Photos by the author

Think about your favorite pair of leather boots. Do you love them? Like, REALLY love them? Love them to the point where you’re sexually obsessed with them, and feel the need to connect with a community of people who love to fuck while wearing leather?

This, and many other things, is what leather means to the queers and heteros who attended the 28th Annual International Ms. Leather and International Ms. Bootblack Contest (IMsL/IMsBB) at the end of April.

For four days, hundreds of people took over the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, about 50 miles south of San Francisco. The weekend served as a chance for pervs from around the globe to gather and get laid in meticulously designed temporary dungeons, cramped hotel rooms, and public bathrooms.

According to rumors I heard from members of the leather community, the event moved from San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood to San Jose this year partially because the raunchy sex bothered San Francisco’s squares. For years, IMsL/IMsBB took place in SOMA—which after Stonewall was known for being filled with bars where you could receive a mouthful of piss and a fist in your ass—but the neighborhood has become so gentrified it’s now unrecognizable.

Although I have been involved in various kinky communities for nearly ten years, I had never attended IMsL/IMsBB before. Based on past participants' stories, I imagined the event was a beauty pageant where contestants wore fetish gear instead of sequin-covered gowns. In April, I decided to throw my bar vest and reporter cap in a suitcase and see what a leather weekend was really like. 

Like a doughnut, the Doubletree lobby circles around an enormous pool courtyard, so to get from my bedroom suite to the dungeon, bootblack stand, ballrooms, classrooms, and café, I had to past the civilians in the lobby. IMsL/IMsBB didn’t book the entire hotel, so I saw several vacationing families eating sushi next to women in full-body, latex catsuits. I also walked past people who crawled on the ground and wore collars and special hoods to make them look like dogs. 

The official contest took place Saturday night, and the schedule for the rest of the weekend was packed. The Alameda County Leather Corp hosted a cigar party with human ashtrays. Vendors turned one ballroom into a kinky shopping mall, where they sold everything from handmade chain mail to enormous dildos. Workshops with names like “Advanced cock confidence” included explicit live demos. During Bawdy storytelling, which is like an X-rated version of The Moth, I heard the tale of a man sticking a thermometer in his urethra in front of noted science fiction legend Sam Delaney.

The bootblack salon consisted of three chairs with metal stirrups on raised wooden platforms. Sitting for a kinky bootblack was like receiving a shoeshine in Grand Central Station, except it was acceptable for me to sexually objectify my bootblack Allison. (She gave me a view of her magnificent cleavage while she rubbed leather up and down my calf like a masseuse.) After the shoeshine, my boots looked brand new and I felt “shiny on the inside,” as International Ms. Bootblack 2011 described the feeling. 

On Saturday afternoon, I took a walk through the 24-hour dungeon, which was actually a hotel ballroom furnished with donated furniture. Spanking benches, wooden ladders, and a gynecological table stood next to sterile prep surfaces. Curtains distinguished a few men’s sections and women’s sections, but anyone could play in most of the dungeon.

The event encouraged voyeurs to watch as long as we behaved respectably. On Saturday, I saw a young woman wearing gym shorts hold an older man in a chokehold on a wrestling mat.  Elsewhere in the room, someone bent over a chair to receive welt-raising punishment from a long rattan cane, and an elderly woman sat in a chair while another woman performed fellatio on her cherry red silicon strap-on cock. It was 2 PM, and the room was relatively quiet compared to the previous evening, when people filled the room with the sounds of 90s sex music, screams, orgasmic moans, and the thwap, thwap, thwap of different objects colliding with flesh. As I eavesdropped on kinky sex enthusiasts setting up “dates” and “scenes,” I thought their negotiations sounded similar to comic nerds' conversations about their favorite characters.

At Saturday night’s contest, a panel of judges chose the people to represent the titles of International Ms. Leather and International Ms. Bootblack for the following year. Anyone from any gender could compete as long as they identified with the women’s leather community.

This year’s International Ms. Leather, Patty, won for her achievements in community service and education (it’s like a Rotary Club community service award, except the community service involves pledges to “cruise, fist, and fuck” across the globe), and International Ms. Bootblack, Dara, earned his title because he possessed the best technical skills to take care of his kinky gear. 

During the most entertaining part of the contest, a talent show called the Fantasy Scenes, contestants created a performance illustrating their unique desires and personalities. Narine sucked Rock em Sock em robots' lightsaber-like cocks; SubMissAnn performed human-pony choreography; and Patty starred in an elaborate rock star scene involving a human drum kit.

No matter how much you really know about kinky sex, leather is probably one of the first things that comes to your mind. Tom of Finland-style daddies in caps and chaps. Rihanna or Madonna in dominatrix drag. These archetypes and many more wandered around the Doubletree during IMsL/IMsBB. Some opted for rubber, or vinyl, while others wore ordinary dykey jeans and flannels.

Despite the different kinds of outfits, there was a unified passion for what leather clothing represents. For the people who congregate around leather events, that material is symbolic of their proud deviancy. 

After sitting for a sexy bootblack, reeking of the smoky smell of Huberd’s shoe grease, and watching the contest, I realized I would never look at my leather boots the same way again.

Follow Tina Horn on Twitter. 

Over the past year, Brazil's public school teachers have played a major role in the protests surrounding the World Cup. They have demanded pay increases, better working conditions, and improvements to Brazil's lagging social services. Teachers also have been going on periodic strikes.

For the past month, they have been trying to meet with Rio's governor to voice their demands, but the governor has ignored their requests. In VICE's third dispatch from the World Cup, we go to the public school teachers' demonstration in downtown Rio, where they demand a 20 percent pay increase and continue to try to make the governor hear their voices. 

Photo courtesy of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

When I was 25, I moved to Berlin with a beat-up copy of Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories tucked in my bag. Like many hobosexuals and fagabonds before me, I considered the book a lodestone, a guide to transmuting aimless searching and polymorphous desire into meaningful experiences. So when I heard that Farrar, Straus, and Giroux was releasing The Animals, a collection of the letters of Isherwood and his longtime lover, artist Don Bachardy, I knew I had to read it.

Bachardy met Isherwood when he was 18 and Isherwood was 48 (a year older than Bachardy’s own father). Despite the age difference, the couple spent the next 33 years together. Though love affairs and artistic exploits frequently sent them ricocheting around the world, they maintained a deep and unbreakable connection. They expressed this affection (and frustration) through “the Animals,” personae the two adopted in their letters. Bachardy acted as Kitty and Isherwood called himself Dobbin, Kitty's faithful horse.

Bachardy, now 80, still lives in the house the couple shared in Santa Monica. Shaking with faggoty fan boy excitement, I called Bachardy to discuss The Animals and what it's like dating a famous old man who was older than his dad.

VICE: How did your letters become a book?
Don Bachardy: It was my idea. I'd saved all of Chris's letters, and after his death, I found that he’d saved all of mine. Reading through them just made me think the material was too good not to share it with others. There's almost nothing, no letter in the book, that is missing, except one, though I can't remember now where in the sequence it is.

Did you ever discuss publishing something like this with Chris before he died?
No, no, no. And the animals at the time would have been horrified at the suggestion that they would ever be revealed and their letters [would be] published in a book. They would have been quite shocked by such an idea.

What changed your thinking?
I came across both sets of letters and it was very strange reading them again, but interesting too. There were even some laughs in the material, our attempts to entertain each other. There were things I would have liked to have changed—would have changed if I could—but then it's always a mistake to tamper with any mementos of the past.

How did you meet Isherwood? Had you read his books?
I'd seen a production of I Am a Camera [the play adaptation of The Berlin Stories which was later turned into the musical Cabaret]. It was the road company, here in LA, at the Biltmore Theater downtown. I'd actually already met Chris on the beach with my brother on summer weekends—he was one of the many people my brother introduced me to—but it wasn't until February of 1953 that Chris and I started seeing a lot of each other. It hadn't occurred to me that the “Herr Issy-voo” of I Am a Camera was actually the man I was getting to know. He had to tell me himself, and of course, I remembered the play, and eventually I got to meet Julie Harris [who played Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera] because he and Julie had become good friends because of the play.

How did people react to the age difference between the two of you when you started your relationship?
They freaked out about it at the time, all those years ago, because Chris wasn't in the closet. He couldn't very well pretend to be anything but queer. And everybody knew this very young looking friend he was going around with—they knew he wasn't his son. It was considered quite shocking by people who guessed this relationship with a 30-year age difference. That was not at all usual in those days, and certainly not at all usual that neither party was hiding. No beards required! We just brazened it out. Also, we were both artists, so that made it easier. If we had nine-to-five jobs in a clerk's office, it would have been much tougher because different standards apply. 

How was your life as an artist affected by dating Isherwood?
I would never have become an artist except for Isherwood. It was he who constantly urged me to consider being an artist. When we met I showed him drawings that I was doing as an 18-year-old. They were copied from magazine pictures, mostly of movie actors. I did them freehand. Chris saw that I had a real flair for drawing and kept after me: “Why don't you go to art school?”

Well, it took me three years before I dared to make the jump. I was frightened of failing, but his continual support and interest in the work I was doing in art school, once I got started, was invaluable to me. I could never believe in myself as an artist without his support at the time. That was essential to me.

Was it difficult to get people to take you seriously as first?
Yes, because I looked so young and presentable, and most of Chris's friends were around his age or older, so it wasn't so easy for me to be taken seriously by anybody—especially since I hadn't established myself yet as an artist. That's why being an artist was so important! I had to have an identity of my own that was more than just Chris's boyfriend.

Did the age difference concern either of you?
No. I naturally gravitated to people older than I was. It was just instinctive. I knew I could learn so much more from them, and for some reason or another, I had few friends my own age in my school years. So I was ripe to meet an older distinguished man who could give me very, very good advice, which Chris always did.

My favorite paintings you’ve done are the portraits you did of Chris in the last six months of his life.
I was doing close-ups, these close-ups of what Chris was going through at the time. He was lying in bed, and I was hovering over him, just a few feet away. I don't know of any other artist who has ever done close-up drawings of someone dying day after day, week after week. It seemed so appropriate to me because Chris had urged me to be an artist. And here I was with a model who I knew very well, who I'd drawn and painted through our 33 years together. And here he was dying, and it was a way of being with him intensely for much more of the day because I was drawing him. I was with him and looking at him in a way that I only looked at somebody when [I was] drawing or painting that person, so I could be with him intimately. It felt like dying was something he and I were doing together.

Follow Hugh Ryan on Twitter. 

Although polling day passed smoothly in Kabul, the Taliban are still keen to show their power to strike within the capital. Early Saturday morning, a suicide bomber struck the convoy of Masoom Stanikzai, the head of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, who is responsible for peace negotiations with the Taliban.

Stanikzai survived, but the attacker and a bystander outside of Kabul's Dawat University were killed, and three were injured. VICE News was the only news crew allowed through the police line to witness the aftermath.

GIFs by Daniel Stuckey

A British teen decided to yank a fire alarm at a rave, pulling off most of his pinkie in the process. The teen didn't rush to the hospital, though—he kept dancing. “I didn’t want to be the sore thumb sticking out—or the sore pinkie—so I was like, ‘Fuck it; let's skank on and enjoy it,’” he said.

Twitter plays GIFs now, but still won't allow users to select GIFs as their avatars. I guess I won't be choosing a GIF of me fucking a robot as my avatar anytime soon. 

Hillary Clinton handed a copy of her book, Hard Choices, to a Republican National Committee intern who was dressed as a squirrel. This made no sense, but making no sense is very on brand for Clinton, whose gay lovin', liberal husband supported DOMA and Don't Ask, Don't Tell, deregulated Wall Street, and allowed Arkansas to execute a mentally challenged man. Keep reppin' the family brand, Hill! 

Scientists have yet to invent antibiotics that don't make you shit your brains out, but they have created a process that allows art historians to look deep into old paintings. Recently, this technology allowed historians to uncover a picture of a cute man wearing a bow tie beneath Picasso's “The Blue Room.”

Proving mommy bloggers are the biggest sociopaths on earth after poets and theater kids, a mommy blogger poisoned her son with salt. 

Idiots invested $1 million in a new app called YO that allows you to say, “YO,” to your friends. This news pissed off tech bloggers, who make pennies while tech geeks make millions creating new ways to say hi to their friends. Of course, the REAL thing to be pissed about here is that YO is a ripoff of Facebook pokes. 

Authorities apprehended a man who danced around a burning pickup truck that he allegedly lit on fire in Northern California, blessing the world with this glorious picture.

A drone took a picture of a naked dude, however, for long-distance dick pics, dick pic connoisseurs still believe telephoto lenses are the way to go.

Eleven years after the start of the Iraq War, Sunnis and Shiites are once again fighting in Iraq. This week, Dick Cheney decided to open his mouth and blame the mess on Obama, even though ruining countries is what Cheney does best. 

This week commemorates the two year anniversary of Julian Assange's decision to hide in Ecuador’s London embassy. Two years later, the notorious creep (and defender of public transparency) is still trolling Obama hard:  “You must surely, now, start to reflect on what your legacy will be,” he said. “It must be at odds with a former professor of constitutional law to have a legacy that not only involves the construction of extrajudicial kill lists of individuals—including American citizens—but also a legacy of being the president who conducted more Espionage Act investigations against journalists and their sources than all previous presidents combined.” Ouch. Nice burn, Assange!

Follow Mitchell Sunderland on Twitter. 

The world's first porn industry-targeted cryptocurrency. Photos courtesy of Titcoin

With over 275 cryptocurrencies currently trading on the market and new ones popping up seemingly every week, it can be hard to keep track of which ones are scams and which ones are simply doomed to fail. By now, you must be acquainted with some of the more mainstream coins, such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and one of our personal favorites, Dogecoin. But the cryptocurrency world is about to get a proverbial boob job thanks to the arrival of Titcoin, the first porn industry-targeted cryptocurrency. Hailing from the minds of startup and finance wizards Edward Mansfield, Richard Allen, and a third gentleman who prefers to remain anonymous, Titcoin is designed to easily facilitate payment for your daily jack-off sessions.

On June 21, people who sign up early for a Titcoin wallet will get first dibs at mining what will eventually be 69 million Titcoins (why not have fun with this?) three hours before the official launch at noon that day. Evidently, the incentive to get in on Titcoin is already very real, so I called up one of the co-founders, Mansfield, to talk about why Titcoins are the tits and their fake viral video that jokingly advertised Titcoin as a barter system based on flashing.

VICE: The first time I had heard of Titcoin was the fake spec ad that was made for a contest to become Pornhub’s creative director. That video made it seem as if Titcoin was a way for girls to pay for things by flashing their tits. That’s not actually how your currency works, but would it ever be possible for me to use Titcoin that way in the near future?
Edward Mansfield: Anything is possible. It’s funny because it’s tongue and cheek and it’s meant not to be reality at the same time. I don’t think we would advocate for flashing your tits. That market already exists to some level.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure if a girl flashes her tits at the bar she’s gonna wind up getting a free drink anyway.
That’s pretty safe to say. Titcoin is mainly an idea that we came up with because we wanted to be very business minded. Sometimes we feel a bit uncomfortable talking about this matter because we’re not trying to promote pornography per se. We’re trying to promote a currency that is a conduit for that. We are walking that thin line. We are not really pornographers—we are basically business guys who are bringing in a currency which caters to a specific audience.

I must say Titcoin is a very catchy name. Was it a no-brainer for you to name it that way?
Yes, Titcoin was a no brainer. Just to give you an idea of what happened in the beginning, it was just myself and one of our partners chatting about digital currency as a whole. We’re at a bar, and somehow we start thinking about what if there was an industry-targeted currency, not one that was generic and covers a wide spectrum but something that was very specific. The adult entertainment industry quickly came to mind. I think within seconds we thought of Titcoin as sort of the perfect name. Everyone knows what Bitcoin is, and Titcoin has a very similar spelling. It’s really to capitalize on the branding.

OK. Now onto serious business. What am I going to be able to buy once I mine a fat stack of Titcoins?
Digital currency is pretty much like cash—you can’t really control what people do with cash. The partners that we are targeting are primarily online websites that have subscription-based services where you pay monthly fees for content. But there are other e-commerce sites that may benefit as well, mostly those that sell toys or adult packaged products. But we also have a lot of entertainers who have contacted us. One in particular, he’s a friend of a friend. I don’t want to give you his name because he’s actually one of the famous porn stars out there. He’s very interested in being a partner as well. Having his name on this would definitely skyrocket the notoriety of Titcoin.

How would having this mysterious person’s name attached to Titcoin help you?
It would bring things into the mainstream and help legitimize the currency. I think legitimizing the currency is the most important component in creating value in the long run. This person that we are talking to, his name is big enough that the average person will know who he is without being someone who buys porn all the time.



Mansfield (left), anonymous finance guy (middle), Allen (right)

Have you been contacted by other entertainers?
We have been contacted by a lot of performers who do webcam streaming. They’re particularly interested in Titcoin as a way to get “donations” from their viewers. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with how it works. It’s like when you go to a strip club and you throw dollars at the strippers, but online, instead of throwing dollar bills, you could throw digital currency at performers on the webcam. Viewers would pay to watch, but they could also throw Titcoins at performers.

That sounds great! Now, when it comes to who is going to be accepting Titcoins, are we talking big sites like Brazzers and Pornhub?
Yes, largely. But the ones that have reached out to us are generally some of the smaller, fringe websites, which are more than welcome to join us. We have been talking to a few of the really big players in the industry. We have talked to Brazzers at some point. In fact, we were talking to them before they started accepting Bitcoins. We kind of feel like we nudged them in that direction. But some of the other ones we are talking to are very suspicious of digital currency as a whole. It’s not surprising. These types of industries are very technologically advanced when it comes to media content and video streaming. But I feel that when it comes to the financial aspect of subscription-based services, they tend to be a little bit gun-shy.

What’s going to make Titcoin stand out from the other cryptocurrencies, aside from having a catchy name and a sexy logo?
I don’t think we see ourselves as competitors to Bitcoin per se. The way that we see it is that it gives users various payment options, like using Visa, MasterCard, or Amex. In the future, if we can imagine a world where digital currency is more mainstream, you might have a Bitcoin account with your spouse. You may not want them to see you purchasing products or subscriptions on adult sites, because perhaps this is something you’d rather keep to yourself, so having an industry-specific coin has certain advantages for consumers when they want to keep things a bit more private than they would with a Bitcoin account. Fundamentally there is no significant difference. It’s all in the branding.

Follow Stephanie Mercier Voyer on Twitter.

Photos by Jessica Flynn

At the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia, one of the most historic arenas in wrestling history, a short man dressed like a masked superhero scaled the ropes surrounding the wrestling ring.

Instead of crushing his opponent when he launched himself off the ropes, the wrestler landed a few feet away from his opponent. This wasn’t his only misstep, but his fans—Mexican families, die-hard wrestling aficionados, and pop culture buffs—didn’t mind his mistakes. Jumping and falling, pain and victory, are parts of the lives of luchadores, the Mexican wrestlers who work at various independent professional wrestling circuits around the world.

The last Saturday of April, I visited the arena to watch Masked Republic’s first MaskedMania event in Philadelphia. “The entire concept behind MaskedMania was to test bringing an authentic lucha libre show to a market that does not traditionally get lucha libre—or, in the case with Philadelphia, had never had a traditional lucha event period,” said Kevin Kleinrock, president of Masked Republic. “We wanted to bring our event to an underserved city. And, with the rich tradition of wrestling in Philly and the extremely supportive 2300 Arena, it seemed like a perfect fit.”

Several local promotion companies have called this arena home, and the venue has served as a breeding (and bleeding) ground for dozens of wrestlers who eventually fought in the WWE—the rafters’ banners include names like Terry Funk, Jerry Lynn, and Sandman.

Like at many other wrestling events, the men jumped on their competitors, their big bodies banging against each other and flying throughout the ring. It was a freak show, but it was an inclusive freak show, starring women, young guys, old guys, tall guys, short guys, straight guys, and gay guys—yes, gay crossdressers known as exóticos.

In lucha libre tradition, most exótico luchadores are gay men dressed in drag. “Everyone knew I was gay, but I never had a closet, so I was never in the closet,” said Cassandro, one of the most famous exóticos in the world. “Everyone knew I was gay except me.”

Many luchadores wear masks to disguise their faces, but the 44-year-old Cassandro has used heavy-handed mascara and eyeliner to draw attention to his naked face. He began his wrestling career with a mask, but when a big wrestling promotion in Juarez, Mexico, needed an exótico, he knew the mask had to go.

“Lucha libre has been the worst thing to ever happen to me and it has been the best thing,” Cassandro said. 

In addition to surviving a suicide attempt and having to work long hours to prove himself, Cassandro has suffered back injuries and torn his ACL and PCL. After another luchador, LA Park, kicked him in the face four months ago, he had to buy a new set of teeth. His next three surgeries have to wait until after he tours Japan and Europe in the fall.

“The doctor said, ‘Urgent surgery.’ I said, ‘Urgent for you, not for me!’” Cassandro laughed. “It’s lucha libre, not a beauty salon—even though sometimes it may look like it.”

Lucha libre’s traditions date back to the late 19th century. According to Steve Sims (a.k.a. Dr. Lucha, an authority on the sport with encyclopedic knowledge), the first Mexican wrestling competition in America possibly took place in the 1920s in California or Texas. In 1933, back in Mexico, Salvador Lutteroth González, the father of lucha libre, formed a popular promotion company called Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre. Over 80 years later, González’s company still exists.

In the 1940s, many Mexicans immigrated to America, because World War II had vacuumed up most American men, bringing wrestling and other Mexican customs with them. Lucha libre was so popular in the 40s, promoters in California and Texas organized fights between Mexican wrestlers.

Since then, the tide of interest and support in the United States has crested and receded, but with recent partnerships between companies north and south of the border, lucha libre may be ready to ride the wave again. According to experts, the two biggest promotions in Mexico, CMLL and AAA, may respectively gross as much as $10 million or $15 million this year. CMLL has partnered with Warner Bros. to handle the marketing of luchadores, while AAA has made a deal with El Rey Network to bring lucha libre to television. While these promotions represent a push into the United States from Mexico, companies like Masked Republic are also starting here, bringing luchadores to America, which makes sense considering the WWE grossed more than $125.6 million in 2014’s first quarter.

MaskedMania-type events are also growing in America. Steven Steffel, a fan from Falls Church, Virginia, drove two and a half hours to see the match. “I’m a general wrestling fan, but I like the high-flying, risk-taking acrobatics aspect [of lucha libre],” he said. Josh Mitchell from York, Pennsylvania, agreed: “Lucha libre to me is like real life superheroes,” he said. “You can get behind somebody, and they have a persona you can buy into, that they can do anything. It transcends larger than life. I think of lucha as live action comic books.”

Although the American market has boosted lucha libre’s popularity, Cassandro and other athletes grunted and sighed when I asked them about the gringos who joined lucha libre. The influx of white wrestlers reminded me of when Prime Minister Pete Nice and MC Serch broke out on the rap scene. At the time, rap was a small subculture, so the rappers’ ethnicity didn’t draw as much attention, but as rap became more popular, white rappers, like Eminem, drew flack. Cassandro now sees the positive benefits of the American wrestlers: “It’s very obvious there are two different schools, American wrestling and lucha libre Mexican-style, but if you don’t lose touch and skills and talent, it raises the bar and helps us both.”

Before each match, wrestlers and luchadores did push-ups, prayed, and shadowboxed invisible opponents backstage. While production people frantically scurried to referees, Cassandro stood silently with his glittering, pink robe's long train flowing across the floor behind him, like a bride waiting to walk down the aisle. 

When Cassandro’s theme music began, he strode with confidence through the curtain and down the walkway. As Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” started to play, he entered the arena and the crowd lost it. Men catcalled; women whistled. Even the bored children who had been dragged to the event by their parents dropped their toy masks to watch Cassandro.

After Cassandro sauntered down from his perch on the top of the rope, he played out a charade of overt and rejected sexuality with his American opponent, Matt Cross, to the cheers and jeers of people in their seats. At the start of the match, Cassandro wrapped his arms around Cross from behind and then squeezed his pecs. Cassandro and the crowd enjoyed this, but Cross did not.

In many ways, the match symbolized the contrasts between American and Mexican wrestling. More than any other fight that night, the battle pitted the lucha libre-style against traditional American wrestling. Where lucha libre fighters perform moves on their opponent’s left side, American wrestlers deliver moves to the right.

Eventually, Cassandro landed a missile dropkick before executing a top rope rana and pinning Cross for a three count, winning the match. The crowd exploded in the longest, most sincere round of applause of the night.

“People went crazy for me tonight. Even the white guys were like, ‘Mexico!’ I was like, ‘Awesome!’” Cassandro said after the match. “I’m not used to wrestling American-style, and Matt isn’t used to lucha libre-style, but we were pretty good. I still did my stuff, and he still did his awesome stuff. It was good.”

“That was my first time seeing Cassandro, and that was fucking awesome,” said Philadelphia resident Jason Goldberg. “He’s my new favorite wrestler!” Along with being a longtime wrestling fan, Goldberg handles vocals for Eat the Turnbuckle, a band that describes itself as “ULTRA-VIOLENT DEATH MATCH ROCK AND ROLL.” From occasionally rocking lucha libre masks on stage to performing wrestling stunts during live performances, their wrestling appreciation is more than a gimmick—they love the sport.

 “Look at today. It was a great turnout; it was a great show. And Philadelphia doesn’t very often have a lucha libre show. It was mixed, but the result was obvious,” Cassandro said. “The fans, adrenaline. I love my job. I’m so blessed.”

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Although most Americans believe water scarcity only occurs in countries where Angelina Jolie campaigns for peace, two of the world’s most overexerted rivers are right here in the United States. According to the World Resource Institute, both the Colorado and Rio Grande suffer from extremely high stress, meaning that we annually withdraw over 80 percent of each river’s renewable water supply, and at least a third of the US exhibits medium to high water stress or higher.

Take Lake Mead. Located outside Las Vegas, the lake has experienced an alarming decline in elevation. The US Bureau of Reclamation commissioned the Hoover Dam in 1931 to protect the water needs of the area, but according to the Las Vegas Sun, experts predict that Lake Mead could run dry by 2050, with declining power generation possibly occurring in as little as a year. According to the Sun, the Colorado River “provides drinking water for 36 million Americans, supplies irrigation for 15 percent of the nation’s crops, and supports a $26 billion recreation economy that employs 250,000 people." In other words, if Lake Mead dries out, we’re fucked.

What should we do to fix this and other water problems? Professor Glen MacDonald, a UCLA Distinguished Professor, a UC Presidential Chair and the Director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, believes he has the answers. I emailed him to discuss America’s water problem, the issues in the South West, and what the government can do to save our water supply.

VICE: Where do you think our biggest threat lies in terms of water scarcity?
Professor Glen MacDonald: In the United States we are so used to turning on the taps and getting clean water we forget this is not the way it is in many parts of the world, or that in a state like California we need about 80 percent of the water we apply to grow the food we eat. We urbanites forget about the huge needs of water for agriculture and the problems that drought can cause for farmers and ranchers, even in a rich country like the United States.

Which industries, in your opinion, could make changes that would produce the biggest drop in global water consumption and river stress?
The biggest use of water is agriculture. However, in California many farmers are using water pretty well relative to the crops they grow. Getting efficiencies in irrigation while protecting crop yield is getting increasingly difficult as the easy fixes have already been applied in many cases. Perhaps we need a movement by consumers to favor water-wise food choices and crops. [This will] help incentivize the growing of crops which are efficient in terms of water per-yield, provide healthy and diverse food choices, and allow farmers to make a living. This is an important area with exciting possibilities.

What do you think about population control as a part of the solution to the global water crisis?
I believe that if we work together we can supply good clean water to meet projected population growth in this century. As economic status, educational status and freedom increases population growth rates tend to decline naturally. I think we should worry about getting good clean water to people who lack it and not focus on global population head counting.  

What about reclaimed water?
Reclaimed water is part of the solution in arid cities. It can be grey water used for irrigation or it can be treated waste water placed directly back into the water system or used to replenish groundwater and reservoir supplies first.  

What is the future of Southwestern American cities like Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles?
I believe that in the Southwest we may see changes in our urban landscaping as we become even more water wise. Remember that 50 to 70 percent of urban water is typically used for landscaping. By rethinking our gardens and outdoor spaces we can conserve a lot! I think in any case that urban water supplies will be protected. Cities in the Southwest will not dry up and disappear, but the cost could be higher water rates for consumers, and less water for agriculture.

What should the government do to protect our water?
The State needs to pass a comprehensive water bond that has no pork and provides improved water infrastructure and water management—including ground water management. Problems with our groundwater supplies are a looming problem that we need to get a handle on.

What countries provide good examples of responsible water conservation that the U.S. can follow?
I think Australia has a broad number of technologies and strategies that work to save water. [Since] their climate is similar to ours, it provides a good test bed for us to look at.

What can the average citizen can implement to make a dent in water consumption? 
Most people have installed low flow toilets and showers—if not, do it now! Tackle how much you water your outside plants. Most people over water their gardens. If you can get rid of lawn and replace it with beautiful low-water demanding plants by all means do it now!  We have zero lawn at our new house and I am seeing more and more people replacing lawns and boring high water consumption gardens with beautiful water wise landscaping.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Philadelphia's city council voted to decriminalize marijuana, and I couldn’t be happier. I don’t live there anymore, but I spent an important chunk of my life in that town. When I first arrived there for college, certain neighborhoods scared me, but over time the city’s flaws grew on me. I started loving Philly for the same reason so many people hate it—it’s a shithole, but it’s my shithole.

If the city makes decriminlization a law, which is likely, it would be a victory for the underdog. Decriminalization would remove an immense burden from a city that smokes a shit ton of weed. Like many other cities in America, Philly arrests way more minorities than white people for crimes of minimal possession. I never had to deal with that reality, because even though I’m clearly a minority, cops usually perceived me as a harmless college student. I tried to explain this to my mom time and time again, but she believed that smoking—or just possessing—weed would land me into trouble. “They’ll do a stop-and-frisk on you,” she often said, shaking her head. 

My mom got the opportunity to confirm her fears when her friend introduced her to a realtor named Todd who used to be a Philly cop. He was helping us look for a new house, and my mom figured she would receive a bargain on his fee if she asked him for advice about the dangers of smoking weed. One afternoon, as Todd drove us around South Philly, a cloud of weed smoke passed through the car at a stoplight. My mom saw her chance to segue the conversation. “Todd, what is that smell?” she asked politely. “Weed,” said Todd, adding, “Shitty weed.” My mom pried further, “Now, you were a policeman once. How often did you arrest people for smoking weed?” Before Todd could answer, she said, “Because my son, he smokes the weed.” Todd looked at me in the rearview mirror as I cringed in the back seat. He started laughing. “There’s no need to embarrass him. A lot of kids smoke weed. A lot of people in general do—hell, most of the cops I know smoke weed. I never bothered arresting people for that. Way worse stuff goes on out here.” My mom thoughtfully considered this for a moment. “OK. That makes me feel a lot better. Thank you,” she said. Thank god I have a reasonable mom.

Todd seemed pretty chill, so one day I asked him about his days as a police officer in one of America’s roughest cities. I asked him about the most fucked up thing he had ever seen, and then he told me the following story, gesticulating with one hand, as he drove us through Philly.

“One day, we got a citywide call on a car speeding up Broad Street toward City Hall. He was blasting red lights, and apparently driving on the wrong side of the street. We set up a blockade on the other side of City Hall, knowing that he’d have to go around it at some point. There must have been a hundred PPD there, cars and paddy wagons everywhere. We made the blockade, assuming that he would go the right way around the building counter-clockwise. Instead, he shoots around the wrong side and crashes into a bunch of cruisers with cops sitting in them.

“There was a frenzy, cops and medics rushing to the crash and struggling to pull the injured cops out of their vehicles. The renegade driver was in pretty bad shape too. They rushed the cops to Hahnemann Hospital right up the street, but not the other driver. A bunch of cops pulled him from the wreckage and dragged him into the back of a paddy wagon; they beat the living shit out of him in there. He was wilding and could have killed their buddies—and there was no way they were letting that go. A few minutes later, the cops emerged from the paddy wagon with the guy’s blood all over their arms and hands. Medics pulled the guy out and rushed him to Hahnemann, where he died in a few minutes.

“We found out soon after that the guy was driving through town in a rage because he had just found out that morning that he had full blown AIDS. They gave him a few weeks to live—he had no treatment options and no way out. He just lost it, got in his car, and sped away with a death wish. The cops who beat him had been exposed to a lot of his blood. If one of them had a cut on their knuckle, there was a chance they had the horrible disease that drove that guy crazy. For weeks, none of them could have any physical contact with their wives until they were thoroughly tested. Did they deserve that? Maybe. But in a city where the crime is fucked up, the enforcement is going to be kind of fucked up.”

We sat in silence, absorbing the gruesome tale. Todd broke the tension. “So, yeah. The weed is no big deal, kid.”

Follow T. Kid on Twitter. 

They say that sometimes you need to distance yourself to see things clearly. Sicilian photographer Glauco Canals spent four years in Milan, before moving to Plymouth, UK, from where he sent us another heavenly selection of photos. This is what he had to say on Milan:

"My perception of Milan has changed ever since I came to England. In the past year, I've had the opportunity to reevaluate the city, its people, and its dynamics and come to love and miss so many things I despised before."

See more of Glauco's photos here and here.

Does your town or city qualify for paradise status? Feel free to send your pitches to ukphotoblog@vice.com. Don't be shy.

It’s easy to write a novel: Just keep typing until you have something that is very long and mostly lies. But getting that mess published is another beast entirely—unless you are famous, in which case your every utterance is assumed to be worth printing. As a result, there are a ton of embarrassing books with famous names attached to them. We sampled a few to see whether they were really that bad and found that yes, they were.
 

THE JUSTICE RIDERS
Chuck Norris, Ken Abraham, Aaron Norris, and Tim Grayem
B&H Fiction, 2006

Who knew that Walker, Texas Ranger, would be the best ridiculous-name-giver since Stan Lee? If you want to read about “Ezra Justice” as he teams up with English sharpshooter “Reginald Bonesteel” to fight “Slate Mordecai” and teach the Wild West about the Bible, The Justice Riders is the grocery-store paperback for you! The book wraps up with Justice sharing the gospel with Mordecai, then shooting him dead after the bad guy rejects Jesus—which is sort of Norris’s worldview in a nutshell.

MIKE PEARL

PARADISE ALLEY
Sylvester Stallone
Putnam, 1977

The plot of Paradise Alley is a predictable yawn about three brothers in 1940s Hell’s Kitchen who get involved in underground wrestling in search of a quick buck and learn heartwarming lessons, but Stallone’s prose makes what could have been a merely mediocre novel memorably awful. He was likely aiming for a Dashiell Hammett–esque hard-boiled style but winds up sounding both simplistic and overly fond of the stalest stereotypes of New York City tenement life. When your fight scenes include lines like “Patty McLade dropped to the floor like a whore’s nightgown,” it’s time to go back to writing movies that are mostly inspirational jogging scenes and anguished grunts.

HARRY CHEADLE

VOODOO CHILD
Nicolas and Weston Cage
Virgin Comics, 2007

One time, Nic Cage and his black-metal crooner son, Weston, came up with an idea for a comic book about the child of a slave who was killed in the 1860s and gets resurrected by black magic to clean up the streets of post-Katrina New Orleans. Then they got an artist and a writer to make their dreams into reality, because the Cages are not like you or me. This book is like if Spawn impregnated the Candyman with his demon seed on the set of Treme while a cuckolded Todd McFarlane masturbated in a corner. In other words, it’s fantastic.

DAVE SCHILLING

MODELLAND
Tyra Banks
Random House, 2011

Modelland is the story of Tookie De La Crème, a 15-year-old girl from the land of Metopia. Everyone considers her a “Forgetta-girl,” but on the Day of Discovery, the annual event where girls catwalk down Metopia’s main street, a scout invites De La Crème to Modelland, a mysterious place on a mountaintop where every year seven girls become “Intoxibellas” (a.k.a. supermodels). But before she can achieve Intoxibelladom, Tookie must survive the “Catwalk Corridor” and “Thigh-High Boot Camp.” There’s a positive message about inner beauty yada yada yada in here, but it’s buried under 5,000 tons of gibberish that Tyra Banks thought would sound cool to 12-year-old girls. PS: I did not finish the book because come on.

MITCHELL SUNDERLAND

JUNIOR
Macaulay Culkin
Miramax, 2006

So it turns out that when a child megastar writes a semi-fictional memoir-slash-sketchbook, what comes out is kinda nuts. Junior is loaded with non sequiturs, drawings, lists, and daddy issues. At one point, Culkin writes, “Dear Dad, Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck…” Reviewing this would be like reviewing a roomful of headless dolls.

BOBBY VITERI

A LIFETIME OF LOVE: POEMS ON THE PASSAGES OF LIFE
Leonard Nimoy
Blue Mountain Arts, 2002

These poems (nauseatingly printed on pastel-colored paper) are all about the most amorphous form of love possible—it’s a love free of sex, fear, envy, or passion, which makes it a love that’s incredibly boring to read about. Nimoy employs nature imagery you might find on the back of a box of organic quinoa (he’s big on sunrises, trees, breezes, and gardens) and generally writes like a man who has never read poetry or gotten a boner. This book is bad.

WILBERT L. COOPER

Ricardo Castellano

I always thought of wars as something people try to forget. Particularly civil wars, like the Spanish one—three years of fighting that resulted in dictator Francisco Franco ruling the country for the next 36, from 1939 to 1975. Yet in Spain there are still those who are committed to keeping the memory of the conflict alive.

Lawyer and military historian Ricardo Castellano has built a career on tracking and cataloguing remnants of war. As leader of Colectivo Guadarrama, he has spent the past 15 years unearthing bunkers and strongholds in Madrid and the surrounding area. A modern-day treasure hunter, he is a fascinating character, so I got in touch to ask him about his work.

VICE: How did you get into tracking strongholds and bunkers?
Ricardo Castellano: I’ve had an interest in the Spanish Civil War since I was 16. Then, in 1995, I had an accident and had to stop working for a while. I took the opportunity to catch up on some reading and since I had time until I returned to work, I began exploring battlefields out of curiosity. I realized there was no information. I found it hard to believe that no one had been interested enough to gather information; the only thing I found was a periodical published by the Community of Madrid in 1987.

In 1996, I started traveling around the country. In 1998, a friend told me what a GPS was, so I ordered one from the US for 50.000 pesetas [the old Spanish currency, equivalent to $360]. With it, I began taking coordinates of the sites where I knew there were remains and investigating in archives. I also developed my own location technique.

What does that entail?
My interest isn't as much in the battles as in when those fortifications were built, who built them, and why. In order to make my excursions easier, I photocopied the microfilms I found interesting, I cut and pasted the photocopies, arranged the maps at home, scanned them, and then—through a system of layers—overlaid the maps from the times of war with the current ones. This way, I managed to depict the battlefronts and the positions of each side, so I had quite a clear picture of the area when I was on site. Then I used other tools, such as Google Maps, which provides an aerial view of the terrain but does not tell you where you need to go. For example, it is not useful when you are dealing with a forest. It is a good tool for bunker hunters, but not great for those looking for historical knowledge.

What exactly is a "bunker hunter"?
Around 1998 I began to inventory everything I had found, and in 2005 we established the association. In these years the internet evolved, allowing people with common interests, such as looking for remnants of war, to communicate with one another. It began as something for connoisseurs and ended up extending to other social spheres. In the last six or eight years this has really progressed; some people even organize routes.

Are there still fortifications left to discover?
Of course, although they will not be the most spectacular ones, since dozens of people have been walking the battlefields looking for them for about 15 years. The real treasures now lie within the underground buildings, because they’re not noticeable and they don’t appear on maps. I am talking about air-raid shelters, of which there is little documentation.

A bunker near Madrid, unearthed by Ricardo

So we might be standing above a hidden bunker right now, here in Madrid.
Indeed. There are plenty of them. A couple of months ago, I got in touch with this man who had posted a blog about how he’d managed to enter an underground construction I knew but hadn’t been able to visit. It’s on Aristas Street, and it was designed to shelter 5,000 people. After its construction began, the proportions of the bunker had to be reduced to accommodate 2,000 people instead. Eventually, they built four shelters for 500 people each. I found some photos of the place, uploaded by a civil servant who worked in the sewage systems.

Is there any other place that you find intriguing?
Yes, I’ve been working to gain access to the Osram Shelter, next to the light bulb factory, near Atocha train station. The premises belong to the Community of Madrid and used to be surrounded by open country. That was the building site of one of the biggest shelters, all with reinforced concrete and spacious rooms. I don’t know if it still exists.

How long did it take to build one of those shelters?
It should be noted that these were made in times of war. There were power cuts, and the workforce was scarce. In some of the buildings they used bricks from other constructions. With all means at their disposal, it could take them about a month or so to build a shelter for 100 people, and four months for the most complex—those with machinery involved.

The army's layout for another bunker from the 1930s

Are there still people who go out on their own looking for "souvenirs" of the old battles?
This is a sensitive subject. There is a law dating from 1985 that regulates the use of metal detectors, but each government makes their own interpretation. The tendency is towards prohibition, as it usually happens in Spain. If you’re talking about material remnants from the Civil War, of course there are some. During the noughties, about 1400 shells were deactivated yearly. That’s an average of five shells per day. Some were injured and have even died because of this. Many a fool finds something and, instead of calling the Spanish military police, takes it home, and tries to manipulate it, and sometimes it explodes, killing them, or blowing the house up.

And what would the solution be?
I always tell them that they should have a permit if they use a metal detector. In the past, they would take refuge in the fact that no one could dig out anything less than 100 years old. But if what you find is near an archaeological site or in a natural park, the law says that you can’t touch it. The problem with “detectorists” is that they are not historical treasure hunters or looters. They are interested in grenades, ammunition, etc. So the risk is to them, rather than to the national heritage.

How valuable are those pieces?
They have a market value, but not very high. I don’t know. A nice hand grenade might be worth 60 Euros [$90]. Well-preserved helmets are very highly priced, but they are not excessively expensive. Very few people make a living from this in Spain. It doesn’t yield a big margin.

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