Photo by Bruno Bayley

I'm 26. Why does this matter? It doesn't, in itself. But we need to talk about age, because as a generation we seem to be suffering a collective delusion, convinced that we're old and past it long before we actually are. 

If you’ve ever heard a 30-year-old man in a baseball hat declare that he's "over" while creating Vines of a Seth Troxler Boiler Room show, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, then it’s pretty well summed up in the most over-used and meaningless of all internet stock phrases: “officially old.”

Turning 22 and sleeping: sure-fire signs that you're old

Every hour, countless people on Twitter declare themselves "officially old." They use it to prefix anything they're doing that is remotely mundane, from buying running gear to boiling an egg, when really, all this is stuff people generally do way before they start worrying about cataracts and their own funeral arrangements. In some cases, the admission even seems to carry with it a sense of pride—history's most infantile generation of twentysomethings taking pleasure in the occasional sign that their lives aren't such irresponsible marathons of recklessness after all. 

Being a Justin Bieber fan: a sure-fire sign that you're old

That people with Justin Bieber profile pics are blind to the irony of declaring themselves "officially old" really isn’t their fault. Admen wield the threat of lost youth as a weapon; summer's arrival, for example, is always accompanied these days by ads pushing inner-city "festivals," sponsored by phone networks and beer companies while hot-pink signals flare over the heads of 10,000 exuberant 16-year-olds, all living their youth to the fullest. Of course, this is also the way you should be living your youth, but in reality jobs, hangovers, familial commitments, and the need to not completely piss your rent away often make this non-stop-party lifestyle a little tricky to achieve.

If you're measuring your life in rituals sold to you by vodka companies, it's easy to see why so many people live in fear of reaching "milestone" birthdays. We're constantly on the lookout for warning signs that our blessed fun—the thing that we live for above anything else—is being stolen away from us. Of course, advertisers have always employed this and similar tactics to it. What surprises me, though, is just how readily we now accept it. Rather than scoffing at the glitter face paint, the full-body animal suits, and the corporate-sponsored DayGlo that we're told will prolong our youth, so many of us submit to a perpetual fear of slipping into the next age bracket.

Getting up early and reading books: This his makes you officially old

If we continue down this route our lives will come to resemble weird double bills, where the first part of the show is a roaring, drug-fueled adolescence that lasts 30 years, and the second is a prolonged and timid surrender to Brita-filtered domesticity. The message is always the same: There is only a finite amount of time to have fun before the bar runs dry and you’re too saggy to wear that cactus-print high-waist bikini and oh, wait—no, you’ve totally fucked it now; your youth is gone, and all you’ve got to show for it are 25 ear piercings, some Instagram photos, and a colostomy bag.

Which brings me on to another thing, namely our hyper-awareness of our own stories, the kind fed back to us in Facebook movies—those weird "My top moments of 2013" things—and the inane #TBT. We feel the need to write our own autobiographies as we move through life, unaware that they're doubling as premature obituaries, into Saturday-night talking-head TV shows dedicated to us that, thanks to sun-bleached filters, are stillborn with the hues of nostalgia. We’re preoccupied with our own mythology: social veterans of 25 reminiscing about that time at Coachella two years ago when that thing happened, remember?

Overloading your tweets with emojis makes you old.

“A man is always a teller of tales,” wrote Sartre in 1938, a few years after you were born, probably. “He sees everything that happens to him through them, and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell.”

This is the crux: As long as we are consumed with telling our story, the less we are living. The more concerned we are with the narrative than the experience, the more aware we become of who we are at a given age and how we should be acting.  

Yet there are no "shoulds." Jarvis Cocker was 32 when His 'n’ Hers, the first Pulp record to receive any kind of notable attention, was released. Kurt Vonnegut was 41 when his first novel, Cat’s Cradle, was published. Alan Rickman was 46 before he got his first film role. Gandhi led the Quit India Movement at 73. Obviously we don't all possess the charisma or talent of these people, and the arcs of our lives won't exactly mirror theirs. But if all of that doesn’t make you feel stupid for declaring yourself old, past it, and on the shelf for submitting your first tax return, I don’t know what will.

While I was half watching his debate with Nick Clegg, half scrolling through his Wikipedia last month, I learned that Nigel Farage—2014's very own Toad of Toad Hall—had only just turned 50. Which makes him ten months younger than Johnny Depp, five months younger than Brad Pitt, the same age as Dr. Dre, and one year older than Björk. If it wasn’t already clear to me, I realized in that moment that age is completely meaningless.

Being really alt = officially old.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re young. Even if you’re not, who cares? Growing older and becoming more confident in who you are is something to be enjoyed and to feel proud of. Despite what people want to tell you, there is a novelty to growing up.

That said, you’re probably still the same person at 30 as you were at 29. Yes, life changes and new responsibilities arise that we have to adapt to, but the idea of seeing one experience, one birthday, as a precipice between young and old age is ridiculous and puts a huge amount of pressure on us, which is only going to lead to disappointment. Spending as many of your post-breast-milk years in a haze of hedonism and irresponsibility as you can is impossible, unrealistic, and likely to lead to an overdose.

Also, if you’re more Keith Floyd than Chief Keef, it doesn’t invalidate your 20s; and the reverse goes for your 30s, 40s, 50s, whatever. There is no "right" way. Life is a series of mistakes, some of which give way to beauty. It's probably best to just ride it out and keep doing it however you want until it’s over.

Follow Nathalie Olah on Twitter.

Workers at an underground test freeze, in 2012. All photos via Kevin O'Reilly.
Our northern Canadian territories often get written off by most of us province-dwelling folk as a frigid tundra of nothingness. But it’s probably about time us southerners start paying attention to the situation up north. Yellowknife, is currently sitting on 237,000 tonnes of arsenic, enough to kill the entire human population of our planet a few times over.

The majority of this highly water-soluble carcinogen is sitting in specially designed underground chambers below an old and depleted gold mine called Giant Mine, on the outskirts of the city. The arsenic is a by-product of mining operations that started in the late 1940s, shortly after the discovery of gold in the north. Mining continued until 2004 when the company handed the depleted mine back to the federal government along with loads of arsenic trioxide dust as a nice “fuck-you-very-much.”

For years the local mines’ arsenic production (averaging 22,000 lbs a day) was left unregulated until 1951, when a child from the Yellowknives Dene First Nation died of poisoning from eating snow in the area. It became apparent that the government needed to do something about it. But instead of shutting down operations, they thought the best course of action was to collect the massive amounts of poisonous dust in purpose built chambers underground, presumably hoping that the arsenic trioxide fairy would eventually come and take all of it away. They handed the child’s family $750 and decided to wait it out.

However, with a crumbling infrastructure and increasing concern about leakage into the local water supply, the time has come to do something about it. Now that it is 2014 and our Canadian government is older and wiser, they have finally come up with what a reasonable solution to our minor poison problem: we are going to freeze the 237,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide underground for all of eternity.

“How can we ever ensure that human systems are going to continue to keep something that requires rather sophisticated engineering and monitoring to function forever, that’s just crazy,” argues Kevin O’Reilly, an activist with Northern Alternatives. “We can’t even remember how the pyramids were built 5,000 years ago, how can we know that 5,000 years from now, if there are even people on this planet, that they are going to know what to do to keep this stuff frozen. That’s just irresponsible.”

The government had originally hoped that permafrost would creep its way back into the area and freeze the arsenic naturally, despite warnings from engineers that came as early as the 1950s that this would not be the case. After a decade of fruitless waiting the government’s plan to achieve this “frozen block” solution is to mimic the way an ice rink is kept frozen. That is: by continuously pumping coolant into the ground, the arsenic should theoretically stay frozen.

The freezing as of now is expected to cost at least one billion initially, and then an additional two million every subsequent year.



An aerial view of the mines.
“My own thoughts are that we probably should bring the stuff up above ground and process it into a less toxic form of arsenic and put it at the bottom of the mine,” says Kevin. But this solution is seen as too costly to implement.

The government’s remediation plan of icing out the arsenic was initially met with uniform opposition from every group involved with Giant Mine. The Mackenzie Valley Review Board, an independent tribunal which aims to give the surrounding aboriginal peoples a greater say in the management of the area, proposed an environmental assessment, which will hopefully be approved by the minister in Ottawa any day now. The assessment lays out numerous amendments that include “forever” being reduced to only 100 years, as well as putting funding towards research that would seek to find a more attainable solution for the mine.

“The project went from having uniform opposition from every group involved to having support from many groups after environmental assessment,” says Alan Ehrlich, a member of the Mackenzie Valley Review Board.

The City of Yellowknife as well as the Yellowknives Dene First Nation unanimously passed a motion to accept the Review Board’s proposed amendments, as they would bring the people a slightly more hopeful future for their area. This is especially important when you put into context how much Giant Mine has affected the Dene people’s lands, upon which the mine is located.

The carelessness with which the mine was operated in the first few years of production has had profound repercussions on the Dene people. With no pollution control, everything inside the mine was going up the stack. Even towards the end of the mine’s life in 2004, there was still around 26 kilograms of arsenic being diffused into the air every day. The end result was complete contamination of the Dene’s land.

“They have often talked about their land being destroyed,” says Kevin. “They used to go into the Baker Creek area as it was well known for fishing and berries. It’s really hard to find any blueberries around Yellowknife anymore. They’ve been scorched off the surface of the earth by the sulphur dioxide emissions from the mine.”

“They used to harvest throughout the area where the mine was,” Alan continues. “It was also on routes for hunting caribou as well, and now it has become one of the most contaminated sites in Canada.”

It's no surprise that they would be concerned about how the proposed cleanup will affect them further. Numerous contaminated buildings will have to be exhumed and destroyed in an attempt to decontaminate the area, and soil will have to be removed which has the potential to create toxic dust. The Dene people have raised concerns of how this will affect them physically and culturally, as many of their key cultural practices are closely tied to the land.

“One thing that I think is outstanding is the need for a public apology and compensation to the Yellowknives Dene First Nation for what was done to them and their land,” says Kevin. “There needs to be some acknowledgement that something bad happened and that [the government] will do their best to make sure that it never happens again.”

@mpearson9

Photo via Flickr user oxmour

Rus Garofalo is one of those only-in-Brooklyn entrepreneurs, a comedian and CPA whose company, Brass Taxes, helps New York’s self-employed creatives get right with Uncle Sam every April 15.

Freelancers’ finances are trying in the best of times, but recently Garofalo and his ilk say they’re being bombarded by a kind of 1099 nightmare: cash-strapped artists turned novice hoteliers who rent out their spare rooms, or even couches, to travelers on Airbnb.

“It’s maybe 15 to 20 percent of people are doing it,” Garofalo said of his clients, whom he now charges a premium on top of his regular fee if they use the site. “I think with all the political stuff and law changes that are happening, people are backing off somewhat, but I feel like I had a couple of clients last year who it was their main source of income.”

They’re not alone: Airbnb released an economic-impact study last fall revealing that about 30 percent of the 13,500 New York City hosts identify themselves as freelancers, while more than 8,000 New Yorkers rely on income from the site to keep them in their homes. That’s still just a fraction of the city’s 100,000 independent workers who belong to the Freelancer’s Union. But it’s growing fast.

“I feel like part of my job is sleeping away from home: I make as much leaving as I would staying and doing freelance work,“ said artist Carol, who asked to be referred to by her middle name because she feared she could lose her livelihood if her landlord learned she was camping out at her studio and letting her Williamsburg apartment on Airbnb. “I made $18,000 on Airbnb, so I assumed that I owe a chunk of that in tax. That doesn’t mean that I’m prepared for it, but I wasn’t surprised.”

For others, they look at the IRS as an unwelcome intruder on their new economic reality. If their sublets had been listed on, say, Craigslist, the taxman wouldn’t come knocking on their door.

“At the end of the year they get a 1099-K and all of a sudden realize they have to deal with it, and then a thing that was just some extra pocket money is something they’re dealing with on their taxes,” Garofalo said. “It might be $2,000 of income, but it’s complicated enough and confusing enough that people are surely going to make mistakes doing it unless they take some amusement in diving into the miasma of googling tax terms.”

Even before the sharing economy exploded, tax season was an anxious time for independent workers. Unlike fulltime employees, who get the bulk of their tax information from a single W-2 form, freelancers must cobble together information from a string of 1099s. The upshot, for many, is to do what they love and also itemize it on their taxes: Just as a homeowner can deduct a new energy-efficient furnace, an actress may claim her headshots and web developer his Wired subscription.

Knowing precisely what is and isn’t deductible is part of what keeps Garofalo in business.

“Somebody just handed me a rental as if it were part of their freelance income, and it’s not,” said Susan Lee, a New York City tax pro who has built her business around the 1099 set. “What it’s showing to me is that freelancers are getting crushed, and they're doing anything to make more money.”

According to her, many may forfeit as much in lost deductions as they make in rental income: Lee recently consulted a cash-strapped couple who’d used Airbnb to keep up with a rent beyond their means, only to find they now owed more in taxes than they’d made from the service, in part because of deductions they’d lost in the process.

“Home offices have to be exclusively and regularly used,” Lee explained, referring to a popular freelancer deduction that also helps offset rising rents. “You can’t say it’s a home office on Tuesday at 3 but rent it out on Tuesday at 5.”

Others take on expenses like new furniture, appliances, or other amenities to make their homes attractive to tourists, assuming that they’ll be able to deduct them at the end of the year. But unless a new AC unit or wireless router is used exclusively by visitors, it can’t be itemized, and residents are stuck with the cost.

It’s not just the accountants who are seeing a shift: The Freelancers Union, a nationwide network of more than 250,000 independent workers, was suddenly overwhelmed by inquiries about how to account for sharing-economy income on tax returns.

“It went from basically zero to a pretty significant amount,“ said union spokesman Dan Lavoie. “Really, this was not on the radar screen not that long ago for any of our members. Now suddenly it is, and it’s a pretty significant income stream for a lot of freelancers.”

The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that creatives really want to pay their taxes. They just can’t quite seem to figure out how.

“Freelancers are a well-compliant group, and they are struggling to find a way to be compliant with this. On the one hand they need the extra income; on the other hand it’s not easy in this city to be in compliance,” said Jonathan Medows, a Manhattan CPA who also specializes in freelancers. “They’re kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. It’s so bloody expensive to be here, it’s created this cottage industry in New York.“

The CPA said it’s the company that should be scrambling for a solution, since the site makes money no matter what users end up owing or how hard it is for them to pay.

But Airbnb insists it’s not so simple: Exactly what hosts are responsible to pay can vary dramatically from city to city and state to state. Bring deductions into the picture and the variations expand exponentially. Then, of course, there’s the looming specter of hotel tax: Airbnb recently announced it will begin paying hotel tax on the company’s home turf in San Francisco, even as it continues to fight it in New York.

“We are a marketplace in 35,000 cities and the rules vary in each one,” company spokesman Nick Papas wrote in a statement when I called for the company’s response to the tax nightmare some of its hosts were facing. “There's no question that these are complicated issues and we're working to fix this by fighting for clear, fair rules for everyone in the sharing economy."

The site’s newly updated terms of service, which were announced on April 7 and will go into effect on the 30, offer more explicit guidance to those trying to piece out how to pay the IRS on its behalf this spring.

“Hosts should understand how the laws work in their respective cities,” the new rules state in all caps. “Hosts should review local laws before listing a space on Air.”

Follow Sonja Sharp on Twitter.

My name is John Doran, and I write about music. The young bucks who run VICE’s website thought it would be amusing to employ a 42-year-old who is counting down the days to his summer holiday in Tenby.

In case you were wondering or simply too lazy to use Urban Dictionary, "menk" is Scouse/Woollyback slang for a mentally ill or educationally subnormal person, and is a shortened version of "mental." As in “Your Sergio Tacchini trackie is sick, la. Look at that menk Doran—he can’t even afford a Walker trackie. Let’s hit him with a brick and push him in the canal." [US editor's note: That makes sense if you're English, we promise.]

MENK 66: Gone Daddy Gone

An interloper has moved onto my turf.

He’s much slimmer than I am and younger as well. It looks like I’m being replaced by a newer model.

I first noticed Cardboard Daddy when I got back from a work trip to Norway about a year ago. His torso was a stiff white oblong, with lanky limbs made from cereal boxes that had been folded out, then trimmed and glued together, with the plain sides pointing out. His head was the kind of off-white paper plate with crimped edges that you use at children’s parties. He had round, blue, full-fat-milk-carton lids instead of eyes and strands of shoulder-length blue wool as hair. He had a smirk drawn onto his face and the Sunn O))) logo on his chest. He was sitting in my seat, wearing my headphones, plugged into my stereo, with my favorite mug at his side and my copy of Private Eye open on his lap.

Maria had made him for Little John to essentially fulfill my role while I was out of the house. Now, I would argue that I actually do a lot more than simply sitting in the corner listening to music that no one else wants to hear, drinking tea, reading magazines, and wearing Sunn O))) merch, but I’ve come to learn in life that perceptions count for an awful lot.

To be fair to Maria, she did have the clothes, the eye color, and the texture of my hair right. Once, about nine years ago, I was in a barbershop (I was getting my beard trimmed, if you must know), and the conversation turned to the subject of the international hair trade.

The master of the scissors said, “You know that wig makers use human hair, right? You can get anything up to £500 [$825] for a good head of hair if it’s in nice condition. People all over the world grow their hair to sell it on to hairdressers and people who make wigs, weaves, and extensions, mainly for markets in Europe and North America.”

I asked him if he’d act as broker so I could sell my death-metal-length hair, which at the time stretched over halfway to my waist.

He picked up a length and examined it closely. “I could get you £25 for this…”

“Just the fucking beard, please, and put a sock in it,” I barked at him.

So each time I returned from a trip to Oslo or Tilburg, Cardboard Daddy would be folded up and put on a shelf in the small utility cupboard with the vacuum cleaner and the tools. But then last week something disturbing happened. I got home from work and saw that Cardboard Daddy was sitting in my chair, reading the copy of the London Review of Books that I had bought but hadn’t even had time to put a crease in myself.

And so it begins, I thought. You get in from work knackered and all you want to do is to sit down, have a brew, listen to Bolt Thrower, and read the LRB, but you can’t because some sexy cardboard cuckoo bastard is sitting in your chair.

And then Maria dropped the bombshell: “Little John wanted to see Cardboard Daddy, so we got him out.”

How can it be that I’m being replaced as a father figure already? And by someone made from cereal boxes?

Photo by Anthea Leyland

You might not always be conscious of it, but when you become a parent, all kinds of novel ideas about influence come into play.

Will I be able to influence my son in a positive way? Will I know when it is time to let him make his own mistakes? What kind of position of authority can I talk from, given various incontrovertible biographical facts about my own life? How will I influence him on certain important issues more than his peer group? When positive influence comes into direct conflict with my getting on with him as a friend, will I have the mettle to do the right thing? At what point does parental influence have the opposite effect of the one desired?

To be honest, I feel that all children are so markedly different from one another that there isn’t a neat way to answer any of these questions ahead of time. The only planning I can do is to keep on reminding myself to be pragmatic, to respond to difficulties and challenges as they arise in a positive manner, and not to get locked into any pre-determined proscriptive or authoritarian course of action that I stick to no matter what. My own father warned me in graphic terms—literally on a daily basis—about the horrors of alcoholism and drug abuse through most of my childhood and teenage years. Of course, it wasn’t his fault at all that I became an alcoholic with several drug habits, but his determined, crusading plan to steer me safely away from these things served little positive purpose at all.

What you don’t consider, as the parent of a two-year-old, though, is that you’ll have to think seriously about these things right away. You live in this fool’s paradise where you imagine your child, who is of course an angel, not really giving you any kind of serious grief until the age of 14, looking up in awe at you as this amazing font of wisdom. However, if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that children are much cleverer and sharper than anyone seems to give them any credit for.

Recently, I was larking about in an attempt to make him laugh, and he put up one hand to make me stop and shouted, “Mummy! Stop!”

(He has never once called me daddy. He calls me "mummy," and then when I protest he half-heartedly calls me "mumdy" instead.)

“Mummy, stop dancing!”

“Daddy you mean…”

“Mumdy—stop dancing. You are a very silly man.”

So much for me being an unquestionable authority figure to him until the eve of his 15th birthday.

Good for him, though. I don’t want to influence him for the sake of it; there’s no point. People are always asking me what music I’m getting him into—no doubt keen to hear that he has a very youthful penchant for Norwegian black metal or dystopian techno—but I’ve got no interest in this, to be honest. I don’t want him to grow up to be a music obsessive; I want him to be happy and content instead. If I try to force him to listen to the Ganja Kru and to Coil he will no doubt rebel by developing a love for Coldplay ten years from now.

Obviously this must sound odd coming from someone who writes about music for a living. There must be a certain degree to which I want to influence the art that I’m into and to influence people into liking it as much as me, right? Well, to be honest, I gave up caring about that idea a long time ago, and as soon as I did my life became a lot simpler and more relaxed. Manipulative behavior is a hallmark of the chronic but high-functioning alcoholic. It’s the main thing that stops him from being friendless, jobless, and homeless. I now fully understand that "Pipes" by Katie Gately is never going to be playlisted on Radio One. And I fully appreciate why, as well.

This is a good way to be because, on the very odd occasion anyone says that he's listened to something because of my recommendation, it always comes as a pleasant surprise. I mean, why would you listen to a music journalist in the first place? They’ve all got such fucking appalling taste in music. If ever there was an entire profession populated exclusively by people who were bullied at school for their awful taste in music and are now engaged in an unsatisfying project to get their revenge on life, it’s music journalism.

I’ve never, ever, ever seen anyone reading a magazine or a newspaper article that I’ve written on the tube or the bus. I know that water coolers up and down the land are not surrounded by people discussing my articles on Electro Chaabi, Shitfucker, or Frisk Frugt. It’s best just to write the stuff and be glad I’ve expunged it from my head. I’m happy to let someone else worry about what happens next.

That’s not to say I never influence people. It’s just that it happens in ways I could never predict. About four years ago a new grocery store had just opened in Hackney, and being blown away by their reasonable prices, high quality, and excellent selection, I tweeted effusively about the establishment. The next day I returned to the shop, and it appeared to be full of people in Mayhem and Godflesh T-shirts. One guy in an Electric Wizard T-shirt and a giant beard came stumbling out of the door holding a bag of satsumas and said, “Jesus Christ, mate, the fruit in there is excellent.”

And so it came to pass that when I got in from work last night Cardboard Daddy was sitting in my chair, entertaining both my girlfriend and my son. I can’t be 100 percent sure, but I think that Maria had just been laughing at some amusing bon mot the flat, blue-haired fucker had just made.

“Don’t worry, I’ll sit over here,” I said, pointing to where I never sit.

They appeared to be pretending that Cardboard Daddy was tired or ill and they were tucking him in, under a Thomas the Tank Engine blanket. Making a right fuss of him.

And then, as if things weren’t already bad enough, I heard Little John say, “I love you Cardboard Daddy!”

Maria grasped the enormity of the situation and let out an involuntary gasp. I heard her whispering to Little John, “I think you should go and tell Real Daddy that you love him as well, or he might get upset.”

Little John walked over to me and said, “Mummy…”

“Daddy, you mean…”

He started again, “Mumdy... I love Cardboard Daddy.”

He walked back over to the slim intruder, and I heard Maria entreat him, “No! I think you should tell Real Daddy that you love him; otherwise he might start crying.”

Little John walked over to me giggling and said, “Mumdy. I love… THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE!”

I kept my composure in a stoic manner, ruffled his hair, and said, “I know you do, mate.”

Then Maria and he disappeared out of the room to deal with some disaster on the Island of Sodor.

He’s great, my son. I can already tell that he won’t suffer fools gladly when he’s older—his old man included. And even if this means that sometimes this won’t make my life any easier, my heart’s already reassured that he’ll never be a follower and will always think for himself.

This warm feeling I have evaporates instantaneously when I see Cardboard Daddy sitting in my chair with a blanket over him, smirking at me.

I point out of the window: “Have you ever seen what the rain does to a cardboard man? Now that is something you should see...”

Maria sticks her head round the door. “Did you say something, Daddy?” she asks.

“No! Just clearing my throat...” I say.

Maria comes in and picks up Cardboard Daddy and carries him out of the room. I can see his grinning head over her shoulder as she carries him into the bedroom, where he now lives on top of the bookcase. When did he get moved into the bedroom? Why didn’t I notice?

“Don’t get comfortable, Cardboard Daddy,” I hiss after they’ve left. “I’ve got moves you haven’t seen yet, you insufferable, bendy shitheel. I’m not going to stop until you’re in the recycling and the balance of power has been restored.”

To be continued…

A drum session at a Truth and Reconciliation Commission event in Victoria. Photo via Facebook.
As the Canadian government slashes the budgets of Indigenous organizations across the nation, many are struggling to stay afloat. Increasingly, Indigenous organizations are accepting lifelines from a controversial source—namely oil & gas or resource extraction companies—sparking a debate over whether taking the badly needed money is 'building relationships' or 'selling out.'

"We're trying to rebuild our credibility," says Hayden King, Director of the Centre for Indigenous Governance (CIG) at Ryerson University, an organization dedicated to advancing issues of Indigenous governance. The Centre launched in 2010, with financial help from Hydro One, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization and Vale Inco, a mining company. "The Indigenous community at Ryerson didn't know this money had been accepted to launch the Centre," says King.

Although it was the university who accepted these funds, the Indigenous community withdrew their support, effectively shuttering the Centre for about a year in 2011. King came on board after the Centre reopened, but he's still dealing with the backlash today."We're trying to atone for that but maybe there's no atoning for it," he says.

Another group under scrutiny is Indspire (formerly the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation), a national charity that's helped tens of thousands of Indigenous people attain higher education. Indspire also produces an awards show that honours the achievements of Indigenous peoples. Much of the money has come from Big Oil.

"Syncrude has invested more than $3.7 million in various aboriginal community projects in the past three years," says Will Gibson, media relations advisor with Syncrude Canada. However, Gibson wouldn't say how much of that went to Indspire. Indspire President and CEO Roberta Jamieson declined an interview to discuss corporate sponsorship, saying it wasn't in the organization's mandate.

Another philanthropic group, the Dreamcatcher Charitable Foundation provides grants to Indigenous youth and communities. Representatives from the Foundation also declined to be interviewed, their newsletter contains a list of sponsors that includes one of the the largest tobacco companies in the country.

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is another proud sponsor of Indigenous initiatives. In 2013, the NWMO bankrolled a general meeting of the Metis Nation of Ontario and an elder and youth environmental initiative for Indigenous people in Saskatchewan.

Another oil & gas giant, Enbridge, has opened their wallet for Indigenous groups. Any First Nation school near Enbridge's projects can apply to their 'School Plus' program—money for K-12 programming. A total of 91 schools can apply, and many of them do. Over the years, Enbridge has also partnered with the University of Winnipeg to fund an inner-city program for students, to Our.story.ca, a national short-story contest. There's also golf tournaments, annual powwow celebrations, Christmas hampers for kids, holiday parties, elder gatherings, and the list continues.

Even the Truth and Reconciliation Commission—tasked with revealing what happened because of Canada's disastrous Indian Residential School system—has had events sponsored by these companies. For instance, Syncrude and Enbridge have recently contributed to their last and final TRC event.

"This is a very destructive and an oddly matched exchange," says Clayton Thomas-Muller, the Co-Director of the Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign of the Polaris Institute. "This area of corporate sponsorship has gone on without any critical analysis or criticism."

Accepting corporate sponsorship from the very same companies that advocate against Indigenous rights and land claims, not only contributes to the erosion of Indigenous rights but sends the message that this is the norm, says Thomas-Muller. "What it gives these companies is the social license to operate as business as usual… And it's being done by throwing money into scholarships, bursaries, or thousands of dollars into writing awards,” he says.

"Companies are able to exploit organizations and native people generally because they know we don't have any resources," says Hayden King. "There's a power imbalance." King says Indigenous people need to ask themselves why companies are approaching them in the first place and how the company might be benefiting.

But J.P. Gladu, CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business—a group that advocates for Indigenous businesses—sees it another way. "We don't build pipelines, we don't build mines—we're about building business opportunities that are reflective of aboriginal people," says Gladu. With no government funding, Gladu says the CCAB has to be creative and one way is through sponsorships from Canadian corporations.

But it isn't just charities and associations who are accepting money from corporations. Increasingly, it's Indigenous political groups too. Some political groups have lost as much as 80% of their budgets in recent years.

Called 'new funding models' by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, the latest string of cutbacks has crippled the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations and Chiefs of Ontario, two regional organizations with long histories. Considered the largest Indigenous organization, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) has also taken a significant hit. The AFN has lost over $1 million in funding over the past two years and has had to layoff staff. Neither side has said how much, but the AFN accepted money from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization to help pay for their Elders, women's and youth councils.

CEO of AFN Peter Dinsdale says it's a necessity when the AFN is struggling in times of cutbacks and expensive legal cases. "I think we have to make sure that any sponsorship we get is ethical," he says. "How we define that will be different for every organization."

Currently, the AFN is drafting a corporate sponsorship policy that Dinsdale says will ensure Indigenous rights are not being infringed by accepting money. The Centre for Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University is also in the process of developing a policy as well. Hayden King says a major aspect is not accepting money from nuclear waste or mining companies. As Indigenous organizations struggle to survive in an age of government cutbacks, the question remains—where will the money come from?

Photos by Matt Star

Gangsta Boo was the first of Da Mafia 6ix to walk into the Smith, a casual American restaurant in Manhattan’s Union Square. She beat the rest of her cohorts—DJ Paul, Koopsta Knicca, and Crunchy Black—by a solid 20 minutes. With time to kill, Boo headed straight to the bar and ordered her first of three Kettle One and Sprite mixed drinks. When the men showed up, the bottles continued to pop. DJ Paul kept it classy with a hot tea and a pinot grigio. Koopsta Knicca had a Grand Marnier paired with a glass of iced tea. And Crunchy Black sipped on a neat glass of Rémy.

Da Mafia 6ix is the 2014 reincarnation of the legendary Memphis rap group Three 6 Mafia, minus fellow founding member Juicy J. Over the last 22 years, Three 6 pioneered a cryptic southern sound that has influenced everyone from Outkast to A$AP Rocky. After years of flux in their interpersonal relationships with members coming and going, an Oscar win for the Hustle and Flow soundtrack, and the untimely death of famed rapper and DJ Paul’s brother Lord Infamous, they banded back together in 2013 under the new moniker to rekindle the wicked spirit of classic albums like When the Smoke Clears. Since then, Da Madia 6ix have released the stellar 6ix Commandments mixtape for which they are currently on a nationwide tour.

I met the group for dinner four hours before their New York tour stop. Throughout our low-key, family-style meal, Paul’s position as group leader was crystal clear. He guided the conversation, constantly double-checking that everyone at the table made smart dinner decisions. When a very quiet Koopsta ordered shrimp cocktail, Paul turned to him and said, “You know that’s cold, right?” Just checking. Later, when Koopsta ordered water Paul told him, “Make sure it’s filtered or you’re going to get sick as hell.”  

Four hours after our interview, I saw the band take the stage at Webster Hall. It was both shocking and comforting to see the crew transform from courteous old friends into ominous rappers wrecking shit. There was a ferocious energy in the air. One single dread-headed fan was so turnt up, he formed a mosh pit by himself, forcing a lonely circle around the front of the stage to solo-thrash. When he looked up and realized that he was alone in the center, the dread-head turned toward the stage and dapped a smiling DJ Paul. That is the kind of visceral reaction this group of legendary hip-hop vets can still create—it’s professional, honest, and a whole lot of fun.

VICE: How has it been being together 24/7 again?
DJ Paul: We just had to get used to being on the road every day. The worst part about this tour is that we’d be in 16-below-degree weather that none of us are used to.

Gangsta Boo: I think that killed our brains. We’re tropical people.

You should’ve waiting until the summer for the tour.
DJ Paul: We don’t time this shit, so we got to go when they want us. But that’s been the main thing—a constant concert every night in the cold weather. I’m sitting here drinking this tea because of the cold weather. We walk out of the concert sweating, wet and then it’s fucking two degrees outside. Instantly, in one second, you get sick. You’re like [coughs three times] Am I dying? [coughs] This early in the morning? It’s terrible.

Has touring gotten harder now that you’re a bit older?
Of course, the bones ain’t as strong as they used to be. If you fall off the stage now, you gon’ die. Back in the day you’d just be drunk so you could get right back up.

Boo was telling me that you jump in the mosh pits.
Yeah, but I do it differently now. I got footage of me from a couple years ago; I was in Germany and I took off my shirt and just ran for it. Now I’m like Hey, everybody move over.

Gangsta Boo: I ain’t never seen you plan it. I didn’t know you planned it.

DJ Paul: I was like, Everybody ready right here? And I just start leaning. Then I go all the way down. I don’t do it like back in the day when I’d just run and turn my back and Boom! They’ve got stages 12 feet high! If I jumped off of that I better automatically take out my phone and start typing my will. I want to leave Crunchy all my vaporizers, Boo all my sunglasses, Koop—we’ll play it by ear...

Is it easier to perform when you’re drunk?
Gangsta Boo: It just relaxes me. It opens me up for whatever I’m about to witness.

DJ Paul: We calmed down on a lot of alcohol and the drugs.

What did it used to be like?
It was crazy. It was like Scarface and Cheech & Chong times a thousand. It was way different.

Has the crowd changed over time?
Gangsta Boo: I’m going to be honest—it’s worse. I get drunk because I have to prepare myself. It’s blood battles now. I ain’t see blood before.

DJ Paul: The songs have aged so much. Back in the day when we played to the club they really tossed some shit up and threw chairs and broke shit. They’re not like that no more. They still get wild and they mosh pits and fight, but I ain’t seen no glass break—at least not at us, yet. When we did Gathering of the Juggalos a year ago I saw somebody throw a Corona bottle clean across the field and it cracked on somebody else’s head. He didn’t notice it at first. He didn’t know what was going on. I was like holy shit. So far on this tour I haven’t seen no glass breaking. I don’t want to see that, but it happens

What do you want to see?
Titties would be good.

Boo, would you ever flash the audience?
Gangsta Boo: Depends on what country I’m in. I wouldn’t do it in the states though.

Have you done anything weird in other countries?
DJ Paul: I went on a nude beach once. That was pretty fun.

Were you actually nude?
A little bit. I left the frank in, but took out the beans. I kept the main part in, but I left my balls hanging out the side. I thought it was funny, but some people thought it was cheating. 

Ha! Do you feel like old pros now?
Legends. We’ve been legends. We was legends before we even had an album.

You’re the only rappers to win an Oscar.
Gangsta Boo: It was way before that, though.

DJ Paul: A lot of people think we just popped out the alleyway and won an Oscar. We sold millions and millions of records before the Oscar. Only the true fans know that.

What do you think about Juicy J reinventing himself?
It worked! Which is perfect for him because we’re all getting older. He found somebody who’s got the young fans, so it was great for him.

Why didn’t you want to do that?
DJ Paul: For me, it’s too risky. The new fans these days ain’t loyal. One person walks in with pants on and then the next person walks in with something tighter, so they’ll be a fan of him. There’s only so tight you can wear your pants. I really just go with the core audience—the ones that’s always going to be there for you no matter what. I would rather stick with that. The new fans are cool and it’s good to have them, but I’d rather keep all the loyal fans.

Do you listen to Young Thug?
Gangsta Boo: I think he’s weird.

Why?
I only know his image. I’m just going to say this—I don’t like a man wearing skinny pants and skirts. I don’t know his music, but I’m just not a fan of his image. You can quote that as Boo, you don’t have to quote that as Da Mafia 6ix .The only reason I know him is because people are like, Oh shit, it’s gays in hip-hop. 

What new music do you listen to?
DJ Paul: It’s all about listening to your own music and not becoming a fan of somebody else’s. There are some other artists that I’m a fan of, but I’m not going to listen to their music on the regular. I might hear it on the radio and be like, Oh, that’s kind of hot and then play it in the club, but I’m not going to listen while I sit in the house with my apron on vacuuming or some shit like that.

You clean your own house? 
I do.

Paul, your brother and bandmate Lord Infamous passed away in December. How’s everything been without him?
Gangsta Boo:  We feel his energy.

Crunchy Black: We had a joke that he’s jumping into everybody’s bodies while we’re on tour.

And you have his actual body on tour too, right?
DJ Paul: We got it in a special trailer hooked to the bus. Lord was funny man. He was the funniest dude in the world. That’s the main thing that everyone misses about him—he was a comedian.

I saw that you respond to people on your Instagram.
They ask me what kinds of studio equipment and microphones they should get, and what they should tell a chick to score her panties. I try to help out in whatever way I can.

You’re an Instagram therapist.
We’ve been doing this forever and it’s been way more than the four of us. At one point it was like 30 people in our crew so I’ve heard it all. I was like a father to a lot of the guys. You have them coming in at four in the morning being like, I just beat my girl up and she called the police. What should I do? First of all, you shouldn’t beat your girl up. I’ll answer the rest of this shit after we find out if you going to get caught for running down the street like that.

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned after being in the game for 22 years?
Getting smarter at the business aspect. When we first started out, we just did it for fun, but you have to make sure you learn. Paying your taxes is one of the most important things. That could be hell. You hear about rappers everyday that go through that. You used to hear about that all the time and it was horror.

Gangsta Boo: I was 18 when I got my first big paycheck and he was like, Pay your taxes!

You’ve kind of built up a DJ Paul empire with the DJ Paul’s Smoked Out BBQ Sauce, legal Sizzurp, and clothing company Dangerus Scandulus. I hear you own real estate too.
DJ Paul: I own shopping centers and some homes—I’m more of a businessman. The talent is just five percent of this shit. There are a million people out there who got talent. Everybody can start a business, but everybody can’t  keep a business rolling 24 years like we have. That’s a big difference. It keeps the bills rolling when you ain’t doing nothing. I call it my “Fuck You” money.

I like that.
You gotta always have that “Fuck You” money so when you get to that point in your career when someone’s like, “Well, you ain’t so hot no more so I want you to do this for less than—“ No, fuck you. I always had “Fuck You” money.

What about you Boo?
Gangsta Boo: Think before you react and make sure you make the best decisions for yourself.

DJ Paul: Like using a condom.

Gangsta Boo: Think rational with a clear head—not with emotions. Don’t make decisions when you’re mad. I made so many decisions mad and woke up like, Fuck!

DJ Paul: You got to think like the Jewish people. Jewish people never get mad. They just keep a sober head and be like, Oh, oh well.

The author with Da Mafia 6ix.

I’m Jewish and I don’t know about that.
I ain’t never been at the club and seen a Jewish person crack somebody at the top of the head. I think they just know how to control it better. Black people, we the worse at controlling shit.

Gangsta Boo: Nah, white people.

Do a lot of white people come to your shows?
DJ Paul: It’s all white people. They’ve always been our biggest fan-base because we based our group off of rock n’ roll music. I still try to put guitars in 80 percent of the beats—maybe 90. I grew up on rock music. I was the only kid on my street that had cable, so I’d be sitting there watching MTV every night when I was seven and it would just be rock music. There’s like four black people in our audience.

Gangsta Boo: You throw us in and that doubles it.

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Pro-Russian protestors in Luhansk, the most Eastern city in Ukraine, took over the headquarters of the state security services on April 9. Armed with guns they found in the building, the demonstrators were determined not to leave. VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky visited the occupied building, which despite the occupation, was surprisingly calm.

But not everyone in Luhansk wants to join Russia—and some who express that sentiment are suffering dire consequences. We spoke to one resident who said he was severely beaten for siding with Ukraine, and another who is determined to leave the area if Luhansk becomes Russian. Amid calls for parts of Ukraine to join Russia, the tension and unrest across the country is spreading—and it is becoming increasingly difficult to predict what will happen next.

Peter King looking rather dazed and confused. Photo via Flickr user Azi Paybarah

Smart people can argue about whether former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden is a hero or a traitor or a whistleblower or whatever. Maybe you despise the mass surveillance regime he revealed last year by leaking huge troves of classified data to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras and respect the man's courage for sticking his neck out. Or you might see him as the worst kind of self-righteous iconoclast, a misguided computer geek carelessly revealing state secrets to bolster his activist bona fides.

What cannot be disputed, however, is that Peter King, a Republican congressman from Long Island, New York—who responded with outrage on Monday to the announcement that the reporting on Snowden's leaks had won the Washington Post and Guardian a Pulitzer Prize—is a hypocritical asshole who should be cast out of public life as soon as possible.

Taking to Twitter (as well as speaking to the Associated Press), the blowhard—who, by the way, leads the House Homeland Security subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence—immediately called the awarding of the prize to the reporters who broke the biggest story of 2013 a "disgrace." Keep in mind, this is the same guy who called for legal action against Greenwald last June when the leaks first began to emerge, just one of many ominous signs from American officials that ultimately made the journalist's return to the US from Brazil this week such a dramatic event.

Fortunately for the rule of law, the Obama administration did not attempt to arrest or abduct Greenwald. But if King—who hopes to chair the House Intelligence Committee and has also sort-of promised to run for (ha!) president of the United States in 2016—had his way, Greenwald would presumably be on his way to Guantanamo Bay at this very moment.

As Barack Obama would say, let me be clear: This is far from the only time King has said something that makes it sound like he pines for a more authoritarian country since first being elected to Congress back in 1992. King routinely cites the horrific specter of 9/11 to justify the creeping national security state; in his reality, if the PRISM program had been fully operational back in the fall of 2001, disaster might have been averted. (Students of history will recall that the US intelligence apparatus had all the information it needed—George Bush just didn't really care to pay attention.)

King also insisted on holding a series of hearings about Muslim radicalization in 2011 and 2012 despite evidence that home-grown domestic terrorists (that is, crazy white guys with guns like the bigoted old man who went on an anti-Semitic rampage at two Jewish centers in Kansas City on Sunday) are the greater threat. For a sense of just how fringe this man can be, even John Yoo—the notorious Bush administation legal lackey who authored the memos used to justify torture—has (so far, at least) declined to savage the Pulitzer committee as King has.

But perhaps the most confusing part of King's political beliefs is that he's a longtime supporter of the Irish Republican Army—the car-bomb-loving group that has committed many acts of terrorism in the name of winning independence from the British.

"My problem with him is the hypocrisy," Tom Parker, a counterterrorism specialist who was injured by an IRA bomb in 1990, told the Washington Post in 2011. "If you say that terrorist violence is acceptable in one setting because you happen to agree with the cause, then you lose the authority to condemn it in another setting."

I actually hope King does run for president, if only because it might provide an opening for someone else to claim his congressional seat and thereby boot the guy off the TV airwaves (at least until Fox News or some other outlet that peddles right-wing fantasies snatches him up). His campaign, from what I can tell, would be an extended rant about how we need to go to war with more countries more often and crack down on investigative journalism. The one redeeming element to his biography is that King has occasionally called out some of the loons in his own party for their ideological extremism—which is awfully rich coming from him. (Even when he broke with his GOP allies, that was only in hopes of securing federal funding for his constituents and thus his own re-election.)

So while the verdict is still out on exactly what kind of person Snowden is—the Pulitzer committee recognized the journalism based on his disclosures, not the act of leaking itself—the ongoing NSA scandal has already accomplished another lofty goal: reminding us that Peter King has got to go.

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

January 2014 saw Bangladesh fall into yet another vicious power struggle—the impending elections resulting in sporadic attacks, mass rioting, and religiously motivated anarchy. Alongside political unrest, the interjection of fundamentalist Islamic groups has meant an already troubled nation has been left in turmoil. VICE News was on the streets of Dhaka in the lead up to the enforced elections, to witness democracy at it's most questionable.

Keep your eyes peeled for new installments of Blobby Boys every Wednesday from here until the end of time.

Weirdness is getting harder to find these days.

Between marketers, sitcom characters, and whacky dickheads in shirts that say things about ninjas and bacon, genuinly odd stuff is difficult to come by. So I was extremely excited to hear about Jurassic Restaurant, a (presumably) unofficial Jurassic Park-themed Taiwanese restaurant in Industry, California. 

Weird shit used to be everywhere. If Tod Browning's Freaks is to be believed, it used to be that you could barely open your door without tripping over some undiscovered weirdo. 

But then lunacy got gentrified and oddness became mainstream—co-opted by Phoebe from Friends and printed on trucker caps to be sold at Hot Topic (over 600 locations nationwide).

American entertainment became about gawking at weirdos. TV shows about women who eat couches or get plastic surgery to look like celebrities became the norm. The guy with a 300-pound scrotum (RIP) got an agent. 

Marketers and advertisers got their claws in, too. Weirdness used to be a pursuit for outsiders, but now it's thought up by teams of market researchers, to be regurgitated by the Old Spice Guy or the Geico Gecko. 

Sites like Atlas Obscura, Time Out, and Roadside America popped up, blowing the lid off any remaining unknown weirdness left in the world. Now it's impossible to visit a "hidden gem" without being surrounded by other curiosity seekers, Instagramming pics of themselves in official merchandise purchased from the suddenly savvy owners.

Gawking at weird stuff has become something you can do with your grandparents. Entire families are taking wholesome road trips to Salvation Mountain or the House on the Rock. People have started running paid urban exploration tours of Detroit, and Hamburger Mary's has opened a restaurant near Disneyworld. 

Sure, there are people that will argue that the world is still full of weird. But they're just easily fooled. Weird is now something studied and branded and accepted by those who're willing to take things at face value.

For instance, multiple people in Los Angeles told me about a "super weird" clown-themed strip club that had a salad bar. I, apparently, HAD to go there! But when I did visit, every patron was under 30 and wearing a plaid shirt. The strippers danced to Radiohead and had the kind of tattoos you usually see on cups sold at Urban Outfitters. Everyone present seemed pleased with themselves for being so Out There. 

It's become important to be cynical when it comes to odd things. Nothing can be accepted at face value. Now when we see something like Dumb Starbucks, our first question is no longer "What the fuck is this?!" – it's "What the fuck is this viral marketing for?!"

Which is what makes something as purely eccentric as Jurassic Restaurant a real treat. 

The restaurant is located in a strip mall surrounded by strip malls. Its full title, according to the main sign, is Jurassic Restaurant Full Line Tin. Which, to me at least, means nothing. 

The thing that makes Jurassic Restaurant so bizarre (beyond the fact that it hasn't been sued for copyright infringement in the 8 years it's been open,) is its arbitrary interpretation of the Jurassic Park theme. It was as though the owners listed what they wanted to achieve interior-wise, then ran it through Google Translate into Mandarin and back again. 

You enter the restaurant through large wooden gates, and there are huge model dinosaurs dotted around. Which, yeah, is very much like the films.

But that's where the similarities end. On display around the joint there are Burger King Kids Meal Rugrats toys, Chinese lanterns, forgotten Halloween decorations, miniature pumpkins, neon beer signs, and a stage with an unintelligible word written across it in graffiti writing (I think it said "LHESNOW"?)

Electing not to use the score of the movie, the music was the same five hip hop songs played on repeat. Chris Brown complained that "these hos aint loyal" at least 50 times over the course of my meal. 

The waitresses were, naturally, dressed in Native American ensembles, accesorized with chokers that spelled out their names, Uggs, and a utility belt emblazoned with a pink triangle (possibly a reference to the Nazi concentration camp badge issued to homosexuals?)

According to a slideshow that was playing on a large fake iPhone attached to the wall, the waitresses also sometimes dress as sexy Rainbow Brites in flip-flops. 

I asked my waitress if they had anything vegan, but she was unfamiliar with the concept.

I don't mean that she didn't know the word. She was genuinely unable to wrap her head around the concept of eating food that contained neither meat or dairy. As I explained veganism to her, she made a face filled with so much confusion and shock I may as well have just dumped a bucket of ice water over her head. 

After what felt like an hour, she seemed to grasp what I was talking about, and assured me the chef would make me something vegan.

When she brought my food out, it was buried beneath a mountain of fried egg. "The chef said that it needs to have either pork or egg for taste," she told me. To be in Los Angeles and find somewhere that not only has no vegan menu items, but had never even encountered veganism before was a truly wonderful experience.

On the second attempt, she brought out something that was, seemingly, vegan:

It was completely fine. More "completely fine" than any other meal I've ever eaten in my life.

If forced to describe what it tasted like, the most accurate adjective I can conjure is "food." A semi-salty, sorta-savory, perfectly-consumable pile of beige carbs and MSG. I ate four mouthfuls and was full. 

But really, who cares what the food tastes like. You don't go to a copyright-violating Taiwanese Jurassic Park restaurant to enjoy good eats. You go to post Facebook pictures of yourself with giant fiberglass dinosaurs and Native American waitresses.

So go, enjoy the last beautiful, unspoiled oasis of weirdness in a major global city. At least until some jerk from a high-traffic website comes along and writes a blog post about it and the whole place fills up with assholes. 

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Schererville, Indiana, 1964. Racer. Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum

Last fall, while I was working as a book designer for the Aperture Foundation, the photography nonprofit, a first-edition copy of of Danny Lyon’s The Bikeriders from 1968 was placed on my desk in a plastic folder.

The Bikeriders is the first book by the now-legendary photographer; copies like the one I was given go for $700. I was asked to tear it apart, write on it, and otherwise mutilate it in order to find a way to create an exact facsimile of the book. I could hardly imagine unbinding the book, and I cringed at the thought of writing on it. But as I learned more about the book and about Lyon’s relationship with the project, I became convinced he wouldn’t mind me pulling his book apart in order to precisely recreate his original. Unlike many photographers, Lyon pays special attention to all the aspects of his books—the captions, the sequence, and the text are treated with the same acute focus as the images themselves. As I looked at his candid shots and casual recordings of conversations, the motorcycle gang members who were his subjects grew more and more alive to me. Staying true to the original means giving younger generations a way to rediscover how this book became iconic. Our new reproduction of Lyon’s original will appear on bookshelves around the world at the end of next month. 

The project that became The Bikeriders began in 1963, when Lyon was just starting his career as a photographer. An educated son of the middle class who grew up in Queens, his work had only been published in one book, The Movement, which was about Civil Rights in the South. He was a 21-year old student at the University of Chicago at the time, and he worked for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. These political photographs laid the foundation for Lyon’s subsequent work—documenting the Chicago Outlaws motorcycle club seemed like an obvious next step for a photographer interested in those on the outskirts of American society. The Outlaws rode Harleys and Lyon rode a Triumph, but despite this fundamental difference, he was able to forge close relationships with members of the club.

Wisconsin, 1965. Route 12. Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum

Hugh Edwards, to whom Lyon dedicated The Bikeriders, was an extremely important figure for Lyon and his contemporaries. From 1959 to 1970, Edwards was an associate curator of prints and drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, and Lyon would ride his motorcycle to show him new pictures. Edwards’s encouragement and support helped Lyon as he worked on The Bikeriders throughout the mid 60s.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1965. Funny Sonny packing with Zipco. Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum

At certain points, documenting the Outlaws' conversations seemed more important than taking their photographs. The book is filled with highly personal moments that reflect the violent and extreme lifestyle of the club. For instance, Funny Sonny, a former Hell’s Angel, described meeting the Outlaws for the first time, riding down a hill drunk, and seeing a rider fall off a cliff:

“So he goes over there and he takes about four good swallows of wine. And he gets sick right away, instant sickness. And he pukes it all out. But he makes it, he wipes his mouth off, shows a little class, wipes it on his pants. Little Honda guy, you know, helmet and everything. So down the hill he goes. So he’s comin’ up the hill and he’s goin’ good, he’s lookin’ good, he’s comin’ up like crazy... but he doesn’t realize something. His bike is headed in the wrong direction, he’s headed for a cliff. And he jumps on and gives the gas and over the cliff he goes, messed his whole bike and he’s gone. He never came back.”

Louisville, Kentucky, 1966. Crossing the Ohio. Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum

Funny Sonny went on to describe swallowing a caterpillar a size of a pencil, and what happens afterwards:

“Now I swallow, the caterpillar is out of sight. Open my mouth, show everyone it’s gone. Then I know he’s crawling, I can feel him crawling back up my throat, see. So I got my mouth closed, and you know, it’s closed and everybody’s eating. And I’m at the table and everybody’s eating, we’re talking and I open my mouth just a little tiny bit and this little fuckin’ caterpillar comes crawling out of my mouth. About four people got sick, see. So then I yelled to everybody, I said, 'Ah, you ain’t gonna get away from me, caterpillar.' So I crunched my teeth down on him and chewed him up real good... Oh, Christ. That was good. That’s when I really met the Outlaws, really met ‘em good.”

Detroit, Michigan, 1965. Renegade's funeral. Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum

The riders are painted as unforgiving and brutal. Over the course of the book, some members die on the road, some by suicide. But when you read between the lines, you can see love and respect underneath the violence. Johnny, the president of the Outlaws, said the club would buy huge floral pieces for each of the members' funerals: “We buy for all the club members that do get killed, or die, even if they’re not in the club if they were in good standing when they quit.”

Ultimately, Lyon attempted to glorify the life of an American bikerider and all of its hardships. He recently told Photo District News, “In my America, people were all different, they were handsome, and everything around them was beautiful. And most of all, they were free.” He added that ultimately, all of his projects are “about the existential struggle to be free.”

Schererville, Indiana, 1965. Sparky and Cowboy (Gary Rogues). Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum

Once Lyon felt the project was complete, he grew tired of the club’s lifestyle, and moved to New York. Finding a publisher for the work proved difficult, however, and his personality didn’t make up for his thin credentials: Lyon was, and still is, known as a stubborn photographer, and has voiced his dislike towards magazines and the brutal editing process involved with editorial work. Even the title of the book was disputed by copy editors who had not heard of the new term bikerider.

Elkhorn, Wisconsin, 1966. Cal. Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum

Finally, in 1968, his friend Alan Rizler managed to get the book published by the Macmillan company. Thousands of copies were printed and spread across America, but no images were reproduced in color due to the expense that would have been involved, and there was little fanfare and hardly any press attention when the book was released. After Lyon saw a copy of the book displayed in the front window of the East Village bookstore, he would ride his motorcycle past the shop simply to stare at it. Eventually, MacMillan asked him whether he wanted to buy the remaining copies for 60 cents apiece.

Chicago, Illinois, 1965. New York Eddie's. Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum

After completing The Bikeriders, Lyon was made an associate of the prestigious Magnum Photos cooperative, but in 1975, when other members noticed that he never attended any of the meetings, the group dropped him, though his work has remained in the Magnum archive ever since. He continued to photograph important and personal stories with integrity, from the demolition of downtown Manhattan to the brutal prison system in Texas.

The book is a seminal example of the practice called New Journalism, in which the writer or photographer is immersed in the scene he's documenting and is a participant in it. The rerelease of The Bikeriders is not only an homage to this movement, it reminds us to follow our instincts and react to the world as fearlessly as Lyon did.

Danny Lyon's The Bikeriders will be available May 30 from Aperture.

Sophie Butcher is a photographer, writer, and designer based in New York. She is a contributor to TIME magazine's LightBox blog, as well as the blog Feature Shoot. Follow her on Twitter.

All photos via Clifford Roles.
Porn for moms has become a pretty big thing (not to be confused with mommy porn, which is probably an even bigger thing that I’m afraid to Google). Whether you’re a fan or a hater, it’s hard to deny that E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey is pretty much singularly responsible for the boom in BDSM-friendly parties occupying the living rooms where Avon and Tupperware parties once did.

The erotic novel has successfully shocked and embarrassed an immeasurable number of people (e.g. spouses, subway passengers, elderly librarians, adult children of elderly librarians) since its steamy Summer 2011 release. With over 100 million paperback copies sold worldwide, the excitement over the “titillating” novel has, in recent months, seemingly died down—making this the perfect time to debut a musical parody of the book, right? Right.

50 Shades! The Musical—The Original Parody, is the lovechild of producers Marshall Cordell, Emily Dorezas, and Al Samuels—who also directed and co-wrote the piece with a number of people whose resume is probably more impressive when this production is omitted. Not to be confused with Cuff Me: The Fifty Shades of Grey Musical Parody (I’m assuming the two are at Biggie and Tupac level of rivalry) 50 Shades! is a loose retelling of the novel through 11 original songs and a lot of sweaty dancing. And I was lucky enough to experience the whole thing.

Like most people in their early 20s with internet access and the ability to use Google Chrome’s Incognito function, I openly rolled my eyes and scoffed at any mention of Fifty Shades in the past. An erotic book series based on a fan fiction based on a teen vampire series based on Mormon ideals? No thanks.

My journey into this weird and dismal abyss began two days before opening night, when I put down my copy of the Long Island Medium’s There’s More To Life Than This to delve into the erotic novel in question. After the first few chapters, I felt nothing but boredom and sadness—for myself, and for the millions of people who bought the book because they don’t know how to use Google PDFs. As things started to “heat up,” I became irrationally afraid that the content of this glorified rape fantasy might actually turn me on. The first sex scene, however, where we discover that Ana is a virgin and Grey wants to be her first and only, or some shit, was so fucked up and poorly written that if my sexual organs weren’t already innies they would have crawled up into my body never to be heard from again.

After reading the novel and spending way too much time thinking about whether Ana was actually a strong woman in control who didn’t need no man, or if this was just a messed up tale of abusive relationships (the latter, I think), I felt ready to see what the touring version of NYC’s off-Broadway production had in store for me. The show’s website cautions that it’s, “not for those under the age of 18, but does not cross boundaries that would make general audiences squirm.” Given my predisposition to secondhand embarrassment, I was sure that promise wouldn’t be kept. Surely the live show wouldn’t venture into the dark and cum-covered territory the book does, but I still had a lot of questions. Would there be whips and collars? Would there be even a little IRL semen? Would Anastasia, have her tampon removed by Christian on-stage as in the book? (Yes, no, no.)

With images of Mr. Grey dancing in my head (and by dancing, I mean aggressively slapping women and being your standard weirdo control freak rich guy), I set out on an evening of what was sure to be very high art with my friend Kevin.

Nearing the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, I suddenly felt anxious and unprepared for what I was about to potentially see. When I was five I cried at my brother’s wedding when he removed his wife’s garter belt in front of everyone at the reception, but I’ve since been to strip clubs and burlesque shows. Was I entirely the wrong person to be attending this musical? Maybe it was the corporate crowds outside Union Station, or maybe it was the Twilight-esque forest installation of Brookfield Place on Front St., but like the book’s protagonist Ana, my inner goddess began speaking to me. Hey bitch, it said. Chill the fuck out. I followed the voice.

A Sears portrait of the author's pre-show innocence and serenity. Photo via the author.
Entering the theatre lobby, we were met by a bevy of drunk moms and grandmothers out for ladies night, dressed to the nines (let’s be real, they were more like sixes) and a few touchy feely, lets-whisper-into-each-others-mouths-in-public couples who seemed to be more into the 50 Shades! part than the parody aspect.

Taking our seats, the familiar melody of Katy Perry’s Roar could be heard. If there was any doubting it before, it now became very clear that this would be a very edgy, very sexy, not at all ridiculous show. The lights faded and the onstage band fired up.

The musical opens in the living room of a ladies’ book club, where three women are about to have their worlds rocked by E.L. James’ atrocious grammar and overused thesaurus. The Trio of Moms act as an intro the novel and appear throughout the musical as the chorus, sort of like if the Dixie Chicks were tour guides at the musuem of tacky literature. 

In a twist of fate rivaled perhaps only by the moment in Bring It On where Torrence finds out her cheer squad has been copying routines from the East Compton Clovers, lead female character Anastasia Steele stepped into the spotlight to reveal that she looked exactly like an ex-girlfriend of mine. As I reeled from this shocker, the rest of the audience somehow moved on to discover what would be the show’s running gag—that the novel’s star stalker/master of sex, Christian Grey, was played by a very hairy, heavyset redhead. A young guy sitting in front of me (who looked exactly like Kurt from Glee, making this experience the perfect recipe for my sexual nightmare) whispered to his companion—a MILF, Kevin would later note—that the actor resembled Toronto’s own Rob Ford.

Throughout the show, I was confused as to whether 50 Shades! The Musical is really making fun of E.L. James’ novel or paying tribute. The show makes a lot of questionable choices, including the portrayal of the Spanish character, José Rodriguez, played by a white guy in a cheesy stick-on mustache. The choice went over terrifically with the show’s (almost completely white) audience, and he was one of the funnier characters. But given that José is written as a creep and a stereotype in the novel, were audience members laughing at the parody, or merely at the lazy stereotype onstage?

The first musical number that really stirred something inside me was, “I Don’t Make Love (I Fuck),” in which a sweaty Grey—in a sparkly red leotard, penis outline fully visible—very eloquently describes how he will penetrate every woman in the audience. My eyes immediately wanted to roll off of my face, out the doors of the theatre, and into incoming traffic. Then things took a weird turn. I actually started enjoying myself. I don’t know if the change of heart was due to the actor’s own charm and personality, the fact that he was delivering lines like “I’m gonna eat your pussy like a poutine” to unsuspecting grandmothers, or if it was merely a case of mob mentality (probably), but I was won over. Sort of.

I came to appreciate that the show just wants to give people a good time on a night out away from their fucking kids. My friend Kevin and I agreed that it was probably a good time for anyone who’s ever had a Skinny Girl wine or bottled cocktail touch their lips, and that’s exactly who it was written for. Whether you’ve read the books or not is pretty irrelevant—if anything, it’s probably best to go into this without any expectations, given that audiences don’t get much action beyond two shirtless male backup dancers (with some pretty hefty bulges, I’ll give you that) and one female dancer in lingerie (whose presence is never really addressed, but OK). To my slight disappointment the only penetration happening in the theatre was the man behind me going in hard on his Häagen-Dazs ice cream bar and the only wieners I saw were the dozen basketball fans eating hot dogs after the game on my subway ride home. That’s probably for the best.

@fatti_smith