I arrive at the Vice store on Queen St. W. an hour late because I’m hung over (which actually agrees perfectly with the Vice ethos). My tardiness barely registers, because Gavin McInnes—the 32-year-old, handlebar-mustachioed and heavily tattooed overseer of the Vice empire—is cajoling a nude woman into having anal sex with him.
The woman is Lily Kwan, a topless webcaster-cum-journalist from NakedNews.com, and she’s demurely refusing Gavin’s probing offer. He assures her the transaction won’t take long—they’ll just slip in the back, he’ll administer a quick enema, and then “I’ll fuck you up the ass.” They’re standing in a tiny shower stall that doubles as a changeroom.
It’s bizarre indeed, but then so is Vice. Since its inception eight years ago as a photocopied Montreal ’zine about punk and skate culture, it’s mushroomed into a grotesque, throbbing beast—like the Tetsuo-monster in the final scene of Akira—enveloping the music, fashion and book publishing industries with its fleshy tentacles. But despite its multi-market domination (see book review), Vice has remained loyal to the basics.
“Poo and farting and bum-bum stuff is always good. It’s the backbone of good comedy,” says McInnes. “We’re definitely making a conscious effort to keep the vacancy level high. The problem is that we’re so intelligent that when you’re trying to be stupid all the time, it’s hard. Being hungover helps.”
In recent years, though, the magazine has shifted more towards the highbrow. Whereas in 1999 you might page through an issue to light upon an exposé about corn in your poo, these days the majority of editorial space is devoted to high-minded documentary photography by serious, cutting-edge artistes like Ryan McGinley, Terry Richardson and Bruce LaBruce.
McInnes explains the change: “We’re really into photography and we like having big pictures.” He says although many readers have complained the average article size has been sacrificed to flashy, image-centric content, this suits the average reader and isn’t favouring style over substance. Discussing music coverage, which constitutes the bulk of Vice’s copy, he says, “I can’t think of a band I’d want to read more than 400 words about. But if it’s something important, like someone buying nuclear bombs in Bulgaria, that’s worth 3,000 words.”
Vice’s other core value, of course, is sex, and lots of it.[tenuous connection, rework] Back issues containing the celebrated Vice Guide to Giving Head, Eating Pussy and Anal Sex are harder to find than weapons-grade uranium, and McInnes claims the popularity of the Vice brand has gotten him more coochie than the average male can dream of. “I’ve fucked probably 200, 250 women in my life,” he says. “In the past eight years, 90 per cent of my lays have been Vice-related.”
But Vice doesn’t espouse the kind of macho posturing you’d find in the pages of Maxim. Homosexuality is openly celebrated and dissected (“Abe Lincoln Was A Fag”) and sundry other perversities (balloon sex, fat fetishes) are embraced with an honesty the “lads’ magazines” could never get away with.
It’s this honesty that allows Vice to venture into territory most other publications are terrified to go near. Especially race.
McInnes, although convinced “[Montreal girls] are like they’re bred in a lab to be fucking cool,” re-located to New York because la belle province didn’t have the business environment necessary for the magazine to grow. “That’s the problem with Canada,” he says. “It’s communist.”
But “America’s racist,” he says. “So, if you’re [in America] looking at, like, some Polynesian girl or some black chick…none of the white guys around find her attractive, even though she’s a nine [out of ten, on the Vice physical-attractiveness scale], because she’s a ‘nigger’ or a ‘chink.’”
However interesting a socio-political phenomenon this may be, McInnes cares little for such academic concerns. Fancying himself at a robust 7 to 7.8, he claims, “I could easily get a non-white 8, because of the racism” in the good old U.S. of A.
And that’s what Vice’s appeal is really all about: honesty. “I’ve always thought the funniest stuff is when people are totally honest. I think that’s why people like the magazine, is because we say what we think. The most honest stuff is the stuff people are most attracted to.”
Photographs by Simon Turnbull
