In 2012, we fell in love with Fishing without Nets, Cutter Hodierne's short film about Somali pirates. We weren't the only ones—the film won a Sundance grand jury prize that year. The 17-minute short, starring a full cast of Somali non-actors, was spectacular, but we wanted more, so VICE decided to team up with Cutter to produce a feature-length version of Fishing. We sent him and his crew back to East Africa and they returned with a deep and beautifully shot story of Somali pirates told through the eyes of the pirates themselves.
Cutter premiered the full-lengthFishing without Nets earlier this year at Sundance to glowingpraise, and took home the 2014 Directing Award for US Dramatic film. Now, the film will be making its full release at the end of October. Over the course of the next month, we'll be showing the film in LA, NYC, San Francisco, Atlanta, and more.
Fishing Without Nets follows Abdi, played by Abdikani Muktar, a fisherman who, after pollution spoils the waters generations of his family have counted on for fish, uses the last money he has to smuggle his wife and son out of the country, toward a better life. Desperate to join them, Abdi succumbs to the allure of the quick money to be made as a pirate. His experience as a fisherman gives him the knowledge about shipping lanes that the hijacking party needs. Reluctant, but determined to rejoin his family, Abdi sets off to capture an oil tanker and take its crew hostage.
Watch the original Fishing without Nets short here and check out the feature film's website for more information about its release, showing schedules, and how you can host your own screening.
Last year I became the first Brit to live among the Baruya tribe, a people from the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea. Meals up there consisted overwhelmingly of sweet potato, so within a month my body had started to ache from lack of protein. The solution, I realized, was to shoot one of the wild pigs scurrying about nearby. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to go about doing that, so I asked my neighbor—Miyana, the village shaman—to teach me the warrior-hunter skills of the tribe.
My first exposure to this traditional form of archery came when Miyana’s ten-year-old son attempted to shoot an arrow at me through a hole in our hut. After his father had disciplined him for that semi-worrying prank, he returned—bow in hand—and we began.
Considering myself to be in good shape, and being markedly larger than the aging Papuan shaman, I smugly took the bow off him, placed the arrow on the reed, pulled back with force and shot. Nothing happened. People started laughing. I had failed to release the arrow from my grip. Hauling the cord back again, I forced my fingers open and allowed the spia to drop into the mud a couple of yards away. Sparing me any further embarrassment, Miyana collected the arrow and brought the session to a close.
For the next couple of months, every time I asked for another shot the locals would mumble “behind,” a word that can be translated to something between “later” and “never.” I even tried to bribe children, offering a ball to whomever would let me practice with them, but to no avail. Finally, I found a young man, Raiwin, who agreed to teach me traditional archery—using six-foot bows made out of black palm—if I helped him learn English.
Everything went well for the first four months. Then war broke out with the neighboring tribe, and archery practice shifted focus toward shooting humans rather than animals. The village elders had all been dented by enemy arrows in the past, and some had lost body parts during a seven-year war in the 1980s. In light of this development, Miyana began teaching me to move like a fighter, showing me subtle side-steps to help avoid enemy fire, and an acrobatic method of stealth shooting, which involved positioning the bow horizontally while taking cover in the undergrowth.
One night, a man in his sixties came up to our village to share his story. As Miyana kept the fire alight and his son dissected a block of taro with a machete, Birimaniye outlined how he had personally ended the first war—which had erupted over a land dispute—back in his youth.
“Bows and arrows can only do so much damage, so I managed to get hold of a rifle and some bullets, and decided to kill their most fearsome warrior, Taviwei. I knew that would bring an end to the conflict,” he said. “I crept down the valley and placed myself in some bushes near the frontier, before popping a bullet into the chamber and taking aim. Taviwei spotted me, grabbed a machete and sprinted towards my position. I pulled the trigger, looked up and saw blood all over Taviwe's torso. The bullet had hit him directly in the throat, and killed him shortly afterwards.”
Relations had been tense ever since, but the two tribes had manage to coexist in relative peace since the shooting. However, the rape of Taviwei’s granddaughter by a youth from our village put an end to this in the summer of 2013. Yamarai, Taviwei’s son, vowed revenge.
The author
As I improved my archery, men came to our hut with a variety of firearms they had acquired through selling marijuana to criminal gangs operating in the lawless hills nearby. Birimaniye had demonstrated that guns win wars, and so, wherever possible, the fighters in our tribe were trading in their bows for rifles. A man from a neighboring village had even managed to get hold of a block of plastic explosives and was keen to try it out on the enemy, much to my dismay.
I attempted to convey my feelings about the rules of war, but quickly realized that my ideas weren’t only misunderstood, but that I had no right to try to influence the tribe’s behavior. Before long, I became acutely aware that my presence alone appeared to be mustering a peculiar gun fever among almost everyone.
Sporadic gunshots rang out throughout the valley, and every evening Miyana would delay the latest tales of blood and body parts from the front line. Injured tribesmen started turning up with a variety of wounds, and we would attempt to restore them to fighting form with a combination of antibiotic spray and painkillers. Heavy rain exacerbated everything, and I started sleeping with my machete within arm's length of my bed.
Amid the fighting, I remained hungry, and clung onto the dream of log-fire roasted pork. One day we wandered down towards another village to cut some sugar cane. The place was not only incredibly close to the border with the enemy tribe, but also home to clusters of venomous, fist-sized spiders and knots of the legendary highland death adders.
After collecting the goods, we ascended back up the craggy slopes with Miyana at the helm. The two of us shot at various targets en route until, near the village, we spotted a wild pig feasting away in a private garden. “Shoot him!” Miyana ordered. From that distance there was absolutely no way I could kill the little creature, so I took out a flat-faced ama arrow and shot. The poor beast let out a cry as the arrow hit his side and ran for it. But he didn't get far—a weighty middle-aged woman with an ax was waiting at the other end of the field.
We scraped away the fur as the pig baked on a mount of hot rocks, cut out its innards, and cooked the appropriate parts before huddling around the fire. Conversation turned to the war, and I mentioned my concern over the pointless loss of life.
“I have a story to tell you,” Miyana's brother began as we divided the pork between us. “After Taviwei was killed by our tribe, Yamarai—his son—became friends with an American missionary who used to fly planes near the north coast. Robert, the pilot, wanted to help his friend, and so the two of them traveled to the black markets of the Sepik. Late one night we saw Robert's Cessna fly into the airfield on the other side of the valley, which was risky, as it’s extremely dangerous to fly out here after dark. A few weeks later we traveled to Yamarai's village, and he confronted us armed with a Kalashnikov rifle—the sort I remember seeing in films when I lived in town. We ran, and—thanks to the powers of our shamans—the gun didn't fire.”
A local with a homemade gun
Miyana nodded, proud that his tribe's magic could trump modern tools of war. “So, no matter what happens, we will not be defeated by them. Nonetheless, it is good you are here, as now you can help us buy more guns to fight back.”
The hills I lived in have seen countless battles over the last few thousand years. For my tribe, war gave meaning to its men, and conquest provided an opportunity to mingle genetically and avoid incest. With weapons made of stone and wood, victory relied on skill, but didn't always result in the death of the enemy. Assault rifles will change everything.
While missionaries in Papua New Guinea appear to have gone out of their way to demolish indigenous culture, the introduction of sophisticated firearms ensures the destruction not just of that culture and tradition, but perhaps of entire peoples. I left my tribe in a state of war against another, both sides increasingly arming themselves with AK-47s and M16s.
Out of government eyes, the complete eradication of the people I lived with would go unreported, and the bow and arrows hanging in my flat would, perhaps, be some of the only physical remnants of an entire way of life.
Aleppo is Syria's largest metropolitan area and a millennia-old commercial capital. Today, however, it is a relative ghost town, threatened by regime bombing from the air and a militant offensive on the ground.
For two weeks this summer, VICE News embedded with the Islamic Front, a coalition of Islamist rebels fighting the forces of President Bashar al-Assad on one hand and Islamic State militants on the other. From their secret tunnels beneath the ancient city to their threatened frontline outposts in Aleppo's ruined medieval center, we followed the Islamic Front as it battled against overwhelming odds to retain control of the capital of the Syrian revolution.
Arturo Díaz Jr. needed a buyer. He had turned 1,000 acres of his family’s Puerto Rico waterfront into a luxury housing development called Coco Beach, but the real estate bubble had burst and the banks were on his case. At 91, having led a successful career in construction, he was ready to be rid of his share of the $200 million white elephant. So when a friend named Miguel Lausell said he was working with a billionaire who might want to buy, Díaz was ready to talk.
Lausell was an old acquaintance, and his reputation was solid: Harvard Law, a former phone company president, a Democratic Party fundraiser. He was working for an oil-trading start-up, Madasi Oil, representing a much larger Aruban oil company called Arevenca. So Lausell and his partner, Marcos Da Silva, the CEO of Madasi, met with Díaz. They said the president of Arevenca, a billionaire named Francisco Javier González Álvarez, was interested in the property. Díaz called for his helicopter and gave the Madasi partners a tour.
While Díaz was focused on real estate, Lausell was pushing another offer. Díaz’s main business was Betteroads Asphalt, a paving contractor. Lausell wanted to know whether Betteroads wanted 100,000 barrels of asphalt from Arevenca. At $88 a barrel—well below the market price of about $100—it was a steal. While he waited to work out the details of the property sale, Díaz bargained down the price and prepared to pony up $7.8 million for a tanker of Trinidadian tar.
Díaz liked the idea of building a relationship with someone who could pay $300 million for his share of Coco Beach, so he ignored the various warning signs surrounding the asphalt deal—the fact, for example, that Arevenca wanted the money wired in cash to a numbered Swiss bank account, a practice more common once a relationship is already established. Another warning sign: Arevenca wasn’t a familiar name. But Díaz didn’t imagine Lausell would steer him wrong.
In July, Díaz’s company, Betteroads, wired $2 million. An additional $5.8 million followed in August.
The tanker never arrived.
By September, Díaz knew something was seriously wrong. Betteroads went to the law, but no one was arrested. After a year of discussions, Betteroads sued Madasi and Arevenca in Puerto Rico. This year, Betteroads has pursued criminal charges in Spain. But the Díaz family has yet to recover a cent, and likely never will. (Madasi is also suing Arevenca in US court.)
Arevenca, it turns out, was a sophisticated version of what some traders call a “joker broker.” They are all over the web, offering, say, the entire world’s production of jet fuel or Russian diesel, at a discount—call now! With each con running to the millions of dollars, it only takes one successful job to pay for years of effort. It’s low-risk work. In a dozen interviews I conducted with the FBI, money-laundering experts, oil traders, and industry executives, no one could identify a US prosecution for sales of nonexistent oil products. Few victims go public, fearing the stigma of looking like a sucker. There are enough victims to feed a vast ecosystem of joker brokers, in which Díaz had come up against perhaps the king of them all: Arevenca’s founder, Francisco Javier González Álvarez.
Francisco Javier González Álvarez’s life is shrouded in secrecy, but we know this: He was born December 3, 1949, in La Laguna, in the Canary Islands, off of Spain. The next 45 years are a bit of a blank, and González declined repeated interview requests. Former confidants offer little about his past, other than that he was married at least once. He had at least two kids. Nothing to indicate he would become the world’s foremost vendor of nonexistent oil.
The paper trail of his shady dealings starts in Venezuela in 1994, when he was 44. That’s when he registered a gravel company called Arenera de Venezuela, CA. That’s Arevenca for short.
One of González’s first dubious projects was when he told people he would build the San Francisco Javier port complex on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. Court records show that he said it would include 800 warehouses, a five-star hotel, a mall, and a heliport. Construction would cost $1 billion. A contractor started to clear land, but the state halted work for lack of permits. The contractor has been in court since 2001, trying to collect on its bill.
Big dreams stymied, González appears to have gone for small-time cheats. In 2004, an American sued to recover two Venezuelan ranches he had sold González after payment never arrived. A helicopter pilot, a renovation contractor, and a lawyer all sued González for unpaid bills.
Then, out of nowhere, González was calling Arevenca an oil company. In 2006, González allegedly made himself out to be an agent for Venezuela’s state oil firm and sold cargoes of diesel to a Nigerian company.
Most legit oil trades are like buying a home—two sides agree on a price. The buyer puts the money in a sort of escrow and sends out inspectors. Once the oil is delivered, the money moves. A buyer who wires cash up front to a new vendor is asking for problems.
Like Díaz, that’s what the Nigerians did. Like him, they had reason to trust: They would later claim that the Venezuelan embassy itself told them to work with Arevenca. As with Díaz, the oil never arrived. The Nigerians sued for $600 million in New York but never served Arevenca. The other defendant, Venezuela’s state oil company, got the case dismissed in August.
Then, in 2009, González went to the West African country of Côte d’Ivoire and promised to build the world’s biggest oil refinery on the Ivorian coast. Arevenca’s shady record was still buried in court documents. Unsuspecting local reporters covered the news. Global financial outlets Bloomberg and Economist Intelligence Unit ran with the story. The news coverage, portraying Arevenca as a legitimate business, gave the company an aura of respectability.
González has never been convicted, though he is facing criminal charges in Spain over the Betteroads affair. But the law is a weak counterweight to his sales prowess.
Like small-time email scammers offering a Nigerian royal fortune, González dazzles his marks with promises of wealth. Make this little deal now and get a big payoff down the road. He pursues those who need something. Maybe he can offer it himself, or maybe they’re impressed by the politicians González eagerly poses with in photos. He adds legitimacy with an impression of panache: fancy cars, a sleek website, favorable press. He’ll provide bank recommendations if pressed, but that’s rarely needed. And when it is, those recommendations may be fake.
Suhey Villadiego fell for it. When González showed up on the Caribbean island of Curaçao in 2009, she was hired to work as a sort of unpaid assistant. She was already in the brokerage game herself and wanted to learn from González’s methods: She said she had previously done oil deals involving off-market Venezuelan crude. To go big-time, she needed a line of credit so she could buy and sell cargoes of fuel—or at least pretend to.
As González negotiated to purchase an old, filthy oil refinery from the Curaçaoan government, he bought his 22-year-old girlfriend a Cartier watch. But when it was time to pay for the refinery, he offered only a fake letter of credit, Villadiego told me in an interview last year. Another time, he sought to withdraw a $200 million false wire transfer from a Curaçaoan bank. The bank managers didn’t fall for the pressure, she said.
Villadiego wasn’t so lucky. She loaned Arevenca $70,000 from selling her house so they would get her that line of credit.
“I started giving them money in January and gave more in March,” Villadiego said. “I started asking for my money back in October. I was hysterical in November. This was money for my children.” She never saw her cash again. Police told her to sue Arevenca, but she no longer had the funds for a lawyer. Villadiego was scammed—but it was her sense of hope that made her a mark.
Marcos Da Silva, the founder of Madasi, recalls how González gave an impression of great wealth and respectability. To start, González flew Da Silva and his partner, Lausell, to the Arevenca offices in Aruba on a private jet.
Arevenca took up the second floor of one of the more distinguished buildings along the waterfront of Aruba’s capital, Oranjestad. A company flag fluttered out front, and the company name was fastened to the salmon-colored facade. The interior was decorated in handsome furniture. For Lausell and Da Silva, the scene imparted confidence. They had ambled into joker-broker headquarters, but photos show them grinning like they had hit the jackpot.
“He’s a playboy,” Da Silva said, describing to me Gonzalez’s white, short-sleeve shirt, open at the neck, and white linen pants. He presided over a glass-topped conference table, explaining how things would be done. “You look at him, you see a big magnate guy. You know the guy from Virgin? Branson? You see him, he’s like that.”
Framed photos decorated the walls, Da Silva said—González in a Saudi headdress, González with Suriname’s president, Dési Bouterse.
“Man, I believed,” Da Silva said. “I believed in him. Let’s be clear. I believed he had product, just like the Díazes believed, and everyone believed.”
With the London housing shortage at crisis point, a group of young moms have taken matters into their own hands by squatting in abandoned affordable housing in the Olympic Borough of Newham. As of the weekend, four boarded-up flats have been “reoccupied” by the Focus E15 Mothers group and turned into a makeshift social welfare center and open house for the homeless.
“People need homes, and these homes need people. We were all told there were no places in the borough for us, well we found them sitting empty,” says Sam Middleton, 20, one of the founding women of activist group which began when she and 29 other young mothers faced eviction from the nearby Focus E15 hostel just over a year ago today.
“It’s as simple as that. There are people sleeping on the streets in Newham and empty, boarded up homes everywhere around here. They say there is no housing and they're regenerating the area but why do these houses need to be empty while they do it? The places have been boarded up for years. We’re just doing what the council [local officials] won’t.”
Sam Middleton
Last year, a heavily pregnant Sam, then 19, was living in the hostel in the shadow of the London olympic village. Along with the other women in the hostel, she was told it had to close because of funding cuts. Local officials offered to have them re-housed, which would have been fine, except they were to be tossed outside London. The neighborhood had become expensive thanks in part to "regeneration" of the area around the Olympics, so moving people out of their own city seemed like the most cost-effective, if heartless, option for the stretched housing budget.
Some mothers, most of whom have lived in the area their entire lives, were told they could be sent as far away as Manchester, Birmingham and Hastings, away from their families and support networks. Sam was due to give birth the day before the eviction, but instead of accepting the council’s offer, the women formed the Focus E15 Mothers group and successfully campaigned to remain in London.
Sunday saw the one-year anniversary of their battle and a family day was organized in the estate with facepainting and live music to celebrate. This culminated in a small number of the group entering the properties and occupying the empty buildings—a surprise for many of those in attendance.
All of the original Focus E15 Mothers and their children have now been housed in private accommodation in the nearby area, but this, they say, is very insecure. Most of the units cost about $1600/month, are barely covered by their benefits, and have short-term leases that they don’t know will be renewed. So they're occupying the flats to protest their insecurity.
As of today, two of the mothers are inside the building, along with about 20 other supporters who come and go on a shift basis. They are cleaning and setting up activity and kids rooms for the residents of the estate. The building has electricity, hot water and relatively new kitchens and appliances. Several of the protesters slept in the building on Sunday night.
“We want it to be a place where people can come and get housing advice, use the phones and talk about these issues, get advice on letters to the council," says Jasmine Stone, also 20 and an original resident of the hostel, who is inside with her two-year-old daughter Safia. On the wall you can see the plans for the building, which state activities such as “plumbing classes," “house meetings," and “advice about stop and search."
Local officials are aware of the occupation but have so far taken no action. Councillor Andrew Baikie, mayoral adviser for housing in the borough, described the situation in a press statement as a “petty, expensive stunt” and indicated action could soon be taken “get protesters off the estate." On Monday, two police officers and a local official visited, but after not being allowed access, left after a short period. Private property security and clearing company Clearway Group have also been present outside the buildings at various times, checking other empty properties nearby. They could be heard complaining to passersby about the protesters “undoing” their efforts to secure the building, which was sort of exactly the point in the first place.
Asked about the occupation, local officials put forward the following statement from Baikie: “It is disappointing to see empty homes in the Carpenters Estate being occupied by agitators and hangers on." That seems like a pretty weird thing to call a group of precariously housed young mothers. "It is equally disappointing to see them attempt to misrepresent the truth for their own ends," Baikie added.
“I don’t know what they think we’re lying about—we’ve been in these situations faced with eviction," says Sam, just as disappointed as the officials say they are. "We’ve lived round here all our lives and it makes me so sad and angry that these places are empty while there are vulnerable people with nowhere to go.” Throughout Tuesday, Sam and the other protesters can be seen beckoning in people she recognizes or other residents from the street, who seem rather supportive of the move.
Jasmine Stone
The estate has been earmarked for redevelopment since 2010. However, many flats have been empty for up to ten years, which Sam says is “unjust” given the need for housing in the area. Officials claim the current waiting list for affordable housing stands at 14,000 “homes." That sounds like a lot of people hanging around waiting for somewhere to live. Critics, however, estimate that this really means approximately 24,000 individuals are waiting.
Local officials say they're counteracting this by building new affordable housing units, but Jasmine points out that the situation has become dire. "They say they want all these new developments but they are just geared towards rich people. We need affordable housing, not new housing. None of us can afford to live in them. These flats are clean and affordable and just sat empty. There are places here already."
When asked why the site was empty, officials said, “The Carpenters Estate is not viable. The tower blocks are simply too expensive to renovate and will need to be demolished.”
“They say the buildings are unsafe and you can't live in them but some of them are nicer than my flat,” Sam says, laughing while showing a photograph of a mouse skeleton she found when she moved in to her current home. "My little friend I call him."
Jasmine says she is constantly worried about her daughter’s future—and her own. Like Sam, she has been relocated nearby but says she is constantly anxious about what will happen to her and Safia.
“I’ve never ever met my landlord and I have no idea if we’ll be able to stay beyond the end of our lease early next year. I want to be back in work now but we can’t put down roots. I don’t want to put her in nursery and then school to have her move again and again.”
Like many people, she's angry that residents are continuing to sleep rough when there are, by the local government's own admission, 400 empty homes on the estate. This is the same area whose mayor, Robin Wales, wrote in a column for the local newspaper about cracking down on the local homeless by issuing "anti-social behavior orders"; some 28 in the last year. The women have met Wales but it is clear they are not fans. He's previously told the women: "You just can't afford to live in London."
As of yet, it is unclear how long the occupation will last, but Sam says they hope to remain in the premises for “as long as possible” and fix-up the two downstairs flats which are in worse condition. “I really hope we can stay. I really hope we reoccupy the estate,” Jasmine says. London's housing situation is at a breaking point and the Focus E15 Mothers show that if the authorities can't or won't take action, the people will.
Follow the Focus E15 Mothers on Twitter at @FocusE15
17-year-old Daniel Simao dressed up as Slender Man. Photo courtesy of Daniel Simao.
“I chose the character cause he's tall, I'm tall, it's perfect for me,” says Daniel Simao. “I'm aware of the stabbing in America, but no, I didn't wear the costume cause of the incident, or any other supernatural events relating to Slender.”
“Slender” is slang for Slender Man, otherwise known as Slenderman or, in a curious example of internet shorthand, “Slendy.” If you're under the age of 30, up to date with memes, and a sucker for mildly sensationalist articles about horrific crimes committed by teenagers, you'll be familiar with the tall-legged dude who lurks in playgrounds and terrorizes folk with his blank, gawping face.
The story of Slender Man's origins is by now well-known: the “horror figure for the selfie age," as described by the New York Times, emerged during a Photoshop contest on a web forum called Something Awful. From there he found his way to Creepypasta, where a community of enthusiastic writers spun the original, skin-crawling idea into a trope that now echoes endlessly around the internet and beyond.
Sometimes the legend has bled into reality, as appeared to be the case when two 12-year-old girls from Wisconsin were accused of stabbing a classmate 19 times in order to please the Slender. One of the girls was recently deemed mentally unfit to stand trial. In Florida, another teen allegedly paid her respects to Slender Man by lighting her house on fire while her mother and sister slept inside. According to reports, she ran away with nothing but "water, cookies, knives, lighters, and flashlights" and later texted her mom—who, along with the sister, were unscathed—to ask if “any of u (got) hurt.”
Slender Man hanging with Sailor Moon and Sailor Mercury. Photo courtesy of Daniel Simao.
With such reports evoking a demented horror plot, it's hardly surprising Slender Man has captured the imagination of Tumblr types. He's also sparked several rounds of moral panic from schools, police, and other authority figures. “As a parent there's always something... They're trying to target our kids with,” one sheriff said, following the Florida incident. While most of the drama has unfolded up here in the States, the 17-year-old Simao, a cosplayer who has just graduated from high school, would not have been remiss to expect a little criticism for the Slender Man outfit he donned for Sydney's most recent Comic Con.
Yet he wasn't prepared for the backlash inspired by his Slendy shtick. He told me the trouble began when he was forced to leave a Q&A session with Stargate SG-1 star Chris Judge, who he'd visibly spooked with his lurking behavior. “Me and him had a bit of fun... Many people were laughing,” Daniel recalls.
When security asked him to leave the Q&A, he spent the next few hours roaming around the exhibition center, practicing his routine. He describes his behavior as “poking people softly, placing my hand on people's shoulder but taking it off immediately, and the occasional touching of the hair... In no circumstances did I inappropriately touch someone.” The event being Comic Con, many of his 'subjects' were fellow cosplayers who would freak out before stopping to admire the seven-foot-tall teen's efforts. A volunteer and a few security guards had asked him “to stop touching people and invading their personal space,” but the warnings hadn't dented his day.
That was until about 1PM, when a posse of four or five security guards surrounded him. “I didn't take that warning as a warning—it felt more like a threat,” he said. “It felt like, if you don't do as we say you'll have to deal with us. I'm only 17... Obviously by my height they thought I was early to mid-20s.” A few hours later and after more defiant Slendy hijinks, a group of up to 10 guards caught up with Daniel and escorted him outside the venue. News later emerged of several complaints concerning behavior deemed “inappropriate” by Comic Con organizers.
Facebook discussion around Daniel's removal from the event.
Event Director of Oz Comic Con, Bernadette Neumann, has confirmed that an attendee dressed as Slender Man was asked to leave the venue after management received a number of complaints. “While management did not witness every single incident, the fact a number of complaints were made indicated there was an issue which needed to be addressed straight away,” she said. “Oz Comic Con has a zero-tolerance policy on any form of harassment at these events. Anything that is reported to staff and security is immediately acted upon in the appropriate manner.”
Later, other cosplayers took to Facebook to vent their concern and bewilderment over Daniel's ordeal. In a typical response from a community besieged, perhaps unfairly, with accusations of seediness and irrelevance, many sprung angrily to the young cosplayer's defense. Others suggested the complaints were justified. “Your costume was great, but invading other attendees’ space consistently is just bad form,” wrote one contributor. “People aren't always comfortable with being touched by people they don't know, and clearly there were more people that weren't OK than (those that) were.”
According to Patrick Hamilton of Beyond Cosplay, the heated discussion is part of a wider debate concerning right and wrong behavior at places where cosplayers, generally an amiable bunch, like to hang out and enjoy their badass and often attention-grabbing costumes. There are always a few rotten apples, and smartphones and social media have exacerbated opportunities to be thoroughly creepy.
Daniel Simao at the event. Photo by Patrick Hamilton.
“Two guys were running around doing video interviews, getting girls to kiss them on the cheek—then they would turn around and catch them on the lips,” Patrick says of an incident at this year's Sydney Manga and Anime Show. “The police ended up getting involved, they went to [one of the guy's] house and he had to delete everything he filmed and make a YouTube apology. I don't think he was part of the scene, he'd just decided this was a way of making it big and it failed spectacularly—thankfully. It might work in America, but over here everyone's got their defenses up.”
Female attendees, unsurprisingly, are forced to be particularly careful, even around the tired old characters no one takes seriously anymore. James, an active Sydney-based cosplayer, describes an incident involving a dude at this year's Comic Con dressed as Freddy Krueger. “A friend of mine came to where we were standing and asked if she could stay with us,” James recalls. “She said Freddy was a bit frisky and would grab her whenever he saw her. She was very nervous and afraid he would find her again.”
This unnerving incident proves a figure like Krueger can still have an impact beyond its pop culture expiry date. Will Slender Man also persevere? Despite the high-profile cases of violence, and now the controversy at Sydney Comic Con, Patrick feels Slendy is really just as powerful and pathetic as “the new flavor of ice cream everyone's into. Every now and then there needs to be something fresh,” he says. “I don't think the character, in particular, generates its own evil. It's just a template for people to project their own issues onto. It's a blank slate... it's the same with the girl from The Ring, it's just hair over a blank face. I think there's something compelling about that.”
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Ibiza is a place that looms large in our collective imagination. It's the island that is smaller than even Majorca but has become not just a holiday destination for Brits in search of the usual sun, sea and STDs, but a sort of tech-house Shangri-La. A place whose no-holds-barred, no-fucks-given majesty makes it worth toiling through 50 or so weeks of spreadsheets and supermarket pizza. It's a place that people don't just work to visit, but that people will work in while they visit, purely to keep the party going.
The stereotype goes that it's a paradise of pillheads and Portobello hippies, the gurning masses huddling together in the death throes of a 15-hour Roger Sanchez set on one side of the island, while personal friends of Jade Jagger and James Blunt sit on the other side smoking expensive hash in their turquoise cowboy boots and Stevie Nicks buckle hats.
In recent years, the sheer weight of the island's reputation has meant it's become the place to go for everyone from sleeve-tatted Yorkshire boys to junior oligarchs; from Resident Advisor heads to crusties, shoulder-bag shufflers and of course, celebrities, like Orlando Bloom, who famously tried to batter a child there this summer. British perception of it might be defined by the adolescent sex comedy Kevin and Perry Go Large, but in 2014, Ibiza's more all-encompassing than it's ever been, a cross-section of every part of the modern British youth experience dumped on an island and given shitloads of drugs.
Having never been there myself, I'd always been fascinated by it, endlessly replaying the video to David Morales's "Needin' U" on foggy February mornings, listening to Dario G's "Sunchyme" on the bus home, dreaming of better days. So this summer, we went out there to make a film about it, Big Night Out: Ibiza, which is coming very soon to VICE.
Ibiza's always been a decadent place. Its name even derives from that of Bes, the Egyptian god of music and dance. But the idea of the island as a clubber's paradise can probably be traced back to one man: Alfredo Fiorito. The native Argentinian fled his home country's murderous military junta in 1976, and after a spell on the Spanish mainland joined friends of his who'd already settled in the Balearics. Spain itself was just throwing off the shackles of Franco's fascist regime, enjoying the freedom that came with democracy. And what better place to celebrate the death of a bastard dictator than Ibiza?
Graduating from his jobs as a candle shop owner and barman, Alfredo started DJing and was snapped up by the newly opened club Amnesia, where he developed a cult following thanks to his legendary 12-hour sets. Mixing everything from early Belgian new beat to the Woodentops to Joe Smooth, hip-hop, and even U2, Alfredo played rave before rave was even a thing; the anthemic pop tunes mixing with the more percussive stuff to establish what quickly became known as the "Balearic Beat."
Soon after this, Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling exported the Alfredo experience back to Bermondsey, London. Their clubnight, Shoom, fused with the ecstasy boom and a worldwide obsession was born: rave culture. House music may have started in Chicago, but the ideal of taking pills, waiting for the piano breaks, and reaching for the skies comes from Alfredo and Ibiza.
Photos by Rhys James and Grant Armour
But Ibiza is not a museum. Since those days, the place has become big business. Really, really big business. The sweet stench of cold hard cash pervades the entire island, a new opportunity to blow it at every turn. The clubs operate more like Vegas casinos or theme parks than places you might rock up to on a whim to get drunk and have a little dance. With entry fees regularly exceeding €50 ($64), drinks rarely going for less than €15 ($19) and cab meters ticking away like Ritchie Hawtin bangers, Ibiza is all frills.
That said, there aren't many places you can go to see the world's biggest DJs in environs that are as wonderfully maximalist as the Ibizan superclubs. Space is to Carl Cox what the Bernabeu is to Cristiano Ronaldo, or what the Louvre is to the Mona Lisa; these are arenas designed to be as outrageously unreplicable as possible. Try all you want, but you'll never recreate the feeling of partying on the beach beneath palm trees and the undercarriages of 747s in a warehouse just outside Leeds, or at some newly-opened club somewhere near the Millennium Dome.
The clubs themselves are intense experiences; they'll push you to the very limit, but then give you an experience that's so good it'll make you want to exist forever beyond those limits. They're hard work partly because the prices are high, partly because they bring in more people than most lower-division soccer matches, and partly because people have built their entire years around these nights. Nobody goes to Space for "a chilled one."
The Ibiza lifestyle is brutal—by the time I got back, I felt like I was in recovery from major surgery—but it's one that's so far removed from normal life that you can't help but go flying hell for leather into it. You wake up at 5 PM, you start drinking at 5.30 PM, you eat some shit pizza, you go to the beach, you drink some more, you get to the club at about 2AM, leave at 7AM, stay at the villa party till midday, and do it all again the day after. Sinking a few beers at Liquid and getting an Uber home it is not.
At Amnesia, one of Ibiza's oldest and most famous clubs, we met Luciano, a legend in Ibiza whose Origins show is still one of the biggest attractions on the island. Bringing in a few thousand punters every night, we'd heard he makes a serious, serious amount of dollar from it.
Flagrantly disregarding EU regulations with his booth cigarette, his astonishing set of tribal house, minimal techno, and all sorts of bits and bobs from his Swiss-Chilean heritage was a highlight of our time there, and showed us what a true Ibiza DJ should be all about. Reacting to the space, judging the crowd, keeping people on their toes, bringing in those little bits of magic from nowhere and blasting people with CO2 gas whenever possible.
But away from the very European world of the super-clubs there is of course a more downmarket part of the island. A place lined with pubs named after the locals in British sitcoms from the 1970s, fish and chip shops, and whey powder wankers in neon headbands, blind-drunk on Sea Breezes, puking in storm drains, poking their balls out the side of their mankinis, and generally performing a kind of cultural Dresden of piss and tack.
That place is San Antonio, the setting for many a BBC3 slot-filler and the home of all that is shit in Ibiza. The guy in the photo above, who kept pointing at the dick tattooed on his bulging calf muscle and telling us he had "cock on t'leg," is indicative of the kind of person who spends their whole time in San An', eating roast potatoes on the beach and singing sectarian songs, as the natives begin to wish they'd planned that Armada thing a little bit better.
But luckily, San Antonio doesn't come anywhere close to defining Ibiza.
A club that offers something fairly different is Zoo Project, which—while primarily catering for a crowd of young drunk Brits—actually manages to book some pretty decent DJs, and hold it all within an abandoned zoo up in the hills surrounding San Antonio.
Maybe it's because of the setting, maybe it's just that it's so camp it's basically Febreze for testosterone, but the same people I'd met being assholes in San An's West End were actually great fun at Zoo Project, painting themselves up like the cast of Cats and generally living the nu-Ibizan dream. Ariel (in the above photo) was just one of the many British dancers who'd come to work at the place, leaving the Midlands and the world of office admin behind to live and work on the island hwere she'd partied so many times before.
She had become a kind of professional club mermaid, a job that could only really exist in Ibiza. I've not looked into it properly but I doubt there are many professional club mermaids in Dudley.
Dancers are more than just decoration in Ibiza—they're an integral part of the island's club culture and economy. Not only do they lead the dance by example—with their hyper-sexualized moves and outrageous costumes—they also hit the streets in the late afternoons to lure the punters in from their daytime beach slumbers, turning up en masse, dressed to party, full of beans and generally representing the kind of ideals that the club wants to promote (i.e. being awake and hot and fun rather than slumped, blistered, and angry).
This crew—a multinational collective of Eurobabes and bongo-playing David Luiz lookalikes—dance at places like Luciano's Amnesia night and are among the most respected teams on the island. They took us out with them onto the beaches to see just how they get scarlet-backed revellers in the mood for an expensive dance.
Corinne, originally from Rome, is typical of the Ibiza dancers. Trained in ballet, she came to Ibiza after a few holidays here, knowing it was one of the best places in the world to make it doing what she does and falling in love with the place in the process. As well as being a dancer, she also works for a yacht company and has managed to calm down the party somewhat in recent years, finding a strange kind of maturity and peace in this island so famous for its chaotic lifestyle.
Ibiza, I realized, is not just a place to blow money but a place of opportunity on a continent in decline. A place where young people with a lot of get up and go can make a fuckload of money. Grapes Of Wrath with bikinis, if you will.
But perhaps the man making the most unusual life for himself on the island is Jamie Brennan, a.k.a. Kryoman, an ex-Domino's delivery boy turned EDM club robot superstar.
In recent years, the Kryoman franchise has become massive business, and Jamie travels the clubs of Ibiza and far beyond doing his pyrotechnic-laden dance show, surely making more than a few clubbers wonder if it's just those dodgy pills they bought outside or if they really are seeing a ten-foot tall cyborg dancing around to David Guetta.
We met him in the garage of his house on a quiet part of the island as he prepared for an appearance at Music Is Revolution at Space.
But the most successful Brit working the Ibiza season is surely the man above, Carl Cox, the boy from Carshalton who came to Ibiza nearly 30 years ago and has been leaving his mark ever since. Cox is more than a DJ. He's as much of a draw for Ibiza as Disneyworld is for Florida, and despite this has kept his "nicest man in techno" reputation fully intact, kindly tolerating some evasive action I had to take while chatting to him after a heavy night, not enough water, one disgusting panini, and a lot of direct sunlight.
Alfredo Fiorito, the man who invented Ibiza
But if Carl Cox is the king of Ibiza, then Alfredo is God. Towards the end of our stay, we finally got to meet the man. I'm not ashamed to say that he's a complete personal hero of mine; his bootleg mixes have got me through many a tedious day. His take on the island was a uniquely interesting one.
Alfredo still DJs at Ibiza's biggest clubs, and he's seen just about every change the island has been through, not just as a DJ but as a resident, as somebody who just loves Ibiza and still finds the same awe in the place 35 years after he first arrived. Hearing his take on the changes, the past, the future, the nature of electronic music, and the similarities between today's youth and his youth was both sobering and inspiring, and generally about as far away from deep house DJs complaining about airport food on Twitter as you could possibly imagine.
But what really ties all these disparate threads together is the place itself. Club culture, the music, the drugs, and the money will keep changing for years to come, but Ibiza remains not just one of the most beautiful places in Europe, but the entire planet. And it's these vast and warm night skies, 10 PM sunsets, rocky beaches, and still, blue waters that seem to fall off the edge of the world like giant infinity pools that hold it all together.
As we head toward October, the Ibiza season is coming to an end, the closing parties are drawing closer and the likes of Ariel, Corinne, Jamie, and the thousands of other part-time residents will fly back to their lives in the real world. But this summer, like all the other summers they've spent in Ibiza, will coalesce in their minds into another strange chapter in their lives, just as the week I spent there did in mine.
I'm quite sure my body is yet to fully recover, and as my winter social life withers into a series of shivering smoking area chats and lost cloakroom tickets, I don't think my expectations of clubbing will ever be the same again. You just don't get planes and palm trees in Elephant & Castle. Ibiza is as much about endurance, as much about environment as it is about enjoyment, and because of that it'll linger longer in my memory than any other Big Night Out I've done.
Ibiza, you nearly killed me, but I'm sure I'll be back one day.
I have, at various times, loved LA and hated LA. Right now, I'm on an up-swing. I love the weirdos, the driving, the aggressively-enforced postive vibes, the endless space, and the ridiculous weather. And I can't imagine myself living anywhere else.
Here are some photos of the higlights and lowlights of the city I call home:
M&M’s World in Leicester Square is really fucking strange, both as a concept and a reality. It is a shop split over four floors in one of the most expensive commercial areas of central London. It employs at least 50 people, and its main purpose is to shill relatively pricey memorabilia for a bag of sugar-coated chocolate pellets. And it's somehow still open, three years after it opened its doors.
I know the company has spent the past 20 years cramming their red and yellow “spokescandies” into the public consciousness via movie trailers and Happy Meal giveaways, but I'm still not sure why anyone actually cares.
I suppose I wouldn’t have found it so odd if I’d come across the store in New York or Tokyo, places where there's a reasonable expectation you'll stumble across people dressed up as sweets for photo-ops. But there’s something about the fact that it’s in the UK that makes in doubly weird; it seems oddly incongruous, even in London’s most consumer-reliant zipcode, nestled between the Ben & Jerry’s flagship store and those tourist traps selling Kate Middleton shot glasses.
When I visited, the majority of people browsing the endless list of branded products weren’t even tourists, but Brits—presumably on a day trip up to London for a $28 burger at the Rainforest Cafe and some M&M’s magnets. Which I found even stranger, considering the whole place had clearly been set up to entice large groups of Austrian schoolchildren wearing matching backpacks.
To try and get my head around the place, I took my camera along one Sunday afternoon last month and shot some photos.
Climate change is a daily reality on the Carteret Islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Photo via Flickr user Citt
For Ursula Rakova, climate change isn’t a theory—it’s a tangible threat that has been encroaching upon her ancestral home on the Carterets Islands for decades now. Global warming has forced the 2700 members of her community off the coast of Papua New Guinea to forge new lives on higher ground.
Indigenous communities make up five percent of the world’s population, and are often directly and drastically affected by climate issues, even when they aren't forced to relocate. And those like Rakova's whose land is disappearing from beneath their feet have to negotiate a transition without any legal framework to guide them.
“We have lost our staple food crop,” Rakova told me just ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Summit in New York. “Our shorelines have eroded. We have lost at least 40 percent of our land. One of the islands in the Carterets is divided [by ocean water] and the gap continues to grow...We cannot talk about food security on the islands. It has gone.”
As ocean levels rise due to climate change, sandy atolls—chains of islands formed by coral reefs—are at risk of disappearance. The Carterets, less than four feet above sea level, are already being overun by the saltwater around around them. It’s just a matter of years, according to Rakova, before they become completely uninhabitable.
The worst part, of course, is that Carteret Islanders are losing their homes to a crisis they have played little part in bringing about.
“We don’t drive cars,” Rakova told VICE. “We don’t even have electricity on our islands and yet we are victims of what is happening. We are victims of what is being caused by other people.”
Carteret Islanders make up a small portion of the estimated 20.6 million people displaced by extreme weather last year, which is believed to have been exacerbated by climate change. For now, many of them have decided to stay put, but on nearby islands, that’s no longer an option.
The majority of those who will be most immediately affected by rising temperatures and ocean levels are indigenous people. But it’s been estimated that up to 300 million worldwide will be displaced by the affects of climate change before the year 2050, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.
“It’s already like a weapon of mass destruction,” the prime minister of Tuvalu has said of the impact climate change is having on the island nation in the South Pacific. Its nearly 11,000 residents face the impending loss of their homes and farms—but under international law, they aren’t able to cite these losses to make their case for obtaining asylum.
That’s why a family from Tuvalu drew so much attention when they were granted asylum in New Zealand in June. It’s been argued that courts granted residency to the family because of their humanitarian circumstance—but also because they have relatives in New Zealand. Still, many have noted that the Tribunal cited a lack of land and livelihood in Tuvalu as part of their rationale for the decision, and specifically noted that the “exposure to the impact of natural disasters can, in general terms, be a humanitarian circumstance” that might make it unjustly harsh to return people to the country from which they've fled. The point was further made that “coastal erosion, flooding and inundation, increasing salinity of fresh ground-water supplies, destruction of primary sources of subsistence, and destruction of personal and community property” left Tuvalu uniquely vulnerable.
The UN Convention on the Status of Refugees does not specifically include climate change as valid factor that can be used to offer refugee status to displaced people. But according to Helen Clark, the former prime minister of New Zealand and current head of the UN Development Programme, it's very much on the agenda.
“We can’t take our eye off of the ball of trying to turn the tide on climate change, on adaptation, but if the world is not ambitious enough and doesn’t take enough action, then we have very, very serious issues of people needing somewhere else to live,” she told VICE.
When pressed, the UN High Commissioner on Refugees Antonio Guterres put the number of people currently displaced by climate change in the tens of millions.
“The truth is that we are witnessing more and more people forced to move that do not fall into the legal definition of refugees, even if, in the normal language, we also call them refugees,” he told me, citing a combination of “megatrends” including the effects of climate change, in addition to the other factors including population growth, urbanization, food insecurity, and water scarcity.
“There is, in my opinion,” Guterres added, “a serious gap of people who have chance but to move, and unfortunately, have no rights under the general human rights frameworks.”
At the first high-level World Indigenous Peoples Conference Monday, UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon said, “Indigenous peoples are concerned about issues that top the global agenda. They are deeply connected to Mother Earth—whose future is at the heart of the Climate Summit.” Ban urged world leaders to make “bold pledges” to reduce the impact of climate change ahead of Tuesday's Summit, and made his own move by taking part in a climate march that drew more than 300,000 to the streets of New York on Sunday.
“The communities that we work with have subsistence lifestyles,” Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network has point out. “They live off the land. We are the first ones affected by dirty energy, and so we are the first ones affected by climate change and the first ones first to suffer because of that.
The issue of forced migration due to extreme environmental and weather conditions is gaining traction as a political and legal concept, even if many of those forced to flee their homes chafe at the phrase “climate change refugee.”
"I have never encouraged the status of our people being refugees," Anote Tong, the president of Kiribati, another atoll at risk of being flooded, said at a conference in Samoa earlier this month.
"People in the Pacific Islands...tell us, 'We do not want to be refugees because refugees are people who are marginalized and in desperation depend on handouts. We don't want that. We want to stay [in our home countries],'" Walter Kaelin, a former special envoy on internal displacement, told the Radio Australia program Pacific Beat.
President Anote Tong of Kiribati, an atoll rapidly being subsumed by the ocean, is on the same page: “I have never encouraged the status of our people being refugees. We have to acknowledge the reality that with the rising sea, the land area available for our populations will be considerably reduced and we cannot accommodate all of them, so some of them have to go somewhere, but not as refugees.”
Ursula Rakova just doesn’t think the definition of refugee fits her community. “Refugees are already a convention by the UN, but displaced communities basically [are different] because we have to move,” she said. “It’s not that we are moving away for political reasons. We are moving away because the place where we are cannot sustain our continued inhabitance, especially for us small islands and atolls in the world.”
Since 1992, she has worked to make the most of her the islands she grew up on while working to build connections and find land in less threatened areas nearby for her community to inhabit once they're forced to flee. She has carried out this work under the banner of Tulele Peisa, an organization she founded in 1992 when her home atoll broke in two. Rakova has helped a few families move to Bougainvillea area nearly 50 miles away to farm cocoa. The sale of the harvested crop helps to sustain those who have stayed behind—though she recognizes that it’s only a matter of how long they can continue to live on a sinking island.
To Rakova and many in her community, it’s less about money and more a question of personal dignity.
“Basically losing your connection and identity to the place, and to your own community and having to move to another location—it’s an anxiety,” she told me. “It’s also a loss of identity.”
Beenish Ahmed is a freelance multimedia journalist. She reported this story with support from the United Nations Foundation. Follow her on Twitter.
The author (far right) with members of Long Live Southbank campaign. Photos by Ekaterina Ochagavia
Last Friday, it was announced that the Southbank Undercroft skate park in London had been saved. After a 17-month campaign, representatives from Long Live Southbank (LLSB)—the lobby group started by a bunch of local skaters (full disclosure: I’m a member and have helped out during the campaign)—signed an agreement with the Southbank Centre, which owns the land, to ensure the legal protection of the space for the foreseeable future.
LLSB’s victory isn’t just a success in the battle to save the treasured skate space, but also serves as inspiration to other grassroots lobbying efforts. Protesting can be frustrating; it’s hard to get people to listen—particularly lawmakers, Tesco Express bosses, and whoever stops bankers from causing global economic crises—with plenty of demonstrations merely being ignored or swept away. But LLSB proves that, with enough determination and perseverance, seeing a result can be possible.
Of course, it’s probably going to be harder to, say, convince an oil company to quit drilling in the Arctic, than to stop a skate park from being destroyed. But if campaigners are passionate enough, LLSB's success demonstrates how there’s no reason to believe they won’t eventually be heard. Talking to skate videographer and Undercroft regular Henry Edwards-Wood, he pointed out where much of that passion originates.
“I started going there as a young kid because it felt like a sanctuary,” he said. “It’s a linear community that doesn’t judge people for their appearance, or their economic, ethnic, or social backgrounds. Everyone is welcome, providing they adhere to the unwritten rules, which are to respect the space.”
Keith Hufnagel, pro-skater and the founder of HUF, agreed, adding that Southbank “gives kids a family; they’re able to express themselves in art, in design, in whatever they see going on—and it gives them a learning experience outside of the house."
Every aspect of the LLSB campaign was provided by a member of the Undercroft community. For example, artist and skater Arran Gregory designed the column logo, and Roger Gonzales (another Southbank local) put together the animated indent that appears at the beginning of each campaign video. It was this, as well as the cause itself, that encouraged others to offer up their creative output, giving a genuine voice to a section of Britain’s politically-active young people and helping the campaign grow to over 150,000 members.
LLSB has mobilized skaters, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and local parents to work together and collaborate. Legendary pro Chad Muska commented that it’s “the epitome of skateboarding and what it represents to us. Skateboarding is Southbank. It’s the kids coming together, pushing themselves, having fun, enjoying life and doing something positive."
Of course, it wasn’t all fun. Collaborating with skate companies and holding events might have been the high points, but there were plenty of planning and council meetings to attend, and lots of standing at the campaign table (which was set up outside the Undercroft) throughout the winter months, wondering whether it might all be for nothing.
Skaters like Domas, Joey Pressey, and Louie Jones sat on the tables through rain and snow to promote the message. “Southbank is a free community where social barriers are broken down by expression,” said Joey, explaining why he was so committed to the cause. And he’s right: the Undercroft isn’t just for the skaters—the various LLSB skate jams saw thousands of non-skaters come along to watch, support, and connect with each other over a shared passion for the space.
That said, the space clearly holds particular significance for anyone who's ever rolled around it on a board. As Southbank local and Landscape Skateboards amateur Jin Shimizu highlighted, “It’s amazing to see a whole history of the spot through visual media, and to be able to go to the spot itself and see for yourself how hard the trick was and the thought process involved. Skating there is an invaluable experience.”
The legal battle against the Southbank Centre wouldn’t have been possible without the help of planning lawyer Simon Ricketts, whose firm SJ Berwin was incredibly supportive. Over the last 17 months, LLSB smashed two UK records for objections against a development; the first was roughly 15,000 signatures, and the second was just over 26,000. These results forced the Southbank Centre to withdraw their Festival Wing planning applications twice—a success that earned a statement of support from London Mayor Boris Johnson. It’s been truly inspirational to watch a grassroots campaign make such a visible impact on some of London's most influential people and institutions, most noticeably on the Southbank Centre itself.
The largest council-funded arts institution in Europe, the Centre has opened the up to a level of scrutiny and public inquiry it’s never experienced before, due to the campaign. Their initial ignorance of the Undercroft’s importance, their lack of consultation with skaters, their ill-conceived PR strategies, and their plan to move the park (leaving behind all of its cultural history) to underneath the Hungerford Bridge exposed the SBC as an arts center that was somewhat out of touch with the needs of its own city.
Now, in light of the LLSB victory, the Centre has the opportunity to engage with the Undercroft as a space that's just as important as all the others on their site. During the 90s, the SBC damaged slabs, laid grit, and introduced other deterrents to dissuade people from skating the space. The recent agreement has hopefully brought this approach to an end, allowing skaters and the Centre to work towards a harmonious, mutually beneficial relationship.
Tim Leighton-Boyce, former editor of Rad magazine, told me, "A key point is that these specific banks have been skated continuously since the mid-70s. As far as I am aware, that makes the site unique in the way it allows us to see how each different generation of skaters have interpreted the same found landscape to suit their own style of skating.”
The symbiosis that skaters and the Centre can now work towards will ensure this is allowed to continue.
Multiple copies of the LLSB's report, ready to be distributed to various London institutions
What’s more, the LLSB generation now feel more politically empowered, engaged with current affairs, hyped on the city they live in, and proud of the spaces they use. The campaign stands as an example to other people around the world who want to protect their communities from commercial development and retain whatever relationship it is that they had with that specific area.
As 16-year-old Palace Skateboards amateur Blondey McCoy pointed out, “The Undercroft is the heart of British skateboarding. When you come here, you feel like you’re literally part of the history of it. Which is a massive deal.”
LLSB have outlined that history in a 120-page report—filled with photos, quotes and research on the space—which they hand-delivered to 150 institutions, including the Houses of Parliament, the Mayor’s office and the London Arts, a few days before they found out they'd won their battle.
The campaign and its victory represents more than just a group of people who wanted to save what is arguably the UK’s most important skate spot. It’s also a symbol for how young people can really affect change if they have the drive and determination to do so.
One more time: Long Live Southbank.
Keep up with LLSB on their website, and buy the book they've published about the Undercroft here.
That said, employees of the Canadian government are still using their free time to make edits to Wikipedia. It’s just that you won’t likely see a politician ordering one of their staffers to remove a nasty bit of information about them (true or not) from their own Wikipedia article on government property; unless they’re really, really stupid. Even still, the edits that are made somewhat innocently can still result in a PR headache for certain government agencies.
The PBS video doesn’t show off much of the technology, but even the most basic reveal of the tech—in this case, a camera sensor called ARGUS, named after the 100-eyed giant from Greek mythology—shows that these systems can have a resolution of up to 1.8 gigapixels; meaning that ARGUS can take a photo from a drone that will cover a 15 square mile radius. It can capture video, and zoom in on specific parts to zoom in on particular individuals or vehicles. ARGUS can even capture details as small as a bird flying over a parking lot.
So, this is some pretty high-level, high-tech shit. The fact that the American government already has the technology to throw up a drone and capture live, high-resolution footage of a medium-sized city is pretty insane. The privacy and security ramifications of this are, obviously, immense. And, it’s not really the type of conversation that Canada’s Department of National Defence needs to be associated with; if you look at it from a purely PR standpoint.
I reached out to the Department of National Defence, to see if this was in fact just some bored worker or if DND had somehow ordered this minor edit to be made. After a back-and-forth with DND’s media relations department, I was given this official statement: “...all I can confirm to you is that, though Wikipedia provides a wide array of content that is produced or gathered by different users, it is not an official source of information for the Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces.”
Given the sheer size of the department, DND was unable to pinpoint who made that specific edit. But clearly, the optics of this modification, to an article about mass surveillance, is somewhat unfortunate. What it does tell us is that mass surveillance and its various technologies has its own set of nerds and geeks, just like comics, sci-fi, and video games do. And it’s no surprise that some of those people are going to end up working in the military-industrial complex. But with so much scrutiny being placed on what our government does to Wikipedia (the surveillance edit was tweeted out yesterday, and got a modest amount of attention), employee ennui might need to be redirected to Sodoku or Angry Birds, instead of encyclopedia edits on behalf of the military.
A larger-than-life airbrushed portrait of Hulk Hogan, former WWE champion and current Loan Mart spokesperson, stands guard overlooking the parking lot of his new business venture, Hogan’s Beach, a restaurant and club that opened on New Year's Eve of 2012 in Tampa Bay, Florida.
As you pass by the “motorcycles only” section of the parking lot and make your way through the damp Best Western banquet hall lobby that’s lined with Hard Rock Café-style memorabilia in dusty glass cases, it’s almost as if you get transported back to a time when Urkel was the class dweeb, Kelly Kapowski was the homecoming queen, and Hulk Hogan was that really cool PE teacher who looked the other way when you cut class to smoke weed.
When you finally arrive at the entrance of Hogan’s Beach, it’s hard to believe that this dream of a restaurant was almost just that.
Even though he had experienced huge success in the wrestling world—such as winning “Best Babyface” for ten consecutive years—Hogan’s track record in entrepreneurship has been somewhat shaky. His first restaurant, Pastamania, was located in the Mall of America and closed less than a year after opening. And after passing on the George Foreman Grill franchise (before Foreman was attached), Hogan tried to make up for the loss by fronting a line of health-centric blenders called the Hulk Hogan Thunder Mixer. The device has since been discontinued.
Hogan also suffered a string of seemingly unrelenting and very public personal lows from 2007-2012. There was the messy divorce from his wife Linda in 2007, in which it was reported that he turned over 70 percent of the couples liquid assets to her (no word on who got to keep the couple’s Thunder Mixer). Later that year, his son Nick was arrested at 17 for an illegal street race turned car crash that left his close friend, and former Iraq War veteran, braindead. A lengthy and expensive civil suit followed, and Nick spent six months in county jail before he was released on probation. Then, in 2008, Hogan started a 19-month-long nightmare where he endured nine back surgeries and was told he’d never walk again. To top it all off, an embarrassing sex tape he made with his best friend Bubba the Love Sponge’s wife, Heather Clem, was made public in April of 2012. But if there’s one thing Hulk Hogan fans know, it’s that he’s never down for the count for good.
In what could arguably be called his comeback, Hogan seemed to invest all his energy into Hogan’s Beach. It's a throwback to his glory days, and the carefully selected color scheme of American mustard yellow and cookout ketchup red pay homage to the wrester’s infamous costume.
As I sat down to eat next to a table of 20-plus patrons in the midst of what I can only describe as an NRA meet-up, I realized just what it took for this living icon to complete this venture.
Head Chef Rob Uzzillia, a graduate from the Culinary Institute of America, rounded out the menu at Hogan’s Beach in a way, he described, “that will make Hogan’s Beach a dining destination as much as it is a place to come have fun on the beach.” While I can certainly attest to having fun on the beach, I also ate at least half of the $14 microwaved chicken fettuccine alfredo that was served lukewarm. I took a break from devouring Chef Rob’s creation and walked out onto the restaurant’s “Tequila Sunrise meets Pirates of the Caribbean”-themed patio.
It was easy to imagine how this Tampa hotspot transformed into the place to be for people like this on weekend nights. Equipped with a jet ski-up beach, where patrons can literally park their jet skis near the beach, and some of the areas most high-end DJs spinning insane tracks (such as Tony Puccio, who’s described on his website as earning “respect both locally and globally"), it’s no wonder Hogan himself describes the nightlife “like a crazy beach party… that on Saturday and Sunday has 3,000 to 4,000 people.”
A flier near the outside bar informed me that the venue is set to host a “Nothing But 90s” Halloween Bash, featuring Vanilla Ice on October 31. A $5,000 cash prize will be awarded to the best-dressed contestants in the sexiest, scariest, and totally 90s categories.
Oh, and this bar gives back too. When 9/11 fell on the bar’s infamous “bike night” (gotta wonder what the “motorcycle only” lot looks like on a night like that), Hogan’s Beach took the opportunity to host a party to raise money for the Wounded Warrior Project. Cover band Cross Eyed Larry, self-described as "Tampa Bay's Best Roll and Roll," played on the main stage while a Latin-style/electronic DJ spun tacks in the lot to honor our nation’s soldiers.
As I walked towards the exit, feeling how Bill and Ted must have felt upon returning from their excellent adventure back to San Dimas, I looked back and I noticed this:
How could a man who seemingly put do-rags on the market for white people suddenly discriminate against his clientele for wearing them? Let alone the laundry list of other clothing he banned:
There is, of course, a reason for the restrictive dress code: “This is a beach party and beach attire is required.”
Hulk Hogan has done a lot over the years for his fans. This restaurant seems to be his way of grasping at his glory days, trying to remain the Hulk Hogan we knew and loved back then, but I wish he would allow himself to retire his do-rag and maybe jet ski up to someone else's beach.
Goat Boy is the cobbled-together remains of a student film I made based on Frank Bidart's poem, “Herbert White.” These are the bits that were taken out of my adaptation because we didn't need backstory for the title character, played by the great and strange Michael Shannon of Boardwalk Empire.
This short is the backstory Frank provided to us to fill out Herbert. The funny thing is that Herbert is a killer and a necrophiliac, but Frank gives him some of his own life experience as context. The part about the father—that’s Frank's life. His father is a ghost who haunts his poetry. The part about the goat—that’s Herbert’s. Frank read something or other about fucking goats in a book called 21 Abnormal Sex Cases.
All those little goats are cute, eh? We shot them running around their pen the morning after the wrap party in Suffolk, Virginia. The focus puller, Chris, was hungover. We chased them around the little pen in a farm full of animals. When I went to piss, I passed a kennel full of dogs. The loudest and biggest was an overgrown hound dog, as big as a horse, with red-veined eyes and a speckled, pink and black mouth. He was barking incessantly, an evil booming echo, again and again like the hound of hell.
These actors are all Virginians, found locally at a casting call. Hundreds lined up to be in the film: children, teens, parents. Some shy, some drunk. These were the ones we chose. The father, played by Cody from Richmond, was in a band with Allen Ginsberg called the Fugs. He also plays a hunter in my film Child of God.
The line from Frank's poem, "Man’s spunk is the salt of the earth and it makes things grow," is true enough. But how should I make sense of it? In a poem it’s one thing—in a movie it’s another.
In the poem, the boy fucks a goat that gets strangled on its rope before he jerks off on the animal to bring it back to life. In the film, we didn’t have the actor fuck the goat, because it would then be anti-climactic to have him jerk off on the thing. We had him kill the goat out of anger, and then jerk off on it to bring it back to life. After all, man’s spunk is the salt of the earth and it makes things grow.
We didn’t really kill the goat—we had a vet on hand who put it under for ten minutes so it would look dead. That's the magic of movies.
Near where we shot the goat was a turkey that was so fat it couldn’t stand. Its disgusting red and blue head, dripping with excess skin, sprouted from a blob covered in molten feathers. It made me swear off turkey sandwiches for six months.
I took the clips that were left over from Herbert White, put them together, and then zoomed in, so everything is super-close and fucked up.
MATTE magazine is a photography journal I started in 2010 as a way to shed light on good work by emerging photographers. Each issue features the work of one artist, and I shoot a portrait of him or her for the issue's cover. As photo editor of VICE, I'm excited to share my discoveries with a wider audience.
Issue 24 of MATTE magazine features pictures by Baltimore-based artist Ben McNutt. A current student at MICA, McNutt has been mining imagery of wrestling for the past year, researching the topic by training himself in the gym, taking lessons from a wrestling tutor, following wrestlers and teams on social media, poring over historical images, and staging erotically tinged wrestling matches in the studio. All of this adds up to a visual questioning of how society has set standards for what is considered heteronormative throughout time. I sat down with Ben to ask how this project came to consume him.
VICE: The magazine made up of pictures that have to do with wrestling. When did you make the first picture like this?
Ben McNutt: I started my exploration on wrestling about two years ago when I saw a vintage picture of wrestlers. I wanted recreate a picture like the one I had found for purely aesthetic reasons. I just wanted to have two males in the studio wrestling, and as a photographer I have the power to make that happen. I never really expected it to become much more in-depth than just the pure physicality of it, and my pure attraction sexually to it. But the more I researched this type of imagery, the more confusing paradoxes I found. Really, one thing led to another, and I’m still discovering paths. There’s so much to delve into in terms of sexuality, relationships with people, and these weird exceptions in society when you can be really close with other males in some situations, but it’s not OK in others. It doesn’t really make sense to me. At the same time it’s really comforting to know that maybe this very heteronormative thing is accepted among people. That’s really nice. There’s a nice potential in that on it’s own.
You just said a lot of very complicated things. To begin with, there’s’ a sexual element to the pictures. You’re interested in this safe space where two males can have this experience that objectively might look kind of sexual. Do you think wrestlers consider wresting a sexually charged act?
No. I’ve asked two gay wrestlers about that, and I’ve asked straight wrestlers, too. At least with the gay wrestlers, it wasn’t sexual during the actual competition. I mean, they weren’t turned on by it’ it was purely a sport. They’re in to win, or in to be the best. But it goes outside the actual act of wrestling. There’s working out together, or having to lose or gain weight together.
Are there a lot of gay wrestlers?
Hard to say. There are a couple I go to art school with, at MICA. But otherwise, I follow a lot of wrestlers on Instagram, and at times it becomes very confusing how it couldn’t be really sexually intimate. About a year ago, I started a journey of physically trying to look like a wrestler—going to the gym all the time and trying to gain weight and lose weight.
But you don’t wrestle?
No, but I wanted to get into the mindset of what it is to be able to know your body, and control your body like that. It really opened up my eyes. It’s really intense having to go to the gym every day, and do things that you sometimes don’t want to do because it’s something you love. With wrestlers, they do these very physical things together, they prepare for matches together, and there’s something very intimate about that I feel like I’m starting to understand.
You are breaking the images you appropriate of men wrestling from the Internet. In the context of your work, they have to be read as gay. How do you feel about queerifying these people?
I don’t even think about it because that’s just how I view it. There is literally no other way for me to see these images. I think that’s part of how this all began, because to me there’s no way to view wrestling as something not queer, just because of who I am as a person.
"My next idea was to invite him to the gymnasium with me. We to excersise together, and I was sure that this might lead to something. He took exercies and wrestled with me many times when no one else was present. What can I tell you? It got me nowhere." —Plato (Symposium 217C)
One thing I like about this project is that to say “wrestling is gay” out loud is not that interesting or new. You’re able to communicate things in a much more nuanced and complex in pictures than anyone could in words. Part of that has to do with including historical or classical references.
I mean how confusing is it? Culturally we have these very specific signifiers of what is gay and what is not gay, and then you’re presented with this classical Greek statue of two guys on top of each other. I mean what are you supposed to think about that?
The statue I photograph is a plaster cast in the atrium at MICA, but you can go to the Metropolitan Museum and see the same thing. People pass by it all the time and don’t give it a second thought. Maybe we don’t think they’re culturally relevant because of how old they are, or because they’re in a museum. But I see these images of wrestlers and wonder how I’m not supposed to find it homoerotic. Society dictates that you’re supposed to think, “it can’t be gay” because it’s in a specific context, like a museum athletics. But that doesn’t make sense at all.
It’s something that’s happened from Greek and Roman times, into the 1900’s and now. It’s this weird paradox of something undeniably erotic, but we’re used to this assumption that they can’t or shouldn’t be viewed as that. And that’s really confusing.
You’ve been photographing around this topic, but you’ve also been collecting images and making drawings. It’s a multidimensional investigation of wrestling. How has your perspective on the sport changed since you began this work?
Initially I just found it hot. But I didn’t feel comfortable taking this on as a subject as a long-term project unless I knew more about it. So I had a wrestling tutor teach me some moves, and I’ve done a lot of research. In some ways I’m not part of the community, but in some ways I am, in terms of how committed I am to following it.
Sexuality hasn’t always been considered fluid over the course history. I find wrestling to be a very specific way to open up that conversation. I don’t know how many people actually consider the fact that our views on sexuality haven’t been the same throughout time. I think that’s an important to thing to know on a basic level—to know that perceptions of sexuality are always changing.
Ben McNutt is a Baltimore-based artist and wrestling enthusiast. See new work on his blog.
Whether you're a slow food advocate or a fast food junkie, the search for the perfect bite never ceases. Say what you will about the Michelin Guide, it manages to showcase some of the best and most consistent restaurants in the world. The simplicity of Momofuku Ko's fixtures highlights its simple, clean menu. The skins of Din Tai Fung's xiaolongbao have the perfect texture. The seasonal rustic flair of VAU sets the right tone for a day's exploration of Berlin's street art. But not all of the guide's entries fall under the umbrella of haute cuisine. One entry from Hong Kong stands out: it's a chain of simple dim sum rooms. I visited Tim Ho Wan, the world's cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant, and found that its regulars don't even care that their daily morning meals are considered to be some of the best food in the world.
Tim Ho Wan was opened by a former dim sum master of Hong Kong's Four Seasons Hotel. He left the fussy settings of grand banquet halls to focus on the essentials that make simple fare delicious, serving up the basics with exquisite skill. His business has expanded to several branches, and three out of five of his locations in Hong Kong are the cheapest restaurants to be awarded Michelin stars.
The unassuming entrance
My preferred branch is in the blue collar district called Sham Shui Po, where decades-old printing presses are found alongside messy garages. I was in the same neighborhood a few months ago to visit the local headquarters of a pseudo-Christian cult with a violent agenda. It was lunch hour, and the roughest cha chaan teng were the busiest joints, mainstays for those who worked with their hands. Tim Ho Wan's low-key fixtures blended in perfectly; even its own sign was blocked by a staircase. By the entrance was an altar for Guanyin, set beside a water cooler for the unfortunate, hungry souls who line up outside for hours on end.
A twenty-minute subway ride brought me to Tim Ho Wan ["add good luck" in Cantonese], and I managed to snag one of the last two open seats, joining a table with a grinny old man clutching a cane and a middle-aged woman with spiked hair. A few families of tourists from Mainland China had tables to themselves, but nearly everyone else was a septuagenarian sitting alone at shared tables. The establishment had little pizzazz, the waitresses had the charm of disgruntled ogresses, and the cashier was rude.
The menu
Aproned waitresses were on autopilot and one slipped me their half-page menu, zipped off, and returned with a pot of hot tea that I could use to rinse my utensils—a local custom, and something that many Chinese restaurants expect patrons to do in Hong Kong. Grinny Old Man was a regular, and didn't have to place an order; the staff knew what he wanted for breakfast every day. I ticked off a few things on my ordering sheet, including the house specialty, and one of the staff snatched it from me without us exchanging a word.
Dim sum served up by this team of chefs is so popular that at its peak, the wait for seating can be three hours long, with crowds clamoring at the door, and held back by one woman armed with a headset microphone so she always has the loudest voice in any spat. Ask her how long the wait is, and she will bark out an answer that makes you feel six inches tall.
My sticky rice came, with lap cheong, shiitake mushrooms, and shredded chicken as filling, wrapped in a lotus leaf and steamed. Another waitress slid a plate of vermicelli rolls stuffed with pig liver slices next to me, completely taking over my dining space. Grinny Old Man and I jabbered as we dug into our meals, but his responses didn't follow any rhyme or reason. I caught a waitress laughing, breaking character. Then she brought my tonic medlar and osmanthus cakes, leaves and petals and wolfberries encased in amber gelatin, just a hint of sweetness peeking through. I sipped tea between mouthfuls, and brown sauce dribbled onto Grinny Old Man's shirt as he wolfed down beef bits on rice.
Tonic medlar and osmanthus cake
A few minutes later, the house special arrived: fist-sized steamed buns packed with red-braised pork, with a sweet crunchy top. This wasn't the average cha siu bao; a flaky brown glaze set it apart from its starchy cousins. The bun and its crunch melted in my mouth, meshing with the sugars and proteins encased within, sweet and savory sauces flowing together for the perfect Cantonese dining experience. Two more buns were on my platter. I wanted to share one with the old man. He rubbed his stomach and grinned again. When a waitress swept by to clear my plates, she asked, "You realize that he can't hear anything, right?"
"Dim sum" has two literal interpretations: a bit of heart, offered by the chef; and touching the heart, gently, of the diner. The best dim sum does both. Even though the bowls and chopsticks were plastic, and the waitresses communicated through a series of undecipherable grunts, every bite was made with pure dedication. A jar of soy sauce sat on every table out of habit instead of necessity. The bond between cook and consumer was forged by an unspoken agreement that was issued in the kitchen and acknowledged in the crammed dining room: this is how we serve it, and we know it's perfect, so don't change anything, and don't fuck it up.
Not one of my pork buns, but the slightly squashed one I photographed.
Tim Ho Wan stands as an anomaly. Hong Kong is cluttered with rampant consumerism, and the concept of returning to the basics isn't popular. The race in the dining scene is upward, to craft elaborate, decadent, luxurious dishes, like MasterChef on steroids. Local foodies flocked to see The Hunger Games: Catching Fire for its Capitol dining scenes. Visiting hip, new restaurants to write clueless food reviews on a local website is a popular hobby. The only three-Michelin-star Italian restaurant outside of Italy is here, and some of the best sushi masters beyond Japan's borders call Hong Kong their home. Even celebrity chefs are capitalizing on the trend: Gordon Ramsay came in for the inauguration of his new restaurant, tossing verbal barbs at Jamie Oliver, whose new venture had opened its doors a month and a half ago.
Rice and flour are cheap, as are offal, pork loin, ground beef, mushrooms, and the small collection of other ingredients that are used in Tim Ho Wan's kitchen. The same raw materials are utilized by other restaurants, but a single dish elsewhere could cost more than an entire meal at Tim Ho Wan. General wisdom says that restaurant bills aren't just about food prices and fixed overhead costs, but also the skill level of the chefs behind the dishes that are served. Tim Ho Wan shatters that convention because it serves first class food at working class prices. That they are known as the cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant in the world is a nice shtick that puts customers in seats for a first experience (even if the wait is hellish).
When asked why they never raise their prices, the cashier said, “These are gai fong ga [literally 'prices for neighbors' in Cantonese]. We would rather close our doors or move before we charge more.” That claim was backed up last year: Tim Ho Wan's first location was shut down because of a rent hike, even though they could have kept the legendary spot open by charging a premium for their food. "If our prices go up, we'll feel like we're losing our regulars." It sounded like a cloying PR line, but the people around me were retirees. Eating there was a routine, not a treat.
Free-flowing pu'erh tea, fermented in Yunnan for several years before reaching my table, cost $0.25. The rest of the food was $9, but I ordered enough to feed two or three people.
On my way out, the cashier let me peek into the shoebox kitchen. “Just for a few seconds,” she said, “and then you need to get out of here.” Steamer cages were stacked ten or fifteen high, everything made fresh upon order. The chefs were almost in a flow state; to them, I didn't exist. Every ounce of focus was on food prep, and the kitchen's heart never stopped beating.
The food was solid, but the downside was its safety. Everything on the menu was far from being innovative or exciting. Many people are drawn in to try it because of the buzz, but aren't wowed by the experience. The staff's attitude doesn't help. Are the long waits that start at lunch time and last till closing justified? Most Hongkongers don't think so.
Nonetheless, two days later, I was back in line for those sweet braised pork buns.
