Photo of Bobby Cann courtesy of Groupon

On May 29 of last year, Bobby Cann left the Groupon offices in Chicago, where he worked as an editorial-tools specialist. Traveling north on his bicycle, he rode up wide, sunny Larrabee Street. As he entered the intersection at Clybourn Avenue, a Mercedes SUV traveling more than 50 miles per hour slammed into him from behind. The impact threw Cann into the air. He landed unconscious, blood streaming out of his mouth and his left leg severed. Bystanders, including a registered nurse, rushed to help. Shortly after transport to a nearby hospital, he died.

What makes Cann’s story notable among the 700 or so bicyclists who are hit and killed in America each year is that San Hamel faces charges in Cann’s death. According to a recent report by the League of American Bicyclists, barely one in five drivers who end bicyclists’ lives are charged with a crime. The low prosecution rate isn’t a secret and has inspired many to wonder whether plowing into a cyclist with a car is a low-risk way to commit homicide.

The Cann case is an exception that proves the rule. “The criminal case is sort of about the outrageous nature of what happened,” Todd Smith, a civil attorney for Cann’s family, concedes. “[San Hamel was] driving under the influence on the city streets where things are congested, and [there was] the complete lack of braking of any sort, the enormous impact of a car of thousands of pounds going in excess of 50 miles per hour, hitting just the human body.” San Hamel’s blood alcohol level was 0.127 at the time of the crash.

Photo via Flickr user rick

Bicyclists who pushed for prosecution also helped the cause. Last summer, more than 5,000 people signed a petition asking state attorney Anita Alvarez to refuse a plea bargain from San Hamel. Local activist Robert Kastigar, who started the petition, says he believes it encouraged the state to pursue the case. A representative of Chicago advocacy group Active Transportation Alliance says the involvement of activists is likely to influence stiffer sentencing.

Nationwide, incidents like Cann’s often result in misdemeanor charges, tickets, or nothing. Leah Shahum from the San Francisco Bike Coalition told the New York Times last year that her organization does “not know of a single case of a cyclist fatality in which the driver was prosecuted, except for DUI or hit-and-run.” Kristin Smith, also of the SF Coalition, says that “Last year, four people were hit and killed in San Francisco and no charges were ever brought,” including for a collision captured on video that showed the driver was at fault. Last year in New York City, the bike-advocacy organization Time’s Up pushed for changes in police investigations of bicyclist deaths by painting chalk-body outlines on streets, marked with words familiar from NYPD reports: “No Criminality Suspected.”

Chalk-body outline by Time's Up activists. Photo via Flickr user Adam Greenfield

Data on the official number of prosecutions in fatal bicycle collisions is sparse, and following up on prosecution is the least-covered point. A May 2014 report from the League of American Bicyclists reads, “We don’t know much about the consequences of most crashes that result in bicyclist fatality.” Based on incomplete data, the report estimates, “Nationally, 45 percent of fatal cyclist crashes had some indication of a potential enforcement action; 21 percent had evidence of a likely charge; [and] 12 percent resulted in a sentence.” Put another way, killing a cyclist with a car was effectively legal in more than seven of every eight cases.

Despite universally acknowledging the problem, bike activists don’t always agree on appropriate punishments. Robert Kastigar, the activist who circulated the petition for Hamel to stand trial, is ambivalent about punishment. “He shouldn’t do 120 days, but he shouldn’t do 12 years, either,” he says, even though the latter figure falls within Illinois state law’s sentencing guidelines for reckless homicide (three to 14 years). He also suggests San Hamel would be best punished by being forbidden to drive, “since we all depend on cars.” (It’s worth noting that Bobby Cann did not have a car.) In another case, the mother of Hector Avalos, a 28-year-old former Marine struck and killed by a drunk driver in Chicago last December, believes putting the man who killed her son in prison is pointless. Robert Vais, the driver, “might only do one year,” she said. “What good does it do for me?” Vais received a felony aggravated DUI and two misdemeanor DUI charges, but nothing for killing Hector.

Hector Avalos's mother, Ingrid Cossio, at a ghost bike memorializing Avalos's death. Her son's killer is not being charged for his death. Photo by the author.

But if the public is at a loss, so are prosecutors. Portland, Oregon, attorney Ray Thomas explains that DAs don’t like to go after “some soccer dad who made a mistake… The police, prosecutors, and courts don’t feel it’s a mistake that should net someone jail time… There are criminally negligent homicide laws. But [a crash] has got to be really, really bad.”

League of Illinois Bicyclists executive director Ed Barsotti explains why cases aren’t prosecuted in his state: “We are left in that situation where you have to be charged with a felony, and it’s really tough to meet that standard, or you’re stuck with the usual traffic citations. We and many others are interested in having that prosecution gap closed.” Illinois created a Distracted Driving Task Force in 2008, which generated a list of laws for new charges against drivers who hit bicyclists. Unfortunately, for lack of political will, none of those laws passed.

In 2010, a glimmer of hope was sparked in New York when Hayley and Diego’s Law was passed. The law, which focuses on penalties specific to careless driving, is designed to enable prosecutions of drivers who hit bicyclists and pedestrians—a previously difficult task because no appropriate penalties existed. But New York cops and activists don’t acknowledge Diego and Hayley’s Law. Despite arguing for more aggressive prosecutions of careless drivers, Time’s Up director Bill DiPaola was unaware of the law. (DiPaola says his group focuses on educating bicyclists on how to manage a crash, and has also successfully pushed the city to beef up its collisions-investigation unit to address cases in which bicyclists die.)

While Hayley and Diego’s Law is a step in the right direction, New York City’s biggest roadblock when it comes to prosecuting cycling accidents is a bizarre loophole that is applicable to the majority of collisions. “Right now, what New York misses that other states have is that the police cannot issue a summons unless an act was committed in their presence,” says local bike attorney Dan Flanzig. This means most bicyclists can expect police action only if a cop happens to watch with his or her own eyes as they get flattened on the pavement.

Ghost bike in front of a Brooklyn police station. Photo via Flickr user Several Seconds.

Flanzig says New York is also unique because it has a “no-fault” insurance law for motorists, which can cover an injured bicyclist’s medical bills without a criminal prosecution or a private lawsuit. Flanzig says the insurance may give cops an excuse not to bother with the logistical problems of prosecution: “They may say, ‘This is a civil matter; we’re not going to chase them down; we’re not going to do a summons.’”

Other states’ laws make a bit more sense. Delaware, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington have recently implemented vulnerable-road-user laws, which provide comprehensive methods to address cases of careless driving without felony charges. Thomas describes them this way: “[The crash is] not necessarily a crime, but there are some things you need to do to reconcile it. That’s community service, a physical and mental evaluation, and a driving safety course,” which “provide a higher level of scrutiny” on whether a driver should return to the road.

Spurred by an incident caught on video where a driver yells something at a cyclist before slamming into him, Washington, DC, passed a limited “anti-harassment” law in 2012 to penalize drivers who deliberately assault bicyclists. Washington Area Bicycle Association, which pushed for the bill, says it was necessary because deliberate harassment of cyclists was common in the DC area and “too often… criminal charges are not brought” under existing laws. Similar laws have been passed in 17 states.

But while those laws might help prosecute the psychopathic assholes who don't have any qualms about hitting a cyclist out of anger, the vast majority of fatalities can be chalked up to negligence. This means that even if these new laws are actually enforced, the number of cyclists who are run over might not decrease. Portland, Oregon’s Bicycle Transportation Alliance helped pass a Vulnerable Road Users law, but communications manager Rob Sadowsky says, “We didn’t push the law expecting there to be more [safety]. We wanted prosecutors and DAs to have an opportunity to have tools at their hands to be able to punish.” Sadowsky points out deterrent effects only reduce intentional killings, and “nobody ever wants to kill anyone.”

Critical Mass in New York, circa 2008. Photo via Flickr user Alex Thompson.

The longtime tension between cyclists and cops, which DiPaola blames largely on the confrontational and sometimes violent Critical Mass protests of years past, seems to be waning. In Chicago, a recent Ride of Silence that I attended went off without a hitch. The ride, which tours ghostbikes to call attention to bicyclists’ deaths, began with a gentle reminder to “obey the police,” and the police reciprocated with an unusual politesse. For people complaining about having their lives threatened, the activists were bizarrely chill.

But if the group reacted to their own aims as if the wind were at their backs, then perhaps they have a point. After all, every single state has considered distracted or careless driving laws (like Hayley and Diego’s Law) since the year 2000, and every Vulnerable Road User law on the books has been passed since 2007. Increased public funds for bicycle lanes, bicycling promotion schemes, and advocacy have created huge surges in the number of riders, too. If the recent past is any clue, more pro-bicyclist legislation is on its way.

Soon, any crash—not just the drunken, high-speed, body-dismembering collision that killed Bobby Cann—might be enough to put a driver off the road or even behind bars. As bike attorney Ray Thomas puts it, “I feel like things are going our way.”

Follow M. Sophia Newman on Twitter.

Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

“There's been much ado lately about pubic hair, from Cameron Diaz's "Body Book" to Lady Gaga's "au-naturel" Candy Magazine cover. Janeane Garofalo recently weighed in on the subject, and she is decidedly pro.” - Huffpo

“If you are a woman brimming with pubic hair pride and you’ve been looking for someone to tell about it, Sunday is your lucky day.”  -SFGate

“Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my pubic hair.” -The Bustle

A Google search for “pubic hair trends” reveals 187,000 results. Summer brings with it a veritable tsunami of bush-based thinkpieces, as columnists and feminists and ladybloggers and male writers hash out their thoughts on whatever “trend” exists for women’s body hair at the moment.

The Bustle piece quoted above—“Will The Full Bush Trend Continue Into Summer? Why Waxing Is Getting Even More Complicated”—is a perfect example of its kind. It's a quick summary of pubes over the years, from the full bush to the Brazilian to full bush Brazilian, is followed by, well, this: “With ‘normcore’ pubes supposedly all the rage, will the beaches really be chockfull of women and their pubic hair this summer?” Can it be? Will we be applying #buzzword to #bodypart, and in #public? It concludes—as most pieces about pubic hair do—with a reminder that it really is a woman’s own choice, ultimately up to her.

Very personal, you know. Love your pubes, sisters. End thinkpiece. 

But do we have to love our pubes? Is an apparently obligatory pride in our underbrush as unhelpful as the previously obligatory shame? Although certainly more positive, the end result is that we continue to endlessly dissect what’s happening in all of our ladygardens, instead of, say, our heads. Or even our beds. Or our actual gardens, for god’s sake. Maybe your friends are growing an incredible chrysanthemum crop and you have no idea because you’ve been too busy wondering if they’d ever consider vajazzling. 

We’re living in a pubic panopticon, our every depilatory movement chronicled, considered, and chewed up by the commentariat, when truly it's no more remarkable than head hair, and we don't write endlessly about whether or not a certain style of haircut will make it okay to go out in public. We do not pen lengthy invectives against those who do not “get” our new haircut, or make parody videos when a new style of fringe becomes popular. The fascination rests purely on pussies. And why not? They’re just another part of the female body, which as we all know exists to be taken apart—physically, by television’s myriad women killers, metaphorically by the unending stream of “beach body” critiques available in tabloid magazines, and linguistically in trend pieces like the ones sampled above. 

For now, at least. This is not just a matter of Caitlin Moran’s famous feminist test: are the men doing it? Because, yes, unfortunately, they are. In increasing numbers, the public consciousness (pubic consciousness?) is coming for men’s trousers as well. In the shittiest possible version of equality, men are slowly but surely beginning to experience the same body hair issues that women have experienced for decades. It is nowhere near as bad for men as it is for women, but I fear for the consequences of this kind of evening out of the pubic playing field.

Visions of a fuzzy dystopia dance in my head:

"Nice to meet you, professor. My vulva’s largely hairless but I leave a little postage stamp at the top, for color." “My name is Senator Andrew Carleton. I approve this message and I’m a devotee of the back, sack, and crack wax at Linda’s on 5th.”

It’s upsetting. It feels like instead of liberating women from the endless cycle of bodily dissection, judgment, grooming movements and countermovements, we’re just going to scooch over to make room for the other half to join us on that crinkly table-paper.

Do you spend time thinking about your elbows? Are you tempted to write a strongly worded letter to the New York Times regarding your pedicure routine and how you are, in a way, using it to make a statement? Do you think it might be interesting to poll those around you to see whether or not they have feminist teeth brushing patterns? The bottom line is that thinking about your pubic hair at all is time you are spending not thinking about anything else. Things like: How is your resume looking these days—do you need to update it? What are you up to this weekend? Have you texted that guy from Tinder yet? Are you hungry? Where is the nearest sandwich? Literally anything is more important to think about than what your pubes look like right now.

This summer can be different. We can be different. Don’t read pieces about pube trends, don’t write them. Don’t cultivate a series of reasons it’s okay to wax or an impassioned defense of your copious pubes. You do not need to defend your body, to yourself or anyone else. Bustle and its ilk are correct: it is up to you. But so is whether or not you want to keep talking about it. I certainly don’t.

Follow Monica Heisey on Twitter

As a coalition of ISIS fighters, Sunni militias, and former Baathists continues to push its way toward Baghdad, the Iraqi army and Shiite militias have fought to slow its progress. In Mosul, however, ISIS and other Sunni forces now exert total control. Confusion remains about what exactly happened there, and why Iraqi soldiers abandoned their posts so quickly.

There is much speculation about the role high-ranking officers in the Iraqi army might have played, and whether or not they were involved in internal sabotage or had advance knowledge of the assault. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has already fired a number of high-ranking officers, and ordered one to be court-martialed for desertion.

After fighting broke out, hundreds of thousands of civilians fled Mosul for territory controlled by the Kurdish Regional Government, many Iraqi army deserters among them. A seven-year veteran of the Iraqi army who sought refuge in Erbil agreed to talk to VICE News about what happened on the condition that we withhold his identity.

Photos by Brenna Cheyney

I like soccer for the same reason most white straight dudes from America do—to separate my identity from my dad’s. Growing up, soccer was something that children and French people do, a fey joke compared to the poetic brutality of our football. Real football was for Americans, hockey was for Canadians, and soccer was for people who spoke other languages while doing jobs where they used their hands (quite the irony, if you asked closed-minded adolescent me.)

This all changed during the 2006 world cup. Then 19, I was living in a shitty condo across from Universal Studios and looking for any excuse to numb the boredom of life as a host at the Cheesecake Factory. My roommate Jake was from Oregon, where soccer is ok because it’s the only major league sport, and he taught me that the World Cup is perhaps the most wonderful excuse for drinking at hours normally designated for drifters and Willy Loman. That summer, Zinedine Zidane headbutted his way into my heart, and opened me up to the glory of the world’s sport. Soccer truly is the Game of Thrones of sports, in that it takes place all over the world, and I don’t know any of the characters names.

Then came 2010, I was presented with the opportunity to double down my fandom and watch with more of a knowledge of the game. Despite the fact that I actually liked the vuvuzelas, (I mean they honestly gave tension and a Jonny Greenwood-esque nightmarish quality usually reserved for a PT Anderson movie) I just couldn’t connect with that year’s Cup. Despite the fact that our boys made it to round 16, I just wasn’t able to care as much as I did the previous go around. For whatever reason, there weren’t as many people in my life that cared. Blame Obamacare, or even call it a pre-Benghazi warning of Americans abroad, but there wasn’t as big of a deal made from people I regularly interacted with. Before Team USA’s debut on Monday, I truly wondered, did it all matter?

Does it make it worse to root for a country that just doesn’t care?

I tried to think of the reasons why I should get involved. When else can you get drunk at the same time as a billion people? That spirit of togetherness, of being a part of something greater, and drunker than myself, is what spurred me into the world of Cups in the first place. I wanted to see what it was like to witness America’s match at one of my favorite dive bars in a historically white part of town and compare it to the viewing experience of watching Mexico v Brazil in my favorite Mexican bar in town to truly see if caring more mattered. First stop, Team USA at the Drawing Room.

The Drawing Room is a bar after my own tastes, dark as hell, cash only, open as early as legally allowed, and home to both the best jukebox and the best pour in Los Angeles. I got there a half-hour early to ensure I had a seat. At the time I arrived, the room was empty, save for four barflies that looked like they'd been sitting on the same stools since the Carter administration. They seemed like they were actually into soccer though, and not just into rooting against other cultures. One of them piped up to the other, "The whole world really is watching dude!" Score one for America, and the game hasn't even started!

My good friend Cornell accompanied me, and we immediately started making fun of the dumb video intros of the players. Some idiot producer forced the world’s finest athletes to do a 45 degree angle turn while folding their arms, as though they were members of the absolute worst 90s R&B group, (I think the best name we came up with for their stupid band was Boys II Glenn.) We hadn’t even begun to riff on how shitty those intros were when Clint Dempsey scored America’s first goal. Thirty seconds in, and already America had proven to the rest of the world that they were better than Ghana, fucking finally. 

By the time the game was over, there were probably a dozen people in the bar of all backgrounds, jumping up and down, high fiving, hugging, and celebrating. I’d venture to guess that at least half of them weren’t there for the game, but it sucked them in, like it did me all those years ago. Also, Christina the bartender’s healthy pours helped lubricate the revelry. I stepped outside into the harsh sunlight for a smoke. After chanting “USA USA USA!” at a parade of passing fire trucks, I spoke to a patron named Sharif about his experience.

“This was my first time at the Drawing Room. I drove drunk here so I can’t remember when we scored but I knew I was smoking a cigarette, and then it was so exciting that I stuck around. Next thing I knew, AMERICA WON!” We were then interrupted by an old man who wanted to tell me about his experiences.

“I think the international stakes have the most to do with it for me, because it means so much more to every other country in the entire world. We’re the people who take it the least seriously. I mean, Australia’s like 58th or something? They got their asses kicked, and everyone there is watching every moment of that game. And we’re like, ah, we don’t give a fuck, and we’re pretty fucking good! I guess it’d be fun to be around more people, because being around so many people rooting for the same thing is so fun. Jumping around after a goal, arm in arm with strangers, hugging, it’s such a great energy to be around.”

I ended up getting so drunk that afternoon—celebratory shots were raining down on us lucky few who witnessed Team USA’s victory—that I missed the first half of Mexico v Brazil. When I stepped into The Gold Room, my favorite old school Mexican bar in Echo Park, the place was already packed. The Gold Room is a throwback to what I assume Los Angeles was like when people in New York still liked us. $5 shot/beer specials, free tacos, and usually ample room to drink in what people in the 1980s thought a classy spaceport might look like.

That day, however, every available seat was occupied, and there were enough people standing to make a fire marshall blush. I was constantly bumped into, but there was not even a hint of discomfort or rudeness from the throng because, after all, I was there to watch the Super Bowl of the goddamned world. A 0-0 tie was being treated with cautious optimism by the patrons, mostly rooting for Mexico.

I ran into honorary Mayor of Echo Park, Terrence Newman who I found out actually set an alarm to be there on time for the match. We sat through the intensity, replete with chants, shouts, and hair-pulling from the congregation of staunch supporters. I was hit by the realization, noticing the differing ages of the clientele, that some of these people had watched their national team with generations of their family. 

I caught up with Terrence after the scoreless game ended and asked him why he was rooting for Brazil.

“Honest answer? I root for the team with the hottest women, that’s why I almost always root for Brazil. That, and being a novice to soccer, Brazil’s like the gold standard. They’re like the Lakers of international soccer. I have an appreciation for how much they love the sport and how much they respect it.”

I then asked him why he chose The Gold Room.

“As you step into The Gold Room, you step out of America for a second and into a country that really cares about the World Cup—which is not America. Nobody scored, I’ve been here since noon, I’ve been on the edge of my seat the whole time and technically nothing happened. This was the best.”

Terrence really encapsulated my experience. Points are like explosions in action movies. Just because they’re there doesn’t make them worthy of our time. Cringing when your rival gets an opening, exhaling a sigh of relief when your keeper fully extends to defend your goal. Soccer is about the journey, and as long as you take it with others, that journey is the most worthwhile in sports. 

Everybody wants to be a part of something, sure, but who doesn’t love being a part of something first? We actually have a good goddamned team, and we can experience greatness with the extra added benefit of comfort. Get into Team USA while you can still grab a seat and not wait a half hour for a drink. Next World Cup there will be lines around the goddamned corner.

Follow Josh Androsky on Twitter

The disused Royal Mail sorting office where the party was held. Photo by @rossellascalia

On Saturday evening, thousands of people turned up to a party in Croydon, South London. The problem was that the venue for the rave—a disused Royal Mail sorting office—could only accommodate a few hundred, leaving the majority of those pouring out of the train station to either stand around outside, drinking beers and smoking weed, or try to force their way into the party. Before long, the police showed up, tried to control the situation, had “missiles” pelted at them, gave up, and resolved to just stand guard until everyone had cleared off.

The following day it was reported that a number of people had been taken to hospital, either because of illness or injuries. Tragically, one of those taken sick—15-year-old Rio Andrew—passed away on Monday. Police have suggested that his death may have had something to do with drugs.

Another partier to leave the rave in an ambulance was 16-year-old “Josh,” who lost most of his left pinkie halfway through the night. I gave him and his friend "Fraser"—who was with him at the time—a call to find out exactly what happened at the now infamous party.

VICE: So how did you hear about the rave?
Josh: I knew quite a few people going, so I thought it was going to be pretty legit. It was a good night—I’m not going to lie. I enjoyed what I had of it, but it wasn’t really worth the hassle of getting there and stuff.

How many people were there?
Fraser: I reckon about 4,000 turned up, which is a lot compared with other raves I’ve been to. The promoters always have a good turnout, though. We hated the venue—it was over-hyped. The stairs were constantly packed and the drum 'n' bass room was too small.

How was it trying to get into the venue?
Fraser: Well, everyone found out about the venue and got a train there, and the station is really close to the post office. This was at about 10:30 or 11 PM, and that’s when the crowds gathered and the police came.

The photo that Josh uploaded to Instagram from his hospital bed

What was the crowd like?
Fraser: Some of them were throwing missiles at the police, and me and my friends didn’t want to get hit so we started walking backward away from it. That’s when we saw people in the rave shouting, "Go around the side!" When we got there, there were people climbing over the fence trying to get in and kicking down the wooden fences. Luckily we got in through a side door. Police were everywhere, to be honest, and they were quite violent at times—I saw one raver being jumped on and kneed in the chest when he was detained.

But they let the party carry on for a bit, right?
Fraser: Yeah, but that was after a solid half hour to an hour of trying to stop people from getting into the rave. Then they realized that if they did hold everyone for any longer, it could turn into a riot. They stayed outside the building for the whole night to make sure there was no trouble.

Josh: No one had any bad intentions; they just wanted to get into the rave. The police don’t understand the mentality—we just want to get inside, hear the music, have our night, and go home.

So what happened with your finger, Josh?
Josh: Well, at about 1 AM we were up in the house room, but I don’t really like house, so I was waiting for the drum 'n' bass to kick in. As soon as I heard it, me and my mate went down there. Five minutes in, the fire alarm starting going off, and everyone was like, "Rip it off! Rip it off!" So I thought I’d give it a go. I was completely sober at the time. I jumped up, grabbed it, and my little finger got caught in the case because it was all broken, and as I came to rip it back down, my little finger got ripped off completely.

Josh's destroyed little finger.

Jesus. What did you do next?
Josh: I looked at my hand, and my little finger was gone—the bone was sticking out. It’s the weirdest feeling; one second you’re fine and your little finger is there, and the next second it’s gone. It shoves reality up your backside. I was in so much pain and shock that the first thing that hit my head was the beat and the bass. The bass was hard, so I just ripped off my top, wrapped it around my finger and tied it up as tight as I could and skanked it out for half an hour. My mentality was, I’ve only been here for an hour, I’ve paid £10 [$17] for this night, I’ve lost my little finger—am I seriously going to go? Nah, I’m going to skank until I can’t skank anymore. After that, my mate dragged me down to the paramedics.

What did they say?
Josh: I said to him, "Is there any chance you can bandage it up, and I can just rave on?" He was like, "Nah, you’re going to hospital, mate." There was also a chance of septicemia [sepsis] because of the dirt, so he got some medical acid, poured it right onto the finger, and all the flesh around it melted right in front of my eyes. That was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life.

I can't believe you carried on dancing in the first place.
Josh: Well, what can you do? There are fit girls around you, the bass is hard, the music is popping. I didn’t want to be the sore thumb sticking out—or the sore pinkie—so I was like, "Fuck it; let's skank on and enjoy it."

A photo Fraser took of the crowd assembled outside

And what happened to your severed finger?
Josh: It pinged off into the crowd. I got told later that a bunch of stoners found my little finger and were playing catch with it.

What happens now?
Josh: Basically, it’s just gone, innit. I’ve just got a little stump left. What can I do? The person in the ambulance asked me, "What are you going to do, mate?" I was just like, "Shit happens." It’s nothing, really—I’ve lost one little finger, while a 15-year-old boy has lost his life. What am I complaining about? My heart goes out to his friends and family. It’s heartbreaking.

Yeah, that was tragic news. So has everything that happened that night put you off raving in the future?
Josh: No. The next rave is in July—you’ll see me there. Raving isn’t a dangerous thing. Obviously accidents do happen, but there are people around you 24/7 who are willing to help. It’s a calm environment; everyone’s just there to enjoy themselves.

Follow Chem Squier on Twitter.

Image via Martha of the North.
While most Canadians think of tuberculosis (TB) as a disease of the past or something that people in the 1950s dealt with and solved, for some of our country’s population it remains a very real danger today. The disease, which kills about 1.8 million people worldwide every year, is pretty much non-existent among non-aboriginal Canadians. For Inuit, however, the rate of incidence is almost 200 times greater—and it’s getting worse.

“Tuberculosis is a serious disease that usually attacks the lungs, but can also affect other parts of the body, including the brain, lymph nodes, and bones,” Judith Gadbois-St-Cyr, a media relations officer with Health Canada, said in an email. The disease develops after someone contracts TB bacteria from an infected person. TB “is second only to HIV-AIDS as the greatest killer worldwide due to a single infectious agent,” according to a World Health Organization (WHO) fact sheet.

WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Report 2013 found that rates of TB are the lowest in high-income countries. Canada was one of the first examples of this type of country listed. Overall, Canada consistently has a TB rate of fewer than 10 people per 100,000. Among Inuit populations though, this rate is as high as 195 per 100,000. That’s even higher than the global average, 122, and comparable to rates in Afghanistan, India, and Bangladesh. It’s a bit better than Democratic Republic of the Congo’s rate.

Worldwide, TB rates are declining. But since 2003, TB rates among Inuit have been steadily climbing.

Terry Audla, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), a national Inuit advocacy organization, and a man who has dormant TB himself, attributed this to many factors, first and foremost overcrowding. “The transmittal of the disease is that much easier in cramped homes,” he said.

Inuit, more than any other group of Canadians, are most likely to live in over-crowded homes—despite the fact that, collectively, they are the largest private landowners on the planet. (Inuit land claims cover a whopping 40 percent of Canada’s landmass, according to the federal government’s Inuit Relations Secretariat.) And yet, “as a result of an ongoing housing crisis… Inuit are nearly eight times more likely than non-Aboriginal Canadians to live in crowded (more than one person per room) homes,” according to a strategy ITK released on TB among Inuit last year. The strategy also said that 3,300 homes are needed to deal with the immediate housing need in the most populous Inuit region, Nunavut.

This is partly because of the rapid pace at which Inuit families transitioned from semi-nomadic living to settling in permanent homes and cities. Just a generation ago, most Inuit families lived off the land, moving around based on animal migration patterns, said Audla. This, along with the effect of forced relocation programs, has created an ideal climate for TB to spread. The WHO says that TB rates are directly tied to an area’s wealth, resources, and power, and the social and economic conditions people are born into. The rapid “modernization” of Inuit society has resulted in massive problems of malnutrition, food insecurity, poor access to health care, and mental health and addiction issues, on top of the completely lacklustre housing situation.

Once someone has TB bacteria, they are more likely to develop TB disease if they don’t have regular access to nutritious foods. Malnutrition is one of the other major factors contributing to Inuit’s disproportionate TB rates, the ITK strategy says. Both traditional and so-called “market” foods are out of reach for many Inuit families. Climate change is melting the ice used to travel for hunting and killing off the hunted species themselves.  And a weekly basket of food that costs $224 in Ottawa costs $382 in Iqaluit, $422 in Resolute, and $457 in Coral Harbour. Couple that with the fact that the average Inuit salary is $10,000 less than the Canadian average and you get this bleak reality: for many Inuit families, a year’s worth of groceries costs almost an entire year’s salary.

That kind of economic divide is nothing short of a crisis.

It’s likely that TB has killed more Inuit than all the other diseases white people brought to Canada combined, according to the ITK strategy. When TB became a mass epidemic in the 1930s and decades following, Canadian Inuit had the highest TB rates in the world. “Formal requests and proposals for the construction of health-care facilities that specialized in TB care (TB sanatoriums) at various locations throughout the Arctic followed, although none were ever built,” the report says.

Instead, the government shipped a seventh of the Inuit population south for treatment, keeping no records of who came from where or what happened to them. Relatives are still searching for answers about what happened to their loved ones to this day. All of these factors have made it hard for Inuit to trust the health-care system, which in turn makes it even harder for those infected with TB to get the treatment they need, Audla said.

An action plan to tackle TB is in the works, he said. The strategy released last year provided the research necessary to move forward. “Renewed and enduring political, financial, and community commitment will be critical” to fix the problem, the report said. “Expanding partnerships, reducing tobacco addiction, and incorporating new and evolving tools for TB detection, treatment, and prevention might also be part of the solution. The path forward is clear.”

Audla said TB was recognized as a federal priority in Inuit health two years ago, but he “wouldn’t say we have the necessary funding.”

In her email to VICE, Gadbois-St-Cyr said, “the Government of Canada recognizes that Aboriginal communities are disproportionately affected by tuberculosis. We are committed to working with our provincial and territorial health partners, and with Aboriginal communities to address this problem.”

For his part, Audla is optimistic that change can happen. “All we’re trying to do is get at par with other Canadians,” he said. “We have nowhere to go but up. You need to have a good attitude to make progress.”

@waitwhichemma

["Methadone] used to hold me for up to 72 hours. Now I feel sick by midnight." Photo by Garth Mullins.
Laura Shaver shows me two fresh track marks on her arm. She’s using heroin again, after years on the methadone program. When I ask her what happened, she looks down. The words catch in her throat.    

In February, Shaver and the rest of BC’s 15,000 methadone patients were switched to a new formulation of the medication, called Methadose, used to treat opiate addiction.

Dr. Christy Sutherland, co-medical director of the Portland Hotel Society in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, tells me that since the switch, most of her methadone patients are feeling withdrawal symptoms—the same effects that Shaver is self-medicating with heroin.    

Regulators made the move to Methadose to standardize and cut down on diversion of the medication.

“The thing is with down (heroin), I was done,” Shaver said. “I didn’t have relapses.” But four to six days after being switched to Methadose, she began using again.

Many patients are saying that Methadose doesn’t hold them until their next dose, and it’s causing them to experience withdrawal symptoms—something methadone maintenance treatment is supposed to put a stop to. Some, like Shaver, are even turning back to heroin to make up the shortfall.

Opiate Agonists

Shaver, the vice-president of the BC Association of People on Methadone (BCAPOM), tells me about Methadose. “It doesn’t have legs,” she says. “On the old methadone, I didn’t wake up in the morning sick. I didn’t go to bed sick. I was fine. I drank my juice [methadone]—there you go.”

By 7 AM each morning, Shaver is in the beginning of opiate withdrawal.

It starts with restlessness, the sweats, anxiety, and nausea, but can quickly move on to vomiting, diarrhea, muscle spasms, bone pain, increased blood pressure, faster heart rate, depression, and even suicide. The daily ingestion of methadone is supposed to prevent all this and end the cycle of opiate highs and lows. But for many, Methadose is not lasting the full 24 hours. Withdrawal symptoms return before the next dose and patients become vulnerable to relapse.

And regular life becomes impossible. 

“I’m not being able to fulfill my position or my mandate [at BCAPOM] the way I know I should.” Shaver said. “My medication shouldn’t be a fucking hustle. I don’t want to hustle anymore.”

Charlie Boyle, BCAPOM’s treasurer, tells me, “Methadone used to hold me for up to 72 hours. Now I feel sick by midnight.”

Methadone, Wine & Cheese

In February, the executive of BCAPOM went to raise concerns with officials in charge of the methadone program. I rode along. 

We sat around a boardroom table in the offices of the College of Pharmacists of BC. Coffee and sandwiches were offered. So was a large bottle of Methadose. The various professionals poured samples, sipping, like a wine tasting.

I was incredulous.

But they explained it was “inert”—no active medication. It was just to let the professionals find out what it tasted like: gasoline.

The representatives from BCAPOM explained that many were finding that Methadose was not lasting as long. Initially there was skepticism. But doctors in the trenches, like Sutherland, are seeing a real problem.

Another addictions doctor I spoke to on the condition of anonymity said that 25 percent of her long-term, formerly stable patients are now reporting the same thing: withdrawal symptoms after being switched. These are patients that had been stable and off street drugs for years, she said. The doctor has started raising patients’ dosages to try to compensate, but BCAPOM’s members report that all doctors are not so quick to believe their patients.  

Methadone Machinations

College of Pharmacists of BC knows something’s going on. Their spokesperson Mykle Ludvigsen told me in an email: “I do believe that when patients perceive a change on a fairly wide basis we have an obligation to look into it, and we have (and continue to do so).”

Additionally, BC's Ministry of Health said that it is aware of only "a very small number of reports of some patients having a ‘wearing off’ effect of Methadose."  

The problem is, however, that methadone patients are a highly stigmatized group that are unlikely to report concerns to the government. The number of reports may not be a good metric.

Mallinckrotd Pharmaceuticals (the manufacturer of Methadose) wrote in an emailed statement that the problem isn’t with its product: “opiate withdrawal in the context of patients switching between oral formulations of methadone has been studied. The observed patient intolerance to switching formulations appears not to have a pharmacodynamic basis." 

There doesn’t appear to be a consensus amongst authorities. Regardless, some patients are feeling the pain.

Dose Disconnect

Nathan Crompton is all too aware of the disconnect between patients and officialdom. Crompton is a community organizer and volunteer coordinator at Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU).

“It all could have been avoided if patients were part of the decision [to switch to Methadose]. BCAPOM explicitly asked to be part of a [Methadose] trial to make sure it would be ok, and their request was turned down.”   

If Methadose isn’t holding people, Ludvigsen suggests that patients should “consider raising that issue with their physician.”

But not all doctors are accommodating of patients’ concerns and some dismiss their claims about withdrawal symptoms.

Patients Losing Patience

Jeff Louden is getting sick after being switched to Methadose. He’s been on methadone for nine years, but his doctor won’t adjust his dose.

“The new juice is garbage,” he says. “It comes on hard and fast, then dies quick.”

Louden, a nine-year veteran of the methadone program, goes to the pharmacy to take his Methadose at around 10 AM every day. But he’s starting to feel the effects of opiate withdrawal in the middle of the night. At 3 AM, the morning of the day we spoke, he was awake, sweating with “the spider [of withdrawal] crawling up and down my spine.”

“Without methadone,” Louden says, “I’d be back to robbing banks.” But now, to avoid getting sick, Louden is topping up his doses with heroin, which he has long struggled to stay away from. “I don’t wanna be a pin cushion,” he says.  

Louden has a message for authorities: “I don’t take this stuff for fun, I don’t take it to get high,” he says.

“Just give me the old stuff back.”

@garthmullins

@lisa_hale

Johnny Edgecombe and his wife Ulla Vibeke Filtenborg on their wedding day at Lewisham Town Hall on February 8, 1970. 

Johnny Edgecombe, known to his friends as “the Edge,” was one of the hippest of my early jazz scene acquaintances, and someone who achieved lasting notoriety through a moment of madness. Two weeks before Christmas in 1962 he got out of a taxi in a smart west London mews, confused and angry and carrying a gun. Christine Keeler, his lover, had disappeared, leaving him upset and bewildered, and her dismissive response when he found her only made matters worse. His reaction was to fire five bullets into her door. Those shots would ricochet around the corridors of British politics and diplomacy, and into the echelons of privilege. They led to the resignation of a cabinet minister in the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan, and left the reputations of Keeler and Edgecombe in tatters. Tongues wagged as the scandal escalated, mixing espionage with sexual transgression and leading to the trial of Stephen Ward, Keeler’s landlord, on a trumped-up charge of living off her immoral earnings. The suicide of Ward, society osteopath and friend of the famous, was the final nail in the government’s coffin.

This saga was the inspiration for a recent West End musical that exonerated Ward to some extent—Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Stephen Ward, a flop that lasted four months—but the man who pulled the trigger and kicked off the whole affair was no longer around to provide a corrective. Because he was black in a period of increasing hostility towards Afro-Caribbeans, Johnny Edgecombe was treated as a mere walk-on part in the drama and was thus dispensible. In what became known as the Profumo Affair (after John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War and another of Keeler’s lovers), Edgecombe remained a fringe figure, little known and misunderstood. The historical centrality of Profumo ensured that Edgecombe would be periodically "discovered," but he was ambivalent about such attention, and did not always help his own cause when the opportunity for clarification arose. He spoke up for the black man whenever he was interviewed, but he tended to put his foot in it, too. Those who knew Johnny Edgecombe always believed he deserved a lot better.

My own connection with the Edge went back at least two years before the shooting. I can’t remember exactly how we met, but I do recall an afternoon we stood together at the top of the steps leading down to Ronnie Scott’s Gerrard Street basement, and I asked him what he did for a living. I may have been working for a Jamaican magazine at the time, or knocking out prints in a Soho darkroom. Either way, I knew Johnny for more than a year before he met Keeler. And in all that time I never found him to be anything other than pleasant, amusing, and cool. Furthermore, he had the most beautiful laughing eyes, with long curling lashes to die for.

Johnny’s response to my question had puzzled me at first. “I drive Tubbs, don’t I?” he said, but I had no idea what he meant. “Tubs” I believed to be swing-era American slang for the drums, so I suppose I imagined he was a drummer. It didn’t take me long to disentangle that one, however, and to realize that the man meant just what he said: Johnny was a dedicated jazzer with a set of wheels and saxophonist Tubby Hayes was one of his clients. Long before the term emerged in New York, associated with the movement to bring jazz out into the streets, Johnny called his car “the Jazzmobile.” And as self-appointed chauffeur to jazz stars such as Hayes and Ronnie Scott, he was available for gigs out of town.

His first passenger was a trumpeter from Jamaica named Dizzy Reece. Aged just 18 when he left Kingston on board the Empire Windrush in 1948, Reece became an accomplished jazz player in Britain and Johnny’s good friend. Whenever he had a job in, say, Manchester, the trumpeter would get his train fare on top of his fee and share this with Johnny, covering the cost of gas. No money was ever made from this arrangement, but it enabled Johnny to go along for the gig, and, through Reece, to meet visiting Americans.

Within a few years, Quincy Jones and trumpeter Donald Byrd would become among the biggest names in jazz, and when in London they both rode blissfully around in the Jazzmobile with Johnny at the wheel, regaling them with his tall tales from life on the frontline. Major Holley was another interesting customer, a black man from Detroit and sometime London sojourner who played double bass on some of Tommy Steele’s early rock ’n’ roll records. Jazz greats Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie, and black Eastender Kenny Lynch, an aspiring jazz singer at the time, all used Johnny’s services, and eventually he graduated to an estate car, enabling him to carry more instruments—good news when he had Phil Seamen on board, that most talented (and erratic) of British drummers.

The newlyweds signing the registry at Lewisham Town Hall.

Unlike the majority of settlers of the Windrush Generation, Johnny was what West Indians call a “small islander,” born in Antigua. Poverty, he told me, drove him to sea and led him to live by his wits on land. In the early 1950s he settled in west London’s Ladbroke Grove district and ran a shebeen in a dilapidated Rachman property, one of the first of the popular unlicensed black “drinkers” of the period. Like many a hustler back then, his establishment featured gambling, but he had other ventures to suit the occasion. He sold dope on the jazz scene, where he was known as “Johnny Shit,” and was a well-known face at the clubs where organist Georgie Fame played his heart out to an audience of Afro-Caribbeans and white mods that was augmented by black American GIs on weekends.

Fame’s Blue Flames played Carnaby Street’s Roaring Twenties and at the Flamingo’s all-nighters in Wardour Street, and it was at these two venues that Johnny found his best customers. The GIs were his favorites: eager young servicemen arriving in town looking for smoke, music, and women. They were a good source of income for a fast-moving Caribbean entrepreneur like Johnny—although, as I was to discover, his other hustles counted for nothing if jazz was involved. Johnny would drop everything in a minute for a chance to go on the road and hang out with “the cats,” even if he ended up with only a fiver in his pocket. As he remarked in Black Scandal, his 2002 autobiography, he loved getting high, but his love for jazz was the driving force of his life.

Because I never used his services, I knew little about Johnny’s day-to-day life until much later, but whenever our paths crossed at one of the clubs, he’d stop and smile and pass the time of day. We never spent any time in a one-on-one situation but he knew I was writing and taking photographs of musicians and seemed to approve of my progress. And then he disappeared.

Around the same time, I met a group of new friends who lived in west London and moved in vaguely arty, experimental circles. They came from Guyana, England, France, and Jamaica and they took me to an Earls Court pub called the Coleherne, where Trinidadian pianist Russ Henderson led a jam session at lunchtime on Sundays. With this new crowd I went to blues parties, ate curried goat, and drank rum, including the popular Appleton Special, Jamaica’s gift to the world. I discovered sexual freedom, too, and found myself on the fringes of the gay and lesbian world.

In 1963, as the scandal broke and Profumo was forced to resign, the connection between the minister and Keeler’s friend Stephen Ward was exposed. This was the signal for some of the crowd to reveal their own connections with people on the edge of that world. More stories and scandals emerged, but at the same time, I knew members of this crowd as serious thinkers, concerned with Pan-Africanist ideas and racial justice. Many independent nations were emerging in Africa and I discovered that my friends had known political figures such as Tom Mboya, a popular and energetic young minister in the new Kenyan government. Around the same time, Malcolm X came to London and some of the crowd went to hear him speak and were granted an interview. Although such involvement was far from being mainstream, it seemed to me that an understanding of liberation politics was developing in the popular consciousness, while as for music, literature, art and theater, west London was nothing if not cool.

Across society, everyone was fascinated by what they saw as the “other”—whatever that might be—and I was no exception. At the same time, jazz was as all-consuming for me as it had been for Johnny. I interviewed and photographed visiting musicians and some locals, and did stories for a new black magazine called Flamingo, including an assignment that took me to West Africa.

On my return to England the connections continued. I still went to Caribbean parties where I ate rice ’n’ peas and danced to bluebeat and ska, and when I wasn't listening to music or writing about it, I got jobs taking photographs at African student dances and weddings where I danced to highlife and ate Jollof rice pungent with pepper and oil. I still went to the Coleherne, the Troubadour, Africa Unity House, and other London haunts, at the same time becoming more entrenched in the jazz world and working as a writer and photographer. I knew musicians from every jazz era and visited New York three times in the 1960s, where I met Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, and Cecil Taylor, leading avant-garde figures.

Johnny Edgecombe never entered my mind until one day at the end of that decade when I realized that the subdued-looking figure dressed in a US army jacket and standing in the corner at Ronnie’s was the jazz-loving Jazzmobile chauffeur I used to know. I greeted him warmly and expressed surprise that it had been so long. He looked at me, hard. There was a smile, but this time the eyes weren’t involved—even his eyelashes had lost their sheen. “Well, I’ve been away, haven’t I?” was all he said.

Early in 1970 he rang me out of the blue and asked me if I would take his wedding photographs. He was calling himself Johnny Edge by now, but in the meantime, of course, the penny had dropped. At the time of the Profumo business, I’d been so unworldly that I’d failed to put two and two together to recognize Johnny’s role in the affair. Being close to Keeler, he knew of her connection to Profumo and was aware of her friendship with the Soviet naval attaché Yevgeny Ivanov, an explosive combination under the circumstances. Under pressure from other elements in her life, Keeler went into hiding at Stephen Ward’s Wimpole Street flat, which was where Johnny went looking for her—and where we came in.

When she refused him admittance, and threw money at him to get him to go away, he fired at her front door lock in frustration. During his subsequent trial, initially for attempted murder, and those of Keeler (for perjury) and Ward (for immoral earnings), the names of Keeler’s West Indian acquaintances were bandied about in the press. Aloysius “Lucky” Gordon was another of her lovers, a Jamaican I’d met one night when a couple of friends offered me a lift home from the Flamingo. Upon accepting, I’d found Gordon at the wheel. He was so well known through his dramatic outbursts outside the court, when his picture was splashed in the newspapers, that I knew I had to be wary. I survived by inventing a vigilant father awaiting my return, and that was that. But I’d never associated Johnny with any of this when I had known him. And here he was, I realized, back in town after having served part of a seven-year prison term—for shooting at a door. The punishment was generally agreed to have been imposed to make an example: The crime was officially possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life. How naive I’d been! Johnny had been released in 1967 and went through a self-confessedly maverick period before I saw him again.

And so it came to pass that John Arthur Alexander Edgecombe, 37, and 18-year-old Ulla Vibeke Filtenborg, a Danish artist, turned up at Lewisham Town Hall on February 8, 1970, to tie the knot, with yours truly present to record the event on film. It was winter but the weather was passable, and Johnny wore an open-neck shirt under his dark suit, with Vibeke in a poncho and cream-colored wedding dress she had crocheted herself. Registers were signed and confetti thrown, then it was all back to Johnny’s pad in Blackheath for the reception. Vibeke’s father, a dentist, her mother, and other relatives had come over from Denmark for the occasion and there was a definite Scandinavian touch to the setting. I remember wall hangings, rose petals, incense and potpourri, all combining to create a warm and intimate atmosphere. Johnny Scott, a top session player and the most respected flautist in British jazz at the time, came to join the celebrations, then other musicians arrived. There was champagne by the crate and plenty of food, with a "secret" trail leading to an upstairs room where people could go to turn on. According to Johnny's autobiography, things got a little hairy later on in the evening and he had difficulty in keeping the two groups apart, in particular in making sure that Vibeke’s parents did not get into the upstairs lair.

Afterward, Johnny emerged from the shadows to carve out a presence on the jazz scene as a promoter. He got financial backing to help organize Edges in Rotherhithe and sessions at a Catford pub where he featured leading musicians such as Bobby Wellins, pianist Stan Tracey, and the free-thinking drummer John Stevens. The army jacket became a kind of uniform and soon the old spring was back in his step. He acquired an attractive sports car that he enjoyed driving around town, but though he enjoyed a bit of style, he really wasn’t a man you would describe as flashy. He remained the devoted jazz lover who’d never looked back since discovering the music of the great Charlie Parker, and was still the generous person he’d always been. For example, when Wellins was stuck for transport one night, Johnny lent him the car. Wellins enjoyed driving it, and was a little tardy in arranging its return. He remembered the plaintive phone call: “Can I have my car back for a while?”

It was in the same period that Johnny became a well known face in the local pubs. Jazz enthusiast Matthew Wright, who knew him by sight in his student days, got to know Johnny after getting a job at Chris Wellard’s record shop in Lewisham Way, where the Antiguan was a customer. Wellard’s was a specialized jazz outlet where musicians such as Manfred Mann and Tom McGuinness came looking for vinyl, along with actor Deryck Guyler, a veteran jazz fan, and Goldsmiths student Malcolm McLaren. Johnny was often in the company of his good friend Paul Rutherford, a committed Marxist who played trombone with John Stevens and in other avant-garde bands. Wright saw how Johnny’s notoriety still prejudiced some people against him, but he has only positive memories of the man.

“He was always very affable and very funny and always pleased to see people,” Wright told me. Chris Wellard was invited to Johnny’s comfortable home in Kidbrooke Park on several occasions. He recalled the Edge with fondness, while admitting to having been slightly intimidated by his vitality, saying, “He was such an indescribably energetic man with so many ideas. These all seemed a bit mad at the time but, you know, they really made sense later on.”

Johnny monitoring the door to “the upstairs lair”, at his wedding reception at his home in Blackheath.

When I spoke to Bobby Wellins recently, the saxophonist confirmed what I’d always felt about Johnny: that he was a victim of circumstance and basically decent. “Johnny was not a hard man, not one of your villains. He was a nice person,” he said. Wellins, who met Edgecombe through Stan Tracey, suggested that he’d been made a sort of fall guy for the establishment during the Profumo Affair and its aftermath. He is not alone in holding this view, and indeed, the initial charge of attempted murder and the sentence Johnny received were widely agreed to be extreme. As Wellins sees it, “He wouldn’t hurt anybody. They tried to divert attention from what else was going on, but it didn’t pay. He took the brunt of it.”

For Johnny, the story had a deeper dimension. Time, racist attitudes, and the values of the popular press have reduced every relationship in it to pure carnality, but there is little doubt that he was in love with this woman who had so many men in thrall. Wellins remembers him in tears at the Downbeat in Old Compton Street, trying to fathom Keeler’s skittish behavior.

In the early 1990s, I went to see Johnny to tape some of his memories. He told me he was born on October 22, 1932, the last of eight children of a seafaring father who owned a two-masted schooner and had a woman in every port. He told me about traveling to Britain, living in Cardiff, and how Lucky Gordon was briefly the cook at his shebeen in Ladbroke Grove. He expressed a view of sexual relationships that stuck in my mind as a poignant example of the corruscating lack of self-belief that for some in the past was so damaging to notions of self and, thus, the potential for racial advancement. It was his conviction, he said, that a black man like himself, with no education and living in a white man’s country, could never expect to get any woman except a prostitute or someone who was close to being one.

A year or so after our interview, Johnny set up his Edge Music Organization (EMO). He secured funding to stage a jazz dance competition at the Jazz Café in Camden, taking advantage of a revival of interest in jazz and jazz dance that centered around a new generation of black British jazz players, and was spearheaded by the Jazz Warriors and organizations such as Abibi Arts. He asked me to join the judging panel but when I protested a lack of qualifications, he cajoled: “Help me out, baby, I need a woman with a name on this.” I agreed, somewhat grumpily, and arrived at the Jazz Café to find a bemused Bobby Wellins as a fellow panelist. Two black women were among the others, one a professional dancer. We did our best, faced with a lineup of competitors who threw themselves energetically around the stage, showing off their moves while remaining oblivious to the music. Jazz dance had suddenly become all the rage but, plainly, listening to jazz had not. Eventually, the person who got our vote was a scruffy guy wearing a T-shirt and hat, with a red-and-white cotton scarf around his neck. We chose him over the more stylish contestants, who watched themselves in the mirrors as they danced. I convinced the other judges that in spite of all the glamor, our man was the only contestant doing what it said on the tin. It was a moment straight out of the film 12 Angry Men and, I have to admit, immensely satisfying. Afterward I found Johnny outside, having a smoke and looking miserable. He thanked me for coming but the eyes said it all: The gig money was in his pocket but he was much too hip to get into something like this again.

Edges only lasted a couple of years but Johnny used the experience as a springboard for his promoting career. He continued to book jazz artists in southeast London and put on live events under the EMO banner at Greenwich and other theaters such as the Albany in Deptford. He provided work for up-and-coming musicians and the well established ones such as Stan Tracey, and stayed loyal to those he admired. When Paul Rutherford died in 2007, he attended his old friend’s funeral at Hither Green.

Johnny had already started working on his autobiography when we sat down to talk for the record. He showed me a draft of an early chapter, something that was undoubtedly his own work, and I was intrigued. Whether he typed this himself or dictated it, I don’t know, but what I read had the ring of authenticity, especially his recollections of arriving in London. Over the years, however, other hands worked on his original account. The result was Black Scandal, published 12 years ago in a cheap pulp edition and stylistically inconsistent. In one of several phone conversations following our interview, he’d asked for my help with the book but pressures of work forced me to decline. Now I wish I’d been able to help him by doing some work at least on the manuscript because so much of the detail of his story is missing. It’s a cheerful read, though, despite everything, and worth having been done.

My other regret is that we lost touch towards the end of his life. I did try to find him once or twice, but was unwell myself at the time and lacked the energy to persevere. Only later did I find out he’d been diagnosed with lung cancer in early 2010. He was in hospital in August of that year when a group of friends and family organized an early birthday party for him, complete with live jazz and plenty of Guinness. He left his hospital bed to attend, vowing, “I want to get high till I die.” He left the planet on September 26. I’d like to have been there for his send-off. I hope there were rose petals along with the spliffs.

With thanks to Johnny Edgecombe, Roland Miller, Mark Olden, Chris Wellard, Bobby Wellins, and Matthew Wright.

I visited Art Basel in Hong Kong a few weeks ago, and the number of tourists photographing the pieces of art overwhelmed me. Sharing images on social media is a phenomenon we’ve all grown used to by now, but in Hong Kong, it seemed that art was only looked at through the lens of a camera.

This series of images shot with an 1980s analogue Canon A1 is my own attempt at making a picture-within-a-picture-within-a-picture. I also hope it helps me get over that whole experience a little.

See the rest of the series and more of Carsten's work here.

RVCA dress, Topshop shoes, vintage earrings; Nasty Gal top and shorts, RVCA hat, Lucy Folk rings, Dannijo ring; Nasty Gal top, RVCA hat, Lizzie Mandler earrings.

PHOTOS BY SEAN SULLIVAN
CREATIVE DIRECTION AND STYLING: ANNETTE LAMOTHE-RAMOS

Fashion Coordinator: Miyako Bellizzi
Photo Assistant: Jordan Watts
Models: Bianca Alatorre, Chelsea Schuchman at Photogenics, Ingrid Sophie Schram, Lauren Young at Vision, Z Berg
Special thanks to Root Studios and JD

For Love & Lemons top, Dannijo ring; RVCA dress, Lucy Folk rings, Dannijo ring; For Love & Lemons top and skirt, vintage bag, sunglasses, and boots, Dannijo bracelet and ring; RVCA dress, vintage earrings, Dannijo ring

Vintage top, J.Crew purse, Topshop earrings; Apiece Apart dress, American Apparel shoes, J.Crew clutch; Apiece Apart dress, Aesa earrings.

Tia Cibani top, vintage sunglasses and ring; Tia Cibani top and skirt, vintage sunglasses and ring, Chic Peek earrings

Têca / Helô Rocha skirt; For Love & Lemons bra, underwear, and garter skirt

Jill Stuart bottoms; For Love & Lemons jumpsuit, vintage belt, Chic Peek bracelet; For Love & Lemons garter skirt, American Apparel knee-highs; Nasty Gal bra, Betsey Johnson pants, Steven Alan belt, Maria Black necklace

Kristinit dress, Maria Black necklace; vintage dress and ring.

Kristinit dress, Maria Black necklace; Kristinit dress; Kristinit dress, Maria Black necklace, Lizzie Mandler ring

American Apparel top and skirt, vintage bracelets; In My Air top, Schott jacket, RVCA jeans, vintage necklace and bracelets; vintage top and ring, American Apparel skirt; In My Air top, vintage necklace.

RVCA bra, vintage bracelet; (on her) American Apparel top, vintage bracelets, (on him) vintage shirt; (on him) vintage shirt, (on her) vintage ring

The conflict in eastern Ukraine has not yet entered into all-out war, but the situation is becoming more fraught every day. Despite Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's call for a ceasefire, shelling has persisted in the rebel stronghold of Sloviansk. VICE News visited a section of Sloviansk that was recently struck by an attack and spoke with the residents about the chaos of the attack and its aftermath. They also visited a local hospital and spoke with medical workers who have stayed behind to treat the increasing number of wounded.

Caught up in the standoff and facing gas and water shortages, residents across eastern Ukraine have been fleeing for safety. According to Kiev, some 120,000 people have been internally displaced from the region and are currently seeking refuge in Russia and elsewhere across the country as the area's humanitarian crisis worsens.

Is Toronto ready to dump its Ford for a Benz? Photo via Brazzers (link NSFW).
The 2014 Toronto mayoral election has attracted enough oddball candidates that it’s making the 2003 California Gubernatorial recall election look like the pinnacle of democratic integrity (that’s the one where Arnold Schwarzenegger beat out Larry Flint and Gary Coleman). In case you’re not familiar with the current crop of candidates looking to take Rob Ford’s seat, the options include a white supremacist, a dude who almost made marijuana legal in Canada, the conveniently named Al Gore, one of the geniuses who wrote the classic Toronto anthem “Spadina Bus," and a dread-headed hippie who uncomfortably misappropriates Rastafarian culture.

Toronto’s crowded field of unlikely candidates got a lot more erotic after adult film actress, Nikki Benz, announced her candidacy last month. Benz is a Torontonian through and through. She grew up in Etobicoke—the home of current mayor Rob Ford—and attended Bishop Allen Academy high school, before jettisoning to Los Angeles in 2004 to seek a fame and fortune putting Ps in her V on camera. Her films like Anal Dream Team and Meet the Fuckers 6 have made her a commercial and critical favourite in the world o’ porn, resulting in a seven Adult Video News award nominations.

Nikki sent the press into a tizzy a few weeks ago when she introduced her Brazzers-backed candidacy with the deliriously clever “Trade In Your Ford for a Benz” campaign slogan, but then ran into some trouble when the driver’s license she was using to register was expired and the city prevented her from registering her official candidacy. She says she’s in the process of resolving the issue now.

Anyway, I called Nikki to talk to her about how her professional career prepared her for the role of mayor, whether or not this is a craven publicity stunt, and why she thinks Rob Ford is a great mayor.

VICE: What kind of changes would you bring to Toronto if you were mayor?
Nikki Benz: There are three things I would do or try. First, one of the biggest issues that Toronto has—and I know this because I experienced it last week—the horrible traffic. I want to say it’s just as bad as LA. So one of the things that I would do is work on a new plan to resolve the traffic and expand the subway system and raise funds for the relief line.

Another thing I want to do is bring the adult industry to Toronto. I realize that this is a point where a lot of people tune me out because they think it’s the worst thing possible for the city, while some others are all for it. The only adult industry that exists in Canada right now is Montreal and they’re not that big—so I feel that if I brought the industry to Toronto, it would create jobs for people and it would bring revenue for the city. We could use that money for the subway relief line.  

Then another thing I would probably do is lower property taxes and make it more appealing for younger people, like myself, to buy property.

Has there been anything in your professional experience that you think qualifies you for the role?
I’ve been running Nikki Benz Inc. since 2005. It’s a small corporation, I produce content, and I know how to manage finances. I know how to run a business because I am a business owner. Having a business background is good for the city if I were to become mayor.

Also, my job already involves a lot of public speaking—I make a lot of appearances whether it be conventions or trade shows—and I’m good at it. I also feel that I am charismatic. And I am—this is not a sexual innuendo, but it’s going to sound like it—but I’m really able to handle a big workload. By that I mean I am really busy every day and I’m able to divide my time between the different projects that I do. I’m good at having a business. I’m good at money management. So everything that I’ve learned from the adult business, I can apply to government. I understand their concern about my lack of political experience, but I’m not going to be running the city alone. I’m going to get a lot of help. But I’m definitely good at knowing what needs to be done.

Also, as an adult star, pretty much everything that you or someone else needs or would want to know about me, you can go online and find out. There’s never going to be a scandal with me. I get naked for a living. Everything you need to know about me is already out there.



Nikki outside of Toronto's city hall. Photo via Nikki Benz.
What do you say to people that say this is nothing more than a publicity stunt?
Here’s the thing: of course I’ve gotten a lot of publicity out of this and I will say this and I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Every politician, including Rob Ford, runs first for publicity, and politics second because we have to get noticed and recognized for the things that we stand for or believe in. And once the people actually pay attention to you, then it’s time to get serious.

What do you think of Rob Ford?
I really hope that his rehab stint turns out to be useful. I do want to say that I think he’s done good for the city. However, he does have a problem. He’s an addict, and to truly recover from an addiction it takes three to five years. He’s been in rehab for about two months for heavy stuff—and I don’t think that’s enough time to recover. Still, if I weren’t running, I would vote for Rob Ford. My only concern for him is that it’s going to go back to such a high-pressure job again that he would relapse and he hasn’t given himself enough time to truly recover from his addiction.

What is it about Rob Ford’s policies that you like? Why would you vote for him?
I like the fact that he is a people person. Everything he promised to do, he did. He lowered taxes and he wants to extend the subway system. At the end of the day, he has been a good mayor. I’m not saying he’s perfect, but he’s done good for the city and I can definitely respect that.

How does your Jamaican patois accent hold up against Rob’s?
I think he beats me on that one. I’m definitely not that good. I’ve seen a few of those videos—I had to laugh. It was pretty entertaining. I will say this though: since he’s been in rehab, the city’s been kind of boring. I know he sort of livens things up but the city is boring without him.

Hear, hear. You said you wanted to implement National Masturbation Day as a citywide holiday.
Technically, that was more of a publicity stunt. That would not happen, no. That was more to get your attention. I wanted people to think, “Is she for real?”

I’m trying to figure that out, myself. If you wanted to leave the voters of Toronto with one thing about you, what is it? Why are you the one for us?
I am the most honest person actually running for this. My life story is out there. I have no hidden agenda. I want to run this city.

@jordanisjoso

Lawrence Lessig at the 2011 PICNIC Festival in Amsterdam. Photo via Flickr user Sebastiaan ter Burg

Harvard Professor Larry Lessig, friend of the late hactivist Aaron Swartz and a longtime advocate for net neutrality and ending political corruption, has been on a tear lately. This winter, he led the New Hampshire Rebellion, a 185-mile walk across the freezing Granite State intended to draw attention to the problem of money infecting everything our government does. He recently celebrated his birthday with likeminded activists in California, where he joined the March for Democracy, a 480-mile hike through the state in protest of what the group calls America's current "plutocracy"-based government.

Now Lessig is talking the talk as well as walking the walk—he's starting a Super PAC to end them all, a sort of Kickstarter campaign he hopes will raise enough unregulated cash to oust some of the entrenched assholes who run Congress with an eye toward making themselves rich. He plans on collecting $12 million by November in order to unseat a handful of legislators who are particularly in the thrall of big money, but hopes to seriously step up his game come the 2016 election and radically change what Washington looks like—potentially complicating the ascent of Wall Street favorite Hillary Clinton. I called up Lessig to find out whether this is different from all those other lofty bipartisan reform projects that seem to inevitably flame out.

VICE: How bad is the influence of money in politics right now?
Larry Lessig: It's become almost catastrophic for the capacity of government to function. There's a great line in The Sun Also Rises, something like—the question was how did we go bankrupt, and the answer was slowly at first, and then all at once. And I kind of think that's what happened with the way money influences Washington. The problem that I'm focused is a problem that I think begins in 1995 when the Gingrich Republicans take over control of the House—the first time Republicans controlled the House in 40 years. They begin this perpetual campaign to raise money, to continue to keep control, and the Democrats then match that by having this war to raise money to take back control.

So the fact that this is a deeply competitive system where each year control of Congress is up for grabs means there's an enormous energy directed toward creating the resources to make that victory possible. And over the course of the 20 years since then, the norms of Congress have changed radically so that the presumption is that their job is to raise money—that's their number one job. Just after the start of the last Congress, we got a leaked document from the Democratic campaign committee telling new members of Congress that they're supposed to be spending four hours a day raising money. And members of Congress were like, "What the hell? Why am I here? I didn't want to become a telemarketer, I didn't want to be fundraiser." And it makes it almost impossible to get anything done. It's very hard to pass anything in Congress, but it's pretty easy to stop things. And so basically a technique of fundraising becomes the ability to promise you're going to block something your client doesn't want passed.

If you're on the right you say things like you want the government to shrink taxes and the size of government, but that will never happen so long as we fund campaigns the way we currently do. If you're the left, you want healthcare or climate change legislation—that is just not going to happen given the way we fund elections. So until we confront this reality and do something about it, we're going to continue to see stalemated government. And the truth is regardless of your politics we can't accept stalemated government. So I think it's bad as it could possibly be.

How is this different from the last century's Gilded Age, when robber barons would cut deals in smoke-filled rooms that impacted the whole country?
The Gilded Age corruption was old-style corruption. It was Standard Oil sitting down with the leaders of the Republican Party and handing them money and saying, "Here's what you're going to do." That's the standard notion of what people think of—what the Supreme Court thinks of—when they talk about corruption. But that kind of corruption doesn't exist in any significant sense anymore. The corruption we have now is in plain sight. It's not hidden, it's not illegal, there's not even shame associated with it. It's an elaborate dance of influence that both parties engage in that in my view is actually more destructive. Because the thing about bribery, the thing about the old-style corruption, is at least there was shame—at least a kind of internal limit to how far it could go. But the current system there's no limit. When the Democratic Party takes out the public option on healthcare in order to avoid tens of millions of dollars being spent by insurance interests against Democrats in the 2010 election, nobody's embarrassed by that—that's just what we call politics. But it's only what we call politics becuase we have a system of elections where money matters in a way that is inconsistent with representative democracy. So it's a different kind of corruption. It's not as bad in the sense that it's not criminal, but it's worse in the sense that it actually does more harm than the old criminal corruption.

How is this different from your past attempts at purging money from the system?
I've been working in this field for seven years, but this is the first time I've been on a project that has an endgame. What we want to do is build a Super PAC powerful enough to win a Congress in 2016 and enact fundamental reform. What that'll mean is passing legislation that would change the way elections are funded. So we did a study of how much that would cost—it turned out to be a smaller number than I thought it was gonna be—but what the report recommended is the most important thing we could do is to run a pilot of this campaign in 2014. So we want to run a give-race campaign to demonstrate the salience of this issue, kind of take the Eric Cantor defeat and multiply it and add some context, but also help us understand how to refine the message and the techniques so that in 2016 when we've gotta run many more races in order to win, we've got a better sense of what to do. So we've got an endgame and that's something new.

Is this all on Congress, as opposed to the president, and Barack Obama in particular?
I see Congress as an essential step in solving the problem. I was excited about Obama in 2008 largely because, at least before Hillary Clinton was out of the race, he spent so much time focused on this issue, talking about needing to change the way Washington works. And then when he was elected that issue basically disappeared—it wasn't something he did anything about in the whole time he's been president. But one of the reasons why it's not surprising he did nothing about it is that he didn't have a Congress that would do anything. So that's why the strategy we're focused on is to create the conditions for leadership, to create the conditioins fo the president to pick up the baton and say, "OK, it's time for us to finally end the corrupting influence of money in Washington, or at least time it's time for us to make our generation's contribution to this struggle to end the corrupting influence of money in Washington." Because this problem has been with us in different forms since the beginning of the republic. It seems every 100 years the republic has to kind of come together and figure out how to adjust itself in a really dramatic way. And that's where we are now.

What's at stake in the ongoing net neutrality fight, and how does it relate to corruption?
It's a great thing to talk about in this context because it is both literally the product of the money in politics problem, and it's a perfect metaphor for why we've got to solve the money in politics problem. The whole reason we are still fighting about network neutrality is because Comcast and the other carriers have so effectively deployed their lobbying and financial resources that have neutralized the basically universal political moment that happened in 2008 when both political parties said yes the internet needs to be neutral. They've stalled and stalled and filed lawsuits and the FCC has employed the dumbest techniques for imposing network neutrality it could have. They got a former lobbyist as the chairman of the FCC and he started saying, effectively, "Well, actually we don't believe in network neutrality." Going into the 2014 election, you can be damn sure that no one in the leadership of the Democratic Party has any interest in getting Comcast and Time Warner to spend their money against Democrats. Democrats are not going to rally around network neutrality—to the contrary, they're going to try to run away from this issue. This is a problem created in large part by the enormous influence of money in politics.

But it's also a metaphor for why solving this is so important. Silicon Valley wants government to work way it wants the internet to work, which means it wants a kind of neutral playing field. [Silicon Valley entrepreneurs] don't want to have to go get permission from network owners to innovate. And they don't want to have to get lobbyists to go get permission from Congress in order to innovate. That, Silicon Valley feels—I think rightly feels—is a deeply inefficient way of running a government. In the same ways that we need a neutral network, we need an honest government.

Do you have any qualms about the matching funds you're poised to accept from some of the big honchos in Silicon Valley, given that they are stepping up their own political activity and doing more lobbying in DC?
I couldn't be happier with the people who matched. In the short term, I'm sure all of them think the chance of us ultimately winning is not high. So in the short term they're going to do what they need to play the system the way it has to be played. I don't believe in universal disarmament. I think [hedge fund manager and environmentalist] Tom Steyer spending $100 million to fight climate change is a good thing because I believe climate change legislation needs to be passed. I have enormous respect for people like [libertarian billionaire] Peter Thiel spending their money in ways that if we're ultimately successful means they have less political influence. People might ask, "Well, isn't that big money going to corrupt you?" But the Super PAC has a pretty clear objective. We're not a political party. Our mission is singular—changing the way elections are funded. And If we succeed in doing that, then these people who paid for our Super PAC will be more like regular citizens and less like the kind of nobility that the current system treats them as.

How do you prevent the cesspool of political consultants—whom you've said you will need to oust incumbent members of Congress—infecting what it is you're doing?
I'm not a campaign manager. I'm not in the business of running campaigns. When we get to the point that we've raised the money we want to raise—obviously we have a big hill to climb to get there—a lot of people might say, "Couldn't you find a different way to run a campaign?" One part of me says, "Yeah that'd be great! I'd love to see us find a way to educate the American people that didn't involve political ads." But our objective in 2014 is to win five elections in a way that convinces people this issue matters. And after we're done with that and we do succeed, and kick this into an order-of-magnitude-bigger project next election cycle, then we've got lots of projects we're talking about that involve changing the way politics functions. But for now we're going to turn to the people who are experts on campaigns now and get them to win five of them for us.

Hillary Clinton sort of typifies this system with her relationship with donors (and her husband's relationship with donors). Like Mitt Romney, she seems better suited to dealing with the donor class than interacting with voters. Do you see this project eventually colliding with her personally or politically and to what extent does she and the incredible amount of money she has behind her stand directly in your path?
I don't know. In the paperback edition of my book Republic, Lost, I do an afterword where I talk about the difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In 2008 I was a big critic of Hillary Clinton because she didn't take up this issue, she kind of poo-pooed this issue, and both Barack Obama and John Edwards obviously really nailed her on that. Afterward, it might have been that Hillary Clinton was just right. It might have been she was just saying there's no way a president can take up this issue and do anything about it. To take up this issue is to take on Congress, and to take on Congress is to basically guarantee you're taking on your own party. If you take on your own party, you're guaranteed not to get anything passed. And if you don't get anything passed, you're not going to get re-elected. And if you don't get re-elected, you're going to be a failed president. So the idea of making this the central issue of a presidential campaign is just crazy.

That's a way of saying I think she's for this reform, but I think she's actually smarter for recognizing what the president's role in this reform could be. If that's who Hillary Clinton is, then what we're trying to do is make it possible for us to actually take a leadership role in this reform. Because if we produce a Congress by the time she would be sworn in as president that's committed to this reform, then why not? Why wouldn't she grab the reins of this movement and claim victory?

Her critics might say becuase she's personally corrupt. That even if a reform were possible, that she's just not the kind of person who can be trusted to carry it out.
I don't think she's personally corrupt. She's got all the money in the world she wants. Now she wants to be a great president. I think the more instructive example to look at are people like LBJ. In 1960, if you had said Lyndon Baines Johnson is the only chance we have for getting Civil Rights legislation passed, people would've laughed at you. That was a crazy idea. But what Johnson realized was that the way he was going to make himself world-historic was to do exactly the thing nobody thought he ever would do.

Now, I don't know if Hillary Clinton is that great—is great in that sense—but she might be. She's obviously incredibly smart. Were I to advise her and she were to become president and we had created the political conditions under which she could actually bring about this reform, I'd say, "Look, Hillary, this is your Civil Rights movement. This is your chance to be LBJ without the Vietnam War—to do something nobody imagines you would do because everybody imagines you're just in the system and you don't care about making this kind of change." Because then she would really become the transformative president Barack Obama said he would be.

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

Nick Zinner is known for being the wild-haired guitarist shredding on stage for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but outside of his Brooklyn band, the art punk has been busy making awesome music of his own. In addition to producing songs for bands like Bloc Party and releasing collections of  photography, Nick has curated and composed his first classical piece, "41 Strings," which he will be performing for the third time since 2011 this Friday.

Three years ago, the clothing company Loomstate, commissioned Nick to compose an orchestral piece for their 41st Annual Earth Day celebration. The guitarist collaborated with Hisham Akira Bharoocha and Ben Vida of Soft Circle, who had produced the previous years percussion piece with the very original title, "40 Drums." What he came up with was an epic 45-musician piece, consisting of an army of strings, synthesizers, and drums that takes listeners on a moving journey through the four seasons.

Since the New York show, Nick has only performed his extensive orchestral production at the Sydney Opera House in 2012. This year, he will be premiering 41 Strings at the Meltdown Festival in the UK, where the Yeah Yeah Yeahs played in a lobby 12 years ago. Joining his list of collaborators this time around are Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Romy Madley Croft (The XX), Gemma Thompson (Savages), Romeo Stodart (Magic Numbers), Lindsey Troy (Deap Vally), Jeff Wootton, Seye (Damon Albarn band) and Simon Tong (The Verve), in addition to students from Southbank Sinfonia and Goldsmiths, University of London.

To find out more about the 41 Strings UK debut and what Nick has been up to, I gave him a call.

From left: Seye from Damon Albarn Band, Gemma Thompson from Savages, Hannah Thurlow from 2:54, Lindsey Troy from Deep Valley, Jeff Wootton from Gorillaz and Damon Albarn Band, Romeo Stodart from Magic Numbers, Romy Madley Croft from The XX Simon Tong from The Verve, Brian Chase from YYYs, Hisham Akira Bharoocha from IIII and Soft Circle, Ryan Sawyer, Andy Macleod from White Magic

VICE: Can you tell me more about how you first came up with "41 Strings"?
The first time we did it was in 2011 for a free event that was celebrating Earth Day. They approached me to write something for it with the tagline being "41 strings." So, I wrote up this orchestral guitar epic thing. The show was really fun. That was the first time I had done anything like that. It was a pretty DIY affair, everyone we used were friends and friends of friends. We were scrambling to get all of the non-union string players. Then we got asked to do it again in 2012 at the Sydney Opera House.

So it’s been two years since your last performance.
I have wanted to do it again for a while. I put the word out and luckily Meltdown offered to put it on. It’s very exciting and kind of terrifying too.  I have been rehearsing for the past two or three months, putting everything together and finding the players for it. I have an all-star band.

Is there anything different about 41 Strings this year?
I guess it is all different players with the exception of the drummers and bass. The guitar players who are playing in it automatically bring it up to a new and exciting level. I think the fact that it is one show seems to add a momentum for me. In Sydney we did it twice in one day and this is just one show, so it’s like don’t fuck up, this is it.

Have your feelings about the piece changed at all?
I think about changing or adding things or rearranging some of the string parts, but I feel like, ultimately, I don’t want to do that because it is a complete statement for what it is, so the point is to respect that. I listened to it when I was getting ready and I hadn’t listened to it in a year or something and it struck me as very powerful and emotional. I was pleasantly surprised. If anything I want to do more stuff with strings.

There are going to be student musicians involved?
Yeah, the orchestra is all young players. I think it is important because when you are playing drums and guitars, if you have a typical string section, a lot of them get mad. I prefer to use young players who are used to it.

How many times do you get to rehearse before the big performance?
Three times, I will be getting in and going straight to practice. We don’t even get to practice with the orchestra until Friday.  It is all pretty intense.

How long has everyone been preparing?
It depends. Some people confirmed two months ago and then literally I got the last guitar player three days ago. A lot of the guitarists have been on tour with their band or whoever they are playing with. When I was writing it, I wanted to keep it simple so that it was something that people could learn pretty easily. The piece is inspired by the four seasons, so there a few patterns that different instruments trade off on, in the same way certain elements of the season move and feel.

What else are you working on?
I am producing a band in Mali called Songhoy Blues, from Timbuktu. They are super rad. I have to finish mixing their record. I am also doing some producing and writing stuff for the next few months, I haven’t really thought about further than that.

Follow Erica on Twitter

Buy tickets to see Nick Zinner play "41 Strings"

Hiba Krisht. All screenshots courtesy of interview subject

A little over a year ago, Hiba Krisht started writing about her experiences as an ex-Muslim and former hijabi (a hijab wearer who practices traditional conservative Muslim modesty) living in the US, using the pen name Marwa Berro. The 25-year-old had worn the hijab throughout her childhood and young adulthood in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, but took it off when she came to the US; this August will mark two years that she has been hijab-free.

This week Krisht suddenly found herself in the media spotlight after she launched “The Ex-Hijabi Fashion Photo Journal,” a Tumblr she describes as “dedicated to celebrating body and fashion, specifically for those who have broken away from Islamic modesty requirements.” The day after she started it, she woke up to find a piece about it featured on Mediaite, thousands of hits on her personal blog, and her “social media feeds blow[ing] up with people who love the idea.” Having met Krisht briefly at the Center for Inquiry’s recent Women in Secularism conference, I reached out to her to find out more about the project.

VICE: How would you characterize the interplay between your atheism and your feminism and the decision to no longer wear the hijab?
Hiba Krisht: My move away from religion was very much driven by my inability to settle with women's gender roles and modesty doctrines in Islam and other Abrahamic faiths. My body was constantly scrutinized and stigmatized. My behavior was policed in line with how my body was perceived. Too often Islamic modesty doctrines have bodies treated like a shame, with rhetoric in favor of the hijab comparing women to objects to be claimed and consumed, like pearls in oysters and wrapped pieces of candy. The Arabic word used in Islam to refer to body parts that must be covered up is 'awrah (عورة), a word whose root means defectiveness, imperfection, blemish. In Arabic, women's uncovered bodies are also referred to as fitnah (فتنة) to describe their temptation, the same word we use to refer to sedition, civil strife, and discord. These are words we grew up hearing in reference to our bodies and selves.

But my body is not an object of discord to be covered up. Many of us have left Islam or rejected its modesty norms because we refuse to be treated as such, refuse to have our hair and limbs hypersexualized to the point that we are considered a danger and temptation simply for having them where eyes can see. The move to celebrate the body and reject doctrines of modesty is one that I have seen openly embraced by many religious people as well.

And after having our bodies treated with such denigration and restriction, I feel it is very apt for us to have a space to celebrate our bodies in all their shameless glory, publicly, to tell our bodily histories, publicly, to adorn ourselves in beautiful things, publicly. To finally be able to determine how we want to present our bodies, how we want to look and be and feel.

What has been the most challenging aspect of being an ex-hijabi for you?
Although I wore the hijab, for too much of my time wearing it I was only behaving as a hijabi would, i.e., modestly, quietly, restricting my public presence, my voice, my interaction with other people, because I was compelled to by my family rather than out of conviction in those roles. I had to practice enormous amounts of self-suppression and control. I was forced to lie in every way—lie with my body, my actions, my face, my words—because I had to carry out rituals I had no belief in, had to agree with sentiments I abhorred and hold my tongue in the face of misogyny, racism, and homophobia. I learned habits of hiding and coding to cope, so that I could have outlets of warmth and human interaction on the side, so I could not just survive but live.

Every person has a different story, but I personally could not have imagined the damage that so much lying, hiding, and fear was doing to my psyche, how torn-in-two I would come out of it being. I could not have imagined how lasting and debilitating the effects of those years would be—the dysphoria that would develop, how disconnected I would feel to my body, how the ghosts of a fearful past still hid behind sudden knocks and late-night phone calls. I developed PTSD when I came to the States—a full six years after the most severe abuse I faced for attempting to defy my family occurred. My mind packaged a lot of things away to deal with later, and much of it has only come out now that I am free.

This is probably the strongest motivator for me—it is healing to have a space where we can talk about this, where we can have fun and take joy and pride in our bodies, reclaim them as ours, ours, and only ours.

As with many endeavors that progressive Muslims or ex-Muslims might engage in, there is always the possibility that it might be used to advance a right-wing agenda or even promote outright anti-Muslim bigotry in the US and abroad. What are your thoughts on this?
This is a legitimate concern. Anti-Muslim bigotry is a very real and unfortunate phenomenon—one, I might add, that ex-Muslim atheists are not immune to by any means, largely because it is based on blanket generalizations rooted in ethnicity, culture, and race that do not pass us by. Plenty of non-Muslims are subjected to anti-Muslim bigotry because they are assumed or perceived to belong to Muslim culture. We also resent having the past and present circumstances of our lives so grossly misrepresented and othered by right-wing rhetoric aimed at destructive divisiveness rather than fostering progress or change. We have plenty of reasons to be concerned with anti-Muslim bigotry, to condemn it, and to try to make sure that our endeavors are not co-opted in its favor.

The possibility that our work will be misused is always present, but it is work that is too important to set aside for that reason. There is too much progress to be made in securing basic freedoms in Arab and Muslim societies and communities everywhere, in supporting the right to religious dissent and apostasy. That's not to say we ignore the problem. We hope that our attempts to bolster our work with reason and empathy, especially by discussing particular circumstances rather than generalizing about Muslims or Islam, will minimize this. We attempt to be very clear and open about our liberalism and anti-racism, to be staunchly on the side of asserting personal freedom and autonomy, for the godless and the godly alike.

Follow Simon Davis on Twitter.

Screencap via YouTube user Cal Watchdog

A little over a week ago, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor got his ass very unexpectedly handed to him in his district's primary by a Tea Partier named David Brat. Apart from a nuanced position on immigration, Cantor was largely a by-the-numbers Republican in his views, but he had a history of pulling the strings on the Republican party's obstructionism, had displayed some really infuriating ignorance, and was all the more terrifying because he was stone faced and boring as hell.

We were glad to see Cantor go, and his replacement in the leadership, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy was announced yesterday. McCarthy will be a step up in my book, and there are some real bright sides to him replacing Eric Cantor, but that's really not saying much.

Briefly, it looked like the Republicans might replace the departing Majority Leader with Tea Partier Pete Sessions. As VICE's Grace Wyler noted, after Cantor's defeat, the Republicans are spooked about the anti-corporate sentiments held by Tea Partiers starting to catch on, which could mean funding might suffer. Pete Sessions being in a leadership position might have made matters worse, if his rhetoric spread to elsewhere in the party, but it might also have pacified the Tea Party to some extent having another comrade in a seat of power.

Instead of wading through that muck, the Republicans just did the obvious thing and moved McCarthy from the number 3 position in the House to position number 2. Starting now we're going to be hearing a whole lot from this guy, but, like Cantor, we hardly know who he is. Unlike Cantor it's not because he's a cardboard cutout, but because his short political career has been an almost Obama-like rocketship ride. I only know who he is because he's from my state, California, and he's outspoken on an issue I feel strongly about.

So take it from me, McCarthy's everything you could realistically hope for in a mostly lock-step Republican: he's affable, occasionally inept, and refreshingly goofy.

His ineptitude is arguable. By and large, politicos consider him effective at whipping votes, but he's had surprise failures on the House floor, where the vote count wasn't what he thought it was, and he unexpectedly lost. The New York Times says he's far from "steeped in the fine details of policy," and that he's "likely to delegate substantive policy matters to committee chairmen, which they may prefer."

But it's the goofiness that will make his tenure as Majority Leader bearable. Specifically, he has a harder time stringing words together than George W. Bush. At least with George W. Bush you could tell what he was trying to say. McCarthy just loses the thread completely and keeps right on blathering. The Washington Post just compiled an incomplete list of McCarthy's word salad episodes. One was an attempt to illustrate that justice is blind:

One of the most important I think that can happen today, Lynn Jenkins’s bill, an idea of fairness, the idea that when you look across the street from the Capitol, you see the Supreme Court, you see the statue sitting there, blinded in the process with the weights in-between.

Huh? It's hard to tell from just reading his nonsensical quotes out of context, but McCarthy's speaking tick is that he constantly interrupts himself and he never finishes a thought. Listen to him answer this Tea Partier's question at a town hall meeting. (His answer starts at 1:36)

He's jumping all over the place, and then he becomes lucid for long enough to tell a joke, and then he goes back to saying random shit like in one of those Bad Lip Reading videos, except real. I hope he doesn't ruin the fun by taking a diction class. 

Don't get me wrong, politically he's all the things a republican has to be to get elected—pro-life for instance, and a card-carrying member of the oil-and-coal fan club—but contrary to a lot of jokes that are going to come out in the next few days, he's not unusually evil. The rumors about him being evil will come from two trivia items:

1. He chose a really ominous clip from Ben Affleck's The Town to inspire cooperation from recalcitrant Tea Partiers when he needed all the Republicans to oppose Obama's budget:

Granted, that's a pretty scary sentiment, particularly the part about hurting people, but apparently he's a huge film buff, and he hosts movie nights with other representatives. My guess is that just like me, he's too saturated with media to resist a reference to a scene that feels right, no matter how much violence it might imply. I sympathize. 

2. He's the inspiration for Frank Underwood, the evil House Majority Whip from House of Cards.

Yes, he did let Kevin Spacey job shadow him when Spacey was preparing for the role. Yes, he gave House of Cards a quote that became one of the show's most iconic threats. Yes, he did say "If I could kill just one member of congress, my job would be a lot easier."

But the inspiration for Frank Underwood is some British guy. So case closed.

The Republican party is full of cloak-and-dagger figures like Dick Cheney, genuinely hateful demagogues like Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, and ruthless juggernauts like Richard Nixon. At the gut level, Kevin McCarthy doesn't strike me as any of those. I would take comfort in the fact that he lacks the oratory skills and policy expertise to bring about some kind of real shift to the right, but past Republicans leaders have proven that a lack of those skills isn't actually an impediment.

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