the mark by a mile—from our new and hopefully benevolent NHL broadcast rights masters. They know they need to up their game, and that at least is probably a good thing for Canadian hockey fans on balance.


@thomasdrance

Black Rock City is the temporary city built each year at the Burning Man Festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. Last year, for one week at the end of summer, the population of Black Rock City was over 60,000. 

Despite only existing for a short time, the city has an airport, law enforcement, medical care, stores, restaurants, and different distinct neighborhoods. Just like a permanent city.

And, like all permanent cities, it can also be pretty grim at times, as you can see in these photos that photographer John Kilar sent to us. Enjoy!

The back patches of some of the members of the Neverlanders Social Club. When someone is accepted into the group, he or she picks a Disney character that represents his or her personality and receives a corresponding patch. Photos by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

I'm standing in front of Space Mountain worrrying I won't be able to find the Neverlanders Social Club. It’s an ordinary Sunday in Disneyland in November—sunny and beautiful in that Californian way and packed to the gills with tourists—and I’m concerned I’ll miss them in all the hubbub. They told me they'd be decked out in their Disney gear, but a lot of people here are wearing park-themed merchandise. Then I see them coming and realize there was no way I could have missed them.

There are more than 30 Neverlanders moving toward me as a pack, cutting a path through the crowd. They’re wearing handmade mouse ears and hats, and many of them are covered in tattoos—they look like one of the minor gangs from The Warriors, or some cult in a postapocalyptic wasteland where Mickey Mouse is worshiped as a deity. Each member has a patch of a character that represents his or her personality—the 30-something couple who founded the club, Angel and Cindy Mendoza, are Donald and Daisy Duck.

Everyone is staring as I walk with them to It’s a Small World, a boat ride at the tip of Fantasyland. As we round the Matterhorn Bobsleds, “regular” park-goers snap photos of the Neverlanders as if they’re celebrities. People point; parents tell their children to take note; jaws drop. Angel says with a shrug that they’re used to this commotion by now. When you’re the biggest Disneyland fans in the world and wear that love on your sleeve—literally—you’re bound to get some odd looks.

From left to right: Neverlanders Leah, Taylor, Angel, and Jessie

Today is a special day for the Neverlanders, because they’re going to invite two new people to join their club. Membership is exclusive, and the application process involves months of hanging out with the Mendozas and the other 50-plus members at the park. They have to determine that the newbies will be a good fit and that they're devoted enough to Disney—which, as you can imagine, is a pretty tall order.

Sara and Taylor, the young couple, have passed the vetting process and, Cindy whispers to me, will be “proposed to” at the Mad Hatter Tea Party later that night. The couple doesn’t know this yet, and they’re quieter than the rest of the crew, clearly on their best behavior in hopes of getting a vest with a big back patch, which will mark their official induction into the Neverlanders.

But before the serious business of accepting new members, they do what they do twice a month as a group and dozens of other times as individuals: enjoy Disneyland. I sit between Angel and Cindy in an It’s a Small World boat, and as the ubiquitous song blasts at us from all sides in who knows how many different languages, they tell me how much they love Disneyland and, mostly, how much they love Walt Disney.

Angel tells me that Walt built something anyone, no matter his or her age, can enjoy—it’s a place where he can let his imagination run free. Walt once said, “We believed in our idea—a family park where parents and children could have fun—together,” and the Neverlanders believe in Disneyland's egalitarianism too, no matter how many odd looks they get. Angel says he aspires to be like Walt himself—an amazing businessman and a great husband and father. Going to Disneyland means Angel can make memories that he will replay in his mind forever. To some the park may seem expensive or crowded or cheesy or corporate, but for social clubbers it really is the happiest place on Earth.

A tattoo of Walt Disney on a Neverlander's leg

There have been die-hard Disney obsessive for decades, people who compulsively collect pins, memorize trivia, form online communities, and attend the D23 expo, the annual convention for fans. But the phenomenon of Disneyland social clubs—groups of superfans who organize frequent trips to the park and think of it as their second home—is relatively new.

The Mendozas say that the Neverlanders, which they formed in 2012, were the first-ever social club. At that time they were already taking their two young daughters to the park multiple times a week—a luxury they could afford thanks to Disneyland’s Annual Passholder program, which gives steep discounts to Southern Californians who want to visit the park many times a year. (Angel, a manager at a Toys"R"Us, told me he’s gone to the park nine days in a row before.) Their inspiration came when they were listening to a fan podcast devoted to Disneyland that mentioned a public outcry in response to a new monthly payment plan Disney had announced. The program would make it easier for low-income people to afford the passes and thus possibly bring "unsavory" people to the park.

“They spoke about tattooed people, younger people,” Angel said. “It hit the wrong chord with us, because we are payment-plan users and tattooed. Disneyland was created to provide entertainment for anyone who wanted it, no matter class, race, financial status, political party, or religion. So we talked about bringing strangers through social networking together, with a common interest in and love for the park, Walt, and all things Disney.”

The Neverlanders

They soon created their matching denim vests and began connecting with other regulars, via Instagram. Very quickly other people wanted to join, and the Mendozas developed a system for bringing in new Neverlanders. The club now looks for people who, like them, are active park-goers who post often to Instagram and other social-media platforms. Current members communicate with the wannabes online for a while, invite the ones they like to hang out with them at Disneyland, and give the lucky few who are accepted a Neverlanders vest. This system might seem overbearing to outsiders, but the club is serious about its love for Disney. Neverlanders follow a member-created itinerary on the days they roam the park together and are sticklers for following the rules, so making sure new members measure up is paramount. (So far, they haven’t kicked anyone out, but they would if they had to.)

The strict application process actually helped fuel the growth of other social clubs. The Main Street Elite, whose members dress similarly to the Neverlanders and espouse a similar philosophy, was formed by Michael Stout, a 25-year-old who thought the Neverlanders were too exclusive. Other social clubs of various sizes and seriousness include the Wonderlanders, Black Death Crew, Pix Pack, Jungle Cruisers, and the Hitchhikers. All in all, there are more than 90 social clubs, ranging from a small family of four to a group with over 100 people.

The Neverlanders walk down Main Street, USA, in Disneyland.

Not everyone loves that there are a bunch of mostly young, mostly tattooed fans roaming Disneyland, covered in patches and buttons. A cast member who has worked at the park for more than a decade told me that he isn’t a fan of the social clubs and doesn’t understand the need to represent one’s fandom in such an exclusive and intrusive way. He said he and his coworkers think the Mendozas and others like them are living out a fantasy meant for kids, and in his view the clubbers' infatuation with the park can come off as creepy—many park guests have asked if the social clubs are gangs, and parents often wonder if they should be worried.

“I know for a fact that security keeps a close eye on them, and I think they should treat them [as having a] gang mentality, since they run in huge packs,” he said, adding that Disneyland often keeps plainclothes security officers near the social clubs.

A recent long piece in OC Weekly (which was being reported and written while I was working on this story) contained allegations from a frequent park visitor that some of the gangs jump the lines and smoke weed before going on the rides. It also noted that some Disney fans who aren’t part of an official social club have started copying the crews’ look without adhering to the same code of good clean fun. “Thanks in part to the unrestricted founding of new clubs, some Disney-goers began wearing vests while adhering to much less stringent codes of conduct and embarrassing the movement in the process,” wrote Charles Lam.

There are also Disney fans who hate the clubs—either because of their alleged bad behavior or for complex, internet-beef-related reasons—and often troll and insult them on social media. In September, an anti–social club Twitter account called WigWagsSC started a rumor that a couple of crews had gotten into a brawl at Redd Rockett’s Pizza Port, a restaurant in the Tomorrowland section of the park.

“Our friends in Disney security shared an interesting story with us about two rival Disneyland social clubs that will remain unnamed. Turns out these two clubs had a fight, yes a real fight, over whose turf a specific location belonged to,” the account said over the course of several tweets.

Neverlanders tend to love both tattoos and Disneyland, so Disneyland-themed tattoos are a no-brainer.

The leaders of the social clubs object to stories like this, which they say are untrue, as well as the insinuation that they are anything but perfect park guests.

“There was a rumor that we fought another club. There have been rumors that we wear our vests outside the park, and that people think we are excluding people,” Michael of the Main Street Elite said, dismissing all of those accusations.

The Main Street Elite and the Neverlanders both say they obey the rules of the park and even warn park employees if they see any other guests cutting in line or otherwise acting funny. They claim to see Disneyland as a second home and treat it as such.

In the comments section of the OC Weekly story, a reader claiming to be a former Disneyland cast member defended the groups as well. “Many of these social club goers were the nicest guests I ever had interactions with,” the commenter wrote. “[They] always made a point to stop and say hello to ask how my shift was going so far, or to just talk about anything Disney. Yes, their ‘look’ is unconventional for Disneyland, but their love of Disneyland is their best quality. Don't let the negative actions of a few social club members skew your view of all social club members.”

When I asked Angel about conflicts between social clubs, he carefully told me that there had never been any issues like those that the WigWagsSC tweets described. He reminded me that the clubs are made up of intense Disney fans who are focused more on having fun in the park than on arguing with each other. He said he has personally tried to get to know every social club leader and form bonds with them, which makes sense—if your hobby is covering yourself in symbols that express loyalty to fictional characters created by a giant media company and strutting around an amusement park, you probably have a lot in common with the people who do the same thing.

A pin worn by a Neverlander

Though some park employees may grouse in private about the crazily costumed fans, Disneyland officials seem to approve of the social clubs publicly.

“We are fortunate to have guests who share such a strong affinity for Disneyland Resort,” said Disneyland spokesperson Kevin Rafferty Jr., who said the park was aware of the groups.

Michael said that the social clubs participate in Disneyland charity work like the CHOC Walk in the Park and help keep the park clean by picking up trash. Jessica Teague, the 22-year-old founder of Walt’s Wonderers, a club for out-of-state fans, told me she loves participating in do-good Disney events as a social clubber.

“[Many] clubs have created bonds in and out of Disneyland,” she said. “We also have come together to try and help the communities around Anaheim—we most recently raised money for Toys for Tots.”

After spending time with the Neverlanders, I’ve begun to see the criticism of the social clubs as misguided, if not outright mean-spirited. Their obsession with an amusement park is strange, their outfits are outlandish, and the amount of time they must devote to crafting their vests boggles the mind. But the bonds between them are real. Writing about the process of being initiated into the club on the Neverlander blog, new member Sara said, “While my whole journey was long, it was never just about becoming part of a club. It was gaining friendships that I know I’ll cherish forever and gaining the courage to be myself.” That might be a little corny, but so are a lot of Disney movies—that doesn’t make them any less powerful.

The social clubs aren’t childish, either, despite their sometimes childlike glee. Though they love all things Disney and especially the company’s founder, their admiration is tempered by an understanding of his humanity. Walt, like his park, isn’t perfect, but his ideals are something to work toward.

“He drank, and he smoked, and he loved his family too,” Michael said. "He’s a real man who built an empire, and it’s something we strive for and look up to. For us [going to Disneyland] is all about getting there and letting go.”

Crissy Van Meter is the founder of fivequarterly.org. Follow her on Twitter.