Last week VICE reported that a new museum that promised to celebrate the Suffragete movement and the women of East London had opened—but turned out to be a museum about Jack the Ripper, a man who is famous for mutilating and murdering women.

This week the understandable outrage has boiled over into public protest. On Tuesday the Greens, Lib Dems, Communist Party, and other left-wing groups held a demo outside the proposed museum. On Wednesday night it was the turn of anarchist rabble-rousers Class War and a bunch of their rowdy friends to voice their hostilities.

The site was protected by private security, all ironically wearing stab proof vests. That included this guy—the privatized equivalent of the famous "hipster cop."

The presence of the bearded man and his colleagues didn't manage to stop a few rocks being thrown and a window being smashed before one of the hired goons finally remembered the padlock combination to lower the shutters and protect the piles of "Keep Calm. I'm a Ripperologist" T-shirts within.

I chatted with a few of the protestors to find out why they were there and why they are determined the museum won't be allowed to open.

Martin Lux, author of the street-fighting memoir Anti-Fascist and a long-time resident of Cable Street told me,"The East End isn't just the Kray Twins and Jack the Ripper. It's the battle of Cable Street, the siege of Sidney Street, and countless other examples of working class resistance against the ruling class and their agents.

"If there should be any museum on Cable Street, it should be an anti-fascist museum commemorating the resistance of local people to Mosley's blackshirts in 1936. The Ripper murders weren't even associated with this area, they were all in Whitechapel and Spitalfields! Believe me, the campaign against this insult to the memory of East End women is going to be the second Battle of Cable Street and, again—we won't be letting this pass."

Tim from Hackney joined in: "The East End has a rich history. What this yuppie prick is serving up now is a cheap, sleazy, and fictionalized cash-in. Since the rich, the bankers and the property developers have moved into the East End they've done their best to gentrify the present, it seems now they're not satisfied with that and they're trying to gentrify the past."

Patrick

Patrick, a local actor with a role in Dave Courtney's Full English Breakfast gangster flick under his belt was also pissed off. Almost spitting, he said: "More than the sickening affront to working-class women in the East End, past and present, it's all just really snidey. Whatever you think of the ripper tours there are a lot of local working class actors who work on them between jobs and this museum would just take away their bread and butter, as well as mugging off tourists that it's even in some way authentic. The Ripper never had anything to do with Cable Street. 'Come and see Jack The Ripper's living room' it advertises. No one knows who Jack the Ripper fucking was let alone what his living room looked like."

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Overhearing this exchange, a guy named Kevin came up to me and announced he was a former Whitechapel Ripper tour guide, explaining his change in perspective and what had prompted him to attend tonight: "I decided Ripper idolization simply wasn't entertainment two years ago after I found out more about the victims and their lives while conducting Ripper tours in Whitechapel. Originally I thought their stories might have been able to enrich my tours but what I grew to realize was that these people, reduced and objectified to being simply 'Ripper victims' were real people with real stories other than just being butchered by some misogynistic creep. Needless to say when I introduced this dimension to my tours people weren't interested and just wanted the prurient guts and gore angle."

Katie, another local brandishing a placard reading "What would Sylvia do?"—referring to Sylvia Pankhurst, the communist, anti-fascist, and campaigner for women's suffrage—was incandescent. "Out of all the history of courageous women in East London, it's disgusting they have chosen to glorify women as victims, and in particular victims of sexual violence at a time when unconvicted incidents of rape are at a high," she said.

Jane remonstrates with a cop

Jane took a breather from brandishing the Class War Women's Death Brigade banner and haranguing the cops, security guards, and anyone else deserving of a spleen-venting to add, "This is the beginning of the end for this temple to misogyny. Women are fucking angry about this and they aren't going to tolerate bullshit like this any more."

The museum's owner, Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, insists that he's an advocate of women's rights, and that the museum will be educational, rather than a "gorefest." Unfortunately for him, nobody at the protest seemed to be buying that.

Later, nursing a pint in the pub, veteran anarchist and Class War founder, Ian Bone was in a reflective mood: "Tonight was a missed opportunity. We could have taken the place over, squatted it, and turn it into the museum celebrating the history of the East End's women it was originally supposed to be. But don't think this will be the end of it."

So we can all look forward to scenes of confused tourists turning up to a Jack the Ripper Museum that should have been about the struggle for suffrage, only to find demonstrations against it outside. At least that way they'll see an authentic example of the power of an angry protest, which was supposed to be the plan in the first place.

Photo via Coventry Telegraph

Read: How I Catfished a Pedophile Who Was Posing as a Pro-Anorexia Coach

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

A guy from the city of Coventry in England tried to blame the large stash of child porn in his possession on his own children, who, at the time, would have been under the age of six.

According to the Coventry Telegraph, 43-year-old Andrew Martin allegedly downloaded the images between 2001 and 2003, some of which include a girl as young as five being raped. When he was arrested in December after a search warrant was executed, Martin attempted to blame his two sons who would have been younger than six years old at the time.

At Martin's trial at Coventry Crown Court, Judge Philip Gregory said, "What is shameful is that when caught, he sought to blame his 17-year-old son, who would have been three or four at the time."

Martin was given a three-year community sentence, as the Judge deferred to the opinion of his probation officer regarding the large amount of time he has already spent in custody. He is, obviously, now on the sex offenders register, unable to have unsupervised contact with children, banned from living at an address where there are children in the house, and prohibited from working with children.

Muzik nightclub in Toronto. Photo via Muzik's Facebook page

A version of this article originally appeared on VICE Canada.

Early Tuesday morning, two people in their 20s were shot and killed at and around Muzik nightclub at Exhibition Place in Toronto. It was the second shooting in two years to occur at the venue on the night of an official OVO Fest afterparty hosted by Drake.

Zlatko Starkovski, the club's owner, has a history of attempting to ban all-ages parties of a certain genre—EDM—in the same area the club calls home. He even got help trying to do so through his politcal connections to then-Toronto mayor Rob Ford and outspoken City Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti. But to Starkovski's critics, in both the dance music community and in city council, he was really just staging the protest in order to remove his competition. Starkovski's argument, and one loudly repeated by Mammoliti to any camera in spitting distance, centered on the accusation that all-ages EDM parties expose teens to drug dealers and sex offenders.

"What you're saying is it's better for 13-14-year-olds to do drugs in a safe place... It's absolutely ludicrous," Starkovski said in a 2014 statement. "Allowing these events such as raves... not only damages our good work, but that of the Exhibition Place being a location for top notch entertainment and hospitality and events."

But Starkovski's events have had more than enough problems over the years and have arguably done a lot of their own damage to Exhibition Place's reputation. In addition to the official OVO Fest afterparty that has ended in shootings two years in a row, there was a shooting after an event at Muzik in February 2013 that left a 19-year-old man dead outside the club. And that's not to mention the time Rob Ford was seen doing lines of blow in Muzik's washroom.

Though he's denied it at times, Starkovski is rumored to be pals with Toronto's former crack-smoking mayor and current city councillor. The Toronto Star reported in May 2014 "that Zlatko Starkovski has told staff at the club that 'Rob Ford is our best customer. His money is no good here.'" Muzik has also supplied Ford's FordFest parties with booze in the past.

On April 11, 2014, the ban Mammoliti introduced was passed, albeit temporarily, and he and Starkovski had their wish granted. Much to their dismay, the ban was lifted less than a month later; Starkovski's competition and the supposed blemish on Exhibition Place would be allowed to return.

"How many more have to die before we finally accept these EDM events cannot be held on government lands or anywhere else?" Mammoliti was quoted saying in the Toronto Sun in August 2014, months after the ban had been lifted. His statement was made following the drug-related deaths of two young people at VELD festival the first weekend of August 2014 in Downsview Park, Toronto. The two victims were 20 and 22 years old—close to the ages of those shot and killed this week at the OVO afterparty, 23 and 26.

Drake performs at Muzik. Photo via Muzik's Facebook page

But the big difference here is that those who take drugs at any sort of party have usually made the personal choice to engage in an activity that has risks—it just comes with the territory. Around 3:20 AM Tuesday of this week, 26-year-old Ariela Navarro-Fenoy did not choose to become a victim of gun violence. She was an innocent bystander who had made every effort to get into a cab to escape the gunfire-laden scene that had broken out at Muzik (a cabbie refused to give her a ride since her short-distance trip would have only made him $8).

The other victim killed Tuesday was Duvel Hibbert, 23, who had been awaiting trial on drug charges in both Toronto and Brampton, Ontario. He was set to appear in court this week for the Toronto charges, including possession and trafficking of cocaine. Three others were injured in the shooting.

When VICE contacted Muzik for a comment from Starkovski about the shootings, a spokesperson who signed his email simply as "Jeff," replied, "You're raising a number of other points, which we can address in the fullness of time, but at this point we are focused on assisting the Toronto Police Service with their investigation."

In the official press release put out on Tuesday, Muzik claimed that among other security measures, including the constant presence of police and medical responders, handheld metal detectors were used on all patrons entering the property in addition to the average patdown. The Toronto Star reported that a gun may have been brought into the afterparty over a security fence.

Muzik has had more than 12 lawsuits filed against it since 2007, many related to violent incidents. One statement of claim from a lawsuit reads: "The defendants... knew or ought to have known that this after-party would cause or foster an environment of unusual danger... knowing that Muzik Nightclub has a history of violence, and failed to implement proper security measures."

Mammoliti and Ford did not respond to VICE's requests for comment.

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Check out Esther Pearl Watson's website, Instagram, and get her books from Fantagraphics.

Photo via Flickr user Anthony Quintano

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A new report published in Science Magazine on Thursday shows serious progress in the search for a cause of ALS, and even some hope for finding a way to stop the horrible neurodegenerative disease. On Friday, in a Reddit AMA, Johns Hopkins medical researcher Jonathan Ling, who is one of the authors of the report, credited the Ice Bucket Challenge with funding the scientific work that brought them to this point.

The Ice Bucket Challenge, was, of course, that thing from last summer where people would video themselves having ice water dumped on their heads, and then nominate other people to have ice water dumped on their heads, all in the name of fundraising for research that would hopefully cure or treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. ALS, is, of course, gradual weakening of all the muscles in an afflicted person's body until they become unable to function, and typically, die a torturous death after a few years.

Jumping on the pop-culture bandwagon and participating in what superficially seemed like a dumb meme was, it turns out, a pretty good idea. The ALS Association reportedly received $100 million in donations over the course of 30 days.

Related: That time VICE took the ice bucket challenge last year

So just what was discovered, and how was the Ice Bucket Challenge responsible? According to Ling, the new information could lead to clinical trials of a promising new treatment technique "2-3 years from now," a heartbreaking expanse of time for anyone who already has ALS, but still cause for cautious optimism.

Ling explained that the substance of the experiment focused on faults in TDP-43, a protein needed in the nucleus of cells—specifically neurons in the brains of ALS patients. Without TPD-43 keeping everything in order, proteins generated in the nucleus, the cell will, the experiment found, generate defective proteins known as cryptic exons. In Ling's analogy these exons are "nonsense pages" in the "book" of DNA.

In mouse stem cell experiments, after restoration of TPD-43, damaged and dying cells were shown to come "back to life," and "looked completely normal," Ling wrote.

He explained that he'd been troubled by pessimism he'd seen online, with participants in online communities complaining that all the publicity and donations appeared to have no help. He wrote that, "All of your donations have been amazingly helpful and we have been working tirelessly to find a cure."

Another user claiming to be an ALS researcher showed up in the thread to point out that the focus of the new study was somewhat narrow. There are other proteins whose "aggregation" seems to cause ALS, such as C9orf72. Stopping such proteins from aggregating, the researcher argued, would be a better approach. Ling pointed out the potential usefulness of the treatment that might result from this research, adding, "but you're absolutely right, it would be fantastic if we could stop it from aggregating in the first place."

However, Ling's overall tone was one of across-the-board positivity. "With the amount of money that the ice bucket challenge raised," he wrote, "I feel that there's a lot of hope and optimism now for real, meaningful therapies."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

All photos by the author

Over the weekend, a hearse and reptile show took place at a funeral home in Azusa, a town in Los Angeles County. Yes, you read that correctly: at long last, hearses and reptiles both being displayed at a funeral home. The whole thing seemed too weird to not attend, so I did.

People get freaked out by death for obvious reasons. When I was a kid, I would lie awake at night about once a week, considering the fact that one day, I would cease to exist. My fear of death was all-consuming. The night before my tenth birthday, I cried to my parents, the realization that I was making a tangible step towards what, even as a child, I perceived as the utter blankness of nonexistence. My parents listened, and in that loving parent-y way, told me to chill the fuck out: death was inevitable, and me cryin' about it wasn't helping.

I say that to say this: I totally get why people are into death. It's certainly the inverse of how I feel about it, but people's fascination with death and my anxiety about it come from the same essential place. Death is an unknown quantity; no one has been able to experience it and come back and tell us what it's like. It might be awesome, or it might be insanely shitty, or it might be nothing. Who knows!

As I blasted Danzig out of my Toyota Prius on the drive over to White's Funeral Home, where the event was set to take place, I was totally unaware of what I was getting myself into.

What I stumbled onto was one of the most charming events I've ever been to.

In addition to featuring an impressive collection of customized hearses and a room full of rare, impressive reptiles, the Hearse and Reptile Show strove to be a true community event. It featured a grip of booths and vendors, from macabre crafts to haunted cupcakes to the community's LGBT group. There was even an area for children called the "Kids' Coroner" that featured face-painting.

White's Funeral Home, which hosted the event, doesn't necessarily do things the same way as their big box competitors. "When people are dying," White's Funeral Home director Manny Godoy told me, "they don't want a ritual in a sad room. They want a celebration of their life. We're trying to bring people to White's for a good time and to get people out of their fears about death." Manny's a short-ish, friendly guy who looks like he's just crested the hill of 40. While we were speaking, members of the community kept approaching him to congratulate him on the turnout, which from the looks of it was well in the hundreds—not bad for an offbeat event in a small community. While he talked to well-wishers, I socialized with Manny's dog, named Lola the Bereavement Pug. (Adorable and friendly, Lola the Bereavement Pug licked my face within seconds of meeting me.)

As the sun began to set, a band called Rhythm Coffin took a stage and began playing a brand of music they called "Monster Rock." Think kitschy, zany rock from the pre-hippie era, with lyrics ripped from campy horror movies (sample chorus: "Put the FUN in FUNERAL," repeated like ten times).

I was looking forward to Rhythm Coffin's set—before they'd gone on, a guy interrupted showing me his hearse full of old toys to tell one of his fellow hearse owners that the band was one of his favorites.

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The hearse and reptile show was, more than anything, a community event, offering the people of Azusa the opportunity to unite under goofy and fun circumstances. When I asked Manny what his favorite part of the Hearse and Reptile Show was, he told me, "I love the diversity. This is usually a very traditional hispanic community. You've got zombies having a good time, drag nuns having a good time, a bunch of old men that run charities are having a good time, and they're having it all together."

Death is the one thing that unites us all. We might as well reap that benefit while we're alive, too.

See more photos from the event below.

Lola the Bereavement Pug

Rhythm Coffin

One of the hearse owners

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Part of Utopia. Al photos by David Levene

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

If you live in London, you're probably so used to social inequality that it's easy not to think about it as you give the homeless guy outside Whole Foods £1 [$1.50] change from that £9 [$14] salad you bought for lunch. Maybe that's not you. Maybe you don't buy expensive salads. Maybe you signed one of those online petitions opposing plans to evict an entire community from their homes to make way for new luxury flats already sold off-plan to foreign investors. Whoever you are, however rich or poor, if you live in London you probably don't mix with people outside your income bracket. But what if you could?

Filmmaker, writer, and artist Penny Woolcock spent months searching for stories of Londoners across the social spectrum—from gang members, former offenders, and sex workers to the elderly, housewives, and university graduates. She then teamed up with radical design duo Block9 (Gideon Berger and Stephen Gallagher) to mash up all those parallel lives and turn them into a multi-sensory installation that is taking over the Main Space at the Roundhouse this month. I chatted with Penny, Gideon, and Stephen about their vision for Utopia and whether art can change the world.

VICE: Tell me about Utopia. Where did the idea come from and how has it developed?
Penny Woolcock: One of the central ideas is that when you live in a big city like London, the same street can be really different for different people. There are lots of different stories, but we never get a chance to really step into each other's spaces. And Camden is probably one of the most unequal boroughs in the whole world, where you have billionaires living in these massive mansions and also pockets of extreme poverty. So it was about somehow trying to get those voices—generally voices you don't hear from—into the Roundhouse's Main Space.

Gideon Berger: I don't know if we're calling it a show or an installation, but it feels less like a show where you arrive and spectate and consume, and more like an installation. You actually walk through different environments and realities that we've built, based around these snippets of stories.

From left to right: Gideon, Penny, and Stephen

How do you go about finding people to interview?
Woolcock: I find people in random ways. There was a lot of wandering around streets and community centers, loads of cul-de-sacs, and then someone would catch my eye and there would be an energy between us—I don't know how else to describe it.

I also did go looking for specific people. For example, I really wanted to find a sex worker who wanted to speak for herself, because it's so dreary the way women only get talked about as hapless victims. I also wanted to look outside my usual comfort zone so I pushed myself to do that and I'm glad I did.

At what stage did Block9 come on board?
Berger: We started working on it at quite an early stage when Penny was trying to organize all of these different seeds of stories and personalities that she'd been collecting for several months. We sat down at a big round table and sort of played dot-to-dot, joining up all the different stories and snippets of personalities and lives, trying to make sense of them all.

Something that was fascinating to us was that everybody was touching on the same sort of overarching theme. A lot of people were talking about the same stuff, just using slightly different vocabulary. We found that a Primrose Hill dinner party talked about gentrification, crime, and inequality in the same way that the front line kids or someone sat in prison did. And also being pretty far out and philosophical, talking existentially about the state of mankind and humanity.

We found that a Primrose Hill dinner party talked about gentrification, crime, and inequality in the same way that the front line kids or someone sat in prison did. –Penny Woolcock

Do you feel you have a responsibility in the way you represent these people and their lives?
Woolcock: Yeah, of course you do, but I invited people in good faith and everybody was incredibly open. There's a trust there that I'm not going to stitch them up, so I was able to push things to quite an extreme. When I wasn't sure if somebody would be happy about an idea, I contacted the person and asked how they felt about it.

Berger: Penny was definitely the soldier protecting all those stories. So she would say, "We can't frame this person in this environment because there's implications and associations you'd make by putting a certain person in a certain space."

Stephen Gallagher: We were pretty careful to make sure that we're not judging anyone. I hope this comes across. We're merely presenting their voices and telling their stories and interpreting those in the way that the three of us think is most appropriate.

What do you hope the audience take from the experience?
We're quite excited by the idea of challenging perceptions and taking that into the design work as well, so all is not what it seems. We're challenging your preconceptions of the actual space that you're in, so it's different to what you might imagine the Roundhouse to feel like.

Berger: It's funny, lying in bed at night in anticipation of this installation actually happening and how it will be received. It's perfectly conceivable that we're going to fuck loads and loads of people off. At the same time, we'll probably please a bunch of people, amuse some people, wind some people up, open some people's eyes. It's got the potential to annoy the fuck out of the whole crowd in a different way. That's quite nerve-racking, but it's exciting as well.

Woolcock: If it doesn't do all of those things then really we've failed.

The poster for Utopia

I'm aware that a lot of the people you've interviewed might not be regulars at the Roundhouse. Are you hoping to attract more of a diverse audience?
The second failure will be if people like that don't come. We're actually going out of our way to give free tickets and to make sure that those people feel not just invited but encouraged to come. If you have a theatre or gallery, even if it's free, the people who will usually come are the upper middle classes who consume cultural events. So we're doing everything we can not to exclude people, because it would really be a disaster if we set something up like this and the same people come to it that always come to everything.

The title you've chosen isn't a word I'd associate with the themes of this installation. Why Utopia?
I'm an optimist and I don't think things have to be like that. We can get locked into our own bubbles that we live in and think, This is the way it has to be—there has to be extraordinarily rich people and at the same time people living on rubbish dumps. Why? It does not have to be like that. Let's actually do something about it. There are very exciting things that are happening, particularly amongst young people. I find it a really encouraging time—the first time I feel that radical revolutionary politics are being talked about and are potentially possible. We don't just want to sit there and go, "Oh no, another person's been stabbed in my neighborhood," or, "Oh no, a load of people have been blown up by a bomb."

Do you think that's something that art can change?
It's a contribution. We can do what we can, and what we do is make art. Other people do different things.

Berger: We're linking people and linking their ideas. Fundamentally, it's good to plug voices into other voices, because at the moment they're disparate voices. They're in very different parts of London—a hundred yards away from each other but worlds apart.

Part of 'Utopia'

Without giving too much away, what can the audience expect to experience? Woolcock: We hope that it will feel like you're inside either a video game or a film. You're not watching it, you're actually inside that experience.

Berger: There are two journeys that each individual visitor can take. Both of those journeys lead you through very different realities, and the stories that you will encounter are giving you part of the overall picture. There'll be quite a lot of different experiences you can have in the main space and there's no shortage of things to do. If you want to spend the whole day in the main space and go really deep, you can do that. In a way, Block9's mission statement is to build an environment around audio. In our usual work it's music, but in this case, those sound bites are coming from people, from lives.

Woolcock: We won't really know until we put it up, but in a way there's no point doing something if we could predict how it was going to work. I think all of us are interested in taking risks and trying to do something that's impossible. Playing it safe is not really the game here.

What's your vision of utopia?
I think it's where everybody feels that the public space is theirs and that they can move freely around it without being oppressed by others.

Berger: I'm going there on Sunday. Downstairs, Berghain, Berlin, on Sunday afternoons.

Gallagher: I have to be honest, I don't know what my utopia would be. It's just so hard to imagine. I think that's the point of this piece. It isn't Utopia with a question mark, but it could be. And maybe that's the thing I'd like everyone to take away from this. Is this what you want? Is this what we want? Is this it?

Follow Rose on Twitter.

Utopia runs at the Roundhouse from August 4 through 23.

Image via Wiki Commons

News station WKMG in Orlando is reporting that the Theta Chi fraternity house at the University of Central Florida was evacuated earlier today due to the discovery of a "cup of suspicious white powder." What was it? Cocaine?! Meth?! Smart drugs?!?!?!

Eh, how about protein powder?

A post on the frat's Facebook explains:

Earlier this afternoon a UCF representative conducted a walkthrough of the Theta Chi house. She found a cup of BCAA workout protein powder, incorrectly assumed it was an illegal substance and informed the authorities. It has since been deemed a false alarm and the chemical tests have confirmed it.

UCF's student newspaper reported on the hullabaloo, noting that at one point a hazmat crew was present at the frat house.

After two tests, the paper reported, the substance was confirmed to be protein powder.

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Mugshot via Arapahoe County Sheriff's Department

Read: Forensic Psychiatrists Weigh in on What the Ramblings in the Colorado Theater Shooter's Journal Mean

The convicted Aurora, Colorado theater shooter, James Eagan Holmes, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Friday afternoon. He was found guilty on July 16 on 24 counts of first-degree murder in the notorious shooting spree during a July 20, 2012 showing of The Dark Knight Rises.

Before Judge Carlos Samour read the verdicts he announced that he had "not prohibited emotional reactions," but that any verbal "outbursts," would not be allowed. Holmes, who looked straight-laced in a gray oxford shirt, and slicked back hair, didn't react as he learned that news that he had avoided death row.

For each victim, a separate life sentence was issued, with the judge reading a note explaining that the jury hadn't reached a unanimous final sentencing verdict, meaning life in prison would be imposed.

During the sentencing phase of Holmes' trial, witnesses for the prosecution included family members of the 12 victims who died. The father of a victim named Alex Sullivan described the scene as he tried in vain to find his son, who died while celebrating his birthday and first wedding anniversary.

Holmes' own family testified in his defense, attempting to spare him from the death penalty. The defendant's sister, Chris, arguing that he was insane when he pulled to trigger, a quality she saw firsthand when she visited him, and found that "his eyes were almost bulging out of his head in a way."

Deliberations lasted six and a half hours over the course of two days. This was the same jury that dismissed Holme's insanity plea, when they convicted him. According to a Colorado law, the "not guilty by reason of insanity," plea requires the prosecution to prove a suspect is sane, instead of the defense having to prove that they're insane. The requirement sets a higher bar for conviction, which this jury felt the prosecution had cleared.

Upon his arrest, Holmes identified himself to the authorities as "the Joker." During court proceedings back in May Holmes's bizarre personal journal was an exhibit in the trial. It told the story in detail of planning the murder spree in order to cause the greatest possible number of fatalities, as noted by the prosecution. But for the defense, the book's content–for instance, repetitions of the word "why"–was intended as evidence of his insanity.

On the day of the crime three years ago, then 24-year-old Holmed burst into the theater with four legally obtained guns: an AR-15 assault rifle, a shotgun, and two Glocks. He was dressed in tactical gear including body armor and special equipment that let him reload more quickly during his attack.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Photo by Flickr user Mark

Watch: Weediquette, our video series on marijuana

California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law today a bill that will charge steep fines to marijuana growers who cause environmental damages. It's targeted at the state's increasing number of illegal pot farms, who have wreaked havoc on local wildlife and water supplies.

According to the Los Angeles Times, state agents participated in 250 raids on illegal marijuana operations in California last year, yielding over 600,000 marijuana plants and 15,000 pounds of processed marijuana. It's not just a problem because it interferes with the state's legal marijuana growing operations, but because it's causing massive environmental damages. In one case, a grow site was diverting as much as 1,400 gallons each day from a stream where endangered salmon lived.

It takes a lot of water to grow pot plants, and water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource in California. "Marijuana plants use six to eight gallons of water per plant, per day, and are a direct hazard to wildlife that eats the plants," said California Department of Fish and Wildlife's assistant chief Brian Naslund in a press release last year. Among illegal grow operations, a great deal of that water is siphoned from other sources, which has a huge impact on local environments. The LA Times reported that last year, the state "found more than 135 dams or diversions in rivers and streams that resulted in the theft of about 5 million gallons of water for marijuana grows."

Growing pot also requires flat land, which means grow operations sometimes cut down trees and destroy wildlife habitats to make room for their pot plants; it also causes water pollution to local streams, from chemical pesticides and fertilizer runoff. It's basically an environmental nightmare.

California's new law gives more power to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and prescribes fines up to $40,000 for polluting rivers and streams and fines up to $10,000 for threatening nearby trees or wildlife.

Polyester T-shirts and spandex leggings were once inappropriate attire outside of the gym, let alone during a night out with friends. But now it's hard to spot someone on the street who doesn't look like they just came from yoga class.

Over the past few years, women's fashion has adopted such a comfortable and casual look, wearing denim can make you look overdressed. These changing attitudes towards athletic wear have made it the fastest growing segment in the fashion market. What is being called "athleisure" has helped fitness garments bring in a whooping $35.1 billion over a 12-month period ending in October 2014, and it is only expected to grow—reaching $178 billion in 2019. This means people are spending a shit ton of money to look like they just ran five miles on a treadmill.

But this newfound interest in workout wear isn't all about getting fit. Only 39 percent of the people who purchase athletic gear say they actually have the intention of hitting the gym, the look is more about functionality. Women have also been drawn to fitness clothing because it exudes the appearance of a healthy lifestyle and the spandex and lycra materials tend to be more flattering.

High-end sportswear from designers like Alexander Wang and Rick Owens have long blurred the line between gym clothing and fashion, and now it is being diluted for the masses. Brands like Nike and retailers like H&M have all amped up their active wear, specifically for women. Although both genders have taken an interest in more sporty styles, the women's market is growing the fastest and providing the most opportunities.

Since women are wearing athleisure from the office to happy hour, the offerings must be stylish enough to transition, which means more and more brands are trying to figure out how to make chic workout clothes and appeal to customers in a heavily-saturated market.

It's not necessarily that girls are really working out, but they want to look like they are. —Vanessa Chiu

One space where the growing trend is on full display is at the Axis tradeshow, where booths are filled with asymmetrical cotton tees and sheer-paneled leggings. The newly launched biannual women's lifestyle event sits in the back of its distant cousin, Capsule, a tradeshow that displays mostly high-end ready to wear by exclusive fashion labels.

Axis was launched last year by Vanessa Chiu and Reed Exhibitions and showcases the new generation of women's casual lifestyle—with a laidback vibe, a lower price point, and new brands that represent fashion, activewear, beauty, and home accessories. Before Axis, Chiu worked in marketing and sales for almost a decade, attending dozens of tradeshows a year. This experience helped her realize there needed to be a show that catered to the new way women shop and their shift towards the athleisure.

I caught up with her to chat about how women's fashion is changing and how brands are innovating with these new trends.

VICE: When did you notice that the market for women's was changing?
Vanessa Chiu: I jumped on board with Agenda about two and half years ago to develop a women's voice within the tradeshow, and that's the very point when I realized, "Oh shit, there's actually more of a need." There needs to be a whole women's movement really embracing where we shop.

Do you see more brands in the future starting to kind of accommodate to the growing active wear market?
You can. And they have to trickle it down. They're not dumbing it down, I think they're making it more accessible and more palatable. I read a report that 32 percent of denim is going into legging sales, and that was last year.

It's not necessarily that girls are really working out, but they want to look like they are. I am seeing a lot of brands offer that, even swim brands.

Since "athleisure" is growing so quickly, have you seen anyone doing cool stuff with that?
There's a brand that I love that we're working with that's really badass and it's a little bit different, called Skin Graft. They're doing what I call luxury basics.They are very known for couture leather super-crazy stuff. They're actually developing and launching with us a price-pointed active lifestyle luxury basics line to cater towards our girls so we actually can buy it and it's also wear day to night.

Fashion Week Internationale: Tel Aviv

What are some of the things you've seen brands doing to standout in the market?
What I've seen is more and more brands are embracing collaboration. Let's say it's a blogger that partners with a brand; that brand has an immediate sponsor. Or if it's an artist that they're bringing in, they're basically launching a collection and then that collection becomes a gallery show that ties into something tangible.

Why do you think they are turning to collaborations?
I feel like a lot of brands now are looking for a sense of meaning; there are collaborations based on emotional affiliation. It's always multi-functional without being cheesy. I think a lot more money, a lot more strength is being played towards creative output as well as marketing, so people want to tell why [a product was made] as opposed to what they made.

What did you have in mind when you were developing Axis?
It's not about ejecting us and pigeonholing us into this youth culture super show, it's about developing a show for the hustler girl that's multi-dimensional. We shop differently. We're not brand-loyal. We're always looking for what's new. We want to feel included, but it needs to feel exclusive at the same time. So that's how Axis was born. Our first show we had about 150 or so brands, now we have 200 at the cap for September.

How do you pick which brands to feature?
We do a shit ton of research. All of the retailers that we work with we actually have relationships with. We ask the retailer's feedback. What sells in your store? What sucks? We basically choose the brands based on what we ourselves buy because we are the authentic customers that these brands are selling to. We really target brands from around the world, like globally-relevant brands, that no one can get their hands on.

Follow Erica on Twitter.

The Craigslist post shouted, "HAVE A GREAT ATTITUDE AND LOUD PERSONALITY, LOVE KIDS?" I broke an unwritten rule about anything posted in all caps and clicked. For a post clearly about clowning, it was pretty vague about job details, though the poster did mention twice that females over 30 need not apply. I laughed, then went back to looking for work.

But the more I scrolled through Craigslist's paltry career options in Brooklyn, the more I realized clowning was the perfect part-time job: weekends only, same day cash, probably lots of free cake. I responded to the all-caps ad. One interview and two hours of balloon training later, I was on the clown schedule.

I had assumed this was a small clowning operation, because the office where I had interviewed was tiny, but there were over two dozen clowns when I arrived for my first day of work. As they waited to be dispatched, they painted each other's faces and got chastised by the boss. She yelled, "Your big asses make the moms feel uncomfortable!" When she saw me, she told me everyone else was getting ready and I shouldn't just stand there. My "lead" (basically my clown mentor), Anna, asked me if this was my first time out. I nodded and followed her to the car for my inaugural party.

We parked in Manhattan. I changed in the back as our driver, Juan, sat in the front smoking. The ruffled gaucho clown shorts were too big and I couldn't feel my arms because the costume's glittery sleeves cut off my circulation.

We entered the lobby and the bellboys escorted us to the service elevator. The common room was empty except for the mother and birthday boy, too young to be frightened or interested. A dozen toddlers, followed closely by their parents, filtered in as we set up next to a Curious George cutout. Anna told me to make balloon animals as she plugged in our pink boombox and turned on Kid Bopz Volume 23.

I knew I could make a dog. Luckily the children were all of an impressionable age and asked for more pups. When all of the children had dogs and painted faces, Anna asked the crowd if they liked magic. They looked unconvinced but sat facing us. I had no idea how she was doing the tricks, and thought that her genuinely sweet energy and untraceable foreign accent made her a pretty good clown.

I heard children scream as I entered the next party. Are you a clown? Are you my friend? Will you make me a balloon?

I relaxed until Anna told me to go change into George. Excuse me? I said. As the kids played pin the tail on the donkey, we went to the bathroom, where Anna pulled out an adult-sized, pretty professional-looking Curious George costume. After I changed, she guided my furry hand towards the children.

"We have a special guest that's traveled from a far away land to come wish a special someone happy birthday," Anna told them as I waved. I started to dance. I saw children bouncing happily and could hear adult laughter and clinking champagne glasses. I loosened my knees and remembered a video I watched about the Christmas dougie but couldn't figure out the difference between that and the regular dougie, so I just dougied. The father gave us an $80 tip, 20 bucks more than the recommended amount, and some written feedback: Great show. Especially George. Will call again!

Juan got this gig because he's the brother of a clown. He uses all the money to pay for his studies in cosmetic chemistry. Anna said she had some problems with her visa and was hesitant to take chances on a new job. She took weekday shifts, too, and saved everything. Sometimes, she said, she walks away with the same amount of cash people make in a week. She warned me that most girls don't last long.

Photos courtesy of the author

I heard children scream as I entered the next party: Are you a clown? Are you my friend? Will you make me a balloon?

A man grilling offered me some meat, but it seemed wrong to eat party food, especially with that little girl watching my every move. I made her a balloon sword, instead. Soon all the children wanted swords. I made myself a blue one and yelled "en garde" in a funny accent and started chasing the children. I am really getting the hang of this, I thought, as children hit me in the face. A kid accidentally popped my sword, and I fell to my knees yelling nooooooooo! while clenching an imaginary wound. I announced my defeat and found Anna. When she saw me coming she turned to the crowd and asked them if they liked dancing. To my surprise, the crowd grew quiet and vied for better views of the platform porch, now a stage.

Improvising a magic show is one thing but synchronized dancing? Even the children could see fear in my eyes. An electronic drumbeat pierced the silence followed by, "This is something new, the Casper Slide part two, and this time we're going to get funky..."

The mother gave us no tip. The company pays clowns on a per party basis somewhere between 20 and 40 bucks. Without the tip, the job sucks.

Anna had a plastered on smile and clapped along with the "clap, clap, clap, clap your hands" of the song. I started marching in place and focused on one point like I use to do when I got nervous during college presentations.

"To the left." My left or the crowds? "Take it back now, y'all." Back to where I started or just backwards? "One hop this time." That I can do. Right foo leezt stomb. What was that? "Let foo leez stomb?" I had no idea what the fuck it was telling me to do, though I had deduced that all of this was just a series of commands that had a few seconds between instruction and execution. "Cha Cha real smooth." I was not sure what that meant, so I dougied again. And just kept going. There were some curve balls about getting "low to the flo'" and "Charlie Brown-ing," but for the most part I mastered it by the end of the song and reveled in the crowd's applause.

It was time for my second costume: a huge, yellow beer koozie with overalls. A child yelled, "Minion!" and I felt tugs from all directions. I leaned my real head up to get a better look out of the costume head's mouth, and my nose started to itch. I rubbed my head around, trying to brush against the foam padding but it was pointless. I smiled big inside my costume head every time someone said cheese. The mother gave us a $60 tip, exactly the recommended amount.

The author, when she isn't a clown

We took a break at a strip mall. A man leaned out of his car and yelled, quit clowning around, and Anna gave him a forced ha-ha look. We lost Juan, so we waited where people enter one set of automatic sliding doors and are briefly in a consumer limbo before reaching more doors. A vending machine full of small toys ate my money, and I was feeling cheated when a young kid, probably eleven, moved me aside. "You gotta know how to work it," he said as he slipped $.50 in, maneuvered the machine, and handed me my plastic prize. "So you guys are clowns?" I confirmed his suspicion, thinking he might like to see a trick. "I don't like clowns," he said, and walked away.

At my third party, I experimented with a butterfly balloon. It popped in the birthday girl's face and her eyes welled up. I informed her I was still in clown school and she giggled and gave me an understanding look.

Later in the evening, I got dressed up as Foofa from Yo Gabba Gabba. When the birthday girl saw, she swung her arms around my pink legs and told me she loved me.

The mother gave us no tip. That was when I learned about the saddest moment in a party clown's life. The company pays clowns on a per party basis somewhere between 20 and 40 bucks. An average day after travel and cleanup is around 12 hours. Without the tips, the job sucks.

READ: Clowns Are Going Extinct

We drove an hour into the Bronx for our final party. The contract said 15 to 20 kids. The gym was filled with about 100. Children clawed at my legs, begging for a balloon. A horrifying number of parents cut the line on behalf of their child. I wanted to tell them they were acting like bullies, but instead I wiped the sweat from my brow and handed them inflatable dogs. A second wave of children returned crying because they stepped on their balloon or rubbed it against sharp, pointy things that are ever so present in a Bronx community center basement. They demanded new balloons because it was not fair. I wanted to tell them life is not fair, but instead I promised them another once everyone got at least one. Unsatisfied, many returned with a parent wearing an unforgiving gaze of how I let a child down and that I better get them a new goddamn balloon that second. I knew I was not being fair, and that the most annoying kids or parents got balloons first just so I could get rid of them. I was letting the more patient ones wait, which was its own sort of a life lesson.

I looked at Anna, who motioned for me to wrap it up because I should have already been in the ninja turtle costume. I went to the bathroom to change and just as I finished zipping up the turtle body and was about to put on Raphael's head, a child came in. She took one look at me and the head in my hands and ran out like she had just walked in on her parents having sex. Our tip was 50 bucks, $10 under the recommended amount.

As we headed back to the office in Queens, a text appeared from an unknown number. It was a clown call. "Sunday, 9:00 AM, bring jeans." I am used to these types of texts from my work as an indie prop master. People write you late at night asking you to show up the next day at 7 AM, to get paid $150 for a 14-hour day. It's too much work and not enough money to live off of in New York City. That's why I turned to clowning in the first place.

I turned down the assignment, and thought I would never clown again, but soon after I found myself with thick-painted cheeks in an ill-fitting costume, once again. I clowned that whole spring, first to subsidize my time working on a play I loved, and then to pay my way on Adam Green's Aladdin, even after Adam started paying me the same rate as Macaulay Culkin.

I don't clown anymore. I don't accept that type of work. But I can still make some pretty mean balloon animals and I'm still great with other people's kids, who are always fascinated by a grownup who is willing to play a fool.

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