Cover photo by Jerry Hsu. That’s a gypsy kid who tried to pick
Jerry’s pocket in Moscow. When Jerry caught him, the kid attacked.
 VICE MAILLong Live Krewson, Can Anorexics Eat Crow?, Fart Contest, the Colon's Broom, Support the Islanders, Kind of Missing the Point, It Never Fails..., Huh, What?, Know Your Enemy, Facial Hair Inquiry, Kentucky Fried Moron, Free to Be You and Me... | |
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  BRIBING WITH BLUE JEANSBartering at the Velvet RopeJust how valuable ARE a pair of old black Levi's 550s and a fresh roll of Kleenex-brand two-ply toilet paper to today's deprived Muscovites? I recently hit the fanciest nightclubs in town to see how far I could get on the real cultural currency of 1980s Russia.... | |
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 OVER THE COUNTER HABITSA Brief History of Getting High in RussiaSt. Petersburg's drug situation was always better than Moscow's. In fact most of the "fast" shit (ecstasy and meth) was produced in "Peter" and distributed to Moscow for double the price. St. Pete resisted cheap smack when it first hit about ten years ago, but eventually surrendered after most of th... | |
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 GROSS JARBeing a hippie without relegating yourself to the dregs of utter dirtbagness is kind of a tricky area. If you're a guy in high school and completely surrounded by jocks and dogmatic straight-edgers, it's fine to take a year or two off to dabble in acid and not be stressed out all the time. And if yo... | |
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 RUSSIAN COCKTAILSWhat Can't They Drink?" In America, you drink vodka.
But in Soviet Russia...vodka drinks you."
-Yakov Smirnoff, comic genius
Russians as a species are disappearing from this planet faster than Chilean sea bass. With a mortality rate comparable only to that of African countries ... | |
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 BORN TO RUNWhy Do Russians Always Leave Russia?ARTIOM, 19, STOCKHOLM
Vice: So you left to avoid the Russian military?
Artiom: Did you hear about the guy who lost his legs and his dick? This is how Russian military service works: It's mandatory, and it's basically one year ... | |
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 SKINEMAI never really grasped what they meant when doctors said people who lose a limb often feel a pain where their arm or leg once was. ... | |
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 TIDBITSA monthly look at things we love - v13n4THE RUSSIAN ROAD RUNNER
You can learn a lot about a culture from its cartoons. This 1969 classic is the Russian version of the Road Runner. It's called Nu Pogodi ("Just You Wait"), but instead of the Wile E. Coyote character coming up with elaborate booby traps and weird disguises, Volk ... | |
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 FUCK KATRINADJ Chicken Does DallasHurricane Katrina was a total disaster and everything but for some of the people of New Orleans' projects, who are used to dodging bullets while slanging yay and shocking out to jittery 808 beats and O.T.T. synth-driven hip-hop, Katrina was nothing. In fact, the misfortune has helped the local bounc... | |
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 GAMESBlack, Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under PressureBlack
EA Games
This game expertly preys on the fantasies of all devoted gamers. No, we don't specifically want to be black-ops guys with ninja clothes and guns from the future and shit. It isn't about the equipment or the clothes, man. It's about ... | |
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 LITERARY GULAGA Writer's Retreat Behind BarsEdward Limonov is the leader of the National-Bolsheviks Party, a radical left-wing movement that was outlawed by the Russian Supreme Court, but which has emerged as the leading opposition to President Putin. The NBP's membership numbers in the thousands (see the first pic in the DOs).... | |
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 BIBLE BASHERSWhat's With The Maccabees?Sometimes, you'll know a British band by how they make something poetic out of their experience of living in the UK. It could be Blur's Britain, or Pete Doherty's Albion, but you'll usually notice that their songs find some way to romanticise what is essentially a small, rainy country where summer l... | |
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 THE VICE GUIDE TO RUSSIAAn A-Z of the world's biggest country
Russia is poisoned. It's poisoned from shitty old cars running on leaded 76-octane fuel and it's poisoned from decades of Soviet waste. Its capital is the largest city in Europe and the most polluted. The weather is usually raw, cold, and damp, while the apartments a... | |
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 OUT THEREEverybody likes to jaw on and on about indie rock and indie labels and indie magazines and indie rap (that's the worst indie), but what about indie distros? There are tons of them and they never get anybody saying, "Hey, I really like you guys. You guys are OK." So, for the Russian Issue of Vice, we... | |
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 RA-RA RASPUTINIs The Favourite Sons' Favourite RussianThe Favourite Sons are the reason Ken Griffith isn't currently mopping vomit off the floor of a Brooklyn drinking hole. After Irish noise-pop demi-gods Rollerskate Skinny split in 1997 he decided to have one last go with Kid Silver before opting to live out his remaining years polishing glasses, get... | |
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 VICE FASHION - MAIL-ORDER BRIDESThe real Russia is in provincial cities and towns like Tver, where we found these girls. They are all members of a local bridal agency (tverromance.com) and would like to marry you. There's no guarantee you'll hit it off but the bright side is, unlike American women, they could give a shit about a s... | |
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 GRIMEWATCHWith Roll Deep being kicked off Rinse FM, Essentials splitting up and my quest to become grime's own JT LeRoy moving as swiftly as Sharky Major's career, I was ready to file this month under "WASTE".... | |
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 VICE PICTURESJerry Hsu Goes To Russia" I flew into Moscow alone. After the 14-hour flight I got to stand in an immigration line for three hours while hundreds of Russians cut in front of me. They are the world's greatest cutters.
" I went there to take pictures, but I had to skateboard too. Communist architecture is some of th... | |
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 FULL METAL TORTURERape in the Red ArmyOver the recent New Year's holidays, Private Andrei Sychyov's superiors tied him to a chair and beat him continuously for hours and hours, taking breaks only to sustain their drinking binge. When it was over, Sychyov was told not to say a peep. He didn't complain, and the doctors who examined him re... | |
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 RUSSIANS YAWN AT DEATHFew countries can boast a death count as high as Russia's in the 20th century. Twenty million were killed by Hitler and Stalin each, and millions more were lost in the Civil War, WW1, and the Famine. During the 1990s, an estimated seven million Russians went to early graves due to the unbearable eff... | |
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 RECORDSMusic Reviews - v13n4DJ Eleven and Spitkicker Present the Best of M.O.P.
Spitkicker
They used to be the dopest but they haven't put out a good song in a while. Signing with 50 is suspect. They look like bozos on that roster next to Ma$e. But we'll see. In the meantime their old-school hits are sures... | |
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 VICE FASHION - TRUE RIGGERS DON'T PLAYAND YOU THOUGHT WIGGERS WERE bad. At least some of them have met a black guy before and could kind of identify with what it's like to be poor and shat on in America. But Riggers? They're worse than Japanese Rockabillys. What the fuck are you doing guy? An imitation of something you saw on TV? Oh, so... | |
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 DOOMS DAY METALDoes it make any sense to even try to explain what has gone wrong with Death Metal? I see you scratching your bleached hair going "Huh!? Metal still rawks man!" Well, let me begin; Fuck you all. Fuck you all, and look deep into the face of Satan's Metal! Not the light-headed, sensationalist circus t... | |
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 WHORES ON WHEELSMoscow's One-Stop ShoppingMoscow is awash in whores. They come to Russia's capital, the lone island of wealth in a Eurasian ocean of wretched poverty, from all over the former Soviet Union.
If you've got wheels, you can cruise the hundreds of outdoor whore markets, each of which boasts between 20 and 40 whores. ... | |
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 ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE"Vodka for Russians is like a warming water. When it's cold you have to drink a glass of vodka to feel warm-I don't drink vodka to get drunk," says Alexey Orchensky, the 20-year-old Russian genius behind Amen Orchestra, whose breathtaking debut album, 17 Waves, on the Art-Tek label, is an audacious ... | |
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 LITERARY / I WANT MY DVDSMarzo, Rag, A Year in the Life of TheManWhoFellAsleep, Apples and Olives, Unknown White MaleApples and Olives
Lee Friedlander
Fraenkel Gallery
Lee Friedlander is the god of black-and-white photography. These are his photos of apple and olive trees, that's it, and they have so much visual and emotional ... | |
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 VICE FASHION - HOMESICKIn 2004 Chechens took siege of a Beslan school and killed and injured up to 1.000 people. There are about 1 million street kids in Moscow, infant death in Armenia is 36 to every 1.000 (in Scandinavia it's 4) and procreating close to Chernobyl is risky for the next 3 million years. No wonder parents ... | |
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 DRUNKY MONKEYFreezing at the ZooIn Russia, it isn't just prison inmates who go without heat. One million homeless kids get in on the freezing-their-fucking-balls-off action too. Christ, during the Russian winter, people who keep their cell phones pressed to their heads for too long find them frozen to their ears. So can you imagin... | |
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 WUSSIAN WABBITSArt With Floppy Ears And Fluffy TailsNathalia Edenmont is a 30-year-old Russian artist who has been bashed by literally everyone for the crime of making of art with dead bunnies. She gets hate mail from militant vegans, Nazis, and even regular people who say things like: "That's not art!" And all she does is take really cutesy photos o... | |
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 PLAYSTATION PIRATESRussian Home EntertainmentRussia is one of the world's largest pirate markets for electronic media. From music and DVDs to video games and software, Russia is ranked right up with world-leaders in piracy China and Indonesia. Fake shit is sold everywhere here, from underground walkway stalls to large bazaars and train station... | |
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 TB IN RUSSIALike Ticking Time-Bombs?Tuberculosis is a contagious disease that spreads through the air just like the common cold. Someone with TB can cough or sneeze and infect others (10 to 15 people a year on average) with the bacteria known as bacilli. Getting the bacilli does not necessarily mean getting the disease, however. It is... | |
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 RUSSIANS IN LONDONA Blight on Blighty?Dasha is a 19-year-old Economics student and the only child of a media tycoon from Moscow. With a Hermès Birkin collection that would make Paris Hilton piss in her panties, Dasha loves to blow her family's cash. But she's not a fool about it: Dasha owns shares in her father's company and gets involv... | |
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 DUBIINA BOX *Tuning In RussiaFuck, Russian TV is bad. It takes "so bad it's good" into entirely new realms. The best (worst) of Russian TV is so utterly abysmal that it's completely amazing. Here are the worst (best) shows that it has to offer. ... | |
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