43 Is What a Skate Magazine Should Look Like
As skateboarding has grown in popularity and seeped into the lives of an ever-increasing number of households, the industry—and I’m painting with a broad stroke here—has morphed into a more family-friendly, watered-down version of what it once was, like MTV or domesticated animals. Which is why 43, a New York-based magazine that debuted last year from photographer Allen Ying, is a much-needed breath of clogged city air. A large-format quarterly that’s heavy on excellent photography and light on ads, 43 combines stories of late-night New York City skate missions with photos that wouldn’t be out of place on gallery walls anywhere in the city. Which is fitting, because on Tuesday night, in celebration of its third issue, 43 hosted a photo show at Temp Gallery in Tribeca.
While its previous issues have drawn praise within the skateboarding world, it’s probably safe to assume that this issue has received the most attention of any 43 so far, thanks to one of its photos body-jarring the internet a couple of weeks ago. The image above, of a gentleman by the name of Koki, ollie-ing a subway platform was spread far and wide not only on skate sites, but regular-people blogs like NYMag’s and Gothamist, among others.
I caught up with Allen to talk about his new issue and the pretty things inside of it.
VICE: Let’s cut right to it. Who is Koki, the guy sailing over the 143 Street subway gap, and what is wrong with him?
Allen Ying: Koki is an MIA local, and he’s a beast! I only got to meet him that night. It was all pretty surreal, but he’s rad. Koki was the only one in our crew who thought he could do it.
I’ve heard some whispers around the ole water cooler that Gonz ollied that gap, or one like it, way back when. What do you know about that?
I heard that rumor recently too, but I haven’t heard someone definitively say, “Oh, he def did that.” It was just someone saying they heard he might have done it. I’d love to hear about it if he did; that’d be amazing.
Continue
I Went to the Playboy Mansion (and It Was Kinda Depressing)
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to the Playboy mansion for a screening of that new Jennifer Lopez/Jason Statham movie, Parker. I don’t usually go to press screenings because it’s much easier to download the movie and watch it at home and not have to talk to other people, but I’d literally wanted to visit the Playboy mansion ever since I’d found out it was an option for me several seconds earlier. So I HAD to go.
Before the screening there was a reception featuring drinks and “photo opportunities” with some Playboy Playmates™® in the mansion’s main entry hall.
Hugh was supposed to be in attendance too, but he was sick. So we had to make do with this thing.
The screening was held in the drawing room. Here’s an exclusive sneak preview of it. This is from a scene where (SPOILER ALERT!!!!) Jason Statham hits someone with something.
Right after I took this picture, I whispered something to the girl sitting next to me and a guy wearing a suit with Converse shoes came over and told me off for being too loud. A suit with Converses is my least favorite look ever. Do you have any idea how humiliating it is to be yelled at by someone wearing an outfit that was last acceptable on Tom Green at the 2003 Nickleodeon Kid’s Choice Awards? Horrifying.
I needed to get out of there, so I decided to “get lost” while trying to find the bathroom, and see how long I could wander around the mansion before someone made me go back to the movie.
The first thing I did was go find a bathroom to poop in. I didn’t even need to, really. But how often do you get a chance to poop in the Playboy mansion? This is what you get to see while you’re pooping there, if you were wondering.
After pooping, I started to notice how crappy everything was. Am I an idiot for thinking the mansion would be nice? I figured it would at least be a little bit fancy. That was the main reason I’d wanted to visit—I’m gay, btw. Wait, are straight people even into the women in Playboy anymore? Or did that stop in the 90s? Wait, how does Playboy still exist now that the internet exists? Who on Earth is buying the magazine? The kind of person who wears a suit with Converses, probably.
Anyway, this is less nice than my bathroom at home. I keep my air freshener in a cupboard and everything.
Continue
Esquire’s Interview with Megan Fox Is the Worst Thing Ever Written
The cover story of this month’s Esquire is an interview with Megan Fox by Stephen Marche. And though I haven’t read every single thing that has ever been written, I can say, with confidence, that it is the worst thing that anybody has ever written. Ever.
It’s fucking LONG, and I know you’re busy, so here are the worst things about it.
THE WAY THE WRITER DESCRIBES HOW ATTRACTIVE MEGAN FOX IS
Megan Fox is good looking. There are various photos of her throughout the article that back this up. But just in case it’s not clear, the author breaks down her beauty in a number of riiiiiiiidiculous ways. Including:
“[Her skin is] the color the moon possesses in the thin air of northern winters.”
“Megan Fox is a bombshell. To be a bombshell in 2013 is to be an antiquity, an old-world relic, like movie palaces or fountain pens or the muscle cars of the 1970s or the pinball machines in the basement. Bombshells once used to roam the cultural landscape like buffalo, and like buffalo they were edging toward extinction.”
“The symmetry of her face, up close, is genuinely shocking. The lip on the left curves exactly the same way as the lip on the right. The eyes match exactly. The brow is in perfect balance, like a problem of logic, like a visual labyrinth. It’s not really even that beautiful. It’s closer to the sublime, a force of nature, the patterns of waves crisscrossing a lake, snow avalanching down the side of a mountain, an elaborately camouflaged butterfly. What she is is flawless. There is absolutely nothing wrong with her.”
The symmetry of her face is “genuinely shocking”? I’m imagining the author arriving for the interview, seeing her face for the first time and leaping back, letting out an audible gasp, “God, Megan, I am SO sorry! It’s just your face… It’s so…”
“Symmetrical?” Megan will have asked, forlorn, “I get that a lot… *sigh*.”
THE WEIRD AZTEC METAPHOR THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE
“Deep in her house, Megan Fox and I are discussing human sacrifice. I tell her about an Aztec ritual practiced five hundred years ago in ancient Mexico during the feast of Toxcatl, when the Aztecs picked a perfect youth to live among them as a god. He was a paragon, beautiful and fit and healthy, with ideal proportions…
“The sacrifice’s year was filled with constant delight, I tell her. He danced through the streets adorned in luxurious clothes given to him by the master, decked in flowers and incense, playing magical flutes that brought prosperity to the whole world. He had eight servants and four virgins to attend to his every need and could wander wherever he pleased. But at the end of the year, when the feast of Toxcatl came around again, the perfect youth had to smash his flutes and climb the stairs of the great temple, where the priests would cut out his heart and offer it, still beating, to the sun.
“Megan Fox is not an ancient Aztec. She’s a screen saver on a teenage boy’s laptop, a middle-aged lawyer’s shower fantasy, a sexual prop used to sell movies and jeans.
‘It’s so similar. It totally is,’ she says quietly.
At the end of the year, the beautiful youth had to go up by himself. He had to go up willingly. That was part of the deal.
Now she is shaking her head. “Not everyone understands that that’s the deal,” she says.
Megan Fox will not go willingly to have her heart cut out.”
I understand that what occured the day of the interview probably wasn’t all that interesting. I’d imagine he sat opposite her while she talked about whatever movie she was contractually obliged to talk about. And then he had to find a way of making that seem interesting for five whole pages. But SURELY, any rational person, upon typing the sentence “Megan Fox is not an ancient Aztec” would think ‘Wait, maybe this is a bit much? Perhaps I should take a break and have another try at this in the morning.’
And let’s just forget, for a second, that what he wrote doesn’t actually make any sense at all, and concentrate instead on Megan’s reaction to it. She fucking AGREED with him! Horrifying.
MEGAN FOX BELIEVES THAT BEING FAMOUS IS WORSE THAN BEING BULLIED
“‘I don’t think people understand,” she says. ‘They all think we should shut the fuck up and stop complaining because you live in a big house or you drive a Bentley. So your life must be so great. What people don’t realize is that fame, whatever your worst experience in high school, when you were being bullied by those ten kids in high school, fame is that, but on a global scale, where you’re being bullied by millions of people constantly.’”
When I was at school, there was a kid who everyone picked on because they thought he was gay. One day, a bunch of older kids dragged him into the PE showers and forcibly inserted a broom handle into his ass. Pretty sure he’d trade lives with you, Meg.
We Just Acquired i-D Magazine
Ah-hem, Ah-hem. [taps microphone] Ladies and gentlemen, may we have your attention, please. We have an important announcement. On December 18, 2012, VICE acquired the iconic style publication, i-D. The deal will allow the two of us to commence a beautiful partnership, and to get on with the important business of siring the future of fashion.
i-D founder Terry Jones and his wife Tricia will remain partners and shareholders in i-D, as well as staying on in their current roles as creative visionaries.
“VICE is so excited to work with the guys at i-D magazine, one of the only fashion publications in the world we actually respect,” said our President, Andrew Creighton. For his part, Terry Jones has called it “the beginning of an incredibly exciting chapter in i-D’s history.”
Be sure to watch this space closely to see what your future’s gonna look like.
Do you assholes realize that we have been putting out this magazine every 30 days for something like 40 years now? It’s true, and today we are launching the new issue, which will serve as our shining beacon of light through the next dark 30 days. When you first pick up the It’s Actually Quite Weird issue you’ll notice two zombie-esque Asian ladies staring blankly at you with white eyeballs. Don’t worry! That’s just our pals Maggie Lee and Sandy Kim, who star in a shoot called “Pretty Kool-A.” It’s based on Japanese purikuras, the super-fun sticker photo booth thingamajigs.
As you may have noticed, we’ve decided to start feeding you the new issues one piece at a time instead of turning you loose on a giant buffet of great words and pictures all at once. This month, we’re getting the ball rolling with a disco party at a German mental hospital, a fashion spread based on old Richard Avedon shoots by Aliya Naumoff, and a small sect of Iraqi Muslims who like to demonstrate God’s healing powers by stabbing themselves in the face, among other places.
As always, we’ll be peppering the homepage with a new article every day from now until the beginning of June. If you can’t wait that long or don’t like computers, try your luck at snagging an actual copy of the mag at one of these nice places.
![Esquire’s Interview with Megan Fox Is the Worst Thing Ever Written
The cover story of this month’s Esquire is an interview with Megan Fox by Stephen Marche. And though I haven’t read every single thing that has ever been written, I can say, with confidence, that it is the worst thing that anybody has ever written. Ever.
It’s fucking LONG, and I know you’re busy, so here are the worst things about it.
THE WAY THE WRITER DESCRIBES HOW ATTRACTIVE MEGAN FOX IS
Megan Fox is good looking. There are various photos of her throughout the article that back this up. But just in case it’s not clear, the author breaks down her beauty in a number of riiiiiiiidiculous ways. Including:
“[Her skin is] the color the moon possesses in the thin air of northern winters.”
“Megan Fox is a bombshell. To be a bombshell in 2013 is to be an antiquity, an old-world relic, like movie palaces or fountain pens or the muscle cars of the 1970s or the pinball machines in the basement. Bombshells once used to roam the cultural landscape like buffalo, and like buffalo they were edging toward extinction.”
“The symmetry of her face, up close, is genuinely shocking. The lip on the left curves exactly the same way as the lip on the right. The eyes match exactly. The brow is in perfect balance, like a problem of logic, like a visual labyrinth. It’s not really even that beautiful. It’s closer to the sublime, a force of nature, the patterns of waves crisscrossing a lake, snow avalanching down the side of a mountain, an elaborately camouflaged butterfly. What she is is flawless. There is absolutely nothing wrong with her.”
The symmetry of her face is “genuinely shocking”? I’m imagining the author arriving for the interview, seeing her face for the first time and leaping back, letting out an audible gasp, “God, Megan, I am SO sorry! It’s just your face… It’s so…”
“Symmetrical?” Megan will have asked, forlorn, “I get that a lot… *sigh*.”
THE WEIRD AZTEC METAPHOR THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE
“Deep in her house, Megan Fox and I are discussing human sacrifice. I tell her about an Aztec ritual practiced five hundred years ago in ancient Mexico during the feast of Toxcatl, when the Aztecs picked a perfect youth to live among them as a god. He was a paragon, beautiful and fit and healthy, with ideal proportions…
“The sacrifice’s year was filled with constant delight, I tell her. He danced through the streets adorned in luxurious clothes given to him by the master, decked in flowers and incense, playing magical flutes that brought prosperity to the whole world. He had eight servants and four virgins to attend to his every need and could wander wherever he pleased. But at the end of the year, when the feast of Toxcatl came around again, the perfect youth had to smash his flutes and climb the stairs of the great temple, where the priests would cut out his heart and offer it, still beating, to the sun.
“Megan Fox is not an ancient Aztec. She’s a screen saver on a teenage boy’s laptop, a middle-aged lawyer’s shower fantasy, a sexual prop used to sell movies and jeans.
‘It’s so similar. It totally is,’ she says quietly.
At the end of the year, the beautiful youth had to go up by himself. He had to go up willingly. That was part of the deal.
Now she is shaking her head. “Not everyone understands that that’s the deal,” she says.
Megan Fox will not go willingly to have her heart cut out.”
I understand that what occured the day of the interview probably wasn’t all that interesting. I’d imagine he sat opposite her while she talked about whatever movie she was contractually obliged to talk about. And then he had to find a way of making that seem interesting for five whole pages. But SURELY, any rational person, upon typing the sentence “Megan Fox is not an ancient Aztec” would think ‘Wait, maybe this is a bit much? Perhaps I should take a break and have another try at this in the morning.’
And let’s just forget, for a second, that what he wrote doesn’t actually make any sense at all, and concentrate instead on Megan’s reaction to it. She fucking AGREED with him! Horrifying.
MEGAN FOX BELIEVES THAT BEING FAMOUS IS WORSE THAN BEING BULLIED
“‘I don’t think people understand,” she says. ‘They all think we should shut the fuck up and stop complaining because you live in a big house or you drive a Bentley. So your life must be so great. What people don’t realize is that fame, whatever your worst experience in high school, when you were being bullied by those ten kids in high school, fame is that, but on a global scale, where you’re being bullied by millions of people constantly.’”
When I was at school, there was a kid who everyone picked on because they thought he was gay. One day, a bunch of older kids dragged him into the PE showers and forcibly inserted a broom handle into his ass. Pretty sure he’d trade lives with you, Meg.
Continue](http://25.media.tumblr.com/62b5f8134233838ebc727c3cb8cbce5d/tumblr_mgq7orqWKO1qzikspo1_500.jpg "Esquire’s Interview with Megan Fox Is the Worst Thing Ever Written
The cover story of this month’s Esquire is an interview with Megan Fox by Stephen Marche. And though I haven’t read every single thing that has ever been written, I can say, with confidence, that it is the worst thing that anybody has ever written. Ever.
It’s fucking LONG, and I know you’re busy, so here are the worst things about it.
THE WAY THE WRITER DESCRIBES HOW ATTRACTIVE MEGAN FOX IS
Megan Fox is good looking. There are various photos of her throughout the article that back this up. But just in case it’s not clear, the author breaks down her beauty in a number of riiiiiiiidiculous ways. Including:
“[Her skin is] the color the moon possesses in the thin air of northern winters.”
“Megan Fox is a bombshell. To be a bombshell in 2013 is to be an antiquity, an old-world relic, like movie palaces or fountain pens or the muscle cars of the 1970s or the pinball machines in the basement. Bombshells once used to roam the cultural landscape like buffalo, and like buffalo they were edging toward extinction.”
“The symmetry of her face, up close, is genuinely shocking. The lip on the left curves exactly the same way as the lip on the right. The eyes match exactly. The brow is in perfect balance, like a problem of logic, like a visual labyrinth. It’s not really even that beautiful. It’s closer to the sublime, a force of nature, the patterns of waves crisscrossing a lake, snow avalanching down the side of a mountain, an elaborately camouflaged butterfly. What she is is flawless. There is absolutely nothing wrong with her.”
The symmetry of her face is “genuinely shocking”? I’m imagining the author arriving for the interview, seeing her face for the first time and leaping back, letting out an audible gasp, “God, Megan, I am SO sorry! It’s just your face… It’s so…”
“Symmetrical?” Megan will have asked, forlorn, “I get that a lot… *sigh*.”
THE WEIRD AZTEC METAPHOR THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE
“Deep in her house, Megan Fox and I are discussing human sacrifice. I tell her about an Aztec ritual practiced five hundred years ago in ancient Mexico during the feast of Toxcatl, when the Aztecs picked a perfect youth to live among them as a god. He was a paragon, beautiful and fit and healthy, with ideal proportions…
“The sacrifice’s year was filled with constant delight, I tell her. He danced through the streets adorned in luxurious clothes given to him by the master, decked in flowers and incense, playing magical flutes that brought prosperity to the whole world. He had eight servants and four virgins to attend to his every need and could wander wherever he pleased. But at the end of the year, when the feast of Toxcatl came around again, the perfect youth had to smash his flutes and climb the stairs of the great temple, where the priests would cut out his heart and offer it, still beating, to the sun.
“Megan Fox is not an ancient Aztec. She’s a screen saver on a teenage boy’s laptop, a middle-aged lawyer’s shower fantasy, a sexual prop used to sell movies and jeans.
‘It’s so similar. It totally is,’ she says quietly.
At the end of the year, the beautiful youth had to go up by himself. He had to go up willingly. That was part of the deal.
Now she is shaking her head. “Not everyone understands that that’s the deal,” she says.
Megan Fox will not go willingly to have her heart cut out.”
I understand that what occured the day of the interview probably wasn’t all that interesting. I’d imagine he sat opposite her while she talked about whatever movie she was contractually obliged to talk about. And then he had to find a way of making that seem interesting for five whole pages. But SURELY, any rational person, upon typing the sentence “Megan Fox is not an ancient Aztec” would think ‘Wait, maybe this is a bit much? Perhaps I should take a break and have another try at this in the morning.’
And let’s just forget, for a second, that what he wrote doesn’t actually make any sense at all, and concentrate instead on Megan’s reaction to it. She fucking AGREED with him! Horrifying.
MEGAN FOX BELIEVES THAT BEING FAMOUS IS WORSE THAN BEING BULLIED
“‘I don’t think people understand,” she says. ‘They all think we should shut the fuck up and stop complaining because you live in a big house or you drive a Bentley. So your life must be so great. What people don’t realize is that fame, whatever your worst experience in high school, when you were being bullied by those ten kids in high school, fame is that, but on a global scale, where you’re being bullied by millions of people constantly.’”
When I was at school, there was a kid who everyone picked on because they thought he was gay. One day, a bunch of older kids dragged him into the PE showers and forcibly inserted a broom handle into his ass. Pretty sure he’d trade lives with you, Meg.
Continue")
![We Just Acquired i-D Magazine
Ah-hem, Ah-hem. [taps microphone] Ladies and gentlemen, may we have your attention, please. We have an important announcement. On December 18, 2012, VICE acquired the iconic style publication, i-D. The deal will allow the two of us to commence a beautiful partnership, and to get on with the important business of siring the future of fashion.
i-D founder Terry Jones and his wife Tricia will remain partners and shareholders in i-D, as well as staying on in their current roles as creative visionaries.
“VICE is so excited to work with the guys at i-D magazine, one of the only fashion publications in the world we actually respect,” said our President, Andrew Creighton. For his part, Terry Jones has called it “the beginning of an incredibly exciting chapter in i-D’s history.”
Be sure to watch this space closely to see what your future’s gonna look like.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/0d2770a23faeb3bcf33c8a367debab25/tumblr_mfaf8vvZXy1qzikspo1_1280.jpg "We Just Acquired i-D Magazine
Ah-hem, Ah-hem. [taps microphone] Ladies and gentlemen, may we have your attention, please. We have an important announcement. On December 18, 2012, VICE acquired the iconic style publication, i-D. The deal will allow the two of us to commence a beautiful partnership, and to get on with the important business of siring the future of fashion.
i-D founder Terry Jones and his wife Tricia will remain partners and shareholders in i-D, as well as staying on in their current roles as creative visionaries.
“VICE is so excited to work with the guys at i-D magazine, one of the only fashion publications in the world we actually respect,” said our President, Andrew Creighton. For his part, Terry Jones has called it “the beginning of an incredibly exciting chapter in i-D’s history.”
Be sure to watch this space closely to see what your future’s gonna look like.")
