For more than a decade, Vicar Andrew White has been risking his life to preach for peace on the streets of Baghdad, driving through bombed-out war zones to spread his message. In his quest, White has become the primary liaison between the Sunni and Shia Muslims. 

Photos by Aaron Joel Santos

Thailand’s most sinful city, Pattaya is famous for getting men a little hot under the collar. And discontent is boiling over at the police mobile unit stationed at the entrance to the resort town’s infamous Walking Street. A giant Pakistani man is stating his case vociferously to the volunteer foreign cops who patrol the red-light district on a nightly basis. Beside him, a feminine Asian form on skyscraping stilettos chews gum and shoots him sour looks. “I am not a homosexual,” cries the man. “This thing deceived me,” he says, jabbing a finger at his companion, whose perceptibly manly features and guttural tones make it obvious she was born a he. 

“He refused to pay her,” says Andros Plocins, an English member of the Foreign Tourist Police Assistants (FTPA), as we watch the scene unfold. “So now we have to sort it out.” The situation is soon defused. The man, who it transpires, had got a degree of value for the transaction before he realized the reality of the situation, has to pay the agreed price. The ladyboy, meanwhile, is hit with a 200 baht ($6) fine for soliciting. “He should have just paid in the first place,” continues another policeman, laughing. “She was pretty hot.”

Taking care of such misunderstandings is among the many responsibilities of the FTPA. Foreign volunteer police have been pounding Walking Street since 2002, when Pattaya’s Tourist Police Division invited foreigners to assist them. At first, their primary role was to help Thai officers with translation and to provide an informal tourist information service. The FTPA still provides support to foreign visitors, but its scope has been widened to include duties such as stopping bar fights and apprehending thieves. Although volunteer officers don’t have powers of arrest (approval is needed from a supervising Thai officer), they carry handcuffs, batons and cans of pepper spray. Indeed, with their black SWAT-esque uniforms, they cut imposing figures. 

The FTPA numbers around 60 members from 20 different countries while its reach extends across the greater Pattaya area thanks to the recent introduction of motorbike patrols. Despite this diversification, however, Walking Street, which they patrol every evening from 9PM to 3AM, remains the primary beat for volunteer officers. 

To a legion of visiting men, the thoroughfare is something approaching paradise. Extending a little over a mile from the center of town to the ferry port, the pedestrianized strip is a neon-lit playground of wall-to-wall go-go bars. Teams of mini-skirted girls patrol the exterior of the larger venues hoping to lure in johns. Smaller operations rely on the age-old tactic of employing impressively vocal barmaids whose throaty cries of “welcome handsome man” can be clearly deciphered over the thumping techno that is the street’s constant mating call.

Pattaya is not just about sex tourism however. The city’s proximity to Bangkok’s Suvarnhabumi Airport (it is a short two hour hop away) makes it one of Thailand’s most popular destinations for package tourists. Russians in particular flock here, as do Chinese, Indians and Arabs. The town’s civic leaders have gone to great lengths to rid the city of its reputation for sleaze and many of these new visitors are families, couples or tour groups who seem blissfully unbothered by the trade in flesh that is as integral to Pattaya as its slightly shabby beach. 

It is an eclectic mix of people, and the various nationalities generally rub together peacefully. However, for all the efforts of the local authorities, it will take more than a few Siberian families to burnish Pattaya’s image.  Bar fights, drug crime and tensions between tourists and sex workers are regular currency on Walking Street. Elsewhere hundreds of freelance prostitutes ply their wares; drivers donate their lives to one of the worst road death tolls in Thailand and scores of methamphetamine pills fuel further craziness.

Keeping a lid on the mayhem would be a tough job for the most hardened police team. The fact that much of the grunt work is carried out by foreign volunteers is therefore even more remarkable.

“This place isn’t what it used to be, that’s for sure,” laments Dave Eke, another British member of the FTPA. He should know. A one-time security manager at tough East London nightclubs during the era of mobsters like the Kray twins, Eke left the UK for Thailand over thirty years ago and has been living in Pattaya since 1979. For the last twelve of those years he has devoted most of his nights to pounding the streets of the city as a volunteer officer. 

A lugubrious character anyway, Eke’s hangdog features droop visibly as he reflects on the nightly parade of humanity on Walking Street. “I wouldn’t say that Pattaya is exactly a magnet for bad eggs,” he says, “but there’s definitely a good proportion of idiots that come here. They will get uncontrollably drunk and then refuse to pay a bar bill or something. The Thais used to be very friendly, but they have been worn down and now it is a lot more cynical. What a lot of visitors don’t realize is that it is very dangerous to anger Thais. And if you cause trouble in one of the go-go bars or you get into an argument with a girl or the management, you face the prospect of a beating from a bouncer, most of whom are trained in muay thai.”

If Eke seems weary, his FTPA colleague Plocins is clearly living the dream. He came to Pattaya on holiday following his retirement from a police career in Befordshire and fell in love with lifestyle. The novelty clearly has not worn off. “Pattaya has its moments of course, but it still feels like a dream to me,” he beams. “I could be back in England, retired and bored with a retired and bored wife. Yet here I am, the sun is shining and I’m surrounded by hundreds of beautiful women. It is a no-brainer.”  

Despite his downbeat disposition, Eke is clearly a well-known and well-liked figure in Pattaya. We join him and Plocins as they leave the mobile unit to patrol the length of Walking Street. Eke, resplendent in his military beret, leads the way, stopping frequently to exchange wais—the traditional Thai greeting—with mama sans, bar girls and ladyboys. “It is not enough to walk around in a police uniform to get people to respect you,” he says. “You have to build up a relationship with everyone over time. That means everything here.”

It is certainly not a good idea to cross the locals on Walking Street. Use of ya ba, a methamphetamine derivative which translates literally as “madness drug” is prevalent in Pattaya, especially among sex workers and other nightowls. Originally given to horses to give them energy to pull carts up steep hills, the drug, which comes in tablet form, typically engenders euphoria but it is highly addictive and its side-effects are unpredictable. “If there wasn’t so much ya ba doing the rounds, there wouldn’t be half as much trouble,” claims Plocins. “Booze can make people leery and aggressive but the drugs can really step things up a notch.”

Unsurprisingly, catching dealers is a top priority for the regular Thai police and there are stiff sentences for those busted. To avoid being nabbed in possession, pushers have devised a number of hiding spots for their product in the vicinity of Walking Street. 

Eke takes pride on being able to sniff out these nooks and crannies. “You’ll need to get away from there,” he instructs a group of confused-looking Russian teenagers who are drinking by a wall at the port end of Walking Street. Eke removes a loose stone from the lower part of the wall and lowers himself onto his haunches to perform closer investigation. “I find bags in here all the time,” he says as he stretches his arm into the space vacated by the rock. On this occasion, however, he comes away empty handed. 

Back at the mobile unit the atmosphere is relaxed. FTPA volunteers give directions to lost tourists and have their photos snapped by jovial vodka-fuelled Russians. To pass the time they share some of their Pattaya horror stories. Ladyboys brandishing stiletto heels as a weapon seems to be a common occurrence, while gruesome motorbike accidents and dead bodies washing up on the beach attest to the city’s darker underbelly. 

This particular evening, however, is something of a non-event. “It is one of the quiet evenings,” admits Eke. “Thankfully these are the most common nights but we always have to be ready and on our toes. It is Pattaya. You never know what might happen next.”

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Photo via Flickr user Mike Mozart

America is the greatest fucking country on Earth. It may as well be the only fucking country on Earth. It’s the only fucking country that matters, anyhow. After all, giving us free reign over the entirety of His Kingdom was the last thing God did before He died. That’s right–our complete and utter dominance over the rest of the world is Divine Right, baby! Which explains why we’re so fucking good at it! We run this bitch (and by “this bitch,” I mean, “the world”)…like a boss!

In honor of the birth of the nation that allowed D. W. Griffith’s wildly racist Birth of a Nation to be the first motion picture ever screened at the White House, let us now take a break from setting shit on fire and pounding piss-weak macrobrews to praise everything that makes the good ol’ U.S. of A. the proverbial tits.

We Get Other Countries to Make Our Shit for Us

We’re, like, constantly on the go, workin’ double shifts at our service industry jobs to pay for childcare, which means we no longer have the time to manufacture our own products like ancestors did in generations past. It doesn’t matter, though, ‘cause China’s totally got our backs. They’re all, like, “Dude, we get it. You guys are busy. Don’t worry, we’ll totally make all your shit. T-shirts? Done. Electronics? On it. Food? Oh, fuck yeah. We’ve got this.” And we’re all, like, “Thanks, brah. We were worried we’d have to manufacture things again and, in the process, earn more than eight dollars an hour. We don’t wanna join a union or whatever like our dads did back in the day… LOL.”

We Get Other Countries to Answer Our Phones for Us

Dude, how baller is that? It’s like India’s our fucking butler!

Photo via Flickr user Shine 2010

We Can, Apropos of Nothing, Decide That We’re Super Into Soccer

Hell yeah, we competed in the World Cup. Should we have? Fuck no. Soccer is the World’s Game, and the world, by and large, despises us. In other countries, up to and including Brazil, the World Cup’s current host country, soccer is a game primarily played by impoverished slum dwellers. In America, it’s a game primarily played by upper middle class autistic kids (all that running gives ‘em the opportunity to blow off some steam!). There are no geopolitical aspects to our newfound love of soccer—it’s just an excuse for frustrated fathers to scream “Hustle, Brayden!” from the sidelines and, in the case of the World Cup, start drinking at 9 AM on a weekday.

The best part about America’s newfound World Cup fever, of course, is the fact that it gives us the opportunity to arbitrarily start hating countries we previously didn’t even know existed. We can’t tell you where Belgium is on a map, or even what language they speak, but we can tell you they should go fuck themselves. ‘Cause they beat our boys, goddamnit!

We Have the Freedom to, Like, Talk or Whatever

We can say whatever the fuck we want, whenever we fucking want. So long as, in doing so, we don’t upset our corporate overlords or get ourselves sued for slander. The richer we are, the more we can say, which gives us an incentive to work hard, make that paper, and go on racist tirades!

Photo via Flickr user Erik Hersman

We Can Vote and Shit (Even if We Have Pussies)

Listen, toots—this ain’t Saudi Arabia. Women have had the right to vote in this country for, like, a hella long time. As is the case with any right, they totally have the right to, like, not vote, too. Which is tight, because voting doesn’t really matter anyway. Our sick-ass Supreme Court ultimately makes all of our decisions, up to and including what broads can do with their bods. Having our lives and rights determined for us frees us from having to research and care about the issues, which in turn gives us more time to care about the shit that really matters, like professional sports and those kooky Kardashians.

We Solved Racism

Whenever some hater approaches us with that “America is still hyper fragmented by race” mumbo jumbo, we can just point at a picture of our fuckin’ POTUS, lookin’ non-white as fuck, and be all, like, “Uh… read ‘em and weep, dipshit.” The same thing applies when it comes to class. Whiny-ass motherfuckers are all like, “Boo hoo, the rich are only getting richer and the poor poorer, soon there won’t be a middle class at all, blah blah blah” and we’re, like, “Uh… bootstraps much? If you don’t wanna be poor all your life, do something about it. Develop an app or something. Look at that 24-year-old over there. He was just a college kid, eating ramen at Yale, and now he’s a billionaire. All ‘cause he found the right angel investor.”

Photo via Flickr user 5chw4r7z

We Use Other Countries’ Cultures as Excuses to Party

While it’s bomb and all that Cinco De Mayo is some kind of tight-ass holiday in Mexico, that isn’t why we get crunk at Chevy’s Fresh Mex once a year. We just love to drink while wearing funny hats. We also love to attend outdoor music festivals while wearing funny hats, which is why our Facebook profile is filled with pictures of us in headdresses and short shorts at Coachella.

We Have Hella Religious Freedom

Listen, there’s no room for religious discrimination in this land of the free, home of the Atlanta Braves. If you wanna be super Christian, or just only kinda Christian, that’s your choice. We’re not here to harsh your buzz, bro. Unless, I mean, you don’t want to pray before a town meeting. If that’s the case, we’re sorry, but our bois and broads down at the Supreme Court have to put the hammer down on your ass.

Photo via Flickr user Simon Shek

We Have Hella Food

We have so much food, we joyfully, remorselessly stuff foods in other foods. So much food, as a matter of fact, that we don’t even eat all of it. Thirty-one percent of our food, 133 billion pounds of shit, is thrown out yearly. That’s $161.6 billion worth of hot dogs—hot dogs filled with cheese, liquid cheese, cream cheese and that cheese shit that comes in a can. We DGAF, though, ‘cause we’ve got money the fuck to spare, what with us being ballers and all.

It makes sense that we’d have so much food, on account of how much we love it. The only thing we love more than eating, in fact, is talking about where we’re gonna eat next, and what we’re gonna eat when we get there. How much do we love eating? Enough to talk about eating while we’re eating.

Photo via Flickr user Pål Joakim Olsen

We Love Our Guns

And our guns love us. Which is why we polish ‘em up, real nice like. We cradle them in our arms, caress them like we used to caress our ex-wives, before they got all fat and we had to kick their asses to the curb. You want our guns? You can take them from our cold, dead fingers. We'll no longer need them, having been fatally shot by another gun-toting patriot minutes prior. 

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Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

In many ways, London is the worst city in the world: it’s expensive, cruel, bitter and twee. But in many ways it’s also the best: a cultural powerhouse where people know how to stay up really fucking late, invent new forms of dance music on a minute-by-minute basis and, over the last 20 years, have finally understood how to make nice food. We’re big on gays, low on racists and love to drink; but we’re also big on oligarchs, low on social mobility and love to drink at infantilizing corporate street festivals. Anyway, this is your guide to the decent bits (and a few shitty ones).

Jump to sections by using the index below:

– WHERE TO PARTY
– WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH DRUGS?
– POLITICS, PROTESTS AND JUST HOW RACIST IS EVERYONE HERE?
   Racists and Lack Thereof | Protests
– WHERE TO EAT
– WHAT DO LOCALS EAT?
– WHERE TO DRINK
– WHERE TO STAY
– LGBT LONDON
– WHERE TO HANG OUT AND WHO TO SPEND TIME WITH WHEN YOU'RE SOBER
– HOW TO AVOID GETTING RIPPED OFF AND BEATEN UP
– HOW NOT TO BE A SHITTY TOURIST
– PEOPLE AND PLACES TO AVOID
– TIPPING AND HANDY PHRASES
– A YOUTUBE PLAYLIST OF QUESTIONABLE LOCAL MUSIC
– VICE CITY MAP

Photo by Will Coutts

WHERE TO PARTY

Bussey Building, Peckham
133 Rye Lane, SE15 4ST
The Bussey is a bar, venue and gallery space spread across four floors, but it’s best known as a club with one of the broadest musical remits in the city. It’s usually less than £5 to get in, everyone's beautiful and the smoking area alone is bigger than most other clubs. If you're lucky, your stay here will coincide with Soul Train, a disco and good-vibes house night that the Bussey hosts twice a month and is basically like being trapped at a wedding party in a car park on drugs, even if you're not on any drugs. A nearby alternative is Canavan’s, a karaoke pool bar with a recently upgraded soundsystem and loads of old Irish blokes who don't know what feminism is. It hosts Rhythm Section—the first night you should come to if you're visiting London—once or twice a month.

Dance Tunnel, Dalston
95 Kingsland High Street, E8 2PB
Of all the basement clubs in Dalston, and there are plenty, Dance Tunnel is probably the best, thanks to its jet-engine soundsystem. Located beneath Voodoo Ray’s pizza place (don't eat there, the pizza is more expensive than war), this is where you’ll hear some of the world's best new house, techno and other types of dance music that don't have names yet at nights like Trouble Vision, Principals and FWD>>.

Corsica Studios, Elephant & Castle
4/5 Elephant Road, SE17 1LB
Tucked away behind a knackered shopping center on the Elephant & Castle roundabout, Corsica Studios mostly deals in house and nosebleed techno. But depending on the night you’re at, you could also hear grime, disco or the kind of guitar music that The Wire would write about without a gun held to their head. Their booking policy means the dancefloor always feels like a dancefloor, not just a space for DJs to play to a series of well-dressed mothers' meetings, and the shit plumbing keeps yuppies away. There’s also a 24-hour bagel shop—Bagel King—just down the road, which is a fucking godsend at 5 AM on a Sunday morning when you realize the only thing you've eaten since Friday lunchtime is chewing gum.

Oval Space, Bethnal Green
29 - 32 The Oval, E2 9DT
This is basically just a big empty rectangular room, but whichever promoter is tasked with filling it usually does a pretty great job. Music-wise, you’re best off just checking the listings because the events are always changing. But if you prefer having absolutely no idea what you’re going to be turning up to, I’d say just go along anyway because it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be disappointed. Pro tip: don’t bother instagramming a photo of the sunset over that big old gasometer next door—it’s already the most photographed thing in London bar Big Ben and all the terrible graffiti along Brick Lane.

Photo by Jake Lewis

Boiler Room
A few years ago the idea of watching someone DJ online was fucking ridiculous, but Boiler Room changed all that. Basically, if you’re into pretty girls in oversized rap tees, handsome men with undercuts and the best DJs in the world, you should definitely check out what they have coming up.

Plan B
418 Brixton Road, SW9 7AY
Good for garage, dancehall and bashment, as well as hands-down the best house bookings in South London. Has nothing to do with the rapper or the morning-after pill.

Birthdays
33 - 35 Stoke Newington Road, N16 8BJ
Not that many people stick around to watch bands in 2014, but Birthdays book the right ones. The DJs and MCs they bring in aren't bollocks either and, along with Dance Tunnel, they've got the best soundsystem in East London. There’s a bar/restaurant upstairs with a revolving kitchen. So, if you get tired of jumping around in the basement, you can head up there and inhale poutine, or fried chicken, or whatever it is they have in that month.

Fabric
77A Charterhouse Street, EC1M 6HJ
This is a bit of a love-hate one, because it's basically a super club but without the euphoria. However, considering it’s normally the first club pilgrimage anyone makes to London, and because they have a soundsystem capable of rupturing your internal organs, it's worth a visit. Entry is pricey, drinks are extortionate and stairs are overcrowded with gurning Italians. BUT the line-ups can't be fucked with and it’s without doubt the best place in the capital to spot 35-year-old marketing managers chewing their top lips to shreds as the sun rises and DJ Hype wraps up his three-thousandth two-hour set in the main room.

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Photo by Bruno Bayley

WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH DRUGS?

The UK has the highest levels of cocaine, ketamine and opiate use in Europe, and we’ve all taken an oath to try to smoke more weed and take more MDMA so it's a full house next year. In London, the news that we snort so much gak that trace amounts of it can now be found in the water supply was greeted more with civic pride than shock.

British people have always liked getting fucked off their faces, but as London has become more and more of a gentrified pop-up pleasure palace, cocaine use has gone mental. Most people from the city get it delivered, but sometimes people do walk around pubs and clubs trying to push the stuff. In places like Camden and Brixton people walk up and down the street offering their gear around, and they’ll happily tell anyone who wants to listen that the bag of white powder in their fist is definitely whatever the buyer wants it to be. No one who’s lived in London for more than 45 minutes talks to these people.

Lots of people take ket here as well, but fuck knows why. It doesn't take a genius to realize that falling into a K-hole outside the Peckham Burger King isn't much fun, plus if you do too much of it, your bladder explodes. There’s little meth beyond gay slamming parties and no one seems to take speed any more. Mephedrone had a period of ascendancy back when that chemical factory in China burned down and no one could get any MDMA, but since the Mandy returned, everyone—bar some in the gay scene and the occasional student—forgot that mephedrone ever existed. Hallucinogens aren't all that prevalent, essentially because London is like a massive cold prison yard, i.e. not really the best place to kiss the sky.

Like everywhere else, a lot of people smoke weed here. The majority of dealers stick with the most coma-inducing skunk they can find, but—very generally speaking—the Ladbroke Grove area is the home of Thai stick and Jamaican bush weed, and in South London there's tons of hash. There are also plenty of shops that sell weed under the counter, but I’m obviously not going to disclose their locations on the internet because I'm not a narc.

Of course, no matter how much we get high, it’s all still very much illegal. And even though bouncers at clubs are generally more likely to bin or pocket your stash than turn you over to the police, the cops have the right to stop and search you, and it’s not unheard of for people to end up with criminal records for possession. 

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Photo by Jake Lewis

POLITICS, PROTESTS AND JUST HOW RACIST IS EVERYONE HERE?

RACISTS AND LACK THEREOF

London is an astoundingly successful monument to cultural integration. At the recent European elections it was widely noted that UKIP’s manifesto preaching the dangers of mass immigration was least successful here in the capital, where mass immigration is most prevalent. Still, you get idiots everywhere, and since the murder of soldier Lee Rigby by a mentalist screaming about jihad in 2013, the anti-Muslim far right have been trying to make inroads in London. So far, all this has led to is a quasi-religious turf war between some dickhead ex-EDL members calling themselves Britain First and some other dickheads from the entourage of Anjem Choudary, a radical Muslim cleric. You can watch our film about it here, actually.

Generally, far-right and nationalist parties like the BNP and the EDL are given short shrift in London; while there is some anti-EU feeling in the country at the moment, this is a multicultural city and it likes it like that. Occasionally the right-wingers will decide to march somewhere and, without fail, anti-fascist protesters will turn up in at least equal numbers to stop them in their tracks. Usually, these guys end up getting arrested—in September last year, for example, 286 anti-fascist protesters were arrested in Whitechapel as they tried to stop the EDL marching through Tower Hamlets. Many interpreted this as an attempt by the Met to dissuade people from taking their grievances to the streets.

Photo by Henry Langston

People from different cultural backgrounds can get along fine, but that doesn’t mean everyone's equal. Displays of overt racism are mostly confined to lone ranters on public transport and the terraces of certain football clubs, but the police are way, way more likely to hassle you if you’re black. In fact, there’s an unspoken bias that pervades the whole of English society to make sure that, decades after mass immigration started—and despite the rise of pop-feminist blogs—pretty much everything is still run by (and for) white people with penises and middle-class accents. The only place where this is not the case is Tower Hamlets, where controversial Mayor Luftur Rahman has carved out an enclave in which it’s much easier to get a decent council position if you’re Bangladeshi.

Somewhat ironically, thanks to all this immigration a bunch of Polish neo-Nazis have settled in the capital. They’re called Zjednoczeni Emigranci Londyn, (that's Emigrants United London, for those of you who've never seen letters put together in that order before) and they hang around Tottenham wearing Blood & Honour T-shirts. They recently turned up to a family music festival and stabbed someone, which is obviously a weird thing to do, but realistically they’re very easy to avoid, and there are a load of anti-fascists currently trying to make them fuck off forever.

All of that aside, the main political battleground in London these days is over whether ordinary people can actually afford to live here any more. With rents designed purely for the amusement of landlords and the tiny cabal of crooked bankers and overseas oil tycoons who can afford them, more and more people are being evicted and squeezed out to the suburbs. Despite this, squatting is no longer as common as it was in the 1960s, perhaps because it's been a criminal offence to squat a residential property for the past two years.

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Photo by Henry Langston

POLITICS, PROTESTS AND JUST HOW RACIST IS EVERYONE HERE?

PROTESTS

Back in 2010, it looked like London was moving into a great period of social upheaval, but eventually everyone gave up and went to Pret for lunch. The students mobilized in order to protest against the coalition government’s raising of the cap on tuition fees, and over one exciting winter it all played out in a series of marches and riots, which reached their most insane level of mischief when protesters took over and smashed up the headquarters of the Tory party. It was kind of hilarious but someone almost killed a cop with a fire extinguisher. You can watch our film about it here, mate.

Eventually, all the protests stopped and people started talking excitedly about how the schoolkids who’d been involved in these riots would now perhaps become politicized, and how London would never be the same again. However, what actually happened was that everyone got kettled in the snow for hours and hours and it didn’t change the government’s mind at all. Following that brutal anti-climax, the wind was knocked out of the movement and now students have returned to being mostly viewed as loutish dickheads.

These days most protests are quiet, disgruntled things that police don’t feel the need to charge at on horses. But even when shit gets real here it’s nothing compared to many European countries—there is no tear gas and police don't fire rubber bullets at people. London mayor Boris Johnson just bought some water cannons from Germany (thanks, Germany!) but he isn’t allowed to use them yet. So, for now, there are just good old-fashioned truncheons and more fucking kettles, which are so much worse than tear gas because they last for hours.

The widespread rioting that pock-marked the country in 2011 originated in a London protest against the police killing of Mark Duggan. It has been interpreted by some as a protest against the Metropolitan police's ongoing targeting and persecution of the city’s poorest communities (and by others as opportunistic looting, so take your pick). But the punishments meted out were so harsh—four years for Facebook posts saying some crap about starting a riot that never came to be, for instance—that it feels as though this won’t be happening again any time soon. Which is probably a good thing for everyone other than journalists.

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Photo by Bruno Bayley

WHERE TO EAT

St John
26 St John Street, EC1M 4AY
At first glance, St John’s aggressively British menu—which includes bone marrow and devilled kidneys—does have a touch of the dry heaves to it. In reality, though, it’s one of the best restaurants London has, of any cuisine. Unfortunately, managing to make all things offal delicious is a rare skill, and this is reflected in the prices. But, unlike everywhere else in London, you get to sit on a chair rather than a kooky, upturned milk crate, so it’s worth it.

Needoo Grill
87 New Rd, E1 1HH
There’s a legendary Punjabi joint in Whitechapel called Tayyabs—so legendary that everyone in London knows it's responsible for some of the best curries in the country, which means there’s always a massive line to get a table. For that reason smart people go round the corner to Needoo Grill. It’s very nearly just as good, and you won’t have to wait in a snaking trail of people in the rain for an hour. It’s actually run by a defector from Tayyabs, so it’s not surprising that it’s basically a mini version of the definitive London curry establishment.

Bone Daddies
31 Peter St, W1F 0AR
As London follows dutifully in the food footsteps of the Big Apple Crumble, ramen places are regularly springing up—most of them densely packed into the culinary grid of Soho. Around here you can find udon at Koya, takeaway ramen at Shoryu Go and a few nice Korean places minutes away on Tottenham Court Road. Bone Daddies, however, serves the best broth, as well as consistent sides, like chicken karaage and chashu pork. Just try to ignore the anti-osteopathic bar-style seating and overbearing dad-rock soundtrack. Not one for the headache crew.

Negril
132 Brixton Hill, SW2 1RS
Let's face it: most hot food isn't great. For all the flavour and nutrition that makes its way through the average vindaloo, you may as well just pay an Indian man £25 to taser your asshole. But things don't have to be this way; find out for yourself by visiting Negril, a Jamaican jerk place situated right on Brixton Hill. Unlike most restaurants with garden views of A-roads, Negril is the fucking bomb, and the staff don't seem like murderers. Share their signature platter—two quarters of jerk chicken, plantain, rice and peas, coleslaw, salad, salt fish fritters and chips—and bring your own bottle/can to arrange a tryst between their amazing hot sauce and some cold, cold beer.

Mangal 2
4 Stoke Newington Rd, N16 8BH
It’s an East London Turkish staple with great food, and Gilbert and George eat there every single night. But most important is its Twitter feed. Example tweets include: “It's Gay Pride Day. It's Armed Forces Day. It's the first day of Ramadan. Gay Muslim soldiers must be delighted today,” and: “Man walks in to order a takeaway wearing a Mumford & Sons t-shirt. Speaks and acts every bit as a twat as you’d expect.” And who could ever forget: “Do you sometimes crave a dirty, juicy kebab after a night out in the town? A proper dodgy doner when you're drunk? Yeah? Well, fuck off.” When a man is tired of the Mangal 2 Twitter feed, he is tired of life.

Silk Road
49 Camberwell Church St, SE5 8TR 
This Chinese restaurant in Camberwell is considered one of the city's best. But it looks like a total shithole, which can make it hard to find for first timers. Don't expect tablecloths, waiters who speak English or sweet and sour pork. But if you want to flush your horrible system out with an industrial amount of fresh chilli, unusual delicacies, barbecue skewers and endless bottles of ice cold Tsingtao, then this place does the job. Don't expect to get a table for ten at short notice, though, because it’s popular. Tip: One order of pig feet is really enough for a large group, don't go nuts on that.

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Photo by Bruno Bayley

WHAT DO LOCALS EAT?

Full English
We’re not famous for our food, us Brits, and we accept that. However, we still kicked the shit out of everyone else when we first had a crack at breakfast. A proper English one of them is a full cooked meal of sausages, bacon, beans, eggs, toast and a handful of other variables, sometimes including cakes made out of fried blood, ideally washed down with a milky mug of tea. You can blow a tenner having your full English sullied with kale or gluten free bread, but if you want the real deal The Regency in Pimlico represents a dying breed of authentic greasy spoon cafes. Or you can head over to its pokier East End counterpart, E Pellicci, famously frequented by the Krays but now filled with builders, personable staff and Capital FM. Or, if you’ve got access to a kitchen, just cook it yourself (after all, all those Tescos you seem to be walking past every day have the shit you need for this pretty much stacked at the front).

Jerk Chicken
Notting Hill Carnival is one of the best street parties in the world, let alone the capital. But if you’re not a hardened West Londoner the reality of Carnival weekend can mean cursing whatever polystyrene box of jerk you panic bought as you touch cloth looking for a kind local flogging £5 entry to their personal shitter. Thankfully, Yum Yum in Ladbroke Grove—who specialize in comfortingly luminous yellow patties—Jerk City in Soho and the aforementioned Negril can be enjoyed all year round, minus the fear of getting tased by an overzealous police officer for taking a dump in a phone box.

Sunday Roast
An important weekly staple of British cuisine: roasted meat and potatoes with stuffing, vegetables, gravy and a Yorkshire pudding. These days every pub with a motivational quote on their chalkboard sign will do one for about £15 (which is an insane amount of money, considering that the only cooking you really have to do is turning on the oven and carving). You won’t have to look hard to find one, but when you do just know that the plate should be PILED with shit; this is not a subtle meal. The dream, of course, is to invite yourself to a local's home-cooked roast and while away the rest of Sunday in a haze of meat farts and Sunday supplements. Thankfully, London is a very friendly city—just knock on someone's door, ask for some lunch and they'll wave you through to their kitchen.

Chicken Tikka Masala
India looms large in England’s vision of itself, from the horrors of the Empire to the exported benefits of the Industrial Revolution, through the adoption of cricket by the Indians to the embracing of Indian food by the British. Chicken tikka masala is one of the most popular curries here—it’s red, it’s creamy, it's looked down upon by food snobs and it was invented in Britain. It’s basically the Heinz Tomato Soup of curry. It’s also totally banging, and when it drips off the end of your naan it’s going to stain the shit out of that £700 Nasir Mazhar jumper you just bought in a frenzy after reading a copy of i-D.

Brick Lane Beigels
If you’re pissed and it's late at night, the odds are you’ll end up eating some food cooked by someone with an avant garde concept of edibility. Perhaps you’ll choose a kebab intent on quite literally kicking the shit out of your stomach, or maybe fried chicken that changes the pH level of your skin. But if you’re anywhere near Brick Lane, you can forget these. Instead, you should go into either of the two adjacent bagel shops, order two hot salt-beef sandwiches and one salmon and cream cheese, then swan off like the alt-fast food connoisseur that you are.

A Kebab Intent on Quite Literally Kicking the Shit Out of Your Stomach, or Maybe Fried Chicken That Changes the pH Level of Your Skin
Because they're pretty good, really.

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Photo by Jake Lewis

WHERE TO DRINK

Soho

Soho is a maze that’s resisting gentrification with greater success than most parts of London. If you want to get pissed there, Sam Smith’s have many boozers in the area. They're one of the last truly independent brewery-run pub chains in the city, so while you can’t expect to see any branded lagers or even Coca-Cola on sale here, you can expect to pay shockingly little for good beer. The Glasshouse Stores on Brewer Street is a dimly lit basement bar, if you're into that kind of thing, and the The John Snow is a good one to stand outside on a sunny day if for some reason you want to socialize with bike couriers. The Cross Keys is a meeting place for obese Freemasons and is decorated with all sorts of wonky knick-knacks, like brass diving helmets and other similar detritus. Try to avoid it between the hours of 5 and 7PM though because, like all city pubs, it will be full of city cunts.

The Old Blue Last
38 Great Eastern St, EC2A 3ES

This is our pub—we own it. It’s called The Old Blue Last and it’s the best fucking pub in the whole fucking world. It’s got three floors, it’s on the site of Shakespeare’s first theater, it’s older than America, it puts on gigs (everyone from Winehouse and Lil B to The Arctic Monkeys and Wiley), there’s a secret bar on the top floor, it’s near our office and you should come. (But please don’t steal our glasses, and don’t do gak in our toilets.) You can learn all about it’s blotted history here.

The Holly Bush
22 Holly Mt, NW3 6SG
Back in the day, Hampstead was full of people like John Keats and Lord Byron. Then it was full of people like Richard Burton and Peter Cooke; then it was full of Arsenal players; and now it’s gone full blown wank and is rammed with Russian plutocrats who order women from their iPads and leave their corpses in Hampstead pond. That said, there’s still nothing better than trekking through the Heath and ending up here to get really, really pissed on the quietest street in London.

Photo by Bruno Bayley

Queen's Head

144 Stockwell Road, SW9 9TQ
Fat White Family are the most exciting live band in London at the moment, and they use this place as a sort of base camp in which to play shows, get fucked up and pursue their agenda against the yuppies who are currently busy turning Brixton into one gigantic piece of expensive Italian cheese. They'll probably hate us for putting what is basically their house in a travel guide, but if there's one place in London to see a screaming man windmilling his cock and glassing a drummer in the face, it's here.

Clerkenwell

It’s a weird netherworld of yuppies, upmarket kitchen shops and other detestable things, but if you go to Clerkenwell on a weekend you get to enjoy some of the best pubs in the city. The Three Kings has a great name and a great sign, and if it’s a sunny day you can get a pint and walk into the churchyard across the road. I’m certain you’re not supposed to do it, but no one’s ever stopped me. The Jerusalem Tavern round the corner has a bit of a 14th century feeling to it and is attached to its own brewery—so no, you can’t get a fucking Foster's here. The Gunmakers is another great old-as-shit boozer, then there's The Betsey Trotwood, Ye Old Mitre... In fact, there are too many to list, but just ignore The Crown—it’s got a wanker thing going on.

Frank’s Cafe
95 Rye Lane, SE15 4ST
This place is only open during the summer months, which is a good thing because it’s on top of a multi-storey car park and would be fucking miserable in December. It’s also probably the only bar-cum-art-gallery-cum-restaurant in London with both an incredible view of the city and cocktails capped at £7.50, AKA half the price of any other rooftop drinking spot. The only thing is, you’re going to want to head there early—straight after work or, if you’re unemployed, just after Tipping Point finishes—because it’s rammed by half 7 and they generally stick to a pretty strict one-in, one-out policy.

New Cross
While New Cross may well just be an A-road propped up by kebab shops and Christian bookstores, it does have some great pubs. The Hobgoblin has my favourite beer garden in London and is usually full of fine art students, which can be a good or a bad thing, depending on how much you care about intercontextuality and microethnographic discourse. Also, Shia LaBeouf has gotten into two fights here. If this Venn diagram of fine art and public celebrity meltdowns doesn't excite you, go to The Royal Albert for quality beers and dependable pub food, or the Marquis of Granby for pool, cheap pints and arguments with elderly men.

Clapton FC
The Old Spotted Dog Ground, 212 Upton Lane, Forest Gate, E7 9NP
Obviously everyone here loves football, but let’s face it—the Premier League is designed to be watched on TV; they should just ship the fucker to Oman already. In its absence, we’ll spend more time watching our local non-league clubs and starting anarcho-syndicalist ultra groups, like first Clapton and then Dulwich have done (much to the surprise of the players, who’d never seen an anarchist or a fan before the black bloc showed up).

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Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

WHERE TO STAY

Living in central London is like shitting thousands of pounds into a bucket that keeps telling you to fuck off to some Zone 5 housing estate. As such, we need help with our rent, so we’re pretty big on AirBnb. The flats will be tiny, but by gum we can absolutely guarantee that there’s a Tesco Metro round the corner.

Australians are a real problem here. They’re our huge, attractive, cultureless cousins, and our hostels are full of them vomiting on terrified Japanese people. So if you’re in the market for a dorm bed where you might actually get some sleep, Palmers Lodge are a pretty good bet (dorm beds from £19 per night). Their two sites (at Swiss Cottage and Hillspring) are a little outside the center of town, but they make up for that by being clean, providing free WiFi and giving you the peace of mind that comes from knowing you won't end up covered in Antipodean bodily fluids.

More central is Generator (beds from £10). It's right next to Russell Square, which is the kind of place Americans think that all Londoners live in because it’s beautiful and reeks of Penguin Classics. We don’t live here, though—we live in prefab shit-shells eight miles down the road.

If you’re going to cough up for a hotel, Russell’s of Clapton (£98 per room per night) has the mix of taste and efficiency you'd expect from somewhere run by a former music manager. It’s well into East London too, which is obviously where all of the VICE UK office live, so you can fuck us all off by clogging up the line at Tesco, complaining about the times we slagged off The Matrix and asking for Clive Martin's number.

If you’ve got money to burn, Ace Hotel (£199 per room per night) is pretty fun. Bands stay there and the club beneath it has decent nights with sets by people like Boiler Room and Young Turks. The website says it's a place for "landmark creatives and renegade artists" but in truth we're neither of those things and we've never been refused entry.

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Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

LGBT LONDON

These days Vauxhall is the huge fuck-off gay area. There are a series of clubs here where you can fuck, swallow and beat anything you fancy, and cum and vodka rain from the sky (meaning lesbians feel slightly left out). Fire and Barcode are good bets for dancing and fucking, and there are also some leather bars and bear nights in the area. If you do just fancy a quiet pint, though, The Royal Vauxhall Tavern is one of the city’s most famous gay pubs. If it’s plain banging you’re looking for, there are a myriad of saunas around where you can get yourself seen to. But yeah, unfortunately Vauxhall is really all about the men.

Woman or man, though, Soho has long been London’s gay mecca, and it’s full of places to drink, dance and pull. Clustered around Brewer Street and Old Compton Street are the most well known spots, including the triple-decker G-A-Y club and Madame Jojo’s burlesque bar. Hit up G-A-Y any day but go Friday or Saturday and you'll find the stupidest soundtrack, purplest decor and some of the cheapest drinks in London.

While Soho is home to the more mainstream spectrum of gay bars and clubs, East London provides some fun alternatives. The Joiners Arms is a cherished dive bar where your feet will stick to the floor, and The George and Dragon is a typically cosy English pub, only full of gays and drag queens. Both are on Hackney Road in Shoreditch, and both have fairly early doors, so after they close you can head over to East Bloc, Old Street's underground labyrinth of seedy corners and pulsating dance music.

Head as far as Dalston and you'll find Dalston Superstore and Vogue Fabrics, two raucous clubs that throw sweaty, fashionable gay parties. While Superstore drags in a younger and better-dressed crowd, Vogue Fabrics is a glorious melting pot of weirdness with no toilet doors. Both of these venues are welcoming to women any day of the week, but look out for Superstore's lesbian nights, which are better than anything ever going on in Soho.

Generally speaking, gay couples should feel safe enough to be affectionate with each other in public in most parts of the city, but sadly there’s always one homophobic bigot, so it’s not impossible that some idiot will take it upon themselves to shout abuse. At which point expect everyone standing around you to call him a fucking cunt and pat you on the back. Because this is London and we don’t like bigots here.

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Photo by Bruno Bayley

WHERE TO HANG OUT AND WHO TO SPEND TIME WITH WHEN YOU'RE SOBER

The British Museum
Great Russell Street, WC1B 3DG
As you well know, we used to own this planet. But then, at some point in the 40s, we were magnanimous enough to give it back. We did keep all the best stuff though, obvs—we’re not idiots. So come and bask in the glory of our plundering! Marvel at our beautiful Elgin Marbles! See the mighty pharaohs eunuched in a plastic box 200 yards from a Wetherspoons! Gaze in awe as the oldest and most noble of antiquities are filed into some dark drawers in the private archive because we just don’t have enough bloody space for all this awesome foreign stuff!
LINK

Edgware Road
The long stretch of road between Paddington and Marble Arch is home to a vast Asian community, so don’t expect many bars, but do expect great food, sweets and shisha. Almost every establishment on Edgware Road will serve shisha, mostly to wealthy young Arab men who are socialising and watching shit on their tablets. The shisha places open very late, most till around 3AM, so if you want to relax, watch some Lamborghinis speed by and give yourself grape-flavoured lung cancer then be sure to hit up Little Bahrain. This is also a great place to escape the onslaught of mindless drunkenness and potential violence that will no doubt pervade your visit; everyone on this road is courteous as fuck.

Lincoln’s Inn Fields
Bit of a genius one, this. It's right behind The Royal Courts of Justice, so it’s where all the lawyers hang out eating Itsu, but it’s also home to three of the best things in London: 1) The Hunterian Museum—a collection of medical curiosities in the Royal College of Surgeons, which has babies in jars, the skeleton of a giant and an entire circulatory system ironed into a big table; 2) Sir John Soane's Museum—one man’s insane collection of artefacts from around the globe, all displayed in his house—from Hogarth cartoons in his study, to Egyptian mummies in the basement and Roman shit everywhere else. And finally 3) The Seven Stars—the best pub for daytime drinking in Central London and if some lawyers win a case over the road, you can probably have some of their champagne.  

Hampstead Heath
It’s a huge swathe of countryside within the city, which means it’s where most teenage North Londoners go to take acid and smoke weed. There’s also a thriving dogging scene for those of you who want to fuck dangerous strangers in the woods.

Photo by Bruno Bayley

The Canals
Walk from Camden to Notting Hill, or from Bow to Islington—or from Little Venice to Brentford, if you really want to. The canals are a weird, outmoded series of veins connecting the city, which thanks to technology have been abandoned to real ale-drinking fans of fantasy fiction, who pootle along them in their barges, refusing to acknowledge the 21st century.

Obscure Political Groups
The harder it is to find a political group is, the cooler they probably are. So, people ramming their socialist newspaper down your throat are likely to be insufferable bores and are to be avoided. Meanwhile, if a group has a weird name and you don’t really know who they are, they’ll be way more fun. A recent example is a group called The Imaginary Party—I don’t know if they still exist, or if they ever really did beyond a tumblr, but their headache-inducing graphics are enough to tell you that they’re not staid leftie beard-strokers. London Antifascists have been known to put on decent club nights and spend the proceeds on a year’s worth of beating up racists, but that’s a pretty rare occurrence. Then there are the London Black Revolutionaries, or Black Revs for short, who go around pouring concrete over spikes designed to stop homeless people from bedding down for the night, or saving illegal immigrants from deportation. They’re good guys. Head to a demo, hit a pub or student bar afterwards, and see if you make friends with someone interesting.

Photo by Luke Overin

Gillett Square, Dalston
A while ago Stoke Newington High Street lost its charm beneath the weight of several thousand pairs of Air Max—but just off it Gillett Square retains something. It’s basically a pedestrianized square with a jazz club, a few food stalls and a slight air of instability. NTS Radio broadcasts everything from sludge shows and doom shows, to ragga and house shows from a hut there, and if you’re pretty you can probably sidle up to the DJ, give them a tin of lager and get on air. Basically, bring a blue plastic bag full of beer and sit about in the sun (which is actually the best thing you can do anywhere in London but but we had to make up some other shit to fill out a 10,000-word travel guide).
LINK

Greenwich
It’s literally the exact opposite of The Land That Time Forgot. It’s the Home of Time. If you stand there, you are, by definition, on time. And once the jokes about Greenwich Meantime get boring, there’s a big hill, a couple of decent second-hand stores and some nice pubs.

Primitive London
73-75 Shacklewell Ln, London E8 2EB
If you’re into pretty girls in obscure British sportswear brands and tall, handsome men who literally only ever wear black, check out Primitive London—a boutique on Shacklewell Lane that also throws the occasional party. They used to sell necklaces made out of kangaroo balls, which went down really well when they took the shop over to Tokyo for a couple of weeks, but haven’t taken off in quite the same way over here.
LINK

Anarchist Bookshops
Freedom, 84b Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX / Anarchist Bookfair
Brits aren't great at smashing the system but we're great at pontificating about it. To avoid becoming a Russell Brand acolyte, check out Freedom, an Anarchist bookshop that must be worth a shit because it recently survived its second firebomb attack. And once a year the Anarchist Bookfair comes to town and the UK’s anarchists gather to sell anarchist books and T-shirts to other anarchists. You’d think it’d be a convivial affair but they usually manage to disagree with each other about something. Anyway, you can catch some interesting talks about how not to get arrested in a riot, but sit by the door so you can leave if it becomes boring.
LINK / LINK

The Institute of Contemporary Art
The Mall, SW1Y 5AH
The ICA is on the Mall, which is the road that leads up to Buckingham Palace. So, if you come here to see an exhibition of outsider art by Costa Rican mental patients, or whatever, you can have a few drinks at the bar, watch a band and then stumble out, squint into the distance and chalk the Queen’s house off your list of stupid shit you’re supposed to see when you visit London.
LINK

Royal Parks
Like swans, these are owned by the Queen, which mean they’re a bit poncey and closed at night—but they are uniformly pretty. Regent's Park, Hyde Park, Green Park, Richmond Park—they’re all full of beds of roses and weeping willows and incongruous groups of teenagers playing football topless across about 50 groups of stoned, picnicking 40-year-olds. You’re going to spend a lot of time in London hellholes, so these are a nice, posh respite.

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Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

HOW TO AVOID GETTING RIPPED OFF AND BEATEN UP

It’s worth finding a cab company phone number and calling one to pick you up if you’re staggering around late at night. Waiting for a black cab can be a pain in the ass, and obviously taking some random unlicensed taxi (which is just a man in a car) home in the small hours is a stupid thing to do.

Frankly, London’s been gentrified to the point of almost numbing safety, which is exactly the kind of thing we’ll all appreciate when we have kids (provided we can still afford to live here), but right now is just boring. Of course, you should still watch out for the same sort of crime you’ll find in any city; handbags and laptops can and will be lifted from beneath your table while you sit there, so keep an eye on them.  

Sure, there are gangs and turf wars and guns and all that shit, but unless you’re planning on embedding inside some Polish coke crew or intervening in the E3 turf war you’ll probably be OK. That said, this is the country that produced Richard III, Jimmy Savile, Harold Shipman, Joffrey, Henry VIII, the Child Catcher and all the rest of history’s greatest monsters, so you can never be too careful.   

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Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

HOW NOT TO BE A SHITTY TOURIST

No one likes it when tourists are slow everywhere, but you‘d have to be a real dick not to understand that they’re lost in our ridiculous, unplanned, chaotic city. Oyster Cards (what you need to ride the tube, mate) are a real fucker, and I’m always impressed that any tourist has managed to work out where to get one. So kudos on that, you lovable, slow-moving bastards.

We won’t necessarily be pissed off with you if you get sucked into the tourist vortex that is Leicester Square and its surrounding bars, but you might get pissed off with us for not warning you. I’ve never quite worked out what people do there; there are a couple of bars that are less nice than every other bar in the center of town, a few multiplex cinemas—but who the fuck goes to see Maleficent when they’re on holiday?—and a fucking massive shop selling M&Ms memorabilia to idiots. I think that's pretty much it. I guess there are the guys who'll do a funny portrait of you in ten minutes, but I thought you had them in your country too? Maybe I was wrong.   

The shittiest of shitty tourists, however, are the ones who come to London for the shopping. The fucking shopping. You don’t have clothes at home? ASOS won’t deliver to your country? Ultimately, there are two kinds of shops that shitty tourists go to—the ones they can afford to shop in (all of whose stock is available online) and fancy ones they can’t afford to shop in, which are essentially just museums for the dumb. Who cares if the Rosetta Stone is round the corner in the British Museum? Here’s a £60 Harrods tennis ball!

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Photo by Tom Johnson

PEOPLE AND PLACES TO AVOID

Bankers
Nobody likes bankers anywhere, right? London’s no different, except we’ve got a lot more of them because The City of London—the central square mile of real, old London—is pretty much the financial brain of the planet. This means that pubs around there are full of young men who are basically financial hooligans in suits. It’s like being at a Millwall game in the 80s, only with lots of posh people who make their money defrauding rogue nations, before using it to buy huge swathes of London and leasing that back to the rest of us. I have no evidence for this, but I bet they’re all pick-up artists. 

Anyone Barefoot
It’s London, not the beach. Are you impervious to tetanus as well as ridicule?

Stylish Heroin Users
It’s been a decade since the fucking Libertines exploded in a shit-show of hats and misery, and there are still people out there who think that junk is a decent fashion accessory. Frankly, it beat Kurt Cobain, it beat Coco Chanel, it beat Basquiat, Chet Baker and fucking GG Allin. It will beat you—you guitar-playing turnip. Choose life; choose E.

Comedians
Armando Iannucci, Chris Morris, Stewart Lee and Steve Coogan are all old as shit, and they’re still the funniest people in this country. These days, British comedy is basically people with haircuts repeating shit they heard in the Union bar, yet they’re all millionaires playing to ginormous, giggling crowds of morons and get more BBC airtime than ISIS. Fuck these guys.

Camden Town
Every city in Europe has a market area where crusties sell John Lennon posters and i-Pood T-shirts next to rudeboys hawking fake hash, but this is the only one so unpleasant that it’s tried to burn itself down twice in half a decade. Camden Town is the place where scenes goes to die. It is a machine designed to prove parents right about youth culture—it’s tacky, cheap, commercial and self-important. About a decade ago, it had a last hurrah thanks to the tireless good vibes of certain DJs and a few fun bands, but they’ve moved on now, and the place has been left in the hands of the steampunks, the cybergoths and the 50-year-old gakheads. Just walk up the road for ten minutes and you’ll get to Kentish Town, where you can drink at any of these pubs.

Photo by Holly Lucas

Kensington and Chelsea
A stupid place that has become so remarkably wealthy over the last decade that its new residents have managed to make Mohamed Al-Fayed, the bonkers Harrods owner, look like a loveable local cad—like Del Boy but with more conspiracy theories. There are 72 billionaires in London and they all live here. Most of them have come for the tax breaks, state protection and unbearable aura of "cool"  that London touts abroad; these are bored rich men who want to eat in restaurants where Lily Allen or Nicholas Serota may be at the next table. You can’t afford these restaurants, so why bother visiting?

The Bars Inside the O2
You may, for reasons of blind tribal loyalty, find yourself attending a gig at the O2 arena, a space at least three times the size of your home country. This is unfortunate, but these days it's the only place big pop acts (Rihanna, Kate Bush, Prince, etc) play. If you do end up going, then a) sorry it’s so far away from everything (stupid, right?) and b) don’t show up early just to loiter in the atrium and pay £200 for a microwaved steak in TGI Friday's. Oh, and also c) I was in a car with Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran once and he said the O2 was actually the best venue in London, because of the convenient parking. So, if you've driven to London, you'll be happy as a pig in shit here.

Oxford Street
All the exact same shops you know and love from every other high street in Britain, but at twice the price and with 45 times more customers. Ignore the bin drummers; find a Sam Smith’s pub.

Westfield Shopping Centers
Like Oxford Street but on multiple levels, just like Dante's Inferno.

Photo by Joe Ridout

The Strip
This is what everyone calls the long stretch of tarmac that runs from Kingsland Road to Stoke Newington High Street and it’s an absolute fucking nightmare. That said, you will inevitably end up there at some point and so it’s worth knowing that the back garden at The Haggerston is about as bearable as it gets and Birthdays [as mentioned above] puts on as good gigs as anyone else in town. In general though, these days weekends here are a fuckfest of people disappearing into basement drugs vortices and thousands of students spending so much money so noisily that they’re simultaneously driving house prices both up and down.

The Tube
One mistake lots of people first make when they come to London is relying too much on the tube. It may seem convenient, but it’s also deeply unpleasant during any sort of rush hour and is the only consistently hot part of Britain. Aware of how nasty it is down there, the London Mayor once ran a competition offering thousands of pounds to anyone who could work out how the fuck to cool it down in the summer; the competition eventually closed without a winner and we’re all still sweating. Buses are a lot nicer and actually, if you’re in central London, everything’s in walking distance anyway.

Upper Street
The worst street in the world. It’s a mile and a half of expensive chain stores, posh people ploughing their inheritance into doomed boutique cake shops, unfathomably charmless pubs and overpriced restaurants. It wasn’t always like this, but as London has grown and as transport to the center has improved, places like Covent Garden reached peak dickhead and they had to spill out somewhere. Islington Council opened its arms and turned this long stretch into a mecca of consumption with all the personality of a helipad. It’s a shame because The King’s Head Theatre Pub is a great place, but these days if you find yourself on Upper Street, you should GTFO and head for Holloway Road.

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Photo by Joe Ridout

TIPPING AND HANDY PHRASES

Tipping
For the most part, if a tip is included in a restaurant's bill it will seem like far too much for the service you've received. But there's not a lot you can do about that, unless you don't mind shouting down a master's student who's trying to make rent with a minimum-wage waiting job. If it's not already included, 10 percent of the total price is about right—but that's not hard and fast; scale it down a little if your waitress has coughed on your food or addressed you using a racist slur. Round up in cabs and don't bother tipping at bars—nobody who lives here does, and handing a hot barmaid an extra fiver just makes you look like a sleaze.

Handy Phrases
Aggy: When someone is being aggressive or irritating. 
Mate: Don't assume this means what you think it does. In the same way that "cunt" can be used affectionately, "mate" can also be used to preface you being glassed in the neck.
Moist: If someone directs this word at you, they're calling you a bellend, mate.
Allow: Basically means "don't". As in shouting "Allow that!" when someone's stealing your chips. 
Taking the piss: Americans seem to have a hard time both understanding this and saying it without sounding like idiots, but it can mean a) to mock someone, or b) that something is unreasonable, i.e: "He wouldn't lend you £50 for another gram? That's a piss take, mate."

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A YOUTUBE PLAYLIST WHICH SUMS EVERYTHING UP

All the other offices made a playlist of questionable local music, but this is actually really good and pretty much sums London up right now.  

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VICE CITY MAP

Alright then, that just about wraps it up. We'll see you in the British Museum laughing at the mummies.

Yours sincerely,

VICE UK 

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It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Ginny Griffith

The house where the fire took place. Screencap via Google Maps

The incident: A woman found a spider in her house. 

The appropriate response: Ignoring it, killing it or putting it in a glass and throwing it outide. Varies from person to person and spider to spider, really.

The actual response: She started a fire to kill the spider, almost burning down her duplex.

Last Friday, Hutchinson Fire Department in Hutchinson, Kansas were called out at 1:36am to deal with a fire in a duplex.

According to Hutch News, when firefighters arrived, they found smoke coming from under a woman's front door. When they entered the residence, they found a pile of smoldering clothes. The blaze was quickly extinguished.

Nobody was injured in the fire, but there was some smoke damage to the building. Obv it could have been a lot worse had the fire department not arrived and dealt with it. 

The woman living in the apartment, 34-year-old Ginny Griffith, was arrested and charged with aggravated arson.

According to local police, Ginny told officers that she'd set fire to a pile of towels in order to kill a spider. She is currently being held on a $7,500 bond. 

It's unclear whether Ginny was succesful in killing the spider. 

Cry-Baby #2: Cracker Barrel

The incident: A man who worked in a restaurant gave a free muffin to a homeless person. 

The appropriate response: Asking him to pay for the muffin and not to do it again, if it bothers you. 

The actual response: He was fired. 

Until recently, 73-year-old Vietnam veteran Joe Koblenzer was a server at Cracker Barrel in Venice, Florida.

About 2 weeks ago, a "homeless looking" man entered the restaurant and asked Joe if he could have some condiments. "He looked a little needy. He asked if I had any mayonnaise and some tarter sauce. He said he was going to cook a fish,” Joe told CNN. 

Joe gave him the condiments, and also threw in a free corn muffin. Speaking to Fox and Friends, Joe said, "He was happy, I felt good about it."

This didn't sit too well with his bosses. “The general manager called me in and said he had some bad news for me,” said Joe. “We are going to have to let you go.”

Joe had worked at the restaurant for three years. 

According to Joe, had previously received two warnings from his bosses for similar things. Once for taking a sip of coke while working, and another time for giving a free cup of coffee to a customer. "The lady had eaten there and was on her way out and the table was cleared and she asked if she could get a coffee to go," explained Joe. 

Joe says he understands why the restaurant fired him, “It's a rule. They legally can do this because I did break the rule. I completely forgot about it. I am a host at Cracker Barrel with a little above minimum wage job." 

"They have their rules and I broke their rules, a moral issue comes in," he added.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Cracker Barrel said: "Mr. Koblenzer received multiple counselings and written warnings reminding him about the company's policies and the consequences associated with violating them. On the fifth occasion, again per company policy, Mr. Koblenzer was terminated. Cracker Barrel is grateful for and honors Mr. Koblenzer's service to our country as we honor all service men and women and their families."

The other two warnings that Cracker Barrel say they gave to Joe were not specified.

During his interview with Fox and Friends, Joe was asked if he felt giving the man the muffin was worth it, and he responded "yes, it was worth it. I would do it again." 

Which of this lot is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here:

Previously: A woman who got a man fired for dancing vs. a guy who burned down a bakery because he locked himself out of his car.

Winner: The woman who hates dancing!!!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter

The author and Stevie Williams. All photos below courtesy of Supra.

As we enter the long Fourth of July weekend and begin to consume the ungodly amounts of alcohol we use to honor everything that makes this country great, I ask you, what is more American than the classic rags to riches success story? In skateboarding few tales of overcoming adversity rival that of Philadelphia’s own, Stevie Williams. Stevie was never meant to survive his rough childhood, or ever make it over the Ben Franklin Bridge out of Philly. He grew up fast and did whatever was necessary to survive. In the 90s he and his friends ruled one of the most infamous natural skate plazas in the world, Philadelphia’s Love Park, with an iron fist. It was not uncommon for visiting skateboarders to get beaten up or have their skateboards stolen for not abiding by the unspoken laws of the park.

That was 20 years ago. Today skateboarding has been outlawed at Love, and the skaters have relocated to the new, state of the art Franklin Paine Skate Plaza just below the Philadelphia Art Museum. Stevie has over 15 years as a professional skateboarder under his belt. He’s turned DGK into a household name, is part owner of the newly-launched Asphalt Yacht Club clothing line, and just two days ago his latest Esteban shoe from Supra hit stores—he has become successful beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

I was lucky enough to catch up with Stevie at the plaza he made famous decades ago to talk about some of the more colorful stories from his younger days, like people getting their ears bitten off, dumping piss on strangers, tricking people into drinking piss, as well as the story behind DGK’s name. As awful as these stories might seem from that bygone era to others, I can’t help but miss that time of lawlessness. Now parents see dollar signs in skateboarding, and think their kids will become a superstar if he picks up a board. Dropping the kids off at a skatepark for the day is no different than leaving them at summer camp. There are no enforcers, no bum fights, no sex in the bushes, no robberies, no hard lessons learned; there is only training and winning.

I often think about the current state of skateboarding and wonder how we got here. Sure, all the parks and money bolster the growth and progression of skating, but much of the romance of it has been lost. As I sat listening to Stevie recount his plaza tales I thought about how truly boring in comparison the stories of today’s new, vanilla skaters will be 20 years from now.

Follow Stevie Williams on Instagram.

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

Welcome to a special Fourth of July edition of This Week in Racism. I’ll be ranking news stories on a scale of one to RACIST, with “one” being the least racist and “RACIST” being the most racist.

–Famous American abolitionist Frederick Douglass once said of today's holiday, "What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim." Whoa, talk about a bummer. I bet no one invited him to a BBQ ever again!

In an effort to refrain from being a massive killjoy and reminding America of its history of systemic prejudice, I'm getting in the spirit of the season and projecting all of my frustrations with this country on foreigners! It's the American way, after all. That means no racism stories about the good ol' US of A. You win this round, Opie and Anthony.

First up is the Australian woman who called a fellow train passenger a "gook" because no one would stand up to give her a seat. I'm sure her back was hurting from carrying all those illegal immigrants all day. As is now commonplace, the incident was filmed and the video went viral. The woman has since apologized publicly, but potentially faces legal repercussions under Australia's Racial Discrimination Act. Section 18c of the law bans words and actions that "offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate" someone due to their background. The government of Prime Minister Tony Abbot is doing all it can to repeal Section 18c, and Australian Attorney General George Brandis was quoted saying, "People do have a right to be bigots, you know." Oh, I know. I know. RACIST

Photo via Flickr User West Annex News

–Toronto Mayor Rob Ford blamed his alcoholism and drug addiction for racist, homophobic, and misogynist comments that were leaded to the media back in April of this year. He used the words "wop" and "dago" to refer to Italians, which is a big no-no. Ford went to rehab and is now claiming he's clean and ready to start over, but not before turning the tables on his significant opposition.

Doug Ford, Rob's brother and a city councilman, called high school teacher and Ford critic Joe Killoran a "racist" for his displeasure with Rob's behavior. Does that not make sense to you, because it doesn't make sense to me either. Doug believes that you can be racist against someone for being an alcoholic or, in his words, "you can be racist against people who eat little red apples." Actually, no. Toronto, please keep electing these people. I'm loving it. 4

–Someone put a KKK flag on a light post in east Belfast, Ireland. It was subsequently taken down, but that hasn't stopped the citizens of Northern Ireland from flipping out over the possibility that racism exists quite near to them. The Guardian recently reported a spike in racist activity in Northern Ireland, with police responding to up to three racially related incidents per day. The economy in Northern Ireland is still struggling to find its footing after the Great Recession, and naturally, that leads to racial resentment and eventually, violence. One can only hope they can find a way to ease the tension. RACIST

The Most Racist Tweets of the Week:

WHAT THE FUCK JUST GO OUT WITH ME AGAIN YOU DUMB NIGGER

— (@tipsymendes) July 3, 2014

This wetback done came to work today looking like a big ass American flag hell nahhhhhhhh his shirt look like a bed sheet

— DonJuan™ (@DonJuan95) July 3, 2014

A stupid nigger followed me

— Leyo (@OhLeyo_) July 3, 2014

Sharon will forever be "little chink" in my phone. Full racism intended.

— Zachary Miller ⚓️ (@Cptn_zach) July 3, 2014

im sorry, but if you're mexican and you're here illegaly all you are to me is a beaner, sorry.

— Sega (@SegaTheGoon) July 3, 2014

Follow Dave Schilling on Twitter.

Few things are more American than T-shirts and pissing people off for no reason. Combining the two is a long-held national pastime that makes baseball seem about as exciting as sniffing Ben Franklin’s beer farts. So I decided to have some fun testing the limits of every American’s inalienable right to conceptualize offensive ideas and pay someone to print them on t-shirts.

My aim was to create garments that the majority of the US citizenry would find offensive and, more specifically, submit designs so despicable that most custom-tee printers would refuse to print them. Still, my ultimate goal was to find a willing printer and get the shirts made no matter what. Mark Twain, perhaps the quintessential American author, once wrote: “Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.” Each entrepreneur who refused my business would define yet another instance of American indecency and chip away at the bedrock of liberty as we know it.

I began by setting some guidelines: The topics of racism, sexism, and politics were deemed too easy for this exercise, primarily because online retailers already provide a bountiful selection of knee-jerk schlock marketed to college students and bigots. I also afforded myself the luxury of ratcheting up the viciousness of the shirt designs if the printer proved too eager to accept the initial unseemly idea.

I am happy to report that the First Amendment prevailed and every one of my ideas—even when pushed past the limits of my own morals and common sense—was eventually affixed to a t-shirt for around $20 a pop (except for one pricy exception). Sure, it took enduring a little verbal abuse and a bit of shopping around, but I believe our forefathers would be proud that even today the combined forces of capitalism and free speech triumph over America’s prudish moral quibbles.

A few years ago, when every DJ in the world had “Billy Jean” and “Thriller” locked on repeat, I found myself wondering how many children Michael Jackson had actually molested and what kinds of elaborate costumes he was wearing during his rendezvous before he overdosed and died. I settled on either Al Jolson as an ice-cream man or a sequined paramilitary Easter bunny. But these types of images don’t really lend themselves to striking T-shirt design, so I simplified things.

The first printer I called was in Manhattan and had no qualms with the phrase “Baby Toucher” accompanying an image of the King of Pop but objected when I tried to add the word “Dead.” Undaunted by this initial denial, I was positive someone else would be willing to print the image exactly as I wanted, and instead of compromising or asking for an explanation I called another print shop. The nice woman on the phone thought it was a fantastic idea. The shirt was ready for pickup two days later and cost me $25.

Eric is an acquaintance of mine who screenprints t-shirts for side work. I met him through a friend, and I asked said friend what would happen if I called Eric up, put in an order for a screenprinted shirt without giving him details on the design or why I wanted it, and emailed him a Photoshopped image of him blowing his own brains out along with instructions to print it on a plain white tee. She said he wouldn’t care and might think it was all part of some elaborate joke, but I knew better.

I spoke with Eric and he was excited at the prospect of some extra pocket change but thought it was curious when I told him I only wanted a single shirt. In my subsequent email I asked him to call me to discuss a fee after he received the attached image. At 11 PM that evening, I received a call from Eric. He nervously giggled on the other end and asked, “What’s going on? Why did you send me that picture?” He sounded like he was perturbed but trying to keep calm. “It’s just for this thing I’m doing for VICE,” I dead-panned. “It’s going to be a good article.”

He then raised his voice and said, “Wait, what? This is going to be in VICE magazine? What are you trying to do to me?” Guilt began to creep into my conscience and I aborted my plans to play dumb. I gave him a half-assed summary of the article; he admitted to thinking I was a sick son of a bitch and agreed to print the shirt for $100. I bumped into him in the street the next day and things were painfully awkward, but I received the shirt soon after.

Raising the stakes, I decided some straightforward American commentary was needed on the post-earthquake situation in Haiti. I randomly selected a printer in the city that boasted a three-hour turnaround for plain text on tees and told him I wanted “Haiti? Who Gives a Shit.” printed on a gray shirt without adornment. “No way,” he said and hung up.

For my next attempt, I decided to conduct things a little more inconspicuously and commissioned my shirt through a printer’s website that allows you to preview the final product. After a day of unreturned follow-up calls and emails, I concluded that they weren’t true flag-wavers and moved on to Plan C: printers in Brooklyn, which is perhaps the most verbally offensive territory in the world. Unsurprisingly, the second Brooklyn-based place I contacted agreed to print the Haiti hate speech without objection. I couldn’t resist the opportunity and quickly spit out a few more phrases concerning Haiti that might infuriate a normal human being. He had no problem with my improvised addenda and happily told me my shirt would be ready within a few hours.

Back in 2007 when it came to light that Mother Teresa had suffered a serious crisis of faith in her latter years, I wondered whether she ever just threw up her hands and said, “Fuck this. I’m going to get the soup cook to lay some serious pipe in me after he finishes feeding the orphans.” That scenario has played out many times in my mind ever since, and I couldn’t help but wish to manifest it onto a baby onesie so that the children would be able to speculate as I have.

I warned the first print shop I called (in Queens) that the image I wanted to print was racy and that they might be offended. The associate on the phone insisted that his shop had printed many humorous and ribald images for bachelor parties and as gag birthday gifts. A few minutes later I sent the image and he responded with an email that was blank except for a signature line and a subject that read “sorry cant help you” [sic]. When I inquired as to why he was unwilling to print the shirt, explaining it was a sociological-cum-art project that celebrated our American freedoms, he responded, “Yes, there is a policy of no porn. Sorry.” Distraught and dispirited, I once again turned to a Brooklyn-based printing facility. Within ten minutes I had explained what I wanted, emailed the image, and received a quote without hesitation. I expected the clerk to give me a hard time upon my arrival, but he had it bagged up and ready to go and told me he thought it was a “good idea.”

Concert tees and 9/11 are perhaps the epitome of Americana. So, for my final design, I combined their forces. The first place I called was a print shop on the outskirts of the Financial District (which, for all of you heathens out there, is the neighborhood where the World Trade Center once stood). A nice lady answered the phone and I explained that the t-shirt I wanted to print had the potential to get a person killed, or at the very least severely maimed, if it was worn while walking around the sordid streets of NYC. She replied, “We’ll print anything. We don’t care.”

Rising to the challenge, I had my designer add a final touch: an image of a jumper careening down the side of one of the twin towers. Then I sent it off and waited for an infuriated phone call. Twenty minutes passed and my phone rang. It was another employee (or perhaps the owner?) of the print shop, this time a male. He told me he did not appreciate my sense of humor. I insisted that it wasn’t necessarily supposed to be funny and questioned his appreciation of the Constitution of the United States of America. In a fit of rage he stuttered before spitting out “You motherfucker!” and hanging up the phone.

The next place I submitted my design to never returned my multiple follow-up emails and phone calls so, in the interest of giving my business to people who want and probably need it in this dire economy, I phoned the shop that had no problems printing the Mother Teresa tee and told them I had another job for them. Again, no questions were asked and the shirt was ready for pickup the next day. When I arrived there I noticed something that didn’t catch my eye the first time around: NEVER FORGET and FDNY shirts lined the walls. I was certain I had just stepped into a trap and firemen would soon be bashing my skull in with axes, but the clerk calmly ran my debit card and provided me with the shirt and a receipt before wishing me well. That, my fellow patriots, is truly the American way.

Shirt designs by Michael De Leon and Angie Sullivan

The VICE News Capsule is a news roundup that looks beyond the headlines. This week, Ukrainian forces and pro-Russia separatists blame each other for civilian deaths in Eastern Ukraine, Syrian rebels turn two towns over to ISIS, UK politicians release a scathing report on female genital mutilation, and thousands of shellfish wash up on beaches in Pakistan's port city Karachi. 

Illustration by Jonny Ruzzo 

The most hated mom in America isn’t Casey Anthony, Andrea Yates, or the mommy blogger who poisoned her son. It’s a 23-year-old single mom who allegedly grew up in an abusive household, gave birth to a baby at age 17 because her mom refused to allow her to get an abortion, and lost her baby daddy in a car crash when she was eight months pregnant. A mom so controversial, the former Real Housewife of Beverly Hills Taylor Armstrong called her a “fucking rat.”

America's current favorite Whore of Babylon is, of course, Farrah Abraham, the most controversial teen mom on MTV's very controversial Teen Mom. 

This week Abraham released her first erotic novel, In the Making (Celebrity Sex Tape), about a reality TV star named Fallon Opal who purposefully releases her own sex tape. If the plot sounds familiar it's because last year Abraham starred in Farrah Superstar: Backdoor Teen Mom with porn star James Deen. Despite the fact that a cameraman clearly recorded the porno, Abraham has claimed the video was a “leaked sex tape” she made with a boyfriend: “I am not involved in porn,” she said on VH1’s Couples Therapy, while discussing the porno and her sex toy line.

Deen has called Abraham's bluff, telling TMZ that he never dated Abraham and she wanted to make a porno. Following the anal controversy, Abraham appeared on VH1’s Couples Therapy, where her other alleged “boyfriend” failed to show up for filming. Unsurprisingly, the media accused Abraham of lying to star on a reality show. I would dismiss Abraham as another famewhore who sucks at lying, but in 2012 she released a critically acclaimed noise album, My Teenage Dream Ended. On the album, Abraham cathartically wails about her traumatic experiences against a confusing medley of sounds, creating heartbreaking songs The Atlantic compared to the music of Daniel Johnson and other outsider artists. 

Is Abraham a broken starlet who pathologically lies because she grew up on reality TV or the last outsider artist—the Bjork of reality TV, as my friend called her—who is using interviews and an erotic novel to fuck with the public’s perception of reality? I invited Abraham to the VICE office to find out. 

Photo via the author's Instagram

Abraham unsurprisingly arrived wearing the same orange and gold dress Sydney Leathers, Anthony Weiner's mistress, wore to my college graduation. “I buy most my dresses at Dillard's,” Abraham said. “We could do a ‘Who Wore It Better!’” (For the record, Leathers wore it better.) After I settled down in a conference room with Abraham and her entourage—her publishing company's CEO, a make-up artist, and a security guard—we got down to a contentious interview about her porn history, traumatic past, and artistic output. 

VICE: Why did you decide to write Celebrity Sex Tape?
Farrah Abraham: I think it was the perfect time to write about sexuality—a celebrity sex tape—because I had a lot of press ruin my life this year in regards to my sex tape, and I was like, “Wow! There’s a lot that I learned from this.”

Why did you decide to write a novel instead of a memoir, which could have set the record straight?
First of all, it’s a whole legal reason, and second of all, I wasn’t really going to grow from doing that, and as you’re writing you’re really making yourself work. I write, and I’m tired at the end of the day.

Did you write the novel on your own or with a ghost writer?
I wrote it myself, and all I need is editors.

I wanted to talk to you about your critically acclaimed debut noise album, My Teenage Dream Ended.
My album? I just create therapeutic music.

You did it for therapeutic reasons?
Yeah, usually everything I do, I do it for myself.

Do you listen to noise music? What are you listening to right now?
EDM or what is it called, BBM? I like a lot of dance and electric music too. If you came over to my house, I would be listening to Christian and hip hop and rock and heavy metal. I like remixes where it doesn’t even sound like words but it just sounds like fun—or maybe I just tune it out.

The music video for “On My Own” from Abraham's debut album, My Teenage Dream Ended

Who do you look up to?
I don’t look up to anyone.

Do you have a five-year plan?
I have a 20-year plan: I take care of my life insurance in case anything happens and my will and all that. I think my five-year plan is to keep writing—I really enjoy it. And then keep doing reality television and maybe some movies if the person is right.

You mean like movies-movies?
Yeah, like the ones you go to theater and watch with your friends. And then I’m also working on my restaurant and working on my portfolio there, not just staying with one type of restaurant but growing them.

What do you think the biggest misconception is about you?
That people think I’m a porn star. You’re like, “What type of movies?” Those comments are—

I don’t think you’re a porn star. I think you’re a reality TV star.
I’m just mainstream, and that’s what it is.

There were also accusations by porn industry members that you weren’t really paid $1 million.
You have to understand that the porn industry is not relevant. It’s not relevant to talk about that because they purposefully do that to get attention and make me out to be a porn star.

At the same time you’re writing a book about a sex tape.
It’s a popular topic, and as a writer you want to stay relevant with the topic you’re writing about.

Don’t you think it’s hypocritical to dismiss porn and then try to profit off a novel about porn?
Why would I feel bad about making the best choices? And that’s why I’m sick of people looking down at women and saying that they can’t move on with their lives.

I don’t think there’s a problem with porn. I think you’re hypocritical.
Do you know what’s behind the women [in porn]? I’m not hypocritical. You go through life phases and you learn from them.

So what’s your philosophy going forward then?
I just really am Christian.

Have you studied psychology?
No, I just go to therapy. I like that stuff. Do you watch Dr. Jenn [on Couples Therapy]? I think when you’re around a million doctors like them it helps you understand others and where they’re coming from. Here’s the problem with Couples Therapy: If you don’t take the time to understand where the other person is coming from and have some empathy, then it just doesn’t work out to connect and better yourself.

Several websites accused you of lying about having a boyfriend to star on Couples Therapy. Is that true?  
I’ve been ditched so many times for some reason. They don’t have enough balls to talk about it so they just don’t show up. I don’t really like to speak [about him]—I’m not going to say his name—but Dr. Jenn was like, “I’m so happy you stayed and could be here.” She just wants me to find an amazing man—no DJ who lost his fucking brain is going to be good enough for me. I don’t date DJs anymore.

Did you enjoy Couples Therapy?
I love that experience. I love therapy—I don’t know why. Maybe I’m just so fucked up I need it all. You know what I’m dealing with right now? My grandpa is dying and I didn’t know.

You just found out?
I was there last weekend, and he’s in hospice—hooked up and stuff—and it’s really sad. [It’s] my mom’s dad who’s been very supportive the whole time I was growing up. I found out after I turned 18 that I had like six brothers and sisters from my mom. I was like, “This kind of thing is alarming.” How do you handle that? I’m always thinking when—if ever—I find someone who’s marriage material, I don’t think I would want to say to Sophia, “This is your dad,” because her dad is her dad.

Does it bother you when people ask you about your daughter’s father and other traumatic experiences from your past?
No, it doesn’t bother me because it’s still very much an everyday thing, because as Sophia gets older, she looks like him. It’s really hard for me, and I still go to counseling, but I'm moving on with my life.

Did dealing with that on reality TV alter your perception of what is real and fake?
I think I’ve had a lot of perceptions changed, with magazines, TV, and things with entertainment. I don’t like to watch TV. I don’t like to be part of those things now—and I used to be the girl that bought every magazine and watched my favorite show every night.

OK. I ask this question to a lot of people. Finish this sentence for me: Farrah Abraham is…
Amazing.

Follow Mitchell Sunderland on Twitter.

Photo by Gabe Ayala

Like many gay porn stars, Colby Keller has a knack for versatility—and I’m not talking about how he’s worked as both a pitcher and a catcher. In between working for the top companies in gay porn—including Randy Blue, CockyBoys, and (controversially) Treasure Island Media—Keller has put his anthropology degree to good use, writing about art, barebacking, and capitalism on his blog, Big Shoe Diaries.

For years now, I’ve wondered about what goes on in the dirty mind behind Keller’s goofball grin. When someone told me Keller was giving away all of his possessions—except for a plaque of Lenin—as part of an art project, my curiosity was seriously piqued. With all of his possessions discarded, Keller's now embarking on “Colby Does America… and Canada Too!”—a lengthy road trip to make art, meet people, and get laid. In each state Keller will film himself fucking a guy in the back of a van in the name of art. Wanting to know more about the Marina Abramovic of gay porn, I caught up with Keller at a Pret A Manger in New York to discuss his art projects, capitalism, and why porn is better than his “horrible, evil job” at Neiman Marcus.

VICE: Why did you decide to create your van project? 
Colby Keller: I don't have a house, I don't have a home, I don't have a destination, and I don't—for at least the immediate time period—want to think of one. The van is a way of thinking about home on the road, and also thinking about our future, because we're all probably going to have to set out in vans and move around, and there will be a lot of displaced people, and a lot of people will die. I want to embrace this future we're making for ourselves and that capitalism and this horrible landlord are forcing me into. There’s a porn trope where they're going to fuck the whole country, so I’m gonna fuck America! America has certainly fucked me, and I'm going to fuck back—but in a nice, positive way. 

What made you become a porn star?
I was taking courses at the University of Houston in their studio art program, and I really didn't like it. So I dropped out of the program and graduated with a degree in anthropology, but there aren't a lot of lucrative jobs out there in the field, and we were in another recession. I was also curious about porn. My favorite site was Sean Cody, and just on a lark, I was going to send in some nude pictures, totally expecting to be rejected—actually, I kind of wanted to be rejected. I wanted them to tell me I wasn’t worthy! And then they came back and said, “Oh no. We're actually interested.” I was like, “Oh man. God, they're into it! Do I have to do this? I guess I have to.”

I eventually got other jobs while I was in Texas. I worked for Neiman Marcus, a horrible, horrible, evil job. They didn't want to consider me a full-time worker, even though I worked there for two years, 70 hours a week, just cause they didn't want to give me health insurance and they wanted to pay me $10 less than anyone else on staff.

You often discuss capitalism. Capitalism clearly affects our work lives, but how does it affect our porn consumption and sex lives?
I have some guilt when it comes to that, because porn specifically presents a problem. Does porn inform people's sexuality, or does porn simply try to access those things in your sexuality to sell itself to you? Obviously, the product always does this thing where you're never completely fulfilled, so you buy more of it. As a porn performer I feel somewhat responsible for that, because sometimes the images that porn produces aren't healthy ones. It's very formulaic: We're going to give each other mutual blowjobs, maybe the top will eat the bottom's ass, then there are three fucking positions, then they both come. Who in [his] right mind has sex like that? 

You’re a porn performer and also an artist. Do you identify as a performance artist or as a visual artist?
I try to think of it as everything. I don’t want to put a limit in terms of what mediums I can use, but to me the main medium is Colby Keller. Art projects for me need laws—creating a law gives you the power to break the law, which is the best part of having one—but I don't want rules to limit the kinds of tools I can appropriate as an artist.

With performers like James Deen pursuing porn and other careers, porn has become more mainstream, like it was in the 70s. Why do you think this is happening? 
Part of that is about the structural and financial problems that the business itself is encountering, and about social media. The late 80s and early 90s were the golden era of gay porn, and models got paid really well. Companies controlled the images of their models under an exclusive contract. They would do all the work of marketing you and making you a star, kind of like the old Hollywood system. Now there's much more pressure for the models themselves to do promotional work—to be on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. In some ways it’s good to have ownership of that image, but also it's a lot of work you're not getting paid for.

Follow Hugh Ryan on Twitter. 

The ceasefire in Ukraine between pro-Russia forces and the Ukrainian military technically ended on Monday, but the ceasefire never lived up to its name. VICE correspondent Simon Ostrovsky traveled to several checkpoints around Sloviansk in Eastern Ukraine and spoke to soldiers about being attacked by pro-Russia forces in recent days—attacks that caused dozens of deaths.

America is locking up more people than any other nation on earth. Home to just 5 percent of the world’s total population, the United States houses more than 20 percent of the world's prisoners.

In the last three decades—fueled in large part by a national drug policy and legislation like three-strikes laws—America has imprisoned more people in local jails, federal penitentiaries, and private correctional facilities than Stalin put in the gulags. New court rulings have declared overcrowded prisons to be unconstitutional, and the sheer cost of incarceration is forcing prisons to let prisoners back out on the streets.

VICE News was granted rare access to go inside one of the most maximum-security prisons in the country, a place that’s on the front line of what could be a sea change in prison policy. Salinas Valley State Prison is home to America’s most powerful prison gangs, including the Aryan Brotherhood and Mexican Mafia. It's a place that’s projected to have more than 700 assaults this year.

In an institution that houses the worst of the worst, we see how one maverick warden is trying to turn the system around by rehabilitating murderers before they get returned to the streets.