Her latest limited edition book, Street Walker, features vivid images of NYC and other US cities taken in the 70s and 80s, and will be available on a made-to-order basis from November 1st via Italian publishers Eyeshot, so preorder before September 30 or miss out forever.

VICE chatted to Meisler about the latest book and the virtues of sticking at it.

VICE: Is it strange to keep revisiting your youth through these shots?
Meryl Meisler: I didn’t really look at the photographs seriously before doing the books. This time, I looked through and discovered things I never even peeked at before. It’s like New York City: You sit on the subway, you could see someone reading the Bible, the Torah, whatever, and they’re reading it again and again and again, and they’re finding new meanings. I feel like I’m looking at my work and finding new meanings. I have barely touched upon my archival work from ‘73 till now.

So there’s a whole treasure trove of further books, you just have to find the links between the images to tell a coherent story?
Yes. It’s like having lots of words in your head and putting them together to make a story.

New York City was very different back in the 70s and 80s, right?
The New York City I moved to was a very exciting time. I still find excitement here, but I didn’t know it was a radical excitement—like in England, things originated, punk, this and that… In New York City, the disco scene flew out of it. It was a change in music and culture and acceptance of people who weren’t exactly living the mainstream life—but could have a life. It was a good time; a good time for me.

Does anything specific about New York’s built environment lend itself to photography?
New York City is a treasure trove. As soon as I moved here in 1975, I realized, ‘Oh, this is where I belong.’ It’s an invigorating place. It’s got energy. Visually it’s very stimulating because some things are so familiar—you’ve seen them in movies, stories, and everything else—and then you’re always discovering something new. There’s so much there.

Do you still know many of the people pictured in these photographs?
All my family, friends, and friends’ friends and photographs of people in my neighborhood, yes, I know them. But people have also reached out to me who’ve found themselves in the pictures. Former students who have found themselves in my Bushwick pictures. Strangers have found themselves, and what’s very nice is, everybody always likes the picture; nobody’s angry with it. I captured their joy. I think that’s something I didn’t understand while photographing, but I tend to want to photograph people in places expressing joy and confidence and laughter. Even those who grew up in rough neighborhoods like Bushwick, you also saw the beauty. 

Is there anything else you feel people should know about your practice, or this book?
Number one is that it’s from different places, and it’s diverse. I’ve never photographed or hung around with just one kind of people. It’s a little parade of life as I saw it. I made my living doing something else [Meryl was a public school art teacher in NYC], so they’re very unconstrained. It’s what I found fascinating. Whatever it is you enjoy doing, just keep doing it, whether or not you find the proper outlets. I was always showing my work, using photography with mixed media, exhibiting, but I was getting rejections a lot. But I kept on doing it anyway because it’s the way I see—you can’t force yourself to do something else. 

If you’re doing it because it makes you feel connected with the world, that’s enough reason—not everybody gets awarded immediately with big shows or fellowships or hires, but if you want to do it, you have a right to do it. It’s a surprise to me how powerful my photographs are. Editing and time only improve things. And I think the most important thing is to stay healthy—find a balance that nurtures you. Dying young doesn’t work. 

Finding community, other people who share passions and encourage each other, is very important because without that I might have stopped. And for that I’m grateful. I’m very grateful that you, whoever you are, have a vision, a voice that will help somebody else understand a little bit more about why they’re here on this Earth, and make this time a little better. It makes a big difference. 

It’s…
Preachy?

No, it’s very inspiring. I’m just thinking about my writing and stuff. No, it’s great. I think I needed that today.
I needed something too. It’s hard.

Yeah.
Most of it’s hard. 

Yeah. 
And everybody else lives a charmed life. No, but you have your life, and sometimes there’s a reason for it. 

Preorder a copy of STREET WALKER by MERYL MEISLER here.

Follow Nick Thompson on X @niche_t_

MORE PHOTOS BELOW:

The post Meryl Meisler’s Poignant Photos Capture the Chaos of 1970s New York appeared first on VICE.

Here, he talks us through the feral party lifestyle he carved out for himself during the island’s glory years—and his dark spiral into addiction.

It’s 8AM, and someone is pouring BBQ lighter gel all over the furniture and floor of our Ibiza villa.

As he sets it ablaze, another pal goes outside, and unleashes a spray of tear gas at us through the window. Then another mate throws an air bomb firework into the room. People are coughing and spluttering; there’s smoke and fire everywhere. This is my cue to direct everyone to the nine lines of gear on the table: It’s go time.

In case you’re wondering, the point of this is ‘fun’. This scenario was just a regular afters at the Clockwork villas. Every single night in our gaff was madness: it was all about how far we could push the craziness. We were addicts, getting fucked up every single day of every single season for the best part of a decade. If you didn’t die, you had a story to tell the next day.

How did it get to this? Well, you could say it started when I first got drunk—age eight. On the day of the 1980 FA Cup Final my mum left me home alone, as usual, to go to work, telling me expressly not to touch the three green cans in the fridge. Obviously, I settled down to watch West Ham and drank them all. I was allowed to go wild throughout my childhood. I didn’t have a dad and my mum was an alcoholic who’d send me out to steal things like milk or food if we didn’t have any—we lived in a council estate in Essex with debt collectors always knocking at the door.

The more I look at it, I was clearly ADHD or on the spectrum: I didn’t concentrate at school and spent the whole time messing around. I had child psychologists during school, and child psychologists after school. I was one of those kids who always had three times as much energy as anyone else, so when I started properly drinking and huffing aerosols at 12, that’s when it all took off. By the age of 14, I was going out with the older boys and into school the next day with a hangover.

After school, I was ducking and diving, doing various jobs. I was working on a building site on the estate where I lived when I was 20, but I fucked that off after I came back from Ibiza. I remember I was living with my mum and this guy knocked on the door. My mum said, “This man’s the pension man; I’ve arranged for you to start paying into one for when you’re older.” I told him to fuck off, I was only interested in earning money to pay for the summer to come on the island.

My first time in Ibiza I was 17, but it wasn’t until I was 22, in 1993, that I launched Clockwork Orange club nights with my friend Andy. Imagine a young alcoholic being given a book of 50 drink tokens at the beginning of the night—obviously, I drank most of them myself. It was like a wonderland. If I wasn’t the most fucked out of the 3600 people in there, I felt like I’d failed. At this point, me and my friends didn’t have enough money for cocaine—it was mainly booze and acid—but as we earned more money, our life of excess spiralled.

By the mid-90s, we were getting two ounces of gear each week for the villa, plus endless pills and weed. If we didn’t have a party to put on, we’d put on our own kind of party, routinely doing two or three-day benders without sleep. The longest bender was probably Wednesday to Sunday, then four hours kip and straight to Space to carry on until Monday. We got on it every single night and day, the entire time we were in Ibiza—well, except the one week each season when I’d be so sick I couldn’t get out of bed because my kidneys hurt so much.

This was all happening on a normal residential street, too—the police would come round at 3AM midweek and we’d all be dressed in women’s clothes, having a pool party, and I’d go and speak Spanish and pretend it was my birthday. They’d say keep it down, while my drug dealers sprinted off over the walls of the villa and away, into the darkness of the hills.

The dark side was there in other ways, too, as our addictions steadily grew. At 26, I started seeing things in psychosis, fighting with imaginary characters, and getting so paranoid I’d search the house every night with a knife. Me and my friends would hide in the pitch-black rooms, peeking out of the curtains thinking there was someone there, or I’d spend hours frozen to a chair: our home became like a crack house. A year later, friends of mine began to overdose and flirt with death at parties, and we’d all just carry on when they woke up—it was hardcore.

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I finally left Clockwork and Ibiza in 2001 when the scene changed and everything just imploded. I still continued to get on it in England, though: whatever money I had went on drink or drugs. The moment I realised I couldn’t do it any more was when I went back to Ibiza in 2003, aged 31, to party. After a big night, I just broke down and rang my mum in tears, using someone else’s phone because I had no credit—the former ‘King of Ibiza’ without even a penny to his name. I got on a flight the next day.

The day I got home, I went to V Festival and announced to all my friends that I wasn’t getting on it any more, but they didn’t believe me, so I ended up pressing the ‘fuck it button’ instead. I went mental, caused a load of trouble—necking this, smoking that, taking this – and it all just culminated in a pain in my head so bad it felt like it was literally going to explode. Then, somehow, I woke up the next morning, opened one eye, and just knew that was it: my addiction had gone. I’ve been sober for 21 years now, and haven’t once touched drink or drugs again.

The easy part was waking up and realising the addiction was over, the hard part was going to AA for eight years, every week, three or four times a week. From the seminars to the retreats, it was eight years of hard work. When I was nine years sober, I was finally ready to start throwing parties again with my Clockwork business partner, and ever since, we’ve been doing festivals and nights that are far more successful than when we were under the influence.

I finally made peace with Ibiza when we relaunched there in 2014. For a long time, I’d blamed the island for my addiction but, of course, it was all me. Now the island is a spiritual place for me. When I landed before, I was only thinking about what we were getting on and where we were going to party. But now, I drive through the countryside, I see the local people, I listen to Spanish music, I buy the Spanish food, I stand in my Spanish house that overlooks the sea and I’m in heaven. I don’t regret anything about how I got here: Everything that destroyed me, brought me back stronger.

As told to @becky_burgum

Danny’s story will also be told as part of Ibiza Narcos, available to watch on Sky Documentaries and NOW.

The post The Unhinged Hedonism of ‘The King of Ibiza’ appeared first on VICE.

Here are our picks for the absolute best wine bars in Sydney’s CBD, Surry Hills, the inner west and beyond.

Dear Saint Eloise – Potts Point

Four hundred bottles! My god. From Australia and beyond. Dear Saint Eloise is a sultry, sexy and chic wine bar in the Cross. The food is also both interesting and incredible. Highly recommend.

Shop 5 29 Orwell Street Potts Point

Caravin – Potts Point

Another wine bar in the Cross, Caravin boasts only 24 seats and a constantly-changing selection of 50 bottles. It’s French themed, so you know it’s elegant.

Shop 2 9 Ward Avenue Potts Point

Paski Vineria Popolare – Darlinghurst

Buongiorno… Europa! This Italian wine bar holds more than 450 bottles by small-scale producers. Downstairs is a quaint little bottle shop with cured meats and upstairs is the restaurant with a la carte offerings.

239 Oxford Street Darlinghurst

Love, Tilly Devine – Darlinghurst

Tucked down a Darlinghurst laneway, this wine bar may not be easy to find, but it is a classic. The name comes from a beloved brothel madam from the 1920s underworld, so it’s worth going just for that.

91 Crown Ln, Darlinghurst

Cafe Fredas – Darlinghurst

Far North Hope Street Radio… Freda’s is actually quite nice and not too terrible when you can score an al fresco table. The wine list is pretty good but what’s better is the people watching!

191-195 Oxford St, Darlinghurst

The Old Fitzroy Hotel – Woolloomooloo

Yes, it’s a pub, not a wine bar, but we’d be remiss to not include the Old Fitz. It’s got a wonderful wine list and a fabulous menu. All the good things of a good wine bar, but in a pub. Adore!

129 Dowling St, Woolloomooloo

P & V – Paddington

Can we call it a wine bar? Well… yes :) P & V are wine merchants who let you buy your wines at bottle shop prices and sit right there in their cute little courtyard to drink them. Fabulous.

268 Oxford Street Paddington

10 William – Paddington

Tight, cosy, loud. This little Italian-style wine bar has an extensive wine list and a truly fine, seasonally rotating menu to go with. Sit up at the bar for an elegant and/or rambunctious date.

10 William Street Paddington

Chez Crix – Surry Hills

Upstairs at the dingy skater haven pub is a romantic and light-filled wine bar. It’s nice in a  bare and minimalistic way, but their wine selection is pretty damn good. Love the contrast in vibe betwixt upstairs and down.

106 Fitzroy St, Surry Hills

Bar Copains – Surry Hills

Wine bar for wine lovers, the name “copains” is the French word for friends and with its outdoor seating it’s a lovely afternoon stop in summer with your buddies.

67 Albion St, Surry Hills

Poly – Surry Hills

Situated in the chicness that is the Paramount House Hotel, if you’re looking for swank after-work wines then Poly would be the palace for it. They even have a delicious happy hour with discounted food items, cocktails, and what have you else. Very nice.

74-76 Commonwealth Street, Surry Hills

Fontana  – Redfern

This Italian bar and restaurant may not be a “wine bar” per se, but their wine list is exquisite, curated with an emphasis on natural wines from Australia and abroad. The food is delicious, also.

133A Redfern St, Redfern

No 92 – Glebe

More restaurant with great wine than wine bar itself, this European-style locale is the picture of pure millennial elegance (Victorian core, stark white walls, light-filled).

92 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe

Famelia – Newtown

This gorgeous hole-in-the-wall is a bottleshop and wine bar, with bar seating and yummy snacks. Twelve wines are poured each night from female winemakers, the selection curated by owner-sommelier Amelia Birch. Women in STEM!

55 Enmore Road, Newtown

Odd Culture – Newtown

Relatively new, Odd Culture is a swank natural wine bar, its sunny outdoor tables perfect for a quick stop in for an afternoon vini in the summertime. At night, the energy is moody and electric.

266 King St, Newtown

Ante – Newtown

Not technically a wine bar but we love it. This restaurant and sake bar is beautifully designed. The open kitchen ensures the ambiance is a ten, but it’s also sultry, dimly lit, sexy. Walk-ins only!

146 King St, Newtown

Bar Louise – Enmore

This Spanish-inspired wine bar boasts delicious wine, as well as cosy outdoor seating for people-watching, or romantic peach-hued light indoors for intimate occasions. In addition to great wine and cocktails, Bar Louise has wonderful and fun food. Bread, gildas, olives… what more could you ask for?

135 Enmore Rd, Enmore

Where’s Nick? – Marrickville

Marrickville’s favourite natural wine bar with more than 150 bottles selected on the basis of how natural they truly are!

236 Marrickville Road Marrickville 2204

AG Bar & Restaurant – Penrith

We even have you covered out west. This boutique wine bar is decked out in plush upholstery, decor just as exquisite as their wine and food options.

14-16 Woodriff Street, Penrith

Monopole – Sydney CBD

If you’re looking for city spots, this Italian bistro has a curated wine selection featuring Italy and France’s finest, with a few Australian makers in for good measure.

16-20 Curtin Place Sydney

Arielle Richards is the multimedia reporter at VICE Australia, follow her on Instagram and TikTok.

The post The VICE Guide to the Best Wine Bars in Sydney appeared first on VICE.

When the money ran out he moved into a low-income housing complex in town and that’s how he found the bar. He didn’t have a car, he walked everywhere, miles and miles if he had to, and by the time he made it into work his cheeks and forehead would be lit-up red by the sting of winter air. He’d make fried plantain chips and a chicken parmesan that was so good you’d want to close your eyes. He’d play Dean Martin songs in the kitchen through his cellphone as it sat in an empty can of bread crumbs to amplify the sound while he hosed off the dishes. Sometimes he’d sing along so loud that the people sitting at the bar could hear him, and they’d say, What the hell is that, but they would all sort of be singing along too. Grimy men with stretched red faces; round lunatics in oil-spotted shirts; men with powdery patches of psoriasis on their elbows; men who smelled like mint and cigarettes every time of day; men with serious problems and malaises who just couldn’t help it when it came to anything, pummelled by decades of grand and minor scale calamity.

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But now here was an interlude and there was an amazing kind of life in their eyes. Tommy would rumble out of the kitchen in his busted sneakers, with the rubber soles peeling and dangling askew off the bottom like the tongues of old horses, and he’d slap his meaty palms on the bar again and again and again, his mouth wide open as they all roar the “ohhh, ohhh, OHHH” part in “Volare”, and tonight he is home again, he is home like he was born in this room, like all his ancestors were born here going back to the prehistoric times and they were seated before him now, the outside world a barren, frozen planet but here inside a fire 10 feet high. Here, he was a man of great renown, a man with solutions, and now the people at the bar were thinking they might stay a little longer.

Those were good times. You’d have to say that all that booze had something to do with it.

But there was something else going on in there too, a kind of silent agreement – with each other, with the bar itself and with good God above, that all of your memories, your lusts, your victories and your most divine bullshit could play in here like the truth. Your tragedies were real tragedies and your miracles were real miracles, and no one could say otherwise. Here, you were free from interrogation, speculation; you were spreading your towel out in some distant oasis whenever you wanted.

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There was a guy who came in once who worked construction; he was tan, muscular but his torso was hunched and constricted and bent in odd directions. He was holding a bottle of Budweiser. He told me that in the summer when he was younger him and this girl would go down to the marina at night to get drunk in random boats, bobbing there in the dark in this sort of open-air hotel room they’d hijacked for themselves, and when he said sometimes they’d fuck in those boats too his voice took off and he clapped his hands so hard a cloud of sheetrock dust flew off him.

There was another man who would come in to use our cordless phone. He’d go behind the building to make calls, out on the concrete steps that led down to the dumpsters and below that to a hideous-looking river that storks with stained feathers would creep along the shores of. I imagined that these were vacations for him, a beach carved out of 15 minutes, the tiny mercies in an otherwise grey march to wherever he was going. When it was warm sometimes we’d have a beer back there and there was a generator that hummed loud enough that we didn’t feel strange just standing there not talking.

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These were not quite travellers, but they were always sort of preparing for something. There was always a discussion about going somewhere, coming from somewhere, a friend at some other bar, a call they were waiting on, some big news that had just come across the wire, and whoever was in here half-watching the limp and lazy middle-innings of a Wednesday afternoon baseball game was going to make it real and juicy by listening to you talk about it. A girl they knew in Costa Rica; a guy they knew who just bought a jet ski; a picture their friend had just texted them of Keith Hernandez at a casino steakhouse.

They had a certain dignity. They didn’t go places for leisure or indulgence, they ended up there for work, or the Marines. Somewhere they followed a girlfriend to, somewhere in Pennsylvania or Tennessee, seven years working for her dad’s roofing company, which they would share not with shame or bitterness but a voice of triumph and love in their hearts, something that came from them and is of them, a proof of a life at all. They were out there threading the remnants of one day to the rumours of glory that may wait in all the rest of them, one after another, and that alone was a testimony, evidence of a tremendously powerful spirit. I had never been to Tennessee but this was my postcard, received in real time. There was a guy who told me he once took a shit in a port-a-potty in the middle of an Aerosmith concert in New Jersey. Imagine that?

On Saturday afternoons there was a group that would come in to drink beer and play music on the jukebox, we called it the matinee. They’d eat our stale tortilla chips and salsa we poured from a gallon jug into little plastic cups. Someone would play that Stevie Nicks song with Don Henley. It was early enough that this horrible old bar still had the smell of chemicals from the cleaning crew that came in overnight, and for these moments it was a Fresh bar, a disinfected bar. We’d watch out the front window as cars tried to parallel park, lurching and coming to sudden angled halts as traffic whipped by, some panicked face in the driver’s seat trying to figure it all out. Someone was talking about DIY methods to get rid of the flies that were laying eggs in his shower drain. Someone was talking about the absurd and let’s face it irresistible melodrama of Don Henley’s voice.

Someone was talking about how far a drive it was to Wisconsin, what was Wisconsin like, and he would say that it was beautiful there, that he drove there once with his ex-boyfriend, and then that would be what I said whenever I met anyone who mentioned Wisconsin. I would say, I heard it’s beautiful there, in a tone like that was a surprising detail, my valuable dispatch to share from a foreign land. And then two years ago I was in Wisconsin for a wedding, at a vineyard that was on the other side of a gentle sloping hill, and my girlfriend was wandering through the rows of grapes as the sky was turning this diluted shade of Vitamin Water pink. It was October and it was late but no one was wearing jackets. In every picture she is uncoiled and warm looking, putting on a show, smiling crazy—it can be like that in October, even in Wisconsin, which you maybe wouldn’t think—and in the rows of grapes I thought about Saturday afternoons, drunk with my brothers.

I thought, it’s beautiful there, it’s true what they say.

@RBUAS

The post Here Comes a Regular: How Barflies Became My Brothers appeared first on VICE.

The sentiment, declared on forums, in YouTube comments and scattered across Tumblr in the years preceding the trainwreck diva’s first Australian visit in over ten years last week, epitomises her reign.

Ferreira’s heft has survived a decade. She was the soundtrack to 2013 and to innumerable periods of adolescent angst – raw, indulgent, self-pitying, exquisite torment. She was the it-girl of the blog era. She can’t seem to start a show on time. Her second album, teased in 2015, never came. Her icon is enduring.

And as VICE Australia’s Adele Luamanuvae wrote when Ferreira showed up to her Sydney Opera House show last week 80 minutes late: “You pay for a Sky Ferreira show, you get a Sky Ferreira show”.

And perhaps it’s Ferreira’s seeming disregard for her gagging fans, exasperating as it is, that holds her influence in clutch.

Rocking up an hour and 20 minutes late to your own gig when there’s even a whiff as to whether you’ve maintained relevance is iconic.

Around New Year’s, the ins and outs and predictions for 2024 proliferated around the internet. Sky Ferreira’s return to Australia ten years on confirms the whisper that screamed the loudest: “2024 is 2014”.

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The prophecy was correct…

So who are Ferreira fans in 2024? What are they wearing? VICE sent Naarm-based stylist and photographer Joel Condello to Ferreira’s Melbourne show, at The Forum for RISING, to find out.

She was only 30 minutes late this time.

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Joel Condello is a stylist and photographer from Naarm, follow them @joelcondello.

Arielle Richards is the multimedia reporter at VICE Australia, follow her on Instagram and TikTok.

The post Photos Of Tumblr Girls 10 Years On at Sky Ferreira’s Melbourne Show appeared first on VICE.

For now, definitive answers to these questions remain beyond us. What we do know for sure is that when it comes to Miami, playboys don’t get much bigger than Anwar Zayden.

The tangible details of Zayden’s resumé are scant. A brief stint on Miami Vice. An underwear modeling career for Calvin Klein. Yet through sheer charisma, Anwar was able to reach a level of renown that shocked even the most esteemed stars in the coastal party city.

“Sometimes people ask me if I am from Miami, and I always answer the same question: ‘I am Miami,’” Anwar told VICE back in 2019.

By day, Anwar was to be found (occasionally) at his interior design shop in town. As his reputation soared, Anwar received opportunities to decorate the homes of Gianni Versace, Sylvester Stallone, and the Bee Gees, among others. Whether these chances arose through visionary design nous or sheer vibes is not for us to say.

Also known as the “Most Miami Man in Miami” and “Miami’s Most Legendary Playboy,” Anwar took the opportunity to show VICE around his ocean-side mansion in the 2019 documentary.

“What I believe changes a house to a home is to have all these little memories,” he said, as he showcased the photos covering the walls of his mansion. “It is not really a home if it doesn’t tell a story.

“My career brought me to meet major people in Miami,” he said, pointing out pictures of him with the Hilton sisters and Rod Stewart.

The playboy led the way to his bedroom with pride, as the camera panned out to show a large room with a regal aesthetic: full-length mirrors with golden frames, crimson bedding, and even a safe guarding “pictures with royalty.”

“If these walls can talk and can actually tell you the things that happen in this room…” he said, trailing off into revery. When asked how many girls he’d slept with in the bedroom, he replied, “It’s gonna make me look like a playboy. I’m really not. I can only deal with one at a time.”

Seemingly contradicting his previous point, he then went on to talk about a jacuzzi he created in his bedroom — which could fit 10 people.

“I put a shower head [so] they can shower five girls at a time.”

The mansion tour ended with a stunning view of a large underground pool surrounded by lounge chairs, palm trees, and even a tank that’s usually “full with lobsters.”

“I don’t know how anybody can live anywhere else,” Anwar said.

VICE then got an inside look at a day in the life on one of Anwar’s yachts, which featured multiple girls.

When asked why he thinks women are so attracted to him, he stated, “Girls like to be around me because I protect them.”

Of course, this protection mostly came in the form of financial security. 

“You know what they give in return?” he asked. “They give their youth … Who’s using who?

“I’m almost 60,” he continued. “I do things that no 20-year-old that I know can do.”

He then listed his hobbies – which included rodeo riding, motocross, boxing, extreme diving, and Muay Thai.

“I do everything, so if you see me like an old man, think about it again,” he warned us. “Miami is my home. Every single era Miami went through, I lived it. I built this city, and this city was built for me.”

Anwar passed away in 2020, allegedly after suffering a coke overdose while with two escorts. Still, his legacy remains.

The post Is This Miami’s Most Legendary Playboy? appeared first on VICE.

Headlined by Ecco2k and Yung Lean [performing under his side project, jonatonleandoer96] and supported by Japanese pop-star Aya Gloomy, Swedish DJ duo oqboqo and Scandinavian Star, and Frederik Valentin, who backed Leandoer’s crooning ballads – the all-star esoteric lineup was conjured by the collective dreams of every drainer, emo, hype beast, sad boy and fashion girl across the eastern seaboard.

The show was touching. Surrounded by stinky boys seemingly brought to tears by Ecco2k’s emotive pixie singing, there was howling, impassioned chorus from all sides, an adorable emo couple in front of us with their arms thrown about one another’s shoulders, swaying and jumping, kids in their finest Bape and suits with ties and shaggy, long hair.

But who are Sydney’s drainers? VICE was there to meet them, photograph them, and ask them the important questions: what’s your name and occupation?

NAME: @oxiiboi

OCCUPATION: “Prostitute and I sell clothes”

NAME: @wwabisabi01

OCCUPATION: “Studying finance and I’m about to launch ‘trashgal’”

NAME: @carousel.iii

OCCUPATION: “I work at a banh mi shop”

NAME: @ecilaeel, @prettyappa

OCCUPATION: “graphic designer/mum”, “web dev”

NAME: @jemi.gale, @sugarmamaxoxoxo

OCCUPATION: “popstar”, “food science… biggest blueberry inventor”

NAME: @ennar1a, @zacm00r3

OCCUPATION: “musician”, “boyfriend/ girlfriend’s manager”

NAME: j.starr.io

OCCUPATION: “opshop/ artist”

NAME: @kiren.cameron

OCCUPATION: “computer science student”

NAME: @timsfantasyworld, @cheriej

OCCUPATION: “software engineer”, “lawyer”

NAME: @xmuchuan

OCCUPATION: “marketing”

NAME: @sh4nnych

OCCUPATION: “student”

NAME: @oundsayoybay

OCCUPATION: “music student :’(“

NAME: @_augustin

OCCUPATION: “skate shop employee/ I produce music”

NAME: @g0thangelgirl, @a.person.called.caitlyn

OCCUPATION: “retired body piercer”, “body piercer”

NAME: @kurt____johnson, @gabrealmarial

OCCUPATION: “part-time fgg*”, “???”

NAME: @rari.ferrarri, @kindergartendj

OCCUPATION: rari FERRARRI <3, kindergarten DJ

Arielle Richards is the multimedia reporter at VICE Australia, follow her on Instagram and TikTok.

The post All the Best Outfits at Ecco2k and Yung Lean’s Sydney Show appeared first on VICE.

The crowd whooped as the words illuminated the stage of the Sydney Opera House’s concert hall behind party pioneers Underworld. 

British duo Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have been producing rousing techno ballads and all-consuming, charging dance tracks for three decades. Climbing from Wales, to east London, to the silver screen with “Born Slippy (Nuxx)” (one of the 90s’ most iconic songs that scores the climax to Trainspotting), to music directing the 2012 London Olympic Games’ opening ceremony, and now to headline Vivid, a state-government funded arts festival, in the most famous building in the world. 

1990s Essex was a very different place to sparkling Circular Quay today. Does a 67-year-old man half-ranting, half-preaching “lager lager lager” to a parish of people who forked out $139 for a club night make any sense at all? 

The space: 5 stars 

It’s true, the Opera House is sick. The curved ceiling is so high you can’t even see it through the haze of the smoke machines. The seats are cushy – not that anyone used them for the entire three-hour performance. Walls of seats are pretty fucking annoying at the club, but I really, really appreciated the barrier for stumbly bros to walk backwards. Everyone had space to wiggle, including Hyde who pranced and pumped around the stage behind Smith’s massive electronic setup, front and centre. The $139 ticket gives you room and view to take it all in. 

“Connect connect connect connect” 

Can you really connect on a dancefloor when you’re not glistening with someone else’s sweat? 

The seccies: 4 stars

Being the Opera house, there’s a security screening for weapons when you enter. But it’s chill, the seccies in suits don’t pat anyone down or rifle through bags. And if you felt uncomfortable, could you count on them to remove someone? Probably. 

The bar: 2 stars

Efficient, expensive. I can’t imagine Underworld’s London audiences sipping canned blackberry-infused gin and tonics. But hey, there are shitloads of free cups and taps on the bar. I drank so much fucking water.

The toilets: 2 stars 

Sobering. 

No tags, no piss, no trash, no signs of life or fun. Really bright. But lots of good ledges in the cubicles. 

The crowd: 3 stars 

The band is fucking old so it was a mixed bag of grey-haired men in collared shirts, sexy young rave kids, and jeans. So many people in jeans. But it buzzed. Once the lights dimmed at 8pm sharp, everyone was immediately on their feet. Hands were in the air and hands were in pockets, but it was a party from the first bass thump to the last drifting note. 

Following intermission, I accidentally reentered in the row ahead of my allocated seat. A late-30s-ish cop-type with a printed-out ticket informed us we were in his… seat space, despite the vacant metres on either side. 

“Oh shit, we’re in the wrong row – wait do you care if we stay?” 

“Yeah we need these seats.”

“Not really the party spirit!” I yelled while crawling over his backrest. 

He reached back and rubbed my elbow in unsolicited reassurance.

But the bass dropped and jiggled my leg muscles and I stopped caring.

I later saw him snort something off his friend’s pinky. He left before ‘Born Slippy’. 

The sound: 5 stars 

My boss is convinced the acoustics in the Opera House are shit. He is wrong, but he has also not been there since they redid the whole thing.

The music: 5 stars 

Underworld’s oeuvre is vast, varied and influential. There were moments of throbbing techno, DnB, hyperpop, shoegaze, choral harmonising and even an edit of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”. Throughout the mammoth three-hour odyssey, over euphoric peaks and through lachrymose valleys, we heard the years, the eras of music evolve. But what remained unwaveringly steady was the commitment to the dancefloor. Whether you were cognisant in 1996 or not, Underworld’s performance dredged up memories for everyone and made us feel less alone.

“I’m talkin’ reachin’ out to your telephone, are you listenin’? Can you hear? Do you hear? Show me how it feels when we’re, we’re no longer alone.”

By 11pm when it was time for the “Born Slippy” closer, everyone was so high – full of life yet equally depleted from throwing down nonstop – people clutched their friends, lovers, their own hearts and heads. Hands soared, heads tipped back, tears rolled down cheeks. 

Among the surge of emotion, Hyde said “I know you wanna dance with me. I know you wanna dance with me. Let’s dance.” 

And he did. So we did. 

The feeling: 5 stars

“You bring light in, you bring light in, you bring light in, you bring light in”

Entering the concert hall, I had a lot of thoughts about the people, the place, whether it all fit, whether it was cringe, outdated, forced, fake, relevant. I looked around, I contemplated, I analysed. Did any of this gel, mesh, make sense? As soon as the first kick drum pelted through the hall, it did. After a few songs, I stopped thinking and just had fucking fun.

Aleksandra Bliszczyk is the Deputy Editor of VICE Australia. Follow her on Instagram.

The post Underworld Review: Does ‘Born Slippy’ Make Sense In the Opera House? appeared first on VICE.

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In the midst of it all, dstreet was born. Named for Douglas Street, the location of a big, silly sharehouse, the party collective was formed through a series of “pretty stupid house parties”. What followed out of lockdown were a slew of inner west location TBAs, outdoor parties and bush raves. Their “first licensed venue party” was held at the Sydney Opera House, as a part of Vivid Live’s studio party series. 

VICE Australia met with two members of the collective, Talia and Tom, to find out how it’s done.

WHO IS D.STREET?

Talia: “dstreet formed because we were all living together. So it was during lockdown, we started doing streams in bits and pieces like that.”

Tom: “It actually started from some pretty stupid house parties before that.”

Talia: “It eventually evolved, as we got older and stopped throwing 300 person house parties, into proper curated parties in venues that are not necessarily illegal… I think we fumbled around a lot at the beginning. But now we know how to throw a party we want to be at.”

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR FIRST EXPERIENCES WITH SYDNEY’S UNDERGROUND.

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Talia: “The memory that will be in my head forever and ever, it was Mardi Gras many years ago, and it was a DUNJ rave. And it was something that I didn’t even know about, I got the call when I was at another party. My friends were like ‘no, leave you have to’. That was my first renegade party that I ever attended. And I think that really opened my eyes to the underground scene in Sydney and what that community looked like, out of licensed venues. That party will always live in my head. It was very much a down the rabbit hole kind of moment.”

Tom: “It would probably just be parties at unnamed venues in Marrickville. That would have been back when the police were really cracking down on those things. And I still remember the night that the cops raided three warehouses at once.”

1. SOUND

A big one, the crew spent the better part of lockdown building their own sound system, a venture Tom estimates cost around $100,000. They’ve made their money back by loaning it out.

Tom: “Good sound for me, that’s the biggest one, because it can change anything. It can transform how people interact, just the entire vibe. It can change a fairly lively dance floor into something that’s fully expressive, and it just makes all the difference.”

2. COMMUNITY

One could consider the organisers of Sydney’s underground the gatekeepers of the scene. But in a climate where parties operate in legal “grey areas” the cultivation of a connected, respectful community is as important for keeping the parties on the DL as it is for patron safety.

Thalia: “You can’t fully control it. And you shouldn’t necessarily fully control it. But it’s having a space that is safe and expressive, and brings the right sort of people, and then those sorts of people are able to bring other like minded people. Or, if someone doesn’t know how to party in that way, they’re able to kind of learn the dos and don’ts of how to interact with people in a really safe space. So, community is everything

Tom: “Parties essentially take place in empty boxes, it’s just an empty space. But it’s just a box. So the space is actually this liminal space of people. Good people make a good party.”

3. MUSIC

Talia and Tom concede this one is a little obvious. But… good music is crucial for a good party. And it’s not so simple as booking the hot DJs.

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Talia: “It’s not just about booking good DJs, it’s about bringing people in that maybe your audience hasn’t heard before and being surprising, or booking a lineup so it has a nice story arc throughout. People are not being slammed with the hectic stuff at the beginning, they can ease into it. And it’s that journey. It’s not just about booking the hot DJs.”

Arielle Richards is the multimedia reporter at VICE Australia, follow her on Instagram and TikTok.

The post From the Underground to the Opera House appeared first on VICE.

The Venezuelan-born avant-garde icon bewitched a rapturous crowd with a spiritual performance.

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Entering to a standing ovation, theatrics, fashion and emotion were centre stage. Her first costume, an extravagantly futuristic plastic exoskeleton, crackled and creaked into the mic. As she rocked on a sex swing, the sound of chains grinding against one another tinkled throughout the hallowed theatre. 

Stomping across the stage in bike shorts, inflatable monster hoof boots and a tube bikini, she plucked fresh flowers from her set to throw to gasping fans. As she passed the mic into the front row, the crowd erupted when it landed on Sydney-based icon Planet Janet, who shouted “2024, doll domination!”, “free Palestine!” and “tr*nny pride!”. 

“Yes to everything you said,” Arca yelled back, slamming the grand piano’s keys in a crescendo and throwing the audience into an ecstatic cacophony. “Take the red pill,” she advised. 

Arca’s recommended reading, given out at one stage: 1984 by George Orwell and The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, by Ursula K. Le Guin. She is, of course, a political diva.

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“Arca’s ability to weld a unique and cohesive world throughout her music and performance is unparalleled,” said Melbourne-based photographer and multidisciplinary artist Aaliyah Salem, who photographed the crowd for VICE.

“This not only translates to a strong emotional connection from the crowd, but a beautiful and enchanting display of trans excellence for the world to see,” she said.

As the night wore on, Arca’s performance oscillated across the emotional spectrum, from tender ballads to evocative hyper-pop. And she carried her dazzled and dazed audience along with her the entire time – they swayed, danced, sung and cried. “The fashion girlies know,” she said, giving outfit details for her third costume change of the night. The crowd, packed with every last fashion girl from Melbourne to Sydney, went wild. 

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Just as Arca could’ve never disappointed, nor could the crowd. Trickling up the thousands of steps to the Sydney Opera House, in the foyer, in the line for the bar and in the bathrooms were some of the most exquisite outfits to ever grace Circular Quay. 

Salem captured some of the absolute best.

Aaliyah Salem is a photographer and multidisciplinary artist from Naarm, Australia. Although she is best known for her efforts in the electronic music scene, her photography is notable for its juxtaposition between the banal landscape and the heavily stylised subject. Aaliyah is also a DJ/Producer, runs Earthtones Magazine and is the brains behind Ambience Radio.

Arielle Richards is the multimedia reporter at VICE Australia, follow her on Instagram and TikTok.

The post ‘Doll Domination’: Photos of the Best Outfits At Arca’s Sydney Opera House Show appeared first on VICE.