Volume 16 Issue 6
Feudal Delusions
This past spring North Korea test-fired yet another Taepodong missile over Japan. It was the third such launch in just over a decade.
A Living, Breathing Philosopher
Simon Critchley is renowned for his groundbreaking ethical reading of the deconstructionist movement (that’s an important thing, even if you have no idea what it means).
Hock Talk
Pawnshops in Canada aren't all that different from those in the US, but for whatever reason finding a chatty pawnbroker was like chiseling a dead body out of concrete.
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
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.