Vice magazine is the DIY shit of the century, starting out as a scam on the Canadian welfare office and ending up, eight years later, distributed in 13 cities with a Rolling Stone write-up. As general-interest magazines race to the middle, Vice exists firmly on the edge--delivering smart pop culture coverage that mixes snappy sarcasm (e.g., fashion do's and don'ts) with think pieces about arms inspectors--all as a free monthly magazine distributed at places like Rudy's.
"It's important for people to read the whole magazine," says Suroosh Alvi, one of Vice's founders. "There's the fluffy/funny stuff, but there should be something to get their attention when they walk away from it. I think we surprise people because they don't take us seriously, but when they read us, we'll provide a 'bomb,' a serious article that catches them off guard, so people see us as the dark horse in the magazine publishing world."
Standing on the windy roof of the monthly magazine's Williamsburg offices, the chain-smoking, 33-year-old Alvi explains the origins of the publication. In 1994, when Alvi, Gavin McInnes, and Shane Smith were living in Montreal, they hooked up with a Haitian organization and scammed government grants for minorities to start a paper called the Voice. Alvi, a Pakistani, ran the paper with no problem--his colleagues, he admits, had to "act retarded" to gain access to the same government subsidies. "Gavin filled out the application with his left hand," says Alvi. "He's right-handed, so it looked like he had the literacy level of a first grader, and it worked. But they were shut down the first time. The [welfare agency] was like, 'No, sorry, you guys have college degrees.' So they waited a week and went back to a different welfare officer, changed their strategy, and it worked."
Vice's unconventional approach to publishing has since persevered. "We never respected people that came in from journalism school because their writing was so sterile," Alvi says. "When we've freelanced for American magazines, it's so disheartening because by the time our stuff gets printed, we're like, 'They took the best parts of the article out,' so we basically stopped writing for other magazines. It's not worth a dollar a word."
"We aren't about objectivity," he continues. "We are about subjectivity with research. That's been our thing from day one. When you don't know how things work, you just do it based on common sense. We were [and still are] a free magazine because we didn't have the wherewithal to get it to the newsstand. It was just easier to dump it and leave it on the street. And we write just like we talk. I think people really responded to the rawness of it."
After shifting from newsprint to glossy paper (with support from fashion advertisers and a paper-mill strike that drove down the cost of magazine stock), the newly minted Vice moved south to New York in 1999 with a bankroll from a "dot-com billionaire" who invested millions in the magazine and an accompanying website. After swelling the company into a bloated shell of its former self, the investor bailed, the magazine moved to Brooklyn a year later, and a leaner operation of roughly 30 employees was ready to spread its seed into the entertainment business. A U.K. version of Vice starts in November and they inked a book deal for a Vice anthology. Vice Records, co-headed by ex-Seattleite Pat Riley, launched this fall with the release of brilliant cockney hiphop artist the Streets, and the label plans on turning out a New York rock comp next. (Vice picked up on Fischerspooner, the Strokes, Andrew W. K., the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and even Eminem long before anyone else.) Vice is also pitching a TV series with David Cross as the host.
Despite all of these side ventures, Alvi believes the Vice vision is still intact and not spreading itself too thin. "We're very cautious: We're pretty conservative when it comes to business," he says confidently. "Although we do have a lot going on, we have very good people in place."
Vice's listening party for the Streets is Thurs Oct 24 at Chop Suey, 8-10 pm.
