B EAST Magazine website

Twas another epic ‘Nasty, Nasty’ B EAST Magazine party series in Riga last Saturday night with guest DJ Adam Ficek from London’s badboy Babyshambles band, fronted by Peter Doherty. With Adam spinning an indie-electro mash-up, in addition to playing a live acoustic set, clubbers wearing B EAST T-shirts, special Beast cocktails, magazine handouts, and sets by DJs from Riga’s Ritmas Insitutes, it was a smashing, nasty evening. We’re planning to hit London sometime next year with the series, so stay tuned. Photos by our favorite Belarussian photographer, Rita Aivazova.

Bread&Butter, Barcelona’s tradeshow for selected brands, was steaming this year, not just because it attracted most of the koolest brands in Europe, and beyond. It was also just hot and humid in southern Spain, the sort of weather that drives most Indians or Texans to the comfort of their airconditioned offices and living rooms. Europeans like the heat though—which is still a relative novelty in these global warming times—and, so while some premises were airconditioned, especially those in the swankier Urban Superior and Denim Base areas, many had to deal with the heat. Especially those stuck in the concrete sweatbox of the gargantuan Sport & Street area. Our sympathies went out to Reebok, which had one of the coolest stands at the fair, but was stuck in Barcelona’s version of Dante’s Inferno—down, down in the basement.

The heat, though, meant that fans (the objects, not the star-fuckers*) were in high demand, and those brands savvy enough to hand out their own punkahs certainly got more bang for their buck than biz-as-usual stickers and fliers. We went around photographing fashionistas fanning themselves, and here you go.

And, finally, one of our favorite brand managers, Stephan Ploch from Reebok, Germany

B EAST founder, Vijai and the eXile go way way back, to the summer of 1997, and those gonzo days when whoring, smacking drugs, being obnoxious, slanderous, mean—and chasing slutty Russian dyevushki—seemed a literary pursuit. Hunter Thompson was still fresh in our minds, and the high-minded English daily, the Moscow Times, spurred vyked expat writers to reject the mainstream news feeds and go groping the belly of the Russian beast.
Having fallen out with eXile founder Mark Ames over girls and dirty underclothes (lol), the Moscow rag slandered me endlessly, printing club reviews under my name even when I had moved on to edit Russian Playboy in 1999. Given the country’s weak libel laws at the time, there was little that I could do. I just hoped that the loser, misogynistic writing that defined the rag would sink it eventually, and the magazine would go under, leaving sweaty, shy, frustrated Mark Ames without a job. Brave behind the computer screen, he’s actually shy in person, with an inferiority complex towards extroverted partyers. However, the eXile kept going and going … Until this week, that is.

Eleven years later, the eXile seems to be finally going bust. Hurrah. Moscow has moved on, to a more sophisticated nightlife scene, and a young generation that’s bored of endless talk about sluts and speed and hookers and dyevs and all the rest of the loserish 90s zeitgeist. Plus, Russia doesn’t want to be seen anymore as another country to be gleefully exploited by drugged-up Yanks.
However, we do feel a slight pang of regret that Moscow’s only alternative is out of vodka, and might have to go into exile. So, in a spirit of comraderie, with the old skool un-PC beast we also ask our readers to contribute to save the eXile. Click on the link above to donate.