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All photos by Raymond van Mil unless otherwise stated

The Dutch capital is a compact museum city being sunk into its canals by rich Americans staring at Rembrandts and the revolving cast of perverts and drug addicts who infest the red light district. Here’s how to not be awful in Amsterdam.

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?
   Screw in the Park but Don't Wear Soccer Cleats | Protests? What Protests? | Immigration
– WHERE TO EAT
– WHAT DO LOCALS EAT?
– LGBT AMSTERDAM
– WHERE TO DRINK
– WHERE TO STAY
– 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

De Soos

Leidseplein 12 1017 PT

One of the very few reasons to go to Leidseplein is for the Chicago Social Club, which everyone just calls "De Soos." It’s a former theater that’s been converted into a laidback club with a big dancefloor and it attracts every Dutch person who dresses a bit like you.
LINK

Trouw
Wibautstraat
127-131, 1091 GL

This is hands-down the best club in Amsterdam, and the atmosphere on the dancefloor is as good as in any club we’ve been to in Europe. They somehow manage to book great DJs every single night (apparently great DJs love coming to play in Amsterdam, who’d have guessed?) but if you’re planning on going, make sure you’re in the know with who’s on that night because the doormen can be dickheads. Name the DJs who are performing, and they’re more likely to let you in. Be quick, because 2014 looks set to be the last year Trouw (that's what we call it for short, let's face it, it's got a fucking stupid name) is open. They haven’t announced why they’re closing yet, but they have just banned cameras, so maybe they’re really, really paranoid about their appearance or something.
LINK

Studio 80

Rembrandtplein 17, 1017 CT

Rembrandt Square is the fucking pits, but tucked away between all kinds of horribleness is Studio 80, which for almost a decade has been one of the city’s most important clubs on the house and techno scene. It’s almost exactly 50 percent better than Studio 54. That’s just maths.
LINK

Canvas
Volkshotel, Wibautstraat 150 1091 GR
The Western world's current sad lust for putting clubs in hotels hasn't spared Amsterdam, the difference being that ours isn't a waiting room peopled by new media dads, mediocre laptop DJs, and bemused foreign exchange students. Canvas is actually on top of Volkshotel, an old newspaper factory in the east of the city, which means it's now the only club in Amsterdam with a view worth opening your eyes for. Get a bottle of something fizzy and take your loved one up to a hot tub on the roof to experience just how glamorous the death of print media can be.
LINK

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(Photo by Ewout Lowie)

WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH DRUGS?

Contrary to stereotype, Amsterdam isn’t a lawless free-for-all. There are plenty of rules but, despite talk of changing the law, it remains legal for anyone over 18—tourists included—to buy weed in Amsterdam.

However, the national government is now relatively anti­-marijuana, and Amsterdam is closing dozens of coffee shops because they can’t be close to schools any more. Our best guess is that weed will be here to stay, but the "anything goes" attitude is long gone.

There are areas that display "no smoking weed" signs, but they aren’t actually enforceable. Still, if you see one you’re probably not in the best spot. As a general rule, if a bar is clean and tidy, sparking up a joint in the smoking area will be frowned upon, even if it’s technically legal. So if you want to keep smoking you’re better off sticking to dark and dingy dive bars. Such is the stoner's lot.

The tobacco laws are just as random. Officially, a smoking ban in all bars and restaurants was passed a few years ago, but after a while an exception was made for small bars. There are smoking areas in most clubs, and in some it’s sort of accepted that people light up after a certain time of night. Follow the lead of the locals if you don't want to look like a prick.

Mushrooms are effectively still legal. They now don’t come in their OG mushroom format, but as a sort of nutty root called "Philosopher’s Stone Truffles." They have the exact same psychoactive substance in them and are derived from the actual mushrooms. You can buy them over ­the ­counter at any smartshop, most of which have an orange mushroom logo out front.

Holland is one of the largest producers of MDMA in the world, and in classic Dutch style we can send our pills to a government test lab who will tell us if they're good quality. The government would rather have us rolling hard than dead. They used to have these services at large raves, but sadly Christian political parties had them closed down because they felt “it sent the wrong signal.” The wrong signal being “safety first,” apparently.

Cocaine is relatively popular but the quality varies, as do the attitudes of those selling it. Locals know that the street coke dealers are kind of sketchy, and no one wants to get mugged by some scumbag.

Just because cops are relatively easy-going, doesn’t mean people don't get into trouble. People who are caught by a bouncer carrying one or two pills probably won’t get in and will definitely lose their drugs. Anyone using openly is chucked out once a bouncer sees them. Anyone with enough on them that they could feasibly be dealing will end up meeting the cops, though the police have been known to be lenient to people carrying small amounts, provided those people aren’t dicks about it. Anyone who goes all hippie badman and calls them narcs or fascists are probably going to end up in a cell.

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

SCREW IN THE PARK BUT DON'T WEAR SOCCER CLEATS

The Vondelpark—the best park in town—has its own set of rules. It's the only place in the Netherlands, and maybe the world, where you can legally fuck and smoke weed outdoors. There’s a certain etiquette to it: Go in the evening or night time. Avoid the children's playgrounds. Be a good human being and pick up your condoms. Also, you can’t go to the park while wearing studded soccer cleats, although admittedly that’s quite a specific fetish.

Squatting has been illegal in Amsterdam since 2010, and while the few squats that remain are still tolerated, they're quickly becoming relics of an already lost struggle.

Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom are pretty far right, but they've become more and more mainstream as they've gained popularity over the years. Although Wilders is anti-EU, he currently wants to remain a member of Parliament in the Netherlands AND be granted the opportunity to become a member of the European Parliament, which is currently a legal impossibility.

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(Photo by Alejandro Tauber)

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

PROTESTS? WHAT PROTESTS?

The Dutch aren’t known for taking to the streets in anger. Our country’s unofficial motto is: “Act normal, that's crazy enough.” We tend to think of street fighting as the sort of thing that happens in other countries.

Amsterdam's last major riots were more than 30 years ago. On April 30, 1980, squatters took to the streets to protest the national housing shortage. This was the date that our former queen Beatrix was set to be crowned and grand festivities were scheduled in her honor. Instead, tear gas filled the air and shops were looted as police and rioters went head-to-head. 

Protests since then have been very small and are more likely to come from the extreme left than the extreme right. Having said that, Occupy Amsterdam hardly made a political dent here. The populist right sometimes have their moment in the sun, like when they demonstrated in defence of Santa’s helper "Black Pete," enthusiastically reminding the planet that there’s nothing remotely racist about Father Christmas having an assistant (slave if you will) in blackface.

Act normal, that's crazy enough. Remember that and you'll understand how Amsterdam was built on pragmatism rather than passion. It also makes the city and the Netherlands as a whole more boring than it probably wants to be.

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

IMMIGRATION

Despite the country itself being a product of late medieval immigration, immigrants have been a source of stupid debate in the Netherlands for decades. 9/11 didn't do a great deal to quiet the issue. Back then, immigration’s harshest critic was the right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn, who was assassinated by an animal welfare activist turned immigrant activist in 2002. Which did not help anyone, least of all Pim, better understand the benefits of an open, free and multicultural society. 

Although the worst of the storm seems to have passed, the fight over what it means to be Nederlands continues. This is mostly fuelled by Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom, who rails against Muslims and workers coming in from Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania.

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WHERE TO EAT

Rijsel

Marcusstraat 52, 1091 TK

A small, well-lit rotisserie with a 60s vibe where they serve no-­nonsense food. This is a good place to chill out and not spend too much money. It's not a good place to come if you’ve just eaten a load of mushrooms and need to hide in a darkened room until the walls start behaving themselves.
LINK

SLA

Westerstraat 34
These days, coming back from Amsterdam healthier than when you arrived is the real act of rebellion, kids. Go to this salad bar for all the organic ingredients you can shovel into your mouth, then stick around for the workshops on healthy cooking so you can learn how to stop living on microwavable cheese meals made from sodium and donkey curd.
LINK

Brouw
Ten
Katestraat 16, 1053 CE
Everywhere on earth does beer and burgers these days, but Brouw’s are actually good. They’re famous for their slow-cooked and smoked meats, so try their brisket, pork belly, and ribs and forget everything you learned about healthy eating. Meat is murder, sure, but it’s also suicide.
LINK

Koevoet

Lindenstraat 17, 1015 KV
This Amsterdam institution has been here since 1889, so it doesn’t get much more authentic. It’s an Italian place located in the middle of the Jordaan, and as far as we can tell they’ve barely changed the menu since it opened. Seeing as people have been eating here since your grandparents were doing whatever the Greatest Generation's version of snapchatting dick pics was, they must be doing something right.
LINK

Le Fou Fow

Stormsteeg 9, 1012 BD
This is the best place to get Japanese food in Amsterdam. You’ll find it on the second floor, right above an Asian food shop that’s been giving it the big one here since 1957.
LINK

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WHAT DO LOCALS EAT?

Stroopwafels
What you need when you’ve hit rock bottom after a long, hard day of smoking stupid-strength weed is a hit of sugar, and Dutch people are always jonesing hard for a stroopwafel. It’s basically a cookie made from two thin waffles sandwiching a layer of syrup. It's really stupid stoner food, basically. 

Kroketten and Frikandellen

Imagine putting a cow, a pig, and a horse in a blender, then rolling the resulting mess into a sausage shape, covering it in breadcrumbs and deep-frying it. Voila! Kroketten and frikandellen are to Dutch cuisine what doughnuts and burgers are to American diners: disgusting, supposedly irregular treats that have slowly worked their way into our daily diet.

Roti

The former Dutch colony of Suriname blessed us with some great food traditions. One of the tastiest dishes is called roti and contains curry chicken, potatoes, beans, and the most important element: a sort of salty pancake. Sadly, it seems unlikely that the Surinamese are currently going nuts for stroopwafels. I guess imperialism is a one-way street.

Stamppot

There are a few different varieties of stamppot, but the gist of it is that you mash up a bed of potatoes and boiled vegetables, and then lay a nice fat smoked sausage across the top of it. One of the most popular versions is made with kale, which is funny because this weird, filling traditional dish is just about the least likely thing to ever be eaten by San Francisco yoga moms.

Drop
Dutch people fucking love liquorice; as a nation we eat more of it per person than any other country in the world. But be warned: our liquorice is not like your liquorice. The little black sweets we eat, known as drop, have such a distinctive ammonia taste that unsuspecting tourists usually hack them back up as soon as they taste them. Only the deeply Dutch can manage one without pulling a face like they’ve just bitten into a dog turd.

Gouda Cheese

You really should taste Gouda from a cheese shop while you’re here in Amsterdam, but be aware that from then on you’ll never be able to buy it at home again. This is the cheese equivalent of drinking a pint of Guinness in Dublin or doing crystal meth in Fresno.

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LGBT AMSTERDAM

Amsterdam has a long history of being a great and tolerant city for gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1811, the first gay bar was opened in 1927 and in 1946 the COC—one of the world’s first gay rights organizations—was founded here. The Netherlands prides itself on being the first country to legalize same-sex marriage, and the first legal gay and lesbian marriages in the world were officiated in 2001 by the Mayor of Amsterdam. 

In recent years, though, a handful of incidents have stained the tolerant image Amsterdam has built. Unfortunately, it’s still not unheard of for gay couples kissing or holding hands in public to receive abuse. In another setback, a series of prominent gay bars and clubs have closed, all for different reasons and none for lack of business. However, some argue this is just a sign of greater integration. Practically all bars are gay-friendly, so nightlife needn’t be segregated.

That said, if you're looking for specific gay bars there are still plenty left. The main gay street is the Reguliersdwarsstraat. Search a bit further and you'll find bars and events like De Trut, Spellbound, Fucking Pop Queers, GOD, Dolly, Yarr, and Nyx. If you’re looking for a transgender bar you should go to De Lellebel at Rembrandtsquare.

If it's your style, there are also plenty of dark rooms. Like the Spijkerbar. Downstairs you can drink as if you were in any other folksy bar, but if you go upstairs you’ll find yourself in pitch darkness where you can do pretty much whatever wild shit you feel like doing. Alternatively, Thermos is the place to go if you want a dirty quickie in a jacuzzi, hot tub, or sauna on the way home from the club.

One other highlight is Canal Pride. Every year on the first Saturday of August, dozens of boats glide down the canals of Amsterdam. It’s more of a politically correct endorsement of tolerance than a wild party, but it’s still good fun. The Milkshake Festival (for all who love) is in late July and is another festival for "boys who love girls who love girls who love boys who love boys," which is just about as inclusive as you can get.

Amsterdam has an official gay and lesbian information kiosk, Pink Point. It’s next to the Homomonument (gay monument) at the Westermarkt. Pink Point provides information about the Homomonument, and general information about Amsterdam, specifically for gay tourists. 

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WHERE TO DRINK

The best places for a quiet drink before you head on for a night out are the bars clustered around Noordermarkt, the flea market in De Jordaan. There are only two real dangers: a) vomiting teenage tourists who can't stomach three beers and b) falling in the canal. My favourite bar is probably Paepeneiland, which is also where Bill Clinton came for a beer a few years ago. You should have seen the amount of Secret Service they were employing to keep him out of the red light district.

Further afield, we’d recommend checking out Joe’s Garage, Brouwerij de Prael, and Brouwerij ‘t IJ. Roest is good as well—it’s in the east of the city away from the crowds, with a pool and a terrace covered in sand to create an ersatz beach bar, despite the industrial surroundings. You won’t find many other tourists here, which—if the International Holiday Code still applies—makes you cool, or something.

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WHERE TO STAY

If you’re watching your money, the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel (€25 [$34] per night in a dorm) isn’t a bad choice. It’s the rowdiest party hostel there is: come for the price, stay for the location, leave when you can’t stand the noise a second longer.

A quieter option is Stayokay Zeeburg (€30 [$40] per night in a dorm). It’s your average big clean hostel, but it’s really good value and it’s smack in the heart of a fancy-ish neighborhood in the east of the city, so you won’t get freaked out by sex tourists jerking off on the doorstep before breakfast. An alternative is the sleek boutique CitizenM (€85 [$116] per night for a room), which is pretty great for the price and has all the ultra-modern fixtures and fittings that interior designers jerk off over—it's not really in the heart of anything, which in a city with an international clique of drug zombies looming about, can be a blessing.

If you’ve come into a large inheritance, Hotel Américain (€150 [$205] per night for a room) is a gorgeous hotel in the Jugendstil style, with bags of old school class. And if you’re involved in some sort of Brewster’s Millions scheme to dispose of a vast amount of money, the most ridiculous option is the Faralda NDSM Crane Hotel (€435 [$595] per night for a suite), which is a good place to take someone if your fetish is getting laid in a box suspended in the air. Because that’s exactly what it is—a box suspended in the air. Obviously there's also a jacuzzi on top of the crane.

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WHERE TO HANG OUT WHEN YOU'RE SOBER

Look: you’re going to have to try pretty damn hard not to have an amazing time in Amsterdam. It’s one of the world’s great party cities, so for fuck’s sake don’t come all the way here and then spend your trip hanging around Rembrandt­square or Leidsesquare. Those places are just shitty honey traps for shitty tourists. The city has loads more to offer, and it’s small enough that you’ll probably stumble across the best bits just by getting out there and exploring.

Having said that, if you’re looking for some direction and some cool crowds to hang with, it’s worth looking into both Rush Hour Records and Red Light Records, where you’ll find flyers for all the best underground parties. If there’s nothing here that excites you, then chances are you’re just not cut out for "fun," you miserable loser. 

Rent a Canal Boat
Okay, so maybe we didn’t push the idea quite as far as those ridiculous Venetians, but Amsterdam is still a city that’s best experienced from our canals. Drinking, smoking, and eating while on a boat is basically our life, and there’s plenty of them to rent, so get yourself on the water as soon as you can. Chances are, back home, you live in between a bunch of highways, so this is the open sea to you—your Master and Commander moment. Avoid the shitty "canal bikes," though—there’s a reason the Armada didn’t run on peddle power.

Electric Ladylight Museum
Run by an eccentric New Yorker with a Father Christmas beard, this museum of fluorescent art is the only one of its kind in the world. It has sections called things like "The Magic Land of Lights, Sounds, and Dimensions" and "The Sister Mary Bernadeth Grotto," so yes, obviously it’s absolutely the best place to go when you’re tripping balls.
LINK

Savoy Bar
This is a super shabby café where everyone winds up after all the other bars and clubs have closed. In the early hours, prepare to encounter a fascinating hotchpotch of prostitutes, drug dealers, frat boys, cokeheads, students, tourists, and old sailors. There's a women there who sits outside the toilets called Wilma who’ll sell you five different sorts of candy and cigarettes straight from a garbage bag. Which sounds bleak, but when you think about it, is more wholesome than most deals you make in a bathroom.
LINK

Broek in Waterland/Durgerdam
The most scenic places to burn a joint in Amsterdam, far from the basement coffee shops, are towns to the north of the city, like Broek in Waterland and Durgerdam. They’re absolutely beautiful, and frankly, getting really high in a horrible basement is about the single biggest contributor to mental ill health in the Western world. Here, in the hills, it’s a different drug.

The Docks in the North
For some reason the north of the city gets neglected by most tourists, which is stupid as all the ferries there are free and it’s a great place to hang. The new EYE Film Museum has some cool exhibits and there’s a nice spot by the water where you can eat, drink, and take in the views of the low-rise city. It’s just across the river from Centraal Station, and you can’t miss it because it’s the only building round there that looks like a bad CGI spaceship from an early-90s computer game.

Hanneke’s Boom
This place is Amsterdam’s chameleon. Smack in the heart of the old harbor, by day people come here to study, but by night it becomes a romantic bar and the terrace becomes an outdoor party.
LINK

Special Collections at the Rijksmuseum
So, you’re done with all the Rembrandts and Vermeers? Good—the best shit is yet to come. Head down into the Rijksmuseum basement, where you’ll find piles of gold and jewellery and the realest treasure in history: 17th century magic lantern porn.
LINK

Coffeeshop Bluebird
Most coffee shops in Amsterdam will sell you weed or hash just to turn a profit, but not Bluebird. This place is run by experienced old stoners whose life’s work is getting you as high as God. Normally there’s nothing duller than listening to potheads bang on about why you have to try their new strain, but if you’re going to smoke weed it may as well be the good stuff.
LINK

Sarphatipark
Away from the sleaze and grime of downtown Amsterdam, this cute little neighborhood park that’s surrounded by bars is where locals actually hang out. No one there will be too hyped to see hundreds of VICE readers show up, so try not to act like a jerk.

Kattenkabinet

A museum entirely devoted to cats in art. It’s like imgur IRL.
LINK

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(Photo by Ewout Lowie)

HOW TO AVOID GETTING RIPPED OFF AND BEATEN UP

Taxi drivers in Amsterdam are notorious for overcharging tourists. At any obvious tourist location—like Centraal Station, Dam, Leidseplein, and Rembrandtplein—drivers will compete for your attention and then drive you in rings around the city while the meter ticks up.

The city has started using mystery customers to try to catch taxi hustlers, but the chances are you’ll encounter some type of bullshit if you take a cab. The best thing to do to avoid hustlers is to walk away from the tourist hangouts and try to catch one on the side of the street. Obviously you should never get into cabs that don’t have an official sign.

As lovely as Amsterdam is, it's also a place with a reputation that screams SEX and DRUGS, two fun things that dickheads have been managing to make money out of by abusing other people for centuries. And the red light district is where they come together to swap tips on how to be a dick to women. Anyway, the vibe round there can be nasty and buying drugs on those streets, late at night when you're fucked up, is probably the best way to get yourself rolled by some bastard or other. 

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HOW NOT TO BE A SHITTY TOURIST

We like it when tourists on bikes take an interest in local culture, but why the fuck do you all clog up the city center? There’s a whole city to explore, but most of you end up getting fucked after a couple of blunts and then wobbling a bike down the uneven streets of the tiny 17th century downtown area. Stoned tourists, busy streets, and canals are a recipe for the most repetitive slapstick performance of all time. Get out of downtown, spin your wheels, and see some more of the city.

Another terrible tourist trait is taking photographs in the red light district. The women who work there don’t appreciate it, and chances are they’ll let you know by hurling your camera in the canal.

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PEOPLE AND PLACES TO AVOID

Frat Boys in the Pijp
The Pijp is the stomping ground of Amsterdam’s frat boys—you’ll know it from the mingled stench of sweat and sexual desperation. They’re like all frat boys—violent, sexist, privileged, stupid, thuggish, unattractive shitheads. If you walk through a pile of them they’ll smell the decency on you and start lobbing bottles at your face.

Bike Taxis
Amsterdam’s taxi drivers are pretty bad, but the bike taxis are even worse. On the plus side you do get to spend the whole journey staring at their lycra-clad ass. On the minus, they’re slow, expensive, and they’d drag a baby through deserts of blood just to get a tourist fare.

De Wallen

This is Amsterdam’s largest and best-known red light district (or blue light, for the transvestites). We know the area gives the city part of its identity, but the truth is it’s home to a staggering number of abused and trafficked women from all over the world. It’s grim as hell and fucking prostitutes just isn’t cool.

Street Dealers
Amsterdam is one of the easiest countries in the world to buy drugs in, so don’t pick them up from guys in the street unless you’re really into handing over loads of cash for Pro Plus and rat poison.

Leidseplein

It might be great as a subway hub, but why is this terrible square still in all the tourist guides? It’s the place you end up when you don’t know where you’re going. If you do find yourself here, leave.

Kebab shops
Strangely, for a city with so many people wandering around fucked after dark, late-night food here is fucking abysmal, especially near the RLD. Kebab and shawarma are sometimes reheated by plunging them in boiling water. It’s overpriced and it will kill you slowly. We know you won’t listen to us when you’re drunk, but we’re telling you anyway: You’re better off going home hungry.

Amsterdam Dungeon

This place has hardly anything to do with the real history of Amsterdam. It’s a classic tourist trap. You’d learn more about Amsterdam if you stayed at home smoking a tea bag and googling pictures of canals.

Escape

Regularly named as a beacon of Amsterdam nightlife, but in essence just a really shitty club, it boasts the unholy trinity: shitty music, shitty drinks, and shitty people. Go next door to Studio 80.

Kalverstraat
Amsterdam’s main shopping street. The shops suck and it’s full of tourists who are just as lost as you are. How much interest do you really have in generic high streets in the Netherlands? Fucking none, that’s how much.

Het Damrak

This is the street right in front of Centraal Station, so for most tourists it’s their first sight of Amsterdam. The beautiful old buildings are hidden from view by fences and garish neon signs directing you to the endless shops selling T-shirts with slogans like: "Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go to Amsterdam." You have no business here.

The Sex Museum
We’re all for taking a liberated and open-minded attitude to sex, but Amsterdam’s Sex Museum is not the place to go for a nuanced discussion of interpersonal gendered power relations as they relate to consensual BDSM. It’s the place where stoned teenagers go to point at boobs and dicks. Your Auntie Margaret doesn’t want to see a picture of you on Facebook posing with a seven-foot cock, and neither does anybody else.

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(Photo by Sabine Rovers)

TIPPING AND HANDY PHRASES

Tipping
Dutch waiters and bartenders are used to dealing with miserly people, so tips in restaurants and bars usually aren't that high. Ideally, waiters and bar staff would expect about 10 percent, but they tell us it's often more like five. For taxis, just round up the bill, and don't tip in nail salons or hairdressers.

Handy Phrases
Hello: Hallo
Goodbye: Tot ziens
Please: Alsjeblieft
Thank you: Dank u
Where do I get cocaine, motherfucker?: Hoe kom ik aan coke, kankerlijer?
You're hot: Je bent lekker
Beer?: Biertje?
Is sex with a fist acceptable in this dark room?: Is seks met een vuist aanvaardbaar in deze donkere kamer?

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A YOUTUBE PLAYLIST OF QUESTIONABLE LOCAL MUSIC

Here is some Dutch music. It's pretty good right? You'd be singing along if your clumsy foreign tongue could handle our language.

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VICE CITY MAP

That's all I think. You'll thank me when you're not tweaking out, wandering lost through the red light district on 'shrooms.

Love,

– VICE Netherlands

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It's the first track from their upcoming record 'El Pintor,' their first album in four years.

Photos by Mike Pearl

The William Mulholland Memorial Fountain is among the most neglected monuments in Los Angeles, along with our badass statue of Bruce Lee that lives in a warehouse, and that War of 1812 cannon that we inexplicably keep tucked away in a corner of Pershing Square. The fountain memorializes the water-stealing asshole William Mulholland in a very appropriate way, but it's not a tourist destination, and most Los Angeles residents aren't even sure where it is.

To make matters worse, right now, those 50,000 gallons of water look like a big, wet middle finger to all the drought-conscious people letting their lawns die for the greater good. And it's also a middle finger to the law.

On April 25, Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order, outlining how we're supposed to conserve water. One of the items on the list is "Turn off fountains and other decorative water features unless recycled or grey water is available." While the order was crystal clear, it wasn't initially obvious that the governor planned to enforce it. It wasn't even clear at the time that the state had the authority to dish out penalties, and the fountain has just continued gushing away.

A huge fountain shooting water fifty feet into the air was enough to just barely attract my attention whenever I drove past. Oh look, that's still on during this drought, I would think to myself. I'm sure they have their reasons. 

But on July 2, The Los Feliz Ledger, a neighborhood newsletter, wrote a piece called "Against the Governor's Wishes," in which they explained that in fact there was no justification for the fountain still being on. It just was.

Then yesterday, it was announced that the state's Water Resources Control Board is hatching a plan to hand out $500 fines for violating the order. 

I asked the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to comment on the fountain's status. Jane Galbraith, LADWP's media relations representative wrote the following in an email:

"Mulholland Fountain, like other recirculating public fountains, splash parks, and water features, provides a public benefit that must be considered before any decisions are made. However, there may be options to reduce the amount of incidental water use without significant impact to the public benefit. Any proposed changes will certainly be discussed beforehand with the affected community."

To find out what public benefit she was referring to, I paid the fountain a visit.

It sits in its own little dedicated park that juts out into a major intersection, but the area sees little to no pedestrian traffic. It was a Tuesday afternoon, but it was the middle of summer so I thought there might be kids playing in it.

There weren't. In the hour I spent there, I only ran into one person, and she jogged by without stopping. It turns out the fountain's not a splash park at all. In fact, you're not supposed to go in it.

I did anyway. It was dirty. 

Recirculating water, by the way, is not recycled water. When the water evaporates, new, potable water is pumped in. Grey or recycled water would be even riskier to wade around in. If they started pumping in grey water, I suppose that would necessitate a scarier sign to put people off doing exactly what I did. But if you're already not supposed to swim in it, why use the good water to begin with?

Jane Galbraith had provided me with a little more information about my surroundings as well: "The Mulholland Fountain and the surrounding L.A. Aqueduct Centennial Garden set the stage for the ideal standards for public spaces with water features. While we maintain the fountain, the space subscribes to water conservation through the implementation of the California Friendly landscaping around the fountain."

This part is legit. It doesn't take much water to support a garden made up of desert plants. But is a massive fountain offset by an adjacent patch of drought-friendly landscaping?

I'm not going to pretend this fountain matters in any literal sense. The fountain's 50,000 gallons are about one seventh of an acre-foot, and an acre foot (enough water to cover one acre with a foot of liquid) is the smallest unit farmers use to purchase water. 34 million acre-feet of California's water are used every year just to grow almonds. Agribusiness uses 80 percent of our state's water supply, and they want more. In other words, when you put it in perspective, it's an exaggeration to even call the fountain a drop in the bucket.

It's also not the only public fountain in Los Angeles. Among others, there's the one in Grand Park, which just opened. While that one should probably be shut off too, shutting off the Mulholland Memorial Fountain is more urgent. 

The gesture would be rich in symbolism. Turning off the fountain that memorializes the guy who originally channeled water into Los Angeles would be a sign that there's something wrong in this city. The only thing that would make the irony more potent would be if anyone ever visited the thing.

Mike Pearl is our night editor. Follow him on Twitter

A chart illustrating how many copies of Paula sold during its first week, compared to some more flops. Click to enlarge. (Graph by Georgia Weisz)

Robin Thicke’s latest album only shifted 530 copies in its first week of UK sales. Take a look at the chart above and you’ll see that those numbers put Paula considerably below Future Past, the debut solo album from Blue member and sometimes TV ice dancer Duncan James. Considering 2013's “Blurred Lines”—Thicke's ode to making women feel really uncomfortable—is the UK’s most downloaded song of all time, it’s fair to say things have slightly deteriorated since last year.

But where did it all go wrong? How did he go from retiring songwriter to disgraced idol of the men's rights community, naming albums after the woman who divorced him in the hope it'll win her back? Was it because his breakthrough single was basically "no doesn't always mean no" set to a Pharrell beat, or the fact he then defended it as "a feminist movement within itself"? Perhaps it was the time he was pictured groping a fan while still married to Paula Patton? Or maybe it's just because his new album isn't very good?

Whatever the reason, everything seems to have gone to shit incredibly quickly since he used balloons to tell the world how big his dick is. And there's only one thing that's really changed about Thicke since then: he got properly famous. I wondered whether this fame had a direct role to play in his downfall, so I called Nadine Field—a chartered psychologist who specializes in fame and celebrity—to find out.

(Photo via)

VICE: Hi Nadine. So let’s talk about Robin Thicke. He was 16 when he got his first record deal, which is obviously pretty young. What kind of effect would that have on the brain?

Dr Nadine Field: A huge effect, of course. You’re getting validation at a very tender age, and validation at any age gives you the sense that you’re bigger than you are. It inflates your personality. At that early stage of development we’re all searching for ourselves and creating a certain image of ourselves for the world. If you get validation, you think, ‘Gosh, I’m bigger than I thought.’ Obviously that’s wrong. This validation very young will inflate the ego to some extent because you’re not in a position to evaluate it.

Would that have an effect on your sexuality?
If that validation comes early, you’re at the early stages of thinking about your sexuality. ‘Do I like women? What do I think about women? How do I view them?’ The "Blurred Lines" video says a lot about him—the filter wasn’t there. The video tells me that he never got the balance right between his appreciation of femininity and a sense of demeaning women. That’s where he needs to find his middle ground.

That was his first proper taste of mainstream attention. What happens to the average person’s brain when they experience fame as an adult?
Psychologically you think you’ve made it. You’re experiencing this huge rush. You’re surrounded by all these temptations and you’re probably going to submit to everything and sleep with as many women as you want. That filter might not be there yet. You might not have got to the point where you evaluate, come to a standstill and ask yourself if your choices are what you really want to do.

(Screen grab via)

How does fame affect your ego in the long term?
That’s going to cause the celebrity to have a dilemma. Everyone has two senses of self—a personal self and a public self. With validation it’s harder to evaluate, to see the private side behind the public side.

What happens if you struggle with that?
Your public and your personal sides can start to merge, which is a big problem. Believing your own propaganda precedes your downfall. They’re only as good as the person in their life who can tell them they’re being ridiculous. All celebrities need someone in their life to keep the private self in check. You need anchoring. 

Have you dealt with celebrities who struggle with this balance?
Most of the celebrities I’ve worked with are vulnerable people who think that a certain part of themselves is fraudulent. They’re concerned that people believe in the public self they’ve projected for themselves. They worry, ‘People think I’m someone, but actually I’m someone else.’


And that can undermine the validation you get and make you insecure.

Exactly. If you buy into the public persona, you’re not actually taking account of who you are. 

Okay. If there are underlying traits of misogyny or arrogance in your psyche already, would these be affected by fame?
Yes. If you’ve got men or women throwing themselves at you, it’s the human condition to want to give in. The inflated ego as a result of the fame makes you believe in this public self and makes you believe you’re invincible—but no, you’re not. We all have good and bad aspects of who we are, and fame will only play on these. 

(Photo via)

How exactly?
If they buy into the public life, a male artist can be inclined to think they can do whatever they want. There's a whole history of male celebrities who have been abusive to their female partners because they can. The whole issue with our Yewtree investigations – we’re seeing now the repercussions of fame on male sexuality. Thankfully, it’s meaning that everyone is seeing that they can’t actually do what they want.

Yeah, there’s a photo of Thicke groping a fan while he was still married (a "source close to him" said he "did it as a joke"). 
He’s a celebrity who, unfortunately, has bought into his public persona, and his self is his public. He believes he is invincible—at this point, anyway. He thinks he can do whatever he likes.

After all this backlash, what could he be feeling now? He’d been working on his career for over half his life, then it all blows up in his face.
I should hope he’s looking for another agent! Psychologically, he might finally have to grapple with the two senses of self. If not now, then soon down the line—if he survives, that is, and I think he’s a survivor. He’s going to have to really weigh these two identities up, the public and private. The private person might be very vulnerable. On the other hand, is Robin Thicke having trouble sleeping at night over it all? I don’t know if he is. It’s hard to tell. His inflated sense of self could still make him believe he’s now on the ride – that he’s really going somewhere.

Did you see that his new album is named after the wife who left him?
No. But oh gosh, how interesting. Many male celebrities—Johnny Cash and Elvis, for example—take on too much of that public self and think they can do anything. But then they find out they can’t and it all crumbles.

What happens to the brain when your fame is suddenly taken away?
I’ve worked with a lot of people whose fame has been taken away, and they dissolve. They’ve got too much invested in that public self. Psychologically, they go through hubris—“I thought I could be somebody, but I’ve been picked up and dropped back down.”

Follow Hannah Ewens on Twitter

Artist Anthea Pokroy and her "collection" of gingers, who will not become extinct any time soon.

General consensus in the UK dicates that it's totally OK to discriminate against reheads. The rest of the world might be shocked at the attitude Britain holds toward its ginger population, but that hasn't helped all that much; schoolchildren are still being attacked in the name of "Kick a Ginger Day," and anti-ginger prejudice is a real thing that makes a lot of people's lives very miserable. 

Unfortunately, the world's carrot-tops now have to confront an even bigger problem. According to the Independent—and a bunch of other newspapers borrowing quotes from the original Daily Record report—“Gingers face extinction due to climate change.”

At this point I’d love to spend a few paragraphs going through the research, explaining what the scientists involved did and pointing out any issues with their methodology; it makes these things a lot easier to write. Unfortunately, I can’t, because there doesn’t actually seem to be any of that whatsoever. Instead, the story appears to be based entirely on the conjecture of Dr Alistair Moffat, MD of a Scottish consumer DNA-testing company called “ScottishDNA.” It isn’t even published as a press release on their website, let alone in an actual study. 

To back this speculation up, the Daily Record’s "Scotland Now" blog approached another scientist who agreed with the research, but who “asked not to be named because of the theoretical nature of the work.” This mysterious spewer of science-y sound bites was so confident in the work he was commenting on that he didn’t want his name to be publicly associated with it. And while we’re looking at the people involved, it’s not entirely clear why the Record have called Moffat "Dr Moffat" in the first place, given his main career was as a journalist at STV, and the company website lists his qualifications as an MA and M.Phil, the former apparently in Medieval History.

Moffat's argument is actually pretty simple: people with ginger hair tend to be more vulnerable to the damaging effects of the sun, with a higher risk of developing skin cancer as a result. That’s one reason why you don’t see many redhead people in, say, sub-Saharan Africa—the genes responsible take equatorial latitudes into account to avoid any of those negative effects. In places like Scotland, however, this is obviously less of a problem, and so the three genes responsible for red-headedness can flourish. With rising global temperatures, the scientists claim, redheads will be under more pressure and the gene would be at risk of dying out.

It sounds sort of plausible, until you actually stop and think through the bullshit these people are spouting. For the red-headed gene to die out completely, something drastic would have to happen to the survival rate of red-headed people. In practical terms, that means every single person carrying the genes would have to die of skin cancer so that all genetic copies were eradicated. And crucially, they’d need to die before they had a chance to breed.

Given that skin cancer in the UK kills about 2,800 people a year, that the majority of those will be middle-aged or older and that—at most—maybe several hundred of those are redheads, this is a complete fantasy. And that’s before you even take into account the advances in treating cancer. It’s not just wrong, it’s completely fucking moronic; there is not going to be a mass extinction of redheads.

Just for the sack of completeness, let’s tackle the impact of climate change. Given that it’s UV exposure and not heat that leads to skin cancer, the scientists making these claims need to explain how climate change would lead to greater UV exposure in the first place.

The world is getting warmer, sure, but the sun isn’t getting any brighter, and rising temperatures don’t necessarily translate into more sun exposure. Scotland, for example, has seen considerable increases in rainfall over the last 50 years. Even where UV radiation levels have risen—or may rise—that doesn’t necessarily translate into more exposure.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that somebody's predicted the extinction of all redheads. In 2007, widespread reports cited "genetic scientists" who claimed that gingers would be extinct by 2060. That turned out to be a marketing hoax. And it’s not just redheads: Stories about the "disappearing blonde gene" have been circulating for years now, to the extent that they even have their own Wikipedia page.

Does it matter? Probably not, in the grand scheme of things. But the way these stories appear—and the speed at which they proliferate—is a good illustration of how dire a lot of mainstream "science" reporting is these days. For a start, this isn’t even science; it's just the ramblings of an MD and an anonymous coward. A journalist thought this insight was worth reporting, and content-hungry outlets around the world repeated it without the most basic bit of thought—a true testament to modern online journalism. 

Follow Martin Robbins on Twitter.

Screencap via CPAC.
Half a year after the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the country’s prostitution laws as unconstitutional for failing to protect sex workers, the Conservative government is set to pass new legislation that will probably make the problem worse.

The previous laws allowed sex work but criminalized brothels, communicating in public with clients, and “living on the avails” of prostitution—a clause targeting pimps and other third parties. The court ruled that such restrictions jeopardized the safety of sex workers by denying them the ability to work indoors, properly vet their clients, and hire drivers and bodyguards.

And so we have Bill C-36, wrapping up marathon hearings at the House of Commons justice committee this week. The proposed legislation makes it legal to sell but not to buy sex, and is broadly based on the “Nordic model” pioneered in Sweden, which many view as a compromise that respects sex workers while still recognizing prostitution as an inherently exploitative industry that harms women.

The problem, though, is that many sex workers hate the bill. In addition to targeting purchasers of sex, C-36 also bans most advertising for sexual services and working anywhere “where persons under the age of 18 can reasonably be expected to be present.” That effectively forces prostitution into less populated, isolated parts of town where sex workers are more at risk.

Jean McDonald, executive director of the Toronto sex workers advocacy group Maggie’s, says the government’s approach is one that “sees all prostitutes as damaged, as victims, and all sex work as ‘violence against women.’”

“Social inequalities abound in all industries, but we don’t (attempt to) abolish those industries—we need to address the social inequalities at their root,” McDonald told VICE in an email this week, shortly after speaking to the justice committee.

Maggie’s is an organization comprising sex workers of all stripes, from strippers and massage workers, to porn actors, escorts, and street-based sex workers. McDonald says that in her experience, there is nothing inherently violent about prostitution, but other social ills like sexism, racism, transphobia, and poverty lead to violence against people in the industry who are marginalized and stigmatized for their work. Being treated only as victims further increases that stigma, she said.

To be fair, there have been gut-wrenching stories from former prostitutes this week in Ottawa from women who were trafficked, beaten, tortured, and raped for years before finding a way out. But from a practical standpoint, those are already crimes, and it’s unclear what Bill C-36 would do to prevent such exploitation.

In fact, by pushing street-based sex workers further to the margins, the law would probably increase the likelihood of violence and coercion. Those were the findings of a recent study in Vancouver, where police have been following a Nordic approach to prostitution for almost two years.

"The general public doesn't really understand how sex workers screen clients and how important it is,” a Toronto sex worker who goes by Andrea told VICE in a phone interview this week.

Andrea, like many sex workers, advertises her services online and does significant groundwork before anything sexual ever happens. She asks for references from other sex workers to learn if the experience was safe and whether that previous provider would see the client again. And if it’s someone’s first time, Andrea asks for a real name, work information, and a cellphone number, taking the time to meet in a public location like a coffee shop or hotel lobby, just to suss things out.

But she calls Bill C-36 “a gift to predators” because many safe clients would be scared away by the new law.

"If clients are worried about being criminalized then they're not going to give me any information,” she said. “They won't give me a reference because that's admitting to committing a crime, and they won't want to give me their real names."

The proposed law would also make her less likely to call police if anything goes wrong, she said.

“Because my indoor location is where I work, so if I suddenly reveal my working location to the police they'll be able to stake it out and find out all my clients and just arrest them,” she said. "People don't realize the way sex workers operate so it's hard for the general public to understand how these laws will affect the work."

Now in her late 20s, Andrea has been a sex worker for five years and says the stereotypes about her line of work are maddening. She says most of the time she's sitting at home in her pyjamas responding to emails, doing laundry or other mundane tasks. She enjoys her job but it’s just that: a job.

Another young woman in Toronto, who goes by Olivia, echoed that sentiment. She worked with an agency and later at massage parlours before “going indie” and doing her own advertising.

“I got started [doing sex work] after I had worked a square job which paid me slave wages. $300 was considered a good weekly salary,” Olivia wrote in an email to VICE. “Now I make that in an hour.”

She, too, was shocked by the government’s restrictive prostitution bill, especially since many people expected the Supreme Court decision to be followed by decriminalization of the sex industry. Instead, the Conservatives are hell-bent on trying to end prostitution, as Justice Minister Peter MacKay has said, even though historically that’s been a losing battle for anyone who’s attempted it.

Both women said they were not out as sex workers, although close friends and family know and are fine with it.

“I don't really want to out myself because I have a school life, I have a personal life,” Olivia said. “Otherwise I would readily have stood up before Parliament as #notyourrescueproject.”

The Supreme Court gave the federal government a year to replace the old prostitution laws, and the Conservatives have taken up that challenge with gusto. Unfortunately, they are relying on cheap moralism rather than the advice of legal experts and current sex workers, most of whom prefer decriminalization of the sex industry based on New Zealand’s example.

It’s also not clear the general public will agree with the government’s approach. The government commissioned a public opinion poll earlier this year that costed $175,000, but the results won’t be made available until the end of July, a Justice Canada spokesperson told VICE. By then, C-36 could already be the law of the land, even if most Canadians told the government they disagreed with the legislation’s aims.

Jean Mcdonald of Maggie’s says the government’s urgency to pass a flawed bill is political.

“In my opinion, the Conservative government wants to push through this bill in order to secure support from their Evangelical base and their social conservative supporters prior to the next election,” she said. “They are doing this at the cost of sex workers lives and well-being. This bill will not protect sex workers, nor does it recognize their humanity.”


@ID4RO

Photo by Erica Euse

Like most girls who grew up in the 90s, my friends and I were completely consumed by our shitty dial up internet and shopping at Hot Topic. As I grew older and technology became more complex, my fascination with internet pop culture and screen prints never seemed to fade. So when Shop Jeen bombarded my twitter feed with clothing patterned with the pile of shit emoji and Ryan Gosling’s face, I had to check it out.

A penis-shaped water gun, 24K gold rolling papers, and a Mishka baseball jersey with the words "Death" printed across it are just a few of the items you can find on Shop Jeen's webstore. The unusual array of products is reminiscent of your local mall’s Spencer’s, only instead of lame graphic tees of The Beatles, there are streetwear brands like Huf and Dimepiece.

Shop Jeen is a shopping paradise for any pop culture-crazed 90s girl who wants a dose of nostalgia. The site is designed with colorful 3D word art and a rainbow icon that sits next to the arrow as you move around the store. Shop Jeen's kaleidoscopic approach to 90s nostalgia made perfect sense when I learned that the founder, Erin Yogasundram, is only 23-year-old.

The New York native launched the store in June 2012 before dropping out of George Washington University. She later brought on her first employee, creative director Amelia Muqbel. The duo spent hours sorting through online marketplaces like Etsy and eBay to find the most obscure and sometimes bootleg products, culling their trademark selection of viral content-inspired fashion

Social media platforms like Instagram have been integral to Shop Jeen’s success. Being a pioneer in advertising products on the app gained them thousands of loyal customers. Now, with over 11,000 posts on Instagram and 40,000 tweets, Erin and Amelia are constantly sharing their products to their fans and building an international business that started in Erin’s dorm room.

I met up with besties Erin and Amelia in Midtown Manhattan to talk about Shop Jeen’s success, speaking in emojis, and the internet.

VICE: How exactly did the shop start?
Erin: I made the first site on BigCartel and it was a very small deal. We started as an accessories store that I was running out of my dorm room for six months. After that, I decided that I had to go back to New York. I took the first office I saw and hired a bunch of interns. We finished the year with interns and hired Amelia as the creative director in January 2013.

What kind of accessories were you selling?
Erin: I was selling a lot of items from Etsy. I was very inspired by it, but it was hard to find what the good stuff was. It was like finding a needle in a haystack. But I had the patience to research.

Was the first incarnation of Shop Jeen similar to what it is today?
Erin: Yeah. I mean people, especially in high school, referred to me as having a lot of different phases. I remember being punk and then trash and vaudeville. I think Amelia went through the same phases. Then Abercrombie and Tory Burch... When I look at the original website the curation of products is so different. That is how you stay on trend. We are constantly finding new things and thinking new things are cool.

So you guys met while interning together?
Amelia: We first crossed paths three years ago when we interned together at Alexander Wang. Then after she started the store, she wanted to pick up Noir jewelry and I did sales and marketing there.

Once you came on, what inspired the aesthetic of the shop?
Amelia: When I started, it was really like we had known each other our whole lives. We are into the same things. We used Tumblr and Instagram to see all of the new stuff that was happening. We also went to a lot of trade shows together for different products like streetwear, toys, stationary, and gifts. That is where we find a lot of stuff.

What was your overall vision for the shop?
Erin: It changes every single day. The company is like a roller coaster of emotion. It keeps it exciting, but everyday our style and who we are inspired by is evolving. A lot of designers are planning for the future. I don’t know what Fall 2014 is going to look like. I don’t know what tomorrow is going to look like.

Amelia: We work very quickly. We will be on our phones and see something we love. We will see who makes it, email them, and get it the next week.

How has your social media presence played a role in your business?
Amelia: Well, it takes us away from doing our business. Erin is genuinely connected to the people because she is the one tweeting and taking pictures. I think Instagram is the biggest reason we got recognized early on. We would take pictures of ourselves with the products instead of having models.

You guys still update it yourself?
Amelia: We have kind of destroyed our Instagram, so to speak. We got blocked from the popular page shortly after Facebook bought it. We were getting 20,000 likes per photo and had half a million followers. All of sudden it dropped and new site visits dropped. They aren’t making any money off of us and we were getting major advertising. That was our only marketing. We could put something on Instagram and it would sell... But there will be a new social media platform and we will be the first brand on it, just like Instagram.

A lot of your products are inspired by internet culture. How did that come about?
Amelia: We are so immersed in it. All day long we are on Instagram and Tumblr. We relate to it because it is our age group. We have our language of talking to each other through emojis. There is a group of people who love that and want to wear shit with emojis all over it. We go with it because that is what we genuinely love right now.

So your products are a reflection of your lifestyle?
Amelia: We struggle a lot with what the customer wants and what we want. I think we are sorting things in a very different way. People ask us what makes Shop Jeen different, and it is that we are pulling from a lot of places and we have inspiration from a very wide range. We are less targeted than say Karmaloop, who just does streetwear. We are a one-stop shop essentially.

You have very loyal followers through social media and those buying your products. What do you think people are drawn to?
Amelia: They like that we are really young because they can connect with us. I think they like our relationship a lot. Erin just posted a picture of her squirting me with the penis gun and I love when people comment like “me and you.” It seems real, because it is real. We are friends and we are having fun with products we genuinely love. 

Erin: It is relatable. Everybody loves emojis, penises, weed leaves. We are making stuff that people want. It is a little bit out there, but secretly people love it.

How many products do you carry?
Amelia: We have 2,500 on the site right now. We have always been sku heavy since the beginning. We like to try a bunch of styles. Rather than buy a 100 of one style, we will buy ten of ten styles. We like to give the customer the option and we are so crazy we want everything.

What are some of the challenges you have faced as young women trying to build a business?
Erin: It is very intimidating. I don’t want to play the young female card, but people want to take advantage us.

So if your personal style evolves again, so will the shop?
Erin: Come to us in a month and we will have completely different products. We can honestly go in so many different directions and I think that is a beautiful thing.

Amelia: We are young, so we are growing up with our customers. Their tastes are changing just as much as ours are.

Follow Erica on Twitter

On July 5, the pro-Russia rebels who had been occupying the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk for the past three months retreated to Donetsk, marking a pivotal shift in the conflict.

After Ukraine's military recaptured Sloviansk, VICE News visited some of the former rebel checkpoints surrounding the city, interviewed a pro-Russia rebel in Donetsk, and went to a "peace rally" where Pavel Gubarev, the pro-Russia governor of the People's Republic of Donetsk, proclaimed that the rebels would not be defeated.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko plans to continue his government's anti-terror operation until Ukraine is rid of the rebels.

Much like skateboarders and wildly popular DJs, really good barbers now have corporate sponsors. Rob Ferrel, better known as Rob the Original to his over 69,000 fiercely loyal Instagram followers, is one of those world-famous barbers. He’s sponsored by ConAir’s high-end pro brand BaByliss (he says it’s really big in Germany and only just starting to grow in America—probably thanks to him), gets free equipment like blow dryers and trimmers, and travels the country teaching fellow hair stylists and designers the latest technological advancements in hair-cutting techniques. 

His claim to fame? Specializing in Chuck Close-level photorealistic portraits shaved onto the backs of people’s heads. Ferrel has cut and trimmed designs from Jesus to Tupac to Batman and, a recent fan favorite, World Cup soccer players into the heads of fans ranging from two- to 40-years-old. His work is one of the most practical and democratic forms of visual art—as long as you have hair, Ferrel will shave someone else’s very recognizable face onto it.

When I catch him on the phone from San Antonio, Texas, he’s preparing for a competition where makeup artists, regular hairstylists, design hairstylists, and basically anyone involved in the beauty industry will compete for fame, trophies and maybe even their own corporate sponsorship. But during our conversation Ferrel emphatically insists that he was the first person to ever do a hair portrait and he’s so damn good at it I think I might just believe him. What’s even more amazing, though, is that he hasn’t kept the technical secrets behind his rare talent to himself. Instead, he travels the country teaching the technique at ConAir conferences. Like any good barber, Ferrel is talkative and friendly, and above all fame and trophies, he really just has one goal in mind: To see the hair design industry grow into the celebrated world-renowned scene it was always meant to be.    

VICE: Is the hair design scene a big community?
Rob Ferrel: It’s a huge scene, but it’s been underground for a while. Now it’s starting to come out. It’s so awesome to be a part of this era because I’ve been doing these designs for at least eight years and now people are starting to see. Everybody’s amazed because they’ve never seen this type of work. Me and my employees, we’re so used to it. We know it’s good, but we don’t get impressed like we used to. Don’t get me wrong, whenever I do certain portraits and haircuts, I still impress myself. I get in the zone, put on my headphones, jam out, and when I finish I look at the haircut like, Wow that looks good.

How did you discover your rare talent?
I have eight siblings. We didn’t have a lot of money—my dad was the only person who worked in the house—so he would cut our hair to save money. When I was 16-years-old I picked up the clippers and said, You know what? I’m going to try to do my own haircut. It was kind of a gift. I could draw real good and I guess I had an artistic eye.

Did you ever think that would lead to a full-time job?
I moved to San Antonio and still cut on the side, like a hobby. I would cut my own hair, my brothers, cousins, stuff like that. Then a couple of years later I got offered a job at a barbershop. I walked in to get a haircut and they asked me if I could help out. I was like, “Don’t I need a license or something?” He was like, “No, why don’t you just help me out for a couple of weeks.” I was like, “OK, I’ll try it out.” I picked up how to do other hairstyles pretty fast and then a kid came in and asked me to do a swirl line coming out of the forehead to the top of the head. I didn’t know how, but I just did it and it came out real good. From there more kids started coming in and word of mouth spread out quick. Next thing you know more and more people were coming in asking me for all kinds of things. I never said no.

Were you the only one in San Antonio doing these designs?
I started realizing that a lot of barbers around me were picking up on the same designs. I would see people on the street and ask, “Where did you get that design? It looks like something I would do.” They were like, “Oh my friend’s doing it out of his house or this barber’s doing it.” I’m like, You know what, I’ve got to do something different that’s going to make me stand out. In 2008 I asked my brother if he’d let me do a portrait on him. I tried doing a Tupac Shakur and it’s actually on YouTube. The proof that I did this portrait is on tape. It came out awesome on the first try and from there I was like, OK! It’s on. I found my passion. A couple of years later I decided to add color to it to perfect it.

What’s your process for these elaborate, detailed portraits?
I figured out my own little techniques. Instead of drawing lines, you have to cut ‘em out. It’s like working backwards; I’m carving out the whites instead of drawing the blacks.

If you’re not afraid to give away your secrets, can you walk me through it?
First, I even out the area where I’m going to do my portrait. On the clipper, I use a one guard and I push it all the way up, so that makes it a 1.5. Then I grab the trimmer, which cuts really close to the skin, and I hold it like a pen. The trimmer has a T-blade at the top, so I use the corner of the T-blade to start detailing one section of the portrait. I keep the image up on my phone in black and white, so that I can see my whites and my blacks, and I focus on one eye or just the nose at a time. I pretty much carve all the white that I see on the image. As I’m carving out all the whites I pay attention to every shape, so it looks just like it. It’s very important that you make every shape exactly how you see it on the image.

How long in advance do you need to see the picture before you design the hair?
I usually Google it right on the spot, on my phone. What’s good about phones is that you can zoom into the picture.

Is that the special technique?
I pretty much act like every picture is a puzzle. I’m carving out the eyes, I’m carving out the lips—of course you need to have some artistic talent to do this. Then for grays, I take the one guard off and I use the half, which is the .5. That means I push the lever on the clipper all the way up. Then finally I go back, grab my straight blade, throw some lotion or a lather onto the portrait to soften up the cuticle, and start shaving all the white sections on there—the lightest sections in the image—so they have a glow on the nose or the forehead or even inside the eye. The last step includes eyeliner and pencils. I take eyeliner pencils and I use black to color in all the dark shade and then I use a white to go on the teeth and eyes.

What about the color? Is that dye?
That’s eyeliner.

How long do the hairstyles last?
The eyeliner washes off with water and soap, but I usually throw on a sealing coat—super-hold hairspray. That way you’re able to touch it and it won’t smear. You have to wash it off at the end of the day, though. Some people take a bath and wash their face, but don’t wash their hair to try to make it last. I’m like, OK [laughs]. It’s very important to me for the image to look good without the makeup so when the color comes off it’s not just a painted portrait. I’m charging $150 to $200 dollars for a haircut, so I want to make sure they could have it for as long as possible. It only lasts a week to a week-and-a-half total.

Do you use a special kind of razor or trimmer?
I use BaByliss Pro because I’m sponsored by them. For the straight razor, it doesn’t really matter—I use all kinds. People are always sending me samples. I use ‘em all.

It’s kind of funny shaving hair into someone’s hair.
Have you seen the 3D ones like Bob Marley? I used the hair to do dreads. I also did a Tommy Chong of Cheech and Chong and used actual hair for the beard. It was like 3D. 

I see on your Instagram, you’ve been doing a lot for the World Cup recently.
Right now it’s soccer fever—bad. Everybody’s trying to get their soccer portrait. Mexico was a popular team, but they’re out so nobody’s getting those no more.

Are you a big soccer fan?
I grew up watching soccer. I thought I was going to be a soccer player, but unfortunately, real life hit and I had to work. 

Who were you rooting for this year?
I was born and raised in the United States, but my parents are both from Mexico, so I always like Mexico.

Was that the most popular team for you?
It was Mexico and USA, but then it turned into Argentina. Everybody’s getting Messi—that guy right there is popular.

Have you ever messed up?
I can usually cover up my mess-ups without the client knowing. I misspelled the word Cadillac and only put one L in there. That was horrible. We noticed it afterwards, but I was able to fix it.

Fans comment on your Instagram in Hebrew. Do people visit you from around the world?
I’ve noticed that more people are coming from far away. I don’t know exactly about around the world yet, but maybe in the future. I will say I had this guy came in from Oklahoma and I thought that was real far from where I’m at.

Would you ever have a portrait on your head?
I would, but who’s going to do it?

You’d have to do it for yourself.
I’ve never tried that. I’ve never even had designs. I don’t know why—maybe because I’m picky. I wouldn’t mind getting one now. At first I was more like, Eh I’ll just do it on other people. Now the hair industry has changed so much that it doesn’t matter. I would get one.

Follow Lauren on Twitter

Some old Greek guy once said that the law is reason, free from passion. If that old chestnut held up under scrutiny there'd be a lot fewer pissed-off humans hand-pounding license plates in our sprawling prison-industrial complex. This contradiction inspired us to repurpose an old Noisey column, "Ask a Lawyer," to give us the opportunity to hit up one of our lawyer buddies and get him to drop the gavel on the weirdest legal issues of our stupid time. He'd only agree to speak with us anonymously, because lawyers are pussies. Enjoy!

The internet collectively pointed and laughed at a sleepy fat man on Monday, when news broke that he was suing MLB, ESPN, and two commentators for $10 million. The incident that sparked the lawsuit can be viewed above, but the long and short of it is that the plaintiff, Andrew Rector, passed out at a baseball stadium during a Red Sox-Yankees game and the ESPN commentators, Dan Shulman and John Kruk, said unflattering things about him on live TV.

Rector's lawsuit has been roundly mocked, as much for its chances of success as the grammatical mistakes and the colorful language littered throughout it. “MLB.com continued the onslaught,” it reads, “to a point of comparing the plaintiff to someone of a confused state of mind, disgusted disgruntled and unintelligent and probably intellectually bankrupt individual.”

The internet can be a cruel and unforgiving place, and this lawsuit, uploaded by Smoking Gun, was like throwing gasoline on top of burning gasoline. But the question we need to answer—the question that will determine whether or not you should eat a handful of Ambien and buy a field-level ticket to the next Yankees home game—is does the fat cow have a case? We asked a lawyer to weigh in. 

VICE: Does this guy have a case for defamation?
Anonymous Lawyer: So the elements for the cause of action for defamation are a false statement reporting to be fact concerning another person or entity. Publication or communication of that statement has to result in harm caused to the person or entity who is the subject of the statement-such as harm to reputation-and the person who made the statement must have intended to cause harm, or at least have been negligent. So basically, you have to say something that's false about someone, and be at least negligent as to the truth of that statement. You have to publish that statement and then you have to harm the person's reputation. 

Do you think this broadcast did that?
It seems as though the statements that were made about him are not statements of fact. Statements of fact would be something like “You cheated on your wife,” “You're gay,” “You don't pay your taxes,” and that is different than an opinion of someone. There are many different defenses under defamation law, one of which is that it was merely an opinion of someone. Freedom of speech wants to protect our ability to give opinions on other people, provided that we're not saying a false statement that could be interpreted as fact and harm someone's reputation. It seems as though in this situation no statements of fact were made.

So it's probably safe to assume he's not going to be awarded $10 million for falling asleep at a baseball game.
If the allegedly defamatory assertion is expression of opinion rather than a statement of fact, defamation cannot be brought because opinions are inherently not falsifiable. There's no such thing as a false opinion. So that element- a false statement reporting to be fact concerning another person or entity-cannot be proven and that's one of the main elements of the defamation claim. It seems as though he's going to fail to state the claim because of the fact that there was no false statement made about him. 

The city has become a battlefield. As modern militaries must adapt to a landscape that often gives the upper hand to insurgents, proper training becomes more essential than ever.

VICE News correspondent Alex Miller travels to Israel, home to one of the largest and most advanced urban warfare training centers in the world, to embed with a unit practicing effective urban combat tactics before employing them in the streets.

Remember last year when VICE on HBO was nominated for an Emmy? Well, this year season two managed to scoop up three nominations at the premier award ceremony for American television excellence: Outstanding Informational Series or Special; Outstanding Cinematography for Nonfiction Programming; and Outstanding Sound Editing for Nonfiction Programming (Single or Multi-Camera).

We would like to congratulate the cast and crew on an excellent season, and the renewal of the show for seasons 3 and 4. If they keep going at this rate, who knows what to expect next year. Is it too early for a lifetime achievement award?  

The president is still better at clutching babies than setting drug policy. Photo via Flickr user Charles McCain

It's been a busy week for drug policy reformers in America. On Monday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo set in motion what is apparently going to be a painfully slow process of catching the Empire State up with rest of this weed-loving country, signing into law an incredibly restrictive medical marijuana program that will ban patients from actually smoking the herb. On Tuesday, Washington state's recreational pot regime, passed by ballot referendum in 2012, finally took effect, with the first sales apparently producing bales of cash. Most of that money, as in Colorado, will go toward essential services like health care and education. Coupled with the fact that Washington, DC, is set to (at least) decriminalize marijuana in the near future, and one might argue that it's an exciting time to be an American who wants their government to do intelligent—or at least not completely incoherent—things when it comes to drugs.

Enter Barack Obama. On Wednesday, the president's drug czar released the 2014 edition of US national drug control strategy, a 102-page document that leads off with a paean from the Man himself touting an "evidence-based plan for real drug policy reform, spanning the spectrum of effective prevention, early intervention, treatment, recovery support, criminal justice, law enforcement, and international cooperation." But this latest agenda, while laudable for moving away from a "war on drugs" mentality and highlighting opiate addiction, goes out of its way to defend pot prohibition. The administration insists we ought to be giving it credit for doing a bit of tinkering at the margins of a catastrophic, decades-old policy failure, but even this updated strategy is riddled with glaring flaws. Perhaps most ominously, the document could serve to expand what has been something of a regional moral panic over a surge in heroin use in the Northeast—especially in states like Vermont.

The strategy also embraces the use of drug courts—the phrase appears 26 times in the document, including a plug for actor Matthew Perry's heroism in popularizing this allegedly wonderful alternative to America's traditional legal system. In fact, drug courts could be making the United States act more punitively toward addicts and have failed to reduce the influx of young minorities into the penal system. Rather than reducing harm, the criminal justice apparatus has been expanded, and the studies the government cites showing their effectiveness are dubious at best given the systematic selection bias present in these programs.

Of course, it's not like anyone was expecting the White House to come out with a plan to suddenly legalize ganja across the land. US drug policy seemed to go backward during Obama's first term, at least when it came to the federal goverment's enforcement of marijuana laws. The DEA made more raids than ever, especially in states with versions of legalization or decriminalization on the books. The war on weed has eased somewhat since the president's re-election, suggesting that either this enforcement strategy was caused by some cynical tough-on-crime political calculations, or perhaps that Attorney General Eric Holder has had a massive change of heart since the 2012 election.

To his credit, Obama has pushed through some worthy initiatives like a reduction in the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, which has traditionally resulted in blacks facing far harsher prison sentences than whites (who tend to buy the stuff you can snort). Instead of a 100-to-1 disparity in the prison terms attached to the two drugs, it's now 17-to-1. Cool. Likewise, Holder has started to rein in mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which destroy too many young peoples' lives. And the just-released strategy features an effort to make heroin overdose drugs like Naloxone more widely available, which is a pretty obviously good thing. What's more, Colorado and Washington have largely been free from federal harassment, with one or two exceptions. All of those advances should be acknowledged, but even so, these are hardly bold strides forward.

And not to harp on the marijuana component of this, but Obama's plan was immediately preceded by some amazing journalism from muckraker (and VICE contributor Lee Fang), who reported on how the corporations like Purdue Pharma that manufacture prescription opiates like OxyContin funnel cash toward propping up pot prohibition. Given that marijuana is the most commonly used illegal substance in the country, the fresh strategy already seems a bit stale, warning as it does about the dangers of an opiate epidemic without a hint of self-awareness. One would think the spectacular conflict of interest coursing throughout the federal government's partners in pot criminalization, such as the industry-funded Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA), would trouble the White House.

The strategy also shows its age when expressing concern that young people are insufficiently scared of pot, thanks in part to the example set by those rogue states out west.

"There's been an intense effort since the early 70s at least but intensively since 1979 to keep minors terrified about cannabis," explains Mark Kleiman, a UCLA professor who is advising Washington state officials on their legalization program.

As always, there are legitimate concerns to be had about pot use. Like whether young people might inhibit their development by messing around with the drug when they're in their tweens, and whether overpowering edibles in Colorado will continue to cause marijuana newbies like Maureen Dowd to lose their shit. But the facts are encouraging.

"What's strange about the last decade is we've seen a boost in cannabis use but not among minors," Kleiman says.

Political elites are still figuring out how to reconcile what their fellow insiders are telling them to believe about drug policy and what their constituents actually want. That's to be expected. But inasmuch as Obama is set to enjoy a few decades of fabulous privilege upon retirement, one would think an issue as life-or-death as heroin use—and the almost-as-damaging systematic enforcement of pot prohibtiion—would merit a bit more focus right now. Instead, the president copped to his failure by deferring to interim drug czar Michael Botticelli, who unveiled the annual strategy on his own in Virginia. Ostensibly this was because Botticelli is himself a recovering addict, and the guy should be applauded for admitting that “we cannot arrest or incarcerate our way out of the drug problem.” Talking about drugs remains impossible for Obama himself, however, as we were reminded when he laughed off some bro in Colorado who asked him to smoke pot this week. The president has a storied history of laughing away legalization types, in fact, despite a young adulthood defined in large part by extensive recreational drug use.

So President Obama remains rather cynically satisfied with a status quo that preys on the vulnerable. Meanwhile, elected officials making policy at a local level are moving ahead with at least somewhat less prejudice. No wonder this latest drug control strategy already seems behind the times.

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

Because my film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s book, Child of God, will be released this August, I thought I would share one of my previous attempts at transforming literature into film. When I was at NYU, I made a short based on Frank Bidart's poem "Herbert White," which you can watch above.

What follows below is a talk I had with Matt Rager about my adaptation of “Herbert White.” Matt co-wrote the screenplays for my movies The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying—both of which are also adaptations. During our talk, we touch on the ideas behind my film and Frank's amazing poem and the powers and limitations inherent in the mediums of film and literature.

James: Frank Bidart’s poem, “Herbert White,” was introduced to me in a seminar class at an MFA program. The teacher read it aloud and it was immediately galvanizing for me. Some things speak to us. We can read hundreds of pages a day, but much of it falls into the background. Only a few works urge us to investigate and align ourselves with their power—Bidart’s poem was one of those special works. 

In the class, the initial discussion addressed the unusual depravity of the subject matter—a necrophile murderer. Bidart later told me that he wrote the poem while in a workshop with Robert Lowell at Harvard. Lowell told him that there were some subjects that were suitable for poetry—and this was not one of them. The poem eventually became the first poem of Bidart’s first book Golden State.

The idea came to Bidart after reading a dime store psychology book called 21 Abnormal Sex Cases, one of which was “The Necrophiliac.” The book was 1960s pornography disguised as a case study book. Bidart used some of the details of the necrophiliac’s case and fused them with facts from his own childhood growing up in Bakersfield, California. His father was a lothario who lived in a motel and got remarried and had more children with his second wife, of whom Frank was very jealous. Frank gives Herbert the yearnings of a poet. He’s trying to decipher the world around him. But Herbert can’t understand the world, not in the ways that Frank can. Herber tdoesn’t have the capacity to express himself or to contextualize his world. Instead, he tries to control it through violence. Frank calls the Herbert character his anti-self (a concept he picked up from Yeats) through which one can examine oneself by depicting the opposite of oneself. 

Matt: I can’t help but notice the interplay between Bidart’s “Herbert White” and Anthony Hecht’s “Feast of Stephen.” In “Feast of Stephen,” it is about the distance between narrator and character. In “Herbert White” it seems to be about collapsing the authorial voice within a first-person character. Would you say that this interplay between voices is something you’re drawn to?

James: Definitely. Once I decided to adapt “Herbert White,” I had to figure out what would stay in the narrative. I was struck by two moments at the beginning of the poem that led to an approach for the entire film. The first is at the very beginning, when he says, “I hit her on the head and it was good.” This is a mysterious line. Read alone, it’s ambiguous. What world allows a woman’s struck head to be “good”? I used my initial reaction to this one line to shape how I would depict the mystery around what Herbert was doing in the woods. In other words, the opening of the film was directly influenced by the ambiguity of the first line of the poem. In the film he is dragging something that can’t be seen through the woods and then he hit it and he nods as if in approval, as if it was good.

The other surprising thing for me was that Herbert has a family. He mentions leaving them in the car while he goes into the woods to have sex with the corpse. This implies a depth to him, that he isn’t simply a monster. He has a family that he supports. But more than all that, it implies that he has a secret life. And this tension between the public/family life and the secret shameful life is what I built my film on.

Matt: What is transgressive in one media is familiar in another. For instance, the homo-social bonding between boys in The Feast of Stephen is familiar as a poetic theme, but to see it manifested in your film was much more shocking. Herbert White was an opposite experience for me. The poem is shocking. But when the film opens with the scene of Herbert White carrying what is clearly the dead body of a young girl, I found myself immediately thinking: OK, he’s a serial killer.

James: You’re right. We have different expectations for different mediums. We can watch pornography for free on the internet, but if it enters into our films, people get upset. We see murder after murder in film, but in a poem it seems infinitely darker. The other weird dichotomy is between fiction and non-fiction. This is a tangent, but maybe important for the poems and films we’re looking at. How crazy does Tom Cruise look proclaiming his love for Katie on Oprah? But in a film like Jerry Maguire, that performance would look great. I know that one is supposedly real and one is fictional, but what is Oprah but entertainment? Guests don’t go on that show and act like they do when they are at home in their living room. Talk shows and non-fiction are a mix of reality and entertainment. Certain stories are being selected and told in a specific way for a desired effect. This is why, as Godard says, (I’m paraphrasing) that even a choice of a camera angle is a political choice.

Matt: I’m interested in the structure of the film and the way that you used repetition and images of circularity to develop rhythm and tension. There’s the scene where he sees the girl on the street. He passes her and circles back around the block in one long tracking shot. We watch him wrestle with himself and try to resist the urge that we know is building. Since the camera is in the car with him, the girl becomes the focal point around which the camera, car, and Herbert circulate. These images capture the thematic concerns of the poem—a man trapped within a familial cycle of violence that he can’t escape. Was this structure consciously inspired by the poem?

James: The circling car scene came from a few different places. There is a section in the poem where Herbert has gone to visit his father and he sees that his father is engaged with his new family in a way that he never was with Herbert. In the poem, instead of confronting his father, Herbert prowls the streets for a new victim. It is as if murdering young women is the only way he knows how to channel his pent up feelings. 

For the film, I thought Herbert’s struggle with himself would be best captured if we didn’t cut away from him. The racing around the block along with Michael’s screeches and curses (ad-libbed) adds to the depiction of the inner struggle. We shot it three times, racing around the block. I was in the back with my DP. We were both pinching each other because the scene was so intense.

Matt: The poem also dramatizes several scenes with his father and moments from his childhood. Why did you decide not to depict those?

James: In the poem, there are significant sections that deal with young Herbert, including his first experience with death. Young Herbert kills a goat on accident, while trying to have sex with it, when it strangles itself at the end of its tether in an attempt to get away from him. Herbert takes his mother’s notion that “Man’s spunk is the salt of the earth, it makes things grow” literally and tries to bring the goat back to life by masturbating on its corpse. But his spunk does not make things grow. This is an interesting and comedic episode in the poem because it ties sex, death, and the parents’ struggle all together in young Herbert’s mind. But when putting it on film would be difficult. The image of a boy fucking a goat is hard to swallow. It would put an audience off and I wanted to save the most horrifying image for the end of the film. 

The other issue with the flashback scenes was that they are much more concrete on film than they are in poetry. The poem doesn’t actually jump back to the past. A literal translation of what was happening would have depicted Herbert speaking directly to the camera, talkingabout his childhood. If you don’t do that, then you have to depict scenes with a different actor, a young actor. Scenes like that are less powerful, because they are so literal.

Matt: Most serial killer shows only depict brief snippets of the killer before cutting away to the good guys investigating the crime. They titillate the viewer by presenting the depravity, but they dole it out in manageable chunks and then mitigate it within predictable genre conventions. By staying with Herbert the whole film, you do not allow the viewer to dismiss him as a monster. The tension builds because we are not allowed outside of his cycle of violence. And the film ends without any indication that the cycle of violence will be broken. However, your ending is very different. Why?

James: The poem ends with self-recognition. Herbert has been murdering women and sleeping with them without acknowledging it to himself. But regardless, it would be hard to portray this absence of mind on film. Imagine what the actor would look like while in such a trance. And what about the moment toward the end of the poem when he realizes what he has been doing? That is the material of melodrama and overacting. Finally, at the end of the poem he says, “I hope I fry.” This seems to reference the electric chair, which would imply that he has been caught. But it also means that the character has taken a full turn and is full of self-recrimination. This kind of turn is hard to do convincingly in a 15-minute film. Short narrative films work best when not too much happens and the characters don’t need to change that much. Any big change will make the whole piece feel like a morality tale.

Because I didn’t want the movie to hinge on a moment of self-recognition and recrimination, I altered the pivotal dynamic to the family versus his secret life. This is why the family scenes alternate with the cutting machine scenes. The logging scenes are full of noise and energy. They embody the monstrous side of Herbert without having to show the character being monstrous. The juxtaposition with the plain and quiet moments with the family gives them even more power. At the end of the film, there is possibly a moment of self-recognition, but nothing definitive. Instead, the horror that has just been revealed is covered over by the innocuous voice of the son.  

Matt: I like that idea that the pivotal dynamic in literature is internal and psychological. But in order for this to work in film, it must be shifted to a spatial or physical representation.

It is an interesting choice to embody the monstrous within images of machines. They have immense destructive power, but the power is transient and offers nothing in place of what has been destroyed. While operating the machine, one experiences the power. But at the end of the day, those working that job have very little agency. They are still beholden to the whims of forces beyond their control. Not only do the machines represent the inner turmoil and the drive to destroy, but they also points toward the feeling of impotence Herbert feels at his inability to understand the world, to understand himself, and to control his actions.

Image via Flickr.
In a downtown Ottawa hotel, in a closed-room meeting, a gaggle of negotiators are hammering out the final details of the massive new Trans-Pacific Strategic Partnership Agreement (TPP). Canadian negotiators are probably putting up a bit of resistance. But in the über-secret meetings, the Americans have a specific goal: get its allies onboard with their plans to fight copyright pirates, even if it means attacking the internet itself.

Just a few blocks away, on Wednesday, open internet activists met to discuss the risks that TPP poses to an open internet. They say that users should be profoundly worried about the clandestine deal, and they are mobilizing to put pressure on the signatory countries.

“There is a real disconnect between what many of these countries are saying about citizen engagement and how they actually practice it,” says Jeremy Malcolm, a senior analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who organized the event. “That’s totally contrary to what happens at the TPP, where it’s only open to insiders and we have no reliable knowledge of what they’re even talking about here.”

The only way we even know about some of the huge new copyright impacts is because a draft copy of the secretive draft agreement was provided to Wikileaks. The draft shows that the U.S. is trying to get its partners onboard with a notice-and-takedown regime for copyright infringement.

You may know the practice by its Americanized nom de guerre: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The DMCA is a hugely powerful tool that allows copyright holders to go after those who use or host unlicensed copyrighted material by forcing content providers like Google and YouTube to suppress websites, videos, music, sheet music, lyrics, and images. It stacks the system so far in favour of the copyright holders that it affords Universal Music the power to order a 29-second video of a baby dancing to Prince be taken offline. (A lawsuit was filed against Universal and, years on, still hasn’t been resolved.)

America inserted the language to, effectively, make the the same legislation in the DMCA apply to all the agreement’s signatories: Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and Canada.

But here’s the catch: Canada has flatly refused to adopt a notice-and-takedown regime, instead opting for a notice-and-notice regime, and has fought having to bring the DMCA up north.

Canada’s system was introduced back in November 2011, via Bill C-11—the Copyright Modernization Act. It prescribed that if a copyright holder wants to go after an infringer, it needs to send a notice to the person’s internet service provider (ISP), a search engine, or a website host. That company is required to pass the notice on to the user, and to retain all records of the infringement for at least six months, up to a year, in case the copyright holder decides to file a lawsuit.

This has been the informal practice for years, and it’s been pretty effective. So much so that other countries, like Chile—who are also part of the TPP negotiations—adopted a modified version of it.

While there are some concerns with the program—which essentially lets corporations harass Canadians who download content for private use, and have private companies obtain their data even if the company hasn’t proven that the user is infringing copyright—it’s a compromise.

Statistics Roger provided show that they send out about 200,000 notices per year, with some users receiving more than one. Less than one percent of users ever receive more than two notices. That means only a fraction of users ever get the warning, and only a fraction of them would ever see the inside of a courtroom, where they could be liable for penalties of $5,000.

Yet the official regime in C-11 has yet to come into force. It’s been kicked down the line repeatedly since 2011 until, finally, the government announced in June that it would be taking effect by January 2015.

But the long-awaited measures will be, effectively, moot if the prime minister signs the existing language of TPP.

The draft, which is marked-up with opinions of the negotiators, shows that Canada has opposed the measures, and has tried to suggest alternatives. However, nobody is very optimistic that Canada is going to push very far.

“At the end of the day, there are going to be trade-offs,” says Michael Geist, Canada research chair in internet and e-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. “They’re far more likely to trade access to sell a little bit more beef or pork in exchange for losing on some of these intellectual property issues.”

“That’s what trade negotiations are all about,” chips in Howard Knopf, an Ottawa intellectual property lawyer.

The hope, Geist says, is that Canada invested so much political capital in passing C-11 that it really sticks up for itself in the negotiations.

The two were presenting to a roomful of TPP negotiators at the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s downtown Ottawa lunch. The two say that the notice-and-takedown regime is something to be worried about, especially from a free speech perspective.

“The concern has long been that you’re going to get mistakes where something gets taken down inadvertently or just by error, because so much of this is automated, and that this is has a chilling effect,” Geist says.

But there’s another catch: Canada appears to be preparing another backdoor for copyright holders. As VICE reported in June, Bill S-4 will likely wedge open a loophole to allow so-called “copyright trolls” to extort users for small sums of money, with the threat of legal action, made possible by legalizing the secret exchange of users’ files between corporations.

That contradicts the process laid out by the courts. In February, a federal court put firm restrictions on how companies can get ahold of an ISP’s user data. Those restrictions go out the window when S-4 passes.

Neither the TPP agreement nor C-11 change that system.

Geist isn’t too concerned. He says that, if the notice-and-notice regime is mandatory, then ISPs won’t be very sympathetic to big movie studios that bang on their door and ask for a list of their subscribers. Geist says that ISPs while be especially gun-shy after the public spanking they received this year, when it came to light that they handed data to police—and, well, whichever federal agency wants it—willy-nilly.

“They’re feeling the public pressure on this issue,” says Geist.

Knopf, however, is of a different opinion

“I’m a bit more cynical,” he says.

“Big ISPs are very highly converged companies now, and they have content interests. They’re public companies and they have a duty to their shareholders to make as much money as possible. If somebody comes along and says: ‘We’ll give you a whole lot of money if you give us the names of people who downloaded a certain movie,’ and the law allows that without a court order, why wouldn’t they?”

Most ISPs, Knopf says, “have not fought on behalf of their subscribers at all.”

That’s been laid bare by evidence that most big ISPs refuse to kick up a fight when the G-men come a-knocking. But that is set to change since the Supreme Court ruled police requests for Canadians' user data from ISPs to obtain a search warrant is unconstitutional.

Given that users could be receiving the cautionary notice-and-notice emails from the ISPs, and the threatening invoices from the copyright trolls, there is room for confusion.

But the TPP doesn’t stop there. America is also looking to force its allies to extend the copyright term for intellectual property. It will extend the current 50-year copyright life to 70 years for books and movies, and nearly double the term for music, to 95 years—so you’ll be waiting another four-and-a-half decades more before you hear “The Lemon Song” playing in an elevator.

Had the TPP passed earlier, the BBC’s popular Sherlock remake would never have been possible.

“This transfer of welfare in favor of large corporate copyright owners will come at the cost of those who depend upon access to copyright works that would otherwise be in the public domain—libraries, students, artists, writers, and millions of other people,” read a letter signed by a coalition of dozens of stakeholders.

Geist says whether or not Canada will find compromise on the TPP deal comes down to a very simple question:

“If the goal is for the U.S. to say ‘we want everyone’s laws to look exactly like ours,’ then it’s just ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ If the goal is to actually have a system that is effective, both in respect to right’s holders but also in respect to internet users, notice-and-notice actually has proven to be an effective tool for that kind of educating approach.” 


@justin_ling

On June 12, three Israeli teens were kidnapped while hitchhiking through the West Bank city of Hebron. In response, the Israeli army launched a severe crackdown in the West Bank, arresting hundreds of Palestinians. Two weeks later, the bodies of the Israeli teens were found, and Israel blamed their murders on the militant group Hamas. Then, last week, the body of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy was found in East Jerusalem after being burned alive in a revenge attack carried out by right-wing Israelis.

Inside Israel and throughout the West Bank, the killings set off massive demonstrations the likes of which have not been seen since the Second Intifada more than a decade ago. Meanwhile, the Israeli military has been carrying out airstrikes over the besieged Gaza Strip in an effort to root out Hamas, which has launched hundreds of homemade rockets over the southern border of Israel during the past several weeks. Despite mounting criticism and civilian causalities, Israel has vowed to increase its military operation in Gaza in the coming days.

VICE News is in Israel and Palestine amid the mounting tension as Israelis and Palestinians prepare for the next round of violent confrontations. In this first dispatch, we go to a protest in the mixed Israeli-Palestinian town of Acre and speak with Palestinians intent on using peaceful means to make their voices heard.

Richard Linklater is the filmmaker behind some of indie film’s preeminent classics. His early break throughs, Slacker (1991) and Dazed and Confused (1993), captured and defined our generation more genuinely than had been done before, and perhaps since. 

On Tuesday night, VICE Senior Editor Benjamin Shapiro conducted a Q&A with Linklater at Nitehawk Cinema, along with an advance screening of Boyhood, his latest project. The film is true to Linklater form in its exploration of the nuances of youth and life, and was ambitiously shot over 12 years, following the upbringing of a boy from the age of six until his high school graduation. 

In this episode of VICE Meets, Reihan Salam and Linklater discuss the inspiration behind the film and his career. It also includes behind-the-scenes footage from throughout the film’s production.

Artwork by Brian Walsby