I guess it’s OK to jauntily perch atop an old lady’s bike if you look like the French Dennis Wilson (I want that jacket).Comments/Enlarge |
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I’ve never wanted to be reincarnated as a gross piece of sticky brown stuff on a chair until now.Comments/Enlarge |
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Cover photo by Martha Álvarez
EL HOMBRE ARANA Ryan McGinley Gets Hoodwinked at the Mexico City Zoo In the fall of 2006 I was on the Morrissey Tour. I had been touring since March ‘06, traveling all over the world photographing his concerts and fans. These pictures were taken in November at the Mexico City Zoo...READ MORE
SHEPPARD'S VIDEO-GAME PIE By Stephen Lea Sheppard IKARUGA
The most legendary of shmup games amongst people who don’t self-identify as shmup fans, Ikaruga is now on Xbox Live Arcade in 2008 after seeing release on the...READ MORE
VICE MAIL Letters - The Mexican Issue Care Me A River, Speed Spook, The Feminine Mistake, The Vampire Lesuck, State of the Nation...READ MORE
A MEXICAN IN... ANTWERP Juan Carlos Bonifaz
Vice: Who are you and what are you doing here?
Juan Carlos: I'm a musician and I came from Mexico to finish my master's here. I got invited because I won a competition in Mexico and one of the jury members was...READ MORE
BLESS THIS MESS Hermano Blanco Is Our Own Private Warlock There's a city in Veracruz, Mexico, called Catemaco, wherein there dwell a multitude of warlocks. That is correct, nonbelievers: warlocks. Men who are wizardly practitioners of magick, mojo, and (if you get on their bad side) mayhem, and they all live in this ...READ MORE
A MEXICAN IN... BERLIN Fabrizio del Rincon
Vice: Tell us a little about where you're from.
Fabrizio: I'm from a small farming town in the north of Mexico called Caborca Sonora. It's a tiny place, overrun with cows and ramshackle buildings. I come from a big...READ MORE
COCKS Photos by Erwan Fichou I've been photographing fighting roosters since 2000. The photos here were all shot between 2004 and 2006 in Mexico. The cocks are usually armed with surgical knives that are strapped on one or both of their legs. They use little ones-up to an inch long. Cockf...READ MORE
A MEXICAN IN... LONDON Monica Gonzalez
Vice: Ay caramba, look at you. Why did you decide to come all the way to London?
Monica: I left Mexico City with my parents due to my dad's job and moved to the States for around two years. Then we moved to France, then ...READ MORE
EMOS VS.PUNKS Two Lame Subcultures Battle for the Heart of Mexico City Legend has it that the whole thing started after the MTV Mexico program Telehit aired an episode with the topic "What is an emo?" The host of the show, an uglier version of Mark McGrath named Kristoff, gave one of those precious talk-show...READ MORE
BUT WAIT, FUCK THE EMOS AND THE PUNKS! Mexican Skins Are the Real Cool Rulers RUBEN "RUFFI" RANGEL GONZALES, 28
Vice: So you're like a total skinhead there. How long have you been in the boots and braces?...READ MORE
THE KIDS IN CHAPULTEPEC PARK Mexico City's busiest park is host to all sorts of street performers, vendors, buskers, and hustlers. Our favorite group is this ragtag family of kids who dress up in bootleg costumes of famous characters. LAURA: I am in charge of a couple of photo...READ MORE
A MEXICAN IN... PARIS Abraham Cruzvillegas
Vice: Where are you from?
Abraham: I grew up in a neighborhood that wasn't even a neighborhood-it was land taken by immigrants. It was called Colonia Ajusco because you could see the Ajusco Mountains. It was like a moon la...READ MORE
AMIGOS CON RAMBO This guy who dresses up as Rambo used to work in Mexico City's Chapultepec Park, posing with tourists for photos. Now he is in LA, being Rambo at the Universal Studios theme park. Heavy validation there. Congrats, Rambo-impersonator guy.
But we knew him b...READ MORE
A MEXICAN IN... AUCKLAND Xavier Meade
Vice: When did you come to New Zealand and what on earth led you all the way here?
Xavier: I grew up in Mexico City but left in 1979 to travel. I met my wife, who is a Kiwi, in London. We lived in Mexico for four years before movi...READ MORE
MEXICO IS SPOOKY Here Are Nine Reasons Why I've been an investigator of paranormal and alien phenomena in Mexico since 1974, when I founded one of the first ufology groups in Monterrey. My expertise has led me to participate in international television and radio programs about paranormal and extraterre...READ MORE
A MEXICAN IN...MELBOURNE Jenny Salguero Vice:Hi Jenny, what brought you to Australia? Jenny: I grew up in one of Mexico's biggest cities, Puebla. It's southeast of the capital. When I was young, I met a man from El Salvador and we were married and moved ...READ MORE
DESTROYING MYSELF Guillermo Fadanelli, one of our favorite Mexican writers, is best buddies with Miguel Calderon, one of our favorite Mexican artists. Here, Fadanelli introduces some of the notebook scribblings that Calderón has made during their epic debaucheries...READ MORE
A MEXICAN IN... NEW YORK Bernardo Loyola
Vice: Hey, you work for us. What was your first impression of New York?
Bernardo: The first time I came to New York, I came for just a weekend and there was a hurricane. Hurricane Floyd or something. The city was in a state of ...READ MORE
MEXICAN RASHES Contraband, Commerce, and Art in One of Mexico's Most Overcrowded Prisons I have been going to jail once a week for the past two years now. I stay for about seven hours each time, which means that as of now I have spent more than 500 hours in prison.
The first time I went I was truly scared. There are more than 2,500 men in thi...READ MORE
A MEXICAN IN... TOKYO Jesús Salinas
Vice: Mexico is on the other side of the globe from Japan. What did you think of Tokyo when you first came?
Jesús: The biggest shock was how safe Japan is. Tokyo is the only place that...READ MORE
HOUSE OF THE SETTING SUN Where an Aging Hooker Can Find a Little Piece, Oops. We Mean Peace Tepito is one of the poorest and most dangerous areas of Mexico City. It's been a black market since time immemorial, and anything you want, original or imitation, can be found here. Sex can be bought starting at five pesos-from people up to 80 years old...READ MORE
A MEXICAN IN... MILAN Chantal Garduno Israde
Vice: Why did you decide to move to Italy?
Chantal: Actually, I had already lived in Italy as a child, from when I was three to six years old. My parents are both geologists. We had to run away from Mexico....READ MORE
A MEXICAN IN... STOCKHOLM Paola Pancardo
Vice: Do many Mexicans move to Scandinavia?
Paola: No, it isn't exactly the first place people apply for in exchange programs. One friend told me that Stockholm was the number one city that she least wanted to go to...READ MORE
RECORDS Music Reviews - The Mexico Issue ENDLESS BOOGIE
Focus Level
El secreto mejor guardado de Nueva York no es el local de dumpling en Chinatown que solamente yo conozco, ni es el lugar cerca de Wall Street donde inmigrantes...READ MORE
A MEXICAN IN... AMSTERDAM Juan-Ernesto Castano De Sosa
Vice: Do people joke around with your name?
Juan-Ernesto: Not really, although some people act weird when they hear it for the first time. They start to do stupid impersonations of Tony Montana...READ MORE
SKINEMA By Chris Nieratko LATINA GRANDE
This DVD was shot entirely in Peru, which I believe is in the northern part of Mexico, but I'm not very good at geometry so I can't be totally certain. You know the old saying...READ MORE
A MEXICAN IN... BARCELONA Enrique "Artellano" Hernandez
Vice: How is it that you're in Spain?
Enrique: I came here to achieve a high degree of expertise in art restoration. I came direct from Mexico City. That means I am chilango...READ MORE
IF ONLY IT WAS LIKE THAT HERE Open Season On Journalists If you have killed a journalist in Mexico since 1992 you can probably relax about being caught. The impunity rate for murders of members of the press over there is a reassuring 92 per cent. Last year, men in a four-by-four pulled up outside Tabasco Hoy,...READ MORE
THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC OF THE TELENOVELA Mexico's Biggest Export to the World Is an Endless, Gushing Fount of Insane Television In the summer of 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian television industry was in a profound transition-it needed to find a fast and cheap way to fill the airtime that had previously been occupied by...READ MORE
A MEXICAN IN... TORONTO Jose Maximiliano Suarez Velazquez
Vice: Why did you come to Toronto from Mexico?
Jose: The principle reason is because I'm gay, and for gay people in Mexico it's not easy. I'm from Quaretaro, about three hours south of Mexico City. I had some ...READ MORE
CHINGA TU MADRE (And Your Sister, and Your Neighbor, and All of Her Friends, and the Delivery Guy, and, Hey, Let's Videotape It and Sell It on the Internet) Mexican photographer Jose Luis Cuevas has been working on a series of photographs documenting the world of homemade Mexican porn for the last four years...READ MORE
A MEXICAN IN... VIENNA Mariana Garci-Crespo
Vice: Why did you decide to move to Vienna?
Mariana: Because of art. I studied linguistics and opera, and Vienna is the birthplace of opera. I love Vienna...READ MORE
UK RECORDS Music Reviews - The Mexico Issue DAEDELUS
Love to Make Music to
Is hip-hop a big deal in Mexico?
Not really. There are a lot of mariachi bands. Not much hip-hop...READ MORE
AY CARAMBA! Mexican Food in London Mostly Tastes Like Sewage This we know because we grabbed a Mexican who we found doing capoeira in a park with a bunch of Brazilians and dragged her around three of what purported to be London's best Mexican takeaway joints. Turns out that if they were trying to peddle their...READ MORE
MISSIONARY STYLE Diaries of a Stupid White Girl in Mexico I grew up in an evangelical Christian church where my father was a reverend and my mom taught Sunday school. Evangelical Christians are those real pushy Christians who think that everyone else but them are going to hell, even Catholics and Jews...READ MORE
ON WITH THE SONIDERO! Las Fiestas Mas Locas en Mexico City Sonideros are commonly described as the club DJs of Mexico. Towards the end of the 1950s, they began to liven up neighbourhood dances, block parties, and popular salons in Mexico City. Substituting the traditional trios, groups, and big bands, they perf...READ MORE
RAW CHINA - THE RED GAS STATION By Jocko Weyland When I asked Henry where to catch the 988 bus from Dawanglu he gave me a skeptical look and asked "Why do you want to go all the way out there?" For a lifetime Beijinger, the 988 meant going out to the undesirable hinterlands. Henry seemed suspicious that some...READ MORE
SKELETONIZER Paul Oestreicher Turns People Into Clay We ran into this guy on the subway lugging a two-foot tall, anatomically perfect skeleton holding a plumb line up to a smaller skeleton on a pedestal. Naturally, we had to have a word. A few days later we were standing in Paul Oestreicher's studio surrounded b...READ MORE
MARION BARRY: GUARDIAN ANGEL OF PUNK ROCK By Ian Svenonius Marion Barry, the much maligned former mayor of Washington, DC, is mostly known as a punch line. As a synonym for "smoking crack," he embodied white America's media-based fantasy of 80s urban blacks-entitled, lazy, corrupt, drug addled, and taking advantage of...READ MORE
HELLO, I'M A CIVIL WAR REENACTOR! Excuse Me, I Mean a Progressive, Campaign Living Historian Bill Cross is a Civil War reenactor with a wide range of battles, ranks, and personae under his belt and the current treasurer of the Rowdy Pards "progressive, campaign living history society." Growing up his father hauled him to all the major Civil War battle...READ MORE
SWEET HONEY IN THE BLUES An Introduction to Sanctified Blues & Bluesy Gospel A few years ago, when that big Scorsese-produced PBS special of films about "The Blues" was about to premiere, I was exceptionally psyched to hear that Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas, Wings Of Desire) made one about this gospel blues singer named Blind Willi...READ MORE
GEORGE SAUNDERS The Vice Interview George Saunders is that rare sort of writer who may have gone ahead and invented a new genre. I'm not really sure to call it yet, but it's something along the lines of Dystopian Social Satire. I would say something else here about Chekhov and magical realism, ...READ MORE
