The hot flesh of summer is here, and everyone wants to read about vacations and things covered in sand and margaritas and making love on boats. Not me. I hate this season. So the last thing I want to do when I’m living in the thick of it is read about it. If you feel the way I do, here are three short books that will make you feel strange in the sun.

The Last Horror Novel in the History of the World by Brian Allen Carr

How does one write a zombie novel without falling into the trap of being pigeonholed as the guy who wrote the zombie novel? It’s no easy task, and yet The Last Horror Novel in the History of the World sets itself apart from others in its genre right from the start, with a title provocative enough to announce the imminent end of its own universe, a kind of reminder that you’d better read now, while you can, because once what’s inside takes hold you’ll be just another blood bag.

The most appealing thing about Carr’s horror is the number of forms it takes, and the subsequent mutations the story’s landscape carries out along the way. The youth of Scrape, Texas, are gas-station kids. When fucked-up creatures begin to appear in their town, they barely slow their parade of drinking, fucking, and joking. More than anything, they treat the new developments—a woman in white who hoards dead kids in the water, black hairy hands that crawl across the ground grasping for anything they can get a handle on, etc.—as just something to do. Carr can stack quite a nasty string of messed-up imagery, and yet the life inside the book continues on, flipping back from lines of death into more beer, more sense that everyone was just as fucked before the monsters rolled out as they are now.

Throughout it all, Carr’s magic shows in how he handles territory most would strand as genre. He fills the pages with magnetic, mostly sparse language, not far from how Robert Coover’s recreations bring new threads to a corpse. His new mythology, set right in the middle of nowhere that many would consider the heartland of our country, is new and old at once, sick and rhapsodic, alive and not afraid to die. “The black magic of bad living,” the book reminds us, “only looks hideous to honest eyes.”

The Luminol Reels by Laura Ellen Joyce

Luminol is the stuff cops use at crime scenes to discover remnants of spilled blood. In that spirit, The Luminol Reels provides an index of the long array of mankind’s atrocities, particularly those in the form of violence against women.

The book is divided up into the ten types of traumas it relates, a Dante-like relation of the rings of pain: Agonies, Martyrs, Murderers, Porno, Rituals, Bodies, Virgins, Sacrificial Laws, Saints, and, finally, Luminol. Each section contains a handful of one- or two-page texts, somewhat like specimen slides, describing sick little short films that each provides an eye into a hellish scene or mind. “Mass Burial,” for instance, reads:

The smell is rotten in the desert. Putrefaction is scrambled in the heat. Some of the girls lie with their faces missing, brains leaking from the dead zone, but with their right arms or feet still covered in creamy flesh.

Relief can be gained by visiting the mass grave. Run your fingers through their hair and breathe in their sharp violent scents. Lie on top of them, rolling your heavy body over theirs, catching blue-black hair in your teeth and tasting their sweet perspiration where it collects underneath the fester and damp of their corpses.

There is little hope here, and even less relenting. Joyce’s hand is as unflinching in its force as any of the deathly actions rendered to the bodies on any page, almost like an alarm light throwing its glow over room after room, or stations in an exhibit of twisted murder scenes. Each leg is mercifully brief, landing its blow and moving into the next.

Like its namesake, The Luminol Reels coats the floor of every surface it presents with a stain that won’t be easily forgotten.

Spooky Plan by Drew Kalbach

“Mysticism is just tomorrow’s science dreamed today.” That’s one of the four quotes opening this document, borrowed from communication theorist Marshall McLuhan. It sets the book up well in one of my favorite modes in a body of writing—the use of words to create space, rather than reflect it. Books should build a location that did not exist in any past—a window to somewhere else, now opened.

Spooky Plan, as its title portends, has the dark heart full for this test. It opens with a section titled Planchette, after the Ouija-board recognized device that facilitates automatic writing. Each text in Planchette, according to the book’s end notes, takes its title from graffiti found on the walls at Pompeii.

The book is opened to weird light, like a hallway that just seems to keep going, changing colors, textures. The first text goes, “You defecate and you write ‘hello everyone’ / as if feces mean anything.” Then later: “You rub your eyes / to pinkness and pus, and days change if vaguely, / and total in the freezer glow, the shrimp which melt, / your hands cover spotted walls, / the apostate dissolute feeling which grinds / into your eyebrows and lobes and fringes all the rest.”

Mad science, right? What is he saying? I don’t know. I pick up so many books now and within minutes see their picture before I’ve even been given the chance to take it in. The science of Spooky Plan is in the orchestration, the way Kalbach welds ass cracks to CPUs, literally banging together from line to line a kind of terminology and logic that seems foreign-born as it passes through you, and then you’re turning around to look where it went after it made it through. In this way, the book actually seems haunted, filled with residues compiled in scripts that offer no easy way out, that fill around you like the air inside a ghost house in a video game you lose sleep to stay up playing through the night. 

Steve Costello in action

The Brazilian police don’t have the best reputation when it comes to dealing with their public. Mostly because their way of doing so seems to involve a lot of firing tear gas and rubber bullets at peaceful protesters. Understandably, that's not an image Brazil's government is keen to maintain; hyper-violent police are pretty embarrassing, especially when the world's media is watching. So ahead of the World Cup—which Brazilian protesters weren't best pleased about—they decided to do something about it.

Steve Costello, a 72-year-old grandfather of 11 from Bolton, has been teaching karate in Brazil for 20 years. In the mid-1990s he was recruited to teach police non-violent suppression techniques, presumably so they could deal with threats without adding to their already massive civilian death toll. Ahead of the World Cup he was asked to give Sao Paulo's riot police a few lessons in his brand of karate. I gave him a call to see how that went. 

VICE: Hi Steve. So how did you get into training Brazilian riot police karate?
Steve Costello: It first started in 1996. I was the first English instructor to do a karate course in Curitiba, a city on the coast. I was teaching kids, but the chief of the riot police was present. He asked me to do a training session with the police forces, and after that I got invited over to Brazil on several occasions to train with the Command Operations Elite, the mounted police, firemen and the state cavalry troops. There were also a lot of training sessions organized with the military police in Curitiba and other cities. They even invited the riot police over from São Paolo to Curitiba to join the sessions.

What was it they wanted to learn?
I taught them the technique of Ryūkyū karate, which basically employs the use of pressure points, grabs and restraints when fighting against an armed opponent. It’s more about controlling and defusing a situation efficiently with minimum injuries on both sides, rather than turning to the use of lethal weapons.

Is that so different to what they usually do?
Ryūkyū karate is a combat style, but it’s based on street survival. The police commanders who saw my training liked the fact that it's less violent than other techniques. You give your opponent bruises, but you don’t seriously hurt them. During the year leading up to the World Cup I even taught the cavalry techniques of how to survive in close combat, in case they have to fight on the ground. When I was growing up in Manchester as a young boy I naturally got into fights with the Teddy Boys and the skinheads, which taught me to be street wise.

Did you use any weapons during the training?
Yes. The police used a certain type of baton to defend themselves against knives—small pieces of wood that can be extended with a telescopic button.

That sounds relatively peaceful compared to other techniques the Brazilian police have used to handle riots and protests before. Do you know why they decided to take a less violent route?
They wanted to demonstrate to the public – especially during the World Cup—that they don’t have to use guns. The police have a pretty bad image from past riots that got out of control and ended up getting extremely violent, especially in the area around Rio de Janeiro. In 2011, a child even got shot. That created a very bad image—the opposite of what they wanted to show the world during the World Cup.

What they learned from me were techniques of how to control a person who had a knife without being violent. I showed them how to disarm someone in a—as you put it—"peaceful way", rather than putting them into hospital. I had eight training sessions with different teams of up to 80 men for the World Cup alone last year. I always tell them, “The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.”

I heard you were given an award for your services there.
Yes—from the commander of the riot police, Vladimir Rossini. It reads, “For the great contribution towards the goal set by the corps and further attempts to reach the ideals in common of the collaborators in the community of the city of Curitiba.”

Wow. So do they want to keep using these techniques even after the World Cup finishes?
Oh yes. I have more training planned with the police academy. They’re trying very hard to improve, and they’re all really competitive – in a friendly way. You need a certain mindset for karate, as well as the ability to focus, and they were all really good at that.

How's everything been going over there since the World Cup started? It seems to have calmed down somewhat since the first match kicked off.
My Portuguese is still very basic, even after almost 20 years of visiting. But from what I understand, most of the trouble has been clashes between football supporters where the police had to intervene, and in some cases they used the karate techniques. However, they made it very clear that their number one goal was to handle those situations peacefully, “if possible”. Also, the military police informed me that some of the guys I trained were present on the streets in the World Cup cities, so that’s a good thing, I guess.

It is. Thanks, Steve.

All photos via Jon Reyes.
For those who don’t know, The Mandarin is a 35-year-old Canadian-Chinese buffet chain founded in Ontario. It serves relatively decent Chinese food at relatively decent Chinese food prices.  Canadian-Chinese is the key—we’re talking a very whitewashed ‘ethnic cuisine.’ Not to take away from it, but you can get garlic bread there if you want. I’ve been only once as a child and I barely remember it, save finding the fishtanks infinitely more interesting than the food. That said, people LOVE the Mandarin. And why shouldn’t they? If you’re stuck out in the sticks there is no Chinatown to get "cold tea" and 5 AM dim sum. You have to work with what you’ve got, and if you’re from Ontario you can probably tell me exactly where the nearest Mandarin is.  

Five years ago—on Canada Day 2009—The Mandarin offered the unthinkable: free food to anyone who can provide Canadian citizenship. Period. No purchase necessary, no loopholes, no nothing. They called the event “Thank You Canada” as a reference to the fact that most of the staff have immigrated to our fine country and as a way of giving back. Hey, if they’re happy, I’m happy. Based on the absurd mathematics of giving away a BUFFET MEAL for free to thousands of people, they claim they can only do this every half a decade. I knew that this would require a special disposition, a lot of patience, and a strong appetite for both adventure and chicken balls.  On Canada Day 2014, I woke up at the ungodly hour of 9 AM and headed to Etobicoke.

My strategy was to try and avoid both the walk-in traffic of a downtown Toronto location AND the overall awfulness of driving to the suburbs, so I figured the Queensway location was the logical choice. My previous experience as a moron (sneakerhead) prepared me well for standing around in absurdly long lines waiting for Chinese garbage, so my will was strong. At 10 AM the line was around the Winners* and practically to the Zellers* (*CanCon). The staff had informed me the first person in line arrived at 1 AM the previous night. Once again: the first person in line arrived at 1 AM the previous night. Really let that sink in.

The mood was cheery. Fathers were throwing footballs around, kids were half-heartedly belting out the first few lyrics to Nicki Minaj’s "Pills and Potions" and I wasn’t that afraid of the teenagers like I normally am.  We all knew we were in this together and we all knew we were getting the same thing. There was no need to be cutthroat. Plus, despite a little rain, it was a beautiful sunny Canada Day, and what better way to spend it than melting in a Zellers parking lot? 

The four-hour wait was not an exaggeration. If anything, I shaved a few minutes off. Thankfully, the staff (who were sleeveless for whatever reason) provided water, just as I was arguing that there was no way in hell they were going to provide water.  

Godspeed, old dude.

Despite the welcome hydration, some people couldn’t hack it. This old man was the first to go.  His poor, brittle, frail, elderly, senile, withered bones just couldn’t take the heat. I assume this is him being taken away to the badlands to live out his last days in peace. 

One interesting aspect of the line was that we essentially had to go through someone’s backyard between the Winners and our goal. There are things in life that really force you to reflect—standing inches from someone’s garden while waiting in line to slowly kill yourself with fried food is one of those things. However the promisedland was nigh! 

After finally passing through the gates and being greeted by an impressively upbeat and unhaggard staff, I passed koi ponds to my right and the sweet smell of victory to my left.





The decor and vibe was completely different to the no man's land of outside. To avoid mass-hysteria they were pulling the classic club tactic of running the line while there were still spots available. They knew what they were doing. The decor is what I'd like to describe as tastefully gaudy, like if the set from Big Trouble In Little China threw up on your grandparents' house.  The scene was very quiet, no chit chat. People got all of that out of the way in line—they were here to eat. I was given my seat, grabbed a plate and got to work.

Truly, is there anything greater than a plate with eight different shades of brown? The play-by-play is as follows: Chicken balls, noodles, fried rice, some kind of whitefish I forget, honey garlic chicken wings, mussels (yes, I dared), an egg roll, a piece of garlic bread, a slice of cheese pizza, two pieces of grilled pork, corn on the cob.  How was it? Look, it’s the fucking Mandarin, what do you want from me? We’re going for quantity here. Everything tasted better than it had any business tasting, including the pizza.

My waitress Candii was a delight, happily pouring me Coke after Coke and kindly explaining to me that today was almost as busy as Mother’s Day. I regaled her with some pretty impressive armpit sweat and a dumb look. But look, we’re here to eat, not make friends. Onwards to plate two.

At this point I’ve clearly lost my mind. A caesar salad? Roast beef on top of cold shrimp? A croissant? Is that a poutine on top of mashed potatoes? Remember earlier when I tried to play it like I was some expert on food and this peasant food was beneath me?  Kindly tell me to ‘fuck off’ in the comments. I powered through the starch-filled nightmare and focused on the dessert coming to me next.

The stream of new people kept coming. Hearing people complain about waiting in line "Almost two and a half hours" almost compelled me to say something, but I buried my head in my eighth coke and finished my croissant (why the hell did I get a croissant?). The fake skylight mocked me.

My dessert plate makes as much sense as anything else.  It’s a sugar-free cheesecake, a slice of watermelon, a slice of pineapple, vanilla ice cream stuffed into a waffle and frozen yogurt.  In my delirium I even thought it would be funny to put those little should-be-cheese-flavored-but-aren’t sticks in the frozen yogurt, as if I forgot I had to eat it (verdict: DELICIOUS). At this point I’m a bumbling, incoherent mess. The four hours of sun followed by two hours of stuffing my face with garbage was a system shock. The only thing I needed more than actual nutrition was a cold shower and a good cry. 

I bid farewell to my kingdom and began to climb back down Everest, walking about ten paces to my car.  

As I left the line had dissipated slightly, but at this point it was already almost 5 PM, too late for lunch, too early for dinner; the calm before another storm. Overall, the day was a total delight. I can’t think of anything more Canadian than a bunch of polite people standing in an orderly line waiting their turn to half-appreciate, half-co-opt another culture for free on an arbitrary special day. In all honesty, it was a genuine celebration of Canadians as ‘nice people’ and Canada as a wonderful place, filled with opportunity and possibility. And chicken balls.

Will I be back to the Mandarin? I dunno, maybe? Are you going? I’ll go if you’re going.  

Follow Adam Jackson on Twitter and watch his web series at www.wastedtimeseries.com.

Photo via Flickr user David McSpadden

A fact about Frisco-living is that we deal with a predictable litany of questions when we encounter someone from outside our urban womb: “You’re from San Francisco? How are the gays?” Or: “You’re from San Francisco? How are the earthquakes?” 

But nowadays, instead, I get: “You’re from San Francisco? How are the evictions?” Evictions are the new earthquakes.

These days, San Francisco’s gonzo housing market is international knowledge. And yet, an unspoken truth about San Francisco housing is that the easiest job in the world is to be a landlord here. On the list of easy jobs, it edges out Press Secretary for the Secret Service, where the only words you ever get to say are, "That’s classified."  

I would know what an easy job it is because I am a San Francisco landlord. That’s why I started Small Property Owners for Reasonable Control as a PAC of Insignificant Landlords. We are small landlords (we own four or fewer rental units) and we support tenant protections, rent control, and limits on evictions because, as landlords, we know we’ve got it way too good.

Ten years ago, I bought a house in North Bernal with an in-law unit using a down payment I inherited and a mortgage I shouldn’t have been allowed to get. You know the kind of mortgage that caused the housing bubble and wrecked the world economy? I had one. Then, through no acumen of my own, my neighborhood became the Hottest Real Estate Neighborhood in America™. I got out of my sketchy mortgage and into a low-rate 30-year fixed because my home value rode a wave of appreciation fueled by the relentless power of startup pixie dust and tech VC hot air.

Now, because it is so groovy and desirable and close to the Google (and Apple and Yahoo and Genentech and Facebook) buses, no one I know can afford to live in my neighborhood. So instead of having friends nearby, I get to charge obscenely high rent. I don’t want to charge obscenely high rent. I’d rather have friends.

Photo via Flickr user Roman Boed

Speaking on behalf of 100 percent of small landlords, all the “mom and pop landlords” everyone is so worried about don’t need so many rights. We didn’t build anything. We didn’t sacrifice and work hard to make our investment so crazily valuable. We didn’t execute a visionary and shrewd business plan or invent the greatest app. We don’t do the cool things that make San Francisco desirable. If we were good at being landlords, we would do it somewhere it takes skill to be a landlord, like Richmond or Detroit.

Being a landlord in San Francisco is like being a coke-dealer in the 80s. People are basically throwing money at you for doing nothing. It’s like finding a cauldron of gold doubloons buried in your backyard. It’s pretty sweet.

Which brings me to the second unspeakable truth about San Francisco housing: There is no way to make San Francisco affordable again without making real estate less profitable. Every homeowner and landlord has a ballooning financial stake in the gentrification gravy train never stopping. If the city enacted a policy that brought housing costs down, all of our property would be less valuable and we’d profit less. I’m fine with that, but let’s stop bullshitting ourselves about it. We want more and cheaper housing, which means the only part of the equation to cut is profit. However we get there, there is no other way.

Photo via Flickr user Jamie McCaffrey

Let’s say the "increase supply" maniacs get their way and San Francisco sweeps aside the asinine zoning restrictions and those NIMBYs fretting about the view all fall off their decks, allowing the city to add the 100,000 units needed to make a dent in housing costs. Let’s say this tidbit of economic wishful-thinking pans out.

Then everyone like me loses out. If we flood the market with supply, there’s less demand for my rental unit and I make less money. I lose desperate youngsters writing overwrought cover letters in the hopes of signing a lease. The escalation of my loan-to-value ratio slows. On the other hand, if housing costs were brought down by aggressive government intervention, we would also lose. Whether it’s an organic increase in supply and density, a regulatory/legislative shift, or a combination of the two, if housing prices come down, regular homeowners and landlords like me lose a bit of wealth but gain a more humane city to live in.

If I wanted to live only around rich people, I would have moved to Pacific Heights in the first place. I don’t and didn’t. Please, Mayor Lee and Board of Supervisors, crash the real estate market on purpose. Make my investment worth less. Take away my cauldron of gold doubloons.

Landlords are not that smart and we’re not special. Nobody made us be landlords. We call on all policymakers once and for all to give us the respect we deserve, which is not much.

Follow Nato Green on Twitter.

Photo via WikiMedia Commons.
Meteorologists have allegedly been added to the list of government employees that are not allowed to say anything to the media about climate change, but a former employee of Environment Canada says that's only part of the problem.

When the Harper government was elected, a communications directive was issued that prevented scientists from speaking to the media without permission. It seems that meteorologists are now falling under that umbrella.

Beverly Archibald was a meteorologist at Environment Canada from 1986 until 1998 when she moved to the private sector. She is also one of only about 40 meteorologists who have received accreditation as a consulting meteorologist from the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.

Archibald thinks a meteorologist being banned from talking climate change with the media is not surprising, because there are better-suited experts that can talk about the subject. But she's more concerned with Environment Canada's data.

"The climate records for Canada are in disarray," Archibald explains. "I just finished a big project for one of my clients, and you can't go back more than 15 years in most cases before the climate record is disjointed or there's missing data or the data is reported on the wrong day."

Archibald says the problems have been happening for years, and the Harper government seems more concerned with keeping these professionals from talking than they are with fixing issues in the agency.

"That's where—as a meteorologist and a former public sector meteorologist—the problem is," Archibald explains. "They're more interested in these reports, but the stuff going into them is often faulty, like the climate data."

Archibald says the science that is being fed into the models needs to be fixed to get the proper data.

"It is even hard to get a continuous precipitation record because of the decimation of the Environment Canada weather observation network," Archibald says. "I don't know, sometimes I look and I wonder where they're getting this information from because they've moved stations, closed stations, places aren't reporting precip [precipitation], and there are huge gaps in the data sets."

The problem seems to have been ongoing since the first major cuts at Environment Canada and the agency moving to more automated stations. Archibald says there may be more stations but they are less serviced.

"The accuracy of these stations is in question as well," Archibald explains. "So, atmospheric monitoring in general, whether it is the tar-sands development or a severe weather development or climate change, that to me, if the government wanted to do something, they should fix up the monitoring network."

I tried to talk to Archibald again to see if she could point me in the direction of the false data and other inaccuracies but she no longer wishes to comment on the story.

Environment Canada told me they wouldn't be able to speak over the phone about Archibald’s accusations, but did respond by email. The funny thing was their email contained some questions and answers but I had never sent them any questions.

The only question they knew I wanted to ask was if the allegations were true, and the communications person asked if I would send him a list of questions so they could prepare. But, as a journalist, I told them I don't like prepared answers. Nonetheless, the response email answered questions that I hadn't asked and provided no chance to get any real answers on the allegations.

Screenshot via the author.
After being pretty much shot down by Environment Canada, I decided to talk to the people who originally brought the issue to parliament. I called my MP, who also worked at Environment Canada in the 1980s, and asked her about these issues.

Edmonton-Strathcona MP Linda Duncan says the party is raising these issues all the time in the house but frankly, the public is the key to getting these issues dealt with.

"Canadians are way ahead of the government on this issue," Duncan says. "Canadians, certainly Albertans, when they've been polled have said they want our government to take deeper action to address climate change and to live up to the commitments we make internationally and frankly as Canadians."

Duncan thinks muzzling meteorologists is ludicrous, as they are some of the government officials who could be talking about the climate change data and bringing it into Canadians living rooms and homes.

"Part of this is bringing it down to the level of the public and who better than our weathermen, who people highly respect and are listened to daily? They should simply be sharing information that is coming to light and my understanding is meteorologists or weathermen across the world have been sharing data that's been collected for many decades," Duncan explains. "[This] is indicating that a lot of the rapidly changing and dangerous conditions of weather that we've experienced—certainly in Alberta as I've noticed flood warnings again in the High River area almost a year to the day after the disaster last year—it is really important that Canadians get this information firsthand and [it] can be reassuring to hear it directly from a government scientist."

Duncan remembers the Harper government's mantra when they were first elected and wonders what happened to their promise of an open, transparent, and participatory government.

"Who's going to decide the information is correct: a highly qualified meteorologist or somebody who does briefing notes for the PMO?" Duncan remarked. "We have fought day-in and day-out to actually get the real information and not get a pared-down, cleansed version from the communications department."

Duncan isn't surprised by the accusations from Archibald, but does find it troubling.

"I just think it is darn, darn sad, and it is more than sad, it is completely disrespectful of Canadians," Duncan says. "They need to stop this, they need to stop stifling our government scientists and let them share information."

The MP says the U.S. is far ahead of where Canada is when it comes to climate data and letting scientists speak.

"There is no doubt about it whatsoever," explains Duncan. "In working in the environmental law field I can't even tell you the amount of times I had to turn to the United States system because there is far more disclosure of information to the public and far more requirements to disclose information."

"We [the Canadian government] have gone in a very reprehensible direction," Duncan adds.

The University of Alberta's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences also refused to comment on what meteorologists are facing in the industry after school.

Prime Minister Harper recently said no leader would take action on climate change if it would hurt their economy and that paints a grim future for scientists, meteorologists and Canadians as a whole.

The Northern Gateway received conditional approval, and the Keystone XL project is being built in some areas despite still needing the final thumbs up from U.S. President Barack Obama.

The consensus among scientists on climate change, according to NASA, is that it is likely the result of humans—and with more and more severe weather events in Canada and the rest of the world happening every year, how long before the Harper government takes some actual steps and stops muzzling scientists?

As Newsweek reported recently, between 2012 and 2014, the Harper government doubled its oilsands advertising budget. So it isn't likely we'll see any sort of change of thinking anytime soon. 


@travisdosser

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All photos by Grey Hutton unless otherwise stated

The German capital is one of the planet’s great party cities, where your every dream and darkest desire has been turned into a three-story nightclub with a merciless door policy. Sadly, everybody in the world knows this, so the only thing worse than the stupid fucking lines outside the clubs is the infuriating tourists within them. Here’s how to avoid pissing off the locals and convince everyone that you're ein Berliner.

Jump to sections by using the index below:

– WHERE TO PARTY
– WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH DRUGS?
– POLITICS, PROTESTS AND JUST HOW RACIST IS EVERYONE HERE?
   Legacy of the Squatters | May Day, Refugee Strikes and Neo-Nazis | Berlin's Immigrants
– WHERE TO EAT
– WHAT DO LOCALS EAT?
– WHERE TO DRINK
– WHERE TO STAY
– LGBT BERLIN
– WHERE TO HANG OUT WHEN YOU'RE SOBER
– HOW TO AVOID GETTING RIPPED OFF AND BEATEN UP
– HOW NOT TO BE A SHITTY TOURIST
– PEOPLE AND PLACES TO AVOID
– TIPPING AND HANDY PHRASES
– A YOUTUBE PLAYLIST OF QUESTIONABLE LOCAL MUSIC
– VICE CITY MAP

WHERE TO PARTY

Look. Everyone knows Berlin is basically the best place to get fucked up in Europe, which means you probably shouldn’t bother waiting for the weekend. In fact, avoid the weekend—it sucks, and getting into anywhere is basically World War Z. Wednesday and Thursday are the nights you should save yourselves for.

You’ve heard of Berghain, right? Well, it’s almost as well known for its bouncers as it is for its dance floors, so a three-hour wait on a Saturday night could well end in you being turned away with a simple “nein.” And there's no getting around that nein. Rather than risk that, try Watergate on a Wednesday, Stattbad Wedding on a Saturday, Club der Visionäre on a Sunday afternoon, and then, if you really must, Berghain on the Sunday evening.

If you do make the effort to go to Berlin’s most famous club, don’t be a tourist. Berghain is not a place to stand around chatting by the bar, so always look ready to dance, because the bouncers aren’t just being dicks; they’re there to separate flies on the wall from real techno heads.

The same principle applies to mementos: Don’t waste any time on your phone or taking pictures at Berghain; just lose your shit on the dancefloor. When you do eventually leave, don't wash off your stamp, as a faded mark from the night before helps your case if you try to get in again the following night—although you will have to pay again. Most important of all, always bring cash. They don’t accept credit cards, and there’s no ATM inside.

Friedrichshain is generally the area where techno heads like to hang out, and one of the best Berghain alternatives can be found at the formerly illegal ://about blank near Ostkreuz. Just leave your camo parka, IDF beret, and Swiss Guards smock at home, as they won't let you in if you’re sporting any sort of institutional insignia.

You’ll find pretty much everything in Friedrichshain, from good value warm-up bars such as Süß. War Gestern and Sanatorium 23 to smaller clubs, like Rosi's, Suicide Circus, and Salon Zur Wilden Renate.

Another decent Berghain alternative is Tresor, a big place across the Spree river. Club nights don't go on as long as they do at Berghain, but the place is just as big, it has excellent bookings, and the ground-floor club OHM is also pretty great.

In Kreuzberg, local Berliners go clubbing at places like Prince Charles or Gretchen, while Neukölln residents choose from Loophole, Loftus Hall, or Sameheads, which all usually attract ex-pat crowds.

Avoid Matrix and Speicher, unless you're a teenager, into R&B or generally don't have very good taste in music. These are shitty tourist traps for shitty tourists. Finally, if you know the difference between house and techno and you aren't a forum shut-in, it's pretty much obligatory that you check out any Source Material party that takes place during your stay. Affiliated with the record label White Material, and overseen by residents DJ Richard and Mo Probs, they always have a cool headliner and have the added bonus of not just attracting lonely young men with RSI neck problems and stylus collections.

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WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH DRUGS?

Contrary to popular perception, we’re not all constantly on E. In fact, there are loads of other stuff we’re on as well.

Smoking weed isn’t much of a problem in most neighborhoods, but generally the most liberal of these are Kreuzberg-Friedrichschain and Neukölln. Kreuzberg's mayor, Monika Hermann, has even begun making plans for Germany's first "coffee shop" in Görlitzer Park.

Generally, drugs like MDMA, pills, coke, and speed are tolerated in clubs, but most people make sure they're well hidden before they get to the doorman, as these guys are thorough in their frisking and anything found is generally thrown in the bin. Some drugs are really not tolerated by anyone, though, especially if they can be used to spike people’s drinks or can be overdosed on easily. In fact, anyone caught with GHB will not only be thrown out but also branded with a house ban, known as a Hausverbot, that usually lasts a year. Lord knows how they police this, but they do. It might seem surprising when you see the drug zombies floating around many of our clubs, but there is also, very literally, zero tolerance for people who are too fucked inside clubs, and they tend to get kicked the fuck out.

Anyone who finds himself in possession of some dodgy looking pills might benefit from checking out this site.

In some European cities it seems to be OK to do drugs in parks, but here people are very wary of the police. People can be stopped and searched if they’re looking particularly shifty or fucked. Undercover cops in clubs are not that rare, but they’re mostly there for the dealers. With harder drugs, people can be prosecuted even if it’s just for personal consumption. 

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Photo by Alex Young

POLITICS, PROTESTS, AND JUST HOW RACIST IS EVERYONE HERE?

LEGACY OF THE SQUATTERS

In the 90s, the chaos that was freshly reunified Berlin made it a squatter’s paradise. There were plenty of empty buildings, the owners of which were often unknown, and the authorities were indecisive. Residents were also largely supportive of the squatters’ goal to defend the existing buildings against the city government’s harebrained urban-development schemes. In its heyday, the Berlin squatter scene occupied at least 120 buildings, which it defended in a number of ferocious street battles with riot police.

But as Berlin’s appeal grew, so did the pressure on squatters created by real estate developers and politicians eager to improve the city’s image. As a result, most squats were either dissolved or legalized during the late-90s. When the last real squatters of Berlin were evicted from Brunnenstraße 183 in 2009, the movement ended with a whimper. However, the squats have left their mark on Berlin’s urban culture, and a number of the legalized collectives have since been converted into alternative cultural centers you can visit—be it for a cheap meal, an underground art show or a drawn-out discussion of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony as applied to the NSA’s surveillance mechanisms.  

Former squats turned cultural centers include the Schokoladen in Ackerstraße 169, a venue that hosts readings, parties, and concerts every other day, with a line-up of bands that varies from great one day to utter shite the next. Also worth a visit are the Volksküchen—or “peoples’ kitchens”—where many of these collectives dish out homemade food for either very little or no money. The collective Køpi137 show movies on their impressive screen and will even feed you on certain nights. So does the Filmrisz in Friedrichshain. A good list of these kind of events can be found at www.stressfaktor.squat.net. Be warned, though—turning up as a group of well-dressed, English-speaking strangers looking to “slum it” by going a night without WiFi is almost guaranteed to rub people up the wrong way.

If you’re looking to brush up your dialectic skills, head over to the Liebig34, an “Anarcha-Feminist, FLT Collective and Social Living House-Project” in a former squat in Friedrichshain. The community is entirely devoted to the “everyday advancement of the deconstruction of pre-determined roles and behavioural patterns," especially concerning gender, and includes a (free) bike-repair shop and an anarchist reading room. They’re apparently looking for new roommates at the moment, which could be an interesting experience—although you won’t be allowed to live there if you’re a straight man.

Finally, a truly authentic experience of the old squatter mentality can still be found in a house on Brunnenstraße 7. Here, you have to pass into the back courtyard, where lots of graffiti should alert you to the fact that the inhabitants do not like you because you are a tourist (refugees are welcome, though). If you stick around long enough, one of them might stick his head out the window to shout abuse and throw something at you. To make him really angry, take a selfie in front of the graffiti and then inadvertently leave your latte cup from the nearby Cafe Oberholz on a doorstep.

Just kidding—you should, for the sake of humanity, leave them alone, because it’s not a fucking zoo. Do you want people to come to your house and take pictures of you and your family? Didn’t think so.

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POLITICS, PROTESTS, AND JUST HOW RACIST IS EVERYONE HERE?

MAY DAY, REFUGEE STRIKES, AND NEO-NAZIS

Protests are an integral part of Berlin culture. On any given day you can run into a group of people protesting against everything from NATO’s handling of the Ukraine crisis to dolphin fishing. Even before Berlin regained its status as Germany’s capital in 1999, the fact that it was a Western enclave in the middle of the Soviet sphere of influence gave rise to a lot of political tension, the main outlet of which were the First of May demonstrations. For years, these demonstrations regularly embroiled the Kreuzberg district in chaos, with left-wing protesters and riot police locked in a kind of ritualized dance of rocks, batons, pepper-spray, and torched automobiles.

In recent years, a new police tactic of encouraging a far-flung street festival has had some success at containing these clashes, which has meant that May Day now has more in the way of spontaneous street raves and micro-brewed beer, and less in the way of capitalism-crushing class struggle. It’s still fun to check out, though.

About two years ago, Berlin also saw a new kind of protest emerge: the “refugee strike." This is when a group of asylum seekers squat on a public square or go on hunger strike in order to protest against Germany’s asylum policy. This form of protest has forced Berlin authorities to make some difficult decisions—they've permitted a large group of refugees (and anyone else who wants to, really) to squat in an abandoned school in Kreuzberg, but cleared a protest camp that had occupied a large square in the neighborhood after a year and a half. So far, the protest has achieved few tangible results, but it has managed to keep asylum seekers in the German news.

A group that regularly tries to exploit this situation is Berlin’s small but staunchly dedicated branch of the far-right party, NPD. Every other week they announce a demo protesting “asylum abuse” or “parasitism” by foreigners, which is usually attended by between 15 to 100 goons and around 20 times that number of antifascists, residents and immigrant associations. Usually, the head moron gives a speech to the supporters, journalists and policemen that surround him, while the anti-protesters try to block their route, clash with the police, or organize spontaneous street festivals. This sort of thing can be fun, as long as you keep the police line between you and the fascists.

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POLITICS, PROTESTS, AND JUST HOW RACIST IS EVERYONE HERE?

BERLIN'S IMMIGRANTS

Berlin is a city of immigrants, with 29 percent of the population having some sort of immigrant background. As in many other cities, different groups tend to cluster in different neighborhoods.

By far the biggest group are the Turks (5.5 percent of Berlin’s population, although many of them are technically Kurds). They began arriving in Germany after an agreement with Turkey in the 1960s, when the booming German industry cast around for cheap labor that would sustain growth without raising wages. Like the Italians before them, most of these “guest workers” ended up staying, and although acceptance by Germans has improved, discrimination is still an everyday occurrence. While there are now a number of politicians and journalists of Turkish background, very few have managed to gain a place in the upper echelons of industry or finance. Nevertheless, few Berliners today could imagine their city without the Turkish influence. The biggest Turkish populations live in the Kreuzberg, Neukölln, Wedding, and Moabit neighborhoods.

A smaller but still visible minority are the immigrants of Arab origin, many of whom are Lebanese Shiites, Kurds, or Palestinians who fled the civil war in the 1980s. As the German government refused to recognise many of them as refugees, quite a few have languished in a state of perpetual unemployment and failed integration, which has led some to turn to organized crime. The combination of their being Muslim and from large families has made them regulars in fear-mongering tabloid op-eds about “criminal Arab clans," which has helped foster a great deal of prejudice towards Arabs in Berlin. By far the most Arabs live in Neukölln, where 80 percent of the teenagers have an immigrant background.

After the Turks, the second largest group are the Poles, as well as many Serbs and Russians. Since many Berliners are used to Eastern Europeans from when they were all part of the "Eastern Bloc," people aren't too prejudiced towards them (besides a lot of Germans remaining convinced that Poles are wonderful car thieves).

Immigrants from Western European countries like France, Spain, Italy, and the UK make up around 3 percent of the population and face much less prejudice than other groups. Their biggest problem is being perceived as annoying hipster tourists who drive up rent prices and clog up the line in front of Berghain.

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Photo by Gergana Petrova

WHERE TO EAT

Burrito Baby
11 Pflügerstraße
Delicious vegetarian Mexican food in a nice, cozy atmosphere. Also, if you hate animals so much you can’t even bear to eat their by-products, you have the option of going vegan. The one downside is that it's pretty small, so it's always crowded.

Cookies Cream
55 Behrenstraße
Cookies is one of Berlin’s most renowned clubs—it's pretty much seen it all. Literally on top of the club is this restaurant. It’s expensive, but worth it if you like good vegetarian food and spotting minor vegetarian celebrities.

BBI Berlin Burger International
5 Pannierstraße 5
Like the entirety of the UK at the moment, Berliners basically eat nothing but burgers (don’t get too snobby; while it’s nice to occasionally eat something that doesn’t stop your heart stone dead, burgers are pretty fucking great). The best place for a patty and a bun in Berlin is BBI. It’s small but has everything a good burger place needs: an amazing kitchen, seating on the street, and a serviceable toilet.

Il Casolare
30 Grimmstraße 30
There are actually three of these hectic pizza places dotted around Berlin—one in Prenzlauer Berg (I Due Forni), one in Friedrichshain (Il Ritrovo), and this one, which is our favourite. This is partly to do with the beautiful patio area, which looks out over the canal. It's super loud, the waiters are dicks, and on weekends you sometimes have to wait an hour to get your food, but it’s all worth it for the delicious pizza, pasta, and antipasti.

Vatos Tacos Taco Truck
26 Ritterstraße
This is a food truck, so giving you directions is kind of pointless. But if I had to bet, I’d wager you’d find it on Ritterstraße. And it’s worth it if you do because it’s got the city’s best quesadillas and burritos, served with meat, vegetarian, or vegan options.

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WHAT DO LOCALS EAT?

Turkish Food
Berlin is home to the largest Turkish community outside of Turkey. This is bad news for racists, but good news for normal, nice humans with stomachs, because there’s an abundance of the best Turkish food outside of Turkey in every price range, ranging from döner kebab (invented in Germany) for €1.50 ($2), all the way up to high-end cuisine.

Club-Mate
Club-Mate is essentially Red Bull for arty German hipsters. It’s basically a bitter-tasting, caffeine-loaded iced tea, and everyone mixes it with vodka. However, because arty German hipsters drink it, arty German hipsters now also take the piss out of it. But you shouldn’t care if people think you're lame for breaking some obscure social rule about drinking a bottled drink—you’re a tourist; you’re always going to be the lamest person in the club.

Currywurst
There are a million places all over Berlin that sell the famous Currywurst. It’s basically a pork sausage, with or without skin (known as “darm”), which is then chopped into pieces and covered in a homemade blend of ketchup and curry powder. About as good for your gut as you’d imagine.

Bar Food Vendors
These guys travel around all the bars and work the lines of clubs, selling delicious snacks out of their little baskets. It’s usually handmade sandwiches, pakoras, and other finger food. They’re not cheap, but they’re there.

Kumpir
Look, I know that recommending you a baked potato sounds stupid, but honestly this is banging. Plus, this is a special kind of delicious baked potato from Eastern Europe or Turkey (apparently no one knows for sure).

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WHERE TO DRINK

In Neukölln, a neighborhood in south Berlin, the best place to get drinks is Das Gift—a typical Berliner bar, known to the locals as Eck-Kneipe, where you can get good, cheap draft beer. And like any typical Berliner bar, it’s run by a Scottish alt-rock titan—Barry Burns from Mogwai and his wife Rachel. The pub next door is run by the bassist from Arab Strap and The Jesus and Mary Chain have a falafel cart outside.

A lot of people say the area around Mitte is dying or becoming too overrun by tourists, but firstly you are a tourist, and secondly—frankly—it’s still perfectly nice. Avoid Rosenthaler Platz and instead head to a side-street like Auguststraße, which will lead you to Hackbarth’s on Auguststraße 49a. This place is perfect for a drink before dinner.

Kreuzberg is always worth a visit for its restaurants, and if you’re around here for a drink we’d recommend checking out Bellman’s at 103 Reichenberger Straße. It’s open late, sells alcohol, and I’ll probably be there, so say hi.

If, like a 16-year-old, you prefer to do your drinking in the park, head to Volkspark Friedrichshain. It’s huge and full of beautiful spots to watch the day go by from, in particular the Brothers Grimm-themed fountain (which is also a great place to meet unpleasant teenage drunks).

There’s a lot of buzz around Schöneberg being Berlin’s next big thing, which is weird because it's always been great. Recently, a host of new galleries have moved into the area so you can see some great art during the day before visiting Café Einstein, the most beautiful coffee house in town, then head to Victoria Bar to get pissed on nicer cocktails than the place's British name would seem to suggest.

Charlottenburg is actually one of the city’s most beautiful districts, if you ever get off the Highway of Hell that is Kurfürstendamm, Berlin’s busiest shopping corridor. On the streets nearby you’ll find plenty of high-end bars, like the Paris Bar, and shops that people who hate hipsters hate, like the Bikini Berlin concept store, where you’ll find the latest collections from underground Berlin designers. That said, if you’re not loaded, Charlottenburg may as well be a museum; your best bet is to just buy some tinnies and stare at the rich and wonderful.

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WHERE TO STAY

If you want a safe bet for a cheap and fun experience in Berlin, look no further than the A&O Hostel at Köpenicker/Ecke Adalbertstraße (from €9, or about $12, per night for a dorm bed). This is where the human detritus from every country on earth washes up, and locals call it “the trailer park of tourists." It ain’t pretty, but if you enjoy the disgusting melting pot of hormones that is Generation EasyJet then you’ll love it.

Another cheap option is to find a Pension, which is the German equivalent of a B&B and is typically run by some old people you have practically nothing in common with beyond a groundless belief that Berlin isn’t as fun as it used to be. Sadly, there are fewer and fewer left in the city itself but if you can find one online, it’s worth a punt.

If you’ve tricked someone into coming to Berlin who’d much rather be camping, check out Hüttenpalast at 65/66 Hobrechtstraße (from €55, or about $75, per night for an indoor caravan). They have indoor caravans and wooden huts to give you all the fun of the great outdoors while still being located in party-friendly Neukölln, where the wild things are.

If what you really want to do while you’re in Berlin is sleep with someone in a band, try the Michelberger Hotel at 39/40 Warschauer Straße (from €80, or about $110, per night for a room). This is where shitloads of DJs and other tarts stay when they come through town. If you don’t have a record label or club picking up your tab, you can just go next door to the more reasonably priced Industriepalast Hostel at 43 Warschauer Straße (from €20, or about $25, per night for a dorm bed). That one's also a decent bet if you're more into support bands than proper rock stars. If you don’t get lucky, Berghain is only a five-minute walk away.

One of the better, but pricier, hotel options is the 25hours Hotel Bikini Berlin (From €155, or about $210, per night for a room). The design is great, the views are fantastic and it's right next to Bahnhof Zoo—which you should check out anyway, both because of the whole Christiane F thing and because it's a great alternative to spending all of your time in Kreuzberg.

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Photo by Chris Bethell

LGBT BERLIN

Berlin has the largest gay population in Germany, so it tends to be pretty welcoming. There’s a gigantic pride parade in summer, called Stonewall CSD (Christopher Street Day), as well as a less publicized demo, usually on the same day. There are different street fairs, like the Motzstraßenfest—which is kind of like a non-moving pride parade—and more fetish-based fairs, some of them around Easter and some during the summer, where you’ll find all the sexy cops, fire-fighters and dildos your heart could possibly desire.

The gay club scene is huge and there are scores of places that cater to every kink imaginable. It ranges from hardcore sex places with darkrooms, alternative queer parties for every persuasion, and really big circuit parties for the tank-top muscle crowd. Berghain itself has Laboratory on its premises—a pretty hardcore gay sex club with changing party themes, including slime and scat. If that’s your thing.

Then there are the open-air venues. Almost every single one of the lakes around town has a gay beach, and almost all of Tiergarten (the gigantic park in the middle of the city) is the city's traditional cruising area.

In Schöneberg, centered mostly around Nollendorfplatz, you’ll find gay bookshops, pharmacies, clubs, bars, cafés, clothing stores, and everything else. The rest of the city is also pretty liberal, although homophobia is sadly still present. There were 290 incidents of homophobic violence in 2013 alone, and it’s not unknown for a gay couple to be attacked for holding hands in public. Police are pretty well versed in coping with homophobic idiots, and there are quite a few organisations that can assist you if you're a victim of homophobia during your stay.

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WHERE TO HANG OUT WHEN YOU'RE SOBER

New Theater
If you’re just looking for good drinks in a chilled spot, check out the New Theater. It’s a bar and DIY theatre space, which sounds pretty awful, I know—but if you’re lucky enough to be in town while they’re hosting a play, it’s a must-see. The bar is run by artists Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff, and is the perfect place to mingle with young artists and theatre lovers.

Berlin Community Radio
For the incredibly lazy among you, you technically don't even have to leave your bed to keep in the party loop—just tune in to BCR (Berlin Community Radio), which will play you great music, introduce you to the city’s subcultures, and point you towards that evening’s best parties and events.

Insel der Jugend (Isle of Youth)
When you need to get away from the heart of the city for a bit, the Insel der Jugend is an ideal place to enjoy the river Spree and remember that there’s more to Berlin than techno clubs and nightlife.

Paloma Bar
A great little first-floor bar at Kottbusser Tor. It can be tricky to find the entrance (it’s the first set of stairs after the photo-booth), but it’s worth seeking out as it offers a great bird’s eye view of drug deals and the occasional riot.

Grunewald Forest and Lake
When you’re really tired of the city, catch a train to Grunewald. Yes, it might be a haven for the obnoxious rich, but you’d have to be really bitter not to admit that it’s fucking beautiful. You can walk through the woods in solitude or stroll around the lake, which—being somewhere populated by wealthy people used to getting whatever they want—even has designated beaches for dogs.

Spreepark at Plänterwald
No longer that secret, but still worth seeing, the Spreepark used to be the only amusement park in East Germany but had to close in 2001. In 2002, the former operator took a bunch of the attractions to Peru to open a new park, but went bankrupt there as well. Then he was busted trying to smuggle 180 kilos of cocaine back to Germany. He's completely inept, basically, but he did leave some abandoned attractions behind, like a tiny choo-choo train you can ride around in. Take a guided tour or just jump the fence and explore it on your own if you're the type of person whose heroes have all climbed The Shard.

C-Base
A great hackerspace in the middle of Berlin where some serious Club-Mate consumption has been going on for years. These nerds have been programming all sorts of stuff that we’ll never find out about because they're hoarding it all away inside the mothership they’ve built themselves.

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Photo by David Georgi

HOW TO AVOID GETTING RIPPED OFF AND BEATEN UP

It’s true that Berlin’s crime stats have been on the rise, but it's not like the average Berliner spends their life in constant fear. The capital’s crime rate might be higher than in cities like Munich or Stuttgart, but compared with other places in Europe, Berlin is still a safe option, and tourists rarely feature among the victims of local street crime. Still, as in any big city, there are bound to be a couple of dicks, and it is Germany, so there might also be a cannibal living under your hostel.

Here are some basic life rules that also apply in Berlin: Don’t leave your smartphone or handbag lying around on the table. Don’t linger in deserted underground stations at night if you don’t necessarily have to. Don’t chant "Three Lions" in the street. Don’t use unlicensed taxis. Don’t be an idiot.

More specifically: On weekends, trains run all through the night, and there have been some violent attacks on innocent travelers in tourist hot spots like Alexanderplatz or Friedrichstraße recently. However, these kind of attacks happen very rarely and shouldn’t keep you from using public transport or visiting the places you want to see. Aside from the muggers, you'll find people on Kurfürstendamm or Tauentzien inviting passers-by to play the old shell game—which is, of course, a complete scam.

However, the most widespread type of crime in Berlin—and possibly the whole of Germany—is bike theft, which occurs most frequently in the trendy neighborhoods you’ll probably be hanging out in: Mitte, Kreuzberg, Neukölln. Make sure you don’t leave your bike standing in the street overnight as you’re likely to find it gone or stripped of its wheels the next morning.

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Photo by Theo Cottle

HOW NOT TO BE A SHITTY TOURIST

Berlin hostel are where tourists from all over the world come to perfect their antisocial behavior. The smell of trash and rotting döner wafts around them like a 500-metre halo of ill health.

Tourists also seem intent on giving us cancer. They want so badly to identify with the peasants who lived under Erich Honecker’s Communist regime that they sign up for “Trabi Tours” in their droves—the Trabi being probably the worst car ever designed by a German. It was made out of plastic, the engine was useless and burned leaded petrol, and people in East Germany had to wait for up to eight years to get their hands on one of these “vehicles." Of course, Germans learned from their past and nobody drives these pieces of shit any more—but tourists love them and rent them out so they can drive aimlessly around town while pumping carbon dioxide into the lungs of pedestrians. If you manage to avoid being hit by one or choking to death on the fumes, the climate change they're helping to bring about will eventually wipe us all out anyway. Please don’t encourage this sort of behavior, the only things worse are the booze bikes.

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PEOPLE AND PLACES TO AVOID

Drug Zombies

Drug zombies are only partly human. They lost their humanity somewhere during the three-day bender that Berliners call the weekend. They spend the night hiding in clubs, but creep out during the day looking for more drugs or a bottle of Club-Mate to keep them going. They foam at the mouth, collapse in parks like Hasenheide or Görli, and won‘t ever stop dancing, even if all they’re doing is typing the wrong PIN into a cash machine over and over again.

Nazis

Sadly, just because the war is long over, it doesn‘t mean the dumbest of all Germans have completely disappeared—they’ve just moved a little further outside the city center, to places like Friedrichsfelde or Köpernick. Frustratingly, they’ve also learned to blend into their surroundings, so they won’t necessarily be skinheads in bomber jackets any more. The best way to recognise them is by searching for a crushing aura of total failure.

Random Youth Gangs

Young, angry, bored: the perfect combination. Usually they hang out in groups of four at subway stations around town and wait for the perfect moment to give someone a kicking in front of the CCTV. Media reports have called the rise of youth violence in Berlin’s subway stations “alarming” and “totally irrational," so don’t hang around on your own and don’t flash your expensive smartphone around.

Potsdamer Platz—Mitte

They took the great No Man’s Land. They destroyed Tresor, a techno institution. They bulldozed everything else that represents Berlin’s history. What we got instead is a cold, sharp, and clinical attempt at a skyline, characterized by pointless skyscrapers and really bad Feng Shui.

Checkpoint Charlie

It’s a shitty little hut with fake soldiers who want to get paid every time you take a picture with them. That should be enough to put you off.

Mauerpark-Flohmarkt

This is the most overrated bullshit place in the whole city. Still, you won’t be able to escape it because the odds are that there will always be at least one person in your gang who, for completely unfathomable reasons, loves flea markets or karaoke. It’s supposed to be a cool place where thousands of hip young people go on Sundays. The truth is it’s crowded, dirty, expensive, and all the locals hate going there, like Camden.

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TIPPING AND HANDY PHRASES

Tipping
Mercifully, given that most of Berlin's young visitors surrender the ability to walk in a straight line halfway through their second day, a simple 10 percent should see you right pretty much everywhere.

Handy Phrases
Hello: Hallo
Goodbye: Tschüs [pronounced: "Ch-eeuus"]
Please: Bitte
Thank you: Danke
Where is Berghain?: Wo ist das Berghain?
Where can I get drugs around here?: Wo gibt es hier Drogen?
[Screamed by a bouncer] Please form one line!: In einer Reihe anstellen!

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A YOUTUBE PLAYLIST FOR BERLIN

This is a playlist of shit you might hear when you're out and about. This does not necessarily reflect the tastes of the VICE Germany office. But whatever—I think it's worth your hearing some German rap before you arrive, even if it's just so you have something to talk about in the smoking area outside Das Kool Klub.   

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VICE CITY MAP

Farewell, then, and see you in a three-hour line outside some techno Temple of Doom.

Lots of love,

VICE Germany. 

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All photos via VICE Canada.
The thrill of competition. The roar of the crowd. Glory. Victory. Overpriced food.

The World Cup can go fuck itself, I’m at a dog competition.

I’m at Toronto’s Harbourfront, having enjoyed a scenic 20-minute bus ride beautifully complemented by 20 minutes of lost wandering around construction sites, the crumbling remains of old superclubs, and never-ending condos, condos, condos, letting my legs slowly adhere to the hot, sticky surface of plastic lawn furniture. I’m watching dogs jump into a pool.

That’s the whole competition. Dogs run down a platform and jump into some water to retrieve an object hanging above it. Dogs are announced, let off their leash, one jump, and it’s done. This is DockDogs™.

DockDogs™, I find out, is a global franchise. It is “The World’s Premiere Canine Aquatics Competition where you can have the most fun with your dog!” There are a lot of rules. 44 pages of rules and regulations, in fact. Dogs must be “AT LEAST” six months old, and handlers “AT LEAST” seven years old to compete. “Handlers are prohibited from jumping into the pool, regardless of the situation.” There is no pushing, shoving, or throwing your dog in the water. “It must go in willingly!”

The dogs go in very willingly. They are JACKED UP about getting in that pool. It does look nice. I want to get in it, it is probably cleaner than Lake Ontario, which glistens polluted effervescence behind me next to an office building. “Today won’t be super busy, Sunday is the big day,” an event organizer tells me. Sunday is the finals. The qualifying rounds run from 9 AM to 8 PM on Friday and Saturday, with finals from 9 to 5 on Sunday. Today, about ten dogs mill around with owners in sport sunglasses and waterproof shoes, sniffing each other’s butts and occasionally jumping into and climbing back out of a pool of water. In total, there will be over 30 hours of dog aquatics in this parkette to the side of Toronto’s failed waterfront.

I’m having a fantastic time. There is something mesmerizing about earnestness on this scale. I wonder if I’ve ever cared about anything in my life the way these trainers in mid-rise shorts and sensible sandals care about the entire endeavour. The trainers and few dedicated fans are very, very into everything about this day in the sun. Dog handlers crouch beside their canine competitors; rubbing haunches and giving pep talks from embraces so intimate I have to look away. Dogs strain at leashes in their enthusiasm for what they are about to do. The crowd cheers for their heroes: Mosby, Meadow, Bosco. There are obvious favourites, but every animal is showered with praise when they’ve taken the plunge.

Hot dogs are not being sold—a missed opportunity, I think—but there is lemonade, pulled pork sandwiches, and a tent full of very complacent looking ambulance attendants. No one is going to injure themselves at the dog competition. There are only about 30 of us here.

Of the 30, I would guess that a full third are reporters or photographers here on assignment. They form a phalanx of flashing bulbs and perplexed faces at the end of the pool. The dogs jump, cameras flash, the dogs land, splash-splash, thank you, crowd, well done Bosco. These dogs need your cheers, folks, it really gets them ready to jump.

The event should be sponsored by Tevas and burnt, freckling shoulders. Or margaritas. Instead it is sponsored by the Toronto Port Authority and is, somehow, completely alcohol-free. This is part of the DockDogs™ rules. There is a Wine and Spirits fest happening a few tantalizing metres away, but we are separated by fences and passes and attitudes. I dream about sipping sangria while middle aged men in “Take It Easy” t-shirts hug their dogs and whisper encouragement in their little doggy ears, both of them vibrating with adrenaline. The announcer reminds us over and over that we’re witnessing something “fantastic, truly impressive.”

There are four categories to a DockDogs™ event: Big Air (“long jump for dogs”), Speed Retrieve (basically timed fetch), Extreme Vertical (doggie high jump), and “Iron Dog,” a triathlon-like combination of all three events. I meet the fifth placed female Iron Dog in the world (from 2011). Her name is Meadow. I feel somewhat starstruck but maintain my composure long enough to find out about her handler, Shari. The pair travelled from Michigan to this event, where Meadow is, frankly, killing it. The 8 year-old Chesapeake Bay Retriever has been competing for seven years. They attend roughly 15 competitions per year, and say the atmosphere at this DockDogs™ is “amazing.”

There are a lot of big words being thrown around that perhaps should not be. “Exciting.” “Wild.” “Legends.” “Legend Dogs” are dogs aged ten or older. We do not see any legend dogs, but the announcer at one point gets up and walks his own dog through a few jumps, effectively announcing himself and competing at the same time, which strikes me as pretty legendary. This man is a true professional. When the phone playing the event’s music gets a text and the tunes cut out, he covers flawlessly, shouting out to the official merch table and suggesting we take advantage of the Canadian Skin Cancer Society’s booth to get our sun damage checked out, for free. We do. My skin is only medium damaged.

The rulebook says that “If a team is tied for first place with another team at the end of the finals round, a ‘jump off’ shall occur until there is a defined winner.” I spend a lot of time praying for a jump off that never comes. At national events a judge will evaluate all jumps electronically using proprietary digital video stop action technology. Club events use the “Manual Judging System,” i.e. two people and their eyes, but this is the Canadian Eastern Regional finals. Nothing but the goddamn best. It is kind of hard to tell how any of the dogs are doing, unless you are a DockDogs™ connoisseur. It mostly looks like the dogs are all having a nice time doing the same thing.

This continued for hours. Literal hours. I ate some chicken and watched some dogs, contemplated sneaking into the wine tent and watched some dogs, got a gentle sunburn near the skin cancer booth and watched some dogs, watched some dogs and watched some dogs. Minutes stretched into hours, the announcer played Top 40, read out dog statistics, and commented on the crowd’s enthusiasm when it lagged. There was a bit of a lunch rush when the nearby office buildings let out. People wearing lanyards and work pants stood by bemused, snapchatting dog pics to their girlfriends in other offices across the city. It was probably the least eventful a thing can be while still qualifying as, technically, “an event.”

DockDogs™ wrapped up at 8 PM with a real “everyone’s a winner” vibe. I normally take issue with this kind of thing—life’s not fair, not everyone gets what they want, some people are, really and truly, more talented than others, etc.—but when it came down to it, the dogs didn’t even know they were competing, so where’s the harm? Great work, dogs. Great work, novelty T-shirt owners and dog enthusiasts. Great work, intrepid and hard-working announcer. You’re all winners. But I think we can all agree that the real winner here is journalism.


@monicaheisey

Taking all the food in your pantry, blending it up into a weird paste, and making someone drink it isn’t just a timeless American pastime—it’s also a classic form of behavioral control that has been institutionalized in prisons across the country and even sanctioned by the justice system.

For years, prison kitchens across the country have been cooking up edible Frankenstein sludges, made from various parts of different meals, that wardens feed to particularly unruly prisoners as a form of punishment and behavioral control. The sludge is known as “nutraloaf,” and recipes for the nutritious mélange vary from state to state.

One thing that doesn’t vary is that the prisoners who eat the stuff hate it. But so far, despite numerous lawsuits filed by prisoners claiming that the food constitutes a violation of the 8^th Amendment's protection from cruel and unusual punishment, no recipes have been deemed as such. The loaf, which is referred to in the penal system as a “Behavior Modified Meal,” is typically served as punishment for breaking or throwing trays, utensils, food, or poop. It’s doled out three days in a row for a first offense, and typically seven days in a row for any offense after that.

Recently, a historical prison site in Philadelphia decided to mix up its usual Monday-night hoagie-cheese steak-water ice-scrapple extravaganza, and instead handed out samples of nuraloaf from across the country. Although they didn’t offer any samples of the notorious Arizona-style nutraloaf, which got a reputation for being the nastiest of the nasty after Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio won a federal case allowing him to serve the stuff, I decided to check it out anyways so that any foodie who finds him or herself in the pokey will know what to expect.

State: Oregon and Washington

Taste and texture: I hope you like meatloaf, because that’s essentially what their nutraloaf tastes like. It has the same texture as undercooked beans, and occasionally a mushy apple sliver or a chunk of sour cabbage interrupts the otherwise savory taste. But overall, with a little bit of ketchup or barbecue sauce, I guess it wouldn’t be too bad.

Recommended pairings: I’d suggest eating the Oregon/Washington-style loaf with a standard domestic lager, like a Yeungling or Brooklyn Lager. Any house red, like a merlot, would be fine as well and something that shouldn’t be too hard to bribe a guard with sexual favors for.

State: Illinois

Taste and texture: The Illinois version is much lighter than the one found in the Pacific Northwest. Although it contained meat, it had a much sweeter flavor, with strong hints of tomato and carrot, as well as a little garlic spice, which was a nice touch. The texture was comparable to a dry brownie that falls apart when you try to hold it but can be easily mashed back into its pasty batter form. Even though I've never tried vegan meatloaf, I'd imagine this is what it tastes like.

Recommended pairings: You might want something a little spicier to counterbalance the kick that this Midwest varietal lacked. I’d suggest going with something like a red zinfandel, or a pinot grigio, an imitation of which, so long as you have the right molding spices, could always just be brewed in a trash bag under your bunk.

State: Maryland

Taste and texture: The Maryland loaf gets points for having more moisture than any of the other loafs, but it also loses points for tasting so much like vomit. Somehow, it manages to perfectly evoke that simultaneously moist and grainy, salty-with-a-hint-of-sweet-curry, dehydrated ooze that barely makes it out of your mouth and onto your front steps as you crawl home from the bar after drinking nothing but beer and whiskey and then thinking it’s a good idea to hit up an all-night gyro stand without getting any water. And the most surprising thing about it: it’s completely vegetarian.

Recommended pairings: We’d suggest something rich and fruity, like a Bordeaux or a pinot noir, to counterbalance its strange acidic tang. These can get a little pricier, so you might need to start doing your warden’s taxes, Andy Dufresne–style, to get your hands on a few bottles.

State: Idaho

(Dinner)

Taste and texture: If you find yourself eating the dinner nutraloaf in Idaho, count yourself lucky. Although it has one of the weirder recipes (e.g., “gelatin, any flavor”) it didn’t taste half bad. It was the first loaf that didn’t have that dry Fancy Feast texture. Instead it felt more like eating cafeteria mac and cheese, which, despite how you feel about what your high school lunches tasted like, at least you’re back in familiar territory. I was also able to easily distinguish some of the ingredients in the loaf, including corn, beans, and ground bits of meat. The mint-flavored gelatin in ours was vaguely off-putting, and the use of American cheese and margarine definitely undermined the claim that the stuff is supposed to be healthy, but a heavy dose of onions and beef gave it a comforting Tex-Mex appeal, and overall it was my favorite.

Recommended pairings: The strangely creamy yet south-of-the-border combination seemed to call out for sweet and strong porter, like one of those caramelly nitro beers that cost like $9 a bottle. This will be next to impossible to come by in prison, but if you have a good friend with a large anus, perhaps you guys can work something out.

(Breakfast)

Taste and texture: Maybe skip breakfast in Idaho, though; it was by far the worst one we tried. The ingredients were unsweetened dry cereal, granulated sugar, powdered milk, breadcrumbs, margarine, and orange juice. Maybe they just went a little too heavy on the bottom-shelf orange juice, but it tasted about as metallic as chewing on tin foil. It had the texture of soggy cereal that had been left to dry on the side of the bowl, and you could almost taste the cereal varnish. If General Mills had to mass-market it, they would be legally required to call it Curdled Flakes. We were just glad it was served cold, because otherwise we would have guessed that someone’s cat had just coughed it up.

Recommended pairings: The only reasonable drink we could suggest for this would be something extremely alcoholic. Skip the beer or the wine and go straight for the rotgut, preferably something piss-yellow. You’ll need to get the taste out of your mouth, and to get your mind off the fact that you’ll be eating this crap for the next couple of days.

By the end of my five-course taste test, I felt a little underwhelmed. On some level, I was hoping to see just how violated my tastebuds felt, but all said and done, it was nothing to write the ACLU about. 

Sure, there were occasional violent clashes of taste and texture, but for the most part, it was all just boring and uncomfortable—like they somehow took everything that makes prison a place you’d never want to go, boiled it down into an edible form, baked it in a disposable aluminum pan, and then served it. The punishment isn’t the taste; it’s the fact that you have to keep eating it every day until someone decides you don’t have to anymore. 

Photo via Flickr user playerx

You're allowed to use Twitter's 140 characters any way you want. Some people continiously exhort their followers to read the freshest hot take they've posted on whatever politics/sports/tech site they write for, some get into incredibly petty fights with their ideological opponents, some post "inspirational" quotes or lame jokes in attempt to build a following they can later monetize through ads; some interact with brands as if they were human. Occasionally, some users attempt to cobble together narratives on the social network, which most definitely wasn't built for that—"Twitter novels" of the sort that @DadBoner and others write are almost always user-unfriendly, difficult to follow, and prone to rambling. You get the sense the authors are making them up as they go along, and if you miss a "chapter" you'll have to scroll down through their accounts to find where you left off. 

In the case of @Homer_Marijuana, however, none of that matters. After changing it's name a few times in the past week or so it's settled into a narrative about the Simpsons obsessively smoking weed, Bart getting sent to Iraq, Lisa and Maggie falling into despair, and a fourth Simpson kid, Ken, going to prison for shooting a guy. That summary doesn't do it justice, however—there are hints of Greek tragedy in it, and lots of bizarre humor, and also Sonic the Hedgehog is a character? Like most of the best things about Twitter, it's hard to describe, and you should scroll through its archive to get caught up. Below is an abridged excerpt of the beginning of the story if you want to get a taste for it. 

Abortion-rights activists rally outside the Supreme Court on Monday. Photo via Flickr user American Life League

On Tuesday, I was wandering around the internet and fell into a random binder full of women, which it turns out is a great place to meet badass genius revolutionaries. Jane Doe is a doula and an underground abortion provider. She writes romance novels, dreams of expatriation, and makes the best sea-salt caramels you’ve ever had. She’s spoken at statehouses and chased down riot cops. In the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision that corporations like Hobby Lobby are people with important religious beliefs about contraception (and that men need Viagra but women don’t need birth control), she released a DIY guide to the basics of abortion, birth control, emergency contraception, and more. We got together in a hidden pocket of the binder so I could ask her for the details.

VICE: Why did you write this guide?
Jane Doe: That's a complicated question. About ten years ago, I wrote a guide to surgical abortions after South Dakota banned all abortions in that state. Since that time, I've learned a lot, and I've been receiving—at least once a month or so—emails from desperate women who find my surgical abortion how-to and want to abort their pregnancies. For a long time, I didn't know what to tell them, and then I found out more about medical abortion—how safe it is (especially compared to birth), how women are undergoing medical abortions at home, in privacy, and how there's a law that lets anyone in the United States import up to 90 days of any non-scheduled prescription drug.

From there, I started actually giving away the pills to women who emailed me—a proposition that became both expensive and incredibly (legally) risky.

Then I started sending them URLs to websites that sold the pills—which is when I thought, Wait, what am I doing? I could be letting people know all of this information, everything I know about how to find these medications, how to use them, what to do if something goes wrong.

I think this information belongs to women. It's ours. And now it's out there. Once it's on the Internet, it's hard to scrub.

Were you inspired by the Supreme Court decision or was the timing purely coincidental?
I'd been working on A Womb of One's Own for about six months in total, and like many writers tend to do, I found myself procrastinating toward the end of the project. When the Hobby Lobby decision came down, and I realized the Supreme Court wasn't actually saying that all religious expression was protected—just things pertaining to women's health—I dropped everything else on my plate and finished the pamphlet that day.

Wow. Has your motivation always been purely political or were there personal experiences that got you started?
One thing a lot of women are surprised about when they get to know me and my activism is that I've never had an abortion. What's more, I am pretty sure that for the vast majority of my reproductive life, if I'd become accidentally pregnant, I'd have been likely to carry the pregnancy to term. I'm into birth. I've been a doula. I helped deliver my former roommate's baby in our living room. I say all this because a lot of people get this very particular idea of what kind of woman would write an abortion manual: She must hate kids, they'd think, or must have had an experience where she was denied an abortion. But that never happened. What did happen is that I was raised in a very pro-choice family, and I saw friends and family struggle with their reproductive choices. The biggest thing I learned is that what's right for one person isn't for another. I will say that starting to send the abortion pills to desperate women started after a mother of three in West Texas emailed me asking which of several sharp household implements might be best for her to use if she wanted to self-terminate.

That's intense. I remember a friend telling me about doing an early term abortion on herself with a smooth chopstick. Does that kind of thing usually work, or was my friend just lucky?
I'm sorry your friend had to go through that. Well, it's a tricky thing to say. Here's how it worked when your friend did it: Any time you dilate the cervix past a certain point, sometimes, pregnancies—especially early ones—will spontaneously abort. Dilation of the cervix is the first part of any abortion procedure, though it's generally followed up with extracting the uterine contents, either with a vacuum or curettes. Now, the reason they do that second step is this: When you just dilate the cervix, it's not going to work nearly as often. Moreover, you're introducing yourself to a pretty big risk of infection to induce a miscarriage that way. I'd advise against any kind of instruments being introduced to the cervix—and if anyone does that, they need to be incredibly careful about infection, including getting to a hospital if they notice symptoms.

I noticed you didn't provide any information about surgical abortion and advised against DIYing that procedure. But you did write a guide to surgical abortions once, right? Why the change?
That's a good question, and I'm glad you asked it. Originally, I planned to include information about surgical abortions, but the problem is that surgical abortion is really a top-down procedure. You can't really do it to yourself, you need someone else to do it, and it's better—much better—if that person is trained and experienced, not a nervous wreck doing something for the first time. The supplies, the skill level involved—surgical abortion is relatively simple and safe for surgery, but there's a reason it takes a long time to become a surgeon. What's more, misoprostol (pill) abortions are regularly done through the end of the second trimester in Europe, and studies show them to be statistically just as safe as a surgical procedure. Given the fact that a medical abortion's supplies cost $10 and a woman can do it on her own, I didn't think it was wise to include information on a more dangerous, more expensive, more difficult procedure just for the sake of completeness. If anyone wants a guide to surgical abortion, they're welcome to check it out here. Someone asked me when I published that one whether I'd provide a guide on home appendectomies. I told them: As soon as a state makes appendectomies illegal, you bet I will. The original guide was written more as an angry howl, a political statement—though a medically accurate one. I do not expect anyone actually used it to provide or obtain a surgical abortion, having never heard anything to the contrary.

So now that we’re talking about reproductive justice again, what do you think is the root of the problem?
Imagine a basketball game where one team is only—and I do mean only—playing defense. It doesn't matter how good their defense is, or even whether the other team is bad at basketball. If you're only playing defense, they rack up the points and you lose. Ever since Roe v. Wade, that's been the state of abortion politics in the United States. The left has played defense, acquiescing to little regulations here, waiting periods there. Then the folks at Planned Parenthood and NARAL want to tell us that we're winning victories and should keep donating because the score is only 75-0, instead of 115-0. On the left, we need to stop taking the defensive side--stop letting our opponents frame the debate, start advocating for more access, more clinics, more freedom to make a very personal and intimate decision in a more personal and intimate way.

So we have to start playing offense, which is really just exercising the rights we should have in the first place?
Well, it's not just that. Here's something big: Very few medical students today are getting any training in performing abortions. Most schools don't even offer it, and the ones that do have it as "opt-in" training—because, as we know, most people training to become doctors just don't spend enough time studying and are dying to take on an extra opt-in course that could be a politically sensitive issue for others in the school. So getting that education back into our medical schools, and pushing for state laws so that medical abortions can be delivered in many different environments, by many different levels of healthcare providers, should be a big priority. Right now, the way you get a medical abortion in the United States involves spending hundreds of dollars and, often, several clinic visits—and then a doctor puts a paper cup with pills into your hand. There's no reason it should take a doctor to do that. Nurses and nurse-midwives should also be able to perform abortions nationwide. And that's just one of many ways we can fight back against the decline of access. Even "blue" states are losing clinics to regulations and to the greying of abortion providers, who are now, on average, senior citizens. We need to think of creative, structural ways to make it easier to make an informed choice about pregnancy. Oh, and that's another thing—pro-choice people too often focus only on one side of the choice equation, to the detriment of all women.

Oh, wow, I can't believe it's not even taught in medical schools. Don't midwives do abortions in other countries?
They do! And especially when it comes to medical abortions, where the extent of the "skill" involved is literally putting pills in someone's hands after making sure they are giving informed consent. It boggles the mind that this is a task we're requiring doctors to fly hundreds of miles to perform.

I want to go into that last bit a little more, about how the pro-choice movement has focused too much on one side of the equation. When we hear "pro-choice," we're really saying "pro-legal abortion." But I really am pro-choice. I am. I believe any woman—any woman at all—should be able to make the choice she prefers about keeping or terminating a pregnancy. And I have to think that we've been letting a lot of women down, because a whole lot of women are getting abortions in the first place because there's no paid maternity leave, there are almost no daycare subsidies. This country is brutal to mothers, especially mothers living in poverty. They are damned if they have an abortion and damned if they don't. A lot of anti-abortion people talk about women's abortion-related trauma and how a lot of women wish they'd chosen differently. Well, no kidding. A lot of these women are essentially economically coerced into termination. If we're really pro-choice, that means working hard for maternity leave policies and daycare subsidies, as well as expansions of SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, aka Food Stamps] benefits and the WIC [benefits for women with children] program. If we're really only talking about choice when it comes to the rich, then we may as well not be fighting this battle at all. Everyone knows that rich women, even pre Roe, were able to travel and obtain safe abortions. Today, many poor women are stuck in a double bind: unable to afford to keep a pregnancy, unable to afford to terminate it. We need to work on both sides of that double bind if we want a country that has not just a legal notion of "choice," but real reproductive justice.

That seems like an important piece. So tell me about this diaphragm thing—we don't really need to get them fitted?
Yeah, looking into alternative forms of birth control one day, I found out that diaphragms are actually way cooler than I'd ever known—and all because of some fairly recent studies. In the last ten years, a series of studies, mostly in the journal Contraception, have explored a new method of using the diaphragm that makes it as effective as some forms of hormonal birth control, less messy, less complicated, and allows for more spontaneity. What's more, these same studies found that a huge majority of women—almost 90%—could use a single size of diaphragm, 70mm. If it doesn't fit, you'll know, because you will have discomfort and it will be too big. And a new diaphragm model, the Caya, has a contoured fit that will work for even more women without needing to be fitted. It was always a myth that you needed a re-fit every time you gained or lost weight, but—much like the also-outdated annual Pap smear—it got you to pay your gynecologist on the regular even if you weren't relying on him or her for pill packs. Since diaphragms are available without a prescription in the UK, they're not too hard to get shipped here. Mine cost under $20, and has been going strong for two years now. Better for the environment, too. When I started looking into diaphragms, I thought they were this old, 70s-style contraception. Instead, I found out that they're 21st-century-ready. They offer a great non-hormonal option that works significantly better than condoms and is woman-controlled.

I've never even seen one. Are they like my instead cup? Or more like a diva cup? [For the uninformed: Menstrual cups are alternatives to tampons that are worn inside the vagina and collect menstrual fluid.  You dump them out and reinsert a couple times a day and some of us find it much nicer than having wads of bleached rayon in our twats.]
A lot like an instead cup. In fact, you can even use one for mess-free period sex, and as a low-flow menstrual cup.

How do you know if it fits or if it's working?
If it fits, the rim of the diaphragm will lay basically flat, without bending and bulging in the rim. A too-small diaphragm won't stay in when you go about your daily business. A too-large one will bend and bulge.

Is it really safe to just leave them in all the time? It doesn't trap bacteria?
You rinse it once daily with water. Generally, during my period, I also soak it in a hydrogen peroxide solution. A normal vagina is an ecosystem that's unlike anything else in the human body, and the material is totally inert. As long as you're washing it and introducing it only to one vagina (yours), the only bacteria there after your rinse will be trace amounts of your very own flora.

That's pretty amazing. I talk to so many people that have trouble with hormonal birth control, trouble with IUDs [intrauterine devices], etc., and here the answer is right under our nose for only $20. It's almost like there's a conspiracy.
Well, I think that a diaphragm poses a pretty big threat to a lot of OB/GYNs, since they don't need to be fitted and they don't need to sell spermicidal jelly with them. Turns out that spermicidal jelly was actually making the diaphragms less effective, not more, because it was irritating delicate tissues and women took them out too soon after sex. A form of birth control that costs less than $50 and can last five years if properly kept? I think it's not exactly something our OB/GYNs, who mostly have pens with birth control pill logos and clipboards with "Mirena" on them, would go for.

It is a conspiracy! I knew it!

This information belongs to women—it’s ours, thanks to Jane Doe. Go download it and pass it around so it can’t be taken from us. Tara Burns is the author of Whore Diaries: My First Week as an Escort and Whore Diaries II: Adventures in Independent Escorting. Follow her on Twitter.

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Photo Assistant: Andrés Cardona
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Bershka shirt

For more than a decade, Vicar Andrew White has been risking his life to preach for peace on the streets of Baghdad, driving through bombed-out war zones to spread his message. In his quest, White has become the primary liaison between the Sunni and Shia Muslims. 

Steve Green, president of Hobby Lobby, wants to sell America on the Bible, one teenager at a time. Photo courtesy of Museum of the Bible

On Monday, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the controversial Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. case, ruling for the first time that for-profit businesses can hold religious views and that they can use said views to get out of providing birth control coverage to their employees. Depending on which team you play for in the culture wars, the ruling was either a tragic affront to democracy, healthcare, and civil rights, or a rare win for freedom and religious liberty. For the Green family, the billionaire evangelicals who “closely hold” the Hobby Lobby corporation, it was obviously the latter. But it was also an auspicious beginning, an early victory in a larger fight to persuade America that it is a Christian nation bound by the literal truths of the Bible.

Although relatively unknown among unbelievers until the Supreme Court case, Hobby Lobby and its devout owners have long been a powerful force on the Christian right. The Green family is basically to American Christendom what George Soros is to progressive causes, or, perhaps more appropriately, what the Koch brothers are for the Tea Party. David Green, Hobby Lobby’s self-made founder, is worth roughly $5.1 billion, according to Forbes, which estimates that he has given away more than $500 million over his lifetime, including at least $300 million in property donations to evangelical colleges, churches, and ministries. The Oklahoma City–based arts-and-crafts chain employs three in-house chaplains to minister to and convert employees; three times a year, on Christmas, Easter, and the Fourth of July, it takes out ads in national newspapers celebrating the power of Jesus and America and directing readers to a toll-free number where they can be saved.

But in recent years, the Greens have vastly expanded their philanthropic footprint, undertaking a multimillion-dollar push to study and promote the scriptures. Since 2009, the family has assembled 40,000 biblical antiquities—the world’s largest private collection—and launched an international scholarship program to study the rare texts and artifacts. The family is now building a permanent home for its collection, and is also planning to roll out a Bible curriculum for public high school students this fall.

The goal, according to Hobby Lobby president Steve Green (David's son), is to “reintroduce” a prodigal nation to the “absolute authority” and “historical reliability” of the Bible. “This nation is in danger because of its ignorance of what God has taught,” Green explained in a speech to the National Bible Association last year. “We need to know it. Because if we don't know it, our future is going to be very scary.

“We want to show that this book when we apply it to our lives, in all aspects of life, has been good. Because it has,” he said. “If we can encourage a skeptical world to reconsider a book that can change our world, that is an exciting journey.”

The capstone of this vision is an as-yet-unnamed museum devoted to the Bible located just steps from the National Mall in Washington, DC. The museum, which will cost somewhere around $800 million and is set to open in 2017, will house the Greens’ permanent holdings, which range from unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls and early tracts of Martin Luther to Elvis Presley’s Bible—and Babe Ruth’s Bible, and Johnny Cash’s Bible, and the world’s smallest Bible.

Details about the project are still scarce, but early accounts promise a very interactive experience, heavy on the historical reenactments and animatronics. For example, the Green Collection’s traveling exhibition—a teaser showcase currently on tour in Vatican City, Israel, Cuba, and the Bible Belt—includes a set piece of an “ancient Jewish synagogue” displaying “Torah scrolls that survived the Nazi Holocaust”; a reenactment of “St. Jerome’s Cave, where guests imitate 4th-century monks transcribing the Bible by candlelight”; a replica of the Guttenberg press; and, naturally, a hologram of Abraham Lincoln.

Steve Green and others affiliated with the museum insist that the goal is not to proselytize, but rather to make the story and impact of the Bible more “accessible” to nonbelievers. “We’re not trying to convince anybody of anything,” the museum’s chief operating officer, Cary Summers, said in a March interview with the New Republic. “We’re simply presenting the facts.” He added, though, that the consistency across the Green collection “gives a great deal of comfort that the Bible is true, and it’s accurate.” (A representative for the Museum of the Bible—the foundation that oversees the Green Collection and its related endeavors—declined to make anyone available to me for comment.)

A nun checks out the Green family's biblical trophies at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, DC. Photo courtesy of Museum of the Bible

The scope of the Greens’ proselytizing vision comes through more clearly—and controversially—in the Museum of the Bible curriculum, which is set to debut at the public high school in Mustang, Oklahoma, this fall. An initial draft of the course text is pretty half-baked when it’s not overtly evangelical. A discussion about the accuracy of the book (“How Do We Know That the Bible Is Historically Reliable?”), for example, includes this sentence, apropos of nothing: “Just as historians do not know everything about King David’s reign many centuries ago and about the life of Jesus, we similarly do not know all of Dr. King’s activities during his stay in the Birmingham jail.” (That’s Martin Luther King, Jr., in case you were confused.)  In another lesson, a list of the biblical God’s attributes includes “gracious and compassionate,” “full of love,” and “a righteous judge,” conveniently ignoring all the vengeful, jealous bits. At another point, the text refers to "the American film classic" The Birth of a Nation, a cultural aside that is both embarrassingly racist and totally obsolete.

Mark Chancey, a professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University, said he was “baffled” by the text, particularly given Museum of the Bible’s efforts to sell itself as a non-sectarian academic endeavor. “I mean this curriculum really had not been vetted,” he said. “It was just such an odd thing for them to roll out.”

The Greens, he added, “have worked hard to make inroads in the scholarly community—they want to be major players. That's what made the Bible curriculum such a jaw-dropper—they have been saying that they are about one thing, but then this curriculum comes out and it’s something else entirely."

Image courtesy of Americans United

Predictably, civil liberties groups have been outraged by all this, and are petitioning the Mustang School Board to cancel the Bible class. “This is just Christian proselytizing in public schools,” said Andrew Seidel, a staff attorney for the Freedom From Religion Foundation who has investigated the Mustang Bible curriculum and its ties to Hobby Lobby. “There’s just so much wrong—the entire curriculum is tainted with a Christian bias. It’s totally uncritical. They make assumptions based on their personal Christian faith and treat it as fact.”

The Mustang School Board has said that it is looking into criticisms and working on putting together a new draft before school starts next month. But without significant changes, Seidel said, the school district could face a legal challenge. “We're going to be watching it very, very closely,” he said. “I've never seen a case like this that would be able to stand up to court scrutiny.”

So once again the Greens find themselves in another skirmish over the role of religion in public life. While you may not agree with the family’s belief in the absolute truth of the Bible, it's obviously had a profound impact on world history and Western civilization, and questions about how and whether it should be studied—and revered—are part of a massive debate that America has been having for decades. But after decades of watching the Christian right cede territory—on school prayer, gay marriage, displaying the Ten Commandments in front of courthouses—the Greens seem determined to test the line between church and state.

“I think the Greens do see this as a calling, in the religious sense,” said Chancey, “to remind America of what they see as its Christian origins. There is a clear sense of mission to use these initiatives to spread what they see as the biblical message, for America's own good.”

“I think sometimes it’s hard for them to understand that not everyone accepts their religious views about the Bible as simply fact,” he added. “Not everyone sees things like they do.” He burst out laughing: “I guess that’s an understatement.”

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Screencap via Twitter.
What has already been a terrible year for the Canadian journalism industry got a little worse this week when the free Toronto weekly The Grid announced it was ending its remarkable three-year run, both in print and online.

“Well, we gave it our best shot,” the paper tweeted Wednesday. “After 162 issues, this Thursday’s issue of @TheGridTO will be our last. We are shutting down immediately.”

In total, 22 jobs will be lost, including journalists, designers, production, and sales staff.

“The media landscape continues to be impossible for a start-up,” publisher and editor-in-chief Laas Turnbull told the Toronto Star in an interview.

The online outpouring of support from readers was overwhelming.

"This is so upsetting. I love this paper more than any publication in Toronto," a reader wrote on The Grid’s Facebook page. "This is actually the best paper Toronto has ever had," read another comment.

But for all the lament, it’s hardly a mystery what killed the award-winning paper. Print advertising is in a steady decline and online ads make up only a tiny fraction of what’s been lost. News organizations across the country are facing the same problem, and until more outlets find a way to make money on journalism, there will be more closures and more layoffs.

Most newsrooms have already been cut to the bone, and each contract negotiation brings new risks. At the Toronto Star, the union fought hard to prevent a two-tier pay scale and the Globe and Mail is currently in the midst of union negotiations over pay and whether journalists should be forced to write advertising copy. Management already have a fence in place around the newspaper’s headquarters in case of a lockout, which quickly spurred an entertaining parody Twitter account where the fence is personified.

Even the publicly funded CBC, which is being starved by the federal government, must find 657 people to can over the next two years, not to mention a host of other changes that by 2020 will shrink the broadcaster’s staff by 25 percent and cut back on news and documentary production.

In many of these cases, the cuts are surprisingly short-sighted, especially when the parent companies are often billion-dollar behemoths like Bell, Shaw and Rogers, all of which announced some recent cuts to their news divisions despite making fistfuls of money selling us cable, internet, and wireless service.

Even TorStar, parent company of the Toronto Star and The Grid, made $173.5 million in profits last year, so if they really wanted to keep it alive they could have.

What makes The Grid’s demise particularly alarming is that, as many media folks observed, the weekly did everything right from a reader’s perspective. It was brilliantly designed and had a solid writing staff that often provided the best commentary on what was happening in the city, especially during Mayor Rob Ford’s various trainwrecks. It was smart without being smarmy, and hip without being condescending. If The Grid couldn’t sustain itself despite a loyal following, what hope do other papers have?

But perhaps more importantly, The Grid was an important part of the journalistic pipeline in Toronto, where most Canadian media companies are based. Many people who now work at more pedigreed outlets got their starts at The Grid, or at its predecessor Eye Weekly. Now there’s one less place where young journalists can cut their teeth, one less place starving freelancers can pitch their stories.

It’s also one less source of information for readers. People will eventually find a way to finance journalism again, either through advertising, subscriptions, or patronage (if you’re a billionaire, holla at me!) but in the meantime, millions of stories will go untold. That’s the real shame.


@iD4RO