bert burykill

  • RIP Bert Burykill, Longtime VICE Prison Correspondent

    A look back at his life and work.

  • The Guys Who Really Should Be Locked Up

    You might think that someone who’s been locked up a lot like me might have more sympathy for inmates, regardless of what their crime is, but I doubt that I do. When I hear a guy sitting next to me in group say he just did 31 years, I really don’t want...

  • There's No Sex in Prison Showers

    The average guy in jail is so scared of homosexuals or people thinking that he might be gay that we all wear our underwear in the shower. We’ve all seen the jail shows and heard the endless “Don’t drop the soap” jokes, but in all the years I was locked...

  • HardWhite and Harry Potter

    Harry Potter was fresh from the world and had a sickness to feed. The weakling fiend probably hated everything right now, but mostly he hated that his drug was gone. All Harry Potter will want is to get high and the boys are about to swarm on him...

  • The Trials of Job

    After my sweet release from prison last year, I struggled for about a year looking for a decent job. I badly wanted to work, but I quickly became discouraged when my first ten applications were shot down, probably thanks to my status as a felon. Those...

  • Bert Meets a Real Rapper Who’s a Year Out of Prison

    A lotta dudes in prison are rappers, but I don’t pay them much mind. But in the case of SunBlaze, I had a feeling that he was serious bizness—the way he kept to himself, quietly writing and not talking a lotta shit like lotsa dudes do. He got out last...

Advertisement
  • Addiction Isn't a Disease, I'm Just a Dick

    When you’ve been sent back to prison multiple times for dirty pee like I have, you end up thinking a bunch about addiction—whether you’re a screwup or a bona fide addict, and if you’re an addict, what that means. Lots of people define addiction as a...

  • Jailbert

    Bert has been in and out of prison his entire adult life for petty drug offenses. While he tries to live inside the law, Bert isn't sure if he'll ever be able to overcome his self-diagnosed disease: chronic dumbness. In part two of 'Jailbert,' Bert...

  • Jailbert

    We had a feeling our prison correspondent would do well on video. Drugs remain a problem for Bert, and he consistently fails urine tests and is sent back to jail over and over again. In this two-part series, we examine Bert in his most vulnerable state...

  • RockBottom Heads Toward Bottom

    The early morning air stunk of pissy pussy and unwashed balls. RockBottom did his thing all night like always, dispensing drugs to the party people. The fiends were nodded out, neck-cramp proper, and the freaks spun out on E were in the bedroom...

  • Prisons I've Known and Yelped

    I was kicked off Yelp probably about 15 times. I’m the ORIGINAL prison reviewer, along with some guy named Craig who did a nice review of Rikers four years ago and who probably got kicked off too. I lost my classic reviews, so I decided to make some...

  • Don’t Stick Dominoes in Your Dick

    Some guys in prison like to get together in the bathroom, puncture their penises with a little slice, and then insert an implant. From what I hear, usually they break off a piece of a domino and insert it up under the foreskin area, or sometimes, down...