The Conversations With Distinguished Gentlemen Issue
Hock Talk
We were disappointed when the pawnshop we visited in Amsterdam wasn’t some seedy box in the red-light district with a mean old coot slouching behind his desk and patting the shotgun on his lap.
Hock Talk
This is how the glorified pawnshop works, according to José Luis Arregín, the broker: Money-strapped clients hock their stuff for half its value in cash.
Hock Talk
If the worldwide financial crisis is a 195-car pileup caused by a bunch of manicured dicks in bespoke suits driving around drunk while rifling through a dossier of cooked-up financial portfolios, then pawnshops are the hospitals where the innocent...
The Eyes Have It
Photographer Aaron Huey recently traveled to the Islamic nation of Yemen. While there, he had the chance to photograph and chat with some young Yemeni women who wear the traditional Islamic niqab or burka.
Hock Talk
Berlin is poor and filthy, and nearly everyone lives on welfare. When the state assistance dries up, the whole city runs to the one pawnshop chain that operates a virtual monopoly on hocked goods.
Hock Talk
Pawnshops are found in prime locations throughout Stockholm, but most have teensy, dreadful offices. We visited one of the larger chains, Pantbanken Sverige, and caught up with CEO Peter Sundström.
Hock Talk
Located in the heart of Le Marais, the poshest gay area in all of France, Crédit Municipal is the closet thing to a Parisian pawnshop you can find. It’s run by the city because private pawnbrokering is illegal.
Borderline Bigots
Each year hundreds of thousands of optimistic South and Central Americans travel north to see whether things might be less crappy for them in the United States. The problem is they have to cross Mexico to get there.
Conquest Of The Useless
In 1979, Werner Herzog approached 20th Century Fox to fund a movie, based on a true story, about an overzealous rubber baron who wishes to stage an opera in the middle of the Peruvian Amazon.
Bearded, Bald, And Belgian
As part of the Antwerp Six, designer Walter Van Beirendonck stood out as the color-happy alternative to understated co-members Ann Demeulemeester and Dries Van Noten. Today Walt is the super-gay god-daddy to Bernhard Willhelm and all those kids at
War Is Hell, And Hell Sucks
It’s about as clichéd to call a war book “harrowing” as it is to call a movie about a handicapped guy overcoming the odds a “triumph,” but I’ll be damned if this book didn’t harrow me out big-time.