At the time of its 1999 release in the United States, Cowboy Bebop had already aired and completely wrapped in Japan. Back then, director Shinichiro Watanabe and his colleagues would have been familiar with the Gulf War when they created the “War on Titan” within the anime, a traumatic military conflict on a desert-like planet with no discernible purpose that continues to haunt characters well into the present day. But they had no idea about the prolonged Iraq War that was to follow.

Nor could Watanabe’s team have known about the attack on the World Trade Center, occurring just nine days after the show first premiered on September 2, 2001 on Adult Swim, when they conceived of the “Astral Gate accident,” the devastating destruction of a feat of engineering and accomplishment that would have global ramifications for years to come.

Yet the sole anime series in Adult Swim’s inaugural lineup has become timeless in the 20 years since its first debut in Japan on April 3, 1998. With an increasingly American police state, where elections are hacked, and cities that have red or blue political leanings might literally be worlds apart, Cowboy Bebop isn’t just a landmark series in 2018. It’s a prophetic one.

Bebop follows Spike Spiegel and Jet Black, two bounty hunting “cowboys” who take on assignments to make enough money to eat and fuel the Bebop, their interplanetary ship. Spike used to work for the mob and Jet is a former cop, but they’re old friends and do well enough to get by. Things become complicated when they’re joined by Faye Valentine, an opportunistic hustler (and bounty head) who first attempts to rob the duo before deciding to partner with them; a girl named Ed, an eccentric, 13-year old hacker prodigy who makes herself at home aboard their ship; and Ein, a genetically enhanced “data dog” stolen from a research facility that gave it heightened intelligence and perception (but whose purpose or mission is never revealed on the series). The arrival of all three is received by disapproval and dismay from the men but in time, all learn to work together as a somewhat functional family.

On the surface, the show works as a procedural crime drama, with most episodes revolving around the team attempting to capture a particular bounty. The pilot episode, “Asteroid Blues,” follows two wanted lovers up against a drug cartel on the asteroid Tijuana (resembling the present-day city), a nod to Robert Rodriguez’s Desperado. “Toys in the Attic,” where a mysterious life form infiltrates the Bebop and begins incapacitating the crew, plays out as a cross between space alien and survival horror films like Alien and Predator. “Mushroom Samba” is an homage to 1970s blaxploitation films and spaghetti westerns, complete with a badass Pam Grier-lookalike bounty hunter named Coffee and one of the “Shaft” brothers, who drags a coffin around with him, a move straight out of Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 film Django. Memorable music was designed to fit each episode by famed Japanese composer Yoko Kanno, who helped give life to an animated series through music in a way not seen since Vince Guaraldi brought jazz to American households in 1965 with A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Jet Black

Like each episode, each character has their own connection to the past—Jet is haunted by his previous life as a police officer; Faye can’t remember her real identity and is saddled with debt; meanwhile, Ed’s father forgot her at daycare (Dad, seriously?); while Ein is the lost product of a scientific lab experiment. We’re never explicitly given Spike’s full backstory, despite him being the main character, but it involves growing up in the slums of Mars, working his way up in the Triad/Yakuza-inspired Red Dragon Crime Syndicate with another up-and-coming mafia enforcer, Vicious, and making an escape with Vicious’s girlfriend while the former fights as a soldier in the Titan War. In a later episode, Spike explains how his right eye is a prosthetic, forcing him to move through life simultaneously with one eye on the present and the other on the proverbial past, haunted by previous tragedies.

This is but one example of how the show’s sense of backstory envisions a rapidly encroaching future. By 2071, humanity has spread to the stars—from the floating forest settlements of Venus to terraformed cities on Mars to frigid penal colonies on Pluto. But the diaspora of human beings from Earth has taken a physical toll: the loss of nearly five billion lives following an engineering disaster that shattered the Moon 50 years before the start of the series and rained lunar debris across the planet. The only seeming connection between the diverse populations and cultures now scattered about the solar system is a vast criminal presence and the subsequent bounty system that emerged as a way to supplement an overtaxed interstellar police force.

Spike and Faye Valentine

Over the course of the series, Spike and company pursue bounties and watch as people fight and kill one another, sacrifice their lives completely, or throw themselves headlong into pursuing their dreams, righting a wrong, or seeking revenge. The desert War on Titan produced some of Bebop’s biggest villains, including Vicious and Vincent Volaju, a former soldier abandoned and apparently killed, only to resurface and become a larger and more ruthless threat in the present—not unlike how America’s efforts to combat Al-Qaeda in Iraq have resulted in the emergence of ISIS. Both ISIS and Volaju wage war using surprise bombings to achieve their goals, believing in bringing about the end of the world and a final Day of Judgment.

Volaju, like ISIS, has seduced hundreds of followers through ideals of empowerment. “I owe you big time for making this happen,” says Lee Sampson, a teenage hacker who serves as Volaju’s accomplice in the film. “Seriously, I had to try it out just once. Being a real terrorist, I mean.”

Director Shinichiro Watanabe has said that while he doesn’t make films to convey a particular message, they “naturally reflect the way we feel at the time.” When interviewed about why the 2001 Bebop film, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, has an "Arabesque" atmosphere in the imagery and the music, he replied that “I had more of a flavour, or gut instinct if you like […] I just felt this piece should be Arabic.”

Throughout the course of the show, the crew of the Bebop later encounter technologically-modified superhuman clowns, religious cult movement leaders, “children” who are really decades-old killers, lonely artificial intelligence spy satellites, and eco-terrorists wielding genetic-altering viruses. But few scenarios are so revealing about Cowboy Bebop as that pilot episode, “Asteroid Blues,” wherein Spike and Jet pursue a couple on the lam after stealing a cache of drugs from a crime syndicate. Realizing the futility of continuing to run, the woman shoots her boyfriend and goes out in a blaze of glory as her ship is shot to pieces by police, as Spike watches.

In a story that’s relatively tame compared to the crew’s future ordeals, “Asteroid Blues” serves two purposes. First, it directly mirrors the final episode of Bebop and foreshadows how the series will end. Second, we watch Spike and Jet’s neutral reaction to the deaths of random strangers. This is likely just one of a thousand disasters they’ve witnessed in their line of work. When every week yields a shooting or an incident with police or terrorist bombing, we’re reminded how numbing tragedy in the news becomes. In 2018, the tragedies keep coming.

It takes the entire run of the show to galvanize Spike and company into recognizing and coming to terms with the past. We watch the team as they watch, and learn, from bounty heads that either face their demons or are subsequently consumed by them. The closing title card at the end of most episodes through the series reads, “SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY,” a nod to the notion that the audience would tune in again later; similar to the send-off that “James Bond will return” at the end of every 007 film.

In the last episode though, after Spike fights Vicious for the final time, the end title card instead borrows from a Beatles lyric: “YOU’RE GONNA CARRY THAT WEIGHT.” It’s a message to the viewer; having seen the characters of Cowboy Bebop face up to the past, will we learn to confront the troubling legacies of our own? There’s no showdown with the mob for us to face, but plenty of issues to take on, from the consequences of allowing easy access to guns, to military veterans that have gone neglected, to ignoring growing environmental dangers. Cowboy Bebop was a show shaped by the culture—and the challenges—of the 20th century. The result was a forward-thinking anime that offered a glimpse of what tomorrow might look like. We’re still more than 50 years away from Cowboy Bebop’s year 2071, but in 2018, that future has never seemed closer.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Brooklyn-born photographer Marcia Resnick has documented New York City’s art communities for more than half a century. When she was in high school in the 1960s, she mingled with aging hippies at Greenwich Village clubs like Café Au Go Go and Café Wha? And in the 1970s, she shared a loft building in Tribeca with neighbours like Laurie Anderson.

During the 70s and the city’s wildest years, Resnick spent most nights at CBGB, Max’s Kansas City, and the Mudd Club. Around this time, she also started photographing the “bad boys” of the art scene. Resnick wanted to see how powerful men like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Iggy Pop, and William S. Burroughs reacted when the tables were turned and a woman was behind the camera, subjecting them to the female gaze.

Resnick was also enchanted by the gregarious women she lived, worked, and partied with who were simultaneously shaking up the scene. Though it’s less well-known than her Bad Boys series—which was later published as the book Punks, Poets and Provocateurs, NYC Bad Boys 1977-1982 (Insight Editions, 2015)—Resnick’s Wild Women series captures the revolutionary spirit and creative power of artists like Joan Jett, Debbie Harry, and Susan Sontag.

Wild Women is a rarely-seen body of work that embodies the DIY ethos of the era, and VICE recently sat down with Resnick to talk about what it was like documenting her peers and how Women’s Liberation shook up the 70s and 80s.

Left: Debbie Harry in her hotel room. Right: Debbie Harry with veggies after a show. © Marcia Resnick

VICE: How did you get into art and photography?
Resnick: I always loved art. When I was five, my father put a drawing of mine into the window of his printing shop in Brighton Beach. A customer liked it and had it placed in a show at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. That was my first art show.

I went to NYU for two years, then transferred to Cooper Union, where I became captivated by photography. I attended California Institute of the Arts for graduate school, where I studied “Post-Studio Art” with John Baldessari, was mentored by Robert Heinecken of UCLA, and had Ben Lifson, a “straight photographer,” as my graduate advisor.

CalArts awarded me my MFA in Photography in 1973 during the first flush of the Women’s Liberation movement. Colleges were looking to hire women to balance their faculties. When Queens College offered me a job, I grabbed it. I drove my car across the country, taking photos along the way. By this time I had decorated my car with the names of all my boyfriends on the hood. The words “Marcia the Masher” were written across the side of the car.

Lydia Lunch on all fours. © Marcia Resnick

What was New York like when you returned?
New York was dangerous and on the brink of bankruptcy—but cheap and filled with possibilities. I found a place near Bowery and Houston Street and moved in with my old roommate from Cooper Union, Pooh Kaye, an artist and dancer. We each paid $70 a month. My salary was $100 a week for teaching two four-hour back-to-back photography classes one day a week.

Nearby Soho was the center of the art world. Pooh and I frequented art gallery openings, patronized art bars, and went to parties in artists’ lofts. Mickey Ruskin owned Max’s Kansas City where Warhol and his superstars, “blue-chip” artists, and rock celebrities were known to mingle. Pooh was Mickey’s house cleaner so we had entrée.

Left: Joan Jett at the pool hall. Right: Laurie Anderson with her violin. © Marcia Resnick

How did you come to live in a loft building filled with artists?
I found a building on Canal Street between Washington and West Streets in the neighborhood now known as Tribeca. Each floor was divided into two 2,000-square-foot lofts. The first two floors were a city-run methadone maintenance center. The lofts on the other four floors were dilapidated.

Pooh lived in the other loft on my floor and we built a bathroom and a kitchen for the two of us. My loft had 14 windows. I built a very large darkroom, which closed off three windows. During the winter I slept in a sleeping bag on the darkroom floor because the rest of the loft was bitterly cold. No amount of heat could warm a space with winds gusting from the river.

After I saw Laurie Anderson do a performance about how her loft was consumed by a fire, I invited her to move into the building and she became my upstairs neighbor. Periodically, lost methadone patients who were drugged into oblivion accidentally wandered into our lofts, but soon the center was moved elsewhere.

What was nightlife like back then?
Painters were making films. Writers were doing performance art. Sculptors were doing installations. Artists were generally collaborating with each other.

I went out every night to hear music at CBGB, Max’s, and the Mudd Club, which was my favorite. It was an artist’s bar with late night performances by bands, art shows, plays, Betsey Johnson fashion shows, and performances like the Rock n’ Roll Funeral Ball which featured mannequins with syringes stuck in their arms. Celebrities like Joe Strummer, David Bowie, Marianne Faithful, Nico, Grace Jones, and Diana Ross could be found happily mingling in the crowd.

To allay the guilt I felt for spending so much time in clubs, I convinced myself that my photographic forays into the night were my art. Pushing through crowds to get backstage at concerts became a necessary activity. Backstage I tried to simulate the look of a studio portrait. Whenever possible, I arranged a meeting at another time and place.

Patti Astor at a party. © Marcia Resnick

What are some of the projects you were working on in the 70s?
In 1975, with the help of government grants, I self-published three conceptual art books: Landscape, See, and Tahitian Eve. In 1978, I published Re-visions (The Coach House Press), an autobiographical book of humorous staged photographs.

After the introspection of Re-visions, I did an about-face from my cool, conceptual work. I wanted to explore a world outside of myself and moved on to another topic, which had confounded me… the male species. My series, Bad Boys, was born out of a fascination with the dynamic of a woman photographing men.

Pat Place with toy dragon. © Marcia Resnick

What inspired you to create Wild Women?
While working on the Bad Boys series, I couldn’t help but work on a side project I called Wild Women. Mostly men performed in the punk bands, but certain fascinating women embarked on their own projects in art, music, literature, and film.

Patti Smith and Debbie Harry of Blondie eventually became quite commercial. Laurie Anderson hit number two on the UK pop charts with her avant-garde electronic single “O Superman,” much to her surprise. Until then, her multimedia performance art was known by those exclusively in the art world.

Lisa Lyon in a bodybuilder pose. © Marcia Resnick

Lisa Lyon was a pioneer who won the first Women’s Pro Bodybuilding Championship. She was a standard bearer for the sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll lifestyle. After meeting her, we became fast friends. We wore all black, enjoyed the nightlife of lower Manhattan, and were dubbed the “Weird Sisters” by photographer Marcus Leatherdale.

What are some of the most radical things you and the women of this era did at the time?
As women became aware that the white, Western male viewpoint was unconsciously accepted as the viewpoint in the art world, they understood it was incumbent upon them to change this situation and level the playing field.

Carly Simon at Hurrah. © Marcia Resnick

While I was at CalArts, Linda Benglis, who was a visiting artist for one semester, befriended me. Her art and her style were a tremendous influence. I photographed her sporting her new, slicked-back short hairdo in front of her yellow Porsche. When she returned to New York after being refused editorial space in Artforum, Benglis paid for an advertisement that consisted of a full-page photograph of herself, nude except sunglasses, and masturbating with an oversized, double-ended dildo. It was the ultimate “F*ck you” to the art world.

Bebe Buell and her three-year-old daughter Liv Tyler. © Marcia Resnick

Working on my book Re-visions, which is being republished in 2019 (Patrick Frey Editions, Switzerland), was an exercise in learning about myself and learning about all women. It prepared me to be sensitive to independent, self-aware, creative women functioning in a “man’s” world. Every woman I was compelled to photograph taught me something about her experience. Each of the liberated women artists, writers, musicians, dancers, designers, and sexual pioneers I photographed had a talent and a vision that made her a breed apart.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

WWE star-turned-Hollywood actor John Cena visited VICELAND's Desus & Mero on Monday to talk about his new film Blockers, the art of butt-chugging, and how it feels to have a platinum rap album. Oh, and he even found some time to twinkle on the keys of the VICE HQ lobby piano in front of some unsuspecting employees.

You can watch the latest episode of Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

There are two kinds of people in the world when it comes to alcohol.

There are the freaks out there that can have one or two and go home without committing any sort of major transgression against humanity, then there are the people who, the minute their lips touch the good stuff, they can’t stop.

People who fall into this latter category will do pretty much anything to keep the party going. Take in mind this prison guard in Colombia who accidentally let two men escape prison because he simply couldn’t let the night end. The criminally minded duo’s booze-soaked plan to trick the guard was simple: start by getting him just right wasted, convincing him to let them go get some more booze when they ran out, and, you know, escaping during their beer run. Somehow, someway it worked without a hitch.

It’s important to note that these prisoners convinced the officer to let them go alone on their beer run—as the luminary character Snake puts it in The Simpsons, “screw the honour system.”

The two men—Jhon Gutierrez Rincon and Olmedo Vargas—were being held in Colombia’s largest prison—La Picota jail. Rincon was serving 40 years for a 2003 kidnapping, while Vargas (a former FARC combatant) was being held prior to his trial for theft.

The BBC reported that colleagues of the prison guard smelt booze on his breath after the duo made their escape and that he refused to do a breathalyzer. Colombian police are actively looking for the escaped men.

The prison director Col Germán Ricaurte said, in an interview with a Colombian radio station, that “artificial booze is commonplace in La Picota.

"The weakness of this official meant that he ingested this liquor and these inmates took advantage of that to convince him that they needed to leave [the prison]," Col Ricaurte explained.

Don’t be too hard on the poor guy though—let thou who hasn’t been convinced to do something immensely dumb while plastered cast the first stone here.

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*Some names have been changed to protect identity.

Casey is proud of his 23-year marriage to Sara, but he wants to clarify something straight away: “I don’t have any other cousins I’m attracted to, and I never decided consciously to pursue my cousin.”

The couple, who are from North Carolina in the US, met properly for the first time as teenagers. There was immediate chemistry, but Casey’s father and Sara’s mother are siblings, so for five years neither acted on their desires. When they finally did, it evolved into something they “couldn’t ignore”, so when he was 22 Casey proposed to Sara.

His family were shocked. “I had one uncle tell me I deserved to be in a ditch and my dad told me I’d end up in jail, but that all died down once we got married,” Casey says. “There are uncles I still don’t speak to, but they didn’t like me before the relationship either.”

“Even I was surprised that it’s happened,” he adds. “But besides the fact we’re first cousins, it’s an entirely normal relationship.”

The couple are now more open about the fact they’re related, but Casey only ever told one friend when he and his wife were dating. “There was a sense of shame and a fear that people would say we’re wrong,” he says, “and that was something I struggled to deal with.”

The idea of romantically or sexually involved cousins is generally met with distaste. It’s family; you don’t have sex with family. Despite this, cousin relationships, known as consanguineous relationships, are a “deeply rooted trend” among one-fifth of the world’s population, especially among Muslim regions in parts of South Asia and the Middle East, where consanguineous relationships can make up 30-50 percent of entire communities.

The practice is less common in the West, but consanguineous relationships in Europe and the United States were common until the mid-19th century, when attitudes began to turn on the practice due to medical opposition.

“In terms of the global population, more than a billion people are born and live in communities where 20-50 percent of the marriages are to [at least] a second cousin,” says Alan Bittles, Research Leader in the Centre for Comparative Genomics at Murdoch University.

Bittles, who has been researching consanguineous relationships for more than 40 years, says this means 10 percent of the world’s population are consanguineous, at a minimum. “A lot of countries like Indonesia, Bangladesh and Sub-Saharan countries [lack] data, as well, so that figure is most likely a lot higher.”

“On a cultural level,” Bittles says, “there’s no reason why we shouldn’t accept it in our society.”

Few religious texts or national legislations explicitly ban consanguineous relationships. In Australia, it’s perfectly legal to marry your first cousin (or your niece, nephew, aunt or uncle). But the act is still taboo, particularly in the West.

Shutterstock

“It [the stigma] all boils down to this fear of birth defects and having a kid with two heads,” Casey says, “but that’s just ignorance. We’re trying for kids at the moment, and we know there’s nothing to worry about.”

Having a child with a cousin does appear to pose a risk of a potential recessive trait in your genes surfacing. But, says Dr Greg Jenkins, an obstetrician at Auburn Hospital who has seen at least 4,000 babies born of consanguineous relationships, the risk of congenital defects is lower than you might think.

“The data we’ve got from Auburn Hospital shows there’s a two- to three-fold increase in congenital defects and a two-fold increase in stillborn deaths in consanguineous relationships,” says Dr Jenkins. “With two percent of all births having some type of congenital abnormality, consanguineous relationships are something like five to six percent. So 94 percent of [consanguineous] births are fine and healthy babies.

“So we’re talking small numbers, but it’s a ‘bigger’ small number if you’re in a consanguineous relationship,” he says, adding, “I don’t think we should be telling people that they shouldn’t be reproducing with their first cousin. I think the better work we can do [is] educate couples about the risks associated with it.”

Attitudes against cousin marriage aren’t always exclusively genetic: community and religion can also drive opposition. This was the case for 20-year-old Devleena, who has been in a relationship with her father's sister's son for three years, and whose community in New Delhi is against the idea. In parts of India cousin marriage does happen and is accepted, Devleena says, “[But] I’m Hindu, and in our religion the attitudes are more community-specific.”

Like Casey and Sara, Devleena and her cousin met as teenagers; soon after, her cousin professed his love for her, and one year later they started a relationship. At first they both felt anxious that it would tear the family apart, she says. “Our family isn’t happy about our relationship. My parents aren’t violent [but they] say mean things to me all the time and they wish to arrange a marriage for me, but I refuse.”

“Once I move in with him, I know I’ll never see my family again,” Devleena continues. “It can be scary to be in these relationships though, because honour killings do happen over this. I’ve had friends in relationships with their cousins who’ve had death threats from their parents”

Despite staunch opposition from her parents and her community and the very real threat of honour killings, Devleena does have support from friends in the same position as her. She knows 15 other consanguineous relationships through social media and real life, including two in her own social circle. Most importantly, she has her partner, who she tells me will fight for their relationship.

“I don't think I would be against any form of consensual relationship," Devleena says. “Love is love.”

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This article originally appeared on VICE AU.

Seoul is the only city I’ve ever encountered that has as many skate spots as skaters. A mere 35 miles from the DMZ, Seoul has thousands of smooth marble ledges with nothing but a bit of air pollution and the city's notorious dust standing in the way. And while that proximity to the North might sound nerve-racking, the looming threat of war has been a constant reality for skaters in South Korea for years (although there has been a significant easing of tensions between the two countries recently). When asked, Korean skaters acknowledge the danger posed by their northern neighbor, but also note that this is simply the environment they grew up in. “I was born in 1994, a few weeks prior to Kim Il-sung’s death, and it’s always been like this,” a 24-year-old skater and engineering student from Chuncheon who asked his name be withheld, told me. “The tests do frighten me, but I try not to think about it too much. I mean, what else can I do?”

Instead, skaters are much more concerned about the problems within their own borders. A popular phrase among young people is Hell Joseon, which Wikipedia roughly translates as "Korea is close to hell and [a] hopeless society.”

“Hell-Joseon: I’m surprised you’ve even heard about it,” laughs Kim Youngjoon, founder of Candlroute, a South Korean skate brand, when I ask him about it. The reality is that, even as a foreigner, it’s hard not to hear about it. I have lived on and off in Seoul and Suwon since early 2011 and am constantly reminded about the inferno that South Korea is said to be. Bee-jay, a Korean-Singaporean skater, explains to me that Hell-Joseon signifies the feeling that, “It’s simply very difficult for Koreans who aren’t born with a golden spoon in their mouths. It stands for our shared dissatisfaction of the current state of the Korean society. There’s lots of great stuff happening here, but I frequently worry about my future, and I’m not alone in this.”

Though Korea has been championed as an economic success story, this is also a country whose former president was recently impeached over massive corruption claims involving Samsung executives, a former minister, and university officials. As video producer Min-ji tells me, “It’s mainly the broader societal and familial pressures that take a toll on us Koreans. It still is a hierarchical society with lots of impossible expectations and not a lot of hope.” Suicide is the country’s fourth most common cause of death—the highest rate in the industrialized world. Min-ji points to K-pop star Kim Jonghyun, who many suspect committed suicide in December 2017. “Even he didn’t see a way out of his insane work schedules and the harsh clauses in his contract.”

Many young, disenchanted Koreans are now searching for a talchul (escape) from the social pressure. One talchul is to take advantage of work visas and temporarily move to Japan or Australia; skateboarding is another. As Jin Yob Kim, founder of the Seoul-based skate mag The Quiet Leaf, explains to me: “Think of the deeply embedded values of Confucianism, the hardships of war and poverty, the suppression and denunciation by occupational forces, the urge to gain economic independence, the aforementioned patriarchal and hierarchical tendencies, urbanization, digitalization, and so forth, and compare this to the anti-social, laissez-faire lifestyle of skateboarding.”

And a hopeful escape it is. Take Gyesok Gyesok, the first full-length skate video by Vans Korea. Filmed and edited by Jisuk Hwang, it is a VX showpiece that, at times, is reminiscent of Colin Read’s Spirit Quest (2016). It’s a video of muted colors and visual facsimiles: Tightly edited and framed, Gyesok Gyesok renders Seoul as one huge urban skatepark.

Of course, there’s so much more to skateboarding than the act of riding a skateboard. The activity and the lifestyle that come with it serve as a counterweight to the country’s relatively conservative sociocultural and political backdrop. One of the featured skaters in Gyesok Gyesok is Hyunjun Koo, who stands out off the board by having facial mods in a country where it’s illegal to be a tattoo artist. As he explains in a recent promo: “It doesn’t matter if you’re different, what matters is to find what you truly want to do and go for it.”

After Ko Hyojoo became a fashion sensation when her longboard "dancing" videos went viral in 2016, more and more girls are getting into skateboarding. Skate schools, including those run by by One Star and Tussa skate shop, are regularly attended by as many girls as boys. This is a massive thing in a society with distressing gender inequality, where feminism is still a taboo.

A queer skater I spoke to from Daegu, South Korea’s fourth largest city, praised the skate scene for being relatively accepting: “Even though homophobia permeates all aspects of Korean society, I feel safe and acknowledged among skaters. Very occasionally, a skater calls me out, but that’s mainly because they’re ignorant about queer people. My sexuality is less of an issue here than it would be at work.” He asked me to keep him anonymous, “Not because I’m afraid what my skater friends may think (as most of them know who I am anyway), but because of what it might mean for my social status and professional opportunities.”

While South Korea’s skate scene is small, it’s been growing rapidly. After all, it’s only been six years since a Korean skater first qualified for an international pro event. While skateparks were virtually nonexistent in the mid 1990s, there are now more than 75 skateparks built by the construction company ESP Korea alone.

In the late 2000s, as skateboarding became more popular, so did American brands like Thrasher and Supreme (and their counterfeits). K-pop artists started posing with skateboards, leading to an influx of new skaters. But for clothing designer Kim Youngjoon, this trendiness is also emblematic of Korea’s street culture: “Korea’s fashion industry moves too fast and has a short attention span. It changes as soon as K-pop artists start wearing new stuff. These days, Thrasher has a big impact on street fashion, even though 60 percent of those who wear it don’t know it is a skate mag… So the funny thing is that nowadays skaters in Korea don’t wear Thrasher hoodies anymore.”

Instead, local brands like Kadence Skateboards and Kim Youngjoon’s own Candlroute appeal to skaters precisely because they aren’t on the radar of K-pop and K-drama idols. The Korean skate scene, in other words, is more than ever shaping its own identity. If you don’t want to work as a salaryman, it’s no longer impossible to make a living as a skater—if not by skating professionally, then perhaps as a videographer, clothing designer, or magazine editor. And more importantly, skateboarding remains one of the few feasible escapes from the mainstream, offering marble instead of hell.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

A version of this article originally appeared on VICE Mexico. Leer en Español.

Roughly 200,000 people have been killed and another 28,000 gone missing since former Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war against drug trafficking over a decade ago. The country’s current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has continued that war; altogether, money spent by Mexico’s Departments of Justice, National Security, Public Order, and Interior Security on this project has totaled 1.8 trillion pesos (almost $100 billion USD) since 2006. However, according to INEGI (the government entity responsible for Census data), about 70 percent of the Mexican population admitted to feeling unsafe as recently as 2016.

Meanwhile, according to the National Survey on Drug, Alcohol, and Tobacco Use (ENCODAT, in Spanish) conducted from 2016 to 2017, drug use in Mexico increased by 47 percent over the previous seven years, with 8.4 million people between the ages of 12 to 65 admitting that they had consumed illegal drugs at least once in their lives. At the time, the most frequently consumed illegal drugs in Mexico were marijuana (the consumption of which went from 6 percent in 2011 to 8.6 percent in 2016), cocaine (from 3.3 percent to 3.5 percent during the same five year period) and hallucinogens, consumption of which remained stable at 0.7 percent.

Camila* is 35 years old and lives in a municipality outside Mexico City with her husband, Emilio*, a drug trafficker. Both names are pseudonyms VICE is using in order to protect their respective identities.

In some ways, the couple and the way they make their living are right at home here: In January 2017 alone, there were approximately 20,000 spots in Mexico City where illegal substances were being distributed, according to the city’s Secretary of Public Safety. But Camila has stood by Emilio through plenty of episodes—and taken part in a few of her own—that might make even seasoned veterans of the local drug scene cringe. This is her story.

I met my husband through my brothers, who worked with him in the drug-dealing business. We started going out about 2006, but very casually. I liked him because we were equals and both very fun-loving. We love to have fun and be silly.

Emilio was in a downward spiral when I met him, selling off properties he owned to fund his crystal meth habit. When I found out, I didn’t want to leave him alone to deal with it; on the contrary, it reinforced my need to be there for him. I gave him IVs and I tried to put him in clinics, but he never gave it up.

One day I got annoyed and stopped seeing him. For six months, I didn’t hear anything about him. When I saw him again at a dance, he had kicked the habit, but had no money. We got back together—this was 2008. We got married and moved in together, and he started working in Mazatlán, a seaside resort town in the western state of Sinaloa.

If you’re in the drug dealing game, you’re obviously putting a lot at risk. At the time when Emilio and I got married, two gangs had started fighting for control of the region: Los Zetas, the most sophisticated crime syndicate in the country, was working in alliance with the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel against the Sinaloa Cartel (of El Chapo fame). My brother was in one of them and he tapped Emilio to work with him. He gave him a plaza in a town in Sinaloa to use as turf, where he was in charge of keeping tabs on the merchandise and running sales.

Because of the violence between cartels, we had to move to a new house every three months. None of our other family members were able to visit us, and when we left the house we had to be sure we weren’t being followed.

We were basically locked up in that house, without anyone knowing where we lived or anything. Moreover, the competing cartel had photos of me and was following me. I realized it and I’d talk to my husband, who would tell me where to go. I stayed in one spot while he’d talk to people to find out who might be following me. As Emilio didn’t leave the house for fear of being targeted, they wanted to go through me to find him. Out of safety concerns, I always had to make sure I wasn't being followed home.

By January 2010, I was pregnant, but I would transport the goods because my husband couldn’t leave the house. Eventually things started to get better, although we still had to change houses at regular intervals. Then the violence started to get worse and all of my husband's workers were killed. Two days before my daughter was born, they kidnapped his bodyguard. At dawn on the day she was born, we found him hanging from a bridge.

Emilio had to go move to Nayarit and then to Mexico City. Just a week after I’d had a c-section, I had to take a taxi to deliver the merchandise and money to his new workers, with my daughter in my arms, terrified and everything. I was alone in my house with my son and my newborn. A year after my daughter was born, I went to Mexico City with Emilio in January 2011.

I didn't think about the danger of it all. Now, I look back and say, "Oh, how did I dare do that? I was exposed so much."

Once we relocated to Mexico City, Emilio tried not to repeat the same mistake. He started a legit business with the money he’d earned. He opened two video game arcades. But in July 2011, he was kidnapped, and paying the ransom took away all the money we had.

After Emilio’s rescue, we started sleeping at the arcade because we were afraid to go to the apartment where we lived. We spent roughly four years like this, between the time that we were married and the birth of our second daughter in 2013—the same year that Emilio first started trafficking drugs into Mexico City.

The luxuries of being married to a trafficker are that you never want for anything. Emilio gives me everything. He gave me 100,000 pesos (about $5,400) on my birthday, but the best gift that I’ve received from him is my home. And everything that I say I want, he gives it to me.

Looking back in time at the most challenging years of your life, maybe you couldn't go out on a weekend because you'd spend all your rent money. Me? I couldn’t take my daughters to the beach because I had to think about what how much money it was going to cost us; whereas now, I go here, I go there... whatever I want, I buy it. I don't live my life worrying or twiddle my thumbs.

I’ll say to my husband: "What do you prefer: that someone else wears those new shoes first, or that I get to show them off before they do?” He doesn’t limit me at all. If I say, "I want this," he says yes. But I also try not to be abusive or let my spending habits hurt my family, which is what we care about most.

Apart from taking care of our family, I help Emilio with his accounting. He’s not very organized. I take inventory, keep track of what people owe him, and log to whom he gives the merchandise.

I’m the only person who manages his money; his brother is in the business too, and he passes the money to me to handle. I need to have the accounts squared away for the new shipments that come in every day and be ready to pass things along on to debtors. I also check the customers’ wallets so there's less of a chance that they'll steal from us.

If ten grams are missing, we have to go back to the warehouse and find out where the error is. Last week, I didn’t finish the accounting until 3 AM and it had already taken all day. It’s chaos. My husband doesn’t touch the accounts at all and says that nothing is free, and that I have to do my part, too.

People take advantage of us. They always want to benefit from everything we’ve earned, and they’re always going to talk shit about us. They’ll never give us or our family the pleasure of hearing positive things about ourselves.

Emilio’s workers have hated me in the past because if I saw something wrong, I didn’t cover it up. I need to tell my husband when people are acting out of line, because they’ll take you for a fool if you don’t put a stop to it. Once, my husband lost 400 grams of cocaine, which cost us 100,000 pesos. Just like that—one day it was there and the next it was gone. And who took it? Who knows.

Another time, when I started adding everything up—80 minus ten equals 70 grams, and the worker had only logged 50 grams of cocaine. “That's wrong,” I told my husband. Four whole pages of this employee’s paperwork were full of tricks and forgeries.

Emilio almost had a heart attack. "Stay smart," he cautioned. It's stressful, having to take care of yourself on all sides so you don’t get screwed over.

Both Emilio and I have encountered problems in our marriage because of our respective families. They’re nosy, and if they're looking for trouble it’s better for me to distance myself from them. I still pray for them every day; I just prefer not to know anything about them.

And then there’s the other women and the gossip that accompanies them. One time, some guy called me from a private number and told me that Emilio was in a hotel with another woman. I called his cell; he didn’t answer. Eventually he answered and I realized that he was on a motorcycle, so who the fuck knows what was going on. I prefer not to be embarrassed and I too want to have fun. He’s generally been very good to me, so I said, “Whether you do something or not, I’m not going to be embarrassed by it. I’m just going to find out what I need to know.”

People always freak out, too. They’re scared to go out or spend time with you because they’re worried you’re going to bring trouble along with you, which is why I don’t talk to anyone anymore. If I have a casual chat with our neighbour, he'll start asking what we do and scrutinize our expenses. If you give them the opportunity, people start to come to their own conclusions. Better to leave it at a "Good afternoon!" and call it. We say we sell clothes, and that’s that.

I do have friends—they’re the wives of Emilio's friends—but I don’t trust any of them. I'm more afraid of their envy than anything else.

I tell my daughters that their dad sells sneakers and clothes. Apparently, one time at school, my daughter said that her father sells the branches of dried plants. She’s seen our products, but I always tell her, "You shouldn’t say anything about what you see [at home], because they’re very dangerous things that can put your dad in jail."

In the future, I’d like to start a clothing store as a plan B. Emilio wants to move to northern Mexico with my father; he wants to retire from the drug game all together. His plan is to buy apartments and rent them out, or to establish a seafood restaurant or even a franchise. But until things get as as ugly as they were back in 2008, I doubt he’ll start thinking about retirement seriously. I’d prefer—any day of the week and a thousand times over—that he just retire and leave all of this behind us, rather than to somehow expose himself or have something horrible happen to him. My family is the most important thing in the world to me. If he, my children, and myself are somehow in danger, none of it—the money or material wealth—matters.

This account has been edited for length and clarity.

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It's that time again, ya'll. Music had its biggest night, the Oscars went off without a hitch, and now it's the internet's turn to bask in adulations. On Tuesday, the nominees for the 22nd annual Webby Awards were announced, celebrating the best the web has to offer, and we are so pleased that VICE has been nominated a whopping 30 times in 28 different categories.

This year, our more than two dozen nominations span across all of our wonderful websites to our TV channel VICELAND and our in-house production team. Despite all the bad and ugly out there, we're glad we could bring a little good to the internet in 2017.

But here's the part where we shamelessly ask for you, dear reader, to help us bring home all of those shiny, glorious little springs. In an effort to make things easier on you, we've broken down the voting process below. Just make sure you follow these simple steps before Thursday, April 19, when voting closes. The winners will be announced on April 24, and we're hoping you can help us be among them.

All you have to do is:

1. Go to the Webby Awards site.
2. Sign up to vote and verify your email address.
3. Click on each of the links below.
4. Vote for us!

Here are the links to each of our nominations:

• VICE News's Trump's America for Best Social Video Series
• VICE News's Hurricane Harvey coverage: Inside the Eye of Hurricane Irma for Best Social Video Series
• VICELAND's Desus & Mero for Best Social Content & Marketing: Celebrity/Fan
• VICE Snapchat for Best Social Content & Marketing: Culture & Lifestyle
• VICELAND for Best Social Content & Marketing: Entertainment
• i-D for Best Social Content & Marketing: Fashion & Beauty
• Munchies for Best Social Content & Marketing: Food & Drink
• Noisey for Best Social Content & Marketing: Music
• Garage's Diamonds May Be Forever but ASMR is Here to Stay for Best Social Content & Marketing: Weird
• Tonic's Yes Man: Micropigmentation for Best Social Video: Culture & Lifestyle
• VICE's Know Your Rights: Filming the Police for Best Social Video: Education & Discovery
• VICELAND's Food Shock for Best Social Video: Food & Drink
• VICE News's Trump's America for Best Social Video: News & Information
• VICE News's A Nation in Recovery for Best Social Video: News & Information
• i-D for Best Website: Fashion & Beauty
• Broadly for Best Website: Lifestyle
• VICELAND.com for Best Website: Media Streaming
• VICELAND & GE's Drone Week for Best Film & Video: Branded Entertainment Integrated Campaigns
• VICE's Solitary Confinement Project for Best Film & Video: Events & Live streams
• Broadly's Inside Danica Roem's Historic Victory for Best Film & Video: News & Politics Individual Episode
• Daily VICE for Best Film & Video: News & Politics Series
• VICELAND's 420 Special: A Quiz Show for Best Film & Video: Weird
• VICELAND on Youtube for Best Video Channels & Networks: Entertainment
• Motherboard's Dear Future for Best Video Channels & Networks: Science & Education
• VICELAND's Desus & Mero on Youtube for Best Video Channels & Networks: Web Personality
• VICELAND's What Would Diplo Do? for Best Advertising Campaigns: Best Video Campaign
• Smirnoff Equalizing Music for Best Branded Content: Food & Beverage
• VICE.com for Best Mobile Sites & Apps: Magazine/Editorial
• VICE Media Scandinavia's LikeWhatYouHate for Best Social Features: Experimental & Innovation
• Olympic Channel's Identify: the Inspiring Journeys of 5 Transgender Athletes (Produced by VICE Media) for Best Video Channels & Networks: Sports

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On January 17, 2017, Twitter officially shut down Vine, the popular social media networking app that had brought hours of endless, hilarious, short entertainment and propelled dozens of regular teens to stardom levels of fame, for good.

In the year since its untimely death, there have been hundreds of Vine compilation videos on Youtube and threads on Twitter, each sharing what that user thinks were the best Vines in history, each titled something along the lines of “Best of Vine,” “RIP Vine,” or “I Miss Vine.”

With so many compilations showcasing the “best of” Vine, and no one video to rise above them all, what is at the end of the road? What is the best Vine ever made? And listen carefully: I don’t mean the most looped Vine or the most wild (I think the most wild Vine is I’m Semi I Stay Automatic, simply because the large amount of action that happens in the clip) or even the funniest, which, as much as I would love to pick and revere in, is nearly impossible to select, due to the subjective nature of comedy and the fact that all the Vines that are funny enough to complete (Is This Allowed, Lipstick In My Valentino White Bag, Heart And Soul Nae Nae, etc (Honourable mention: This is the most underrated Vine and I would gladly write another 1,000 words about this one too)) within the sphere are too good and would likely tie if pitted against each other in a fight to the death. They are all too powerful.

Nay, when I ask about the Best Vine Ever, I guess what I really mean is that I want to find a Vine that best represents this era, a brief, wonderful, fleeting period of time (that could only be fully captured in brief, fleeting, six-second videos). I want to find the Vine that tells the viewer what 2012-2016 was all about.

If someone told me that I had to pick one Vine, only one, to be shown to a future civilization 1,000 years from now in either an academic or a sociological sense, I know what I would pick. The best Vine in the world is And They Were Roommates. And this is why.

On October 25, 2014, a Vine user named ig @mattsukkar uploaded his final Vine to the platform, captioning it only with the two dancer girls emoji. Since then, the Vine has been looped over 67 million times (meaning that, if this Vine was a single and we follow the new RIAA streaming structure, it would be certified quintuple platinum). In this video, only eleven words are said; four words are repeated. You know it. I know it. All I have to do is say “And they were roommates,” in a room full of millennials, and I guarantee more than half would get the reference. The video follows a girl walking on a sidewalk, having a conversation with somebody on the phone. As she passes the cameraman, who is elevated, she says, indignantly “And they were roommates!” Turning the camera back to himself, the filmmaker, wearing reflective blue sunglasses says, in a flat voice, “Oh my god, they were roommates.”

That’s it. That’s all there is.

A moment like this comes, it feels like, but once in a lifetime, and for this to have been recorded and put online to be watched millions and millions of times is nothing short of a miracle. How did he know? Did he hear the girl walking towards him, saying other ridiculous things? Was he just planning to record her conversation as a whole, to send to a friend or to just keep for himself, and then that happened, and he just did and said what any other person would do, except while recording? This moment stands out in time. The Vine wasn’t scripted or made by a famous Viner, which makes it all the more special: A normal, mundane person filmed part of a normal, mundane conversation of a normal, munade stranger, and responded in a way that likely many of us would do if we were sitting with our friends and someone walking by said the same thing. This video is natural and organic, from the way the camera follows the girl as she walks to the shock in her voice. Something like this, though jokes like this happen all the time, cannot be recreated, which only adds to my argument: And They Were Roommates represents 2012-2016 in a very, very particular and effective way.

The fact that what ig @mattsukkar captured and responded to, what is, ultimately, a super boring moment in the grand scheme of things makes it a perfect representation of the climate at the time. First of all, what was he doing? It seems like he was just sitting on his porch or stoop— a common activity most of us can relate to. The girl walking by is talking into her Apple earbuds, her hands waving loosely as she stomps by our cameraman. She is dressed in purple leggings and a grey sweatshirt, wearing a black backpack and white sneakers. The white sneakers, are, of course, crucial to this time period, peaking in popularity in 2015/2016 due to the very brilliant and strategic relaunch of the adidas Stan Smiths and taking over your Instagram.

There’s other things that play into this Vine’s importance: The fact that the creator, ig @mattsukkar, never uploaded another Vine after this one speaks to the fleeting nature of fame and the fetishizing culture of mystery that surrounds the entertainment industry these days. The fact that, after all this time, the identity of the girl remains unknown, adds to its allure. A video featuring two unknown strangers, both saying nothing really out of the ordinary— surely we’ve all had conversations like this girl was having— skyrocketing to fame and bringing hilarity is, in itself, hilarious, because it speaks to the time period, and, really, our generation of twenty-somethings: We see ourselves in this scenario, we can put ourselves in the shoes of either one of the players. As a representation of life in 2014, this is it. This is as far as it goes. Sitting on the stoop, filming gossiping strangers wearing white sneakers, making snide commentary about otherwise dull conversation. This Vine is a shining beacon of hope from back in the day, when “Trap Queen” ruled the world.

I tried reaching out to Matt Sukkar to find out more about the Vine, both through email and by sliding into his Instagram DMs. However, he didn’t get back to me—perhaps on purpose, to preserve the allure? I was a bit afraid when I messaged him. I did not want to find out something terrible, like that the video was planned and scripted, that the girl was his friend, or God knows what else. I like believing that the video was pure and unintentional, that it “just happened,” and that ig @mattsukkar succeeded in capturing a bland, boring moment that turned into a cultural phenomenon purely by chance.

If there is some sort of disaster, and a future group of archaeologists is looking through our records 1,000 or even 500 years from now, trying desperately to locate some memento to help understand what life was like in 2014, I hope this Vine is the first thing they find.

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Deadly synthetic marijuana known as K2 has been tied to two deaths and at least 56 illnesses in Chicago in recent weeks, leaving some users reportedly bleeding out of their eyes, ears, and mouths. But on Monday, local cops busted a convenience store selling packets of the substance that tested positive for chemicals found in rat poison.

According to the Chicago Tribune, three men have been accused of running an operation to sell synthetic cannabis from the King Mini Mart in Chicago after an undercover cop bought the street drug over the counter. The K2 found on Monday was packaged and labelled for sale using names like "Crazy Monkey," "Blue Giant," and "Matrix." Tests have since revealed the batch discovered at King Mini Mart was laced with brodifacoum—a toxic material commonly used in rodent killers.

The store’s owner, Fouad Masoud—along with his employees Jamil Abdelrahman Jad Allah and Adil Khan Mohammed—have been arrested and taken into custody, the Tribune reports. Masoud was reportedly snatched by officers on Sunday evening while leaving his home with $280,000 stuffed inside a grocery bag. It's not year clear whether investigators believe they have found the source of all the city's K2 illnesses at King Mini Mart.

Health officials in Illinois have been dealing with an outbreak of K2-related illnesses since March 10. The Illinois Department of Public Health said the two deaths occurred as a result of synthetic pot use, and dozens of others in the state were taken to hospital. Although the Tribune reports that bleeding from the eyes and ears is a symptom of brodifacoum, so far only nine people in the outbreak have tested positive for the chemical.

Of course, addiction to synthetics reaches far beyond the US. It's now a global problem. VICE has reported on the synthetic cannabis epidemic in New Zealand (where it’s called "synnies"), and in the UK (where it’s better known as "spice.")

Made up entirely of chemicals designed to ape a marijuana high, experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have warned about the huge potential for contamination in synthetic cannabinoids. Now that a batch has been found to contain rat poison, the risk has become all the more apparent.

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On April Fools' Day, Adult Swim played a complicated kind of prank. Instead of screening Rick and Morty, they screened an 11-minute parody of the show featuring two characters called "Reek” and “Mordi.”

Made by Australian animator Michael Cusack, the episode featured the two protagonists traveling to the Victorian town of Bendigo, Australia, which gets featured as a very dark, unrefined place.

The parody episode was featured on a loop, and was shared across Adult Swim's social channels where it was seen by millions. As the Guardian reports, Google searches for "Bendigo" ballooned almost immediately.

But not everyone was thrilled. Bendigo's mayor, Margaret O’Rourke, watched the parody without having ever seen the source material. “Obviously, there are different tastes for everyone,” O’Rourke told Calla Wahlquist at the Guardian. “But I believe the Google searches have soared ever since it was released, and people would know by those searches that Bendigo is nothing like what’s in the parody.”

She admitted "any publicity is good publicity" but maintained the place had been unfairly portrayed. “Bendigo is a very vibrant and beautiful place and nothing like what has been displayed,” she said.

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This article originally appeared on VICE AU.

During the two days before Lent, the backdrop of the sweltering Caribbean sun sets the stage for Trinidad’s capital Port of Spain to host arguably one of the world’s most joyous street parties. Lined with revelers flocking "down d road" in a euphoric state powered by soca’s driving rhythms, spirited by libations, and coloured with revealing costumes, Trini Carnival is definitely one of those times to spread your hands and let go.

Trinidad Carnival started in the 18th century as a means for African slaves to artistically express their united desired for freedom from their colonial oppressors. The enslaved mimicked their French wealthy masters’ fancy balls by holding their own folkloric masquerade parties (the derivation for the term Mas) in the backyards of plantations homes all the while assimilating their African rituals. With the passing of the Emancipation Bill of 1833, African descent Trinidadians and further East Indian indentured laborers carried on the tradition, as it was a social commentary decrying oppression whilst creating a public celebration for the common folk to unanimously state: “together we aspire, together we achieve”

Today, Rio-style sequined string bikinis replace the grass-root garments of yesteryears. However, many traditionalist Mas lovers lament over these extravagant bikini-and-beads costumes diverging from old-time Mas.

Trinidadian women increased earnings and economic independence grants them the ability to push back against strict moral controls that religion and society have place on them. By liberating their bodies while having well-earned fun they are able to express themselves as as powerful, desirable, and beautiful and not just successful, demure women. Carnival time is an outlet to expresses sexuality within a conservative culture as societal rules are briefly suspended.

Though through an array of exhibitionism, narcissism, and voyeurism, these Caribbean women have taken on the true essence of Trinidad and Tobago Carnival by resisting a form of oppressive societal norms and expressing their absolute feminist freedom.

One of the leading Trini Carnival Mas bands, Tribe, hostd a sweet mix of beauty and bacchanal with women in fab and flashy costumes wining (the Caribbean version of twerking) and getting on bad. We asked these women playing ‘Pretty Mas’ their thoughts on the freedom of expression celebrated during Carnival.

Lala Juraver, Artist from Guadeloupe living in Toronto.
“For me Carnival is this time of the year where all the social barriers and restrictive conservative ways are abolished! It’s about loosening up and finally be your true self with no approval of anyone or anything. Carnival has always been a way of transgressing the authority and it holds a meaningful sense of freedom! So yes nowadays the costumes have nothing to do with the Ole Mas times and nakedness is everywhere, making it more ‘sexual ‘ than it used to be, but the spirit of Carnival itself hasn’t changed.”

Liz-ann Jaggernauth, Trinidadian hairstylist
“Carnival allows me the freedom to express myself not only sexually, but to also promote beauty in one's skin, in one's colourful costumes and in one's surroundings during the parade. It provides us as a people the opportunity to ‘free up’ for two days and be unified by music, art, and rich culture.”

Cherisse Thurab, Trinidad-born Toronto-raised creative/art director and music festival reporter based in new York City

“Carnival is a space for self-expression and creativity, not exclusively sexuality. The festivities give individuals—women, men, and children—license to be completely free, while experiencing heightened social unity. There is no judgment. People are able to express themselves, celebrate true liberation, and enjoy a multisensory experience through food, extravagant costumes, color, music, great atmosphere and connectedness with others. Today, our revealing costumes and intimate dances lend themselves to the cultural misunderstanding that the festivities are about sex. This is not the case. Reveling is at the core of our history and Mas is about the freedom to be.”

Racine Burke, customer service representative, student in Toronto
“Well from my stance I don’t think Trini culture is conservative at all when it comes to our sexuality. I think we are very open. Yes we tend to take it a bit too far, we should remind ourselves that we can indulge but we should be mindful that we are the mothers, daughters, big sisters of young girls who we need to set examples for. So yes be sexy, enjoy your sexuality but do it tastefully.”

Shenilee Hazell, cosmetic dental surgeon
“I have always found it empowering to wear a carnival costume, especially a sexy one! I love the confidence that wearing an incredible design inspires. Carnival will inevitably keep evolving but what I feel remains consistent is the celebration and acceptance of a freedom to express oneself! The freedom passport is valid everywhere, and every road is a stage. The expressions begin from your costume design selection, to the carnival band alignment to the way you wine to the sweet sweet soca music. They don’t call Trinidad and Tobago Carnival the greatest show on earth for no reason.”

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We would like to thank Tribe for granting access to play with their band.

The Duffer Brothers are being sued by a director who claims the Stranger Things creators stole the idea for their hit Netflix show from him, TMZ reports.

The director, Charlie Kessler, says he pitched the Duffers in 2014 about a sci-fi series on the urban legend of the Montauk Project, based on his 2012 short film, Montauk, which was on Vimeo but has since been taken down after news of the lawsuit broke. According to Kessler, the Duffer Brothers initially passed on his series idea, but then turned around and sold a similar concept to Netflix.

"We've seen the most well-known [conspiracies], Area 51 and the Philadelphia Experiment, sensationalized on film and television many times before," the Duffer Brothers wrote in their original Stranger Things pitch, back when the show was called Montauk. "But the Montauk Project, one of the most bizarre conspiracies in our country's history, remains untapped."

The Montauk Project connection was lost in development, but the final version of Stranger Things still seems to share a few tenuous similarities with Kessler's original short film, like disappearing kids and buggy technology and some freaky-ass shit in the sky, but those tropes aren't exactly unique to the Montauk short to begin with. The short also features a big shot of the hulking radar tower at Montauk's Camp Hero Air Force base, which also pops up in the Duffers' original pitch document.

There are some pretty major differences between the two projects, as well. Most notably, Kessler's film is a found-footage movie set in 2010—meaning it's not the wild, 1980s nostalgia bomb that Stranger Things turned out to be. There aren't any nosebleeds, either. Plus, we have yet to see any levitating women get torn in half in Stranger Things like they do in Montauk, but, who knows, maybe the Duffer Brothers are saving that for when they want to write Winona Ryder off the show.

According to TMZ, Kessler's suit is looking for "money and destruction of all materials that were allegedly ripped off from his concept," meaning some poor intern will probably have to track down and shred a bunch of old Montauk series bibles floating around the Netflix offices if the suit ever goes through.

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Florida senator Marco Rubio has an A-plus rating from the NRA, but in the wake of the Parkland shooting—and after an outcry from gun control activists in his home state—the former 2016 presidential candidate has said he would endorse the mildest of gun reform measures. In a nationally televised CNN town hall in February, Rubio said, "I absolutely believe that in this country if you are 18 years of age, you should not be able to buy a rifle, and I will support a law that takes that right away."

But in a characteristic display of hypocrisy, Rubio has been the primary senator pushing legislation that would reverse the District of Columbia's law that prevents teenagers from buying rifles. The Second Amendment Enforcement Act, which Rubio first introduced in 2015, would also end DC's assault weapon ban, among other provisions.

Following the CNN town hall Washington, DC mayor Muriel Bowser asked Rubio to withdraw his bill. In response, he wrote a letter to Bowser telling her that they in fact “share a common goal," and claimed his legislation simply aims to change DC law to be “in line with federal law.” Federal gun-control regulations—as Rubio surely knows—are currently very lax, compared to many state and local regulations. They're also very difficult to change.

"Stop undermining the safety of our residents just to improve your NRA score," Bowser wrote in response to Rubio's letter. "It's time to show some courage and withdraw your DC gun legislation."

“Rubio’s gun bill should be a public embarrassment as well as a personal embarrassment to him,” Eleanor Holmes Norton, Congress's nonvoting delegate from DC, told the Associated Press. Norton believes that the Second Amendment Enforcement Act has almost no chance of passing, since House and Senate Republicans are unlikely to uniformly vote in favor of such a divisive bill.

“The worst part is why he did it. Why would a senator from Florida take on this issue?” Norton asked rhetorically. “He’s coming back every year for his NRA payoff.”

Rubio has only received a little under $10,000 in direct donations from the NRA, but including the money the NRA spends on behalf of candidates, he has gotten upwards of $3.3 million in NRA contributions, making him the sixth-highest beneficiary of gun lobby money in Congress.

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From the moment Ma Anand Sheela appears in Netflix’s Wild Wild Country, it’s clear she is not to be fucked with.

In her opening monologue in the six-part documentary, the former lieutenant of the religious cult known as the Rajneeshees talks about how one cannot wear a crown without the threat of death by guillotine.

“In spite of guillotine, they haven’t killed me yet, they haven’t killed my spirit,” Sheela, now greying in her late 60s, says in a pronounced Indian accent. “No matter where I go, I will always wear crown… I’m not afraid of being under guillotine."

It was an appropriately dramatic introduction to one of the most fascinating anti-heroes I’ve ever come across, Walter White not withstanding.

At their peak in the 1980s, there were thousands of Rajneeshees around the world who worshipped their guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (later known as Osho), a small, white-bearded Indian man they likened to a rock star. Many Rajneeshees were educated, upper-middle-class white Americans who flocked to India to gain enlightenment by being in Bhagwan’s presence. Bored of capitalism and craving meaning in their lives, they were easily convinced to join the Rajneeshee movement, donning their red robes all the while. Eventually, hundreds of Rajneeshees and Bhagwan himself moved from India to America. They formed a commune in Wasco County, Oregon, on 64,000 acres of rural land, and had it incorporated as a city called Rajneesh, complete with stores, a school, and a landing strip for planes. While initially they seemed to be all about meditation and lots of sex, they eventually engaged in a full-on war with the nearby townsfolk who despised them. It was a war the Rajneeshees fought with mass poisonings and druggings, rigged elections, attempted assassinations, and an arsenal of assault weapons they practiced with on their land.

Bhagwan was their leader, but Sheela, his tiny, cherub-cheeked, foul-mouthed secretary was pulling the strings. And despite her crimes—she pleaded guilty in 1985 to attempted murder and assault for poisoning hundreds of Oregonians with salmonella—I found myself in awe of Sheela while watching the doc.

Sheela was a master of manipulation. She overthrew Bhagwan’s other secretary, Laxmi, to become his right-hand and she seemed to revel in power. She once made a young Australian disciple wax her legs in the middle of the night, later promoting her, and much later instructing her to murder Bhagwan’s doctor. The woman obeyed, though she wasn’t successful. It’s fucked up. But also, how many people can command that type of loyalty?

Sheela courted controversy, doing media appearances solely to troll the townsfolk of Antelope, Oregon who wanted the Rajneeshees gone.

Asked on 60 Minutes how she felt about people who “don’t want the orange people in our town,” she replied, “what can I say? Tough titties.” She rejected Jesus’ notion of turning the other cheek, stating that the Rajneeshee philosophy was to “take both of their cheeks.”

On the Merv Griffin Show, when one of the Antelope residents noted that Bhagwan had collected between four and 14 Rolls Royces, Sheela all-too-smugly corrected her that they were about to hit 20.

She declared that Rajneeshees “are the only people who enjoy sex fully” and posed nude for a German magazine. At a time when society was far more close-minded than it is now for white women, let alone for an Indian woman who served a strange, bearded man, I cannot stress how surreal it felt to witness her antics. The footage of her is captured on video by news crews and the cult itself.

Although the Antelopers had very valid reasons to be pissed about the Rajneeshees, even before all the poisonings took place, bigotry was clearly a factor.

In footage shown in the doc, former Antelope mayor Margaret Hill asks, “Should… a group of people of like persuasion be allowed to enter an area and literally wipe out the culture that is there?” without a shred of irony. Apparently she'd forgotten the entire history of the American/British empire.

In its prime, the Rajneeshee cult was worth $65 million, with money pouring in from massive festivals hosted at the Oregon commune, as well as books and other materials sold worldwide. I won’t lie, it’s a tad amusing that Sheela and Bhagwan duped all these white people searching for authenticity into handing over their money. The inverse of cultural appropriation, if you will.

I recognize that Sheela had major flaws, and may even be a psychopath. I also feel like if she was a man (or at least if she hadn’t have ended up in jail) she could have been the leader of a country. Hell, she could’ve been the president of the United States. The world could use a little bit more Sheela. But not too much.

Follow Manisha on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany

Anna Homann is a freelance midwife who works out of a clinic in Berlin's Neuköln district. Over the past decade, she's helped deliver around 50 babies and offered care and advice to new mothers in the first eight weeks after childbirth.

She describes the job of a midwife as being a mix of social worker, nurse and psychologist. I spoke to Anna to find out how disgusting childbirth really is, what a placenta smoothie tastes like and why some fathers should never be allowed in the birthing room.

VICE: What's the most disgusting thing you've ever witnessed during childbirth?
Anna: As a midwife, you have to be prepared for anything to go down – and back up – during childbirth. Some women vomit a few times, while others get diarrhoea. The diarrhoea happens because a woman's uterus and bowels contract at the same time. All of this normally takes place at the start of labour and then again at the end, when the child comes through the birth canal and everything is pushed out with it. Finally, there's massive blood loss – around 400ml – due to the loss of the placenta and amniotic fluid. Despite everything I've seen, I still don't find births disgusting at all – I think they're beautiful.

How many mothers have offered you a piece of their placenta?
None. But I did purée a small slice of my own with frozen berries and coconut milk to drink as a smoothie. The placenta didn't really taste of anything, but I didn't drink it for that – I did it because I heard it could contain certain properties that can protect new mothers from postpartum depression and help counteract the high blood loss. I have no idea if it's true, but I figured it couldn't hurt to try it out.

How horrible is a perineum tear?
When the child's head comes out, a woman's perineum – the area between the vulva and anus – is rolled out as thin as parchment paper, and that's when the tension is really high and it can tear. But it's only until well after childbirth, when the skin has been cared for and sewn back together, that it starts to hurt.

Some of Anna's equipment in her office in Berlin

Does the vagina stay stretched out after giving birth?
Yes, unless you train the muscles to tighten up again. But the younger you are, the quicker your body recovers. Also, women who are physically fit often have faster births and suffer less complications.

Do you recommend fathers watch the birth?
It depends on the type of guy the father is. There are those who question everything the midwife says and does, and are generally overprotective, but caring. Then you get the complete opposite, with fathers who seem a bit disinterested. I've seen men spend the entire time looking at their watch, seemingly annoyed by how long it's all taking. Those sort of fathers don't even bother to put a reassuring hand on their wife’s shoulder. Finally, some guys just don't want to be there for the main event, so they leave the room until after their child is born. Obviously it's down to each individual couple to decide what they want. Sometimes, when I'm in the wave of emotion, I’ll shout "look!" at the father to get him to see what's happening.

Do you ever get parents who seem to regret having a child moments after childbirth?
I've personally not experienced that yet. But things can get difficult when the mother is in so much pain; the father almost feels guilty – to the point where he can't bear to hold the newborn.

WATCH:

What sort of couples shouldn't have kids?
Sometimes child services will send me to check on troubled parents, and often their apartments are filthy and their newborns are not eating what they should be. On one occasion, I had to call the authorities myself because I could see that a disabled child wasn't being properly cared for.

How do couples react when they find out that their child has a disability?
I don't have much experience with this, because kids with severe disabilities are more likely to be birthed by a doctor than by a midwife. But I did have a couple once who were told, five months into the pregnancy, that their child had Down syndrome. That discovery meant the parents didn't want the child anymore. When the infant was born critically premature, they refused to spend any time with the newborn before the child died.

How do you cope with a stillborn child?
It can be very difficult. But the worst is when a pregnancy is already far advanced and the child dies in the womb. It's very hard to comfort the parents when that happens. I try to work with the couples in the months afterwards to make sure that they look after their physical and mental health, and assure them that they can talk to me anytime.

What is the most common mistake new parents make in their relationships?
Many couples find it hard to share the workload, and immediately adopt the classic gender roles, where the man goes straight back to work and the woman is left feeling frustrated that she has to do everything at home. One client told me, five weeks after giving birth, that all she really wanted to do was go to the pub and smoke a cigarette. I could completely understand why she missed her freedom, but I try to be strict with new mothers and encourage them to just keep going and take everything day by day.

This article originally appeared on VICE DE.

This article contains basic plot spoilers for Love, Simon

Twitter can sometimes feel the most toxic place on the internet, but the corner occupied by the fandom for this spring’s gay high school romance Love, Simon is one of its purest.

There are sweet Love, Simon Spongebob memes and clips of the film’s most memorable moments; there are threads of cute scenes from Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, the devourable-in-a-day YA book the movie is based on. Fans have added the "Love," prefix to their display name, and the film’s director and book’s writer have followed suit.

For the past year, Ellie Vengala – a bisexual 18-year-old from the Bay Area – has been co-running @lovesimonfilm, a Twitter account which shares rolling updates on the movie with fans. "I think we all have this secret agreement to see each other as friends because we relate to Simon somehow," Ellie says of the online community. "At least, the queer teens can."

Love, Simon – which previewed at BFI Flare: London LGBT Festival, and opens in UK cinemas on the 6th of April – is about a closeted high school kid, Simon Spier (Nick Robinson), falling for an anonymous pen-pal known as "Blue", and ultimately shows his relatively frictionless coming out. Everything in the movie is given an eye-pleasing Hollywood sheen; there is not a pimple to be found on the faces of Simon’s fellow high school students, or a speck of trash on the sidewalk. It’s the first major studio teen movie to have a central LGBTQ character – and, in its gentle and heartwarming way, is a landmark for gay representation.

Teen movies can be a tough sell, as can LGBTQ-themed movies. But the film's studio, 20th Century Fox, clearly have faith in Love, Simon’s broad appeal – perhaps helped by its groundswell of internet support. In the US this March, Love, Simon opened in a whopping 2,400 cinemas. That's more screens than Call Me By Your Name and Moonlight reached combined. The movie's wide release also comfortably outstrips the 1,945 theatres reached by Edge of Seventeen, the best (straight) teen flick of recent years.

"I've seen Love, Simon eight times," says Nick, a 19-year-old gay man from Florida. "I hate that being gay means you’re different. I think this film is a small step to defeat this barrier – to make being gay an everyday thing, not an uncomfortable topic."

For Trey, a gay 18-year-old fan from Dallas, Love, Simon is special for its positive flip on the coming out story. "When I came out, everyone turned against me," he says. "They told me I was different and a monster. But getting to see Simon come out and still be treated the same was amazing. I hope Love, Simon inspires kids to know that they aren’t alone, and that being LGBTQ is becoming more of an acceptable thing in society. I hope it gives them hope to a brighter future where they can be themselves without fear or regret."

From the start of Love, Simon, audiences are invited to empathise with the titular character: through his relatable passions for texting and iced coffee, sure, but most directly in his monologues.

"I'm just like you," Simon says in the opening moments of the film, meaning that he is "normal", even though he's gay. But he’s also a rich, white, cis, slim and masculine guy: qualities which make him unusually privileged in both the straight and gay worlds.

"It's honestly a fairytale," says Rebekah, a non-binary 18-year-old from Chicago. "And it's not relatable to a large percent of the community. In real life, gay people are disowned, sexually assaulted and even killed for being who they are. I know that the movie was meant to give people hope, but the peaches and cream narrative just doesn't cut it."

'Love, Simon' image via BFI Flare: London LGBT Festival

Simon isn’t quite a perfect role model for LGBTQ youth. As the writer Jacob Tobia observed in a New York Times op-ed, Simon’s masculinity is fragile: he distances himself from a flamboyant, out student named Ethan, and dismisses a reverie about his own future as a diva-loving university student with the words, "Well… not that gay." For queer viewers who didn’t have the privilege of growing up as straight-passing, it can feel hurtful to see effeminacy as the butt of the joke.

I don’t think that means that Love, Simon should be dismissed outright. The film is a beacon of hope for many queer teens – and, given the fact it has already recouped its $17 million (£12 million) budget, there’s clearly a huge mainstream appetite for LGBTQ narratives that speak to young adults. But it is worth remembering that Love, Simon only tells one specific kind of teen story, and that we must advocate for more films focusing on nancy boys, fierce divas, butch lesbians, trans people and queer people of colour. In other words: watch Love, Simon this spring, but also support indie movies like A Fantastic Woman and The Wound.

"Of course Love, Simon is a glossed-over version of what being closeted is really like," says Ryan Schocket, a 24-year-old writer who lives in New York. "But I still think it is an incredible, important film, one I wish I had growing up."

After seeing the movie by himself this March, Ryan was inspired to come out to his mum. "When I shared my experience in my tweets, I had people reaching out to me saying they too wanted to tell their parents," he says. "I think the impact it will have down the road will be huge. We deserve love stories and breakup stories, big moments and soundtracks, and everything that everyone else grew up seeing onscreen. LGBTQ people are too fucking great to be in supporting roles."

@owen_myers

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Twenty years ago, a toy caused the world to collectively lose its mind.

Mostly fueled by the belief that they would eventually be worth something, people were willing to do almost anything to get their hands on Beanie Babies. This included armed robbery, violating international smuggling laws, and trampling children. A man was even murdered in a dispute partially fueled by Beanies.

Hundreds of millions of Beanie Babies products were sold. Sales staff at Ty, the company that made the toys, became millionaires, and Ty Warner, the company founder, became a billionaire. Many members of the general public became way, way poorer though, because it turned out that almost none of the Beanies would be worth anything once the craze ended. According to the book The Great Beanie Baby Bubble by Zac Bissonette, 99.5 percent of Beanie Babies are currently worth less than they were at retail (though that doesn’t stop people from trying to sell them for as much as $65,000).

"Can you yourself imagine paying a thousand dollars for an item that someone bought for five dollars three years ago?" Leon Schlossberg told me. "It's crazy. But a lot of people did that."

Schlossberg knows something about Beanie Babies because the 69-year-old and his 38-year-old daughter, Sondra, have amassed what might be the largest collection of Ty products in the world. They have everything from Beanie Boos (which you would probably recognize as those big-eyed plush toys you've ignored in the impulse buy section of your local Walgreens) to Ty-branded hand sanitizer to limited-edition Beanie Baby credit cards. The estimated 23,000 Ty items they own have taken over their North Carolina house and also their lives—their shared dream is to obtain and catalog every Ty product ever made for TyCollector.com—their unbelievably comprehensive online database of Ty products—and, eventually, open a Ty museum.

Neither Leon or Sondra have jobs (Leon recently retired) and estimate that they spend 50 hours per week on their collection each. "I spend all of my time working on documenting, organizing and finding new items for the museum collection," said Sondra. "When people ask me what I do, I answer, 'museum curator.'" Though Leon told me he'd been too busy with the collection to track how much they've spent on it, he estimated that the amount "far easily exceeds $125,000."

They've been working on the museum since 2005 and have already designed it, but Leon was unwilling to share too many specifics with me as "we don't want to divulge designs that might give someone else a jump on us and our ideas." But in emails, the pair said it will ideally be "equal in size to the average Sam's Club," with a small park outside featuring giant statues of Beanie Babies. Exhibits will be swapped out using a special type of interlocking shelf that the Schlossbergs designed themselves. They're hoping to have a McDonald's in the museum, due to the restaurant's link to Beanie Babies. There will also be a Ty reference library and a display on the life and accomplishments of Ty Warner. Entry will be free for children and around $10 for adults.

"It is likely a few of the exhibits will make it into the Guinness Book of Records," said Leon, though he didn't offer any specifics.

I asked them multiple times why they liked Ty products so much, and got different responses. Sondra told me that she likes Ty because their toys make children happy in a way that she feels more technologically advanced toys do not. "We've sold some of our duplicates at bazaars in the past and when children browsing through the bazaar tables spot the Beanie Babies, they come running towards our table with excitement and smiles on their faces" she said. Leon said he's interest in the products because he's fascinated by the psychology behind people who are willing to pay inflated prices for things they collect.

The reason they set out on this monumental task seems almost besides the point now, though—they've gone much too far down this road to quit. "We started gathering reference materials on Ty products," Leon explained. "There were literally thousands of other Ty products. But the decision had been made and we continued to spend every available discretionary dollar on Ty products."

"That got costly, because we soon discovered Ty was introducing a few hundred new products every year," he added.

On one of the multiple websites they run together, Leon once wrote: "Sondra and I are the greatest team imaginable. She is my best friend, my partner in a variety of business endeavors and the inspiration for almost everything I do or write."

"Before the Beanie Babies took over our lives, we had plans to open a bed and breakfast or possibly a small restaurant somewhere as my retirement venture," Leon told me. "As the Ty collection got bigger and bigger, the bed and breakfast idea just faded away."

The two of them used to vacation together, but today they spend their time and money scouting potential museum locations. "We've visited Reno, Nevada, Pigeon Forge and Nashville, Tennessee, and several areas in Virginia to look for prospective sites for the museum. We also checked out Asheville, North Carolina," Leon said. They have yet to settle on a spot.

More beanies from the collection. All photos by Sondra Schlossberg

At one point during our conversation, I asked if they thought the public would still be interested enough in Beanie Babies to visit a museum. The plush toys are, after all, currently languishing in some purgatory along with the Numa Numa guy, George Foreman Grills, and rage comics. They're so deeply unpopular that Rogue Toys, a toys and collectibles store with locations in Vegas and Portland, has a recorded message when you call specifying that they don't want to buy your Beanie Babies.

But Leon argued that Ty products never stopped being popular, pointing out the success of newer products like Beanie Boos and Teeny Tys. "It's like the Beanie Baby craze all over again, but this time worldwide," he said.

"Family and friends have been tremendously impressed with our collection," he said. "Several have expressed an interest in working for the museum after it is built."

When I asked how sure he was that the museum would happen, Leon was adamant that, in some capacity, the Ty museum will open. If not a Sam's Club sized mega museum, they would consider a smaller one. And in the unlikely event the smaller one doesn't happen, they will loan the collection to other museums.

"The museum will definitely happen," he said.

Follow Jamie on Instagram.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Mysterious jars of pickles have been appearing on a Missouri highway on-ramp over the last six years, and no one can quite figure out why.

According to Fox 2, the pickles were first spotted around 2012, propped up on the on-ramp of I-270 near Des Peres, Missouri, and they've been coming and going ever since. The pickles have come and go throughout the years, sometimes disappearing from the highway for as long as a year. It's not the same jar—sometimes its a jar of whole pickles, sometimes kosher spears—but whenever one jar disappears, another eventually comes along to its place.

The pickles in February 2018

The great pickle mystery has apparently captured the imaginations of Des Peres community members, highway commuters, and pickle enthusiasts alike, and a Facebook group has been dedicated to how—and why—the pickles keep finding their way to that particular stretch of road.

"These Pickles need a Fan Page," the page description reads. "They have sat on the divide barrier on the exit ramp from 270 North at Manchester for years, if I had to guess mid to late 2012. They have survived snowmageddon, construction, and protesters. There has got to be a story behind these pickles and inquiring minds want to know."

And even though the page has been active since 2014, there are still more questions than there are answers. The truth, like a particularly stubborn pickle jar, has been tough to crack.

April 2018

April 2018

Who is the mysterious person—or persons—keeping the northbound I-270 on-ramp flush with pickles? Is it some sort of Vlasic viral marketing stunt, or just a Good Samaritan trying to offer drivers a quick snack for the road? Are there ever any bread and butter pickles, or are they strictly dill? More importantly, does anyone actually like bread and butter pickles?

As long as the pickles keep appearing, the intrepid Des Peres detectives will be trying to get to the bottom of the mystery—and the brine will likely continue to flow on I-270 until they do.

The earliest known shot of the pickles, in November 2014.

August 2016

A tragic fall in March 2017...

...but more pickles filled its place.

And a yuletide miracle in December 2017.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Your Tinder photos are your first line of offense when marketing yourself for an online hookup (or “something serious,” I suppose). One must carefully curate each and every one of these images to give potential mates a concept of who you are as a human being, and undoubtedly some of us are better at this than others. As a result, the photos you’ll come across on the app are vast and varied—although you do run into many hitting the same themes.

So, we broke down some of the most common photographic genres you’ll see while trying to meet special someones online. Good luck out there.

Fish-Holding

If you’re located near a large body of water and perusing your local Tinder offerings, you’ll find photos of this variety. Usually it’s a dude holding up a very large catch, like he is trying to signal that he’d be a good provider for you and your future children. Or, maybe he’s just trying to express his love of outdoor recreational activities and we’re just reading too deeply into this.

Memes

Actually quite helpful if used sparingly to let you know whether or not someone has a sense of humour, is a fascist, etc.

Flex Pics

Whether it’s a luxury car or a condo, rich people love to post these as a substitute for an actual personality. It should give you an indication of their annual salary, if that’s the kind of thing you’re into or whatever. Just do some fact-checking to be sure this person is not pulling a Bow Wow.

Club Photo

This person wants to show you all the spontaneous fun you’ll have taking Ubers to various exclusive events. What they’re actually telling you is they’re in that semi-destructive phase of their life, which can last an undetermined number of years and can include blackouts, an inability to make plans more than a day in advance, needy late-night texts, and puking in said Ubers. If this is not for you, it’s probably best to move along no matter how hot they are.

Photo via Pixabay user YamaBSM

Dog Pic

This may simply be a lure, but it’s also totally possible that really cute corgi is theirs and you’ll get to see it if you go on a date. Most likely this person is a member of the Dogspotting group and refers to all canines as “doggos.”

Cat/Sedated Tiger Photo

Indicates that they’re a cat person or that they’re one of these people.

Your Ex

Fuck. She’s on here? Goddamn. So soon? Well, I guess I am too. Jesus, what’s wrong with us? We were so in love. I remember telling her she was the love of my life like four months ago at her parents’ summer home in Parry Sound. We made love in the backyard on her childhood swing set that night. Jeez. What am I doing on this app? Hell, what am I doing with my life? I miss her so much. Do I super like her? Nah, that’d be weird. I should swipe right though. Maybe she’s already swiped right—maybe we’ll match and get back together! Yeah! This has all just been a blip! We’ll be back together in no time! *swipes right* She didn’t swipe right…

Hunting Pics

I’m not going to diss this because I’ll probably get attacked online if I do. Bonus points if of the “exotic” game hunting variety.

Holding a Baby or Small Child

Is this your baby? A child you’re related to? A sign of a babysitting gig? An excuse to write “baby not mine” in your profile? There’s some implications to be addressed here.

The Work Photo

The only time that most people ever get access to a professional photographer is when they have a headshot taken for LinkedIn, so you’re going to be seeing this. In it, the person will be like half-smiling and their eyes will be dead. Subtext: They have a job!

The Picture You Took of Your Ex

At first, you don’t recognize the person but you recognize the background, so you stop to inspect. It’s that park where you used to watch Callie play ultimate. Oh, look, there’s a person jumping impressively into the air, arm taut, a hand reaching out for the glory of the catch. There’s long brown hair, floating, forever frozen in time. A sick feeling of recognition starts to wash over you, your stomach is sick and it’s all in your head— I took this fucking photo of Callie. You close the app in horror and think, How did it end up like this?

The Picture Your Ex Took of You
If they ever see this they are going to be sooooooooooooooooo pissed. (See above.)

The Foodie

Key components include a glass of wine, a sly smile, and a platter of perfectly plated oysters. Once swiping right, you end up on a date at your city's most Instagram-ed restaurants, where you spend six minutes suspended in embarrassment and horror as he takes photos of your food.

The Musician Pic

They’re a DJ/guitarist/experimental producer AND they want you to know about it. Unintended effect: serves as a reliable filter for those of us who are doing our best to avoid dating DJs ever again.

The Picture That Is Just a Screenshot of a Poem or Song Lyrics

Abort mission, friend. This person wants you to know they’re deep. Reality: They’re annoying.

Vacation Photo

Potential glucose guardians tend to have a surplus of these. Otherwise, these tend to be a woman flexing that she went to Paris that one time, a dude sitting on a beach drinking a daiquiri on spring break, or an actually pretty impressive shot of someone who has their life together hiking in the Andes. Choose carefully, for each sub-genre of vacay photos has implications.

Photo via Flickr user MIKI Yoshihito

Guy Posing with Hella Guns

Primarily found in the US. Decidedly different from “hunting pics” and potentially terrifying, depending on your views on the Second Amendment.

The Influencer Shot

What they're trying to tell you: how cool they are. What they're actually telling you: they’ll spend half the date checking social media.

An Older Gentleman Who Has Taken His First Selfie

How does this shit work? Fuck, I think I hit this button here. Nope. GOD FUCKING DAMNIT. OK… OK I got this. I hit this one here. FUCK, WHY DID THE FLASH GO OFF?!!? This never would have happened if Barb didn’t leave you, John. Goddamnit brain, we have a job to do stop thinking about Barb and let’s take this photo so we can get on that horny app our nephew told us about. OK… OK, I think I know how to do it. Here we go. HELL YEAH, there we go. Looking good, John, all the ladies are going to love you. You know what they say about them liking men with experience, right?!?! WELL… WELL ALL OF THEM EXCEPT BARB WHO WANTED A “YOUNGER” FUCKING MAN.

I miss her so much.

Photo of a Pizza

The bio beckons you to swipe right.

This is My Only Picture Picture

What are you hiding? You mystery wrapped in an enigma, you. Why only upload one pic? And no bio either? Bold. Am I attracted to this confidence? Or am I repelled by the possibility that you’re either a catfish or bot? *Swipes right* THE DIE HAS BEEN CAST!

Weed Porn

This person might be trying to tell you they’re a dealer.

The Wedding Photo

We all look fucking good at weddings. I don’t care if you’re the ugliest damn person in the world, you look smashing at a wedding. So, of course we’re going to use some photos of us as a bridesmaid or a groomsmen or whatever. However, buried deep in the heart of Tinder—deeper than any of us should ever go—exists the rare but interesting creature that uses a photo from their own wedding day… You may examine this beast, but think carefully before swiping right.

Low-Res Selfie

Might have been taken with a potato. It’s 2018, and this person still can’t muster a proper shot of this variety, so take that how you will. Probably barely use social media, so they might actually be pretty chill. Maybe you should give them a chance.

Standard Instagram Booty Pic

She probably is really into doing squat challenges and her DMs are a disaster. Another possibility: This may be a bot.

The “I Do Standup” Picture

You’re not a real comedian if you have one of these. You’re just a shit-head Humber grad waiting for Netflix to hit you up. Can I get more breadsticks please?

Enlightened Signaling Image

May or may not include yoga. They’ve been to India and will definitely have a number of photos indicating so on their profile. May or may not be Justin Trudeau. If you swipe right, prepare for the possibility of going to Burning Man this year.

Shirtless Selfie

When presented without any other photos, someone is probably cheating on his wife and, if he super-liked you, wants to do it with you right now. “Discreet hookups only,” he writes in his bio.

Someone on a Unicycle, Juggling, or Showing Off Other Rare Talent

This person is an asshole. But, they may be good at sex.

Duckface

There are still people who do this?

The Photo Series

Nothing’s better than a profile that tells a story. I once encountered a profile where the six pictures recounted one woman’s quest to make Kraft Dinner. I mean come on—that’s comedy. The photo series also serves as a natural conversation starter, making it doubly effective.

Gym Selfie

Likely have one of those fitness Instagrams full of posts with too many hashtags punctuated with photos of salads and smoothies (#cleaneating).

The Throwback

Intended effect: They want you to know how cool they were when they were younger. Actual effect: They reveal how boring they’ve gotten since they hit their 30s.

Photo via Pixabay user janeb13

Couple Pic

“Looking for a third."

Sexy Cosplay Pic

You’re super hot but you’re dressed as Spike from Cowboy Bebop. I have the weirdest boner right now.

‘I Accomplished Something’ Photo

This person is trying to tell you they have their shit together, though it’s possible this is a thinly veiled illusion that you’ll find out all too late. Varieties include: graduation, award wins, and some hybrids that fall in the “flex shots” category.

The Uniform Pic

This person is a cop. No, seriously, they’re actually a cop and they’re on Tinder in their uniform. What in the ever-loving fuck?

The Snapchat Filter

Most of us can agree the best part about Snapchat is/was its filters. Seeing all filtered selfies on a Tinder profile is a warning sign on multiple levels. Left, my dear, left.

The ‘Look I Play A Sport’ Photo

Usually these signal that someone is in good shape and/or that they’re in one of those adult sports leagues. But if this photo is from years ago, it’s possible this person is clinging onto glory of the past, which you may or may not be into.

The ‘Look I Definitely Have Friends’ Group Photo

They totally have friends and don’t care how confusing and inefficient it can be to show you this.

Cropped-Out-Friend Photo

Tacky, but probably better than non-consensually putting your friends’ faces on Tinder.

Confusing Group Shot, Family Edition

They want you to know they’re a family person. Instead, like most groups shots, mass confusion ensues. Which one of these people is you? Is that your dad? Did any of these people consent to being on your Tinder profile?

The Really Well-Shot, Cute Picture That Works Perfectly

This is it. This is the one you’ve been waiting for. After slogging through a seemingly endless collection of duckfaces, gym selfies, and Where’s Waldo-esque group shots, you’ve finally encountered the profile of a charming, attractive, fucking normal human being. The quality of the picture is good, but not DSLR good—that’s a healthy sign. It means they’re not a model or YouTuber, people who are categorically uncool. The photo is genuinely candid, not faux candid—that’s important. Anyway, they’re cute as hell. You should swipe right.

With files from VICE Staff.