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Hunt for Escaped Killers Focuses on Tiny New York Town After Possible Sighting

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Hunt for Escaped Killers Focuses on Tiny New York Town After Possible Sighting

Call Me Daddy: Playing Son to My Fatherless Boyfriend

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I meet Tim* on Grindr when I'm 21 and he's 47. It's May of 2013. He lives in the Haight, in San Francisco. I'm at Stanford, an hour away by train. He looks like the man on Brawny paper towel rolls; he also looks like Santa Claus. He's bald and bearded. His nose is big and distinct, his eyes always searching for something I'm too young to understand. I think he's handsome.

We're on day two of date number one when he tells me he wants to be my daddy.

It's the middle of the day. I'm doing homework on his couch while he's playing around on his phone, and I ask him if I'm the youngest guy he's ever hooked up with.

"Well, yeah," he says. "In terms of age difference, this is probably the most significant. But I've gotten used to being a daddy these days."

Daddy. A guy who, at 47, has never settled down with anyone, has never had any kids. He fancies himself a "father."

"Honestly," he continues, "I like it when guys call me daddy."

"Why?"

"I never really had a father. He left our family when I was still very young." He speaks softly.

"It's nice to be that. To act like the daddy I never had. That's why I look like this."

He gestures at his muscles and large chest. I get it now. While his dad was away, Tim sculpted himself into a vision of fatherhood he never saw firsthand: a sturdy Schwarzenegger frame with the heart of Dustin Hoffman.

"I'd like it if you called me daddy," he says. He is ravenous. I am anxious. He starts massaging my ears.

"Call me daddy. I'd like to take care of you."

My emotional constitution is made of straw; I can't say no. Besides, it sounds sort of fun. I nod and, silently, agree. I will be his son.

Tim is unlike other "daddies" I've met in the ecosystem of gay dating apps. He doesn't belong to a subculture of men who think they're silver foxes. Those men are different. For them, being a "daddy" isn't rooted in a pain as obvious as never having a father. I find that they often want, desperately, to feel sexy even when their bodies—graying, sagging, failing—tell them not to. They may have daddy issues; I usually have no idea.

For Tim, it's more clear-cut: He never really had a dad. Now, he wanted to play one.

Tim was three years old when his dad left the family. He grew up on a farm near Bakersfield, a city in Southern California. I don't know the exact details of why his dad left, because Tim never told me. I can only imagine the reasons why: another woman. Pathological wanderlust. An irresponsibly-timed crisis of manhood. A revelation that being a dad just wasn't for him.

Tim's mother, a housewife, forced herself to get a secretary job to support Tim and his siblings. She is now decaying in a nursing home, steps away from where she raised two children on her own.

Tim went on to study music at UCLA in the mid-1980s, back when Shelley Long was still on Cheers. He designs theater sets now. His hair is red, but it was blonde when he was young. I know this because, shortly after we start dating, he shows me a picture of himself aged 11 or 12. He's beaming, surrounded by balloons that look like penises.

"I knew right then and there that I was gay," he smirks. "My dad would've freaked the fuck out."

Every year, Tim splits his time between San Francisco and Prague. He may work in theater, but he doesn't dress like a theater guy, thank God. He has dinosaur-sized gauges—one black, the other green—that fall off when he's asleep. Most often, he wears a dull orange flannel. He's barely 5'9".

Tim drives stick and makes it look like a fucking dance. On our first date, he drives us to a Thai restaurant a few blocks from his apartment. We have a lot to talk about. I am drawn to his storied gay life; he is amused by the charmed pleasantries of my famous school. Tim grew up in the era when all my favorite movies were made, so we have conversations that I've never had with guys my age. About how Liza Minnelli really was a gifted actress before she mutated into a gay icon. How Mickey Rourke had real talent before his face started falling off. Afterward, we go to his apartment. We share a bottle of wine, and he asks if he can kiss me. I say yes.

It's a tempting skin to slip into—to pretend I'm just some uncultured gay kid. He assumes I am basically devoid of taste.

I wake up with him the next morning and we spend the day together. We grab coffee nearby. He drives to Rainbow and we get groceries. He buys me some new earrings; I just pierced my ears a few months ago and now they're infected. He makes some home remedy for me to medicate my lobes with. He's taking care of me.

We see each other most weekends, and our dates proceed like clockwork. He treats me to dinner. When we get back to his apartment, he makes me listen to his favorite operas or audiobooks of Renata Adler essays. I play dumb. I pretend that I haven't heard of them before.

"I mean, the name is obviously familiar," I tell him whenever he name drops like this. "But I've never actually read anything by her. I just know she's smart."

"Renata is essential!" he boasts. "I listen to this in the car whenever I drive to Half Moon Bay. I bet you'll really love this."

It's a tempting skin to slip into—to pretend I'm just some uncultured gay kid. On campus, I'm constantly trying to prove my intellect to the people around me. I fear that everyone's smarter than me, that I'm just fronting. But I have nothing to prove to Tim. He assumes I am basically devoid of taste. To him, I'm just another kid of immigrant parents who did well on his SATs. Perhaps, he thinks, I'll morph into someone with a refined palate one day. He likes to think he's found this potential in me, and he's the one who will bring it out. I play along. It's a well-earned vacation from the electric stress of school.

To him, I'm the prettiest twink in the world. When he calls me beautiful, it's impossible not to believe. His feelings seem unconditional, just as any father's love should be.

We fall asleep together. We wake up. He cooks something for me as I do my homework. He takes me on errands: more groceries from Rainbow, some produce from the farmer's market. He orders me around. He gets fake-mad when I can't do simple things like find the aisle where the soap is. When I do something right, like help him bag the groceries or tell him I'm game to let his gay neighbor be "our third" tonight, he tells me I'm a good boy.

For a few weeks, it's cozy and surreal to play the son of a man who's not my real father, especially when my real one lives across the country. It's actually a lot of fun to play pretend when you're 21. I throw myself into a distraction from the stressful rhythms of life in college. This whole thing is a ruse. He can't really be my dad. My skin is brown; his isn't. It's like Halloween. He's the daddy, I'm the son. It's our private game.

But when I'm back on campus with my friends, I speak about Tim with stupid glee. I tell them how special he makes me feel. He's the first man to shower me with full, unadulterated attention since my balls dropped. Other guys make me feel like shit, telling me I'm cute enough but nothing like the gorgeous white gay Adonises on campus.

Not Tim. To him, I'm the prettiest twink in the world. When he calls me beautiful, he infuses it with a sincerity that's impossible not to believe. His feelings seem unconditional, just as any father's love should be.

We spend that summer apart. I'm doing an internship in DC; he's in San Francisco working his big boy job. With time and distance, I let Tim become something like a boyfriend in my mind. He entertains it. He treats me like a pet.

We see other guys, too. Tim calls me a bad boy for seeing other men, but I know he's joking. We tell each other about the dates we go on. Some are OK; most are awful. None of the guys I'm seeing are as old as he is. None of the guys he's seeing look like me. They're all white and at least 30 years old. We'll have each other when I get back West.

Over that summer, we ripen into concepts, not people. I'm the son, he's the daddy; our correspondences are limited to half-sentences where that tumor of fantasy metastasizes. Our dynamic is convenient and logical in ways romantic relationships rarely are.

Photo via Flickr user Bruce Frick

"I went on a terrible date last night," I tell him one night on the phone. I'm talking about some Zionist, a senior at Berkeley. He's my age, and I find his personality repulsive: nervous and fluttering, like Diane Keaton minus the charm.

"You'll go on many bad dates in your life," Tim reassures me. "You'll also have a lot of bad sex. It's OK. You'll learn soon enough."

It's always like this. Tim is waiting for me to emerge from the tunnel of emotional puberty, assuming that I haven't lived through it yet. I let him do that. Our power play is fucked-up only in principle. When we're talking to each other, we morph into tidy parodies of ourselves, divorced from our experiences. We never dig into our true messes, the dangerous parts of ourselves that we only expose to the people we love.

But when I get back to the Bay Area that September, he's my first priority after I get off my flight.

He picks me up from the train station and we go to an Indian restaurant near his apartment. We sit next to a large Indian family. I imagine that they're all judging me, and it stings. They probably came here from India to make better lives for their children. And look what they ended up sitting next to: some nightmare vision of what America can do to your kids, no matter how hard they study. When your boys come to America, they'll turn into dimpled twinks who will escape their ivory towers to go on dates with sugar daddies twice their age.

Tim is waiting for me to emerge from the tunnel of emotional puberty, assuming that I haven't lived through it yet.

That night is the first time I see his faculties start to fail him. After dinner, Tim wants to watch Punch-Drunk Love. I tell him I'm too jet-lagged to stay awake, but he insists and I concede. He shuffles around his living room looking for the DVD, slamming discs on his glass table, his hands trembling so violently that the table breaks into shards. I hear it from the bedroom, and he yells at me, blaming me for the table slicing his hand open. I bandage him up until he stops bleeding.

My make-believe daddy is irritable and humiliated the whole next day. For the first time, this whole jig starts to feel like a real father-son relationship. I'm taking care of him now, asking if he's OK, periodically unwrapping his palm to see if the wound has healed. He drops me off at the Caltrain station and I wonder if we'll see each other again.

A few weeks later, he breaks things off via email.

"I don't really see myself as a sexual being anymore," he writes. "I felt like you were fetishizing me. I'm just the daddy with the nice chest. It doesn't feel nice."

I expect my initial reaction to be one of righteous, youthful indignation—I've been orphaned, damn it!—but I feel fine. He doesn't know me well enough to strike me where it hurts, which is the kind of wound a real breakup hinges on. It was sure to fail, anyway, this cozy ballet of two people who didn't understand one another's pain. After it's over, I swear to myself that I'll never do anything that weird ever again.

A few months later, I migrate to a boyfriend who's older than me by a few days, not a few decades. He's as immature as I am. In hindsight, I like that about him. It makes our fights more charged, more bitter, more meaningful. His insults are exacting; he knows precisely what to say to make me feel like I shouldn't be alive. I don't want it any other way.

Tim and I, meanwhile, start out by staying in sporadic touch. Every few months, I email him asking how he's doing. I get curt responses. "Fine. Life is good. Hope you're well." The intervals between our emails stretch to become longer, and longer, until we fall out of touch completely.

I meet so many guys who look like Tim where I live now. They have his "look": a crisp, bald head that bluntly gives way to a full beard. Ears decorated with gauges. A laboriously sculpted face. These guys drive me nuts. They're never younger than 37. They've got everything I hate about Tim. Those cloying eyes that search for meaning when it isn't there, trying to perform Chekhov on a Grindr date. These are the eyes of man-children: desperate to take care of someone else as a distraction from taking care of themselves.

Tim rarely updates his Facebook these days. I think he's in Prague now. He may be due back to come to San Francisco soon. Who knows if he's seeing anyone, or if he's graduated to the life of abstinence he swore by? Maybe he's still searching for a son to love, with a kind of affection he never received firsthand. He's probably just given up.

But I wonder about Tim's father more often than I wonder about Tim. My many guesses at the image of Tim's father have started to crystallize into a monolithic daddy.

In my mind, he is muscular. He acts "macho," like Tim, not effete. His voice is more full-throated than Tim's, which is gentle and concerned. Maybe he has red hair like Tim. Maybe it's blonde. I don't know how the genetics of red hair work. He doesn't have piercings like Tim. Maybe he's still alive, dating much younger women like his son once dated much younger men. Maybe someone's taking care of him, or maybe he's learned how to take care of himself. Maybe he's died. Maybe he died alone.

Over time, Tim realized he wasn't cut out for fatherhood. His visions of being a dad were naïve: small gifts of unconditional love without the hard, exhausting work. At some point, we all become like our fathers.

*Names have been changed.

Follow Mayukh on Twitter.


My Dad Was Murdered in Cold Blood

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The author with her dad

I knew something was wrong when I saw I had ten missed calls around 10 PM on January 26, 2012: nine from my sister, and one from her boyfriend at the time. I had been in yoga class. After I finished stretching and rolling up my mat, I dialed my sister back to ask what the hell was going on. When she answered, she just started crying. "What's wrong?" I asked her. Then, as a joke, I added, "Did dad die or something?"

I was a freshmen in college at the School of Visual Arts in New York City at the time, halfway through my first year away from home, taking my first strides into adulthood. Earlier that day, I had gone to the doctor to get tested for an inhaler, and my health insurance had been rejected. I remember calling my dad impatiently, blowing up his phone with text messages about our insurance policy, asking him to get back to me ASAP. He never called.

My sister was so choked up on the phone that she couldn't even respond to me. I walked the ten blocks from my yoga class to my dorm room with my mind racing about what could possibly have happened. When I got home, I called my sister back. All she said was, "There's a homicide investigation going on in Arizona, and they think dad might be dead."

By the estimates of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children, approximately 15,000 people are victims of criminal homicide in the United States each year. For every victim of murder, there are dozens more who are affected in complicated ways: grief-stricken parents, siblings, and children, like me, who are permanently scarred by the loss of a family member in such an abrupt, gruesome way.

As the Violent Crime Victim Services explains it, "Nothing in life prepares survivors for the day when a loved one is murdered. Most people live with illusions of immortality both for themselves and the people they know, at least before they reach old age. Death of a younger person is always shocking."

My dad, who some knew as "The Cigar Guy," was happy-go-lucky, with a silly way of doing things. He always answered the phone by speaking in the third person, and I have many memories of dancing to the Beach Boys on his Endless Summer Sailboat. He was a cigar salesman, and everyone in town knew him. He raised a family of floaters, but we knew he had unconditional love for all of us.

I was the last person to talk to him on the phone. Our conversation had mostly been about my plans for the future, and his upcoming visit to see me in a few weeks. Later, after we'd both hung up the phone, a man named Michael Crane allegedly broke into the house through the back door. According to the police reports, it is believed that Crane tied up my father, shot him, and set the house ablaze. An accomplice, Marcelo Sanchez, stole my dad's car. To this day, we don't know why he did it or what really happened. In the 80-page police report about that day, there's a four-hour gap in the timeline without any information.

It's hard not to wonder, What could I have done to stop this?


At first, it hadn't even seemed real. I booked a flight from New York City to Las Vegas, where my extended family and I drove to the burned-down house in Phoenix. The home had two large windows at the front of the door, but no windows in the bedroom. By the time we got there, you could see through the entire building, because when it was set ablaze, the house had been gauged with gasoline. We picked up what we could find, and stayed until sunset. Seeing all my dad's things from his room tossed outside on a lawn melted together was heartbreaking. My dad's body, badly burned, had to be identified by his dental records.

The Violent Crime Victim Services explains that "children who lose a parent to murder face serious adjustment problems." It's common for children to internalize the incident as abandonment or desertion; some studies have suggested that "children who survive the murder of a parent have persistently low self-esteem." It's hard not to wonder, What could I have done to stop this?

My 19th birthday was two weeks later. My dad had always made a big deal out of my birthday—cakes, decorations, surprising us with little things—and this year, he had plans to fly out to New York City to celebrate with me. It took a while until it dawned on me that he wouldn't be there.

A few weeks later, the people we believe were responsible for the murder—Michael Crane and a slew of other accomplices—were outed by a silent witness. The police were told by the witness that not only did they kill my father, but they were involved in killing an older couple in Arizona, who were both shot in the head before Crane burglarized their house and set it on fire. Crane has a long history of theft. He's served time in jail for it. Two weeks before my dad was murdered, police found a stolen vehicle in his grandmother's house. He wasn't originally suppose to get released from of jail, but the officer who wrote the report didn't write it well enough, so he was let go.

In the media, my dad was referred to as "the businessman," as if selling cigars was his most distinguishing quality. To me, he was a million things besides that: a repair man and a gardener, a cheerleader, a soccer coach, a travel guide, a surf coach, a driving instructor, a golfer, a singer, a photographer, a sailor, a teacher, and most of all, my dad.

It's been four years since my dad was murdered, and he still hasn't had a trial. Murder trials take a long time to process all of the details, and since Michael Crane won't cooperate, it's drawing the case out. Revisiting the details of the murder over and over again is like being forced to relive the trauma everyday, especially when they ask questions about missing my dad. Most of the articles used a mugshot of Michael Crane wearing a coat my sister gave to my dad as a gift, which he stole from my dad's house before burning it down.

Every Father's Day since my dad's passing, I gather with family members and visit his grave at the cemetery. I often reflect on the last phone conversation I had with my dad on the day he died, and how blindsided I felt when I realized I would never talk to him again. If you're lucky enough to have a dad around, pick up the phone and call him. You never know when that conversation will be your last.

​The Stiff Competition to Work in German Prisons

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The final dispatch from our tour of German prisons with The Marshall Project.

Throughout the United States, prisons are competing with other industries for job applicants, and they're losing: understaffing is a chronic problem from Texas to New Hampshire.

In Germany, on the other hand, citizens actually compete with each other to work for prisons. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a state along the country's northern coast, roughly 300 men and women will apply to be correctional officers this year. Thirty will make it into the training program, which has a 10 percent acceptance rate—a figure more often associated in the US with elite universities. They will have to score over 100 on an IQ test to even qualify.

Once they're accepted, trainees will study for at least two years. Training for American correctional officers varies by state, but rarely lasts longer than three months.

In Germany, prison sentences are shorter—more than 15 years is rare unless someone presents a clear threat to public safety—and the crime rate is low, so there are simply fewer prisoners (about 76 per 100,000, compared with 700 per 100,000 in the US). Fewer prisoners means better staffing ratios and more time for training. For the corrections officials, district attorneys, and other criminal justice professionals I've joined in Germany for a week of prison tours, that kind of investment in staff is practically unimaginable.

"It's a constant challenge for us to find people to recruit," said Bernie Warner, the corrections secretary in Washington state.

Witnessing a culture in which corrections are a sought-after profession led to a few epiphanies among the Americans. "We haven't gone out into the community and explained the value of correctional staff for public safety," Gregg Marcantel, the corrections secretary of New Mexico, said after the presentation. "That's the failure of people like me."

In Waldeck prison—which houses 110 prisoners behind a 20-foot concrete wall and razor-wire fence, as well as another 80 in an "open prison" outside (not unlike a halfway house)—we gathered around a projector and watched a video of a correctional trainee's exam. His name was Philip, and he was not an actor.

Over his first year of training, Philip had studied not only self-defense and the basics of how to communicate effectively with prisoners—common facets of training in the US—but also criminal law and educational theory, according to Jörg Jesse, the head of the prison system in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Philip's leg shook as he pulled instructions from a small envelope: He would have to prepare a mock prisoner to be transported to court and greet him upon return. Philip passed the exam, but was far from acing it. He forgot to handcuff the mock prisoner, and during a physical search, he failed to find a letter in the man's pocket (he did, however, find a nail file in his shoe).


Check out our documentary on Giwar Hajabi, a.k.a. Xatar, a German rapper of Iranian descent who was released from prison in December 2014.


Philip did far better when conversing with the man after he returned from court threatening suicide after being sentenced to four years. "What happened? Are you okay?" Philip asked the pseudo-inmate.

"I got four years!" the man responded. "My wife will be gone, my company will go bust, my children won't know me anymore."

"But Mr. Miller, you must see it from a different perspective," Philip told him. "You'll only be here for a little while."

It was not a particularly rich conversation, and Philip had a tendency to build up the man's expectations by suggesting it would be easy for him to get out early with good behavior. "But helping the guy think through his life was his job," said Jesse, the German prison official. "Communicate, communicate, communicate. If you stop communicating, things get dangerous."

He also called the prisoner "Mr. Miller," not "Offender Miller," as he might in a US prison.

A correctional officer during a presentation at Neustrelitz Prison IN Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany

The last time the Vera Institute of Justice took a similar group of officials to Germany, in 2013, this approach to correctional officer training was one of the most powerful lessons. "I came back and said, 'I want everyone to have an IQ of 100,'" John Wetzel, the corrections secretary of Pennsylvania, said of the trip. "When we took a step back and thought what can we replicate from [Germany] was the focus on communication skills. So we're developing a more intensive communication curriculum."

"Culture change in a huge system is a slow process," Wetzel added, "but it's about getting to line staff and getting them to understand the value of what we're trying to do."

All of the prison officials here this week would probably agree that improved staff training—like many other attractive features of the German system—is something they might have already achieved if they had the money. They know it may take years for incarceration rates to dip low enough—and public awareness of what correctional officers do to grow—for lawmakers to listen and give them more money. They know it may take some time to raise salaries and turn correctional officers into competitively selected men and women who get the training necessary to approach prisoners with empathy and psychological acuity.

As with so many of the efforts to reform the American justice system, the results will likely take years to see. But the horizon is peeking into view.

Check back this fall for a full report in VICE Magazine on our visit with The Marshall Project's to German prisons alongside American criminal justice leaders.

Follow Maurice Chammah on Twitter.

Inside the Massive Left-Wing Anti-Austerity Protest That Hit London on Saturday

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Arriving at the Bank of England for Saturday's big anti-austerity demo, there was a sea of Tory-haters of every conceivable type. You had your animal lovers dressed as badgers, your percussionists in samba bands, unreformed Stalinists, people wearing "vote Labour" rosettes like the election hasn't already happened, Green Party supporters, and those who don't fall into any of these categories and therefore are probably either hardworking families or skivers, a.k.a. the general public.

I'm not sure where this guy falls on the spectrum that starts at Mondeo Man and ends with Aldi Mum, and that's probably why he was there: He, like many others at the march, likely feels that he's been forgotten by the arbiters of power in Westminster, so has to take to the streets in a sleeveless Ed Hardy vest if he wants any chance of having his voice heard.

The organizers estimated that there were 250,000 of these people at the demo. That might be a bit optimistic—others put attendance at anywhere between 70,000 to 150,000—but whatever: A large number of people turned up to show that they're not up for George Osborne's big planto return to Victorian values.


More from the UK: Talking to drunk yuppies at the Oxford-Cambridge boat race


Impressive though the turnout was, it didn't mask the sense of a left still reeling from the Conservatives' shock election win. Jeremy Corbyn's leadership bid has given some a sense of direction, but is it a good direction? At one point, I came across a man shouting that if every person in attendance signed up as a supporter of the Labour Party and voted for Corbyn, he'd be a shoo-in. "Do it today!" he exhorted. The maths are pretty inarguable, but even if everyone did sign up you have to wonder if they'd just be more fodder for Labour's centralizing party mincing machine.

Less optimistic than this man was another Labour supporter who I overheard saying that he hopes his preferred candidate, Yvette Cooper, loses. The rationale was that Labour will lose in 2020, so this way—he reasoned—Cooper can swoop in, untainted by failure, and lead Labour to victory in 2025.

At one point, a black bloc of anarchists split from the march and headed to Elephant and Castle. When they got there, they sprayed "FUCK CAPITALISM" onto one of the gentrifying new apartment blocks that's being built there. They then threw a couple of paint-bombs and eggs at it. As a police line formed around the yuppie flats, the black bloc gave up and mooched off to rejoin the main march, which was arriving in Parliament Square to listen to speeches by trade unionists, left-wing academics, and Owen Jones.

At the back of the square, a bonfire was started, before the police quickly put it out. That was as close as things got to an incident that might get the march noticed by the Mail (one of the war memorials on Whitehall was boarded up to prevent anyone writing on it).

Perhaps the only other incident of note was that this guy accidentally fell into a Socialist Workers Party stall, completely taking it out. Although, again, I doubt Paul Dacre and his readers will care too much about some bent signs and a flattened trestle table.

With celebrities as diverse as Charlotte Church, Russell Brand and a print-out of the Wealdstone Raider in attendance—all of them telling the Tories, "If you want some, I'll give it ya"—the left can surely take heart.

Nevertheless, the question of what exactly should be done is still hanging about. According to John Rees, one of the People's Assembly organizers, the march was "only the beginning" of a much bigger campaign. "We need to hit the government again and again and again," he said.

But there's no point in swinging endless left hooks that don't land. The day after the demo, Chancellor George Osborne and Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith wrote an article for the Sunday Times.

"This government was elected with a mandate to implement further savings," they wrote, announcing a plan to further cut benefits spending by £12 billion ($19 billion) a year. It was a strong reaffirmation of their commitment to not giving a shit about the opinions of people who would never vote for them anyway.

And, of course, the march wasn't the "beginning"—that was the student movement in 2010, followed by the "March for the Alternative" in 2011. That day, twice as many people went to London as were there for Saturday's End Austerity Now demo. That also didn't stop the years of austerity that followed.

The danger is—as the saying goes—that like a cute dog wearing a snapback, a skull scarf, and a muzzle, the movement has lost its bite. Sometimes it looks like the left is stuck on an endless protest loop, gearing up for the next "big one" as soon as the last one finishes, none of them going anywhere except to build for the next, again and again and again, on repeat, ad nauseam.

If Tony Blair could ignore a million people saying he shouldn't murder hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, David Cameron can certainly ignore a quarter of that number telling him to please not pursue policies that mean terminally ill people are required to work until they die. The protesters need only to read their own banners about how heartless the Tories are to realize that.

After five years of austerity with no end in sight, maybe a huge demo is just what the doctor ordered for Britain's tortured left. But with the news that child poverty is on course for the biggest rise in a generation thanks to benefit cuts and the bedroom tax, they'll soon need something that does more than act as a political comfort blanket.

Scroll down for more photos.

Follow Simon, Oscar, and Chris on Twitter.

Toilet Tribes: Photos from Women's Bathrooms

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

For the past few months I've been spending my weekends hanging out in the ladies' toilets of London's nightclubs. This isn't because I'm a plumber, or a lazy pervert, or because I have a special interest in paying $3 for a Smint and a short blast of Sure Ultra Dry. It's because I've decided to document the fleeting friendships that form by the sinks and the cubicles of the ladies' toilets every Friday and Saturday night.

While the dance floor might be full of side eyes and aggy guys, the girls' bathrooms are a judgment-free haven of women swapping lipsticks, drinks, and words of wisdom. If you've smashed your phone, or if all that crying's made it look like you put your make-up on with a knife and fork, you know that an uplifting pep talk in the nearest cubicle probably isn't too far away.

The project is ongoing, but what you see below are some photos I've taken so far of the "five-minute communities" that spark between girls when they're united for no other reason than the fact they need to go to the restroom—an insight into the honesty and energy shared between women in their toilet tribes.

See more of Sarah's work at sarahmcclarence.com, and some more of her Toilet Tribe photos below.

Predator Politics

VICE Vs Video Games: Cold Beer, BBQ, and Indie Brilliance: How Devolver Digital Won E3, Again

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The Devolver E3 balloon, snuggled between a pair of trailers, albeit pictured here in 2014. Photo via Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

I'm sitting opposite a video games developer inside the VIP section of one of the big triple-A publishers' E3 2015 stand. Outside, some of the most beautiful people I have ever seen with my stupid human eyes are doing a dance routine to Johnny Derulo or That Ginger Hair One With The Guitar. I've heard the same song four times during my 90-minute appointment slot to see Blood Murder 9, Swords N Shiiit, and Look at Me Dancing Like a Cunt 2015. The walls are actually shaking from the bass, and it's worryingly like I'm trapped inside the disabled bogs of a Liquid. I've listened to roughly ten minutes of non-descript-video-games-male telling me how this year's iteration of his game is the best because they've "built it from the ground up" (I never asked him about how they built their game, or the ground). I ask him a question that's not related to his game for another feature I'm working on, and he looks at me like I've snuck into his house on his kid's birthday and shit on the cake.

"Ooh... I wasn't expecting that question. I... uh... can we come back to that?"

"That was my final question."

"Well, it was nice speaking to you."

That was my final formal appointment for the day, inside the LA Convention Center, so I leave and head for the Hooters opposite. Not because I like chicken wings or watching Americans looking at tits, although those things are just fine, but because next to Hooters, in the car park, is the E3 home of independent, Texas-based publishers Devolver Digital. (Which you know VICE Gaming is sort of in love with, if you've been paying attention.)

Devolver does E3 a little bit differently than other publishers. You won't find them on the actual show floor, because it costs a shitload of money to be there with just a single new title, and Devolver has such a roster of upcoming releases that they'd need to fork out a huge chunk of change to feature all their games. There's also something about the brash, noisy environment of E3 that doesn't really suit Devolver. A Hooters car park filled with airstream trailers, DJs playing to people eating free BBQ and drinking beer from kegs in red cups, though? That's more like it, and Devolver's pitch has proved the highlight of my E3 experiences of the last two years. E3's organizers don't share this opinion, though, and for 2015 they've hired several massive truck trailers to fill the lot in front of Devolver's setup, so you can't see how inviting the booze and meat is when you drift out of the Convention Center for some air. Best to follow your nose.

Instead of stands, each Devolver game on show has its own air-conditioned trailer, and press sorts are invited inside for their game demos. I don't have an appointment set in stone, but sneak in to play Mother Russia Bleeds, a bonkers side-scrolling beat 'em up full of sex and weird drug references.

A screen of 'Mother Russia Bleeds,' via the game's official website.

"Is that... a wanking devil in the background?" (I ask this as I'm smashing up a fat dude wearing a gimp suit.)

"Yes! You're the first journalist to notice that all E3!"

As the two Frenchmen making the game high-five me, it bugs out and my character starts sliding around the screen. If this was a demo for something one of the big publishers were putting out, I'd instantly be shot in the belly and left to slowly die—anything to stop me from making what I'd just seen into a .GIF. But the guys from Mother Russia Bleeds start pissing themselves and one playfully rips into the other because he doesn't know how to fix the problem straight away.

I leave and Mother Russia Bleeds becomes the best game I've played at E3. This happens all the time on the Devolver lot: You get into a trailer, play a tiny section of a game, and it's almost instantly your favorite game of the entire conference. Last year it was Titan Souls and Not a Hero, this year it's Mother Russia Bleeds, Crossing Souls, and Eitr.


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I play Eitr in the company of another journalist and a seven-year-old boy called Dougie, the son of Mike Wilson, one of Devolver's founders. As the title's two young devs from Kingston explain how their game is based on Norse mythology, Dougie interrupts:

"Is this like Star Wars?"

"Hmm, not really."

"It looks kinda like Star Wars."

For the record, Eitr looks nothing like Star Wars—but for a top-down RPG created by two twentysomethings from South London, it's almost unbelievable how good it does look, and how deep it plays. It's going to be fucking massive.

"Maybe you should make it look more like Star Wars?" Dougie offers up some quality feedback.

"Do you like Star Wars, then?" I ask, already predicting the answer.

"No, not really. But lots of people like Star Wars."

'Eitr' gameplay demo from E3 2015.

An astute bit of market awareness for a seven-year-old. Dougie asks a bunch of other questions and, at one point, the other journalist in the trailer actually jots down notes in his pad. I've been in roundtable interviews with people who've asked worse questions than Dougie, and I get the feeling the kid will soon be tipping off his old man for new games to get behind.

Devolver has an enviable knack for handpicking some of the best, previously undiscovered indie titles and launching them into the recommended section of every site, YouTube channel, and magazine in the world. They also take suggestions from their own games' developers, and their CEO Graeme Struthers tells me that Hotline Miami's makers at Dennaton are responsible for bringing several of the games on this year's lot to their attention. He tells me this not in a PR-arranged interview in a white-paneled E3 meeting room, but over a pint while we watch several key Devolver people have a roller-blade race against Dougie's dad, who is on foot but still manages to win and does a lap of honor wearing an American flag.

Devolver games often have ace soundtracks—so check out Thump's article on how games are breaking the drum & bass artists of tomorrow

There's an exciting, almost festival-like feel to Devolver's E3 offering, and I mean a good festival, not T in the fucking Park. Some indie devs who are showing their games off on Sony and Microsoft's massive stands come down to Devolver after the show "proper" to get pissed and fuck about together. I'm sure they'd rather have a DJ playing the Hotline Miami 2 soundtrack next to their demo than TVs bigger than houses blasting out Shootyman 4: The Shootening while trying to explain their game's controls to punters.

I think one of the biggest reasons I'm a fan of the way Devolver do E3 is because, in a time where hands-off demos of massive games played out on cinema screens with about 25 other people in the room is the norm, to jump into a caravan with people making exciting games and actually play something which feels properly new is a genuinely incredible thing. And in that sense Devolver's E3 lot is the perfect depiction of how the company has been successfully doing business these last few years. And yeah, I did see some things inside E3's main event that blew my tiny little mind—but no devs in the Convention Center high-fived me for pointing out a wanking devil, so....

Follow Gav Murphy on Twitter.


Rebel Soldiers Hold the Buffer Zone: Russian Roulette

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Rebel Soldiers Hold the Buffer Zone: Russian Roulette

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Listen to Marc Maron Interview President Obama on His 'WTF' Podcast

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Photo via MarcMeetsObama.com

Last week, Marc Maron sat down in his California garage for a chat with President Obama. The interview was recorded for Maron's podcast, WTF, and it dropped bright and early Monday morning. Maron may sound a little nervous and breathless at times, but the episode maintains the frank, confessional tone that WTF is known for. Obama earnestly opens up about his childhood, racial tensions, gun violence, and the struggles of being leader of the free world in the early 21st century.

"I spend a lot of time just on policy and trying to get stuff right," Obama told Maron. "How do I make sure we create more jobs? ... How do I prevent another Great Depression? How do I make sure folks get healthcare?

"But increasingly, I've spent my time thinking about how do I try and break out of these old patterns that our politics have fallen into. That's part of the reason I am here."

Last month, Marc Maron sat down with Fresh Air's Terry Gross for an interviewer clash of the titans, and now he's chatting with Obama at the Cat Ranch? The guy is killing it right now.

Listen to the interview on WTF's website here.

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Scientists Have Created the UK’s First Herd of ‘Eco-Cows’

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Scientists Have Created the UK’s First Herd of ‘Eco-Cows’

VICE Vs Video Games: The ‘Federation Force’ Furor: On Metroid, Mistrust, and the Entitlement of the Modern Video Game ‘Fan’

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It's OK to be disappointed by Metroid Prime: Federation Force. That was a given, really. Among Nintendo's many icons, Samus Aran might not be the most popular or commercially successful, but in many respects it's still surprising that there hasn't been a new Metroid game since 2010's Metroid: Other M on Wii. Five years on, you could be forgiven for thinking Nintendo had forgotten about the series entirely. Evidently, at this year's E3 it wanted to prove it hadn't, but a portable four-player spin-off wasn't the comeback we'd hoped for. Clumsily introduced in a Digital Event trailer less than a minute long, with little fanfare or explanation, it demonstrated how clueless Nintendo of America can sometimes be when it comes to its core audience. This was a textbook example of how not to introduce a new Metroid game.

Had Nintendo simply shown a short trailer of a 3DS multiplayer shooter without the Metroid wrapper, telling us it was from the folks responsible for the excellent Luigi's Mansion 2, it's likely Federation Force would have been greeted with a shrug at worst. At best, people would have been pleased to see a new second-party game that didn't rely on the crutch of a treasured character or series. Doing so wouldn't likely have made it any better or worse, of course—but it would have affected the level of hostility generated by the reveal.

What followed was, even by internet standards, remarkable: an eruption of rage and indignation that snowballed at breathtaking speed. A Change.org petition was launched, intending to (somehow) force Nintendo to cancel development, claiming the very existence of Federation Force was disrespectful to fans and to the series itself. It's since attracted more than 16,000 signatures, while the game's trailer on YouTube currently has almost ten times as many dislikes as likes. The petition describes the game as a "disgrace" and an "atrocity," but perhaps its most telling line is where the petitioner says: "This is not the Metroid we asked Nintendo to make."

The reaction is troubling for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's worth noting that the idea of players believing they're entitled to have their every whim catered to by format-holders and developers wasn't formed in a vacuum; the industry bears no small responsibility for this, though to explain the factors that led to this situation in detail is a subject for another time. It should also be pointed out that the kind of informal marketing to consumers, like we see in Nintendo's Directs, only empowers players to believe they're in a position where they're being listened to; perhaps even that their demands will be met. It's a feeling company CEO Satoru Iwata's tweet after the event, suggesting Nintendo would work harder to meet expectations in future, would only have exacerbated—even if in reality it was likely as much to appease shareholders who would have been aware of the negative online reception.

As keyboards across the world became flecked with fanboy spittle, something few players—and critics, for that matter—stopped to consider was the viability of a new Metroid game on Wii U. Artistically speaking, it's a no-brainer—the GamePad would make for the ideal scan visor—but you only need a passing awareness of how the Wii U's doing commercially to realize why Nintendo might be unwilling to take such a financial risk. In all likelihood, if a new Metroid is in development—and Nintendo has been sending out mixed messages on that front—then it's probably been shifted back to help its next console, codenamed NX, get off to a strong start.

In the meantime we have this spin-off. Ill-judged though its announcement may have been, it's surely too soon to be declared an "atrocity" after just 50 seconds of footage. It might not be the Metroid we want—beyond being set in the Prime universe and featuring some familiar weapons and enemies, it doesn't look much like Metroid at all—but extended footage during the Treehouse Twitch streams in the days following its announcement suggested a solid, fun multiplayer shooter. Hardly the disaster it's been painted as.


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What the petition also ignores is how often Nintendo looks at new ways to explore its existing brands— undling toys with everything might not be everyone's choice of how best to do that, but the amiibo figures are just one of many examples. NOA president Reggie Fils-Aimé alluded to this during the E3 Digital Event when he talked about "transformation," which admittedly felt a little disingenuous in the light of what followed. "Transition" would have been more accurate, given a line-up of what looked mostly like stopgaps—albeit highly polished and entertaining stopgaps. With Metroid Prime: Federation Force, then, Nintendo's only doing what it has done for years, leveraging its biggest names to boost the profile of games that might otherwise be ignored. In this case, it's likely done more harm than good, though when brand new games like Intelligent Systems' Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. struggle for traction, it's much harder to make a case for Nintendo ignoring its heritage.

Perhaps the most worrying thing about it is not that it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of many of the realities of video game development and publishing, but a total lack of trust in Nintendo from its self-declared "loyal fans." It's hard to fathom how a genuine Nintendo fan could think that trying something different is automatically a bad thing. Nintendo has historically achieved some of its greatest successes by flying in the face of convention, by doing the opposite of what is expected. I shudder to imagine the tsunami of furious vitriol had Twitter been around when Nintendo first showed off Link's cel-shaded makeover in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Or, for that matter, when we first got a glimpse of the Space Pirates through Samus Aran's visor. A first-person Metroid? That'll never work, they said. And yet here we are: Had Prime 4 on Wii U shown up, those thousands of petition-signers would be declaring that Nintendo had "won" E3.

Beyond reminding us all that hell hath no fury than a fanboy scorned, the message the petition sends out is this: We don't want new things, we want the games we used to like with bigger worlds, shinier graphics, more hours of content. Indeed, it's telling that the loudest cheers this E3 were reserved for the moments that looked back rather than forward: Shenmue 3, a remake of Final Fantasy VII, the Rare Replay collection, backwards compatibility on Xbox One—heck, even the return of The Last Guardian somehow touched a nerve that felt a lot like nostalgia. In other words, old is the new new, and gaming's past is also its future. Samus it ever was.

Follow Chris on Twitter.

VICE Vs Video Games: VICE Gaming at E3 2015: Who 'Won' What, and Why

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Screen shot from 'Horizon: Zero Dawn', via the PlayStation Blog.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

I've lost the last few days of my life. Like a regretful binge drinker on their way home, I'm struggling to recall half of what has happened at this year's E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles. The endless appointments with thoroughly sincere and eager games developers, a diet clearly devoid of any remote nutrition, and enough caffeine to begin to see through time and space—that waking dream is over and, in a hunched-up conga line formation, games journos from across the world are now retreating back to their caves to take it all in.

E3 is like a real-life equivalent of the info-dumps you'd sometimes see at the end of TV shows in the 1990s—you'd set your video to record them, and then play it back in super slow motion, wearing out the pause button. Unlike those blasts of barely readable tips and facts, though, E3 didn't disappoint this year. There were the usual sequels on show, but 2015 also witnessed the reveal of new franchises full of potential, not to mention the coming together of some seriously impressive tech.

But even if every presentation, every trailer, and every release date had been equally applauded, gamers the world over would still be throwing down on message boards about who "won" at this year's E3. You don't have to search far to find such discussion, so let's have a little one of our own right here, right now. After all, if we're not drawing our lines in the digital sand over a few minutes of gameplay and a couple of optimistic stretch goals, what the hell else are we going to base our opinions on over the next 12 months, until the next E3 rolls around and presents us with a whole new set of fresh hopes and faded dreams.

The Games Winners

Sony killed it this year with the relentless release roster of their press conference. (Although Vita owners may feel otherwise.) A rush of bright visuals, bombastic sounds, new heroes to embrace, and nostalgia-piquing emotions, it was tricky to recall half of it on the cab ride home. From The Last Guardian to Media Molecule's Dreams, Horizon: Zero Dawn to Shenmue 3, memories of old manifested in new ways in the present day, and cutting-edge innovation scrolled across the mega-screens to be beguiled by. Microsoft had their own huge titles, but many were triple-A sequels, like Gears 4 and Rise of the Tomb Raider—no bad thing, but gamers always want fresh meat. Sony certainly confirmed the PS4's position as the system "for the players" with their machine-gun-style presentation. The company's Project Morpheus is looking great, too, so my money's on Sony maintaining its commercial lead over Microsoft between now and the next E3—and quite possibly beyond that.

The Tech Winners

Gaming will always have its hand held by technological progress as the years go by, and so it is today, as our both Sony and Microsoft showed off some sexy virtual reality kit at E3. Morpheus is, as I said just up there, pretty damn cool, but as far as pure wow factor went, Microsoft's HoloLens ran away with everyone's breath when Minecraft-showcased on stage during their press conference. It points to way to a future world where all playthings are virtual—which is great in the sense that you'd never have to tidy up your room (although by the looks of things you'll need some beautifully clean surfaces for this tech to work its magic, which may be a problem). Rather less impressive but certainly warmly welcomed was the announcement of backwards compatibility for Xbox One, meaning that—eventually—owners of MS's big black box can come out of any CeX absolutely loaded with compatible 360 classics for the price of a single new Xbone game.

'The Last Guardian,' E3 2015 trailer.

The Greatest Offerings to the Nerd Kingdom

There were several offerings made to the alter of the über-nerd at E3 2015, foremost amongst them Sony's confirmation that Fumito Ueda's follow-up to Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian, is coming. Exactly when, we're not sure, but given there's been an almost complete radio silence on the game since its initial reveal at E3 2009, the news of its existence had the faithful in raptures. Then again, many other observers didn't really give a shit about a game featuring a small boy solving environmental puzzles in the company of a gigantic bird-dog-thing, but if ...Colossus and its predecessor Ico did it for you on PS2, The Last Guardian will be a day-one purchase.

And if Ico doesn't mean a damn thing to you, don't worry, as you can still draw no little pleasure from the new game's drawn-out gestation by laughing heartily at the tearing-up fanboys should Sony do the unthinkable and actually cancel the thing. After all, its release date of sometime in 2016 is still hugely tentative, and if it were pulled from the schedule, it'd be like your birthday-partying pal's dad taking a shit into your take-home doggie bag. Not something to be forgotten in a hurry.

Want something more musical? Visit Noisey.

Even bigger nerdgasms were witnessed come the announcement of Shenmue 3: the third entry proper in a franchise that only very particular players cling to as some sort of beacon of gaming excellence. I personally didn't play the previous two games, released in 1999 and 2001 for Sega's doomed Dreamcast, but I sense there was some kind of rite of passage attached to negotiating their leisurely stories.

Sony's support of the game at their press conference was a little odd, though, as it's attracting funding right now through Kickstarter. Sony is going to foot some of the bill, but that wasn't stated at their presentation—and with exactly how much of the development costs they're covering equally unspecified, isn't it a bit weird for fans to be chucking money at something that might not need it? What the Kickstarter does measure, though, is audience eagerness for a Shenmue game on PS4—and if the hardcore pay enough, Sony is sure to find a few extra dollars of their own to make Shenmue 3 everything it could be.

Then there was the Final Fantasy VII remake, but more on that in a moment.

'Horizon: Zero Dawn,' Gamespot stage demo.

The Freshest Shit

It was Horizon: Zero Dawn that got everyone genuinely excited at E3 this year. Not only because it felt new, but also because you can see the potential for it to be a real force in the triple-A market. It bristles with appeal, with life, from its strong female lead—at least, as seen in what gameplay was on show—to the mecha-dinosaurs roaming its verdant post-apocalyptic environments. Can't wait to see more.

Of course there were others of note, such as the endearingly twee Unravel (more on that here) and upcoming Xbox One exclusive ReCore, from the makers of Metroid Prime. These look good, but are unlikely to deliver the top-tier experiences that we're all itching for.

The only other title that could possibly come close to being a brand-new IP of major commercial clout is Ubisoft's For Honor. Initially it made me a bit nervous, the way Ryse: Son of Rome did—you know: looks good, but when you scratch below the surface it's wholly unsatisfying. But going hands-on with the game left me surprised at how tough the combat is. It keeps your brain busy with a much more cerebral approach to swordplay that outstrips the usual button-mashing fare.


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The Best Virtual Reality Games

Capcom's Kitchen on Sony's Project Morpheus blew my mind. It's by far the "best" horror gaming experience I have had in a long time, making me jump, squeal and shout at nothing, like an idiot going to a movie and answering all the rhetorical questions.

My absolute favorite VR title on show at E3, though, was London Heist. It made me feel incredible, unstoppable. It made me wonder about my own mental health, as evidently I enjoy murdering people with guns while laughing hysterically. Even in gaming, that might need seeing to.

Best Press Conferences

It might seem weird to think about which company "wins" when it comes to press conferences, but as Dan Maher wrote pre-E3, these things really are pretty outdated. The endless conveyor belt of suited execs having their five minutes of fame on a global stage: is it really what gamers and the journos in attendance want?

The epitome of this ludicrous corporate panto was EA's conference, which was loaded with all the pant-waving excitement of Prince Charles's wank bank. Taking some unspectacular game announcements and dragging them out for as long as humanly possible is really not the way to inspire your audience. If these conferences are for sales or retail, then do them somewhere else, at another time. But if your goal is to get the media and gamers excited, why churn out a never-ending shit-stream of corporate platitudes? I mean, you may as well have got out pie charts and a flip board showing the percentage of explosions instead of any real ones. Ubisoft at least have Aisha Tyler every year to host their show, and the Archer actress manages to provide some light relief to the corporate agenda.

Microsoft and Sony seem to have found their balance of keeping the corporate beast happy and not angering the gamers too much. They're still full of biz-speak buzzwords, but at least they try and keep it moderately visually engaging. But the most agreed-on "winner" of 2015's conferences was Bethesda, whose Sunday show was short, punchy, featured a load of great titles (DOOM! Fallout 4! Dishonored 2! And that Elder Scrolls card game that we'll all have forgotten about tomorrow!), and showcased actual gameplay. Nailed it, and inviting fans along to see proceedings was a masterstroke, too. Bethesda showed the bigger boys with more experience how to do press conferences in the present day—let's all hope the likes of EA and Square (oh, boy, the Square conference) learn a few things and improve for 2016.

GameTrailers pundits react live to the reveal of 'Final Fantasy VII Remake.'

Best Do-Over

Winner of the best do-over has to go to Final Fantasy VII. The game that franchise fans obsess about is (finally, after no little demand) getting a remake. Except, it's not going to be the same old game in a new set of current-gen threads. Which might well cause some friction amongst the hardcore. Just imagine if Square Enix went and changed your favorite part of the original. But at least it'll introduce (surely) a better save system, as if you ever want to see the closest a gamer comes to talking about true tragedy, find someone who had their original Final Fantasy VII saves wiped. Not that I was around at the time, but seeing someone come back from Vietnam after losing half their platoon is probably the only lasting image that can come close.

Also: given the leaks that preceded this year's E3, how the hell did the powers that be keep the FFVII remake under wraps until its formal reveal? There's some dark magic at work here, folks.

The Future of Gaming, Then

Taking stock of all that's happened at this year's E3, what the bloody hell is the immediate future of gaming looking like? Poking a finger at the residue left in my palms, like some sort of cheap fortune teller at the end of a pier that's not seen a proper summer season since the telly was in black and white, here's what I reckon.

Firstly, VR is not going away—though whether it is the future of gaming remains to be seen. Having a decent augmented reality headset like the HoloLens suggests that it's as close to being a mainstream concern as it's ever been. And given the choice, what would you rather do: see a virtual world removed by your TV screen's array of pixels, or have that world beamed directly into your retinas by wearing it on your face? New tech gets me giddy and excited, and soon the soulless technologically dependent dystopia we all long for will be upon us. And thank god, frankly. All this IRL interaction is really taxing.

E3 2015 also tells us that the big companies are still here, they're still innovating enough to not totally piss off the gamer nation, and that when push comes to shove, they can pull their fingers out enough to really give gamers what they want. Dreams came true last week, for hundreds thousands of people around the world. And that's a beautiful thing to behold, whatever your personal appreciation of gaming culture.

Follow Julia Hardy on Twitter.

Israel's Tense Trip to Bosnia

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Israel's Tense Trip to Bosnia

​The New Season of ‘True Detective’ Is as Grim as It Gets

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Screengrab of Taylor Kitsch as Paul Woodrugh. Photo courtesy of HBO

Warning: Light spoiler alert.

The ending of Game of Thrones, TV's most-talked about and most pirated show, this month prompted a horde of think pieces about how unrelentingly brutal and dark the show had become. Why would anyone want to watch a show so devoid of light and hope?

But Game of Thrones is, in this respect, right in line with the prestige-TV zeitgeist. From the unceasing apocalyptic horrors of The Walking Dead to the chilly murder mystery of The Killing, the dark serial-killer thriller The Fall, and—the best of the bunch—the surreal nightmare world of Hannibal, prestige-TV land is a dreary country. At least Tyrion gets drunk and tells some witty jokes now and then. And into this dimly-lit landscape, chewing on a bottle of whiskey while stabbing itself in the eye to try and see if it can still feel, True Detective strides in, determined to be the grimmest of the bunch.

If you missed the first season of True Detective, it's hard to convey the excitement it caused at the time. The show churned out more think pieces and message-board debates than any show on TV sans dragons. Although the show landed with a sentimental plop, season one was genuinely thrilling and stood out among the other gloomy serial-killer dramas thanks to its eerie Southern Gothic atmosphere, the nihilistic monologues of Matthew McConaughey's Rust Cohle—which were largely cribbed from cult horror philosopher Thomas Ligotti, the creepy mystical elements borrowed from weird fiction legends Robert W. Chambers and H. P. Lovecraft, and the knockout cinematography of Cary Fukunaga, who helped make it one of the most beautiful-looking TV shows ever.

'True Detective' season two trailer. Courtesy of HBO

However, in season two, all of that has disappeared, like so many corpses sunk into the Louisiana bayou. The only things carried over are writer Nic Pizzolatto and the sense of self-seriousness. Forgoing the good cop/existential-despair cop buddy formula of season one, this season follows four leads played by four notable actors.

Colin Farrell is Ray Velcoro, a grim, serious corrupt cop ravaged by his divorce. Vince Vaughn is Frank Semyon, a grim, serious gangster trying to turn straight. Rachel McAdams is Ani Bezzerides, a grim, serious tough-as-nails female cop who is "angry at the entire world, men in particular." Taylor Kitsch is Paul Woodrugh, a grim, serious motorcycle cop haunted by his army past. All four are hard on their luck, probably alcoholic, have unsatisfying sex lives, and spout Chandler-lite hardboiled lines that don't necessarily make any sense ("Never do anything out of hunger, not even eating," is Vince Vaughn's diet/life advice).

Vince Vaughn as Frank Semyon in 'True Detective.' Photo by Lacey Terrell. Courtesy of HBO

McAdams's Bezzerides in particular feels added in as a response to the (quite fair) criticism that season one focused on the corpses of young women without giving us any fleshed-out female characters. Bezzerides is certainly as fleshed out as the other leads, although she comes from the Strong Female Character school of writing where "strong" means "really likes whiskey and stabbing things with knives" and "female" means "played by a woman."

If those four characters sound like they were generated by a Crime Screenplay Generator Algorithm, well, they more or less feel that way through the first three episodes. This isn't the fault of the actors, who play the roles as moody and brooding as they can—although Vince Vaughn is less convincing when he moves from impotent businessman to intimidating crime lord. But the show as a whole feels like a collage of LA noir tropes, as though someone watched Chinatown, LA Confidential, and The Big Sleep, and thought, You want hardboiled? I'll quadruple-boil this bad boy ! In the first episode alone, we get corrupt cops, orange groves, pornography, a swanky gala, grungy dives, a ditzy actress, and a neo-hippie commune. The central mystery involves shady land deals, corrupt politicians, and a mutilated corpse. Yet divorced from the weird fiction and horror-nihilism atmosphere of season one, none of these elements stand out from their use on any other dozen noirs.


Watch our documentary on the real-life crime that inspired 'True Detective':


It doesn't help that the dialogue ranges from unmemorable—"I welcome judgment," "It worries me, you talking so stupid," "I'm not good on the sidelines"—to memorably ridiculous. When Ani fights with her sister outside of her sister's porn gig, she is told, "When you walk, it's like erasers clapping!" Sick... burn?

Also, have I mentioned how morose the show is? In case it isn't clear to you from every single scene, the show provides audio cues that range from industrial clanking to waifish singers crooning lines like, "This is my least favorite life!"

Rachel McAdams as Ani Bezzerides in 'True Detective.' Photo by Lacey Terrell. Courtesy of HBO

Things do pick up in the following two episodes—the first three were made available to reviewers—in part because Pizzolatto starts injecting some real creepiness into the central crime, along with some weird sequences that feel like cutting-room-floor scraps from David Lynch's majestic Mulholland Drive. (Second-tier Lynch is still miles above most TV.) The four leads also become more defined by episode three, as Pizzolatto can move from the archetypes to the atypical once the basics are set up. And there is enough mystery to the central crime to pull the viewer back. Plus, this is still HBO, so the overall production values and quality remain top-notch.

Even if True Detective's second season doesn't stand out among the crowd, it definitely sits comfortably within it. The show is dark, the dialogue laborious, and the scenes pretty in that cool and cold way that increasingly defines "serious" entertainment. Today's film and TV is either a sanitized corporate toy commercial or monochrome misery. Joylessness is treated as a fundamental requirement for artistry. Even TV shows that are lighter on the body count, like the Netflix hit House of Cards, are filmed in an almost unrelentingly cold way. Hell, even a goofy alien superhero in bright spandex gets turned into a gritty anti-hero in an environment where "no jokes" is an actual film-making rule.

Screengrab of Colin Farrell as Ray Velcoro in 'True Detective.' Courtesy of HBO

There is nothing wrong with fictional misery, and I for one am a sucker for blood, death, and despair in my art. But what is missing from so much of the prestige TV these days is tonal variety. A sex scene is filmed as coldly as a murder; a brunch order growled as coldly as a break-up. As dark and tragic as great shows like Breaking Bad, The Wire , or The Sopranos were, they weren't only dark and tragic—they had humor, absurdity, weirdness, and love. Even True Detective season one knew this, allowing for some genuine levity between Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. The show's creators knew to film horrific sex crimes and buddy-cop dialogue in different ways. True Detective's second season is by no means a singular culprit in the—gulps whiskey shot—"Boy, I'm so gloomy and sullen and tinted blue" entertainment climate, but it follows the Snyder/Fincher/Nolan school of cool too closely to the letter. In a field where everything is filmed in dark blue, it can be hard to distinguish one scene or even one show from another. I mean, should a superhero show, a murder mystery, a serial-killer thriller, a fantasy, and a domestic drama all really look and feel identical?

So while True Detective is a well-done crime show that should whet your appetite between seasons of your favorite dark murder shows, here's hoping the rest of the new season adds back in the weirdness—or at least a joke or two.

Season two of True Detective airs on HBO on Sundays at 9 PM.

Lincoln Michel's writing appears in the Believer, American Short Fiction , Buzzfeed, Oxford American, and elsewhere. He is the online editor of Electric Literature and the coeditor of Gigantic magazine. His debut story collection, Upright Beasts, is forthcoming from Coffee House Press. Follow him on Twitter.


VICE Vs Video Games: An Amazing ‘Spider-Man’: The Perfection of Neversoft’s PlayStation Hit

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This article is part of VICE Gaming's Comic Connections week.

When I was ten, I had chickenpox—a real bad case, with spots all over. In the mornings I'd go to the bathroom, open my mouth in front of the mirror, and scrape off the green, infected film that would gather on my tongue. In the afternoons, my mother would bring back games, on one-night loans. 2000 was a slow year, so Metal Gear Solid and Grand Theft Auto 2, both from '99 (in Europe), filled up most of my sick days. But there was one new game worth a damn, one launched late that summer which helped distract from itching blisters: Spider-Man.

While the rest of the gaming industry was foundering on the crux of a new hardware generation—and while I was home, soaking in camomile—Neversoft turned out one of the best superhero games ever made. This was before publisher Activision, which Neversoft had signed with in 1998, shifted the Spider-Man license over to Treyarch and started making movie tie-ins. It was before comic books, comic book films and comic book games got brooding and serious—before Kirkman, Nolan, and Telltale started marketing children's literature to adults. Given a development team of 23, the PlayStation 1's primitive CPU and the fact this was 2000, long before the template existed for sandbox games, it's no wonder Neversoft's Spider-Man is short and linear. Its contained design is a by-product of time and place, but Spider-Man is the purest, most confident comic game of the last 15 years. It's distilled. It's the experience of being a superhero, rather than a person playing one.

A complete playthrough of 2000's 'Spider-Man.'

In terms of structuring, Rocksteady Studio's Arkham games are in the essence of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. You don't play as Batman when he's simply doing Batman stuff, fighting, flying, and so on—you play as him constantly. Just as The Dark Knight movie tries to explore the mindset, the personal life and psychology of Bruce Wayne, the Arkham series gives you a lot of down and reflective time with Batman. In 2011's Arkham City in particular, you roam, you travel, you investigate—you do a lot of things that provide the background to typical comic book moments. You're not just Batman in the sense of the costume, the figure. You're Batman when he's just walking around. You're Batman standing still, or looking at his phone. The scripts for the Arkham games don't lean quite so heavily on psychology and character history as those by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, but their sandbox layout gives you a behind-the-mask look at how Batman does his work. You're not just a cape and a fist, swooping in and saving the day, as if by superhero magic. Like any human being, you have to prepare.

Spider-Man, by contrast, and because of Neversoft's various limitations, drives you from set-piece to set-piece, from one marked superhero moment to the next. In the first level you're rescuing hostages from a bank robbery. In the next, you're battling Scorpion at the Daily Bugle offices, then fleeing from a pursuing police helicopter. It's horses for courses—the Arkham, Infamous, and Prototype games are all purposeful sandbox affairs, so you can't expect this beat-to-beat, excitement-on-excitement structure. But what Spider-Man provides is an argument that superhero games are better for being linear. I'm not interested in how Batman gets to be Batman. I don't care, particularly, for a slow or sophisticated build-up to a fight between the army and a guy whose arms transform into swords. I like the mask. I like the figure. It's the magic of being a superhero, in the big, crystalline sense, that I enjoy most. And I think contrived, comic book moments, laced straightforwardly together, like in 2000's Spider-Man, capture that better than today's open-world games and their inherent bagginess.


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Not that bagginess is a bad thing. On the contrary, I like Spider-Man because it's from a period in game development before the production line. Today, 200 or 300 people each work on their own specific part of any given AAA game. Neversoft, back in 2000, had just 23 staffers. And although Spider-Man was a big-budget game for the time, released via the world's largest publisher, it feels to me much more a personal endeavor than the superhero games of now. It's like a spirit level. You look at the Spider-Man games that came after it, once Activision had moved the license, and although a couple of them are OK—particularly Spider-Man 2—they never have the same color, character or rough kind of vibrancy as Neversoft's original. Same goes for the development team itself. The majority, including lead designer Chad Findley, programmer Dave Cowling and producer Joel Jewett, were recruited post-Spider-Man into production of either the Tony Hawk or Guitar Hero franchises. Eventually, the Neversoft name would be abandoned and the studio's assets merged with Infinity Ward—this small, plucky company of fewer than 30 people would be assimilated into Activision's almighty game factory.

And that's just sad. Excluding any kind of value judgements over what games are "better," those made by tens of people or those made by hundreds, I have a gut personal preference for small development teams. There's something icky about a video game produced inside a mega-studio, something cool and unappealing about entertainment, expression, art—whatever you want to call it—when it emanates from a corporation. Neversoft's Spider-Man isn't urgent, personal, outsider art—it in fact comes from the 2000 equivalent of a gaming industry multinational—but it's a game made by a relative handful of people, and on some instinctual level, that makes it easier to enjoy. Not boring, not portentous, not like now—Spider-Man is an example of a different time for both superheroes and mainstream video games, when fantasy trumped brooding and corporate efficiency hadn't encroached quite so much on studio identity.

Follow Ed Smith on Twitter.

Guys Talk About How They Masturbate

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Photo via Flickr user Omid Tavallai

This article originally appeared on VICE Alps.

These days, guys are generally open about the fact they masturbate. I mean, you might as well be, given that everyone already definitely knows you're at it as soon as the thought, What should I do to kill the next five minutes? enters your mind.

But even if everyone is well aware that most men— 94 percent, according to one survey—like to regularly rub one out, very few of these onanists disclose exactly how they go about it. Post-puberty, masturbation suddenly becomes a very private activity, where precise details and tactics are rarely discussed So, in the spirit of transparency, we asked some of the guys in the office (as well as some of our friends) to shed a bit of light on the ins and outs of getting to know oneself.

The Early Bloomer

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

My wanking story begins at a very early age. So early that pubic hair was still years away, at a stage in my life where my penis looked more like an earthworm than a body part. Luckily for you, this story is about technique, so I'll spare you any more descriptions of my junk.

My grandmother had these two metal poles that she hung her washing lines from, which I loved to use for exercise. And when I say exercise, I mean I'd wrap my legs tightly around one of the poles and pull myself up and down until I was done. It didn't take particularly long.

Related: Girls Talk About How They Masturbate

My next masturbation phase was jerking off to that [German] lad's mag, Bravo. I guess that was between the ages of ten and 15. Back then, there was only one technique, really: lay down on my stomach and furiously rub my penis against the mattress. I'd put my face up so close that I'd be mere centimeters away from the picture of a girl's body. When you got that close to the picture, it'd make the girl's breasts that much bigger and me that much hornier. I'd also always had my dick tucked into a sock, and this was pre-American Pie, which leads me to assume this is a technique you just inherently grasp as soon as you're born.

What followed was years of sexual development during which I learned a lot about myself and my body. I don't know why, but I gradually switched over to a more classic form of onanism. You know, the banal up-and-down stroking technique. I also usually use a bit of spit to lube things up, and I always cum into a tissue that I wrap around my dick like some sort of dirty superhero cape.


Watch our documentary about Indonesia's circumcision festival:


I rarely watch porn, but when I do it's either this lesbian movie called "Belladonna's Heavy Petting," or another one called "Sexy Co-Ed Wants Cock by the Pool." Usually, I just dip into my mental wank bank and imagine girls who I've already had sex with, or would like to have sex with.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that masturbation has completely disappeared from my life, but the ritual of thoroughly going for it on a Friday night is far more rare these days. Sometimes, if I'm relaxed and have the time, I'll wank all weekend. There's nothing better than falling asleep after you cum, only to wake up a couple of hours later to repeat the procedure.

The Post-Fap Depressive

Unfortunately, using my imagination to masturbate just doesn't cut it any more. So basically, if I'm going to have a wank I need porn. This is something that raises a couple of issues for me.

Firstly, there's that moment right after you cum, when post-masturbatory depression sets in. You know that feeling where you scramble to close all ten tabs on your laptop while panicking about some vile video you strangely believed to be the sexiest thing in the world a couple of seconds ago?

Secondly, when you start to notice that all the guys in the thumbnails for those "old man fucks hot babe" videos are 100 percent your age, it's just another crushing reminder that you're hurtling ever faster toward death.

The Tub Tugger

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

When I was younger, my family would reuse bath water in an attempt to save money. This was a great financial move, but because of my budding pre-teen hormones it resulted in some very unpleasant washes for my parents and siblings.

Quite early on, I developed a fascination with jerking off in the bathtub. I suppose it was a matter of practicality: I was already both naked and in a locked room—it made sense. It was also easier because I didn't have to worry about where my load landed, or fret about my mom finding a huge pile of crumpled-up tissues.

After successfully climaxing in the tub, I'd try to fish out as many of the nasty globs I could find as possible and wash them all down the sink—a tactic that worked pretty well. At the time, it didn't bother me that my mom would end up getting into the contaminated water, because—being the nice guy I am—I'd already cleaned up the worst for her. Now I realize that nobody ever wants to sit in a tub full of tepid cum, no matter how diluted it might be. Sorry, mom.

The Masturbatory Nomad

A nomad camp. Probably has very little to do with masturbation in reality. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

By saying nomad, I'm not trying to suggest that I continuously change my wanking locations—I'm referring to the array of preferences that have come and gone over the years. I've been through a large selection of phases—I've jerked into socks while watching anime, I've done it in groups, in a train cabin, on speed, with a fever, in chatrooms, next to unknowing bedmates, and to naked pictures of a 1990s Demi Moore. None of these self-gratifying, one-man sexual adventures took hold as a lasting predilection, however, and I was forever striving for the next frontier.

READ ON MOTHERBOARD: Cock Hero Is Guitar Hero for Wanking

My current techniques are pretty unspectacular. Shockingly, online photos of hot girls really get me in the mood, and for a while I had this thing for lo-res videos of girls dancing in front of their computers.

These days, I sometimes surprise myself with what I type into the porn site search bar. I'm also getting a little worried about my attention span—I've begun stopping videos in the middle because I start getting bored. However, I'm sure some new trend will appear soon that keeps me interested. Probably something with straw hats, or animal costumes, or ceramics or something. I've no idea.

The HD Porn Connoisseur

Screencap via Brazzers

My masturbation methods are very much linked to my internet browser. I can't actually remember the last time I tried to terrorize myself without internet porn, but I'm quite sure that whenever it was, I was not having much fun. The fact that millions of people have spent thousands of years pleasuring themselves without the smut buffet that is the internet is just such a sad thought to me—we really are so lucky.

The omnipresence of a computer has hugely changed the way I use my body. Since I'm right-handed, I've had to learn to go at it with my left hand so I can furiously scroll with the mouse with my right.

I'm actually extremely picky when it comes to porn. I would never consider paying for it, but it's imperative that whatever flogging material I do watch is high definition. PornHub used to be completely useless to me because the videos were so absurdly pixelated, but they've definitely caught up. If the porn isn't HD it's as if my penis refuses to cooperate. I guess image resolution is my personal fetish.

The Hands-Free Fapper

Screencap via Youtube

I've always been pretty basic with my wanking, but I remember this one time I read about hands-free fapping online and decided I needed to try it immediately. What ensued was the most prickly orgasm of my life. It was fun, but it became far too laborious and time-intensive for me. On top of that, the mess was so severe that I'd be finding stains for weeks.

A Void Wider Than Gender

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Image via Wiki Commons

"For all intents and purposes, Cait, I identify as a woman."

We were sitting around the barbecue on old flimsy lawn chairs perched on the blacktop of my long driveway, the one my grandpa poured with my dad when they built this house in the mid 90s. I was home from Brooklyn, visiting my parents in the sleepy wine-country town in Oregon where I grew up. I had been fired the week before and hoped home would be a solace. I wasn't even in Oregon to visit my parents—I'd come back for the wedding of my high school best friend. I'd come to my hometown for one day so my parents could meet my new boyfriend, the first serious one I'd had. They'd taken us from winery to winery, eager to impress my guest. He was there, inside, passed out on the couch from too much wine. I had drunk enough to be nearly blacked out myself.

My mother and sister already knew. My dad hadn't told me or my brothers yet since we lived farther away on the East Coast and were rarely home. We'd spent the evening barbecuing, like we always did, when my dad came out to me as transgender. It was the worst moment of my life so far.

I've been winding my anger up inside like an old pocket watch ever since. I was angry that in 25 years I'd never known the true self of someone I loved so much. I was angry, too, that my dad wasn't him, my father, but a specter; an idea of a man, a summation of guesses, an empty mask. I refused to fully accept the assertion, even as "This is why" tiles began falling into place in my memory, spelling out the truth like a demented Scrabble game. "This is why dad cries all the time." "This is why dad is suicidal and constantly depressed." "This is why dad has disordered eating." "This is why my expectations about men are always tragically off." A woman for a father? The irony of it is almost Shakespearean: the hyper-conservative man of the church, secretly wrestling with fluidity of gender, a truth that flew in the face of those beliefs. What kind of person can make a whole self up? What was it like to feel like you had to?

My father is a former Christian preacher, worship leader, and staunchly conservative blog reader. Especially after 9/11, my dad would come straight home from work and read political updates on conservative sites until my bedtime. My parents' beat-up van still has a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker on it. The man who raised me was abusive, manipulative, and selfish, plagued by rampant insecurities and narcissism. There was no disagreeing with my father's political or religious views. Ever. There was no sparing of the proverbial rod of punishment in our house either. Actually, belts were more common than rods. As an adult, when I make a mistake my first reaction is still a rush of fear that I will be punished somehow. My father's punishments were physically abusive, but I think the emotional abuse hurt much more. I struggle daily with fear that I will be belittled or mocked for my opinions, especially dissenting ones. But I love my dad so much. I did whatever I could to never disappoint my father. Anything that fell outside of the ridiculously narrow spectrum of appropriate sexuality was a sin, so I dutifully attended purity retreats as a pre-teen. I remember meekly signing my commitment to abstain from sex of any kind until marriage. I didn't think I even had a choice, really.

After college, I finally began to think for myself about many of the beliefs my parents held, but it's hard to shake the commandments of childhood. My gut instinct when it comes to expressing my sexuality, or even supporting liberal political views, is still guilt. Sometimes, I get jealous of my friends who grew up with the freedom to explore their own beliefs. I was denied that. I felt a hyper-specific, steely anger that my dad had been grappling internally with aspects of these doctrines all along, even while foisting them on me and my siblings. Even while I felt I could never tell my dad any of my own real feelings about issues like this. I already supported LGBT people before my dad came out. (Currently, my parents attend a church that supports the LGBT community. Many factions of Christianity, too, are self-correcting to embrace all gender identities.)

***

"Language is important. Using accurate terminology is the first step toward creating a respectful story about transgender people."

Though it's been almost two years since that night, I often still feel trapped there. No, I'm not OK, but thank you for asking. It will not be fine. The formative man in my life was, in actuality, a woman. My dad isn't here anymore. I miss that man so much sometimes I don't want to be here either. I wonder what she will be like, even as she emerges. You're losing someone. You're gaining someone. It's messy. There's no right or wrong way to feel. Supporters of the transgender community, very well-meaning allies, will tell me I'm misgendering my father—the most fundamental masculine figure in my life for nearly 30 years—if I slip and say he instead of she. I have the right to take time, to hurt, and work through this. Sometimes I still say he. It will never be hateful; it's only habit. There's a difference between swapping out pronouns for trans public figures and grappling with the gender-flipped identity of your most prominent male figure. I say she whenever I remember to. I forget most often when I'm talking to my siblings. We have a shared memory of the man who raised us.

I support transgender rights. I miss my dad. I still feel angry.

I support my father's transition, but I am still grieving. Not only do I not have a dad now, in reality, I never had one. Though I am peripheral to the transgender identity, I'm not peripheral to the consequences of being raised by someone who hates themselves. I grew up thinking it was normal to despise your own body. I was not immune to the intense dysphoria that was passed down, imbued in me by a person trapped between two genders. What I cannot get back is the chance to grow up without a suicidal streak that suggested this life was not enough—nothing would ever be enough. That void is deep and wide, wider than gender. I am not ready for this strange woman to come into my heart and replace my dad. I am not ready to admit that they are one and the same.

There's no road map for what I should do next. Mostly, I feel alone. I grieve. I am questioning nearly 30 years of memories. Are those years lost or just murky? Why didn't I figure it out? This endless parsing of the past is its own kind of grief. I thought if I tried hard enough I could write or say something that would make this anger go away. I thought if I went through enough drafts of my story I'd land on the one that paints me as the Ideal Daughter struggling with this awkward, bungled burden. No one in this essay is a hero. It's just me in my weird universe, watching my father slip away, a strange woman looming on the horizon.

There's a difference between endorsing something in an abstract sense and having it presented to you unflinchingly. And as much as you want the people you love the most to be happy, it doesn't make it easier to reconcile. I support transgender rights. I miss my dad. I still feel angry. Those are the three things I feel deepest on most days, and they're not contradictory. This essay is only one moment, a Polaroid maybe, but I desperately need this snapshot to make it through. Maybe you need it too.

***

"You still have two parents who love you; you should feel lucky."

I kept the knowledge secret for months, even from my own brothers, as I was requested to do. My father couldn't bear to tell his sons, thinking their devastation would stem from another place more directly related to their conceptions of manhood. I still urged their inclusion. How could our family move on and accept this new gender identity without full disclosure? Splintering us into factions felt unfair. Later, over Christmas, they learned of the situation in calm, quiet, and sober family conversations. I envied them for this.

After they knew, I finally told a friend. Then, emboldened, I told another. The second one was the doozy. I fell to pieces at how others knowing made it real—my life reflected in empathetic eyes that actually understood the cost of this.

Since I know you'll ask, my mother is staying. People seem to think that is a noble deed. There's no essay on how much I want my mother to leave. I wish so much that she'd go discover what kind of life she might really like to have, like my father finally will. If you asked a different question, I could tell you how I feel this decision to be her final prison: another sacrifice she's made in a long line of things given up to make her husband happy, to make us kids happy. She'd always put herself last while fielding my dad's mood swings, raising four kids, and working night jobs so we could pay our mortgage. Is she doing this out of duty, or is it what she really wants? I'm not sure she's even asked herself that.

It is a grief too big to be private, but that does not make it feel public.

I want to tell you about my father getting her ID checked at the store by bitter, leering clerks. I want to tell you about my dad claiming to understand the crushing weight of the patriarchy, something this person had previously enforced in my life for decades. I'm just not sure that's true. Her understanding of those gendered forces will always be different from mine. For instance, I do not understand the vitriol she will face for the rest of her life. I do not know the full scope of the dysphoria she was born with and bore for 50 years. But I watched my dad relegate me, my sister, and my mother to strictly traditional gender roles for my entire life. We did the dishes while the boys watched sports. We weren't allowed to date, but my brothers could. Could she ever understand the contradictions that she dictated? I thought it was a man I resented all along. Imagine my surprise.

No one really wants to cope with the tangled web of pronouns, psychology, and taboo that a transgender father brings along with it. It's hard work. It's cumbersome. Even if they do care, there's no script for their terrified sympathy. They especially do not want to hear me describe how I felt that first night (not again) sobbing in my car, my body wracked with tears until I puked, gazing up at the looming mess of this. Of all the things I'd believed and supported because my father wanted me to, this was the one that felt like too much. A final straw. It felt like the one thing that all those other convictions had been a distraction from or a cover for.

My father's transition took a toll on my relationship too. The night my dad came out, I dragged my boyfriend to the car and drove him down the deserted back road where I'd always taken my small-town pain. I couldn't stop crying as I told him the news. He sat bleary-eyed and drunk beside me, already backing away: I should reach out to my siblings instead of him, he said. I remember weeks down the line, realizing he had no real grasp of the fundamental nature of the transgender experience. Still, it's not like he didn't try. I remember the nights when he'd wake up to my crying and comfort me, hold me until he fell back asleep. I would not fall asleep. I would watch him and think about how much I loved him, how very unlikely it was that our fledgling relationship could stand all this. We started drifting. I was unable to be any sort of partner to him. I was a walking wound. He began spending more time at the office, at the bar, anywhere but with me, perpetually at home, glued to my mascara-blackened pillow. I still blame my dad for thrusting a psychological earthquake into my relationship. I saw it as another casualty of my father's war with herself. I will never get my first love back: an exacting price from an exacting process.

While my world unspooled and the cornerstone of my family unit disintegrated, my friends defected, too. They opted for the less emotional—less dramatic, they'll say—choice in the breakup. I didn't know how to deal with losing my first love, not on top of coping with my dad's transition, but mostly because of it. I still don't. You could say it is going poorly. People began lying so they didn't have to deal with me. The ultimate, deafening conclusion is that my pain doesn't matter. Not to the people I thought loved me, and certainly not to society. Former friends still insist on greeting me cheerily when I see them at social functions, but months ago, when I was barely holding on, they denied my desperate requests for a drink, a hug, a text. Eventually, I learned to stop asking. Small pockets of people knowing about the situation had other consequences. My boundaries were often violated. Most hurtful was the uninvited confidant who pretended I shared the situation with them when I hadn't. Probably a well-intentioned effort at empathy, but loaded with the unsettling, disorienting tell that those who do know discussed this behind your back with third parties. Of course they did. It is a grief too big to be private, but that does not make it feel public.

This is an issue people don't want to be involved in, not really. People don't know how to respond because the emphasis in these situations is never on the family as a whole but on the individual, the "hero." I must be a relentless ally, simply because everyone else, detached from nearly three decades of family dynamics, perceives that to be the only proper response. Do I want my father to be happy? You're goddamn right I do. The slightest smirk, slur, or sideways glance toward anyone in any stage of transition induces a hurricane of rage in the very center of my body. When it recedes, I am still there, in the center of what remains a lonely and devastated place.

***

"I'm nothing if I can't be me. If I can't be true to myself, they don't mean anything."

We are in the midst of a breakthrough moment for transgender identity. In 2013, Laverne Cox portrayed a transgender woman on the incredibly popular show Orange Is the New Black. It was one of the show's major plot lines for the first season. It was also the first time I had really considered the trans identity. Cox is a beautiful and strong trans woman whom I admire for her intersectionality and capacity for love. She was on the cover of Time magazine at the end of last year, keeping her chin up. She is a force of good in the world. Chelsea Manning is a US soldier who entered the public eye for disclosing military secrets, and after these charges revealed her gender identity as a woman, her experience shed light on the difficult, tenuous relationship trans and LGBT people have with our military community. Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! publicly transitioned and then wrote a powerful album about it with the no-holds-barred title Transgender Dysphoria Blues. You have no idea how many enthusiastic straight people and trans allies have asked me if I've watched Transparent yet. For the record, I have not. I'm proud that a daughter shared her story, but why cast a cis man to portray a trans woman? Difficult plot lines usually aren't as moving or poignant if you're currently living them.

Last fall, the suicide of a young trans teen named Leelah Alcorn became a flashpoint for religious disavowal of transgender existence. Leelah's suicide note is heartbreaking, but what's worse, it's merely one life we've lost to the insidious force of suicide that claims countless trans lives every year. We lose an actual countless number of trans and gender-nonconforming lives because so many of their deaths go unreported. Many are homeless. Many are teens. Few are as beautiful as Laverne Cox or Caitlyn Jenner. We have a long way to go.

Jenner's Vanity Fair cover story was, in its own way, a triumph. I applaud her. Many people are happy to send a few positive tweets when someone with every resource imaginable comes out in a glamorous cover shoot. But the transition process is not all "be free now pretty bird" tweets, though the strength it took for Kendall Jenner to write that floors me. Transitioning does not occur in the space of two-hour interviews or a smoldering magazine cover. That is what no one gets. No one seems to really consider the toll that hiding your true identity might take on the individual.

Gender dysphoria manifests itself in certain ways long before a person begins their transition. My father was not well. Her suicidal thoughts, blue-black depression, and eating disorders haunted my childhood. There is no space on a Vanity Fair cover for my abuse. Do you know how hard it is to even admit the word abuse? The shame it carries is outweighed only by my fear of how deeply that word will cut. There's no easy way to explain how much more I need to say this then, to voice what I endured at the hands of this secret. I do not need you to tell me how you are awed by Caitlyn's beauty. I do not find your memes funny. So many of these "advocates" would probably laugh and squirm if they saw me standing on the street next to my father. Is there room anywhere in the world for my disgust at your flimsy, myopic support?

Personally, watching the spectacle of Caitlyn's Jenner's transition while still privately coping with my own father's process is the hardest thing yet. My name itself is caught up in the relentless Kardashian current. Jenner and I now share a name—I'm Caitlin with an "i," she's Caitlyn with a "y." Someone else cheerily wrote about sharing this name for the New York Times, but it has been a hard coincidence for me. Worse than what feels like disingenuous support is the certain subset of people who won't stop hacking Caitlyn's Vanity Fair cover to bits, sneering and simpering even if no hate speech is technically uttered. As they say her name it rings in my ears as mine. It rings in my ears as hate speech against my father. I left work early the day the cover broke in a state of near-collapse. Thankfully, I have sensitive and caring bosses who support me. I am one of the lucky ones. Learn. Be kind. That is how you support transgender people and those of us who love them, who are hurt by careless, smirking asides and salacious gossip. Their surgeries are not headlines. Their bodies are not punchlines.

Now that my name is caught up in part of the Kardashian's narrative, it gets harder to distinguish between me and them. That Kim, Khloé, and Kourtney—and Kylie and Kendall, especially—might feel this same anger, hurt, and confusion is comforting. That they broadcasted none of it was helpful for everyone but me and other children of transgender parents. God fucking bless Khloé for being the only one who was honest about her anger when Caitlyn wasn't candid with them about the pace or nature of her transition. That is the only thing I saw in those episodes that I identified with. Maybe that, and a shot of Kendall curled up on the couch, her face an impassive mask, looking slowly and quietly around the room at her father and her sisters.

Peripherally, that Kanye West is one of Caitlyn's strongest proponents in this narrative is incredibly comforting. He is my favorite creative being on the planet. That Kanye has pondered the same situation I am facing and come down firmly in absolute support of Caitlyn is a soothing joy, unlike anything I've felt thus far. If Kanye loves Caitlyn, he would love my dad. This love is a counterweight to the hate and fear my father will face for the rest of her life. This is how your support for transgender people matters; it expands outward in waves.

***

"What if you allow yourself to call it abuse, then what? It doesn't change anything, it doesn't undo anything, doesn't make you a better or worse person, nor dad."

What will happen if I speak? Will my anger and grief be my sin? I have every right to love this person and grieve my father's vaporization at the same time. I can challenge the abuse I faced without vilifying a new woman, wobbly-kneed in identity. There are layers of hurt here the Jenner-Kardashian saga makes no attempt to capture. Then again, that anyone should begrudge the Jenner children their privacy on this matter infuriates me. There is no winning. Perhaps my grief is not in the best interest of the cause. Some days I am too exhausted to care about the cause.

I need a venue for telling my father I love her, but things have to change beyond gender for this relationship to be repaired. It's not all different immediately. She has a new name, different hair, but the same patterns exist even under those new clothes. The removal of a mask also lets me finally see the mask and the psyche behind it.

My father is transitioning, and I am trying to grasp the decades of emotional and physical abuse that stemmed from her severe depression and buried dysphoria. This is the part that is much harder to cope with than any concept of gender. Her abusive patterns developed long before I was born, when her own mother belittled and destroyed her emotional health, grieving the loss of an infant son born before this child. It is OK that I am struggling to accept my father's new identity, especially since her fight against it has been hurting me my whole life.

Throughout it all, there were bursts of the human she wished to be—pure, sensitive, even understanding—but only within certain parameters. Her imagination is endless, her joy can be infectious, and sometimes I'm overwhelmed by her compassion for others. But it can all turn to anger and hatefulness so quickly. It's hard to feel safe around a person like that. It's hard to heal around a person like that. We haven't spoken in months, but that does not mean I don't love my father. Transgender people are not making a choice. I have watched this person struggle for decades to be happy. I have seen her balk at her failure to do so, one part bewildered and one part simply wearied of the attempts. Now, finally, I see her. She seems happy.

Supporting the transgender people in your life does not mean pretending they are perfect, flawless beings.

My mom asked me to write this essay anonymously or not at all. But I am not anonymous. I am Caitlin. I have lived with anonymous pain and grief for two years. She said she does not think it is anyone's business. That cannot be the case as we move through the current political climate and this volatile revolution in the way transgender people are represented in society. Today, I am coming out too: My father is living openly as a transgender woman. I want to live openly as her daughter. This is not something I am ashamed of or a secret I have to keep hidden away. I am tired of listening to people's disrespectful, ignorant opinions and saying nothing. I want people to know why this issue carries specific urgency for me. I am proud to be part of the greater trans community of supporters and allies, even as I continue to struggle with how those things might manifest themselves. If no one speaks about this experience, whether it is transgender people themselves or their families, how will others learn? It is everyone's business to educate themselves and to make this conversation happen at a national and global level.

Supporting the transgender people in your life does not mean pretending they are perfect, flawless beings. They are not heroes or angels. They are humans. The utter loss of experience—a childhood, an entire life as their affirmed gender identity—is heartbreaking for transgender people. Many try to deny them their true existence or any existence at all. They are crushed and coerced into fragile shells of experience they do not wish to embody. No one understands what it feels like to be so hurt by this person, to be devastated by your own grief, and still wish you had the capability to give them everything they want. I see now that most of my father's decisions as a parent were guided by fear. Now that I know the root of that terror was to be discovered or found out, I don't feel as betrayed by it. I can redirect some of my anger toward the world that made her feel the need to stay hidden. I see stories of five-year-old children allowed to embrace their true gender identities, and I mourn for the little girl my father never got to be.

I cry for all the dresses and makeup and jewelry my dad lost in that first half a century on earth. Then I cry because I realize I'll never see my dad again in any of the slacks and dress shirts I so carefully helped pick out at Nordstrom. And then, sometimes, I find a way to ruefully laugh at how much my dad always loved shopping more than anyone else in our family besides me. If you can't find the humor in a situation like this, you won't be able to survive it. The moments when I can laugh at the absurdity of gender as a concept at all are the best—the moments when I wish I could throw her a coming-out party instead of dwelling in grief. These moments are few and far between in the darkness of my grief—desolate stars—but they are there. They exist. This is exactly how grief works. This is exactly how healing works and life works. Everything is dark, and then a tiny happiness emerges out of nowhere when you thought it never possibly could.

***

"Loving transgender people is a revolutionary act."

I am writing this because I found nothing like it. I am writing something that didn't exist for me. It is the hardest thing I have ever written. For those reading this who are in similar circumstances, know this: Even if it seems like no one stands by you, reaches out, or wants to hear you as a valid and unique human, you can make it through. At least I have to keep believing you can. Even if it means you lose people you love along the way. This is an essay to say that your weird, horrible, secret life is good and worth having. This is an essay for the ones who convinced me of that fact—the ones who refused to stop loving me no matter how far toward dark and destructive my grief took me. Here's an essay to thank the one who held me while I sobbed over a man who wouldn't—or wasn't big enough—to hold me through this. For the one who looked me dead in the eye and told me to stop being a slob and get my apartment together for my own good. Or the one who made me dinner once a week and listened to me leech pain when I couldn't bear to hold it all alone. This is for my friend who made me feel brave and supported enough to publish my thoughts somewhere besides Tumblr. For my sister, who carried my father's secret and supported her many months before I knew and is the strongest woman I know. For my brother, who proves that good men do exist. And ever for her, my dad, whom I love despite, because, and through it all—even if we are never perfect.

If you feel like there is no one else, that is not true. Those who don't support you through transition or gender exploration or abuse recovery or therapy are the only thing not worth having in your life. Your life is worth having. Your life is precious and rare. This experience has taught you deep things about the world others will never know—that is where beauty lives. You don't have to hide. Even when you face negativity and hate, your freedom will make you feel more powerful than any persecution. You can stay standing. I will stand next to you. Compassion will find you; maybe we will find it together. Keep going. Gender is a social construct, and social constructs fade. They always have. Your happiness will not. In all your various states and non-gorgeous attempts at happiness, you are beautiful to me. It took my everything to write this. Take your everything and write more.

If my voice exists, then so does yours.

Caitlin White is a writer living in Brooklyn. Follow her on Twitter.

Thanks to Natalie, Zach, Alex and Tyler, Mary von Aue, Claire Lobenfeld, Lauren Nostro, Andriana Albert, Flora Theden, Nitsuh Abebe, Deanie Mapel, Eric Ditzian, Dan Montalto, Jia Tolentino, Scott Lapatine, Michael Nelson, Gabriela Tully Claymore, Mom and Dad, and Drew Millard.

[Correction: An earlier version of this article used the term "dysmorphia," rather than "dysphoria." We regret the error.]

The Bouncers of Ibiza

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All photos by the author

Being a bouncer is never an easy gig no matter where you are. The job is basically hour after hour of dealing with wasted people, some of whom will want to fight you, while maintaining your composure. So imagine being a bouncer on Ibiza, the Spanish island that is a Mecca of European summer nightlife.

Tourists swarm to the island from all corners of the globe to attend its mega-clubs: venues that fit thousands of people, host the world's top DJs, and stay open until way past sunrise. If the clubs of Ibiza are some of the biggest in the world, and the DJs on the island are some of the most famous in the world, then the bouncers of Ibiza must be the biggest, baddest, and most capable motherfuckers around, right?

We wanted to know what work was like for the guys who hold down the fort at these spots. Photographer Alexander Coggin spoke to five bouncers from four clubs that recently opened for the summer party season.

Robert from XOYO

VICE: How long have you been a bouncer?
Robert: Well it's my second year here but I've also worked in Barcelona.

Is it different working here?
Yes, of course. The customers are especially different. In Barcelona it's normally Spanish or Catalan people but people here are from all around the world. People come to Ibiza from Dubai, England, America, Russia, and everyone has a different kind of craziness.

In terms of security, how difficult is it?
Every day is a carnival here. You have to have at least one security person at every place in Ibiza—even if it's a restaurant or hotel.

Do you have a standard for letting people in?
We let everyone in because it's Ibiza and people come from around the world to visit. You can't say yes or no based on race or style. It's not like that. Everybody's the same here.

What's the craziest thing you've ever seen here?
One time, a girl took a shit in the jacuzzi. Lots of things—orgies in the clubs or at hotels or private parties. People party for five or six hours at clubs and then afterwards they're just crazy. You never know what to expect. You expect one thing in Ibiza and then it always goes ten times further, it's amazing.

Have you ever had to turn anyone away?
Yeah, because people are very hostile or very drunk—if you're too drunk you're not going to buy any more drinks and there's no point to letting someone come in.

How do you deal with people that get out of hand? Is security aggressive?
You have to talk to people with a smile because there's no other way. If they refuse to cooperate, then you have to bring in the big security. But they normally come to Ibiza to have a good time, so if you smile and tell them whatever they did was wrong then they usually understand.

Stevie from Pub Joy

VICE: How long have you worked here?
Stevie: I started working here this year but I've been coming to Ibiza for seven years. I worked last year at another place and then the year before that I had enough savings to not work.

What's the craziest thing you've seen while on the job?
I've seen crazy shit, some real crazy shit. I mean Ibiza on the whole is a really peaceful place, there's not a lot of violence going on. It just doesn't fit with the culture. That being said, I've seen people stabbed numerous times on Bora Bora beach. On Sunday at Bora Bora it's supposed to be a beach party, but I've seen gangland rivalries or people competing to sell drugs. They're usually not from Ibiza—they're mainly British guys that live out here during the summer and they compete in drug gangs.

And they bring their British issues here?
Right—so you got guys from London and guys from Liverpool who have these turf wars and they fight about who controls drugs in any given area. And that's mainly going on in San Antonio [the second-largest town in Ibiza], but then they come to the club side of the island on Sundays.

[Speaking to some people leaving the club] Guys, I'll see you soon! Come back for a drink... is it Lou, Dave, and Alicia? Cool. Come back and I'll give you some free shots, alright?

How do you remember everyone's name so well?
It's part of the job, man. I forgot your name though. I try to establish this connection with them and then they buy drinks, they buy club tickets and everything else.

So back to the story—I've seen everything from gangland turf wars to drunken fools thinking they can take on seven-foot-tall bouncers. I mean, even myself, six or seven years ago I would come here as a tourist and drink a lot. I've had the shit kicked out of me in clubs by bouncers and thrown out on the street. I mean like literally thrown out on to the curb. It happens.

And when did you switch from partygoer to employee?
Two or three years ago. I'm from London, and in London being a doorman is a super hard job 'cause there are just assholes everywhere, people want to fight you, and everyone drinks too much. In Ibiza, we're quite fortunate that everyone's on mind altering substances which normally make you into a zombie person or full of love.

What are the common drugs now?
Ecstasy, MDMA, ketamine, coke, whatever.

But in those situations how do you deal with people? Aren't they more unpredictable?
I mean on the whole people on those substances don't really want to fight. But people that are drinking, they want to fight.


For more on clubbing, watch our doc 'The Party Island of Ibiza':


Why do bouncers become bouncers?
Well my theory is that some bouncers become bouncers out of necessity because that's the only job available to them because they were blessed with brawn but not brains: these big guys aren't really skilled at many things. Then there's another type of guy that likes the authority and having that over people. A lot of bouncers do take massive amounts of steroids. And for some people, it's just a job.

On a very busy night, how many major instances would you say you deal with?
Not a lot at all—let's put it this way: The strip's been open for two weeks now and there's only been one altercation where a German guy tried to leave without paying for the drinks and the team told him that he had to go back and pay. He got a little bit leery and put his hand on one of the staff and he was dealt with appropriately. When it gets to peak season, mid-summer, you'll have anything from two girls fighting to groups of girls fighting to all-out gang fights.

Puking?
Yeah, lots of puking. That's nothing, man. Like for instance I was at a season closing party last year and this Italian DJ from Napoli named Marco Corona was performing. He attracts a large Napoli Italian crowd and people from Napoli don't so much get along with other groups—like the guys from Rome, the guys from Ibiza, there's war in between the groups. I saw like six or seven guys getting stabbed in the middle of the crowd.

That's terrifying.
Well for me it's not terrifying. I've seen that shit before in London... I've been stabbed six times, I've been beaten up, I've been shot at...

On the whole, Ibiza is a very peaceful place—my theory is that wherever there is an awful lot of money to be made, there will always attract a criminal fraternity and there's always gonna be more than one group that tries to monopolize a situation. When that happens, you have tension and when tension reaches a breaking point something bad happens and some shit goes down. You know?

Alex from Top 21

VICE: Where are you from?
Alex: San Paolo, Brazil.

How long have you worked here?
Seven years.

What's the craziest thing you've seen?
I've seen too many crazy things. Once five English guys—I don't know what the hell they took—all came in naked and a bit chub. They sat down at the bar and asked for drinks. We told them that they were naked and they said that they were not naked. Again, we said they were naked, and they left in peace, but the whole time they thought that were not naked.

What do you think they took?
I'm not sure, some weird combination of drugs probably. About two or three years ago, there was a 70-year-old couple proposing a threesome to everyone in the bar.

Did they get it?
I don't know. I left before they did. They asked me, they asked my cousin, they asked all the guys that worked there. Seventy years old. They were Canadians.

What's the best way to not get into a club?
Well we're in Ibiza, everyone here likes to party, everyone's gonna be peaceful, you know. People that come here to get into trouble and fight, they shouldn't be welcome here man. We're here to party, have a good time and listen to music, man.

Do you think there's one nationality that really goes too hard?
Ibiza brings the best and worst out of every nationality. When English people get too drunk they really like to fight.

We keep hearing that.
At the end of it, there's one word that ends most aggression. It's please.

That's it?
Yes. When a guys getting aggressive just say, "Hey man, please. Please. We're here to have fun. Please."

And what if that doesn't work?
We just keep calm. The calmer one is usually the stronger one. If they get real aggressive, it happens a few times, we call the police.

Aggressive women?
Yeah, sometimes. Less often then men, but when it does happen they go crazier than the men do.

Is there difficulty getting into clubs here?
Ibiza's a massive place and the entrance fees are very high so whoever buys a ticket can usually get in. There's no politics or door policy. There's not even a dress code.

Is that a good thing that anyone can get into the clubs?
The big clubs can hold 15,000 people. If you don't let everyone in it wouldn't feel like Ibiza. And the good part is that everyone is able to have fun that wants to have fun. It doesn't matter where you're from, if you're religious, or whatever.

Nick and Ochoa from Sankey's

How long have you guys been doormen?
Nick: Four years, about eight to 12 hours a day. In different places but always in Ibiza.

Are you guys from Ibiza?
Nick No, Madrid, but we work the season here.

What's the craziest thing you've seen here?
Nick: Drugs is a big problem here. The people are crazy with the drugs.

Ochoa: It's more of a psychological job. I work with drunk people and you see people change after drinking alcohol. But it's always the same, you speak nicely with the people: please and por favor. Only with respect, OK? You speak with respect and you give respect.

What's the most difficult situation you've dealt with?
Ochoa: It changes with the situation. When people have this "fish look"—drugs. They're on drugs and they look like fish. You have big eyes. You have more cooperation with the smaller guys on drugs, because you see they're scared and people think you're strong.

Does your job change later in the season?
Nick: Yes, we are more tired and we work later. The people are coming with the same energy but we're tired.

What do you check for when you pat people down?
Nick: Drugs, bottles.

How many times a night do you find drugs?
Nick: All times, all days. People think Ibiza is a free-for-all.

To see more of Alexander's work, visit his website here.

Bam Margera Got Beaten Up by an Icelandic Rap Crew

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Bam Margera Got Beaten Up by an Icelandic Rap Crew
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