Temperatures can reach 100 degrees or higher in these sweaty enclosures. More than 30 men are crammed in each cage.

I n San Salvador, the two main street gangs are Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 (M18). Both were founded in Los Angeles in the 1980s by a group of poor, mostly illegal immigrants. Initially their membership consisted almost exclusively of those who had escaped from the civil war in El Salvador. Many of these gang members were deported back to El Salvador after the war ended in 1992, exporting back a newly organized and ruthless gang culture. 

For nearly two decades, the gangs have been murdering each other in the most brutal ways possible, while expanding throughout Latin America. In 2011, the murder rate peaked at 15 homicides per day in El Salvador. Last year a truce was negotiated between MS-13 and M18 with the assistance of religious leaders and the government. The aim of the truce was to stem the escalating number of shootings and deaths by focusing on the younger gang members and taking some of the weapons off the streets. According to the gang leaders, the time was right to talk and stop the violence. After the much publicized treaty was signed, the effects were almost instantaneous, and the homicide rate dropped 52 percent in 15 months; however, in early July of this year, tensions boiled over once again and there were 103 killings in the country in a single week, giving Salvadorans a reminder that some things may never change. 

Inside the MS-13 cage, gang members hold up copies of the Bible.

Just before that outbreak of violence, I traveled to a rough suburb 20 miles outside San Salvador and spent some time with a police captain and units charged with patrolling this particularly troubled area where both M18 and MS-13 live and operate. I won’t reveal the captain’s name or jurisdiction, for fear he will face retribution for his frankness and the access he granted me. He was generous with his time and taught me a lot about how policing works in a posttruce country; he told me that he was especially proud of how he’d recruited women police officers to deal with domestic and sexual abuse issues, and how he provided outreach and support to victims of such crimes.

On my last day with the captain, I was chatting with him in the police station when he mentioned the severe overcrowding in the Salvadoran prison system. When I pressed him for more information, he offered to show me what he called the “gang cages” and escorted me to the back of the station flanked by four armed guards. 

Prisoners take turns sleeping in makeshift hammocks made from their clothing.

In a rancid, sweltering prison yard ringed by a high wall topped with barbed wire sat three cages. They stood about 12 feet wide and 15 feet tall—each crammed full of more than 30 human bodies. M18 and MS-13 each had their own cage, with the third reserved for “common criminals.” They were initially constructed to serve as 72-hour holding cells, but I was told that many of the inmates had been imprisoned in these pens for over a year. Most of their days are spent pulling apart their clothes and using the thread to sew together hammocks, where they sleep stacked on top of one another like cords of wood.

I talked to a one-legged civil-war veteran who said he’d been locked up in the nongang cage for over five months for protesting against the government’s slashing of his medical benefits. In the M18 cage, I met one of the gang bosses who signed the 2012 truce treaty, a man who called himself Henry. Through the bars he spoke to me in hushed tones about his role in helping to disarm his gang of assault weapons. “The deal was that everyone, including the police, put down the assault weapons.

A member of the M18 shows off his tattoos.

I helped round up those guns and oversaw them being melted down. We, the gangs, did that, but the police did not. The other very important thing we are trying to do is educate the youngest kids who are born into a life of gangs. Some of the new gang members are joining at ten years old. We have started Sunday schools, and we have handed out Bibles—both gangs have done that. We are trying to stop the violence and having a faith can help.” 

After my 40 minutes in the enclosure, the guards told me to leave. I asked the captain if I could return the next morning to talk to the prisoners further, and he agreed. 

The following morning, however, I discovered that the cages were usually off limits to press. The captain told me that no photojournalist had been allowed to see the cages for over ten years, and word of my peek inside had somehow reached the San Salvador police’s press office. They weren’t happy, the captain told me, and apparently were on their way from San Salvador to “talk” to me. The guards had told Henry that I was barred from returning, and because these prisoners aren’t allowed visitors, he got very upset and started threatening them.

Prisoners must rely on their families for food as the police only provide water. Sanitation is almost nonexistent and health issues are commonplace.

My situation was becoming more compromised by the second. The captain even asked me if I could return the pictures I had taken of the cages. I refused. He understood but told me to leave immediately, before the head of the press office arrived. A few minutes later he had calmed down, and we had a friendly chat as he escorted me to my car. He was clearly troubled by the storm brewing but seemed somewhat resigned to it all.

Looking back, I think the reason the captain showed me the cages was because he was simply frustrated with the inhumane conditions that he must preside over on a daily basis, with no hope of the situation improving anytime soon. During most of our discussions, he brought up that there wasn’t even a budget for the inmates’ most basic necessities, like food, the cramped conditions, and the prisoners’ frequent health problems. “We need a full-time doctor here,” he said. “These cages are full and many are sick. Maybe your pictures can help in some way?” 

That was the last thing he said to me as I got into the car. Two hours later, I was at the airport and checking in for my flight back to New York City. 

All photos by Giles Clarke in conjunction with Getty Images.

We go to prisons so you don't have to. Read more about it here:

'Orange Is the New Black' Through the Eyes of an Ex-Con

Molly Crabapple Draws Guantanamo's Camp X-Ray

Reading 'Born Again' in Jail

Donka and Georgi Kostov in the burn-victim unit of St. George hospital in Plovdiv, two weeks after Georgi’s suicide attempt.
All photos by Jackson Fager.

I

t’s not every day that you meet someone who has set himself on fire. One reason for this is because it’s pretty much the most awful and insane thing imaginable. Another reason is that people who light themselves ablaze usually die soon afterward. Surprisingly, it’s not always the burns that kill them. Often, flames will enter a self-immolator’s lungs through his mouth, causing him to asphyxiate.

On a recent trip to Bulgaria, I met not one but two people who had survived suicide attempts by fire. “Solving problems with gasoline has become the new trend,” Georgi Kostov told me in the burn-victim unit of St. George hospital in Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second-largest city. He was still in shock, so his wife, Donka, did most of the talking. 

She explained how the couple were unemployed, in debt, and struggling to feed their children, when, two weeks before my visit, Georgi disappeared into his bedroom at their apartment in the industrial city of Dimitrovgrad. He came out doused in gasoline, convinced that the Mafia was outside his front door to collect on his debts and kill him. Standing in front of his family, he flicked on his lighter and burst into flames. Donka leapt onto him to put out the blaze while his sister threw water on him. They succeeded in saving Georgi, but his wife suffered third-degree burns all over her arms in the process. “He was so depressed,” she said. “He didn’t know how to make anyone notice our poverty. So he did this horrible thing.” 

Georgi’s not the only one. In the past six months, Bulgaria has experienced a wave of self-immolations. During one span in February and March alone, six Bulgarians killed themselves with fire, and at least ten people in total have done so in the past six months. (That’s more than in any other country except China, where suicidal Tibetan Buddhist monks use the tactic to protest religious persecution.) 

A memorial to Plamen Goranov, outside City Hall in Varna, where the artist set himself on fire on February 20, 2013.

Some say the inspiration for it all was a 36-year-old photographer named Plamen Goranov, who burned himself on February 20 in front of City Hall in Varna, a resort city on the country’s Black Sea coast. According to investigative journalists, Varna’s commerce is controlled by a business group called TIM, which the former US ambassador to Bulgaria, James Pardew, accused of racketeering, prostitution, and extortion in a 2005 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. TIM, he said, was the “up-and-coming star of Bulgaria’s organized crime.” Plamen set himself on fire to protest TIM’s alleged relationship with Varna’s mayor, Kiril “Kiro” Yordanov. Before he set his body aflame, he propped up a sign demanding the “resignation of Kiro and all the city council by 5 PM.” 

When Plamen died 12 days later, he got his wish: memorials and vigils in his honor were held in every major city, and under pressure from his own political party, Yordanov resigned. Buoyed by this success, protests against corruption had erupted throughout the country, and by the end of February they’d grown so large that they forced the prime minister, an alleged former amphetamine smuggler named Boiko Borisov, to also resign. When his replacement, a Socialist named Plamen Oresharski, nominated a widely hated and allegedly corrupt media magnate named Delyan Peevski to run Bulgaria’s State Agency for National Security, protesters forced Peevski to step down too. 

LEFT: After he woke up from a coma in the hospital in Sofia, Dimitar Dimitrov took a selfie on his cell phone. “I dropped the phone five times trying to take it,” he said. “I looked like Quasimodo.”
RIGHT: A protester at one of the nightly marches in Sofia, calling for the resignation of the current prime minister, Plamen Oresharski.

On my visit to Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital, in June, thousands marched through the streets every night. By this point the protesters had upped their demands, calling for Prime Minister Oresharski’s resignation. In a shout-out to the man whose self-immolation in 1969 catalyzed the downfall of the Soviet regime in Czechoslovakia, people began celebrating Plamen as “Bulgaria’s Jan Palach.”

It remains to be seen whether the past six months have signaled the blooming of a Bulgarian Spring, or have instead been a disastrous demonstration of nihilism and despair. Whatever the case, one thing is clear: the self-immolations continue intermittently, and serve as one of the most dubious legacies of Bulgaria’s earnest attempt to create a less corrupt and more democratic country. “The only way to get anyone to listen to us and pay attention,” Dimitar Dimitrov, another self-immolation survivor, told me, as he was convalescing at a little cabin in the rural region of Silistra, “is to set ourselves on fire.” 

In a country where people are still struggling to embrace democracy after nearly 50 years of Communist rule, and where EU membership, which the country obtained in 2007, hasn’t significantly improved the poverty rate or transparency in government, self-immolation remains one of few available forms of critique in Bulgaria. “We are killing ourselves because there’s no way to meaningfully engage with the political system,” Dimitar told me. “But something weird happened to me—I survived. I survived so I can tell the story.” 

VICE: Describe what happened to you on March 13, the day you set yourself on fire.
Dimitar Dimitrov: That day started 23 years ago [since the Communist government collapsed, in 1989]. Our government—first the Communists and then the “democratic” politicians—has always been connected to the oligarchs, to the criminal world, to incompetent people. Under Communism, I had to wake up at 5 AM so that I could stand in line to buy milk and bread for my child. Under this government, I was a blacksmith until my workshop went out of business. The job that was feeding my family went away. Then electricity became impossible to afford. Under Communism, we had money, but there was nothing to buy. Now, there is everything to buy but no money. It’s always been a recession, and I finally got tired of it.

Dimitar Dimitrov at his wife’s cabin in the rural village of Silistra, four months after his self-immolation. 

What was the last straw?
I had decided to do it the day before. The prime minister [Boiko Borisov] had just resigned and new elections were announced, and I was sick of all of it. So I decided to kill myself in front of the president’s building. I woke up early and had coffee with my wife. I had made up my mind, but I didn’t tell her anything. I was very quiet. After that, I went to the store and got one beer. I drank it with my neighbors. I went to a gas station and pumped out some gas and poured it in an empty bottle of vodka. I got on the train to go downtown, and when I got there, I walked around for a while. It was about 10 AM, and I walked around until 1:30. During that time, I drank another beer alone in an unknown bar. I have one daughter, and I thought about her. It’s not that she lives so bad, but I want her to have the same life as American girls. I thought it was worth it for her to not have a father if she could have a better life. One can’t live in a constant recession. 

Eventually, I went and stood in front of the president’s building. I took my bottle of gasoline and poured it over my chest and head. I struck the lighter. I’ve worked with fire all my life [as a blacksmith], but this time there was a big fireball and I got scared. I screamed because of the pain. It surprised me that it hurt instantly. Have you ever burned yourself with a drop of oil from a frying pan? It was like being in a frying pan. My head, face, shoulders, hands, everything. 

Then I heard people shouting, “This guy set himself on fire!” It was the security guards, and they immediately ran over to me with fire extinguishers and tried to put me out. At this point, there had been so many suicides, they were ready. They were scared about someone doing what I did. So they put me out. I lost consciousness at some point, and I woke up in the hospital. I survived because the guards were so fast, and because the hospital was close by, but I don’t remember it. I was in a coma for a week.

When I woke up, I looked terrible. I took a photo of myself on my cell phone. I dropped it five times trying to get a good shot. I didn’t have skin. You could see my bones through my arms. I had no lips. I looked grotesque, like Quasimodo. When I saw the photo, I thought I would have to go off to live in a wild village all by myself. I looked like a vampire. I didn’t think I would ever get better.

But at Pirogov Hospital, when I was there recovering and having surgery, the health minister came to visit me every day. The nurses told me I was under the president’s supervision. Which means that I had to survive. Even if they had to fly me to New York to save me, they were going to do it. I had to live, because if a person dies in front of the president’s building, that’s bad news. I didn’t have the right to die. And so I survived.

Afterward, the government shut down my personal website, they deleted my profiles on social media—Facebook, everything. I am defined as “dangerous,” and they are afraid I will provoke others.

Why did you choose fire as a method? Why not a gun, for example?
I did not want to simply commit suicide. We had all of these protests—we’re still having them—and nothing gets done. Nothing changes. I didn’t want anything from the Bulgarian politicians. I was hoping that the world, people like you, would look at our country with a careful eye. When Plamen Goranov committed suicide, he ousted the mayor of Varna with his self-immolation. I wanted to oust the entire system. 

Watch our documentary about these self-immolations, Burning Men of Bulgaria.

More from the Hot Box Issue:

The Place Women Go to Get Raped

I Left My Lungs in Aamjiwnaang

The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia

Fuck fracking. Or at least that’s the tone of the short film KNIFE by James M. Johnston. Businesses are fracking all over the place now: Off the coast of California, in New York’s West Village, and in hundreds of small rural towns all over the states, ruining tons of shit in the process. It’s enough to make one mad or make an 11-minute wordless film depicting a young man’s aggravation and desperation in the face of the devastating changes it causes.

The film is efficient, telling it quick and to the point with a bit of flair. There’s a party, a shirtless man and woman, fighting, evil laughs, an explosion, a knife (of course), and a murder. The story deals with one man's struggle to understand why his family’s home and livelihood are being taken away. Big industry frackers moved into town and tore down all of his childhood memories, laying pipe in his fields and building monstrous homes in his woods. The film washes over you in a haze of 16mm images and evocative drones and guitars. The man wanders his city and sees the changes that are tearing him apart as much as the town itself. Although the industry men are depicted in a somewhat grandiose fashion with evil laughs and harlot women doting by their bedsides, it’s all conveyed through the eyes of this young man who can’t see beyond his own cruel vision of them. They stole his life and ruined all he knew. So yeah, hate them and hate them hard.

When your memories and life are being stripped away under the guise of progress, it tends to piss some people off. Anyone making money will tell you “change is good,” but then they’ll never say at what cost. KNIFE depicts the cost that each party must pay and through Johnston’s eyes. It can be pretty steep.

James M. Johnston is a filmmaker from Fort Worth, Texas. He was a 2011 Creative Producing Fellow at the Sundance Institute and was recently named to Variety’s 10 Producers to Watch list with his producing partner, Toby Halbrooks. His work as a producer includes the award winning films St. Nick (2009), Pioneer (2011), and Yen Tan’s award-winning film Ciao (2008). Johnston also produced Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and the film Pit Stop by Yen Tan, which premiered at Sundance in the NEXT section.

Johnston's also directed short films that have played at festivals around the world. His most recent film, KNIFE, was the recipient of a production grant from Rooftop Filmmakers Fund. Johnston also co-owns two successful vegan restaurants with his wife, Amy McNutt, called Spiral Diner & Bakery. They are in the process of opening Fort Worth’s first art house cinema called The Citizen Theater. Currently, Johnston is in development on his feature directorial debut titled Seize the Body, which was recently accepted to the Austin Film Society’s Artist Intensive Narrative Feature Workshop. Johnston is in heavy prep for the August 16th release of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints starring Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, but was kind enough to answer a few questions about his short film.

VICE: There's a major line dividing our country right now between blue and white collar, as well as the 1 percent and 99 percent. What drew you to the subject and do you think our plight will end with violence or can it be resolved diplomatically?
James M. Johnson: I was drawn to this subject very specifically because of what's happening in my own backyard. I live in Fort Worth, Texas, where fracking and gas drilling is a big industry due to the Barnett Shale. I heard about all these cases of private companies being allowed by city and state government to use eminent domain. They seize property in order to lay pipelines to deliver their private goods to the public market. At first they ask permission and try to strike a deal with you, but if you say no they basically just override you and take it anyway. The thought of that just made me so angry.  That feeling of being helpless against a big corporation and the government working together is infuriating.

In the grand scheme of things, a diplomatic resolution is the only way things can get better between the two Americas. Violent fantasies can be cathartic in a lot of ways, but I don't think it's a solid plan for change. However, the more people are pushed the more lashing out seems to be the only means for escape.

KNIFE is in the same Southern Gothic/working class vein as many of the other films you've produced.  What is it about this culture that excites you?
Well, I was born and raised in Fort Worth and come from a very typical working class family. The people I grew up with and the environment surrounding me had a necessary impact on my inner creative process. Growing up, I was always on the edge of this underbelly of society doing whatever they wanted and existing in their own culture and handling things according to their own codes of justice, honor, and survival. As a kid, these things had such an impact on my imagination. I've never quite shaken it. Even in the case of upstanding citizens, there's a lot to explore in the culture of working-class Texas. When it comes down to it, I know a lot more about that than I know about the middle and upper class.

What in God's name made you decide to make a non-linear film with no dialogue?
This story is partially inspired by a song from the band The Theater Fire that two of my best friends are in. I would listen to this song they played at live shows and these images would flood my head. I kicked around the idea of pitching a music video to them. But the story just grew in my mind and got too big to be a simple music video.

Since the story came to me as images, I just decided to keep it that way and see if I could impart some sense of narrative without dialogue. Even though I had something I was trying to say about a particular issue I still wanted to tell a good story and do something I felt was interesting. Shorts are the best time to experiment as a filmmaker and figure things out. So, I took the liberty of giving it a try for better or worst.

P.S., the song that inspired the film has recently been recorded and will probably be on their next album. It's called KNIFE as well. It is written by Don Feagin.

P.S.S., one of my best friends that is in The Theater Fire, Curtis Heath, wrote several of the original songs that are on the soundtrack of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and also did the score for KNIFE.

How come the lawyers and rich people are all such dick bags? They're almost cartoonishly evil. 
I just decided to stick very strongly to the point of view of the main character. To him, there isn't another side of the story worth exploring.They are just a bunch of rich assholes trying to fuck over his family.

What are you working on now?
I'm finishing up a feature script called Seize the Body (co-written by Todd Connelley). It's a revenge film about a father whose estranged son dies under shady circumstances. When he goes looking for answers it pits him against the local "cowboy mafia." And of course, the story is grounded in the world of the Texas working class!

Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as an art and film curator. He is a programmer at the Hamptons International Film Festival and screens for the Tribeca Film Festival. He also self-publishes a super fancy mixed-media art serial called PRISM index.

@PRISMindex

Previously - I'm Short, Not Stupid Presents: 'I Want to Be a Pilot'

NEWS

Wave of Immolation

Bulgarians Are Setting Themselves on Fire in Record Numbers

By Wes Enzinna

Donka and Georgi Kostov in the burn-victim unit of St. George hospital in Plovdiv, two weeks after Georgi’s suicide attempt.

I

t’s not every day that you meet someone who has set himself on fire. One reason for this is because it’s pretty much the most awful and insane thing imaginable. Another reason is that people who light themselves ablaze usually die soon afterward. Surprisingly, it’s not always the burns that kill them. Often, flames will enter a self-immolator’s lungs through his mouth, causing him to asphyxiate.

On a recent trip to Bulgaria, I met not one but two people who had survived suicide attempts by fire. “Solving problems with gasoline has become the new trend,” Georgi Kostov told me in the burn-victim unit of St. George hospital in Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second-largest city. He was still in shock, so his wife, Donka, did most of the talking. 

She explained how the couple were unemployed, in debt, and struggling to feed their children, when, two weeks before my visit, Georgi disappeared into his bedroom at their apartment in the industrial city of Dimitrovgrad. He came out doused in gasoline, convinced that the Mafia was outside his front door to collect on his debts and kill him. Standing in front of his family, he flicked on his lighter and burst into flames. Donka leapt onto him to put out the blaze while his sister threw water on him. They succeeded in saving Georgi, but his wife suffered third-degree burns all over her arms in the process. “He was so depressed,” she said. “He didn’t know how to make anyone notice our poverty. So he did this horrible thing.” 

Georgi’s not the only one. In the past six months, Bulgaria has experienced a wave of self-immolations. During one span in February and March alone, six Bulgarians killed themselves with fire, and at least ten people in total have done so in the past six months. (That’s more than in any other country except China, where suicidal Tibetan Buddhist monks use the tactic to protest religious persecution.) 

A memorial to Plamen Goranov, outside City Hall in Varna, where the artist set himself on fire on February 20, 2013.

Some say the inspiration for it all was a 36-year-old photographer named Plamen Goranov, who burned himself on February 20 in front of City Hall in Varna, a resort city on the country’s Black Sea coast. According to investigative journalists, Varna’s commerce is controlled by a business group called TIM, which the former US ambassador to Bulgaria, James Pardew, accused of racketeering, prostitution, and extortion in a 2005 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. TIM, he said, was the “up-and-coming star of Bulgaria’s organized crime.” Plamen set himself on fire to protest TIM’s alleged relationship with Varna’s mayor, Kiril “Kiro” Yordanov. Before he set his body aflame, he propped up a sign demanding the “resignation of Kiro and all the city council by 5 PM.” 

When Plamen died 12 days later, he got his wish: memorials and vigils in his honor were held in every major city, and under pressure from his own political party, Yordanov resigned. Buoyed by this success, protests against corruption had erupted throughout the country, and by the end of February they’d grown so large that they forced the prime minister, an alleged former amphetamine smuggler named Boiko Borisov, to also resign. When his replacement, a Socialist named Plamen Oresharski, nominated a widely hated and allegedly corrupt media magnate named Delyan Peevski to run Bulgaria’s State Agency for National Security, protesters forced Peevski to step down too. 

LEFT: After he woke up from a coma in the hospital in Sofia, Dimitar Dimitrov took a selfie on his cell phone. “I dropped the phone five times trying to take it,” he said. “I looked like Quasimodo.”

RIGHT: A protester at one of the nightly marches in Sofia, calling for the resignation of the current prime minister, Plamen Oresharski.

On my visit to Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital, in June, thousands marched through the streets every night. By this point the protesters had upped their demands, calling for Prime Minister Oresharski’s resignation. In a shout-out to the man whose self-immolation in 1969 catalyzed the downfall of the Soviet regime in Czechoslovakia, people began celebrating Plamen as “Bulgaria’s Jan Palach.”

It remains to be seen whether the past six months have signaled the blooming of a Bulgarian Spring, or have instead been a disastrous demonstration of nihilism and despair. Whatever the case, one thing is clear: the self-immolations continue intermittently, and serve as one of the most dubious legacies of Bulgaria’s earnest attempt to create a less corrupt and more democratic country. “The only way to get anyone to listen to us and pay attention,” Dimitar Dimitrov, another self-immolation survivor, told me, as he was convalescing at a little cabin in the rural region of Silistra, “is to set ourselves on fire.” 

In a country where people are still struggling to embrace democracy after nearly 50 years of Communist rule, and where EU membership, which the country obtained in 2007, hasn’t significantly improved the poverty rate or transparency in government, self-immolation remains one of few available forms of critique in Bulgaria. “We are killing ourselves because there’s no way to meaningfully engage with the political system,” Dimitar told me. “But something weird happened to me—I survived. I survived so I can tell the story.” 

VICE: Describe what happened to you on March 13, the day you set yourself on fire.
Dimitar Dimitrov: That day started 23 years ago [since the Communist government collapsed, in 1989]. Our government—first the Communists and then the “democratic” politicians—has always been connected to the oligarchs, to the criminal world, to incompetent people. Under Communism, I had to wake up at 5 AM so that I could stand in line to buy milk and bread for my child. Under this government, I was a blacksmith until my workshop went out of business. The job that was feeding my family went away. Then electricity became impossible to afford. Under Communism, we had money, but there was nothing to buy. Now, there is everything to buy but no money. It’s always been a recession, and I finally got tired of it.

Dimitar Dimitrov at his wife’s cabin in the rural village of Silistra, four months after his self-immolation. 

What was the last straw?
I had decided to do it the day before. The prime minister [Boiko Borisov] had just resigned and new elections were announced, and I was sick of all of it. So I decided to kill myself in front of the president’s building. I woke up early and had coffee with my wife. I had made up my mind, but I didn’t tell her anything. I was very quiet. After that, I went to the store and got one beer. I drank it with my neighbors. I went to a gas station and pumped out some gas and poured it in an empty bottle of vodka. I got on the train to go downtown, and when I got there, I walked around for a while. It was about 10 AM, and I walked around until 1:30. During that time, I drank another beer alone in an unknown bar. I have one daughter, and I thought about her. It’s not that she lives so bad, but I want her to have the same life as American girls. I thought it was worth it for her to not have a father if she could have a better life. One can’t live in a constant recession. 

Eventually, I went and stood in front of the president’s building. I took my bottle of gasoline and poured it over my chest and head. I struck the lighter. I’ve worked with fire all my life [as a blacksmith], but this time there was a big fireball and I got scared. I screamed because of the pain. It surprised me that it hurt instantly. Have you ever burned yourself with a drop of oil from a frying pan? It was like being in a frying pan. My head, face, shoulders, hands, everything. 

Then I heard people shouting, “This guy set himself on fire!” It was the security guards, and they immediately ran over to me with fire extinguishers and tried to put me out. At this point, there had been so many suicides, they were ready. They were scared about someone doing what I did. So they put me out. I lost consciousness at some point, and I woke up in the hospital. I survived because the guards were so fast, and because the hospital was close by, but I don’t remember it. I was in a coma for a week.

When I woke up, I looked terrible. I took a photo of myself on my cell phone. I dropped it five times trying to get a good shot. I didn’t have skin. You could see my bones through my arms. I had no lips. I looked grotesque, like Quasimodo. When I saw the photo, I thought I would have to go off to live in a wild village all by myself. I looked like a vampire. I didn’t think I would ever get better.

But at Pirogov Hospital, when I was there recovering and having surgery, the health minister came to visit me every day. The nurses told me I was under the president’s supervision. Which means that I had to survive. Even if they had to fly me to New York to save me, they were going to do it. I had to live, because if a person dies in front of the president’s building, that’s bad news. I didn’t have the right to die. And so I survived.

Afterward, the government shut down my personal website, they deleted my profiles on social media—Facebook, everything. I am defined as “dangerous,” and they are afraid I will provoke others.

Why did you choose fire as a method? Why not a gun, for example?
I did not want to simply commit suicide. We had all of these protests—we’re still having them—and nothing gets done. Nothing changes. I didn’t want anything from the Bulgarian politicians. I was hoping that the world, people like you, would look at our country with a careful eye. When Plamen Goranov committed suicide, he ousted the mayor of Varna with his self-immolation. I wanted to oust the entire system. 

More from the Hot Box Issue:

The Place Women Go to Get Raped

I Left My Lungs in Aamjiwnaang

The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia

This is the first Munchies episode featuring a food writer. Sure, we have had food personalties who write, but Josh Ozersky is different. Josh's rise to prominence came about with his book Meat Me in Manhattan: A Carnivore's Guide to New York, and from there he went on edit Grub Street for New York magazine while putting out other books on topics like Colonel Sanders and the hamburger. We met Josh while filming our Michael White Munchies episode. Josh showed up to the shoot with a half-eaten sandwich and then proceeded to order some pasta before we headed to three more restaurants. It was then that we knew he was special. Beside his Falstaffian appetite, Josh's way with words is what sets him apart from other food people. When we approached him about where he would like to go, he immediately said that he would not leave the confines of Manhattan's East Village, and that he already had his crew in mind. So, with Mr. Recipe, Tommy Walker, and Chef Anthony Goncalves in tow, Josh took us to three of his favorite neighborhood spots. We could go on and on about all the characters in this episode, but you really just have experience it for yourself. Please enjoy all 20 minutes of this episode.

Josh has also written for us:

Lambstock Leaves Me Weak

They didn't want to be "forced to pay these taxes that pay for abortions we don't agree with." This was the reason why Hannah Gastonguay, 26, her husband Sean, 30, and his father, along with the couple's two young daughters, a three-year-old and an eight-month-old infant, attempted to flee the United States in a sailboat. And yet their powers of reason seem as slim as their sailing expertise. They left from San Diego this past May, with the South Pacific island of Kirbati as their unlikely destination. Their "leap of faith" would place them and, most crucially, their daughters, in serious peril. They would ultimately be lost at sea, and spend weeks adrift. By the time they were rescued, three months after they left, they had no solid food and no water, only juice and honey. Good Christians that they are, as Hannah Gastonguay made known to reporters who covered their arrival in San Antonio, Chile, they don't condone abortion and homosexuality, and are against "state-controlled" worship."

It's an old story, really, when devout parents bring children into this world only to endanger them, hold them hostage to their beliefs, and capriciously lead them astray. Even in a society where children are considered possessions, the Gastonguay's—for all intents and purposes—kidnapped their own daughters. Where fanatical parents are concerned, children sometimes die, as when medical assistance is refused, or when the ATF and the FBI throw a bonfire. Luckily, in this case the children did not perish. But it certainly cannot be celebrated as a miracle, as Hannanh Gastonguay so predictably and mindlessly has claimed. Many followers of the story have suggested that what would truly be miraculous—but probably won't happen—is for the Gastonguay's to be charged with endangerment, and for their children to be taken away from them, since they are clearly incapable of protecting them and making rational decisions in their best interests. This, of course, would set off a cacophony of bells and whistles among fervent antigovernment, religious freedom groups. But why not? Bring it on. The Gastonguay's are clearly a danger to their children, and the danger has not passed. Hannah Gastonguay, rescued with her family, claims that they will re-group and "come up with a new plan." And what sort of plan will they hatch next? Maybe flying to Mexico in a hot air balloon?

The Gastonguays are probably narcissistic, Hannah most of all, as the evidence will suggest. She and her husband believe in God, even if God doesn't much care, and they have fulfilled their desire to propagate. They endorse the pursuit of freedom, obviously in the extreme, though with a curious definition: I can do as I please, and you will do nothing that displeases me. They surely believe that they are good Christians, just like others worldwide who deny equal rights to people they deem below them, or unworthy, or sinners. In this sense, like many of their narrow-minded brethren, they are nothing if not blessedly entitled. The Gastonguays are not fleeing political and economic hardship, like refugees from Cuba, Africa, and Mexico, who set sail for Miami, Lampedusa, and Southern California. When this family foolishly set off from San Diego, was it an act of pure desperation? Do they have anything in common with a woman who almost drowned trying to swim around the fence that marks the Pacific border between Mexico and California? Can their life in any way compare to that of an immigrant found floating in the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean, having failed to make his way from North Africa to Italy, and who won't even get a one-way ticket home? The Gastonguays, with their precious government-issued passports, are not madly desperate—they are simply wrapped up in their own madness. They are crackpots. And they prove, perhaps with the exception of Edward Snowden, that Americans can basically go wherever they want. But for all the nomadic rights these people possess, they are not entitled to kill their defenseless children. The infant, who was only a few months old when they set sail, is named Rahab. In the New Testament, Rahab is related to Jesus, and gave birth to Boaz. In Hebrew Scripture, however, she harbored Israelite spies who helped to capture the city of Jericho in the Promised Land, and was later referred to as "the Harlot of Jericho." (Surely the Gastonguays had the former in mind, or simply confused the two.) The other child, Ardith, is three, and appeared terrified in the photos after their rescue. Her name means "blooming meadow" in Hebrew. Not exactly an accurate way to describe where they came from or where they were headed, neither of which can in any way be thought of as a promised land.

Sante Fe Railroad near Ash Fork sometime in the 1870s. Photo via.

The Devil's Hole

Although the Gastonguays sailed from San Diego, they are originally from Ash Fork, Arizona, the self-proclaimed Flagstone Capital of the World. Prosperous at one time, a blooming meadow it is not and never was. Founded in 1882, Ash Fork had no source of water until a well was dug in 1976, which was around the time that the Interstate bypassed the fabled Route 66 that ran through the town, leaving it otherwise high and dry. It was the end of a long decline that began in 1960, when the Santa Fe Railroad moved north, taking away half its inhabitants. Although Ash Fork's population is only around 500, people continue to pass through on the nostalgia trail. Where the mythology of the golden West is concerned, you can still get your kicks on Route 66.

Dante's Descent. Photo via.

Visitors—geologists and intrepid spelunkers, mostly—used to be drawn to the town to explore Dante's Descent, a famous sinkhole that locals refer to as the "Devil's Hole" due to its nearly 400-foot plunge. The state closed the site over public safety concerns a number of years ago, but people still find their way there and walk through the spooky, abandoned railroad tunnel that snakes inside a nearby mountain. As you might have guessed, Dante's Descent is named for Inferno, the first part of Dante Alighieri's great allegorical poem, Divine Comedy, which relates the passage through the nine circles of hell. The first circle is Limbo, a (dis)location that the Gastonguay's have experienced firsthand. But this descent, at least in the 14th century, required an admission and repudiation of one's sins. In the photo of the family's rescue, Hannah Gastonguay appears calm—one might even say beatific. She does not in any way seem to be the embodiment of sin, but of saintliness, a cult of one. This is what she projects, for this is the state to which she aspires. Where her children are concerned, however—and her husband and father-in-law certainly share the blame—the lack of concern is staggering, and the transgression should not go unpunished.

While three adults were present, once rescued the mother seems to have naturally taken the role of spokesperson, an indication that she was perhaps the driving force behind this near-tragic folly. Many who first commented on the story wondered why they didn't have a seaworthy vessel (a la Noah’s Ark, perhaps?), a better compass, and the skills to weather the many storms they endured. What was really missing, though, of all the most essential instruments, was a clear moral compass. If you can't navigate through life with young children, how will you fare with them out on the open sea? Hannah Gastonguay referred to the beginning of their journey as "cruising" and "pretty exciting," to being battered by intense weather as "squall after, after squall, after squall," and to being adrift in a heavily damaged boat as a "twilight zone." She said that they "decided to take a leap of faith and see where God led us." Divine guidance, however, could not save the day for believers who cannot fathom how awesome and terrifying the ocean can be, and how a basic respect for how large it is, and how small we are, is not only central to grasping our place within nature, but within the universe. And the universe—unless we are all seriously adrift—is what people of many faiths consider to be the realm of God, and what those of us who venture beyond the corporeal and graven images understand as divine in itself. And if you don't respect that power, you really do have a cross to bear.

Onward Christian Soldiers, or Any Port In a Storm

Yes, this family was rescued, and those two innocent angels have not ascended into Heaven just yet. But to be raised by adults who would endanger them so recklessly, what perils are in store for them from here on? It could have easily been a much different story, filled with all sorts of pity for the parents, but they were brought back from the abyss, and the terms of return should be seriously considered, the justice swiftly dealt. They are still a clear and present danger to their daughters. By heading out into open sea with them without any particular sailing expertise, the guardians of those children cast them into another kind of Devil's Hole, one from which they might not have returned.

Tarawa, an atoll in Kiribati.

It is also important to look at the Gastonguay's intended destination. In flight from the US, they had charted a course for the island of Kiribati, which is part of Micronesia, at more or less the midpoint between Hawaii and Australia. According to Hannah Gastonguay, it was chosen because they "didn't want to go anywhere big," and since they thought it was "one of the least developed countries in the world." If you can knock your IQ down to around 40 for a moment it's not difficult to understand how the Gastonguays might have thought they would be free to raise their children in an island paradise with little or no governmental interference. You have to wonder, though, in just which century are they living? Were they going to serve as missionaries to the friendly natives? Did they think it was a country without modern laws and governance? Most troubling in their choice of destination is that the indigenous people of Kiribati may themselves have to beat a hasty retreat in the years ahead. If the Gastonguays had bothered to look into the ecological dangers facing the island, they would certainly have discovered that current predictions indicate it will be underwater in as little as 30 years. Then again, that would necessitate a belief in global warming, which may not be on their cockeyed radar. Talk about throwing the babies out with the bath water. Maybe they thought that the hands of God, in which they placed themselves, would one day part the sea for them. In moments like these we can hear a slightly cynical and bewildered voice call out from on high: "Holy Moses."

Where they ultimately ended up couldn't have been any more fitting. After a fishing ship sailed away without offering assistance (no good Christians there), they encountered a Canadian cargo vessel that banged into and further damaged their sailboat. A helicopter spotted them and they were dropped aboard a Venezuelan ship, then transferred to a Japanese cargo ship, where they spent about three weeks on the way to San Antonio, Chile. And it was to the American embassy of all places, that they turned and were given refuge—and plane tickets back to the good old USA. Plane tickets paid for by tax-paying citizens like you and me.

"We were in the thick of it, but we prayed,” said Hannah Gastonguay once the family had safely landed. "Being out on that boat," she mused, "I just knew I was going to see some miracles." Of course the miracle that we would like to witness is for the Gastonguays to pay us back for those plane tickets. But we probably have less than half a chance... especially without God on our side.

Previously by Bob Nickas - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's Anna Wintour

Keith Morris and I have been pals for about a million years, ever since I crashed on his floor after another drunken night hanging out in LA during the 1970s. In the 80s, when I was working at SPIN, I borrowed a copy of Hardcore California (a book about the Southern California punk scene) from him and never returned it. I’d shudder whenever I came across the book. Last year I finally sent it back to him with my most sincere apologies, and that sort of rekindled our friendship. Since I’ve always been confused about Keith’s time in Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, and the whole California hardcore scene, I thought what better way to get some clarity than to interview Keith and let him explain it himself? We talked on the phone for four or five hours and Keith laid out the entire history of the hardcore scene. It probably helped that I started off by saying, “Talk to me like I’m a moron and don’t know any of this stuff.” 

A month after we finished the interview, Greg Ginn, the guy who co-founded Black Flag with Morris, initiated a lawsuit against Keith, along with Dez Cadena, Chuck Dukowski, Bill Stevenson, and Stephen Egerton, because they have been touring under the name Flag, giving the fans a taste of true hardcore punk rock. Henry Rollins is also named in the lawsuit. Since Greg Ginn’s Black Flag has become a bloated, monotonous carcass of everything we hate about rock 'n' roll, Flag got together to pass the torch to a new generation of headbangers and shame Greg Ginn’s band by showing the world how the noise should be played. 

As this lawsuit travels through the courts, take a few minutes, as we travel back to those dark days of the 1970s when the world was one giant macraméd happy face and teenage angst was drowning in the swill of the deadly folk rock, back when a few fuckups dared to challenge the status quo….

"The guy from the Parks Department told us afterward he'd never allow this to happen ever again. That was probably one of the greatest compliments we ever got." —Keith Morris on an early performance at Polliwog Park. Image via

SEEDS OF DISCONTENT

The way that I met Greg Ginn was through his younger sister, Erica, while I was working at this record store, Rubicon, on Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach in 1975. The gentleman who owned the record store, Michael, had a mad crush on Erica. So Greg Ginn would walk down to the record store with his sister—and Erica and Michael would go off to do whatever young lovers do—hold hands and watch the seagulls fly or the surfers on Hermosa Beach. You know, they’d get lunch or beer or cigarettes, and I would be left to run the record store while Greg Ginn hung around, waiting for his sister.

They were always playing Joni Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles and the first three Springsteen records and Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in the record store, and I wasn’t real excited about listening to them. What was happening, as this music was being played, was the seeds of my musical rebellion were starting to come to fruition. 

I thought, I’m not into any of this. I need to be listening to Black Sabbath, I need to be listening to Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges, I need to be listening to the New York Dolls, and I need to be listening to power trios blasting off, trying to remove my skull!

So after Michael and Erica left, I’d take off the Joni Mitchell and put on Uriah Heap and Deep Purple, ya know, just anything loud and abrasive. Greg actually didn’t have any choice because I was the guy behind the counter, but I liked Greg. I liked talking to him. You know, it was cool hanging out with him. He seemed like a good guy. He liked a majority of the stuff that I’d play, and the comments Greg would make would be right along with what I was thinking. That’s how we came together. That’s where the seeds of Black Flag were planted, in that record store in Hermosa Beach.

MINIRIOTS

Michael had purchased some tickets for the Journey and Thin Lizzy concert at the Santa Monica Civic Center. The three of us—Michael, Ginn, and me—drove up to the concert in my Chevy Impala. Afterward, Greg said, “I gotta handful of songs. Why don’t we put together a band?”

See, we were a couple of nerds. We weren’t part of the local music scene. We were just a couple of guys that were going through this blindly. I didn’t how to play an instrument, but I wanted to learn. I played a little bit of bass, but not enough to amount to anything. So we didn’t rehearse yet. We had to find players. We went through three bass players before Chuck Dukowski joined, and that’s when Black Flag became a band, because Chuck Dukowski brought a work ethic. Now we were gonna start practicing, ya know? We’re gonna learn these songs! We’re not gonna flip-flop around like a fish on the deck of a boat!

Now it was time to find a real drummer and so we put an ad in the Pennysaver, your local weekly, throwaway newspaper. One of the guys who answered the ad was Robo [Roberto Valverde], who brought his secret weapon, the cumbia, with him.  

So the three- and four-hour rehearsals started to kick in. We kind of resembled a band, but none of our friends liked what we were doing. The best we could get would be playing in a garage in a backyard, but those shows would erupt into a full-scale miniriots. We would have the bikers and the football players and the cheerleaders and the drug dealers and the surf-rat ho-dads all fighting on the front lawn.

Occasionally some musician friends would show up, like Juan, the bass player in Ratt, who’d just laugh and say, “This is hilarious!”

PUNK ROCK

The punk stuff was just to starting to bubble up here in LA—like the Germs and the Runaways. We didn’t have our ear close enough to the ground to know about it. We were still going to Ted Nugent and Lynyrd Skynyrd at the Anaheim Stadium, stuff like that. We would go to anything that interested us, but we ended up falling in love with the Ramones. The Ramones were a huge influence, and not only did I see them when they played at the Whiskey but they actually threw a party, like an all-night party over at the Tropicana Motel. There were so many people at the party that I’m surprised the Tropicana allowed it to happen. There was a minimum 100 to 150 people there. The Screamers were there, and the Germs were there. I’m sure some of the guys from the Dickies were there, too.  

And, here we are, these guys from the South Bay, and if I met the Ramones or conversed with them, it was beyond me, because of my condition: I was completely drunk. And that’s when I cut all my hair off. I found a pair of hedge trimmers and cut off my hair, that left it all spiky, almost like a flat top, a kind off skinhead scenario. So I felt really proud of myself. 

Of course, the next day I went to work hungover, with this really horrible haircut. My old man was pissed off. He wanted to know what was up. His partner’s wife accused me of being a royal sinner, that I was never gonna be allowed to get into heaven. Ya know, silly, non-sensical crap like that. 

Greg Ginn, via

THE MASK                                         

We didn’t know where to go to get a gig. So after a couple of years of being locked in the rehearsal space, after one of our practices, Greg Ginn and I went up to the Masque in LA, the bastion of punk rock, and cornered one of my heroes, Brendan Mullen. We were kind of grungy looking characters—I hadn’t cut my hair yet, so we looked like the guys that roadied for Peter Frampton.

We were impressed with Brendan because we were impressed with the Masque—that’s where we got to see the Germs and the Weirdoes. So we bothered Brendan to the point where he just gave in. He said, “All right, I’ll let you play, you can be the opening band on closing night.”

So we played closing night of the original Masque, but I don’t remember it because I loved to break open a six-pack or two on a regular basis and snort some Hollywood Happy Powder. I would get around Derf and Philo and Spit from Fear—they’d become friends of mine and we all became drinking buddies. And maybe Darby Crash would come hang out with us. I wasn’t thinking about getting laid, I was too drunk to even worry about what I was gonna do with my penis. I was more concerned with getting fucked up. 

I mean, I was one of those guys sitting in the parking lot outside of the Hollywood Bowl drinking prescription peach-flavored cough syrup before sneaking into the Hollywood Bowl to see the Allman Brothers, yaknow? 

WHITE FLAG

Greg Ginn and I started drifting. Our friendship started to dissolve about halfway through my second year of being in the band. We weren’t playing a lot of shows. All we were doing was rehearsing, but what were we rehearsing for? Yaknow, it was like we were playing to just please ourselves. We made a couple of trips to San Francisco and that was pretty cool, but there started to be a shift in the plates. What I mean by that is when Gary joined the band, people started taking sides. It was no longer, “All for one and one for all and let’s go party!” You know, “Hey guys, let’s be bros! Let’s party down!”  

What had happened was it had turned into three against one. I, apparently, was impeding their progress because of my drunken antics and because they wanted to learn more songs. My mentality was as follows: That’s all fine and great, but why are we learning new songs? What for?

It got to the point where I wasn’t having any fun. I mean, we would go out and play and while we were playing, while we were on stage, I was having a great time, but all the other stuff that was attached to it just started to kind of grind on me. And there was a power struggle going on and I didn’t want to get involved in that. Everytime we got into some kind of argument or there was a group discussion, I was the freckle-faced stepchild, ya know, the orphan. Eventually I just said, “Guys, I’m outta here.”

As it turned out, because I spent a lot of time with Chuck Dukowski, now I got to hear all of the post-Keith Morris Black Flag stories. Chuck told me that Greg Ginn was gonna kick me outta the band because I was keeping them from moving forward. That was one thing that I’d never picked up from Greg Ginn. I never saw him as being particularly ambitious, or the king of an empire, that he would eventually become. 

But it didn’t start getting ugly until the Circle Jerks started playing live.

MASTURBATION IN THE ROUND                                                             

After I left Black Flag, I was living in an abandoned Baptist Church in Hermosa Beach at the corner of Pier and Hermosa Avenue. After it was abandoned by its followers, some hippies moved in and began to rent out sections of the church for glass-blowing and pottery and stuff like that. The guy who was in charge was a guy named Red, who actually dealt LSD to the Grateful Dead—ha, ha, ha! And one of the things that’s happening in the church was that Redd Kross was rehearsing there. 

So Redd Kross was down in the basement one Saturday afternoon, and I run into Greg Hetson and Keith “Lucky” Lehrer, who were going into the basement to audition. Redd Kross was auditioning drummers and Lucky was the drummer that they were auditioning that day. So they’re down there for about an hour. I’m just sitting in the hallway just drinking beer, and Greg and Lucky are the first two to come out and they’re shaking their heads. 

I can see that Greg Hetson is really upset, so I said, “How’s it goin’? It sounded really happening!” But they’re shaking their heads with a disillusioned look on each of their faces. So I said, “Greg, what’s happening?” And Greg said, “Well, it sounded great, it sounded amazing, but the brothers didn’t like Lucky because he was too proficient. He was too good of a drummer…”

That’s when it dawned on me, I said, “Look we gotta vocalist, a guitar player, and a drummer. All we need is a bass player!” And a couple of weeks later I ran into Rodger Rodgerson in front of the Anti-Club over in Hollywood, and drafted him. That's pretty much how the Circle Jerks got together.

RAYMOND PETTIBON

Raymond Pettibon is Greg Ginn’s younger brother, and he has been a part of this since the very beginning. We went to high school together. I mean, granted we weren’t all in the same classes, but there was a point in time when we were all at Maricosta High School in Manhattan Beach. We were all Mustangs—green and gold were our school colors, just like the Green Bay Packers.

And Raymond’s always been a fan of Black Flag. See, we were called Panic before we were called Black Flag, but then there was some French band named Panic released a 45. When we found this out, we looked at each other and went, “We gotta change our name because we can’t afford to deal with any lawsuits!” 

I mean, what lawyer would represent us? Like, “Does anyone even know a lawyer? What’s a lawyer?”

So Raymond was the guy that came up with the name Black Flag. He also designed the band’s logo, ya know, the four bars that create the waving flag? It’s a great design. It lives forever. And the name, the Circle Jerks, was another Raymond Pettibone creation, because we had run through six or seven names, Plastic Hippy, The Runs, White Hassle... Like don’t hassle me, white man!

Anyways, we didn’t like any of the names and one day we were hanging out with Raymond in one of the bedrooms in his parent’s house in Hermosa Beach. And Greg Hetson and I were looking at each other and it was like we need to come up with a name for the band. So I pull a book off the shelf, the American Slang Dictionary, and we’re like breezing through it. I’m looking at all the different names and all of a sudden there’s Circle Jerk. And I’m thinking, Well, the Rolling Stones, that’s a pretty terrible name...

It always seems that the worst names, the most terrible names, are the most remembered. 

So I thought, Circle Jerk, no, Circle Jerks, plural, because there’s four of us. Greg nodded his head and that’s where that went down. So we could almost blame it on Raymond Pettibon again. 

Raymond was one of the first three bass players we had before we found Chuck Dukowski. He was one of those bassists that couldn’t play the bass guitar.

We were party buddies. One night we’re at a John Cale/Zeros show at the Whiskey and he was drunk out of his mind and he picked up some girl and they were dry humping on the floor of the Whiskey a Go Go. Raymond didn’t really get involved in any of the inner workings of Black Flag, he was just a fan, yaknow? He grew up with us. He got along with his brother Greg, but they don’t speak now, because one of them is an incredibly horrible person—and it’s not Raymond.

BUT WHO IS THE LEAD SINGER?  

There were two vocalists in Black Flag sandwiched in between Henry Rollins and me. A lot of people, when they think about Black Flag they think of Henry Rollins, because Henry was on every album. Or just about every album. That’s one of the amazing things about Black Flag; there were four different lead vocalists and each one of us brought our own flavor to the party, yaknow? 

So Henry came in after Dez, and Dez came in after Ron Reyes, and Ron came in after me. Ron was only in the band for six months. He just wasn’t into it. I don’t know what his excuse was or his reasons were for leaving, but I was told that the EP Black Flag put out with Ron, the Jealous Again EP, were the best songs that Black Flag ever did. 

Henry Rollins used Black Flag as a springboard for all the other stuff that he’s done, and I wholeheartedly applaud him. Greg Ginn doesn’t like the fact that Henry is more successful than him. I’m surprised that Henry made it as far as he did with Greg Ginn, because Greg was always saying “I can’t have him upstaging me! Oh, he’s doing all of the interviews!” But Henry would upstage him just by walking onstage. I mean, Henry was a punk-rock sex symbol. So I think Greg was happy to have him, but also resented him.

You have to understand that Greg became very egotistical. He was like, “Well, I’ve got this great record label with all of these bands. There’s all of this stuff going on, and I’m in control!”  And so Greg Ginn quit the band. I don’t know when. All I know is that Greg  quit and left Henry with Black Flag and that’s when Henry decided to do his own thing with the Henry Rollins Band. But I don’t really know anything about that time. 

I just know that Greg Ginn was never a vocalist, and Greg will never be a vocalist. But as a guitar player, I’d put Greg up there with Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Jimmy Hendrix. He was one great guitar players of all time.       

I was the first lead vocalist, but I’m not a singer either. I was the lead screamer. I’m not going to be the guy that goes to the wedding and they’re gonna ask me to sing a song.

I woulda been on the first record that Black Flag released, the Nervous Breakdown EP, but I’d left the band. I am on Everything Went Black. I’m on one side of three sides and I’m on another compilation, I think it’s called Wasted Again. There’s enough recorded material and that would equate me being owed quite a large chunk of royalties. But I’ve never gotten any royalties from Black Flag.

Ginn doesn’t pay royalties. He once invited me to get up onstage and sing four or five songs with him. I looked Greg in the eye and said, “Sure, cut me a check for $75,000 for back royalties.” That would’ve been just the tip of the iceberg, but he just laughed in my face.

REUNIONS SUCK 

The Circle Jerks were out on tour in 2003 and we played a big festival over here by the LA Coliseum. A couple of the guys from Golden Voice, the promoters that we’ve dealt with for the majority of our lives, said to me, “Keith we need your help, we’re doing two nights of Black Flag at the Hollywood Palladium…” 

I said, “Don’t even fill me in on the details, just let me know when you’re doing it. Of course, I’ll be there; I’ll be a part of it. What do I need to do?”

When I was asked to participate in the Hollywood Palladium show, it was being advertised as “Black Flag: The First Four Years.” It’s one of these situations where you’re looking at maybe $100,000 over the course of two nights and it was supposed to be a benefit for cats. So I was thinking, “Wow, they’re gonna have Ron and Dez and Chuck and Robo down here, too! So I will get to hang out with some of my friends!”

So I went to my first rehearsal and it was pretty brutal. These other guys—not Dez or Ron or Chuck or Robo—were playing the songs, and they didn’t even know what the songs were. They were looking at each other, waiting around for the riff to go around like five or six times. It was pretty ridiculous. I shook my head. I’d had enough. I was wasting my time. Still, I wanted to know when Chuck Dukowski was gonna show up because I know that Chuck shows up, shit was gonna happen. I actually called Greg and said, “So when is Chuck going to be showing up for rehearsal?”

Greg said, “I haven’t talked with Chuck yet...”

Then I actually talked with Chuck at Amoeba Records in Hollywood, during the West Memphis Three benefit, and I asked him, “So do you know about the Black Flag reunion at the Hollywood Palladium?”

Chuck says, “No, nobody’s talked to me about it...” 

I said, “Well, I guess you’re learning about it now….”

So I left the rehearsal that night thinking I’m not going back until I know when Robo and Chuck Dukowski are gonna be there. I called Dez to see if anybody reached out to him, to see when he was coming in. But he didn’t call back, so I just left a message on his machine. I woulda called Robo too, if I knew how to get a hold of Robo.

Then I got my ass handed to me by Greg Ginn on the phone, who told me, “I will call you when it’s time to rehearse, stop talking shit behind everyone’s back, stop trying to mess everything up….” 

I said, “Well have you talked with Robo? When is Robo getting in?”

Greg said, “That’s really none of your business. I’ll call you when it’s your turn…”

That’s when I realized that Greg never intended to have the original band onstage.

THE BIG SHOW

The promoter called me and wanted to know, “Well, who’s gonna be onstage? We’re sold out the first night and we need to fill up the second night. We wanna run some ads, so who’s playing in the band? We wanna advertise everyone that’s playing.”

I told him, “I can’t tell ya, I don’t know, I’ve been left in the dark...” 

He says, “Well you’re supposed to know this stuff!” And it just started getting uglier and uglier. I realized why I quit the band in the first place. Initially I was just beyond jazzed, I was beyond stoked, but then getting around all these people and hearing the conversations and getting my ass chewed out for stuff that I wasn’t doing. I was like, “Are you fucking kidding? These are all the reasons I left the band in the first place!”

So the promoter calls me a couple weeks before the show and says “Greg has told me that on a couple of occasions, you’ve been spreading vicious rumors and you’ve been talking shit behind everybody’s back, so you’re services are not going to be necessary.” At first I wanted to be bummed out, but then I breathed a sigh of relief and thanked him.

Two days before the show the promoter calls me back and says, “Keith, we’ve reserved a couple of tables in the balcony, so you can invite all your friends, you can hang out in the balcony, and if you choose to go down on stage and sing a few songs, feel free.” 

And I said, “Well thank you for the offer, but I won’t be there.” 

A few days later I get a call from him and he apologized to me for the way that he talked to me on the phone. Which didn’t really bother me too much because it’s par for the course with stuff like this, but at the end of our conversation he says, “Well I hope that we’re still friends??” 

I said, “Rick, we’re always gonna be friends. No matter what, any of this stuff that goes down, we’re always going to be friends.” 

The sad thing is that Rick mixed some medication and died shortly after that.

So no, I didn’t go to the show but I heard all of the rumors, I heard all of the critiques. They were actually throwing trash cans at the stage. There were people that had purchased tickets for both nights trying to sell their tickets for the second night. I heard nothing but horror stories.

FLAG IT!

Gary Tovar, the head guy at Golden Voice asked Chuck Dukowski to come to his anniversary party and give a speech to 4,000 people. So Chuck thinks about it and says, “Well, no, I’m a musician, let me try something else.”

So he calls me and Billy Stevenson. So we agreed to play the Nervous Breakdown EP at the Golden Voice 30th-anniversary party before the Descendents, who were headlining that Sunday night. So we play the anniversary party and everyone goes crazy. So we’re backstage, me, Chuck, Billy, Stephen, and Dez Cadena, and we’re looking at each other. We’ve had a great time, and among the four of us, we decided that maybe we should play out as a band. 

We came up with the name Flag and start playing out, and all of our shows have been great. We really enjoy playing with each other. We enjoy each other’s company. I mean granted, we’re all a bunch of older guys, and occasionally somebody gets grumpy and grouchy, but that’s what old people do.

KARMA

Raymond Pettibon and I were sitting down to eat a couple of sandwiches, a short while back, and he looks at me and tells me that he knows how his brother has treated everybody that he ever dealt with like shit. Ya know, Raymond tells me he knows Greg’s not been cool to everybody. I’m like, “So what else is new?” But then Raymond tells me that if I ever get in a financial bind or health situation that I can feel free to walk into his studio and take whatever I want to and sell it. 

This is one of the greatest artists of our time and he’s extending that kind of an invitation to me? Not only was I flattered, but I also realized that he and I were real close at one time, ya know? In the circle we were running with in that church—and in Black Flag, and the whole South Bay underground scene—me and Raymond had a lot of things in common. We were both fans of the Dodgers and the Angels, we were both fans of Superman and Batman. We were really close.

But I never took him up on his offer. I had no need to. I was always in a financial situation where I was able to pay my bills. I get by on the skin of my teeth, but I don’t need a lot of money after discovering the greatness of the farmers' market.

Previously - Among The War Pigs

Back in 1975, Legs McNeil co-founded Punk Magazine, which is part of the reason you know even know what that word means. He also wrote Please Kill Me, which basically makes him the Studs Terkel of punk rock. In addition to his work as a columnist for VICE, he continues to write for his personal blog, pleasekillme.com. 

You should also follow him on Twitter - @Legs__McNeil

The venus symbol made out of impractical bras.

Feminism, like everything in the world except for maybe the fact that water is good for people to drink, is a complex and nuanced thing. I love many parts of feminism and am grateful for many people who are or were feminists. I have the right to vote because of feminism. I feel entitled to walk home alone at night without being molested (whether I actually get to walk home without being catcalled or grabbed or not) because of feminism. My ability to choose to work in the on-camera side of the sex industry instead of other possible careers is mostly because of feminism, too. I should also point out that I am Caucasian, was raised middle class, and check a lot of the “conventionally attractive” boxes. All of these things confer unmerited privilege upon me in most parts of the United States, and the closer to the top of the privilege heap a person is the more options they usually have open to them. 

Having a job that involves talking to the press means inevitably everything from my politics to my chewing-gum habits are up for debate and discussion. I've been told that I must be a feminist, that my job is feminist, that I absolutely cannot be a feminist, and, one time, that my vagina should be revoked for crimes against women.

To me, the word feminist is heavy with sometimes-opposing connotations. When feminists fight for the rights of all people to be paid fairly by specifically campaigning to correct male/female pay inequalities or defend the rights of people with fertile uteruses to have accessible birth control, I think it is a wonderful thing. When feminists persecute anyone who isn’t biologically female or infantalize other women who make choices they disagree with, I find it offensive. When feminists debate whether the act of applying lipstick is empowering or not, I find it trivial. My disagreement with some of the extremes of feminism isn’t the reason I’m frequently uncomfortable calling myself a feminist though. I’m conflicted about applying the label to myself because I rarely do things specifically for the purpose of furthering women’s rights. Avoiding giving a straight answer about whether I’m feminist or not is kind of a cop-out though. Shirking the word feels like turning my back on the women who fought to give me many of the advantages I have. So here goes: Hi, I’m Stoya. My politics and I are feminist... But my job is not.

My because-I-wanted-to motivations for working in pornography are not necessarily the motivations of all sex workers. Not all women are the same, not all feminists are the same, not all sex workers are the same, not all sex work is the same, and not all people are the same. This bears constant repeating because I see people (including myself) fall into the generalization trap pretty often. I’ve probably already generalized at least once in this column. But let’s get back to the relationship between feminism and my choice to work in the sex industry.

The concept of choice can be tricky. There’s a difference between choosing to hand your wallet over to someone who has a loaded gun pointed at your head and choosing to give money to someone because of altruism or wanting to present them with a gift. There’s an analogous difference between entering sex work because of financial pressures and lack of other options (whether that lack is perceived or factual) and becoming a sex worker because of exhibitionism, desire for the experience, or because you really really really wanted to have sex with James Deen or Rocco Siffredi or whoever.

That second scenario where someone chooses to enter sex work for sex work’s sake is possible because of all the doors that were opened by feminists over the past 150 years. But my choice to work in pornography doesn’t make me a feminist any more than my choice to take an Aleve when I have a headache makes me a pharmacist.

I use my body to make gender-binary-heterosexual-oriented pornography for a production company that aims to have as much mass appeal as possible. I don’t agree with everything about the way mainstream pornography or the specific company I work for operates but I do pick my battles. I ingest a lot of calories because protruding hip bones are more concerning than arousing to most people. I also regularly put an insane amount of goo on my skin. When I get to set, I sit my body down in a chair and let the makeup and hair stylists do their job of making me look as conventionally sexy as they can. This process frequently involves false eyelashes and curling irons. When they’re done with me I usually put on high heels, some fantastically impractical underwear, and sometimes other clothing for the sake of looking accurate for whatever character I’m playing in the setup before the sex. 

Once the dialogue has been shot I have sex with one or more people while the crew captures it on video. My sexual partners on camera are people who I want to be having sex with and hopefully people who also want to be having sex with me. At least one of these people almost always has a penis and the scenes follow a certain arc. They start with kissing which leads into removal of clothing. Once the genitals in question are visible oral sex is performed. Penetrative sex (specifically penis in vagina) comes next, in various positions. Sometimes more oral sex happens in between these positions and occasionally anal sex as well. Eventually the male performer ejaculates and the scene ends shortly afterwards because the male climax is, well, a natural climax and sex scenes don’t usually call for falling action or denouement.

Nothing about the pornographic material I perform in does anything to intentionally further feminism. It is bluntly superficial entertainment that caters to one of the most basic human desires. Pornography exists and is not going to go away anytime in the near future. I see it as neither inherently empowering nor disempowering. Showing up on set and doing my job is not an act of feminism. 

As entertainment, mainstream pornography is no more responsible for educating viewers about sexual health and etiquette than Lions Gate is responsible for reminding kids that it’s actually not OK to kill each other despite what they may have seen in The Hunger Games. It isn’t Michael Bay or Megan Fox’s job to mention in every interview that giant robots from outer space are fictional, nor is it the job of every pornographic performer to discuss the testing protocols we use or how consent is given before shooting. I do feel the need to discuss these sorts of things, and there are other performers like Jiz Lee, Danny Wylde, and Jessica Drake who seem to feel a similar need to highlight the context already available for adult films and provide further context. 

But what about the wider reaching cultural effects of pornography? I can’t entirely discount the accusation that seeing a video in which I go from giving a blowjob directly to being pounded in the ass has inspired the occasional man to rudely shove his penis into his partner’s rectum without discussion or care. Whoever those guys are, they could probably use a refresher in the difference between TV and real life. In contrast to these butt-burgling-boogey-jerks are the messages I get every week saying that seeing my body or vagina portrayed as some kind of sex symbol made someone feel more comfortable about their own body. Also, the people who’ve said they didn’t realize that things like syphilis can still be transmitted even with a properly used condom and now see the benefit of regular testing and asking to see the tests of their partners in addition to barrier use. 

As long as I continue to enjoy performing in pornography and the positive social effects seem to outweigh the negative ones I’m going to keep doing it, but let’s not pretend that performing in mainstream porn is any sort of liberating act for all womankind.

Previously - Stoya on Ethics, Porn, and Workers' Rights

@Stoya

C.J. Rench's studio. Photo via Aaron Rogosin / Red Bull Content Pool.

Despite every effort to package skateboarding into a stadium setting so non-skateboarders can watch the captive monkeys perform neat tricks, one thing remains undeniable: skateboarding’s growth lies in the streets. From the Swatch Impact Tours of the 80s to Street League and the impending addition of skating to the Olympics, the masses have always been served up a fantasy version of skateboarding involving rules, uniforms, and point values—but that’s all a load of bullshit. There are two things that lead a kid to skateboarding. A.) It’s an individualist activity without rules or judges or teammates, and B.) it’s very accessible. If you have a paved slab, a painted curb, a ledge… hell, even a slanted tree trunk—you have a skate spot. Kids in Sao Paolo and Pakistan aren’t gravitating toward skating because they have an ideal, million-dollar Street League course. It’s the architectural landscape that the majority of the world takes for granted, like handicap ramps with waist-high bars at the end, handrails, stairs, banks, etc.

Unfortunately, ever since skaters left the pools of the 70s and the backyard ramps of the 80s there has been a cop with a badge and inferiority complex ticketing, arresting, and even beating skateboarders for enjoying the urban sprawl that most could care less about.

Some examples:

Luckily there are progressive cities in the US, like Seattle, that realize their baseball and football fields sit unused the majority of the year while the skateparks are packed, ass to elbow, and most streets are filled with the sweet theme song of rolling urethane. They also realize that as fun as some skateparks might be, skateboarders will never be caged beasts—they must be allowed to roam free like the Jackal on the plains of Africa. And so the Emerald City has commissioned 26 sculptures to be peppered around the city with a utilitarian design geared toward skateboarding.

Torey Pudwill

To help usher in the first of Seattle’s skateable structures, Red Bull (who, it should be acknowledged, keeps one foot in the “stadium setting” type of skateboarding mentioned above and one in the core, underground scene) stepped up and created the “Red Bull Skate Space” project soliciting over 40 submissions from sculptors around the Pacific Northwest to come up with a suitable concept for the city. The winner was Oregon seasoned artist/former snowboarder C.J. Rench. He partnered up with Plan B pro Torey Pudwill to construct the 23-foot tall skate spot that will be placed in Seattle’s Jefferson Park this October.

To get a better feel of the project and just how the piece can be skated I spoke with CJ and about the project.

C.J. Rench. Photo via Aaron Rogosin / Red Bull Content Pool

VICE: Coming from a snowboard background, had you ever put any thought into the plight of skateboarders and their difficulties with the law?
C.J.: Not with skating, but I started snowboarding in 1984 and had to ride with mountain managers before they’d even let me get on the chairlift, to prove to them that I could control the board I was on. So I understand that plight a little bit, but unfortunately skateboarders have it rougher because they’re already mainstream and are still fighting that battle. When we were talking to the Seattle Parks and Rec there were some people in the audience who were convinced that all the city’s tagging was from skateboarders. I said to them, “I’m not a skateboarder anymore, but I can tell you that half the tags I see at your park right now are gang tags. Those are not skateboarder tags.” Skateboarders are definitely fighting a bad image and I’m hoping that doing this project will break down some of those barriers and open a whole new movement for public art where people will be stoked that they get a cool piece of art to enjoy while skaters get to skate it.”

Had you ever sculpted anything with this type of use in mind?
No. It’s ironic because I just did another presentation for another town and they were asking me, “How do we keep people from climbing it and tagging it?”

Do you work with different materials or reinforce the sculpture differently when you know it’s going to take a beating from skaters?
Without getting super technical, we are building this thing out of materials that are twice as thick as the stuff we normally build with. I guarantee it will be engineered for much heavier use than what would be required for Seattle.

Talk me through the specs of the piece and how you can skate it. The model in the photo is pretty small scale and it’s hard to tell what you’ll be able to actually hit.
We’re building it to scale so that people can literally skate within the sculpture. The entire thing will stand 23 feet high. Surrounding the sculpture there will be three to five elements that are specifically designed by Torey and myself that are also totally skateable. The two big Cs on either end are 15 feet tall and wide and big enough that you’ll be able to skate through them. There’s a half circle underneath that’s four feet tall, and you’ll be able skate through that, too. There’s also going to be a ramp on the side of it so you can jump through one of those Cs or slide or grind the ledge part of the Cs. The inside of those Cs are roughly five feet wide so you can skate the transition.

Do you think something like this could catch fire and inspire other cities to do the same sort of thing?
That’s my hope. Once the people in Seattle saw the pictures of the sculpture they were super excited. The issue of tagging was not even discussed anymore. If that’s any indication of what we can do for perception by combining art and action sports I truly believe this could be a whole new movement for public art. People are throwing a fortune at skateparks, which are great, but this is the same thing but adds something the rest of the community can enjoy.

Torey Pudwill

VICE: How did you get involved with this Skate Space idea?
Torey: Red Bull approached me with the idea and I was stoked on the opportunity to be able to do something new and different. It’s me working with CJ making it possible. The idea behind it is to build an art piece as well as a skateable attraction that you could bring your family to and play on these things like little slides. From the skater’s eye it’s an amazing skate spot, and from the norm’s eye it’s a cool place that you’d want to hang out at and bring in the good vibes and soak up some sun.

How important is it for municipalities to start creating spots where kids are free to skate out in the streets?
I think something like this is really important because it’s allowing people to see things the way skaters see them, which is a whole different outlook than what they see watching contests or at a skatepark. This is real deal street stuff.  I think it’s cool to bring that attention to street skating. Also, leaving stuff like this in cities will bring a lot of growth to skateboarding.

It’s almost 2014. Do you think it’s ridiculous that grown men, some of whom are making a lot of money, are still getting chased by police and arrested or ticketed for skating?
Yeah, it sucks. That’s not good. We don’t want that. It’s not cool to have to know how to deal with police. You go around to skate and you’re worried if you’re going to have a run-in with the authorities and hoping that they’re cool and see that you’re just skateboarding and not doing anything illegal. Hopefully that will ease up as time goes on and police will see that skateboarding is keeping kids away from trouble and violence. Stuff like this Red Bull Skate Space will help. You can build many, many skateparks all over the country and the world but as skating grows and kids see it for what it really is… you can’t keep us out of the streets. So I think it’s good to have a legal skate spot and at the same time do something good for the city by leaving them a great piece of art. I’m honored to be a part of this and have my name on that plaque with CJ Rench, knowing that we helped the Seattle skate scene and hopefully start a new trend in legal skate spots across the country.

Previously - Ed Templeton's Huntington Beach

For more on Red Bull Skate Space visit redbull.com/skatespace

You can see more of CJ Rench’s work at cjrdesignstudio.com

Follow Torey on Twitter @ToreyPudwill1

More stupid can be found at Chrisnieratko.com or @Nieratko

Photo by Flickr User a4gpa

I am an unhealthy piece of garbage. Alcohol is what fuels me, while cigarettes have replaced breakfast and/or dinner on more than one occasion. Is this a good thing? I personally think so. Our generation has become the generation that is afraid of everything. We're afraid of getting all the cancers, all the STDs, and we’re even afraid of entering a building that doesn’t have Wi-Fi. I'm not saying we should abandon all fear and live a reckless life. Obviously, it's good to be fearful. It's good to take precautions. However, I believe we are the generation that's taking things too far. We're the metaphorical "poindexters" in comparison to earlier generations of young adults who didn't have to rely on their number of Twitter followers to boost their self-esteem. The little shred of hope I had left for us was our love of alcohol. I was under the impression that no matter how gluten free our lifestyle got, no matter how many start-ups we got fired from, and no matter how many e-cigarettes we purchased, that we'll always love making huge drunken embarrassments of ourselves on a Friday night.

It's looking more and more like I might be wrong. In recent years, studies have been released showing the gradual decline of our generation's desire to get wasted. The Guardian reported in March that there are less heavy drinkers between the ages of 16-24 in the UK. In men, it dropped from 32% to 22%, and from 22% to 18% in women since 2007. At first, none of this made sense to me, especially considering the rise of alcohol-inspired idiotic stunts amongst teens which include shoving vodka soaked tampons up butts, and smoking alcohol (which I have tried).

Now, around five months after the initial Guardian report, a new study published by the Economist shows that there is a huge rise in the sale of non-alcoholic beverages. This means we are deliberately choosing not to drink alcohol. We are spending our hard-earned money on a beverage that is meant to mimic beer, rather than be it. It could be that we are growing to prefer the taste instead of the effects. Granted, a lot of the rise in sales is attributed to consumers in the Middle East, many of whom do not ingest alcohol for religious reasons, but what does the Economist have to say about the rest of us? “Many Western teenagers are playing on games consoles or chatting on Facebook rather than illicitly swigging cider in the park.”

There it is. That's it! We are in the golden age of the internet, and it's our love of being online that leads to our diminished interest in drinking. As our desire for getting drunk dwindles, our addiction to the internet grows. I took psychology classes in college. I know all about correlation not leading to causation. However, I still can't help but feel that the internet is basically the new alcohol.

We often consume alcohol in social situations. Having a few drinks musters up liquid courage. We rely on this courage to help us interact with strangers or more importantly, flirt with an attractive person we spot across the room. Sober flirting involves a lot of self-consciousness. Is there something on my face? Did I just say something really stupid? Does my hat look too much like a fedora and not enough like a sun hat? Why am I wearing a sun hat indoors? Wait, what did he just say? Crap, I was too busy thinking about my dumb hat. But now, we rely on the mask that is social media to make us feel cool and calm. We can have a charming conversation in the privacy of our own bedroom, wearing the cow print pajamas grandma got us for our birthday and still feel confident enough to ask someone on Facebook chat, “what are you wearing?” hoping that they don't answer, “cow print pajamas”.

Some might argue that another factor leading to the demise of heavy alcohol consumption is the increased use of marijuana. Pot being legal, or at least more decriminalized in many parts of the world, especially in the US, means more young folks want to get high as opposed to get drunk. Getting high is pretty cool, right? We prefer drugs over drinking. Sounds badass. Yeah well, it totally would be if only we didn’t have to exaggerate having life threatening migraines in order to get permission from a doctor to smoke it. Regardless, this is a valid point, but pot is still not at the social level that alcohol is. Social pot smoking happens in a living room, with three or four close friends who just want to laugh at a viewing of The Matrix on mute with you. It’s better than nothing, but is not what’s going to save us from the coolness killer that is the internet.

I realize that it’s morally wrong to complain about people my age choosing good clean fun over debaucherous life-threatening fun, but I mean come on. Look at us. Alcohol is the last beacon of hope in a world filled with debates on Reddit over whether or not Grumpy Cat should have an AMA. If we keep this up, it’s only going to get worse. If we let the internet replace alcohol, that will destroy the concept of an actual social life. We’ll never want to leave our rooms. Our skin will grow pale, our bodies weak. Carpal tunnel will gift us disability leave from work, or we’ll just permanently work from home. We won’t wash for days, which will turn into weeks, then months. All we’ll be is fat, greasy, sad clumps typing “lol” into conversations while not really laughing. As a society, we tend to emphasize the damage drinking does, forgetting the positives. Go to a bar, get drunk, take shots with your friends, meet strangers, and be a human being. Don’t drive home, and don’t wear a sun hat. Seriously, the fate of humanity rests on this.

@JustAboutGlad

More on "dat liquor":

Hey Kids, Smoking Alcohol Isn't as Cool as It Seems

Defending the Daiquiri and New Orleans's Go-Cup Culture

Trip Report: I Went to Lit Sober

When Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered in 1987, I would denounce all faith in being cool and try to fully embrace being a Trekkie. Breaking this record would be my way to become a small part of Star Trek history.

More Star Trek:

We Went to a Star Trek Convention to Celebrate the 25th Anniversary of TNG

Off Hollywood - Brent Spiner

Comic-Con 2013 Cosplay Photo Dump

It's time, once again, to name and shame the week's biggest pussies. Featuring TWO families with unpronounceable names that begin with the letter G.

Cry-Baby #1: The neighbors of the Giesegh family

(screencap 11 News/ story via)

The incident: A family in Colorado installed a wheelchair ramp on their home. 

The appropriate response: Nothing. 

The actual response: Their neighbors are threatening to take legal action against them. 

Vincent and Heidi Giesegh have a 16-year-old daughter with cerebral palsy. Because of this, they installed a wheelchair ramp on their home. 

In an interview with 11 News, Vincent said, "We're trying to do our best to assist our daughter with her daily needs to get in and out of the house." Adding, "As she goes into her spastic modes, we could just tumble down the stairs and both of us could get massively hurt." But, really, he doesn't need to explain any of that. Having a ramp on your house if someone who lives there needs one is a no-brainer. 

According to the Gieseghs, their neighbors got in touch at some point last week asking them to remove the ramp, as they were afraid it would lower the value of their property.

They said that if the Gieseghs refused, they would take legal action against them. 

A lawyer from the Denver-based Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center told News 11 that the ramp is completely legal due to something called the Fair Housing Act. If the neighbors do take legal action, they're unlikely to win. 

11 News tried to speak to the neighbors to get their side of the story, but they declined to comment. 

Cry-Baby #2: The Gastonguay Family

The incident: A family got fed up with abortion, homosexuality, and the state's influence in the church. 

Members of the Future Femme Collective, plus some hairy dudes. Photos by Sarah Jacobs

If you've spent any time on the internet, you've likely seen a cock shot. Maybe you came across one of a celebrity like failing New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner on a gossip site. Maybe you had some sent to you by random dudes on Grindr or OKCupid or wherever you hang out. Or maybe you even sent one becuase you thought someone wanted to see your penis (they probably didn't). Most of the time, dick pics are thought of as “harmless,” if they're thought of at all, but they're hardly ever treated seriously.

Four artists interested in feminism, the internet, sex, porn, and power have decided that the dick pics they've gathered are important enough to share with the public. Over 300 men who have engaged in a little harmless online exhibitionism sending this summer may be surprised to learn that their members will mounted, framed, and put on display on August 23 at a Brooklyn gallery space by an artist collective known as Future Femme. The group is hoping to turn the tables on this mind-boggling male habit. 

“If a man was ever caught doing this, he’d be publicly shamed and stoned," said Violet, one of the artists. (Because of the sensitive nature of their work—and the potential legal ramifications—the artists requested that their names be withheld. I'll refer to them by the names of flowers.) “And if certain groups were to get ahold of our exhibit, I think there’d be a backlash. Some of the photos definitely cross the line of vulgarity for me.”

Their project started as a conversation about receiving cellphone pictures of penises. Violet, 25, had gotten an unsolicited dick pic from a guy she used to hook up with in college. He’d sent her an occasional drunk text or photo since they ended things, but their back-and-forth had dropped off when she started dating her boyfriend. In any case, his penis on her iPhone screen was a first. But Violet and her friends—who have been putting together art installations at their makeshift Brooklyn gallery space since this spring—quickly moved beyond girl talk.

Each of the artists retreated into their own (often dark) cave of dick pics, keeping their methods of solicitation and photo tallies a secret from one another. Getting a barrage of strangers’ penises sent to your inbox is not for the faint of heart. There have been photos of dicks covered in cum and dicks sprinkled with marijuana and ready to be rolled up like joints. There have been dicks so big that the girls were sure they were fake and dicks placed next to items like shaving cream cans for scale. There have even been some flaccid dicks, which seems like the laziest thing anyone has ever done. Looking at all of these photos definitely takes a psychological toll. As Justin Garcia, a research scientist at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, told me, viewing strange cock can be hard on the psyche

“Many people find [these photos] offensive,” he said. “For many women, it is a form of…” he paused. “Well, not quite an assault, but more of a…”

"An affront?" I offered.

“Yes, an affront. I think that part of what happens on technology is that you lose a sense of impact. You don’t know the age, sex, temperament, sensitivity of someone.”

The artists have different levels of sensitivity when it comes to images of male genitals. Nasturtium, who credits herself with the formal idea for the exhibition, has an admitted fascination with dicks—she showed an interest in Craigslist’s missed connections at an early age, and told me she has a propensity for watching gay porn. Tansy, who wrote her thesis on pornography, referred to the show’s opening night as “her baby.”

Queen Anne, on the other hand, called her approach to sex and dating “subtle,” and said she was reluctant to participate at the beginning. She even felt vaguely guilty.

“I’m not usually sexually aggressive as far as saying stuff like, ‘Let me see your cock,'” Queen Anne told me. “I didn’t think that I would be able to do it, even though it’s online.”

A fifth artist who was initially involved with the exhibit dropped out for personal reasons: the project was making her uncomfortable with its nonchalant approach to sex, something she’d struggled with in the past and was working on setting right.

“Taking the time to encourage the ridiculous nature of sending any girl a picture of your fucking penis—what girl finds that to be anything but ridiculous—even if it becomes a public tribute to the silliness, has done nothing for me but focus my energy and interactions specifically in a direction that not too long ago I realized I need to break away from,” she told me in an email.

Dick pics in general represents yet another tired way women get the societal shaft, literally and figuratively, according to Garcia of the Kinsey Institute.  

“In a national context in which women are treated less favorably than men—in the workplace, in healthcare legislation, and when it comes to sex and dating, it’s troublesome to me that women are getting flashed in the digital era,”  he said. “With these pictures, you’re removing a certain agency from women. I think there’s a larger method of disrespecting women with these photos than we even recognize.”

The artists are pushing past that disrespect, in part by controlling how these penises are viewed and displayed. Each woman is mounting their work alongside a photo of her own genitals, and producing the dick pics in a style of their choosing. Tansy is going for a grainy, 1970s porn look, while Violet has decided on a classic, glossy, high-end art gallery style. Her boyfriend wishes she’d stick to graphic design.

“In my opinion, there's an element of ‘shock value’ to this exhibit that I don't really connect to,” he told me. “I wish the attention this exhibit is getting would translate into people actually becoming interested in who Violet is and her art outside of this, yet sadly I know all too well that most people have no attention span and have no interest in what I consider more traditional, beautiful, ‘real’ art.”

However, the guy Anne recently started dating—as well as a group of her male friends who she told me have been “struggling a bit” with her feminist leanings—have actually rallied behind the project.

“They think it’s so cool,” Anne said. “This person I’m seeing, he loves it. He thinks men are so disgusting with the way they treat women... It’s been really nice to get male support.”

Male support is one thing. Legal support is another. I’d contacted more than ten lawyers in search of some insight into the legality of all this, but attorneys seem particularly squeamish about sexy photos, and even more so about the words “dick” and “pic.” Even when I softened my language, many outright refused to talk to me. 

Luckily, Aaron Messing, a privacy attorney at OlenderFeldman in New Jersey, was happy to shed some light on the matter. New York, where the photos will be exhibited, has very limited invasion of privacy statutes, and Messing said the laws wouldn’t do much to protect a guy whose dick pic was used in a way he didn’t intend.

“In order to be able to sue, you will need to be able to prove that the defendant used your image without consent for commercial and business purposes where there is no legitimate public interest,” Messing told me.  

Most of the women have gone the straightforward route in collecting dick pics, using versions of their real OKCupid profiles and brief conversations—sometimes just going right for the jugular and straight-up asking for a dick pic, avoiding flirtation and conversation at all costs. One of the artists, however, went a step further by posing as a gay man on Grindr and wound up with 150  photos, which didn’t surprise any of the sex scientists or researchers I spoke to.

Grindr’s director of PR, Jeffrey Davidson, told me that users "send pictures of their best features, and sometimes that’s what goes through.” When I gave him a bit of background on Future Femme’s project, however, his voice hardened. “Any use of the site should be on the up and up,” he said. “These people, whoever they are, could get into legal trouble—not with us, but with our users.”

It’s true that if your dick appears in the show and you were misled about the solicitor’s true identity you have a chance at legal retribution. Because one of the artists posed as someone else, she’s liable to be sued for internet impersonation, a class A demeanor in New York that caries a $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison.  

But unless any of these users walk into the Bushwick exhibit and recognize themselves, they’ll never know more than one stranger saw their dicks. But if a dick pic gets shown in a public space and the dick’s owner doesn’t know, is it moral? Is it right?

Peter Gloor, a researcher at MIT who has spent the last 22 years studying internet communities and has devoted significant time to looking at OKCupid called the deceitful nature of the project “problematic.”

“I could never do such an experiment,” he said. “It’s against professional ethics.”

I thought I could detect a hint of envy in his voice; though maybe I was wrong.

“I’m not showing any faces, I’ve made a point in my head not to,” said Tansy when I asked her if she had grappled with the ethics of the project. “No one is going to know anything about any of these people. I would imagine if anyone who has sent me a dick shows up… that would be interesting.”

Show Me More: A Collection of DickPix will open on August 23, 2013 at 8 p.m. as part of the event Explicit at Morgan Avenue Underground Studios, 55 Morgan Ave, Brooklyn, NY, There will also be gallery hours on Saturday, August 24, from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. 

@taliabethralph

For more naughty sex talk:

Recognizing Your Ex-Girlfriend in Porn

Tips for Celebrating International Masturbation Month

Why Don't Dudes Like My Crotchless Panties?

Image courtesy of Christianity Youth Channel

Yesterday, while the world was focused on the grisly and violent dispersal of the pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo, which have so far resulted in at least 638 deaths, Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority, which makes up less than 10 percent of the population, faced their own crisis as Islamists burned Coptic churches, businesses, and schools in predominately Christian towns across the country.

The Coptic rights group Maspero Youth Union estimates that as many as 36 churches were set on fire across the nine counties home to the largest Coptic communities. Ishak Ibrahim, a researcher at the Egyptian NGO Initiative for Personal Rights, added that one monastery, two social-services offices, and three schools were attacked, and seven churches were burglarized. (The violence continues—Nile Revolt activists are keeping a tally on violence against Christians.) Ishak fears things will only get worse. "Most churches burned were in the main towns of each county," he said. "More [fires] are expected in distant villages in coming days amid the absence of police and army."

It’s not clear whether the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters deliberately chose to target Christians (some government buildings were also attacked) or if the attacks were premediated, but in any case the the Coptic community has been devastated. I talked to three eyewitnesses to the assaults from three different counties. All have different perspectives, but none of them expect the government to intervene. They said the police and military only arrived long after the attacks, or never came at all.

VICE: Can you tell us what you saw?
Marco Rasmy, an activist from Sohag, a city on the west bank of the Nile: At 8:30 AM, [members of the Muslim Brotherhood] were gathered at Al Thaqafa Square, which is the main square in Sohag, where they always gather for their protests and marches—this is also where Mar Guirguis church is located. By nine, I saw a church bus being attacked by the protesters and burned while they yelled, “Islameya! Islameya!” [Islamic state] and cursed about Copts. When they couldn’t break into the church because of the steel doors, they broke the advertising boards in front, and then they broke into the [church's annex]. Then they started attacking all the shops around the church including the pharmacy of Dr. Mounir, which was right beside the church. They set fires to cars, then stormed buildings, including an apartment right in front of the church—people were running and trying to escape. This lasted until 11:30, when Ministry of Interior armored cars stormed in and fired tear gas. They fought until 1 PM.

Later in the evening, I went back to see how things were. The three chapels were burned and looted, the administrative buildings were completely burned down. When the curfew started [at 7 PM], I went to the hospital to check on victims. I was told that people had gunshot and pellet wounds. Around the same time the Church of the Virgin was also attacked [on the other side of town]. I was told that it endured similar damages.

How are you sure the Muslim Brotherhood are the ones responsible?
I am certain because I’ve been going to protests since [November 2011], and I know very well how [the Muslim Brotherhood] are and how they act. A lot of them wore the green headbands and carried the green flags [of the Muslim Brotherhood]. Also the gathering point by the church is where the Muslim Brotherhood protesters usually meet.

What do you think is the reason for these attacks? 
They’ve always hated the Copts. There were chanting on loudspeakers in Al Theqafa Square against us, inciting violence since June 30 [when protesters rose up against president Mohamed Morsi]. That’s more than a month of riling people up—and besides, they know it’s a lost battle if they attack the army. It’s easier to attack us. They believe that Christians are the ones responsible for what happened on June 30, even though there are others who took part in that protest—even Sheikh el Azhar [a prominent Muslim leader]. But there’s no way they will attack people like that.

How does the Christian community in your area feel about what happened?
I walked around the area after the attack­—a lot of people are scared and want to leave and others are being more stoic. There’s a sense of repressed sadness. It’s the first time Sohag has ever looked like this. However, a lot of people are thanking God that no one died. At the end of the day buildings can be rebuilt, however you can’t bring back the dead.

What do you think of the army and government response to the attacks? Do you feel they are doing their best to protect churches and Christian homes?
I think the army took few precautions. They didn’t calculate the outcome of Rabaa, even their response was incredibly slow. From 9 to 11:30, the attacks were happening and there wasn’t a single policeman or army officer there. What are their reasons for not intervening sooner?

Are you afraid of this continuing? 
Honestly, the Christian community can’t do anything. Attacks are happening today, and nothing is being done about it. Besides, what are we going to do? People are struggling just to eat so they aren’t going to take the money they use to buy food and to live, and use it to buy weapons. That just doesn’t make sense.

                                                                                   ***

Why do you think Christians were targeted? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the Muslim Brotherhood to attack army and government buildings?
Bishop Kirollos Gendi of Faiyum, a city south of Cairo: I don’t know. We’ve always been neighbors and friends. There’s never been any indicator that something like this would ever happen. I’m truly in shock; I don’t know what to say or even why they would target us in particular. It just doesn’t make sense.

How does the Christian community in the area feel about what happened?
Everyone is unhappy and terrified, especially moderate Muslims who feel that these incidents have defamed their religion.

If this continues, how will the Christian community react?
Right now we are just going to secure the church and people will try to salvage what they can. Other than that, I can’t tell you.

                                                                                     ***

How does the Christian community in your area feel about what happened?
Bishop Weissa Sobhi, from the city of Deir Mawas: Everyone is terrified. The Muslim Brotherhood were walking around with machine guns in the street. No one is coming out of their houses now.

I know the Coptic Church has urged its followers not to retaliate but do you think there is any chance that some might take matters into their own hands?
It’s not in our religion to retaliate or to seek vengeance, and besides, that would only increase the violence so what would be the point?

How do you feel about the army response to what happened? Were they at all prepared for this?
They are concentrating on the major cities, and aren’t focused at all on the outer counties and villages.

How do you plan to rebuild your place of worship? Will the Church do it or will you depend on the state?
I’m waiting to meet with the heads of the Church to decide that matter.

If this continues how will the Christian community react?
We will endure it the best we can, but I’m very worried that many people will begin to leave Egypt because they fear for their lives.

@lasoubrette

More on Egypt's ongoing crisis:

The Muslim Brotherhood Got Massacred in Egypt

Egypt after Morsi

The Place Women Go to Get Raped

All images via

The Golden Dawn is a steel truncheon crunching the bones of the European Project. In the lifetimes of the generation who fought in the Second World War, mainstream Nazis have returned to the continent. To openly read the anti-Semite blood libels The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Greek Parliament. To suppress entire towns beneath their thumb as vigilante social "cleansers." To increasingly hold the balance of power in an increasingly unbalanced state. And, to party.

That’s right, just because you spend your spare time whipping Egyptian taxi drivers with a bike chain doesn’t mean you don’t need to blow off a little steam every now and then. Which is how, every year, the Golden Dawn hardcore end up in Crete, having a racially-pure away-day, where they pretend to be Spartans. Spartans in Crete. A bit weird, but historical anachronism is not something they can spell, much less avoid. The basic idea is simply to have a bonding sesh, get all Judd Apatow and express their man-feelings with one another.

Ah, the eternal school sports day of fascism. Not pictured: Jesse Owens in lane 5. Running with a shield and a spear is all very well, but you can’t help feel like these guys wish ancient Greece had invented the egg-and-spoon race.

As ever when you’re dealing with this much kitsch re-interpretation of national culture, the line between fascist mob and historical re-enactment society is fine, having as much to do with early exposure to War Hammer as it does Mein Kampf. If your re-appropriating the ancient Greeks with such glad-handedness, it seems like whether an assembly is a toga frat party or a rally for racial purity can often depend on little more than the number of beer kegs present.  

This is what everything in a fascist future-Greece will look like if we don’t stand up to the nightmare.

Whatever racial chauvinism the Golden Dawn employ, whatever cod-science they use to justify it, at least certain generalizations will always be as incontrovertibly true for them as for us: chicks can’t throw for shit. Get your shoulder up, honey!

This looks pretty innocuous because you can’t see the Muslim man tied 6 feet up a pole just to the right.

Surf’s up, dudes.

Even their most ardent adherents admit that maths has never been a Golden Dawn strong-suit.

Ah, the Med in summer: font of everyone’s escapist fantasies, no matter what their views on the sterilization of the mentally ill might be. You can’t help but feel these happy times on golden shores should be automatically soundtracked by the "song of the summer."

Click here. Listen to "Get Lucky" while staring at this picture and tell me that two fat fascists sweating into each others’ love handles isn’t the true epitome of the disco spirit. It's just like Studio 54, but without all the black, gay, Arab, Jewish, and transgender people.

Again, this only looks fun because you can’t see the Turk in the gibbet they’re hoisting.

Then, once the day is done, all the Dawn-ers are huddled together and given an antihomosexuality lecture by this well-known icon of straightness.

This bro is just reading out the names of chicks he would like to bang. To polite applause.

If you thought Beach Break Live was bad, just remember that instead of Feeder you could always be listening to fifth tier neo-Nazi losers babble on about their innate racial superiority in the rain.

And then they leave. Pumped. Renewed. Spartanized. Sadly, despite their striving for accuracy in historical re-enactment, no one has yet told them that the Spartans—who regularly threw disabled babies off of cliffs to protect the gene pool—probably would’ve chucked a good percentage of this human slurry off of the nearest raised surface.

Follow Gavin on Twitter: @hurtgavinhaynes

More on Greece's modern crop of idiots:

Greece's Fascist Homophobes Have God and Police on Their Side

Are Golden Dawn Turning to Terrorism to Get Their Message Across?

Immigrants Are Getting Stabbed on the Streets of Athens

Wednesday’s brutal clearing of two pro-Morsi sit-ins has shaken Cairo. It was the largest massacre of civilians in Egypt since Hosni Mubarak was toppled in 2011. Over 600 people were killed and more than a thousand injured. The violence has inspired supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood to call for a March of Rage on Friday.

VICE correspondent Wail Gzoly was at the al Iman mosque in Nasr City on Thursday where many of the injured and the dead from the Raba’a mosque encampment were taken. He sent us this footage. We should warn you that some of the images are graphic. 

More from Egypt:

Muslim Brotherhood Supporters Are Burning Egypt's Churches

The Muslim Brotherhood Got Massacred in Cairo

WATCH: Egypt After Morsi

Babysit My Ass
Dir: Joey Silvera
Rating: 10
JoeySilvera.com/
Evilangel.com

In April, after a battery of tests, at age three and a half, my firstborn son was diagnosed on the autism spectrum. Perhaps I should have realized something was up sooner—like at ten months when he lined 34 pancake bites across his highchair tray equidistant apart from each other in a straight line. Or at age two when he became very particular about how his toys and books were put away and any deviation would result in a meltdown. But I had no idea what signs to look for. I was a first-time parent with no father to ask for guidance. It took my son’s preschool teacher to tell me his humming and outbursts warranted professional examination. 

It seemed just as the diagnosis came back that things were at their worst; meltdowns and outbursts were becoming violent, and he nearly broke my wife’s nose with a kick to the face in one particular instance. I wrapped him up in my love and rocked him back and forth to calm him down. I whispered in his ear how bad it is to hit people.

July 1 marked my seventh wedding anniversary and I found myself in a car headed for Maine on a camping trip with my family. The campsite, as you would hope, smelled of inbreeding and white trash from various parts of America. The people at the cabin next door to ours were from Ohio. The wife and husband both wore glasses, giving them the appearance of being learned; I realized this to be false advertisement when their five-year-old daughter rode up on her bicycle and said, “Mommy! Drinky!” and proceeded to hop off her bike and run over to her mother who was simultaneously whipping out her deflated tit to put in the child’s mouth. 

The swimming pool was ice-cold but had four hot tubs in a row beside it. My son liked to jump in the freezing cold water, letting his temperature drop, then hop in each of the hot tubs for exactly 34 seconds before moving on to the next. Two hot tubs were marked under 18 and two were marked over 18. He can already read but he chose not to heed the signs and I didn’t stop him; he was enjoying himself.

A 40-year-old redneck guido (picture a mullet and gold chain, Oakley Blades, and a Pam Anderson barbwire arm tattoo) tried to regulate a hot tub for him and his bro. My son paid him no mind and slid into their tub. The guy told my son, “No kids allowed.” My son ignored him and continued to count to 34. I told the fucker, “It’s fine, I’m his dad.” He kept on and pointed to the sign and said it was 18 and over. I looked at him and laughed. He had no idea how important counting to 34 was to my boy, and I wasn’t going to tell him. It was none of his goddamn business, and I wasn’t going to give my son a “He’s special” crutch to walk around with his whole life. If his wild eccentricities make him happy, there’s no reason for him or anyone else to apologize for them. I told the Kenny Powers stunt double, “It’s a campground. We’re all on vacation. Chill out.” 

With that he leapt out of the water and puffed up in my face. He was begging me to pummel him senseless and fill that tub full of blood, and it took everything I had to restrain myself. 

“You are fighting in defense of a hot tub, you cocksucker. I am fighting for my son. Who do you think is going to win that fight?” I asked him. Maybe his Oakley Blades made him a learned man for that instant because he let it go.

It was the closest I’ve come to beating a man in front of my son. I feel awful he saw me that way, and I could tell in his fearful eyes that it resonated in him.

“Thirty-four?” I asked him.

“Thirty-four.”

“Do you want ice cream?”

As we walked for a chocolate cone with rainbow sprinkles he asked, “Were you going to hit that man, Daddy?”

“No, boy. We don’t hit.”

More stupid can be found at Chrisnieratko.com and @Nieratko on Twitter.

Read more Skinema from our past issues here.

Drug addicts seem to be the go-to subjects for raw-emotion-seeking photographers looking to try their hand at documentary photography. The problem is that, though gruesome and controversial, photo series of drug addicts shooting heroin into their eyeballs usually offer next to no insight into the psyches of the individuals being portrayed. Tony Fouhse is a Canadian photographer who spent four years photographing addicts in downtown Ottawa. His latest book, Live Through This challenges the conventions and ethics of photojournalism, while offering up a powerful portrayal of addiction. The book is a collection of intimate portraits depicting Stephanie Macdonald’s struggle to get clean.

Tony met Stephanie while working on another photo series about drug addicts. He took pictures of her on various occasions, and eventually asked her if she needed help with anything. They worked out a deal, Stephanie wanted help getting into rehab and Tony wanted to take pictures of her. Tony’s intentions were never to act as a savior to the addicts he was photographing, but in Stephanie’s case he felt compelled to do something.

Over the course of six months, the two became extremely close and due to a series of events, Stephanie eventually moved in with Tony and his wife. As you would expect, a lot of chaos and struggle came out of their relationship.

Live Through This is a collaboration and conversation between Stephanie and Tony. His presence and their relationship is understood in the photographs, without being blatantly spelled out.

I called Tony at his home in Ottawa to discuss the nature of his work, his relationship with Stephanie and the ethical dilemmas that surfaces when your relationship with your subject gets out of hand.
 

VICE: Hi Tony! You had been taking pictures of addicts in Ottawa for a few years before meeting Stephanie. What was special about her that made you want to get involved?
Tony: The thing about Stephanie that I thought was exceptional was her ability to get in touch with her emotions and show them to me. She kinda sparkles. It could also be that, I knew this was gonna be the last year I was going to be photographing down there and I wanted to actually make a mark on someone.

So, can you tell me about how Stephanie ended up moving in with you and your wife?
About five days before she was about to start rehab, she phoned me up and she felt like her brain was exploding. It was an emergency. They found an abscess in her brain and transferred her into the neurology ward. She was supposed to stay in the hospital for six weeks, but three days after her surgery she phoned me up and she said ‘Come and get me. I wanna go home.’ I said ‘Where is home?’ and she said ‘your house’.

That’s intense! What was it like to have a heroin addict living under your roof?
It was very difficult. Back in June, when I asked her if i could help her, I didn’t know that she was going to have brain surgery. Everything was kind of spinning out of control. After she got out of the hospital, she was like a child who was raised by wolves. She was really frenetic, happy to be out and happy to be alive. She was wondering what the future was gonna hold for her, but still falling back on her old habits. She was upstairs and trying to last as long as she could without waking me up and asking me to give her some money for dope. That lasted for about seven days. On the 8th day, she got up and she was a different person. It was like she had come through it all. She was way more aware. She had recovered from her brain surgery and she had mostly withdrawn from being a heroin fiend. That’s what she was. She was a hardcore addict.

Did you ever think you’d get so close to her?
No, that was very surprising. I’m kind of a naive guy. I’m street smart; I can go to Los Angeles and photograph gangbangers and survive. But when it comes to certain things I’m a very slow learner. Part of the way I like to work is that I don’t like to think about things too much. I just like to do stuff and let the chips fall. What certainly surprised me is the intensity of our relationship. There are so many things that happened that I didn’t photograph. A lot of the times when all this crazy shit was happening, I would just put my camera in my pocket and just deal with the drama. I had to decide whether I wanted to be her friend or a photographer.

Would you say you were more of a photographer or a friend to her?
At this point in time I’m more of a friend to her. When the project was happening, I had to make those decisions all the time. I had to question my morals and my ethics. She’s a smart girl and we had tons of conversations about that. I would say to her ‘I don’t know what I’m doing I don’t know if I’m helping you or hurting you.’ Part of what a lot of my work is to go up to moral and ethical boundaries and exploring how a person might react. In this case, I guess the person is me.

What was the hardest thing for you as a photographer, when that relationship started to evolve and you guys became closer as friends?
I think the hardest thing was being put into situations where I was given a tough choice. Here’s an example. Occasionally, I would go and pick up Stephanie in the morning and she’d be dope sick. She didn’t have any dope or any money and she’d say ‘lend me 30$’. I had a choice, I could give her 30$ and then we could get in the car and get some heroin or I could say no. If I said “no”, she wouldn’t not become a heroin addict. What she would do is she would go outside, stand on the corner until someone needed their dick sucked. She’d suck their dick, get the money and then she’d go buy heroin. Those are the kind of morally fucked up situation that I would find myself in over and over again. I had never done a project where the morals and the ethics were painting me into a corner in such an extreme way.

Aside from including Stephanie’s letters in the book, how did you involve her in the creative process?
What I decided to do what to choose the pictures that showed her mostly isolated from her surroundings. Most of the context of her life was sort of gone. There are picture of her taking dope and stuff like that, but mostly in the book, it’s what I would call portrait photography. Most of that, except when she was in the hospital, was shot in collaboration with Stephanie. We would be in a situation and I’d say ‘stand here, look this way, don’t look at me, don’t smile.’ There was an artificiality to it. There’s an artificiality in all of my work because I don’t believe in objectivity. I think that if the photographer shows some of the means of creation, it is more honest.

Even though the pictures from the book are staged, you still get a true sense of loneliness.
I wanted the loneliness to come out, the isolation. Part of the reason why they’re staged but still look real is because the situations we were in were real. I was staging photographs in a very real, very charged and very dramatic situation. The curator of the show that we put together said that the photographs are extraordinary and banal just like the life of a drug addict. I wanted to encompass that also by eliminating all the context. I wanted to point to the fact that it was Stephanie and me in this together. My visibility in the photographs was meant to be understood rather than pointed out.

At the beginning of the book, you tell this story where you said to Stephanie that she should’ve died, because it would have been a better ending. What did you mean by that?
It’s like Stephanie and I had been to war together and at that point, we were both stripped emotionally bare and had nothing to hide. Plus, there’s a kind of black humor you need to apply when you’re in that kind of situation. It was all life and death. But when you’re in the life and death situation, one of the ways you survive is by making fun of it. Again, there are a lot of reasons why that’s in the book. It also points to my philosophy. I don’t believe in happy endings. In the end, I’m still not sure if this is a happy ending or not because Stephanie is still struggling. She’s alive and 100 times better than when I first met her, but every day for her is still a struggle. Yes it was a happy ending, but it was only as happy and ending as any of us can expect, and that is that we survive to fight another day. What could be happier than that?

Follow Stephanie on Twitter: @smvoyer

More Photo Essays from VICE Canada:

Tree Planting Is Really Awful

Guillaume Simoneau Photographed the End of His War-Torn Relationship