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We Talked to a Paranormal Investigator About Some Spooky Stuff

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Photo via Flickr user Amanjeev

If you watch enough of those Paranormal Activity movies (or just the first 45 minutes of It Follows), chances are you'll start looking for otherworldly explanations for any weird shit going on in your life. (Or at the very least, have a sneaking sense of dread every time you look into a bathroom mirror late at night.) Depending on how intense these heebie-jeebies end up feeling, there are options, like a catch-your-own-ghost kit, or even consulting with a professional.

Edmonton-based Greg Pocha is a paranormal investigator and the Director of Paranormal, Parascience and Parapsychology Studies with the Eidolon Project Canada, the largest and most established paranormal research group in western Canada. We asked him to explain what the hell he does, what ghosts really want, and why he hates the term "ghost hunter."


Photo courtesy the Eidolon Project

VICE: How'd you get into paranormal investigations?
Greg Pocha: I had a lot of spare time on my hands. I ran a gym. I had a mild interest in things that were unknown and mysterious. I had time to read up on different things and I was particularly interested in ghosts and hauntings. So, after I started gaining more knowledge, people started asking me questions and then once in awhile I'd go out to a place to take a look around. Word got out and from there it just started gaining popularity and I became more and more well-known.

What are you trying to uncover with these investigations? What do people want you to do?
What they want us to uncover are mysterious things that are happening around their home—things moving, maybe they're seeing shadows, they're hearing things, feeling unknown presences—and they're wondering what's going on, whether they have a haunting or not. So we come in to investigate to see if it is a haunting to begin with or if there's a normal explanation to it. I'm always looking for the normal explanation first. From the client's point of view, were helping them out to discover what this is occurring in their home. From our point of view we're trying to not only help them through that but to help to gain some sort of evidence that an afterlife either does or does not exist. We're trying to find more proof that it does exist.

What sort of tools are you using to measure this?
A lot of it is secret. It's under development. Some are software and implements that we use that we're not telling anyone about. Otherwise, we'll use normal type stuff, such as electromagnetic field meters to see if there's a change in the electromagnetic field where we are. We'll use very sensitive temperature measurement, because ghosts are reported to change temperature when they come in—usually a cold spot but it can be a hot spot. We have instruments that measure wind velocity and whatnot to see if there's a draft around a window that could be causing this. We have highly sensitive microphones—some of these are secret, the way we use them. We are working with RVPs (which other people call EVP) and we can almost now pick up voices in real time.

RVPs?
It's a term by a man Konstantīns Raudive who was out recording bird calls (because he loved birds) as a hobby on an old fashioned tape recorder. And he was hearing voices back where there should be no voices on the tape. So from there it picked up that he was recording the voices of the dead. At the time he called it Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) and the name has stuck. But the name no longer applies. Because when you break it down, it's voice phenomena, it's not an electronic voice—that's Stephen Hawking. We call it RAP and RVP. RAP is a general term for Recorded Audio Phenomena. The fact that it was electronically recorded is moot. Then RVP is a subtitle which is Recorded Voice Phenomena. We're picking up voices with our equipment that shouldn't be there, in almost real time. Not well enough that we can have a conversation with them, but well enough that we know that something responds to a question that we ask. We still have to run it through our editing equipment to find out and clear it up and bring out the voices.

Are clients present during the investigation?
They have to be. We won't do an investigation without anybody on site. That's for everybody's protection—legally, they could come in and say, "you know I had a diamond ring sitting on the dresser." So for our sake, we want a client there at all times. Either the ghost is haunting the house or the client. If the client is in a hotel room halfway across the city, then they'll drag the ghost with them.

I didn't realize ghosts were attracted to certain people. Is that common?
We had a phenomena happen in Red Deer once. There were three girls. It's very much like the DuBois family from the television show Medium. The three girls are all blonde, they all had a medium ability to them. But one of them was very strongly attracted by a ghost. There was enough activity in the home that we were still able to record stuff. But she went off to babysit and as soon as she got there, she turned on the TV and the TV went off. So that's something with her, because the ghost was attracted to her. So we had to find out what she did. One of the things she did was volunteer at an Alzheimer's home. I had an idea. I said why don't you talk to this person, see if it's a patient, see if it's an Alzheimer's patient. See if we can get some kind of response. At the same time we were running an experiment with our walkies. It was the clearest IVP we've ever picked up. Czar Briones (our 1st Assistant Director) started asking a question; "are you lost? Do you know where you're going?" Something she would have asked one of her patients. And we get back as clear as a bell "I am not dead." Five people in the room heard that. And we have it recorded.

But some ghosts haunt places, right?
A person who really liked his house, or maybe died in the house, or had a tragedy happen in the house may remain in the house. We've investigated a place in Forestburg, Alberta, where the owner of the house did not want other people living in the house that he built. So he was trying to get everybody out. We picked up an RVP and we asked him, "Bill. Do you want this team—not the people who live here, but this team—to get out of your house?" We listened back and about 19 seconds in—we didn't hear at the time, but we rarely do—on the playback we get: "OUT!" Clear as a bell. And this wasn't a radio transmission we picked up because we were literally in the middle of nowhere. He just wanted us off his property.

Have you ever been unsuccessful in getting rid of a presence?
We can't tell. There's absolutely no way of knowing. The only way we know is whether the clients phones us up seven months later and say it's gotten worse, which has never happened. Or if we feel ourselves a second cleaning is necessary, we'll come back and do a second cleaning. Usually they work. If they don't work and the main reason for that is the client themselves—regardless of what they say—in their hearts, they want the ghost back. Ghosts aren't stupid, they'll say well, if you want me—voila! Here I am.

How many investigations have you done?
Hundreds. That's also helping people with All Experts, I answer questions on an expert website. I've done over 600 of those, alone.

How many physical investigations do you do each year?
We do about 12 a year. It really depends on the year. We do more, of course, in the fall and winter. In summer, people are out of their house more, either that or ghosts take vacations. We're not sure. But no, people are out of their house more, so they're not noticing as much, and nighttime falls at a later time, and they're out and active.

What's the most rewarding part?
When you're having your initial meeting with the client and you're talking to them as if they're not crazy. They realize there's someone willing to talk to me, and meet with me, and let me tell my story. And then when you say it sounds like you might have something there; we're willing to take on an investigation—it's like a load has been lifted off their shoulders. Their eyes sparkle a little bit more, their mood lightens, they can laugh more freely. That's the most rewarding part. Someone is listening that doesn't think they're nuts.

Is this a non-profit?
All expenses and equipment are out of pocket. People have offered money, we refuse it. If people feel they want to give something, we hint that they make a donation to the Northern Alberta Make A Wish foundation or the Stollery Children's Hospital in Edmonton. We demand that our name not be used at all.

What are some misconceptions surrounding your work?
We have a society now where people will get in contact with me over something that is obviously a psychological or medical issue, before they'll contact a doctor. And I find that's just strange.

I have a question waiting for me right now about someone's 16-year-old daughter who couldn't get up, she was paralyzed, she couldn't scream. Of course this goes back to what a lot of people feel; that they're being held down by a demon. What it is, is sleep paralysis with either a hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucination. It's totally normal and all of us have them. Some people are more aware that they're having one. In a case like this, it's because they don't know that there's a physiological cause for what's happening. It's a chemical that's released from your brain, that causes your muscles to paralyze, so, if you dream that you're Rocky Balboa in the ring, you don't beat the snot out of your wife. Your muscles are paralyzed so you don't act out your dreams. There's some people who don't have that chemical and they act out their dreams.

Why don't you like the term "ghost hunter"?
This is why I don't like to be referred to as a ghost hunter: 99 percent of the time, no matter what happens, they say it's paranormal. I have studied psychology, psychiatry, I'm probably the only private person in Edmonton who has the DSM, which is the bible for psychiatrists. I own the Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties, which is the bible for pharmacists.

I ask people if they're on medication. If they say yes, I ask what. It's important for me to know if it's a hallucinogen or not. I've studied sleep, sleep behaviour, neurology. As it pertains to the paranormal, I have to know all of the stuff that is "normal" so I can tell the difference.

I've heard of cases—people in the states that run one of the largest paranormal groups out there—with one of their recorded EVPs, and they said it was a man—it was a "vuuppp" sound. As soon as I heard it, I knew what it was. It was a mosquito buzzing a mic! Because we have infrared light, we attract bugs when we're out in the dark, especially in summer. And they'll come flying towards the light. If it's a very sensitive microphone, it will pick up the buzz. We don't rely on gimmicks.

What do you say to people who are skeptical of this line of work?
The truth is that these people are not skeptics, paranormal investigators are the skeptics. In keeping with the original meaning of the idea, a skeptic was one who questions. So in all honesty, those who do not believe in non material things are not skeptics, as they don't question, they answer. They are pseudo-skeptics, they are cynics. As a paranormal investigator, and because I question, I research, I explore - I say, "I may be wrong, but I'm willing to take a ship to the edge of the horizon and discover the truth, not assume it."

Cynics say, "If ghosts exist, prove it." I counter with "If ghosts do not exist, prove it!" But cynics are butt-sitters, nay-sayers who wait until others have made advancements. Not a single one is doing any exploration to prove their belief, to prove it once and for all that an afterlife can not exist. But being materialistic, they can not think outside of their 3 dimensional box. To them consciousness ends at death, while there are those involved in theoretical quantum physics (scientists) who are brave enough to state that the universe could not exist without consciousness.

Do you ever get scared doing this job?
Scared, no. I'm so used to doing this. There's not much that scares me anymore. One time I was picking up a battery from a camera pack, I had been re-charging to replace it. So I wasn't exactly aware of where everybody was. I was in the dark, I was using the infrared light to guide my way around. I stood a few feet from our electrician who was sitting on the floor and another was in the other room asking questions. I had our camera on Liz and the hallway. I decided to scan. When I got to about 90 degrees, I pick up this very human face two inches from me. I didn't realize my client was standing there beside me. It scared the shit out of me!


This interview has been edited for length and style.


Follow Tiffy Thompson on Twitter.


The VICE Guide to the 2016 Election: Bernie Bros Crashed the First Night of the Democratic Convention

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Famous politicians and A-list celebrities essentially begged Democrats to get behind Hillary Clinton Monday night, but they found themselves confronted once again by an angry contingent of Bernie Sanders supporters, throwing off any hopes the party had of projecting a unified front as its national convention opened in Philadelphia.

It was a fitting coda to the first day of the party's national gathering, which was colored by angry heckling and raucous demonstrations from Sanders supporters irate at what they claim was essentially a conspiracy by party insiders to tip the scales for Clinton. On the arena floor Monday night, a handful of delegates booed every time Clinton's name was mentioned, and real enthusiasm for her candidacy was hard to come by even as other speakers took pains to praise Clinton's record on issues like healthcare, the minimum wage, and abortion rights.

Despite an opening lineup stacked with Democratic favorites like First Lady Michelle Obama and Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, Sanders remained the main event. Hundreds of pro-Sanders delegates shouted "Bernie, Bernie, Bernie!" as their unlikely primary candidate took the stage to throw his support behind the Democratic rival he spent most of the year lampooning as corrupt and compromised.

But even as Sanders called on his supporters to get behind Clinton's nomination, he also didn't exactly tone down the rhetoric around his own campaign, ticking off the achievements of his "political revolution"—and perhaps setting the stage for an ugly roll-call vote when delegates meet again to nominate Clinton Tuesday.

"I think it's fair to say that no one is more disappointed than I am," Sanders told the crowd. "Together, my friends, we have begun a political revolution to transform America and that revolution—our revolution—continues.

"It is no secret that Hillary Clinton and I disagree on a number of issues. That's what this campaign has been about," he continued, winding down what amounted to his last stump speech of the 2016 cycle. "That's what democracy is about."

Watching from the floor Monday, it was hard not to reflect on how poorly suited Clinton—who seems just as comfortable getting paid to address Wall Street bankers as she is tugging at progressive heartstrings—is for this populist moment in the Democratic Party. Class rage was the primordial ooze of Sanders's run, and it represents a potent line of attack against a cartoonish Republican presidential nominee that Clinton is perhaps poorly positioned to exploit.

Democrats did their best to quell the chaos caused by Sanders's fans, trotting out some of their biggest guns after a weekend dominated by a renewal of Bernie bro rage. PauI Simon appropriately sang "Bridge Over Troubled Water." I saw Boyz II Men perform for the first time in my life and briefly felt hopeful about the future of America. Warren, a progressive favorite upon whom many Bernie fans have now pinned their White House hopes, delivered the keynote speech—and while she didn't bring the house down, she did manage to get in a few good shots at Donald Trump.

"Last week, Donald Trump spoke for more than an hour on the biggest stage he's ever had," Warren told the crowd. "But other than talking about building a stupid wall—which will never get built—other than that wall, did you hear any actual ideas?"

But it wasn't until Michelle Obama addressed the convention, taking the stage just before Warren's speech, that the Wells Fargo Center arena really came to life, drowning out even the disgruntled chants of the Bernie Bros. Throngs of delegates waving "Michelle" signs roared in approval at the first lady's arrival, and they listened rapturously as she embraced Clinton as the successor to her husband's historic presidency.

"I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves," Obama said. "And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent, black young women, playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters and all our sons and daughters now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States."

What remains to be seen is whether a convention that so far seems to be built around appeals to identity politics and making Donald Trump seem as terrifying as possible can generate real momentum for Clinton heading into what could be a tight general election race this fall. Leaving the arena after Sanders's speech, I immediately ran into a gaggle of Berniacs shouting about superdelegates and promising chaos at the roll-call vote.

"As Bernie supporters, if we're true to Bernie and we say he's our leader, then we are gonna need to do what he asks us to do," Katie Nelson, a union official and county Democratic Party chair who works in child support in Olympia, Washington, told me. "Maybe I'm not feeling the unity, but I guess I understand the necessity."

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

We Spoke to the Undocumented Immigrant Who Headlined Opening Night at the DNC

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Astrid Silva delivers remarks on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photo by Paul Morigi/WireImage

When 28-year-old Astrid Silva spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on Monday night, she began with a story: As a four-year-old, she crossed the Rio Grande with her mother, leaving Mexico so that they could join her father in the United States.

"I grew up like an ordinary girl," she told the crowd of thousands. "My dad worked as a landscaper, and my mom stayed at home with my brother and I. But while my friends did ordinary things, I couldn't, because my parents were afraid that someone might discover I was undocumented."

The speech by Silva set the tone for how Democrats and Hillary Clinton will approach immigration in the coming election. As with much of Clinton's platform, she vows to continue and build upon the legacy of President Barack Obama, fighting for undocumented young people and pushing for the passage of comprehensive immigration reform.

Silva, who has permission to live and work in the US under Obama's deportation relief program for young people, appeared during a mini-block of immigration-themed speeches, following 11-year-old Karla Ortiz and her mother, Francisca. The girl said her parents face the threat of deportation and that Clinton "would do everything she could to help us."

The contrast with the Republican National Convention couldn't have been clearer. At the event in Cleveland last week, Donald J. Trump repeated his calls for a wall on the US-Mexico border, and speakers told stories of loved ones killed by undocumented immigrants.

If Trump was trying to instill fear in voters, the opening of the Democratic convention showed that Clinton won't run away from that challenge, according to David Lublin, a professor of government at American University. "The Democrats are embracing being a pro-immigrant party," he told VICE. "That seems not a bad way to help solidify the huge Latino vote."

VICE spoke with Silva after her speech on Monday to hear her thoughts about Clinton, Trump, and the vulnerability of her parents as undocumented immigrants.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

VICE: Why did you decide you wanted to do the speech at the DNC?
Astrid Silva: I had the invitation extended to me, and I thought that it would be really great for our community and especially for our undocumented families.

What did it feel like to be part of the opening act?
I was definitely nervous. It's not every day that you speak to a room full of so many people. But I think also a lot of that nervousness was just thinking about what our families go through and thinking that all the people in this room can really have an impact on what's going to happen to our future.

Were your parents watching along at home?
My parents hosted a watch party, so they got to see it with friends and family there. And I saw some of the pictures, and they seem to be having a really great time.

Do you still have family in Mexico?
My family's all in Mexico. My mom and dad are the only siblings from their families who live here. My mom is from Veracruz, and my dad is from Durango. And I was also born in Durango.

What are their thoughts about this election?
It's not really a big conversation that we have. Most of them, you know, they kind of live their life and don't really get as much involved in what's happening in politics here. I just know that lately, they've been asking, "What's going to happen to you guys if Donald Trump wins?" That's really their question.

"I expect to make sure that our families don't end up the way that we did this time around, where there's so much fear in the community." — Astrid Silva

What do you think it means for other undocumented people to hear you speak?
To me, one of the biggest things was to really talk to people like my mom and dad. They're undocumented, and there's not that many people speaking out for them. With the dreamers, we're so much more vocal, and we were raised here, and we know what's happening.

With the parents, there's still a lot of fear in the community. I wanted them to see that Hillary Clinton is supporting them—not just dreamers, not just citizen children—she's really supporting them and making sure that they eventually have a path to citizenship.

You're supporting Hillary Clinton, I assume. But what are you expecting from her if she's elected president?
Well, hopefully when she's elected, there will be congressional representatives elected as well that will be able to help her push a larger immigration reform plan. But what I expect from her during her presidency is to make sure that our families don't end up the way that we did this time around, where there's so much fear in the community.

Did you watch Trump's speech on the final night of the RNC?
I actually didn't watch it. I chose to do my homework instead. I knew that throughout every night that he had been speaking, there had just been a lot of negativity, and that's not what the United States is about.

What were you studying? You said you have your bachelor's degree, right?
Yeah, I got my bachelor's degree in May. However, I had to finish one course credit. They only offered it in the summer. It's Latinos in the West, an intro to immigration class.

Do you worry about your parents since you're talking about this in front of so many people?
There's always a worry of what will happen to them, but I have a bigger worry thinking they might be deported because somebody like Donald Trump becomes president.

If Trump is elected, do you think he would try to deport you or your parents to Mexico?
I think financially it does not make sense to deport 11 million people. But I feel that he is determined to carry it through. I also know that there's many, many more Americans who don't agree with him, and they will go to the ballot box in November.

Other than your speech, what was the highlight of your night?
It was Karla and her mom, Francisca Ortiz. And just hearing her and seeing how brave she really was. They were a family that was on the verge of being deported. They had already packed all of their belongings, given them away, and then their deportation was stopped temporarily. They have a stay of removal currently. I'm 28 years old—if my parents are separated from me, it's devastating, but if you think about the impact on an 11 year old, it's life-changing.

Did you have the chance to say anything to Karla before she went on?
We spent the day together, and she was really excited about it, because to her, this is what she needs to do to not only protect her family, but all the other families out there that she's met along the way.

Did you give her some advice?
Just one minute talking to Karla, and you realize she could give you more advice than you ever could. She's incredibly smart, and she knows what she needs to do to make sure that her parents have the best odds of staying with her.

Was there a moment when you realized, Wow, there are just so many people in here?
Yeah, it kind of just hit me all at once that I was up there. I can't remember exactly when the moment was, but I just looked around, and I just remember that at one point, it seemed like so many people. I spotted a few familiar faces in the crowd, and it was the Nevada delegation. It just made me remember that home means Nevada, and that's where my home is, and that's where my family is going to stay.

What happens next for you?
I will be here the rest of the week. I plan on finishing this week out and then making sure that people are registering to vote, becoming citizens, doing everything that they need to do.

Follow Ted Hesson on Twitter.

Here Are All The Movies You Will Be Watching Later This Year

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That neck tho. Still from Oliver Stone's 'Snowden'

As has already been well established here, summer sucks and the stifling heat dome bathing most of the continent in damp sweat has us desperately searching for cold, dark places to hide until it's all over. Relief is close though, as this morning's annual lineup announcement from the Toronto International Film Festival promises sanctuary in air-conditioned movie theatres for summer's final few weeks.

The program for TIFF's 41st festival features a slate of heavy, dramatic releases under the thematic umbrella of "infinite views"—further proving this city's ability to always, no matter how grasping, find a way to capitalize on prodigal son Drake.

From Antoine Fuqua's much anticipated opening night blockbuster, The Magnificent Seven, to Park Chan Wook's psycho-sexual romantic thriller, The Handmaiden, here's a look at some of the movies set to premiere at this year's TIFF.

Denzel Washington reteams with director Antoine Fuqua to continue playing some version of his morally ambiguous cop from Training Day. In Magnificent Seven he's a bounty hunter tasked with gathering a group of ragtag stereotypes to fulfil a contract for revenge. But is there more to his motive than just a paycheque? Probably, guys. Chris Pratt plays the comic relief (shocking) with Ethan Hawke, Matt Bomer, and Vincent D'Onofrio rounding out the cast. Based on Kurosawa's epic screenplay for Seven Samurai, Magnificent Seven will open this year's TIFF and at the very least will have a ton of blood and explosives.

Holy shit this looks amazing. If you're already a fan of Korean filmmaker Park Chan Wook then you know to expect more lush, deranged, sensual imagery and a bonkers storyline with themes of greed, torture, and sexual servitude. The Oldboy and Stoker director looks to have created another suffocatingly beautiful world that promises to expose a lot of ugly shit before leaving you wrenching from the plot's twists and turns.

Written and directed by British filmmaker Andrea Arnold, American Honey won the Jury Prize at this year's Cannes festival. Sasha Lane stars as a runaway who gets caught up with a crew of hard partying, white dreadlocked magazine sales weirdos, with a dreaded Shia LeBeouf as their de facto leader. It's like a sunbleached Spring Breakers on the road.

We get it people who make movie trailers, it's a mad world and you find it kind of funny and you find it kind of sad. Please stop using this song to express so literally the vibe of your film. We've all seen Donnie Darko. OK, now that that's out of the way, Ewan McGregor's directorial debut actually looks pretty good. Based on the 1997 Philip Roth novel of the same name, the moody drama shows the quiet devastation of a small-town family after a couple's teen daughter becomes a political terrorist. Ewan McGregor plays the lead opposite Jennifer Connelly and Dakota Fanning.

Leave it to overrated jock Oliver Stone to turn a story about an unassuming nerd into some sort of cyber-Rambo spy thriller. A jacked up Joseph Gordon Levitt (his neck is at least twice its normal girth) is definitely angling for an Oscar nom with his gravelly voice acting that honestly just sounds like he really needs to clear his throat, maybe drink a glass of water. The real life story of Edward Snowden is fascinating and thrilling enough, the Stone treatment here looks like an over-the-top campy injustice to the quiet bravery of the real man.

'Catfight' poster

There's no trailer for Turkish director Onur Tukel's Catfight, but the action comedy starring Anne Heche, Sandra Oh, and Alicia Silverstone got a lot of attention at this morning's announcement. Early reviews suggest a hilarious, vicious, and violent film about estranged friends who reconnect and take their jealousy and hostility to a bloody extreme.

Other notable films headed to Toronto this September include: Canadian Denis Villeneuve's alien sci-fi drama Arrival; Nick Cannon's directorial debut, King of the Dancehall starring Cannon, Busta Rhymes, and Beenie Man; JT + The Tennessee Kids, Jonathan Demme's Justin Timberlake concert documentary; and first-time director Kelly Fremon Craig's coming-of-age comedy The Edge of Seventeen, which will close out TIFF.

Follow Amil on Twitter.


Meet the Gay Syrian Refugee Who’s Leading Vancouver’s Pride Parade

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Photo via Daily VICE

Danny Ramadan knows that a lot can change in a year.

Back in 2011 he was living in Damascus, working to support other queer Syrians, sometimes housing them in his own apartment. "Of course that was all underground and secretive," Ramadan told VICE. (Being gay is illegal in Syria, and Danny would face at least three years in prison if he was ever prosecuted in his home country). "I ended up being arrested, and I had to leave the country to avoid remaining in prison."

A year later he found himself in Beirut—out of the hands of Syrian authorities and removed from the country's escalating civil war, but facing a different set of struggles as a suddenly-displaced refugee. "I didn't know I was going to leave Syria; I wasn't planning on leaving Syria," he said. "Nobody plans on becoming a refugee, ever."

And then there was the leap between 2013 and 2014—a move to Canada, and a new life in Vancouver's gay village. "I arrived here and it was completely different than what I expected—100 percent different," he told VICE.

As a teenager, Ramadan had waved a rainbow flag in the streets of Syria and later Turkey, where he says Pride events were more like riots than parades. "Pride Istanbul was about demanding rights, was about folks coming down to the streets and protesting while police threw tear gas and water cannons at us," Ramadan told VICE. "It was challenging and difficult... I chanted slogans in languages I don't even speak... I kissed tons of boys in the Pride over there."

In contrast, Vancouver's week-long party was a new kind of trip. "Gay marriage has been around for ten or 11 years, rights for LGBTQ2 folks are more acknowledged by the public here, and it's beautiful to see how folks are coming out and celebrating their life," he said. "To me it felt like a jump 20 years into the future."

Next week will be Ramadan's second time joining Vancouver's Pride celebrations, and a lot has changed, even since his first time around the parade route. For one thing, Ramadan says this year he'll be sitting up front with Justin Trudeau in a fancy car, waving like a queen. But this year also marks the first time queer Muslim and South Asian groups are pulling out of the parade to protest police presence and the exclusion of people of colour from the Pride community—issues Ramadan cares deeply about.

In an open letter posted earlier this month, Black Lives Matter Vancouver asked that police not participate in the parade this year, echoing the demands of the group's Toronto chapter earlier this month. When they didn't get a response, the group said they would not be marching in the parade on Sunday. The queer Muslim group Salaam and the queer South Asian group Trikone are joining BLMV an alternative march the following day, dubbed the Two-Spirit Queers, Trans, Intersexed and Bisexual People of Colour Pride March.

Though Ramadan will be part of the main event, he understands why racialized queer people would feel the need to protest and create their own space. "I think it's really important to bring politics back to Pride," Ramadan told VICE. "There's a lot of issues still faced by people of colour, by black folks, by queer black folks, by trans folks, who we should support right now."

Ramadan is getting the "local hero" treatment as a parade grand marshall for his volunteer work helping sponsoring queer refugees in Canada. Just last weekend he hosted a fundraiser for a Syrian lesbian couple—the latest of more than a dozen people he's helped relocate to Vancouver and other parts of the country.

Ramadan tells me he's personally heard all kinds of weird assumptions about his identity and home country within Vancouver's gay scene, which he sees as another hurdle for the new immigrants and refugees he works with. "I faced struggles when I came to Canada finding a job, finding my place here, finding a circle of friends I feel close to, overcoming post-traumatic stress disorder. All of those struggles I faced so many times on my own, and some other times with friends who were there to support me," Ramadan told VICE. "It's really important for me to make this experience much easier for the folks who come after me."

When we meet, Ramadan is keen to share his world with me. We visit his office at a queer resource centre called Qmunity, where he oversees volunteers. Around the corner he shows me his West End balcony overlooking Davie Street's rainbow crossroads—something he says he dreamed about in Beirut. And then we get right down to business sipping vodka at a leather-friendly neighbourhood institution, the Pumpjack. We talk about Pride plans and Pokémon Go, and I watch Danny get the bartender's phone number.

Having spent another year getting to know the ins and outs of Vancouver's LGBT community, Ramadan is feeling bolder, and ready to challenge the white-dominant Pride establishment from the inside. He tells me part of that work includes making space for queer people of colour and trans folks in places of power, and recognizing their perspectives on Pride are different. "The gay community is now in a position of power. We are happy and celebrated. So might as well bring out our brothers and sisters and siblings from the rest of the LGBTQ2 community and show the world, yes, we do stand together as one community."

While other groups push for visibility by pulling out of the parade, Ramadan says he'll carry the message with him on his ride next to the prime minister.

"I think there should be a message everybody hears, where folks realize that demanding equality is not oppression to the privileged," he told VICE. "When I ask you to help me become more equal to you, that's not oppressing you, that's just bringing me up."

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Watch This Walmart Thief Mow Down an Employee and Escape on an Electric Scooter

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Thumbnail photo via Flickr userSascha Erni, .rb

An Arizona man was apparently inspired by all the crazy shit that's been going down at Walmart stores this summer and decided to rob a Tucson location. His getaway vehicle? An electric scooter, the Arizona Daily Star reports.

In the recently released security footage, the culprit slides toward the door in a gray electric scooter before a Walmart employee catches on to his game. She tries to block him from the exit, and though the bandit almost maneuvers his way around her, he ultimately decides just to plow her body into a trashcan. Nearby costumers then surround the employee, attempting to unpin her, at which point the motorist speeds out a second set of doors and into the parking lot.

Apparently the top speed of 4 mph was just too quick for bystanders and Walmart employees to nab the mustachioed thief, and he managed to get away. He was last seen headed down the streets of Tucson and the Pima County Sheriff's Department is reportedly still on the lookout.

His grand escape has us all asking: Where's that heroic lasso-touting Walmart cowboy when you need him?

Read: I Spent 20 Hours Inside a Walmart

What It's Like to Grow Up in the Mafia

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DiMatteo (far left) and the gang circa 1970. Images courtesy of Frank DiMatteo

The mythos and underworld infamy of the Mafia has long been romanticized on the silver screen. These pop-culture depictions glorify the gangster lifestyle and its man-of-honor ethos. But oftentimes, reality is nothing likeGoodfellas or The Godfather. In the mean streets of Brooklyn, life is rough and sometimes becoming an associate of the Mafia is the only option.

Frank DiMatteo was born on Cross Street in Red Hook and raised in a family of mob hitmen. When you grow up with Crazy Joey Gallo pinching your cheeks until you cry like DiMatteo did, childhood can be nothing if not adventuresome. In his new book, The President Street Boys: Growing Up Mafia, out July 26, DiMatteo tells what it was like to grow up with mob royalty.

His father and godfather were both enforcers for the infamous Gallo brothers. DiMatteo's uncle was a bodyguard for Frank Costello and a capo in the Genovese crime family. DiMatteo dropped out of school at an early age and started hanging around with the President Street Boys, also known as the Gallo crime family, a faction of the Colombo family. Growing up, he had a front row seat as the Gallo's waged a war for control of the Colombo family.

DiMatteo calls himself a Mafia "survivor." When many of his peers ended up in the trunk of a car or thrown into Sheepshead Bay to "swim with the fishes," DiMatteo, at 58, is still kicking. And unlike many Mafia guys who've told their story, DiMatteo isn't a rat. He walked away from the mob in the early 2000s with his integrity intact and still lives in his hometown of Brooklyn. We spoke with him to find out what it was like working for the mob in its heyday, how 60s culture changed the game, what he thinks about the modern Mafia, and why he started Mob Candy, a Mafia-culture magazine.

VICE: What was it like growing up in a Mafia household in Brooklyn in the 1960s and 1970s?
Frank DiMatteo: Eight, nine I didn't give a fuck. I was busy being a little kid. I didn't comprehend the real Mafia stuff, because it wasn't really spoken about, and there were no books and newspapers in our face every second like now. By ten you notice your uncles are a lot different from other people. They're whispering and then there are people coming around and they dress differently than other families. By 12 or 13, I knew who everybody was. By 13, I was driving, and I started learning about the life. By then, I knew exactly what was going on, so I was privy to a few things, but not much. I didn't go kill nobody at 13, but I was going to the clubs with them. Driving them here and there because I was tall. I looked like I do now, just a lot younger. I was six foot at 13. These guys went to a lot of restaurants, a lot of clubs, topless joints. Driving is basically how I learned what was going on.

My godfather is Bobby B. Bobby was one of the shooters for the G crew. He wanted to be my godfather, and I was very close to him. I drove him around for a couple of years in the early 70s. Bobby was a character, a stone killer, but you would think he was a jokester, like real schizoid. I mean, the guy was for real, but he was a funny-type guy as far as you could make him out. If you didn't know him, you really couldn't make him out at all. These characters are a very strange breed of men.

DiMatteo in the striped jacket at the San Susan nightclub, circa 1977

Was it like a regular job? You just clocked in? Did you know your job detail?
No one turned around and said, "Hey, Frankie, let me tell you what we're doing today in detail." You're not supposed to tell every little thing you're doing to everybody. People that look for too much information scare me, because that's not what we're there for. I wasn't supposed to know shit. If I wasn't involved in it, I really wasn't suppose to know about it. But I'd hear other people tell me all sorts of stories and stuff, and I'd go, "How do you know that shit, man? You're not supposed to know that."

What was life like in a Mafia crew back then?
Everybody was busy doing their thing. Who's robbing? Who's stealing? And who's trying to eat? You know what I mean. It was the early 70s. Money wasn't flowing. We weren't big time hoods. Every fucking day they were trying to do something—shake somebody down. So you didn't know what was going on. We were doing cigarette runs to make some money. We were hoods, man. And they all had different personalities. Who was a grumpy fuck? Who was funny? Who was a drunk? Who was a pot head? We had Puerto Ricans with us. We had Syrian guys with us. We had a Jew guy with us. It was like a fucking circus. Who had five dollars in their pocket?

What was Crazy Joey Gallo like?
Joey left when I was like five or six. He went to jail. He got out when I was like 16, 17, so I saw Joey for one year. I think 71 to 72. Joey was Joey. Joey was a scary guy. His eyes gleamed. He smiled. He wasn't the guy to joke with. But on the other side, if you're with him, there's nothing to fear. But Joey sowed his oats when he came home. Don't forget he was gone for ten years, so he was going out drinking. He was conducting business, but he stayed in the city a lot. The rest of us guys those days stayed in Brooklyn. We didn't leave far from the neighborhood.

Joey was staying in the city with my godfather and Pete the Greek. We'd see him once a week if were lucky. He would come down to the club. He was a nutty guy. Functional, but legitimately nuts. He had no fear. He was like the throwback of the 1920s gangsters. He thought he could move around and do what he wanted, say what he wanted. He didn't think nobody was going to shoot him, nobody had the balls to do it, so that's how he functioned. But we know he was wrong. He was only out a year when they killed him.

How did the 1960s impact the younger generation of mobsters coming up who filled in the ranks?
The 60s impacted the mob guys coming up. The new hoods were a little different than the old street guys from the 20s. The street guys from the 20s came up out of poverty. These guys, late 60s early 70s, they weren't starving as much. They were just bad guys. What the 60s did was just open the doors to different crimes, stocks and bonds, and these guys just had a different mindset. Then there was the pot. In the 20s, 30s, and 40s, I don't think they were walking around fucking zoning out all of the time. These guys would smoke a joint in the street and laugh like it was a joke. They were half crazy. It all changed. It changed them. The respect or the mindset. They didn't listen to all the rules and regulations like the old-timers did. They laughed at that shit.


DiMatteo and his wife, Emily, around 1970

How did you leave the mob and avoid prison?
I was lucky. Had some foresight on a few things. Beat a lot of cases. I was very, very lucky to walk away, especially with all this rat shit. But we just walked away like it was the end of the day. The boss flipped, so no one came back and said, "No, you can't do this, you can't leave the Mafia." Everybody was ratting. Everybody was gone. We walked out the door like nobody was watching the door, like the door wasn't locked anymore. Nobody even called us. We were just lucky all the way around.

What do you think of the Mafia today?
They have no idea what they're doing. They're young. They've got guys who don't know shit because a lot of guys are dead, a lot of guys are in jail. A lot of guys are rats. A lot guys with a lot of time in have flipped. These guys coming up, no one is teaching them. They're just reading books and saying the word Omerta, you know?

Half the guys in charge, you can't even call them by their nickname anymore. They can't kiss in public because they're afraid. They're afraid of everything. It's like a fucking joke now. You've got no respect. Every other crew is laughing at you. You've got the Albanians laughing, the Russians laughing, you know? There's no respect. They're not scamming nobody no more. The other thing is you've got 200 rats, and no one is dead. Not one rat is dead, and they're walking around in the open.

The President Street Boys: Growing Up Mafia will be released on July 26.

Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Edmonton Man Who Killed and Cooked Family Cat Is Sentenced to Six Months in Jail

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Photo via Flickr user houstondwiPhotos mp

When news broke in 2014 about the three Edmonton teens who stole their friend's cat and proceeded to stab, skin, and cook it near a ravine, the stories came with the requisite trigger warnings.

This case has made headlines since and was revisited yesterday when 20-year-old Wendell Mah was sentenced to six months in jail. Mah will also be on 18 months of probation and is prohibited from owning pets for five years. He pleaded guilty to the crime last November.

This verdict comes almost two years after one of the other killers, Zachary McKinnon, now 21, was sentenced to 10 months in jail, with three years of probation and a 10-year ban on owning pets.

The owner of the cat, Derek North, said he was "unbelievably disappointed" with Mah's sentence. His family adopted the cat, Pudge, when North was just three years old. After the animal's death 17 years later, North said it was like losing a brother.

It was disclosed in court that McKinnon was upset with North because he allegedly stole his iPod. On February 13, 2014 and messaged Mah saying that he wanted to kill someone that day. He then asked Mah if he knew "how to cook cat."

McKinnon, Mah, and another teen, who cannot be identified because he was a minor at the time, met up after school that day with knives.

Crown prosecutor Christian Lim said they "took turns poking, stabbing and jabbing the cat with knives." A bystander eventually reported the fire that the teens made to burn Pudge's corpse.

According to the National Post, Judge Elizabeth Johnson said while Mah is unlikely to do this type of thing again, he's been proven to have "socialization deficits."

North said that he was hoping Mah would be sent to jail for a least a year.

Follow Ebony-Renee Baker on Twitter.


What Comes After the Death of the Lesbian Bar?

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Illustration by Sarah MacReading

When Lila Thirkield sold her San Francisco lesbian bar Lexington Club nearly two years ago, it seemed to be the death knell of lesbian nightlife in the city. The "Lex," as patrons affectionately called the bar, was one of the few surviving venues that catered to queer women in a city awash with gay-male entertainment. Her situation wasn't unique to San Francisco, either: Most major US cities have long offered multiple bars for the boys, with comparatively few devoted solely to dykes. In the two years since, the handful of lesbian bars left in America has dwindled to practically nothing.

As spaces for queer women have increasingly disappeared from the American nightlife landscape, their proprietors and patrons—as well as artists, writers, historians, and other cultural gatekeepers—have risen up to make clear that a vital sort of queer institution is eroding from our national consciousness. And as they move to document the spaces they've called home, a new configuration of agender, lesbian-friendly queer nightlife has taken root in their stead, one that may prove a blueprint for the future of queer nightlife in general.

While bars catering to gay men haven't exactly thrived across the country, they have skirted the downturn that lesbian spaces have experienced since the turn of the decade. Some point to the economic disparity between genders in explaining the discrepancy, while others look to the mainstreaming of gay culture, and the fact that queers coming out today have less need for specifically queer spaces than do generations prior.

Many lesbian bars that face closure have played significant roles in LGBTQ history, and most have represented, at various points, the only places that gay, bisexual, and gender nonconforming women could dance, flirt, socialize, and feel accepted by their peers in public. Even before Stonewall, historian Lisa Davis's Under the Mink recounts the surprising symbiosis between the lesbian community and the New York Mafia in the 1930s and 40s, when the mob ran—in a surprisingly equitable way—every lesbian club in the city, and often provided protection for early drag queens and gender nonconforming women. Indeed, such women needed that protection, as lesbian bars were often the target of police raids. Until the 1970s, dancing with members of one's sex and wearing opposite-sex clothing was illegal in many cities.

Watch Broadly's cross-country search for the last lesbian bars in America.


After World War II, homophile organizations like the Daughters of Bilitis offered social outlets for middle-class, professional lesbians, many of whom preferred private spaces to convene, as they found the bar scene less respectable. Some working-class and masculine-presenting lesbians preferred bars, in turn, where butch/femme roles were most pronounced. The women's liberation movement, which emphasized political activism over recreation and sexual pleasure, meant that lesbian bars—and strictly delineated butch/femme roles, which were seen as mimicking unequal heterosexual power dynamics—fell out of favor.

But lesbian bars vibrantly resurfaced in the 1990s, a time in which same-sex relationships became more visible in the media, even as right-wing politicians and evangelicals continued to vilify homosexuals. It was during this decade that the "lipstick lesbian" archetype reigned supreme, a sensibility that may have influenced the aesthetics of 90s bar culture.

As the needs of the lesbian community continue to evolve, a new wave of alternative queer nightlife that eschews gender binaries, affected labels, and strictly delineated queer sensibilities has taken root, and it may be able to provide a blueprint for the next generation of lesbian-inclusive spaces. Los Angeles, in particular, offers a case study of the kinds of spaces and events that arise in the wake of the decline of lesbian nightlife. After LA lost the Normandie Room in 2012, an intimate lesbian bar with a single billiards table and a beautiful, hard-to-get androgynous bartender, only one lesbian space remained: the Palms, a dingy West Hollywood haunt enjoyed by your mother's lesbians, Ellen DeGeneres and Melissa Etheridge, until it closed in 2013 for "property redevelopment."

Since then, lesbians have turned toward venues that host weekly or monthly nights geared toward queers (and their friends) of all genders. In Los Angeles, these include Rumours at Chinatown's Grand Star Jazz Club, Homoccult at Akbar in Los Feliz, and Mustache Mondays at the LASH, a dimly lit, industrial spot downtown. Beyond LA, queer parties across the country—like Chicago's Queen! and Hugo Ball, New York's Battle Hymn and Shock Value, Boston's House Boi, and more—are providing similarly genderless nights and hotspots for women, men, and any gender identification in between to let loose.

They are spaces open to all comers, including those who identify as trans, agender, asexual, and straight. Irene Urias, a curator of Mustache Mondays, explains that its diverse party was created as a response to the homogeneity of West Hollywood, the LA boystown that dominates the city's queer nightlife. When asked if there is a lesbian angle to the event, she bristles: "I don't want to be defined by any one thing, I don't want to put a label on the party," she insists. "There's no mold here."

It's difficult to see a cost to this newfound embrace of outsider identities and marginalized communities. At all-inclusive events, anyone and everyone can feel welcome, particularly people who have been traditionally excluded from mainstream gay nightlife. At the same time, these changes accompany the rejection of a specifically lesbian identity, in terms of both preferred terminology and the types of social spaces our community creates. It's a trend that shows no signs of stopping, in Los Angeles or across the country. Today, gay women's nightlife no longer means female-only sanctuaries. The heterogeneous, co-ed, and adaptable alternatives that have replaced it are a breath of fresh air for those who have been waiting all their lives to finally be themselves.

Follow Sascha Cohen on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Adorable Patriotic Singers Made Famous by Donald Trump Now Want to Sue Donald Trump

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Jeff Popick, manager and creator of USA Freedom Kids. Photo via VICE

Jeff Popick, manager of USA Freedom Kids, the patriotic group of girls who sang at a Trump rally in January and went viral as a result, now plans to sue his favorite candidate, the Washington Post reports. Previously he told VICE that Trump had the potential to become "the best president we've ever had in the history of our country."

But now Popick is saying that the Trump campaign jerked him and his gaggle of singing girls around, making verbal promises that it didn't follow through on. First, he claims, the campaign promised them a table where they'd be able to pre-sell their albums following their now-infamous performance in Pensacola, in lieu of actual compensation. That didn't happen. Following that, the campaign reportedly called Popick last minute to give a performance in Des Moines, only to cancel after the girls landed, leaving Popick to cover all the costs of travel.

"This is not a billion-dollar lawsuit," Popick told the Post. "I'm not looking to do battle with the Trump campaign, but I have to show my girls that this is the right thing."

The manager and dad of one of the Freedom Kids believes he has a case. He's consulted with an attorney and plans to file a suit in the next couple of weeks, claiming he's owed a makeup performance for the canceled date in Des Moines or some form of compensation.

The girl group made headlines earlier this year for its performance of the original song "Freedom's Call," which Popick wrote. The song includes the line "President Donald Trump knows how to make America great." Reportedly USA Freedom Kids are no longer planning on releasing that song on the upcoming album, which goes on sale (sans hit) in September.

"At this point, my position is that I have no position, really," Popick said about his feelings for the Republican presidential candidate. "He might still be the best candidate as president of the United States—or not."

Related: Check Out Our Documentary About the USA Freedom Girls


The VICE Guide to Right Now: Miss Cleo, the Beloved TV Psychic, Has Died

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Miss Cleo. Photo by Kadeem Ellis.

Miss Cleo, the hotline psychic known for her iconic "Call me now!" catchphrase, has died at 53. She had colon cancer that spread to her liver and lungs and passed away in hospice, TMZ reported Tuesday afternoon.

Although she's remembered primarily for her Jamaican accent, Cleo's patois––like most of her public personality––was an affectation. Cleo, whose real name was Youree Harris, was born to wealthy parents and raised in Los Angeles, where she attended a Catholic boarding school for girls.

Her family were practitioners of voodoo, and she studied under a Haitian teacher for 30 years before joining the company that would propel her to fame. But when she joined the Psychic Readers Network (PRN) in the late 90s, it rebranded her as a mindreader, probably because her religion is often stigmatized and misunderstood in the States.

Regardless, she became the company's spokesperson with a series of ads that started airing in 1997. Her outlandish outfits, cutting humor, and exaggerated accent made her a stand-out of 90s television, and she's been endlessly imitated since.


The company that propelled her to fame didn't propel her to fortune, however. In a 2014 interview, Harris told VICE she was pulling in 24 cents per minute as the company's marquee talent.

In 2002, the PSN was sued by the Federal Trade Commission over deceptive advertising and billing. Eventually, the company's Florida-based owners settled for $500 million, and the woman who made them that money faded into obscurity. In 2006, she came out as a lesbian in the Advocate and voiced a character in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, but she lived a relatively private life after her commercials went off the air in 2003.

She spent the end of her life working as a spiritual adviser, and she is survived by her two children as well as an unknown number of grandchildren.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

I Gotta Have My Pops: Artisanal Poppers Are the Next Big Thing in Butt Sex

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A bottle of 665 Leather's house brand of poppers and a bottle of Jungle Juice aerosol poppers, surrounded by poppers pins made by the author. Photo by the author

I was first introduced to poppers (the inhalant that makes anal sex a breeze and dancing a joy) by a lesbian roommate who worked at a nightclub bar, who would return home each night with an armful of confiscated drugs. (It was, suffice it to say, an incredible living arrangement.) One drunken night, when I was 20, she forced me to take my first hit. Seconds later, I found myself rolling around on the carpet, giggling uncontrollably while my face turned red with heat.

I had no idea poppers were primarily a hookup drug until I was offered them during, you know, a hookup. I became massively confused, wondering why my guy wanted to turn the tide of our passionate night toward a tickle party. But it was then that I came to understand the glory that is sex on poppers.

In their heyday, poppers were typically made from a form of alkyl nitrite called amyl nitrite or isobutyl nitrite. Nowadays, retail variations can include harsh formulas—everything from cyclohexyl nitrite to isopropyl nitrate—that often seem strong enough to strip paint; when inhaled, they can produce headaches, possibly cause permanent vision damage, and, according to some experts, even sudden death; older, legit formulas merely produce a pleasant ten-second high.

How reliably they produce that high, of course, depends on the brand you're inhaling. And there's a lot more to poppers these days than whatever Al Pacino was snorting in Cruising.

My body is now a prison and my brain is floating, waiting for my sensory system to restart, and I feel as if a friend were to shock or surprise me while I'm on them, my heart would explode.

At sex shops, you'll take your pick from seemingly dozens of brands of tiny amber bottles, with names like Amsterdam, Locker Room, Jungle Juice and Rush. I refer to the latter as the Nike of inhalants, and while Rush may be the most recognizable brand in the game, its vials aren't produced with the same care as, say, a fine Scotch. Bottles of "Rush" are sold for $5 at New York bodegas and $20 at upscale LA sex shops; there's legitimate formulations, obviously counterfeit offerings, and everything in between. And it's as important as ever to know what you're popping into. Maculopathy, after all, is never a hot look.

Enter small batch, local, artisanal poppers. Given how (relatively) easy it is to homebrew it, some gear and fetish shops now offer signature blends on the DL. A friend of a friend tipped me off to 665 Leather, a leather store in West Hollywood, which offers an unlabeled 10 ml bottle of its own unique formula for $20, one it simply calls "Leather Cleaner." (Other shops I called were cagey about divulging many details over the phone—one obliquely told me to "stop by," and left it at that—but I've heard that more than a few sex shops now carry house brands.)

While picking up a bottle, I was told it was made by "a guy," and the concoction is "similar" to amyl nitrite. I'd like to envision said man in a white lab coat with an MIT diploma nearby, but I later settle for picturing a leather pig who may or may not own a rubber fist.

I give them a rip once I get home, and the effects are intense compared to your everyday bottle of Locker Room or Nitro. My head is on fire and pulsating; my lungs feel like helium balloons inflated to their limit. The first hit is no joke, but once my eyes stop watering and I bow my head for round two, I find I'm unable to repeat the euphoria I experienced just moments before. Which is sad, because some formulas maintain their potency for hit after hit after of cheek-flushing hits. (Though as I clear my nostrils after my dive into Leather Cleaner, I catch a pleasant sweetness in my nose, and the slightest hint of vanilla bean. It's a wonderful vintage nonetheless.)

At the other end of the poppers spectrum lay varieties that offer the same high in more intense ways, and while at 665, I picked up a bottle of aerosol poppers named Jungle Juice. These contain ethyl chloride, and there's no recommended dose, because the label indicates they're "for cleaning glass and metal surfaces." They are, to say the least, decidedly sketchier than your average bottle of Rush—and I can't recommend you try them out, because the risk of harm to your body is that much greater, as I later learned.

I reach out to an experienced friend for further instructions, and he advises me that a five-second spray on a clean sock will do the trick; hold to mouth, breathe in a few times, and enjoy. I give it a whirl, and within ten seconds, my body is tingling from head to toe. (Especially my fingers, but I also think I sprayed that hand trying to angle the nozzle—this stuff is no joke.) The effect is far removed from the typical jolt I get from a normal huff of poppers; my body is now a prison and my brain is floating, waiting for my sensory system to restart, and I feel as if a friend were to shock or surprise me while I'm on them, my heart would explode. They're definitely doing... something to my body.

After giving them another try, I decide to play doctor and determine that it is in my best medical interest to discontinue use of this product. The next morning, my throat felt noticeably sore. It's possible I overdid it with these, but then again, the label reads "Cleaning Solution," and instructions suggest the formula is great for stainless steel kitchen appliances, so who knows what went wrong or why my reaction felt so harsh. The bottle could say "¯\_(ツ)_/¯" and I would have the same idea of what it is and how to use it.

With all the names, formulas, manufacturers, and counterfeiters of poppers in the world today, it's impossible to know exactly what you're ingesting and how much is too much when it comes to the drug. According to some studies, poppers are fairly innocuous—in 2007, they were ranked 19th out of 20 popular drugs in terms of addictiveness and potential for harm. Some people have gluten allergies and feel fatigued when they cave and eat that office donut; others take their first whiff of poppers and end up blowing out the center of their retinas. If you do choose to indulge in some unvetted formulation of the stuff, it's in your best interest to do some research to determine the authenticity of the product and what it's actually made of. In this day and age, there are forums and communities of users with decades of aggregated experience on the topic. It's a terrifying world out there in poppers-land—one day, hopefully, we'll see GMO-free nitrites on the shelves of Whole Foods, but until then, play safe.

The author's cat also enjoys a huff of euphoria. Gif by the author

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Fatal Police Beating Of Somali Canadian Abdirahman Abdi Raises Alarming Questions

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Abdirahman Abdi seen in undated family photos.

This week the Canadian Black Lives Matter movement was forced to adopt yet another hashtag highlighting tragedy in the black community.

#JusticeforAbdirahman was created to demand accountability in the death of Abdirahman Abdi, a Somali Canadian man who was beaten by Ottawa police Sunday, and appeared to be left lying in handcuffs for about ten minutes before receiving CPR. He was later pronounced dead.

Abdi, 37, lived in the Hintonburg neighbourhood; he was believed to have had a mental illness and was described by one neighbour as a "very peaceful guy" and a gentleman. On Sunday morning, police responding to reports of groping at a Hintonburg coffee shop found Abdi and began chasing him. Speaking to the media, witnesses have said Abdi was pepper-sprayed and beaten with batons, as well as kicked and punched, with heavy blows delivered to his face and neck.

A video shot from a balcony above the scene and published by the Ottawa Citizen shows Abdi handcuffed and laying face down on the pavement, bleeding.

He was taken to hospital and pronounced dead on Monday. However, a spokeswoman for the family said he had actually been dead 45 minutes prior to being assessed by doctors on Sunday.

The province's police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit, is now investigating the incident and neither police nor the SIU is commenting. But some members of the Somali Canadian community and Black Lives Matter are saying the death shows race-based police brutality is just as much of a problem here as it is south of the border. The Ottawa Police Association has denied that charge.

Based on our limited knowledge of how things unfolded Sunday, there are several tough questions that warrant explanations:

What threat did Abdi pose?
Ottawa police beat Abdi to death, hitting him with enough force to cause him to bleed and eventually die of his injuries. Why? There is no indication that Abdi was armed at the time the incident took place. Witnesses saw him holding up a foam block over his head, as if to protect himself against an officer who was chasing him with a baton; another officer apparently pulled up in a car beside him and immediately became violent.

"The officer emerged from that car very rapidly ... immediately jumped into the altercation and administered a number of very heavy blows to the head and face and neck of Mr. Abdi," bystander Ross McGhie told the CBC.

Matt Skof, president of the Ottawa Police Association, said officers were called to a "violent incident" that they had to contain.

"The officers were experiencing a male that was assaultive in behaviour. So they are required, they're bound to react to that, they have to react to that, they have to contain that," he said in a radio interview with CBC's All In a Day. What remains unclear is how Abdi was acting "violent" and how it could have justified the extremely violent response police gave.

Did the cops know Abdi was mentally ill?
"He's mentally ill, I saw the whole thing. You beat up handicap people!" one bystander to Abdi's death can be heard shouting during the video that shows him bleeding on the ground. Speaking to the Citizen, Zainab Abdallah said she saw the attack go down and told officers Abdi was mentally ill. Skof told CBC he didn't know whether or not the cops were aware of Abdi's mental health issues but "it doesn't really change in any way the decision that you are going to have to make to ensure public safety." He said the officers have a duty to prevent "more injuries to members of the public, to the subject or suspect themselves, as well as the officers." But this isn't the first time cops' ability to de-escalate situations involving mentally ill citizens has been called into question. A coroner's inquest ruled the 2014 shooting death of Toronto man Jermaine Carby, 33, was a homicide. Carby was shot multiple times and killed by officers after being carded at a traffic stop. The Carby inquest recommended police be better trained for "unconscious bias, mental health issues, de-escalation and use of force."

Why did it take so long to get Abdi medical attention?
The video shows Abdi was laying facedown on the ground handcuffed, his blood pooling, as a couple of officers crouched beside him offering no medical assistance. At one point, two officers attempt to push him onto his side.The footage rolls for 10 minutes before paramedics on scene begin performing CPR, with witnesses shouting, "Where's all the police, where's the ambulance? He's gonna die" and "Oh my god, he's going to bleed to death." On Monday, Ottawa Police Chief Charles Bordeleau told the Citizen officers did attempt CPR and called for paramedics 23 seconds after Abdi collapsed. A spokesman for the family told reporters Abdi had "been already dead 45 minutes before he arrived on care of the doctors" and yet the family wasn't notified of his death until Monday. This raises two questions: why did it take so long for a man who was in critical condition to receive medical attention; and why did health officials delay telling his family he was dead by an entire day?

Did police tell bystanders not to call paramedics and to put their phones away?
The Citizen interviewed witnesses who said cops tried to take their cellphones away because they were recording the incident. If true, this is an infringement on civil liberties, and the cops should have to answer for it. According to PEN Canada, "it is not a crime in Canada for anyone to photograph a uniformed police officer, as long as the photographer does not obstruct or interfere with the execution of their duties; and it is a violation of their Charter rights to prevent anyone from doing so."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Sex Tips for Young People, from Older People Who've Been at It for Decades

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(Photo: Flickr user Angrylambie1, via)

Older people love having sex. That's because, like younger people, they too are also humans, and humans generally enjoy having sex with other humans. It's a lot of fun, and it feels great, and it's good for your bones and your heart and your soul. So it's no surprise that a recent report found that 26 percent of people over 60 in the UK are unhappy with life because they're not having sex enough. In fact, a lack of sex later on in life, it turns out, is a greater cause of distress than being stuck at home all day, living in relative squalor or being widowed.

A 2015 University of Manchester study found that 54 percent of men and 31 percent of woman over 70 are sexually active, but for the remaining percentages, it must be frustrating racking up all those decades of experience and then not being able to anything with it. So because you can never know too much about ~coitus~, we asked a bunch of people over (or near) the age of 60 to share some of that experience with us, giving us their best sex tips and asking them about they've seen sex change throughout their lives.

Sue, 67

(Photo: Agnieszka Chabros for Catalogue Mag)

In the late 1960s, in Britain, men still had all the power, so they asked women out on dates, and people would go to things like balls. But then there was also the radical hippy group who came in and held orgies with marijuana and acid and sexy dancers.

Even though men weren't very experienced with sex, because they didn't get to have experiences with any women that were more advanced sexually, women just thought whatever they did was OK because it was all they knew. And since all young people lived at home with their parents, there was no opportunity to go out and have flagrant sex and experiment on the kitchen floor. The change started in the mid-60s, because the music became a huge signifier of what was different. It was an odd time, though, because there was this huge sense of conservatism throughout it all – women were still writing cookery books and knitting back then, for god's sake. But then a whole bunch of acid came along and it gave people the freedom to say, "I will not get married, I will not have children, I will not be locked into housework; I will get a job and fly around the world instead." In the 70s my sister and I were living in a beach town, so we had to have sex with a different boy every night for a year to get experience. People went from sitting at home and eating TV dinners to not ever going home and dancing and fucking as much as they could.

The best thing to do to learn about sex is to go and have a lot of sex. I would tell everyone to go out and pick up random people. People should also talk about things, because there's no replacement for that. Definitely, definitely practice masturbation, because that's a skill. You have to know exactly what you want, and you've got to know what's happening to your body. So, if you're with a partner that can't give you those tingles in your feet, you're with the wrong person and you've got to leave them, because sex dictates how your relationship will be. You must also love your body and explore it in every single way. Even the top of your head; everything. You should also be very informed on sex toys – everyone should go to Amsterdam, because really that's where the best sex shops are, and it's brilliant! Having sex with people of the same gender is important, too – everyone should try that at least once in their life, but be sure to just have lots of one night stands in general. Lastly, everyone should try bondage games at some point in his or her life. With the right partner, it can be amazing. Oh, and everyone should make a movie of themselves having sex. If you're not turned on, don't do it. That's the only rule with sex.

Leo*, 59

People have always had sex – I doubt there's anything that people do today which wasn't done by the generation before us, or the generation before that, or the one before that, etc. I don't think dating has changed, either – people still go to the same kinds of places and get up to the same kinds of shenanigans.

Finding a date has certainly changed, though. Apps like Tinder have made it possible to find a date while sat on the sofa, which I guess is fine for most, but it sort of takes the sport out of it. I think the best part of dating is the thrill of the chase, the subtleties of flirting and the risk that she might already be in a relationship. With Tinder, this is all removed. How dull!

I've been very lucky in my life. Without sounding like a complete arse, I have never had a problem in getting a date, and I've done pretty much everything that can be done, sexually. If I were to offer any pearls of wisdom to younger men, it would be this: porn isn't real. The women that you will meet in your life are not porn stars and sex isn't like it is portrayed in porn films. Take time with your partner and don't be an arsehole.

Jo*, 60

When the six-week block of school holidays came around in the late-60s, my friends and I would meet up and go out to parks to meet up with boys and kiss them in the bushes. We'd meet the boys at the youth club and then get together afterwards, and if we could we'd get into clubs because sometimes they didn't check how old we were. We'd go there early and stay until way past midnight by putting mops in our beds with wigs on top so our parents wouldn't find out because they were Christians and would have gone crazy. All the boys used to walk us home, though. There was never the question or thought they'd do something bad to us, because it just wasn't like that. No matter how far it was, they'd walk us home.

Everything was different then; I got pregnant with my first child when I was 16, so we started young, even though our parents didn't want us to. It was all about breaking the rules and doing what we wanted to do at the time. I'd put on my best dress, make-up and go! Those were the days – everything was easier then and no one was scared of what might happen because it wasn't very likely anything would. We had good times back then, man. Things are so much different now, though – we could be free and do what we wanted, but people have to be much more careful now. I hear so many horror stories these days that I just want to tell all my grandchildren not to go out with strangers and do what I did, because you just can't any more.

If you do find someone you like and you get along and that spark is there, make sure you use protection! Or the pill if you've been together for a long time and you know where the other person's been. And tell each other what you like and what you don't – that is so important. When I got pregnant I'd only had sex a few times and I didn't even like it that much back then. So don't continue with something you aren't enjoying or you don't think is all that, and don't ditch your friends for anyone. Those are the most important things! That wasn't even on my mind when I was fooling about, because no one talked about it, but there you have it.

READ ON BROADLY: Teen Girls Are Roasting Boys Online in New Cyberbullying Trend

Ron*, 59

It's definitely become easier now for people to find sex. Dating was there earlier, but it was difficult to engage in sex unless there was some hope of a relationship. Today, I've found it really doesn't matter if people engage in sex even without a relationship. It's more out of carnal desire probably, or just to convince yourself there is physical compatibility.

Easy availability of sexual services via the internet has also made things so different for many people, such as paying for sex or sex outside marriage, for example. It's kind of denigrated the beauty of sex, so more isn't always better in my opinion.

As for sex tips? Don't rush in just for physical attraction or desire. Think about possible consequences, too. But, most importantly, you can enjoy a good sex life without making it the only headline in any relationship. Love, live, laugh and enjoy a relationship.

*Names have been changed to suit the person's low-key lifestyle.

@YasminAJeffery / @its_me_salma

More on VICE:

I Sent Everyone I've Ever Had Sex with a Survey to Find Out How Good I Am in Bed

Everything I've Learned About Sex

Some Important Questions for 'Sex Box', the TV Show Where People Have Sex in a Box

The VICE Morning Bulletin

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Delegates cheer as Hillary Clinton speaks to the crowd on day two of the Democratic National Convention. Image via Getty

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

Clinton Makes History as First Female Nominee
The Democrats officially nominated Hillary Clinton to be the first female presidential nominee of a major party in US history. Bill Clinton talked about his "best friend" during Tuesday night's keynote speech, saying: "She will never quit you." Hundreds of Bernie Sanders delegates walked out of the convention hall after Clinton received the nomination.—NBC News


Obama Says Russia Could Be Behind DNC Hack

President Obama says he could not rule out Russia's involvement in the DNC email leak that has disrupted the party's convention. "What we do know is that the Russians hack our systems," said Obama, who added that "Trump has gotten pretty favorable coverage back in Russia."—Reuters


Apple Profits Fall as iPhone Sales Slump

Apple has reported a second consecutive quarter of falling iPhone sales, and the company's quarterly profit has fallen 27 percent. Apple sold just over 40.4 million iPhones in the third quarter, compared to 47.5 million a year earlier. Chief executive Tim Cook said the results "better than we expected."—The Wall Street Journal


Dozens Arrested Protesting Death of Philando Castile

Police in Saint Paul arrested dozens of people protesting the death of Philando Castile in front of the Minneapolis governor's mansion. Demonstrators have been camping outside the governor's residence since July 7, but 46 people were arrested on Tuesday for public nuisance and unlawful assembly.—CBS News

International News

French Priest Killer Monitored by Police
One of the men suspected of killing a priest at a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in France was wearing a police surveillance tag at the time of the attack. Adel Kermiche, 19, and a fellow attacker slit the throat of the elderly priest before being killed by police. Kermiche was arrested two times last year trying to reach Syria.—BBC News


Helicopter Strikes Kill 18 in Syria
Government air strikes in rebel-held areas of Aleppo have killed 18 people, as fighting intensifies once again in Syria. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, government helicopters targeted the al-Mashhad neighborhood. The UN special envoy said there would be a renewed push to restart talks next month.—Al Jazeera


Venezuela Government Rejects Referendum Calls
Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government is fighting efforts by the opposition to oust Maduro via a referendum. The socialists lodged a complaint with the election board, claiming the Democratic Unity (MUD) opposition falsified signatures to trigger a referendum, using the signatures of 11,000 dead people.—Reuters


Floods and Landslides in Nepal Leave 54 Dead
Floods and landslides triggered by monsoon rains in Nepal have killed 54 people over the last two days, according to officials. Hundreds of people have been forced to leave their homes after rivers breached the banks, and at least 20 people are missing, said home ministry spokesman Yadav Prasad Koirala.—AP

Everything Else

Beyoncé's Lemonade Leads the Way at VMAs
Beyoncé's visual album Lemonade scored a leading 11 nominations for this year's MTV Video Music Awards, including video of the year for Formation. Adele received eight VMA nominations.—USA Today


Bill O'Reilly Says White House Slaves Were Well-Fed
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly conceded that Michelle Obama was right to point out the White House was built by slaves, but said: "Slaves that worked there were well fed and had decent lodgings."—Vox


Judge Says Bitcoin Is Not Real Money
A Miami judge has ruled that Bitcoin currency is not actually money. Judge Teresa Mary Pooler threw out the felony charges against web designer Michell Espinoza, who had been charged with illegally laundering $1,500 worth of Bitcoins.—Miami Herald


Pot Company Trades on Stock Exchange

Canopy Growth Corp., Canada's largest marijuana produce, officially began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), a first for North America. The market value of the company is an estimated $300 million.—VICE News


Pokémon Go Takes Over McDonald's in Japan
Pokémon Go has teamed up with the fast food giant, turning every Japanese McDonald's into a destination for players. Every single one of the fast food restaurants in Japan is either a Pokéstop or a gym.—Munchies


Rio Police Find Cocaine Bags Bearing Olympic Logo
Police in Rio seized 93 baggies of cocaine bearing the Olympic logo and the heading "Rio 2016." The apparently thoughtful dealers included a special warning to "use longe das crianças," or use away from children.—VICE News


The VICE Guide to the 2016 Election: Did Bill Clinton Convince Democrats That His Wife Is a Human?

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Former president Bill Clinton addresses the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on Tuesday, July 26. All photos by Jason Bergman

Leaning on his best throwback Arkansas drawl, former president Bill Clinton pulled off what might have been the most significant moment of his post-presidential existence at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia Tuesday, delivering his first keynote speech as the official spouse of the party's presidential nominee.

That the former president was speaking just hours after the mothers of black people slain by cops appeared together onstage and elicited chants of "Black Lives Matter" elevated the stakes. After all, that chant wasn't exactly a staple of American life the last time Clinton—whose record on issues like welfare and criminal justice has come under intense scrutiny during his wife's current White House campaign—appeared at a party like this one.

Even amid the furor over high-profile police killings that have thrust racial justice into the national conversation once again, Clinton ducked and weaved around the issue, also managing to steer clear of economic problems like Wall Street regulation and political corruption that have driven the left wing of the Democratic Party since Clinton left office. Instead, the former president struck a much more personal chord, going on—at great length—about his romantic pursuit of the first woman to win a major party's presidential nomination.

"I got close enough to touch her back, but I couldn't do it," Clinton said of one of his initial encounters with his future wife, when the couple were still students at Yale Law School. "Somehow, I knew this might not be another tap on the shoulder. And I might be starting something I couldn't stop."

But after lingering for perhaps a bit too long on the mechanics of their early intimacy, the former president seemed to hit his formidable stride, touting his wife as a champion for kids, immigrants, women, and poor people, and revealing himself to be a surprisingly effective surrogate for the new Democratic nominee.

"Hillary is uniquely qualified to seize the opportunity and reduce the risk we face," he told the party that still adores him personally even if it has mixed feelings about his legacy. "And she is still the best darn change-maker I have ever known."

By the end of the night, the most potent dynasty in American politics was officially the only game in town, and the only political recourse left for liberal voters fearful of a future President Donald Trump. With his quintessentially Clinton speech, Bill had forced a new reality on the Democratic Party, and particularly on supporters of Bernie Sanders, just hours after they attempted one final, dramatic stand for their failed primary candidate.

"I wouldn't say the speech was helpful—I still think there's a big difference between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton," Heidi Wegleitner, a Sanders delegate from Madison, Wisconsin, told me on the floor after the former president spoke. "But Clinton was nominated, and I'm very concerned about the possibility of a President Trump."

A very happy delegate soaks in Bill Clinton's 2016 convention speech.

Of course, nothing Clinton said Tuesday night dispelled the deep divisions that continue to fracture the party's identity—a rupture evidenced by the persistent protests outside the convention from movements like Occupy and Black Lives Matter.

"Oligarchy is nothing any of us want," said Keon Gerow, a Philadelphia-based pastor and Clinton delegate, told me Tuesday night. "So the reality now is, once she's elected, we have to hold her feet to the fire—hold her accountable for her actions to the lowest of people."

If nothing else, though, Tuesday's speech proved that Bill Clinton can still bring it. And the fact that no one even close to his stature has emerged on the Republican side to get behind Donald Trump underscored the formidability of the Clintons campaign team.

"Tell me you wouldn't cut off an arm to have somebody like that in our party," GOP strategist Rick Wilson said of his fellow Republicans after the speech. "To come out and deliver a message like that and just hammer the ball out of the park like that."

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

The Cult of Tahiti Treat, Drake’s Much-Loved but Impossible to Find Soft Drink

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A trio of the elusive Drake-approved beverage. Photo via Flickr user paisley's such a nice girl

In 2012, I took an overnight Greyhound from Toronto to Albany. It's the same bus route that takes you to New York City, which stops right after it crosses the border at a depot in Buffalo, where there's a ticket counter, a couple of marginally-better-than-the-one-on-the-bus bathrooms, and a few vending machines. And it was in one of those vending machines that, at around 2 AM in late October, I saw something I hadn't seen in years—a decade, maybe: a can of Tahitian Treat.

People who were kids in the 90s will remember the hot-pink, fizzy beverage as Tahiti Treat, which is what it was called when pre-aughts babies (or, more likely, their parents) were able to purchase it on the regular. Drake is one such millennial fan: he raps that he "used to hit the corner store to get Tahiti Treat" on Views track "Weston Road Flows." Back when Drizzy was drinking it, Tahitian Treat was as commonly stocked in grocery stores as fellow 90s pop faves Orbitz and Clearly Canadian. But while the latter two beverages have disappeared into obsolescence (or crowdfunding purgatory, as is the case with Canadian Classic), Tahitian Treat is still around—it's just next to impossible to find north of the border.

The result is that it's become kind of a cult soda, a fizzy beverage whose admirers catalogue lists of regular convenience-store stockists to visit for a fix. Michael K. Newton is one of them—he actually requested to be called a "Tahitian Treat aficionado" for this article. The Toronto-based DJ (Noisey wrote about him late last year, when his monthly all-Smiths and Morrissey DJ night took a bow) and TRP Radio founder regularly Instagrams his Tahitian Treat hook-ups, but has two stores in downtown Toronto that he calls "failsafe": one at College and Dovercourt, just up the street from TRP, and Bloor Mini Mart at Bloor and Symington: "I've even once found a rare two-litre there," he told me.

READ MORE: Drake Is Brought Up During Another Interview with a Toronto Artist, We're Tired of Writing About This

Newton—like many Tahitian Treat fans—is picky about how the drink is described. He takes umbrage with the idea that it tastes anything like Hawaiian Punch, a sugary, similarly-hued beverage also produced by the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group (DPSG). To him, it tastes "like you would assume a punch bowl at a high school dance would, sans alcohol." He also keeps an eye out for analogues: the short-lived C Plus Fruit Frenzy, often erroneously cited online as DPSG's Tahitian Treat replacement, comes close; Crush's 2013 limited-edition summer flavour, which featured popular bro-rockers Hedley on its labelling, is another contender. "I recognized the singer from Hedley one night at a bar, so I went up to him and talked to him about the pop," Newton says. "People were asking to get their picture with him and I just kept hammering the Tahiti chat. He agreed that the flavor was similar."

Newton's Mini Mart is an oft-cited source of "rare" sodas—vanilla and cherry Cokes, for instance—on Reddit, which is itself a hotbed for Canadian Tahitian Treat seekers, tipsters, and conspiracy theorists. One thread from Toronto in 2013 suggests the bevvy is contraband in Canada (it isn't) because it contains the dye Red40, which is a banned substance here (it's not); another from Calgary points to Vintage Pop Shop in Airdirie as a source of Tahitian Treat (it's also stocked at the Gummi Boutique in Calgary, alongside Pineapple Crush, which you can normally only find in Newfoundland). Meanwhile, a message board on GTAmotorcycle.com suggests mixing ginger ale with Hawaiian Punch for DIY Tahitian Treat, while a Yahoo! Answers page seeking the drink from a full decade ago betrays Tahitian Treat's true rarity: "I'm in Toronto/Mississauga, and I've never heard of it before," a poster wrote. "I don't think it's in Canada yet."

Red-dye conspiracies, goose chases, and 90s nostalgia aside, the fact of the matter is simple: Tahitian Treat isn't distributed in Canada any longer because it's a tough sell. The bright pink, ambiguously flavoured, super-saccharine novelty beverage worked 20 years ago, when we were so unbothered by sugar that stores were selling soda with candy floating right in it. But as the pop-buying public grew wise to the health risks associated with chemical additives and drinking your weight in sugar, it was only natural that a beverage whose main descriptor—flavour- and colour-wise—is "artificial" would fall out of favour. DPSG cut back distribution of Tahitian Treat to the area where it sells best: the US southeast.

That's where Dave Repol gets it. He's the owner of Soda Pop Central, the niche beverage seller located in Whitby, Ontario. Repol figures that if anyone in the GTA is stocking Tahitian Treat, they're buying it from him: he orders the drink one skid—210 cases of 12 cans—at a time from a wholesale distributor in North Carolina, and regularly ships skids as far as BC. But he says that even if Canadian convenience stores wanted to go it alone and buy directly from US wholesalers, it'd be tough: most of them stock cold beverages in branded fridges, and if a Coca-Cola or Pepsi rep found Tahitian Treat on their shelves, they'd have it removed. "When I retire," Repol says, "I'm going to write a book about pop politics."

So for now, fans of the fluorescent-hued, maybe-kinda-fruit-punchy beverage will just have to keep their eyes peeled. Though you never know: last month, PepsiCo re-released Crystal Pepsi, the widely-derided 90s soda that is now all but flying off shelves. Partly, that's due to clever marketing: PepsiCo released the see-through soda alongside a video game called The Crystal Pepsi Trail, the brand's take on the classic 90s game The Oregon Trail. One can only imagine that a similar approach would work for Tahitian Treat, given its existing cult status. All they'd have to do is get Drake to sing the jingle.

Follow Rebecca Tucker on Twitter.

Why People Think Potheads Are Lazy: A History

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Sean Penn as Spicoli in 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High.' Universal Pictures

"I no longer doubt that marijuana can be an intellectual stimulant," wrote the Harvard professor Lester Grinspoon in 1994. "It can help the user to penetrate conceptual boundaries, promote fluidity of associations, and enhance insight and creativity."
Those sentences are from his introduction to an edition of Marihuana Reconsidered, his groundbreaking 1971 book that aimed to challenge the public outcry over marijuana use.

The original edition ofMarihuana Reconsidered also included an essay by someone who referred to himself as "Mr. X," and he noted how being high in the shower helped him figure out how racism worked—a revelation that inspired him to write 11 essays in an hour. The claim sounded crazy, until it was revealed that Mr. X was Carl Motherfucking Sagan.

Sagan is a great example of a pothead who's accomplished amazing stuff while high—and he's not alone. Steve Jobs used marijuana to aid his creativity in the 70s, while weed was one of many chemicals it took to get Hunter S. Thompson's mental engines revving. Francis Crick was one of the scientists who discovered DNA, as well as an unlikely pot advocate who was a founding member of the proto-legalization group called Society of Mental Awareness (SOMA). The famed neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote that pot allowed him to reconcile with his own atheism; author Lee Childs—whose Jack Reacher novels are a favorite among the Fox News set—recently admitted he's smoked every night for 44 years and writes while stoned. So why the hell do people generally think of potheads as lazy do-nothings?

There was once a time when marijuana was accepted among intellectuals and creative types as lubrication for the brain. Under the influence of hashish, "people completely unsuited for word-play will improvise an endless string of puns and wholly improbable idea relationships fit to outdo the ablest masters of this preposterous craft," wrote the French poet, essayist, and general chill-ass dude Charles Baudelaire in 1860. He added, "Every difficult question... becomes clear and transparent. Every contradiction is reconciled. Man has surpassed the gods."

Of course, Baudelaire was geographically and temporally separated from the American moral majority's reign of marijuana scare-mongering in the 60s and 70s. As Grinspoon wrote, "There is something peculiar about illicit drugs: If they don't always make the drug user behave irrationally, they certainly cause many nonusers to behave that way."

And right when marijuana cultivated a reputation as the counterculture's substance of choice, the government stepped in to impose what Allen St. Pierre refers to as "the idea that marijuana use creates a lack of productivity, a slobbishness, a lack of attention." St. Pierre is executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (or NORML), and says that those stereotypes have been around since the Nixon administration, who used them to wrest legitimacy from anti-Vietnam War activists.

Nixon and his cohorts worked to ensure that, as St. Pierre puts it, "Regardless of your political affiliation, if you were a Vietnam War protestor, ergo, you were a pot smoking, non-working hippie." A talkative, bubbly guy, St. Pierre essentially functions as a one-man force against public misconceptions regarding weed: He speaks with gleeful erudition about marijuana, and he estimates he's done "thousands" of interviews about the drug since joining NORML in 1991.

As the years have passed, the myth of the pot-smoking slacker has grown thanks to the Partnership for a Drug Free America (PDFA), the organization behind the notorious "This Is Your Brain on Drugs" ads. Founded in 1985, the Partnership for a Drug Free America brought together the best and brightest in the advertising industry to create ads meant to, according to one LA Times article from 1996, "un-sell" the idea of taking drugs. The PDFA didn't just brand drugs as lame, but actively dangerous, too; and just like Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign, the PDFA initially did little to distinguish between weed and harder substances such as cocaine or heroin.

One of its ads depicted a kid who smoked pot once as dangling from puppet strings, while another found a stoned kid named Tommy smoking a joint in the park being mocked by his schoolmates for being a delirious loser. Another featured a documentary-style interview with an imaginary burnout whose pot use led him to heroin at the age of 14. Scary stuff—that is, until it was revealed in 1997 that the PDFA was being bankrolled in part by Big Alcohol, Big Tobacco, and Big Pharma, a plot that St. Pierre rightly says is "about as Orwellian as you can get."

Though the PDFA swore off accepting funds from alcohol and tobacco companies in 1997, it still accepts donations from Big Pharma; two years ago, the Nation wrote about how Purdue Pharma—the makers of OxyContin—was a major funder of anti-marijuana legalization efforts. But St. Pierre tells me that he expects stoner stereotypes to decrease as the decriminalization of marijuana increases: "When one walks into a marijuana dispensary today, they see some are designed equal to or better than any Starbucks." As more people become familiar with weed, and realize it doesn't turn them or the users they know into puppets on a string, the perception lifts.

Meanwhile, anecdotes of artists using marijuana to enhance both their creativity and productivity are myriad. DJ Quik frantically mixed half of Tupac's classic post-jail album All Eyez on Me in 48 hours by alternating between a steady smoking regimen of cigarettes and joints (Quik's reps confirmed to VICE that the story is true). And as St. Pierre points out, "Listen to the Beatles in their first years of existence, then listen to Sgt. Pepper. It wasn't the fact that they went from being 22 to 26—it's that they took marijuana."

And anyway, science—to a certain degree—backs up the idea that weed can motivate rather than deflate. A 2011 study showed that alcoholics who switched from booze to weed might experience increased creativity as a result, and a 2014 academic paper posited that marijuana could help increase creativity in uncreative people.

"I don't think marijuana is a key that unlocks something," St. Pierre is keen to clarify. "But marijuana can help people get through their day and have a series of clear thoughts. People are ripping away the overwrought static in their head and live a more functional life. If that isn't creativity, then what is?"

Follow Drew Millard on Twitter.

The Best and Worst Celebrity Speeches of the DNC's Second Night

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"The DNC is going to be So. Fucking. Boring." Several colleagues expressed that sentiment to me late last week, when the last-20-minutes-of-The House of the Devil-esque Republican National Convention was winding down.

The sentiment was understandable: Yes, pivoting from a week-long parade of race-baiting and fear-mongering to something more closely approaching sanity would provide sweet relief, but there was a very real possibility that the Democratic Party would take a dull, middle-of-the-road approach while laying out its agenda this week. The RNC resembled what would happen if you filled your racist grandfather with fireworks and threw a match down his throat, and who could compete with such a spectacle as that?

And yet—people are watching the DNC. Not only that, but more people are watching the DNC so far than they did the RNC. This is, on one level, hopeful—partially because it presents the notion that there's another purpose to this election cycle besides watching the firmament of democracy burn to ash.

But also because there's been some truly inspiring moments to come from this week so far: Besides Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Warren's powerful first-night moments, the second night of the DNC featured the Mothers of the Movement urging the party and America to make meaningful strides toward police and gun reform for the sake of black lives and the future of humanity. "This isn't about being politically correct," said Sybrina Fulton, mother of slain black teenager Trayvon Martin. "This is about saving our children." (If only Fox News viewers got the message.)

Less effective was Elizabeth Banks, whose Trump-parodying entrance fell about as flat as, well, the rest of her speech. Political humor is always a risk, even for the most seasoned of comedians—and make no mistake, Banks is typically a capable and funny presence. But perhaps it wasn't a shock that her jabs about The Hunger Games and wolfing down cheesesteaks were met with a "please clap" level of enthusiasm.

I previously mentioned how musical performances similarly stand on a wobbly precipice at events like this, but the DNC's second night featured some strong performances by R&B newcomer Andra Day and Alicia Keys, the latter of which dropped a hot one-two punch by performing the immortal As I Am track "Superwoman" and her extremely sick trop-house single "In Common." Perhaps less effective was the Brady Bunch-meets-Pomplamoose rendition of Rachel Platten's "Fight Song," the type of viral video that actually stands to make viewers sick to their stomaches with cloying sweetness.

Making memes is something that Hillary Clinton and Democrats have struggled with in this election cycle, perhaps to the point where one wishes they'd just stop trying and become the physical manifestation of a stack of New Yorker back issues that we all know they are. So it was surprising that the DNC's second night was loaded with potent viral moments, from Howard Dean's sorta-recreation of the famous "scream" (watch it above), to Meryl Streep's extremely dope flag dress, to Lena Dunham and America Ferrera's concise, withering arrows fired directly at Trump's campaign. (It was relieving not to see Dunham, a smart and talented artist who is nonetheless responsible for one of the worst tweets of all time, step in it while speaking out—Lord knows she certainly could have.)

And of course, there was Bill Clinton's epic poem of a speech, a 42-minute marathon that made Forrest Gump's bus-stop pontificating seem like the length of a Vine by comparison. Perhaps the strangest revelation, tucked within Clinton's warm blanket of an oration, was the fact that he and daughter Chelsea had watched all six movies in the risible Police Academy franchise in one day—an impressive-enough feat that caused "Police Academy" to briefly trend on Twitter.

But the most bizarre viral moment came after Alicia Keys's performance, when a montage of US Presidents were shown on screen before Hillary appeared amidst shattered fragments, a literal representation of breaking the glass ceiling by being the first woman nominated for president by a major political party. The visual effect landed somewhere between a Dril Tweet and a Scientology-orientation video, but the message was resounding and clear: This is history being made, and it's, as Joe Biden would put it, a big fucking deal. There's hope that the country recognizes that too—but with that comes unfortunate reminders that progress is, above all else, slow.

Follow Larry Fitzmaurice on Twitter.

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