DRIVEN September 2009 by Driven Magazine

DRI E September 2009 * drivenmag.com *

fa s h i o n * au t o m o b i l e S * F i c t i o n

* oNi c s

* t r a v e l

life.in.motion

m e n ’ s

l i f e s t y l e

everything’s Up in the air

The Culture issue

the new york nexts raw milk man flight jackets extreme air hair fiction by colin mcadam & A band called culture

jASON REITMAN

Fall Fashion 09

56698 93685

discomfort

Dixie’s cup runneth over

No-tell

hotels

Mad dash in

Marrakesh

9-SEP $4.95

Southern

The green miler

Mercedes S 400 jumps ahead in the hybrid race

Contents

54 44

The Culture issue

32 THE REITMAN FOR THE JOB

First a conflicted tobacco lobbyist, then a precocious teen mother-to-be, now a man with a crushing addiction to...frequent flyer miles? Trying to guess what kind of film Jason Reitman will create next is like predicting the weather without Doppler radar. (Here’s a tip: He has no intention of directing Ghostbusters 3.) SEAN PLUMMER gets the inside scoop from the Oscar-nominated filmmaker, both on-set in stormy Vancouver and off-the-cuff in sunny southern California.

50 GREEN WITH EXECUTIVE ENVY

The 2010 Mercedes-Benz S 400 sets the new benchmark for something we like to call “lavish eco-consciousness.” Check under the hood with MARK HACKING and find out why this hybrid is so revolutionary.

38 SOUTHERN CULTURE ON THE SKIDS

Sweet home, all Obama? Not quite. TIM JOHNSON finds that optimism is still a prerequisite for whistling Dixie in 2009, because the grand ol’ South has not changed as much as one might have audaciously hoped.

Features

54 LES ANNéES TOUJOURS FOLLES

Montparnasse became a legendary destination for starving artists during the 1920s, a.k.a. “the crazy years.” TODD SELBY turns his camera on contemporary New York and finds a higher quality of life but a similar joie de vivre. Still creative, then, after all these years.

30 FICTION

On the cover

“Red’s warning,” by COLIN McADAM

40 FASHION: LUMBERJACK FLASH

JASON REITMAN Photography Max S. Gerber Clothes Reitman’s own Location Beverly Hills, Calif.

If you go down to the woods today, you’ll see MARK ZIBERT capturing fall fashion in its hunter-green, earthy-brown element.

45 TRAVEL: ON THE RUN IN MARRAKESH

The international urban adventure competition “City Chase” can be described as a cultural spin on Fear Factor via The Amazing Race. GARY BUTLER overcomes his disdain of reality programming and sees sides of the Red City that elude tourists and TV cameras alike.

fashion p40 ON HIM: Jacket Philip Sparks, Shirt Eton, Pants Philip Sparks, Vest Brunello Cuicenelli On HER: Dress If Six Was Nine

DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

32 “Axeman” photo by Mark Zibert; Cecilia Dean by Todd Selby

Contents

Departments 18 FLASH

The literal home theatre

25 SEX

Get a room, you two! Better yet, go to a Love Hotel

28 WORDS

The crime genre’s unpublished masterpiece, Grimhaven— and why you need to read it

24 Food

The whey of the warrior: One man’s fight for a rawer Canada

48 AUTOMOTIVE

2010 Volkswagen Golf GTI 2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS

10 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

26 SOUND

To serve and protest: the culture of reggae, and the reggae of Culture

DRIVENmag.com

20 LOOK

New web-exclusive features every issue, new content every weekday

Flight jackets take wing but remain grounded

22 GROOMING

It’s not the mountain we conquer—but our hair

62 Graphique

Weird Sandwich magazine: the strangest thing since sliced bread

girls talk indie rock Three of our favourite axe-wielding women—Amy Millan, Jennifer Herrema and Marnie Stern [PICTURED]—discuss doing their bit to save modern music from mediocrity.

URBAN ASSAULT VEHICLE In an increasingly eco- and user-friendly world, the 2010 BMW X6 M makes absolutely no sense at all. It’s perfect.

LIZ’N LAS VEGAS DRIVEN’s Sex columnist visits Sin City and is promptly escorted to a performance by...Donny and Marie?

The Ring-Neck Riddle We live in a golden age of T-shirt semiotics; still, for men of a certain age, this popular form of self-expression is more often than not regarded as a style crime. Herein: cracking the casual-T code.

“Bombs away” fashion photo by Richard Sibbald; Marnie Stern, by Rachael Warner

From the Editor

DRIVEN: life.in.motion Editor-in-chief Gary Butler Creative director Kelly Kirkpatrick Managing editor Mark Hacking Assistant editor Eric Grant Fashion Luke Langsdale Fiction Nathan Whitlock Editors at large Zach Feldberg, Mark Moyes Contributing photo editor Lindsay Morrell Editorial intern Geneva Fong Art intern Stephanie Shin Contributors Leah Cameron, Kyle Carpenter, Max S. Gerber, Alex Hadjiantoniou, Tim Johnson, Michael Kupperman, Ryan Lake, Colin McAdam, Benson Ngo, Sean Plummer, Michael Schmidt, Todd Selby, Richard Sibbald, Lenny Stoute, Mark Zibert Account managers Stéphanie Massé stephanie@DRIVENmag.com, 514.476.1171 Vincent Noël vincent@DRIVENmag.com, 514.824.7191 Advertising coordinator Melissa Bissett, 514.684.6426 Finance director Alina Calin, 514.369.3222

WITH GREAT DIFFICULTURE In the end, I could never tell whether I was supposed to cry or laugh while reading Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, by Pulitzer-winning non-fiction alarmist Chris Hedges. Not wanting to look foolish, I opted to do neither; though I might have bitten the inside of my cheek. A harrowing read, Hedges’ recent book; hilarious, too. The highlight comes early, in the first chapter, as he uses the WWE’s propensity for cheap pantomime to springboard (not, I believe, an official wrestling move) into a diatribe about the fact that we’ve forgotten how to read. Or, think? I can’t remember, but like all good outrage lit, I’m sure it was convincing. If I’m being more than a little flip, it’s because I’m also more than a little afraid that Hedges is right when he warns that celebrity culture—to be

12 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

Administration assistant Louise Bourgeois, 450.308.0741 x227

specific, its television arm—is going to be the death of, if not us, then literacy. (It’s certainly easier to watch TV than it is to read. The math does itself, thus avoiding potential embarrassment for those of us who’ve forgotten how to do the math in the first place.) “Celebrity worship banishes reality,” Hedges writes, then invokes the modern gold standard for lies packaged as truth: reality TV. The perhaps inevitable result of Warhol’s super-contagious “15 minutes of fame” soundbite, so-called reality programming has brainwashed us into “waiting for our cue to walk onstage and be admired and envied, to become known and celebrated.” We see ourselves in celebrities—we have to. There’s a reason that People.com is one of the world’s most-clicked-upon web sites. I covered a reality TV event for DRIVEN late last year and I can’t deny

that it was good fun. Of course, I enjoyed the journalist’s privilege of being inside yet removed. I actually spent most of my time observing that earnest, unwitting pantomime from the sidelines. Why? Let’s just say the TV cameras had all the angles covered. In a recent interview, Canadian author Cory Doctorow discusses his future-unfriendly story “After the Siege,” which contains a high-tech parallel for the modern “embedded” wartime journalist. The media’s abdication of responsibility in the name of better ratings gets in Doctorow’s craw. (At press time, a Brazilian TV host had been accused of homicide collusion— for his show.) “They say piracy will kill television,” Doctorow says, with hope. “Steal some TVs.” Help it along. And if I may add: Use the money you’ll save to buy some books. -GARY BUTLER

Printer Solisco Marketing director Larry Futers, 416.407.8338 InField Marketing Group Publisher Michel Crépault DRIVEN magazine 412 Richmond Street East, suite 200 Toronto, Ont. M5A 1P8 416.682.3493 DRIVENmag.com Issue #28 ISSN 1712-1906 Auto Journal Inc. CP 930 Coteau-du-Lac, Que. J0P 1B0 450.308.0741 DRIVEN is published five times per year. No part of this periodical may be copied or reprinted without the written consent of the publisher. Subscription for one year: $20 (plus applicable taxes); $50 US surface; all other countries, $100 airmail. For subscription inquiries, call 450.308.0741 x250.

Editor’s photo by Richard Sibbald; styling by Luke Langsdale. Shirt and sweater by Polo Ralph Lauren.

contributors

SEAN PLUMMER In spring 2008, Sean Plummer was pleased to interview Juno director and Jennifer’s Body producer Jason Reitman on the latter film’s rain-soaked Vancouver set, even though star Megan Fox was nowhere to be seen. (Still, Reitman suavely invoked a Mean Girls comparison while discussing her; see “Jennifer’s bodyguard,” p32.) Plummer was equally pleased to reconvene with the Academy Award–nominated filmmaker, again Fox-less, a year and a half later, as Reitman prepared to premiere no fewer than three new movies— Jennifer’s Body, as well as Up in the Air and Chloe—at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. In fact, Plummer is pleased most of the time, because he edits an entertainment magazine, Access, while freelancing for the likes of Details, Toronto Star, Rue Morgue and Flare, and is busy enough that he no longer has to sell shoes—a former occupation, which in no way accounts for why the man thinks Fox is well-heeled.

14 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

COLIN McADAM Colin McAdam is currently writing a novel about chimpanzees, with little dialogue and no profanity. His first two novels, Some Great Thing and Fall, had lots of both. Offered exclusively to DRIVEN, “Red’s warning” (p30) grew out of both novels and was considered too good for them. Its narrator, Colin, is similar to the character Julius in Fall, who sometimes acts like the author, Colin. Johnny Cooper was the author’s favourite character in Some Great Thing, and in “Red’s warning,” we meet that character’s son. The photo above is Colin’s son, Charlie, who is lovely and lives in Australia. Some Great Thing won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel award, and was nominated for several others. Fall was published earlier this year to rave reviews in The Times Literary Supplement and elsewhere, and has been deemed a must-read by Vogue, People and others. Colin lives in Montreal with his friend Suzanne. You can read “Red’s warning” without knowing any of these things.

TIM JOHNSON Simultaneously enchanted and repulsed by the American South, Tim Johnson (“Dixie undying,” p38) is fascinated by the region’s uneasy mixture of faith, family, race and political and social conservatism. Since earning a master’s degree in American history, he has visited every state south of the Mason-Dixon line, on the way gathering countless interesting stories, from tales of survival in Louisiana’s Katrina-ravaged Jefferson Parish to hard-luck anecdotes about Civil War Northern occupation in Tennessee—one of them, from a woman (almost) old enough to have been there. A contributing editor for Canadian Family magazine, Johnson has been published in Reader’s Digest, Best Health and MoneySense, among others. Last year, he received two National Magazine Award nominations, in the categories of “Health & Family” and “Best Short Feature.”

TODD SELBY Born in Southern California and currently based in New York City, photographer Todd Selby (“Montparnasse over Manhattan,” p54) has been gainfully employed as: a translator and Tijuana tour guide to the International Brotherhood of Machinists, a researcher into the California strawberry industry, a Costa Rican cartographer, a consultant on political corruption in Mexico, an art director at a venture capital firm, a wholesaler of exotic flowers, a Japanese clothing designer and a vermicomposting entrepreneur. Todd’s current pastimes include scanning, drinking muscle milk, painting watercolours, eating Vegemite, buying iPods and breaking his computers. He is also working on a project photographing and painting interesting people in their creative spaces, online at TheSelby.com, with a book called The Selby is in Your Space debuting next spring. “It’s going to retail for $35 (US)—inexpensive for a photo book—and I hope everyone in Canada buys at least one copy,” he says. “If you do, I will rename myself Canadian Selby in your honour.”

Sean Plummer photo by Libby Telford

Scene * 1.

THE MONTREAL GETAWAY CONTEST

PRESENT:

Win a weekend

for two in Montreal

Stay at the stylish OPUS Hotel Montreal, dine at the awardwinning KOKO Restaurant + Bar, and enjoy a chauffeur-driven tour of the city in style in the OPUS VIP shuttle, Audi Q7.

4. The Q7 is Audi’s awardwinning executiveclass SUV.

The OPUS Hotel Montreal blends modern design with a nod to history in chic Montreal style. Located at the corner of Sherbrooke and St. Laurent, The OPUS provides a unique boutique experience steps away from the vibrant entertainment district and minutes from both Old Montreal and the “Plateau” Mont-Royal.

KOKO is Montreal’s hottest new dining, drinking and socializing space. Enjoy contemporary Asian-inspired cuisine served sharing-style, blending Far Eastern ﬂavours with Western culinary techniques using the freshest ingredients. Go to www.DRIVENmag.com and click on Montreal Getaway Contest to enter. Follow that link for full contest rules, and for further details about KOKO, the Audi Q7, and The OPUS Hotel Montreal.

16 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

ROGERS CUP PRESENTED BY NATIONAL BANK PLAYER PARTY MONTRÉAL, QUÉBEC (1, 2) On August 10 at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Rogers Cup competitors ditched the tennis shorts to don stylish clothing for a charity fashion show. Top pros such as Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal delighted the patrons, but circuit jokester Novak Djokovic [photo 1] outshone everyone by appearing in his underwear. Clothes, when worn, were provided by Yves Jean Lacasse of Créations Envers [photo 2, middle, flanked by a model and Mark Knowles]. The event raised $50,000 for Tennis Canada’s “Building Tennis Communities” program. LG LIFE’S GOOD FILMFEST LAUNCH TORONTO, ONTARIO (3, 4) Electronics company LG Canada enlisted Academy Award–winning actor Jamie Foxx [photo 3] to launch the LG Life’s Good FilmFest at the Manulife Centre, on August 11. The event served to introduce a contest for filmmakers to produce high-definition short films; rules and regulations can be found at LGfilmfest.com. The multi-talented Foxx charmed the crowd, then continued to tear through Toronto, first with a sold-out show at Sound Academy, next with a post-concert bash at C Lounge. MUSICFEST VANCOUVER VANCOUVER, BC (5) German songstress Ute Lemper [photo 5] opened the MusicFest celebrations at The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts, on the evening of August 3. In a show that The Vancouver Sun characterized as “a finely honed set of songs, memoir and a smattering of stand-up,” the Dietrich-like diva did her typically stellar job of blending established cabaret modes with jazz standards and pop stylings.

EVENT PHOTOS: Rogers Cup, by Arturo Velazquez/Tennis Canada; LG Life’s Good FilmFest Launch, courtesy of LG Canada; MusicFest Vancouver, by Stefanie Pielahn

Flash *

Home for the Hollywood

Custom in-home cinemas transform the tawdry TV room into the literal home theatre By Kyle Carpenter

Water cooler. Shoe polish. Raincoat. Though the term “home theatre” seems as self-explanatory as any of the aforementioned—and is indeed now considered an easily attainable, everyday luxury—its specific meaning has become debased to the point where TVs with 19-inch screens bolstered by bottomtier two-speaker audio set-ups somehow qualify. True cinephiles, of course, refuse to settle for this type of arrangement. And while the low-end is dominating the quotidian market, there remains no shortage of top-of-the-line options for screens, projectors and speaker systems. Still, there’s a marked difference between buying the best equipment available and investing in the accessories needed to transform one room of your house into a miniature Grauman’s Chinese. One of the missing links in the ‘home’ and ‘theatre’ union has arguably been the seating; beyond this, the ambient environment itself. Custom manufacturers such as Vancouver’s Elite HTS and Texas-based CinemaTech have bridged this gap and become known for putting the ‘luxe’ in the luxury home-theatre movement. Elite HTS specializes in high-end cinema seating with a cost per chair running from $1,995 to $5,500 (model pictured, left: $4,810). These chairs embrace both the traditional in-cinema row format and custom models, such as the obvious-enough

18 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

“cuddle couch.” Every chair design includes modern comforts such as Italian leather upholstery, power recline, lumbar support and touch-pad master remote controls hidden in the armrest. Another cinephile-friendly feature: a cutting-edge enhancer device that sends motion through the chair when the script calls for low-frequency sound effects. Elite also offers a computer-assisted seating layout design service, to ensure that no one will have a blocked view when Steve Nash drops by to watch White Men Can’t Jump. The company’s craftsmanship was featured on an episode of MTV Cribs, the focus being a custom baseball-themed environment for New York Yankees’ pitcher CC Sabathia. While enough businesses are billing themselves as home-theatre specialists, CinemaTech’s service goes beyond seating and electronics equipment. The company has developed pre-designed hometheatre templates that cover off every conceivable aspect of the target room’s aesthetic, from the walls (red-velvet columns, ornate gold molding) to the lighting (twinkling star ceiling) to the carpet (indeed: cinema-plush). The templates are fully customizable in terms of both design and scale—each model can be made to fit any room. Beyond the visual, CinemaTech specializes in “audio solutions,” notably an Acoustic Room System (ARS). Built around high-tech acoustic wall panelling,

this “compensator” is designed to correct and improve the acoustics in a space that was never intended to manage sound sensitively. ARS impedes distortions caused by a room’s existing acoustics, resulting in cleaner, better-balanced sound. It also serves as a soundproof barrier—good fences might make for good neighbours, but a whole lot of baffling never hurt, either. Working with a network of dealers across North America, CinemaTech will design, supply, install and decorate a choice home theatre set-up for a starting price of $66,000—topping off at $165,000 if your tastes are truly extravagant; these prices do not include costs of the AV equipment or the seating. For some cineastes, home theatres aren’t about recreating traditional cinema experiences so much as bringing the love of a favourite film to life. CinemaTech and Elite HTS have each worked in conjunction with architects, designers, and movie fans across the continent to make custom movie-room showpieces, from art-deco halls, to Roman palaces, to starship control rooms. (The Batcave, above, features Elite HTS seating.) Whether you opt for a classic cinema palace or a Ben Hur-inspired dream theatre, you’re limited only by your budget, your imagination, and in some cases—we’re looking at you, Caped Crusader—your sheer fanaticism.

Look *

SOAR WINNERS

flight jackets: timeless style in any era Photography by Richard Sibbald • Illustration by Alex Hadjiantoniou Fashion Direction Luke Langsdale • Art Direction Kelly Kirkpatrick Models: James (Elite/Angie’s Modelling Agency) and Bart (Elite)

2 Opposite

This Page 1 Flight Jacket Reproduction A1 in capeskin leather by Eastman Leather Flight Helmet WWI vintage, from a selection at Klaxon Howl Scarf RAF Tartan by Red Canoe – National Heritage Brands Cavalry Jodhpurs WWI vintage, from a selection at Klaxon Howl Belt Hugo Boss Riding Boots Vintage, stylist’s own 20 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

2 Flight Jacket WWII vintage A2, from a selection at Klaxon Howl Shirt Helmut Lang Slacks Brioni Army Boots Vintage, from a selection at Klaxon Howl Green Bag WWII vintage flight bag, from a selection at Klaxon Howl Brown Bag RCAF detailed duffle by Red Canoe – National Heritage Brands

3 Flight Jacket Replica A2, with detailing by Philip Smiley, stylist’s own [Also jacket #4] Jeans APC Bag Brunello Cuccinelli

5 Flight Jacket Reproduction RCAF by Red Canoe – National Heritage Brands Scarf Cashmere by Brunello Cuccinelli Jeans Klaxon Howl

4 Shirt Acme Tie Vintage Polo Ralph Lauren, stylist’s own Vest WWII vintage survival vest, from a selection at Klaxon Howl Jeans Nom de Guerre

Where to land it

For details, see “Buyer’s Market” on Page 60

Fob *

Counter-clockwise from top left

5 Photo by Tktktk tktk

DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com 21

Grooming *

Everest everlasting For your next cut, trend-setting UK hairstylist Paul Gay suggests you bring the mountain to your barber By Luke Langsdale When British barber Paul Gay established Whites salon in 2004, it was with the notion that he could bring something different to the crowns of England— not to mention the country’s sideburns, bangs and parts. Maybe the areas above the ears, perhaps something by the nape of the neck. Gay trained in hair-cutting and styling in London in the early ’90s, and was soon called upon to style high-fashion photo shoots and catwalk shows for noted designers. Over the course of his career, he has worked with many A-listers, including Nottingham men’s fashion heavyweight Sir Paul Smith. Though staple client types run the gamut from stock brokers to fashion designers, the Whites owner insists that he’s happiest using his talents to match (and of course give) the perfect haircut to the average, style-savvy punter who walks through his salon’s doors. “When I started this place, I wanted to stay away from the trendy, chi-chi stuff,” Gay says, “and create an environment men would want to come to, every day.” Whites is a small London barbershop located a proverbial stone’s throw from the achingly hip Shoreditch area. A selection of vintage chairs lines the window, which overlooks the neighbouring mews. Two very large and very old barber’s chairs adorn the spit-and-sawdust floor, Neil Young plays on the stereo, and various photos decorate the off-white walls. Most of those photos are of Sir Edmund Hillary—one of the barber’s heroes— getting his hair cut on his famous 1953 Everest expedition. Gay takes significant

22 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

inspiration from those pictures. “I tell my clients to take heed of the cuts that guys on old expeditions used to have,” he says. “They trimmed their hair right back so that they had four months before it bothered them again.” Hence his current strategy, which is garnering a reputation: providing quality, clean haircuts that last four to six months, and grow out into a solid style on their own. A few top-of-head examples: “A clean short-back-and-sides will always grow into a good style,” Gay explains. “If you have a slimmer face, leave the sides a little longer, and cut with scissorover-comb rather than clippers. If you have a fuller face, taking the sides closer will provide the best base.” Due to Whites’ proximity to London’s financial district, the man serves a wealth of business clients who are often dealing with that age-old conundrum: Do I get a smart cut for work and have my style suffer on Saturday? Or do I go for something that works on the weekend but cripples my professional look? Gay notes that many make the mistake of trying to opt for something in-between, only to end up with the worst of both worlds. Emphasizing the “comeback of a more gentlemanly style, reminiscent of the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s,” he says that many high-power types are “rekindling the ageold standard of using a quality brilliantine to create a sleek look that functions more formally, then washing the stuff out for a more rugged, happy-go-lucky ‘weekend’ look.” Mountains of money for the business week, then, with an option to take a hike on Sunday. Makes the cut for us.

Photography by Luke Langsdale; National Geographic cover courtesy of National Geographic Society

Food *

Raw Deal Canada needs a cultural revolution, at least in terms of milk and cheese. Outlaw farmer Michael Schmidt is churning the pot By Leah Cameron

e always figured the authorities would find some way to bust him; what Ontario farmer Michael Schmidt did not expect was a full-force raid. In November of 2006, Schmidt’s Durham-area farm was stormed by 25 armed police officers dressed in bio suits and bulletproof vests. Though the platoon looked fit to bring down a major cocaine ring, ironically, it had come to prevent the ‘trafficking’ of a far less tawdry kind of contraband: raw milk. Schmidt was eventually charged with operating a plant without a license, distributing without a license, and offering for sale dairy products which are not pasteurized in a licensed plant. But he thumbed his nose at authority, and continues to run the same cow-share system (in which consumers buy shares in

24 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

an animal, rather than purchasing the milk directly) that he has been operating, safely and without incident, for 12 years. At the time we went to press, Schmidt and renowned lawyer Clayton Ruby had appealed the case, and were still awaiting the final verdict on the conviction and an associated $55,000 fine. Should the case be overturned, it could mean a milestone for this country’s small dairy farmers. Canada is the only G8 country where the sale of raw milk remains illegal; provincial boards regulate all dairy production. To sell and produce milk, farmers must buy into the boards’ rules and quota systems—at a price that averages out to some $30,000 per cow. Running a dairy farm, in short, is a millionaire’s game. Raw-milk cheese is a whole different animal from raw, farm-fresh milk: It’s legal to sell the hard stuff across Canada as long as it’s been aged 60 days. As of last March, even younger cheeses are technically legal inside Québec, although there is only one farm currently producing it in any official capacity: Fromagerie au Gré des Champs, in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. Their organic Le Péningouin is creamy and delicately sweet, and only available at the farm’s store. (For a selection of raw-milk cheeses legally available across Canada, see DRIVENmag.com.) On the fromage front, Schmidt is quick to point out that if dairy farmers were able to function outside the current system, smaller operators that cater to cheeseloving foodies would become more financially viable. He imagines a Canada whose epicurean maps display the delicacies of every province’s unique terroirs—a nation with a cheese culture that could potentially rival that of Germany, Italy and France. “It’s like micro breweries,” Schmidt explains. “Twenty years ago, there was Molson and Labatt’s and that was about it. Now Canada produces hundreds of the most exciting specialty beers.” In the meantime, what will Schmidt do if the authorities demand that he pay the steep fine? “Oh, that’s simple,” he says. “I just won’t.”

Self-portrait by Michael Schmidt; Schmidt photo treatment, Benson Ngo

Sex *

Love Hotels Book ’em, Lothario! By Mark Moyes

Japan is known for its exports: on the classic end, automobiles and electronics and, more recently, comics, video games and fashion. But one Japanese invention always seemed impossible to remove from its context: The love hotel. Chances are, you’ve read about love hotels because the western media loves to gossip about them. Of course, this is understandable given the clandestine and seemingly seedy nature of having receptionists hidden behind darkened glass, curtains to obscure guests’ car license plates, rooms inspired by everything from school lecture halls to Hello Kitty, and in-room vending machines stocked with sex toys and beer. It’s easy to formulate some sort of smug cultural reading—the obsession with privacy and fantasy must mean there’s something shamefully pervy and repressed about Japanese sexuality. But that kind of thinking probably tells us more about our own attitudes towards sex; the dominant culture in North America was founded by Puritans, after all. Still, the particular sensibilities that pushed the sex hotel from a novelty to an estimated $40-billion-a-year industry—love hotels are visited 500 million times a year in a country of 127 million people—always seemed too specific to Japan to work anywhere else in the world.

Turns out, that’s no longer true. It may not be too shocking to learn that roadside “love motels” are popular throughout nearby South Korea, but it is rather surprising to learn that they’re also popular in many Latin American countries, notably Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina and Brazil. These aren’t just seedy motels of the North American variety; many borrow features from their Japanese counterparts. The motels are often recognizable by their row of garage doors: Each suite gets a private garage so guests can’t be identified. Orders can be placed at a curbside room “menu.” Brazil has an especially good selection of love motels and hotels, rsnging from the dirt-cheap to the decadent. There was even a less successful effort to open one for dogs (don’t ask). Though they fulfill a similar need in Latin America (where, like in Japan, men and women often live with their parents until they marry), what makes the love hotel attractive is the frank attitude towards sex that is on display—or not on display, as the case may be. The acknowledgment of the need for privacy dispenses with any shameful associations. After all, why do we think hourly hotels must be tawdry and dirty? Because for one thing, in those types of places, we’re less likely to run into anyone we know.

Europe, too, is starting to get the hint. Hotel Amour in Paris can be reserved from noon to 3pm for a discount on its regular rate, and the gorgeous rooms were recently redesigned by graffiti artist Andre Emmanuel. In Barcelona, La Franca’s “rooms for couples” are slick, and the parking spaces boast the curtains now familiar in other parts of the world. So far, the Japanese-style love hotel hasn’t really made an appearance in North America. (With kitschy honeymoon suite themes such as ‘igloo’ and ‘pickup truck,’ West Edmonton Mall’s Fantasyland Hotel doesn’t count—it’s an institution.) Is it puritanical guilt, a sense that sex is dirty, and shouldn’t be celebrated, or merely pragmatism? And do we really need our seedy motels to go upscale? This author visited a half-dozen love hotels during a year spent in Japan. My first encounter was a revelation. Pristine white walls and fluffy pillows; a separate room with a whirlpool (never heart-shaped); a bedside console for soft-lighting variations. It was elegant. Love hotels in Japan come in all flavours, but this—five-star sophistication for the dirtiest of deeds—was the most shocking. Relax, it said. Pamper yourself a little. After all—you lucky sonofabitch—you’re about to have sex. You deserve it.

DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com 25

Sound * Selassie of Ethiopia, but at its core, it’s all about getting along using peace, love and the religion’s sacrament: cannabis. At once teacher and suffering student, Hill was a true reggae poet; his songs today would read like urgent blogs from a battleground eyewitness. Dubbed the “Keeper of Zion Gate,” a title that allowed him to officially speak on behalf of Rastafari, Hill became one of Jamaica’s most respected voices, even if he wasn’t always a favourite of the island’s authorities. The man’s onstage persona was a savvy mix of truth-teller and booty-shaker, MC and professor. During the late ’70s, the group enjoyed a string of hit singles for producers Joe Gibbs and Sonia Pottinger, as well as the long-player Two Sevens Clash, a hit in Jamaica, By Lenny Stoute the UK and the US. Just how influential UK punk scene. By no means was Culture the only was Two Sevens Clash? In 2002, Rolling Stone maga‘conscious’ reggae act operating, but Hill’s decizine named the album one of its all-time “50 Coolest sion to base the group in Kingston yielded instant Records”—the only non-compilation reggae platter street cred. The other ‘conscious’ giants—includto make the list. The group also hit internationally ing Bunny Wailer and Winston “Burning Spear” with “Stop the Fussing and Fighting,” a song directly Rodney—retreated to country compounds to live an addressing the politically fuelled gang wars of the Ital lifestyle (back to the land, vegetarian), basically ’70s, with specific reference to the assassination leaving Babylon to its sins and distractions. attempt on Bob Marley. To Hill, that constituted preaching to the conEven the passing of Joseph Hill three years ago— verted. His resolute opinion was that the ‘conscious’ perhaps fittingly, he collapsed onstage during a live artist’s duty was to speak truth in the belly of the performance—has not stopped Culture’s spread. The beast. Embedding itself in Kingston, Culture stood current evolution of the band is led by Kenyatta Hill, up and addressed both the oppressed and the the legendary frontman’s equally dynamic eldest son. oppressors. Only a very ready wit and an equally Still touring, Culture is enjoying renewed success due straight-up reputation kept Hill out of harm’s way. to the recent re-release of its classic (if more than a To break it down further: Hill and Culture fit little under the radar) albums. somewhere between Bunny Wailer’s country rootsIn the end, Hill had it coming and going. He lived man and the “Mystic Revelator,” Burning Spear. long enough to get his due from his people as a signifMore accessible than Bunny, less overbearing icant presence in reggae. When it came time to lay his than Spear, Hill managed to couch the most fiery body down, a parade of Jamaica’s highest authorities, ‘conscious’ messages in melodic grooves and sinuous led by then-Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, rhythms of complementary power. showed up to praise his contributions to Jamaican Culture was cool not only with Trenchtown rude culture, in the process transforming a good ol’ reggae boys but also influential religious elders, given the rebel into, go figure, a member of the establishment. band’s advocacy of Rastafari principles. RastafarianSomewhere, the ghost of Joseph Hill is quite ism centres on the worship of the late Emperor Haile conscious of the irony.

Culture’s club Revisiting reggae’s still-relevant protest pioneers

Casual listeners and even music critics tend to default to Bob Marley and Peter Tosh as reggae’s only ‘it’ acts, but the aptly named outfit Culture demands a recount. Catchy as the polished beats of Marley and Tosh indeed were, they by no means represented the genre as a whole—the knock being that those artists focussed more on commercial than what is known as ‘conscious’ or ‘protest’ reggae. For top-notch, targeted servings of the latter, street-level rude boys and spiritual dreds alike turned to Culture, arguably the genre’s most respected voice, even to this day. Born in 1976 into Jamaica’s vibrant, politically charged reggae scene—not to mention Kingston’s volatile streets—Culture quickly established a rep for meshing solid harmonies with sharp social commentary and grooves galore. The core lineup consisted of Joseph Hill, Kenneth Dayes and Hill’s cousin Albert Walker, though various incarnations included genre luminaries Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, Ashton Barrett and Skinny Lindo. Penned exclusively by Hill, the band’s material demonstrated the poet’s keen sense of the connection between Jamaica’s history and its socio-political climate. For all his political focus, Hill was still hip to the fact that the message went down best hooked to a beat—a sensibility not lost on the then-nascent

26 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

Words *

Grim fury tale

Exhuming Charles Willeford’s unpublished crime masterpiece, Grimhaven By Zach Feldberg

“Any way he looked at it, it was a rotten business.” (Miami Blues) When American fiction author Charles Willeford passed away in 1988, he left behind an addicting body of work. Perhaps his best-known entry was one of his last: Miami Blues (1984), also adapted into an acclaimed Tarantino-style-beforethere-was-a-Tarantino-style film, starring Fred Ward and Alec Baldwin, in 1990. At the time Miami Blues was published, Willeford had been writing for decades; though he had tried his hand at many genres, he had a particular affinity for crime. Witness this oft-touted endorsement blurb on many a mass-market Willeford reissue, as stated by American crime grandmaster Elmore Leonard: “No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford.” Fair enough: Upon publication, Miami Blues promised to be his long-awaited, much-deserved meal ticket. Not just a critical triumph, the book was also easily the author’s career biggest seller. Publisher St. Martin’s Press wanted a sequel; Willeford, however, felt differently. So he wrote Grimhaven, wherein Miami Blues’s hero—the grizzled, beaten-down but morally stalwart detective Hoke

28 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

Moseley—commits a brutal, irredeemable crime against his own children. And thinks nothing of it. The Leonard quote, then, is only part-accurate, because while Willeford’s unparalleled exercises in tawdry Americana are certainly without equal, to call the man’s works crime novels is to oversimplify. Willeford wrote character, not crime; he shed light on the people who called the shadows home, inspecting them from every angle, usually favouring ugliness over beauty. If his novels are novels about life, then they’re written with a keen eye to the parts gone astray. With Grimhaven, Willeford led the otherwise likeable, decent Moseley so far astray, the poor wretch could never hope to return. After reading Grimhaven, Willeford’s agent wisely instructed the author to bury his story. To this very day, the book remains unpublished. Which does not make it unreadable: In the late ’90s, Betsy Willeford, the author’s widow, donated his vast archives to the Bienes Museum, located at the main branch of Broward County public library in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. There, interested parties can make an appointment, take the elevator up to the sixth floor, and sit down with a full, typewritten MS of Grimhaven. (Respecting Ms. Willeford’s wishes as rights-holder, DRIVEN will not print an excerpt from the book. Suffice to say that the heinous act that launches its ninth chapter is bleak and inhumane enough to have permanently sabotaged the then-budding Moseley franchise.) “Charles didn’t want to write a series,” explains Ms. Willeford from her home in Miami. “He said it was like operating a conveyor belt.” What is astonishing, then, is how powerful a book Willeford managed to produce in the face of a mandate that his gut told him to resist—in fact, outright fight. A fully-formed novel, Grimhaven is a tragic homily on man’s need to find solitude and the lengths to which he will go in order to do so. By contrast, Thomas Harris’ Hannibal (1999), the official sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, is an airport cashgrab if ever there was one: A story also written to self-sabotage a franchise, Hannibal is a book with nothing to say, and less interest in saying it. Consider also Donald E. Westlake, writing as Richard Stark, who killed his honourable thief Parker in the original

treatment of The Hunter (1962), but was convinced—also by a publisher— to save the character, bringing him back for over 20 (admittedly decent) sequels. Willeford chose to elude this typecasting by corrupting his beleaguered hero the moment that a whiff of public acceptance was in the air. Over the years, Grimhaven has accrued a kind of “holy grail” mythology among followers of noir fiction, and while this reverence is not lost on Ms. Willeford, she has no plans to authorize its formal release, despite her frustration that bootleggers occasionally see large sums for selling it to interested parties. “At least one copy made its way to Kinko’s and soon was being sold off a watermelon truck in Montana,” she says. “I exaggerate, but you get the idea.” Elsewhere in the Bienes Museum archives (tucked away in ‘Box #5’), a letter to the author from Kurt Vonnegut politely declines a request for a dust-jacket blurb but nonetheless offers the highest praise: “Please count me among your great admirers,” Vonnegut writes. “You are an absolute first-rate ethnographer in describing survival schemes within chaos which only politicians would be cynical enough to call a society.” And the postscript is purposely written to fall on deaf ears: “The more highly educated and powerful your characters, the more popular your books will be.” According to Ms. Willeford, that was never part of the plan. “I wish Charles could have lived to see some if not all the interest he provoked,” she says. “Although popularity wasn’t what he sought.” As interest in Willeford’s work continues to grow, perhaps he will be revealed for what he truly was: a storyteller who couldn’t help but do a good job. Motivated by obligations financial and contractual, Willeford did write another three readable and publishable Moseley novels—New Hope for the Dead (1985), Sideswipe (1987), and The Way We Die Now (1988)—grudgingly facilitating the character’s potential for pop-culture longevity. It goes without saying that these books are also strong reads. Still, given that the original title of Miami Blues was Kiss Your Ass GoodBye, it’s likely that Willeford would be just as happy if Grimhaven remained the final word on his subject.

Fiction *

Red’s warning By Colin McAdam • Illustration by Ryan Lake I don’t know why I have a hard-on but it’s warm against my thigh and my thigh and my hard-on like each other the same. It’ll go before Red gets here and I’ll look at Red’s teeth and it’ll be hard to believe that a hard-on can be hard in a world with Red’s teeth, he’s uglier than that documentary on what they do with chickens. Riding on his little BMX. You’re a riot, I say, and he looks at me like he doesn’t know why and I say, On your little bike, you know, you’re big. I love Red, he’s scary and dumb. I love buying drugs. I saw you, he says, and I make a noise like a question. With your girl, he says. Ok. Down the hill. Her name’s Paul, right. Leslie, I say. Right. He shows me the teeth. Oof. I knew a guy named Vivian, he says. Ok. And it wasn’t like he wanted a cock in the ass or anything. That was just his name: Vivian.

30 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

I get the money and there it is with the handshake and we pretend we’re not trying to be cool and I’m the coolest. We should party some time, he says. You and me. And Paul. She’d like that. I could bring a girl, he says. Ok. When. When what. Party. Whenever. You call me, he says. He lifts up his front wheel and sits there on his seat like it’s a nonstop wheelie and I’m thinking he’s making that happy thing last in his mind and he looks so funny on his bike. He makes me feel smart and grown-up. I feel like spinning his wheel. I want to ask him his real name. I want to know if he hides the cash under his bed. I’m seeing a small bed and brown sheets and a smell like old water. I wonder what it’s like to be a kid with red hair, is it as bad as they say.

Maybe I should go but he’s popping his wheelie so something more is expected here, we’re down the talking path. Colin, he says. Yeah, man. Colin. He’s thinking about my name. What’s your name, Red. Red, he says. Now he looks away and thinks. I’m not gonna spin his wheel. It’s Johnny, he says like it’s a secret. Johnny, I say. Johnny Cooper Junior. He’s looking serious. I’m wondering why. Nobody knows my name, he says. Not even my dad knew my name, that’s why he called me Junior. I’m quiet. He smiles. That’s what my dad’s girlfriend says, he says. Dad didn’t know my name so he called me Junior. I’m bored. I spin his wheel. I like the feel of the rubber and I think about whether someone spent a day putting those treads in the tire, maybe it was a computer and a laser: zzzt. I like lasers, I say, and Red looks at me like I’m saying something interesting. They’re cool, I say, they’re kind of quiet and always know where they’re going.

Now I’m glad I’m talking to a dealer and not someone bald like a colleague of my dad’s because bald men have nothing going for them but intelligence. I fuckin’ love knives, he says. I’ve got my eye on a butterfly stiletto, fuckin’ swish and I’ve cut your eye out. I’m quiet. I’ll take a knife fight over a gunfight any day, he says. As long as the other guy has a knife not a gun. I’ve got to get going, Red. Where you going. Back to school. You fuckin’ guys and your school. You tell your girl if she wants a real man, eh. He’s rolling on his little bike and hunched over the bars and he looks like one of those big red monkeys. I used to have a girlfriend just like your girl, he says. Really. Tall. Brown hair. She’s blonde. Blonde. And tall. And fuckin classy. I dated her for like eight, nine days, but she wanted to call the cops on me one night. Ok. Your girl reminds me of her. A lot. He rides away, pumps his back wheel like a dog kicking shit and he’s turning back around at me. Anyone can take anything, he says.*

How much does Jason Reitman care about film? Enough to have made two deals with the Diabloâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; getting the Clooney and the Egoyan in the process By Sean Plummer

Jenniferâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bodyguard

Shot on location in Beverly Hills & Santa Monica by Max S. Gerber

ason Reitman believes in Megan Fox, so you should, too. The director of the hipster comedies Juno and Thank You for Smoking is defending the casting of the Transformers starlet in Jennifer’s Body, a (hipster) horror-comedy being produced by Reitman. His “attackers” this rain-soaked March morning are a boisterous group predominantly composed of North American horror journalists and bloggers, who have trekked out to visit the film’s Vancouver set (many of them, in hopes of a Fox sighting; they will be disappointed). While the sex appeal of the céleb du jour is undeniable, neither is there any argument about the fact that she has yet to prove her acting chops. As the new film’s titular character, Fox needs to channel a type that shouldn’t be too hard to access: the hottest girl in a small American town. Bit of a departure at this point, which will require some imaginative flexing when the cameras roll: Jennifer gets sacrificed to the Devil (by a rock band, of course) and comes back from the grave to eat all the boys at her high school. A rabid Fox, then. So to speak.

Photo by Tktktk tktk

nderstandably, the fourth estate is wondering if the lady can do funny the way she can do, ahem, foxy. “She’s really fuckin’ funny,” Reitman insists, “funny the way Rachel McAdams was in Mean Girls.” He mentions seeing Fox in Transformers and admiring her undeniable beauty, but admits that he wondered if she could handle the, shall we say, unique character quirkiness for which Jennifer’s Body screenwriter Diablo Cody is known. (Lest we forget, Cody won an Oscar for her first produced screenplay, the unique and quirky Juno.) “I’ve seen auditions of people trying to do Diablo’s dialogue and it’s like falling off a cliff—it’s tough dialogue. Megan just nails it. She’s mean and funny and dangerous and sexy and everything you could want from her in this.” This is Jason Reitman, producer, and he’s good at it. As good, perhaps, as he is at Jason Reitman, director—and that’s quite good. At 31 years of age (turning 32 in October), it may be too soon to declare him as important a Canadian director as Atom Egoyan or David Cronenberg, but there’s no denying Reitman’s ability to both tell a story well and get audiences to pay to see it. His debut feature, 2006’s Thank You for Smoking, starred pre-Dark Knight Aaron Eckhart as a slick Big Tobacco lobbyist whose job is to convince the public that there is no link between cigarettes and lung cancer. The film premiered at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival, where it was snapped up by Fox Searchlight. Says Reitman in a follow-up interview one month before the 2009 TIFF: “That was the moment I became a ‘director’—kind of. “I remember I had written notes about what I was going to say in front of the audience,” he recalls. The TIFF screening process often involves a short speech

34 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

and a (hopefully) shorter audience Q&A after the film ends. “My hands were so sweaty, they were making the piece of paper wet and making the ink run—I was so scared. But 99 minutes later, when the movie was done, it was the most exhilarating moment on earth.” It was also the moment the Montréal-born Reitman realized that Toronto’s festival is “that perfect sweet spot. There’s an enormous appreciation for smart films; at the same time, there isn’t this intoxication with pretentious films. Toronto audiences just want to watch good movies.” Smoking made money and gathered many awards nods, including a Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy). Reitman won the Independent Spirit award for Best Screenplay, which he had adapted from the book by Christopher Buckley. No less a luminary than Roger Ebert praised the young director’s style as “sneaky and subtle.” Then came Juno. You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it, everyone’s seen it. The Vancouverfilmed indie comedy, about a pregnant teen who decides to have her baby, wowed audiences during its 2007 TIFF debut and went on to gross $230 million US

The Sapphire

Collins Glass: Collins glass or 12oz High Ball Ingredients: 2oz Bombay Sapphire 1oz Fresh lemon juice – approximately ½ lemon ¾oz Sugar syrup (2 parts sugar to 1 part boiling water) Top up with Soda water / Club soda 1 Lemon wedge Method: Add the lemon juice, sugar syrup and Bombay Sapphire to the glass. Fill glass with ice and stir well. Add more ice and top with club soda. Garnish with the lemon wedge and 2 straws, sip and enjoy BE BRILLIANT, BE INSPIRED. PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY. BOMBAY SAPPHIRE IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK. GIN - 40% ALC. BY VOL.

worldwide, thanks in part to clever marketing and strong word of mouth. Juno also became a cultural talking point, for two reasons: first-time screenwriter and former ecdysiast (look it up) Diablo Cody’s highly-stylized dialogue, which most critics praised but some reviled; and the decision by the title character, played by Haligonian actress Ellen Page, to have, versus abort, her child. The latter stoked public discussion of the then-current uptick in America’s teenpregnancy rate, dubbed rather speciously by the media as “the Juno effect.” At their most savage, some critics claimed Juno glamorized teen pregnancy. In one editorial, New Republic writer Leon Wieseltier even referred to Sarah Palin’s then-pregnant daughter, Bristol, as “Juno in Juneau.” Diplomatically, Reitman has only this to say: “At the time, all I really felt was that I hope these young girls have a strong family and community around them. I can’t imagine how tricky and difficult it is to be a pregnant teenager.” Controversies aside, Juno’s success meant that Reitman could now cast his films with bigname Hollywood stars—like George Clooney. Based on the Walter Kirn book, Reitman’s latest directorial effort is called Up in the Air, and it’s one of three 2009 TIFF entries with which the filmmaker has significant involvement (after Jennifer’s Body, the third is Atom Egoyan’s Chloe, which Reitman produced with his father, Ghostbusters director Ivan). For Up in the Air, Clooney stars as Ryan Bingham, a “career-transition counsellor” who flies around the country firing people, and is obsessed with earning his millionth frequent-flyer point. Reitman’s pleasure at having worked with Clooney is palpable. He calls Gorgeous George “one of the greatest actors living today. I’d

always wanted to work with him. And he had exactly the amount of intelligence and charm to pull off this very tricky character.”

ntelligence and charm. These are exactly the qualities displayed by the protagonists in director Reitman’s first three films, although none of them could be considered textbook heroes, never mind conventional people. “One of the unifying features of my films, and I hope this continues to be so, is that they usually take on a main character or a story for which the

audience would have an otherwise different perspective,” Reitman says. “Look, I’ve made three films: the first one, the hero is the head lobbyist for Big Tobacco; the second one, a pregnant teenage girl; the third one, a guy who fires people for a living. I enjoy taking a character or subject that people have dead-set opinions on and opening those opinions up.” Whether or not this Hollywood-atypical attitude can be attributed to Reitman’s cardcarrying Canadian citizenship is, he admits, doubtful. He was born in Québec but raised in Los Angeles. His family is mostly centred in Toronto and Montréal. [CONTINUED ON p61]

Dixie Undying The American Civil War ended 144 years ago. So why is Southern pride as strong as ever? By Tim Johnson

ecently, while waiting for the start of a historical tour in Charleston, S.C., I had a friendly chat with a young banker from a small town in North Carolina. He had come

to America’s “best-mannered” city (per etiquette expert Marjabelle Young Stewart) to attend a conference, and this tour was one of the scheduled activities. But he’d seen more than his share of old houses, so was happy to hang back and discuss Southern culture with me. This 30-something man was smart, educated—and, it must be specified, Caucasian. He stated, in classic staccato twang, that many in the South have “no use for people north of the Mason-Dixon line” and still see America as a nation divided. Though our conversation was brief, his responses were nonetheless passionate. He noted that his great-great-grandfather surrendered at Appomattox with Confederate General Robert E. Lee, his great-grandfather was named for Lee and that, in his hometown, they burned the bridge before Sherman’s troops rolled through. “You wanna come through, you’ve got to build your own bridge,” he said, as if we were actually there. Then he added, with a momentary thousand-mile stare, “There were some tough times after Sherman.”

38 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

Photo by Tktktk tktk

f the Barack Obama phenomenon demonstrated anything, it’s that sometimes, the optimists are right. Alas, it also proved that the political world’s much-vaunted flattening is not yet complete: Regionalism remains alive and well. In last November’s election, as the results rolled in from America’s eastern and central states, it became evident that, in the face of a mighty Democratic headwind, the South was refusing to turn. While much of America went blue, most of the South remained a slash of solid red, ultimately delivering some two-thirds of Republican candidate John McCain’s Electoral College total. Larry Griffin, a professor of history and sociology at the University of North Carolina, observes that regional culture was—and still is—a crucial factor. “There were very clear patterns, and they matter,” he says. “These weren’t randomly scattered red and blue states. They were grouped geographically and in terms of a certain kind of social and political culture.” That culture continues to dog President Obama. While much of the western world, including Canada, quickly lined up behind the new Chief Executive and his audaciously hopeful policies, white Southern support for Obama remains shaky, even amongst fence-sitters in swing states. Griffin explains: “If the economy stays sour, or if we have an unexpected foreign fiasco, I think the white moderate support for him in Virginia, Florida, Georgia and elsewhere might dry up.” The distinctiveness of the South extends well beyond the voting booth. Spend a little time below the Mason-Dixon and you’ll find that signs of a unique culture persist, a century-and-a-half after the Civil War, the South’s defining event. Some of the differences are superficial: Southern pride bumper stickers, T-shirts that read “Dixie: God’s Own Country” and survivalist types sporting belt buckles pretzelled in the shape of crossed pistols. There are also weighty cultural markers, most of them rooted in the past. Mississippi’s state flag still incorporates the Confederate battle flag (colloquially known as the “Southern Cross”), its continued presence reaffirmed by a 2001 statewide referendum. Controversy and a national tourism boycott organized by the NAACP in 2000 saw the Southern

Cross pulled from the dome of South Carolina’s state capitol building—only to be moved across the grounds. (To this day, it flies atop a 30-foot pole over the large monument to Confederate soldiers that dominates the main street entrance.) Some 25 paces further along, just up the steps to the legislature, sits a damaged George Washington statue, complete with

a plaque blaming the vandalism on the brickbats of General William T. Sherman and his Union soldiers. Similar galvanizing statements about the past are replicated across the South. Monuments to the Confederacy’s war dead preside over countless town squares. Country music hits rhapsodize about corn bread and chicken. Regional slang and expressions (“Mama and Daddy,” “Y’all”) are as profuse as distinctive local dialects. Bolstering it all is a culture built on faith, family, history, race and tradition. A 2005 Associated Press/Ipsos poll found that, of those born and living in the region, 77 per cent still identify themselves as Southerners. But what exactly does it mean to be a Southerner in 2009? It depends on whom you ask. A sociology professor at Virginia’s Lynchburg College, Ashley Thompson interviewed 65 Southerners for her doctoral dissertation, posing that very question. Her subjects—selected from North Carolina, Tennessee and Louisiana—candidly addressed how Southern identity affects their lives. Thompson discovered that the South isn’t a single place at all. Everything from attitudes on race to the intonation of the Southern drawl varies from area to area, be it mountain or lowland, urban or rural, upper or lower. Likewise, Southern cuisine is not just a heated topic, but a locative one. “People tend to think that wherever they are in the South is how all

Southerners are,” she says. “In Louisiana, they’ll talk about crawfish and other typically Cajun foods as being Southern, while in the mountains they’ll talk about liver mush.” That said, most would agree that fried chicken, okra, and biscuits and gravy are all typically Southern. There is a set of shared values to which people more or less ascribe— time-honoured elements of traditional Southern culture that continue to resonate. The region remains deeply religious, both in terms of church attendance and firmness of belief. This is especially the case for Protestant Christians, but also holds true for other groups. Griffin, who supervised Thompson’s thesis while serving as director of the American and Southern studies program at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., also notes that traditional Southern families stick together. “The feeling is often, ‘Aunt Betty may be a drunk, but she’s my aunt’; ‘Uncle Ted may be a little off, but he’s Uncle Ted,’ or whatever it may be,” says Griffin. He concedes that family is important across the nation and around the world. “But in the South, I think that there’s a fair amount of consciousness and discussion about it.”

ot surprisingly, some people in the region continue to fight the Civil War. “There’s a certain segment of Southern whites who really get wrapped up in the romanticism,” Thompson says, explaining that for many of these people, simply being Southern is their primary point of distinctiveness—a sort of substitute for ethnic identity that makes them a bit different from the rest of America. Cultural isolation may be the source of that difference. As if encased in a time capsule for a full century after the Civil War, many antebellum patterns— structural, cultural and economic—remained consistent right into the 1960s and even the ’70s. Racial separation, cultural and political conservatism, a very rural population and a largely agrarian, plantation-based economy continued, remarkably unperturbed, until the region was forced open by the dynamism of the ’60s and the upheavals of the civil-rights era. Griffin notes that the deep political conservatism of the South, long represented by the Democratic Party and more recently by [CONTINUED ON p61]

DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com 39

Couleurs du bois Fall styles conjure shades from the past Photography Mark Zibert Fashion Direction Luke Langsdale Art Direction Kelly Kirkpatrick Hair and Makeup Anita Cane (artistgrouplimited.com) Fashion Assistant Daniella Maiorano Models Jan and Monika (Ford Models Inc.) Where to buy? See “Buyer’s Market” on page 60

Opening page On him Jacket John Varvatos Pants Filson Bag Filson Boots Stylist’s own On her Dress Rick Owens Previous page On him Coat Philip Sparks Pants Philip Sparks On her Dress Lundström This page On him Shirt Folk Coat Folk Jodhpurs Philip Sparks Shoes Vintage, from a selection at Klaxon Howl On her Dress Lundström Following page On him Coat Philip Sparks Jeans APC Belt Philip Sparks Boots Redwing On her Dress Lundström

This page On him Jacket Philip Sparks Shirt Eton Pants Philip Sparks Vest Brunello Cucinelli On her Dress If Six Was Nine

Travel *

The ’Chase and the ’Kesh

I went to Morocco to report on an adventure race from the comfy seats; I learned that reality TV shoots without chairs By Gary Butler This is no way to see Marrakesh, but it will certainly do. I am experiencing life not so much in the “fast lane” as in the motorcycle/bike lane, which is plenty fast enough. Riding a rickety and nearly brakeless

old CCM, I am in the thick of evening rush hour in Morocco’s most vehicle-populated region, conducting a perimeter tour, self-guided, of the Médina: the red-walled, 1,000-year-old city of Marrakesh, around which sprawls its modern, in the ’70s sense, avatar.

I follow the rampart-style ancient wall, twice around, then again, because I have no map. So busy are the triple lanes—bikes to the right, please!—and so thick the carbon monoxide—every rider save the sightseer wears a mouth scarf—that there is no action here, only reaction. Despite the fact that I inexplicably feel no danger among the never-diluting throng, this really is no way to see Marrakesh. I pedal harder and laugh through my teeth.

Why so un-serious? Because I am not here to “see” Morocco proper. No tourist, I, but a journalist; not even a travel journalist. I have come to Euro-friendly Northern Africa to report on an urban-adventure competition called City Chase, which tomorrow launches its third-annual world championships, wherein international teams undergo a three-day mad dash through Marrakesh and its environs. Most easily described as TV’s Amazing Race meets TV’s Fear Factor—indeed, a TV crew, from Nat Geo Adventure, is present—City Chase is every bit as surreal as any other reality show: part foot race, part scavenger hunt, mostly smiles (some tears, though just as many hugs), all edutainment. Impossible that it could go off without a hitch, but isn’t that part of the un-serious fun? Even admitting that the other media types and I are tourists—lest we forget, also the competitors, who collectively cover off almost every continent— we’re not typical tourists, because we’ll be seeing very few typical tourist sights. Of those we do see, we’ll get much more than the “local” treatment: We’ll gain access to places few-to-no everyday citizens of this city ever will. Consider that while the lavish, architecturally resplendent Gare des trains ONCF is open to the public (what with being a train station and all), one is technically not allowed to zip line the 80-ft drop from its three-storey arched roof to its marble-tiled front entrance [DAY 3]. And while snakes and dromedaries are as synonymous with the Arab-speaking world as are beavers and moose with Canada, I would dare say that the quotidian ’Keshers likely do not “kiss” cobras in busker markets [DAY 1] or race each other, on camels, along beach fronts [DAY 2]. (For the record: This writer has never raced a moose.)

DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com 45

Travel *

includes water.) One member of each City Chase team is required to leap into a vat, mock-soak a dozen hides, then fish around in the opaque, oatmeal-y murk for a baggie-wrapped clue regarding the next ChasePoint. Standing off to the side in the shade, the tannery workers—who slave all day in temperatures that can max out at 38 degrees Celsius—kindly loan out their crotch-high wading boots and shoulder-length gloves. The contestants still get wet; amateurs! Nobody vomits—at least, not on my shift, which is to say that I only last long enough to watch two of them before I really need to take a walk. The tannery proves to be a brutal early moment in an otherwise light-hearted race. (Well, except for the goat incident [DAY 2]—but we don’t discuss the goat incident.*) This pungent stage is also one of those proverbial necessary evils in the world of suspense-generating programs: One pair of competitors must be eliminated here, less than 60 minutes into the 60-hour race. The shadow could not fall more unfortunately: Team Morocco loses out, for being last to arrive at the tannery because, get this, the duo ran to a different tannery, a mile away.

* For “The goat incident,” visit DRIVENmag.com/thegoatincident

As far as ‘fitting in’ goes, the first morning, greeting the 12 teams at the start line in the picturesque Jardins de la Manera, City Chase host and founder Nick Jelinek gets plenty local, arguably loco (entertainingly, too, of course—the man understands TV). Here is a photo op if ever there was one: 24 international athletes milling about, looking up, down and over their shoulders for some kind of sign, direction or clue—they’d been told, simply, that they’d know it when they saw it—barely noticing the ghutra- and thawb-garbed man approaching on a camel. “Assalamu alaykum,” the toothy rider shouts—Peace be upon you—then doffs the sunglasses, revealing himself to be an affable 30-something white marketing executive from Mississauga, Ont. (still toothy, mind). The crowd loves it; but they have to. The TV cameras love it, too; thumbs up from all the jockeys. I catch Jelinek’s eye; he smiles and shrugs. We’re definitely not in Canada anymore. Later, at a balcony café overlooking the world-famous Djemaa el Fna market square, where Hitchcock shot the public-assassination sequence in The Man Who Knew Too Much, Jelinek will tell me that he felt very self-conscious. Go figure.

“It’s reality television, but it’s very un-real,” he says. “It’s not exactly me up there, it’s a TV character using my body, my voice. It’s…strange.” He explains that City Chase’s goal is to “embrace the international environment,” and I can’t deny that, surprisingly, he does not sound like a sound bite or a sales pitch. Each of the competition’s 27 “ChasePoints,” he continues, has been meticulously planned with Moroccan government and tourism representatives, and every step has been taken to draw that fine, fine line between intentional goofiness and inadvertent bad taste in the act of attempted cultural immersion. He vibes sincerity. I buy him; he buys the drinks. We sip our beers—the privilege, undeserved, of the tourist in the Muslim city—and we mop our brows. It’s an honest sweat. Speaking of cultural immersion: ChasePoint 2, Tannery dar Dbagh Taleb [DAY 1]. There are countless tanneries across Morocco; they yield leather, one of the country’s biggest exports. What gets ‘imported’ are fresh animal hides, which require curing and softening via medieval techniques that involve large concrete vats filled thigh-high with putrid-smelling concoctions of excrement, urine and blood from animals and birds. (I exaggerate: The nauseating mix also

46 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

(They nonetheless almost took 11th place.) Still, the elimination astonishes every participant, as one of the Moroccans, Lahcen Ahansal, is a world-class ultra-marathoner, and the other, Hafida Hdoubane, is the country’s first female to qualify as a licensed guide for the nearby Atlas mountains. What happened to the ‘local advantage’? “We went to the best tannery in town, particularly for health standards,” Hdoubane later explains; Ahansal only smiles, waves and says, “Thank you.” The pair of them covered two miles across busy public streets in 10-or-so minutes; many of the other teams, complete strangers to the city, took almost as long to cover the actual distance from start to ChasePoint: 500-odd feet. Team Morocco bows out, disappointed, but polite. Definitely not winded. The winds of whimsy will also adversely affect consistent race-leader Team Spain at ChasePoint 22, the Ourika river [DAY 3]—not a white-water setting, but still a rapid one, as it traverses the High Atlas range. Triathletes and overachievers by nature, Pablo Vega and Raoul Gomez will set out in their canoe clutching a clue whose meaning is a little lost in translation, which will get them a little lost in the process. (It’s worth noting that all clues are provided in English; while all

All event photos courtesy of City Chase

Travel *

teams do speak the language, still, it’s not exactly what the Brits call ‘sporting.’) Team Spain will paddle ferociously for over an hour before the City Chase organisers finally catch up in 4x4s, telling the pair that the exit point was just around the bend from the entry—a paddle of minutes, at most. Why did it take the ground crew so long to find the errant canoe? Every time the search radius was widened (“They couldn’t possibly have made it this far”), Pablo and Raoul were already long gone. Though I enjoy the journalist’s all-access status, I more often than not find myself, along with two photographers, from Italy and Spain, relegated to the sidelines by the TV crew and its concerns over angles, shadows and the like. Perhaps ironically, my original goal involved shadowing: I had hoped to follow arbitrary teams at arbitrary points—I am even kitted out in high-end, high-performance sportcasual clothing from Mountain Equipment Co-op, and I allow myself small doses of schadenfreude in observing that various crew members, and not a few competitors, could have better prepared for the hot, harsh day-to-day environment. During the race to the penultimate ChasePoint, a small mosque within the Médina, I manage to tag along with Team Canada, Nicki Rehn and James Dean (no, not that James Dean), sprinting through the busy, narrow labyrinth of pedestrian-exclusive alleyways and tunnels. As occurs at many a stage, the competitors are forced to stop people on the street and beg for directions, sometimes phonetically. Here, an urchin worthy of Dickens steps forward. Suddenly, the three of us are surrounded by a wild pack; the kids proceed to clear a path no foreigner would have spotted alone, and all of us start running, together, exhilarated. Like school’s out for summer. That said, these children are not students. In Marrakesh, the division of rich and poor is actually a chasm—there is no middle class, and the education system is drastically underdeveloped—but as we arrive at our destination and the horde of tatty boys and girls gestures in unison at the broken-down wall within which a ChasePoint lurks, Team Canada has

no coins to offer. (No team does: When they left the hotel two days ago, they were essentially ‘kidnapped’—it’s a long story—so they’ve been cashless and without a change of clothes the entire time.) The kids somehow understand; not one hand is held out. It’s a Capra moment. I look behind me: The kids are gone. No cameras, either. Magic. In the end, Team Singapore wins the competition. As it happens, there is another mix up—the final clue involves Club Med, and two different places would qualify—but this has no bearing on the undisputed lead of the Singaporeans. Or rather, the Australians, because that’s the actual citizenship of Team Singapore; Cameron Richards and Greg Shand only live and work in Southeast Asia. It also bears noting that one member of Team Ireland is American, and both members of Team Hong Kong are French. Our host’s ideal of an “international environment” proves more correct than even he suspected. Still, it’s no McLuhan-style global village. Given the Grand Prize—a stint volunteering overseas, for Right To Play International—‘global Scout troop’ would be more accurate. I mention this to Jelinek. “Perfect,” he says, smiling and staring, past me, at a trampled ribbon that was once a finish line. “That’s perfect.”

Back on day two: Long before sunrise and longer before the game recommences, contestants and crew assemble atop a centuries-old battlement in the coastal town of Essaouira—a UNESCO World Heritage Site for which the word “postcard” surely must have been created. Fortified, Atlantic-facing, cannon-lined (I count over 50 in this strip alone), absolutely deserted: These walls have removed us from our day and age. I scan the horizon for attacking ships; all clear. ChasePoint 10 is a race to not so much ‘capture’ the flag as simply find it. Teams leave every five minutes from the same starting spot; a flag can be spotted countless roof-towers away, and many winding streets and stairwells will have to be negotiated to get to it…at which point another flag will be discernible, at another tricky distance. Repeat, sprint. By the time this stage is completed, the sun will be up, the streets will be bustling and we will all be back in modern times. By way of pinching myself, I’ll drink a Coke. But before that first flag is hoisted, before that sun rises, before that sky lightens, I visit an Essaouira in which no modern Essaouiran resides, or likely has cause to recall. I will never forget this moment. City Chase was no way to see Morocco. I wouldn’t change a thing. D The 4th annual City Chase World Championships will be convened in December 2009, in Salta, Argentina; for further information, visit: CityChase.com

DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com 47

>> (&'& LEBAIM7=;D =EB< =J? JKH8E9>7HC;H By Mark Hacking Saint-Tropez, France—No matter what happens with alternative-powered vehicles in the future, the world will always need a Volkswagen Golf GTI. Reason being, this little hatchback has spent over three decades striking right to the heart of what makes slipping behind the wheel such a positive experience: It’s inexpensive to buy, inexpensive to operate and fun to drive. In the automotive world, that’s the very definition of a triple threat. This fall, the sixth-generation GTI (dubbed Mk6) makes its North American debut and, a half-year in advance of this hotly-anticipated happening, the European version of the car was made available for testing in the south of France. While the vehicles we drove were slightly different from those set to hit showroom floors over here, the data gathered ultimately proved relevant nonetheless. As with the previous version, the new Golf GTI is powered by the turbocharged 2.0-litre 4-cylinder engine that features prominently in many Volkswagen

products. It’s an extremely useful powerplant that combines V6 levels of horsepower and torque with the fuel efficiency of an economy car—if you can resist the urge to pin the throttle at all times. The Euro GTI tested cranks out 210 horsepower and 207 lb-ft of torque; more impressively, maximum torque is available from 1700 to 5200 rpm, meaning that the hatchback accelerates smartly without delay while waiting for the turbo to kick in. Fun? You bet. The manufacturer estimates that this Golf will hit 100 km/h in just 6.9 seconds when paired with the redoubtable DSG dual-clutch automatic, 7.2 seconds with the 6-speed manual. The Canadian version of the 2.0-litre turbo will have about 10 fewer horsepower, so acceleration numbers will no doubt be a few fractions slower as well. On the plus side, fuel costs should be reasonable: Economy ranges from 6.6 L/100 km highway to 10 L/100 km city. (The GTI, however, does require premium unleaded.) Apart from the engine, the other significant difference between the European and North American versions of the car is an advanced electronic front differential locking system called XDS—it’s available in Europe, not here. The idea behind XDS is to offset the traditional weaknesses of a front-wheel drive car; namely, front wheels that spin too much under

acceleration and don’t grip the road enough when cornering at speed. Ripping around the winding roads of the Côte d’Azur, the system delivered as advertised and the Euro-spec GTI generated a surprising amount of grip under extreme duress. Sure, the inside front wheels protested at times, but the XDS easily kept the car balanced on the knife edge. The steering response was precise, feedback was decent and it was easy to tell when the car had reached its limits. The VW headed for our shores will have a sporty suspension system, a less-sophisticated electronic differential called EDS, and standard traction control that cannot be completely turned off even when that switch with the fishtailing car graphic is activated. So, my guess would be that our new GTI will be a small step above the current-generation car, already an above-average handler with plenty of feel-good factor baked right in. As in other markets, the North American GTI will come in three- and five-door body styles, both versions benefitting from a slightly redesigned look. The traditional red horizontal bars and honeycomb mesh still define the front grille, but that grille is narrower and more aggressive. Same applies to the front headlight cluster: all squinty and purposeful. At the back,

48 DRIVEN September 2009 * DRIVENmag.com

00 driven28_Sept_AUTO.indd 48

8/14/09 11:18:01 AM

Automotive *

Ripping around the winding roads of the Côte d’Azur, the VW Golf GTI generated surprising grip under extreme duress more rectangular tail lights, a sculpted rear diffuser and dual chrome exhaust pipes tell the story. Inside, the interior sees a return to the sportier and more upscale feel of the fourth-gen model (Mk5 was criticized for its relative lack of quality). Fans of the GTI will recognize the familiar tartan cloth seats and red stitching, while a racy flat-bottomed steering wheel has been added to the mix. DSG models receive metallic paddle shifters mounted just behind the steering wheel; manual versions come with a sporty floor-mounted shifter. Although many of the surfaces are black plastic, the interior nevertheless effects a real quality feel. There will be two trim levels available for the GTI three-door, three trim levels for the five-door. Options available will include a 300-watt DynAudio sound system (part of a technology package), an upgraded navigation system with an iPod plug-in and, of course, the DSG transmission. While there are a number of very capable, frontwheel-drive “hot hatches” to choose from, the 2010 Volkswagen Golf GTI continues to make a strong case as one of the leaders of this sub-segment. Not only that: Despite all the improvements for the Mk6, it will carry a sticker price nearly the same as that of the previous version (just under $28,000). In other words: more bang, same buck.*

DRIVEN September 2009 * DRIVENmag.com 49

00 driven28_Sept_AUTO.indd 49

8/14/09 11:18:45 AM

Automotive *

>> (&'& C;H9;:;I#8;DP I *&& >O8H?: ;D=?D; E< 9>7D=; By Mark Hacking Stuttgart, Germany—The new S-Class executive sedan from Mercedes-Benz is available with no fewer than eight different engines. But only one of these variations—an innovative hybrid powertrain—has the potential to trigger a revolution. The S 400 is significant for a number of powerful reasons: It’s the very first production hybrid to be offered by Mercedes-Benz; it’s leading a charge of similarly-powered cars and SUVs from every major German manufacturer; and it’s the first production hybrid to employ a lithium-ion battery. The S-Class also happens to be the global sales leader in the executive class segment, moving some 270,000 units since 2005 alone. It stands to reason, then, that when some of these current S-Class owners decide on their next ride, a brand-new S 400 Hybrid will represent a compelling proposition. To help with this transition, Mercedes has designed a hybrid that is virtually indistinguishable from its gasoline-powered brethren, apart from some discrete badging. No weighty battery packs in the

trunk. No loss of luggage space. No bold graphics on the quarter panels. No visual treatments of falling leaves, crystal-clear streams or blue skies anywhere in the instrument panel. Given that the S-Class buyer is, more likely than not, a conservative-leaning business executive, this is the perfect pitch. On the engineering side, the S 400 Hybrid is also difficult to differentiate from a standard V8-powered S-Class. Under the hood is a 3.5-litre V6 gasoline engine linked to an electric motor; the combined output of the two is 295 hp and 284 lb-ft of torque. This is sufficient to get the large sedan moving along smartly, with 100 km/h appearing from a standing start in a shade over seven seconds. Under power, the S 400 is smooth, self-assured and astonishingly quiet. While the car cannot run on electric power alone—that trick is reserved for full hybrids, while the Mercedes is a mild hybrid—the inherent quality of the materials used for the S-Class means the passenger cabin is almost completely isolated from any noise deriving from the engine compartment, the road or the outside world. The genius of the S 400 isn’t that it’s a hybrid. Or that both engines shut down automatically at speeds under 15 km/h. Or that the car recoups kinetic energy during braking and deceleration. All of these features

50 DRIVEN September 2009 * DRIVENmag.com

00 driven28_Sept_AUTO.indd 50

8/14/09 10:59:43 AM

Automotive *

The Mercedes S 400’s hybrid system has won a handful of awards, one named for the founder of rival company Porsche are integral aspects of every production hybrid on the road today. No, the innovation driving this system comes down to three factors: incredibly compact packaging, optimal positioning within the car’s overall architecture, and the use of a lithium-ion battery. Whereas most hybrids lug around a heavy nickel/ metal hydride battery pack, the S 400 manages quite nicely with a lithium-ion number that’s about the same size as a conventional car battery. In addition,

like a conventional car battery, the hybrid’s resides under the hood, positioned in between the V6 and a 7-speed automatic transmission that’s fine-tuned to optimize the unique power delivery characteristics of the two engines. Lithium-ion batteries have become the standard for portable computers and music players because they’re smaller, lighter and more efficient than all other sources of power. Recently enough, so-called

experts proclaimed that lithium-ion batteries could not be used in cars because of questionable reliability and high cost. Mercedes seems to have cracked the code. Example: The car’s air-conditioning system has been rigged to redirect cool air onto a battery that is notorious for its high operating temperatures. Here’s further evidence: The S 400 hybrid system has already won a handful of awards, including one named in honour of Professor Ferdinand Porsche, the engineer and founder of the rival company—as strong an endorsement as you’ll find amongst the hyper-competitive German automaker set. Mercedes estimates that the car will achieve fuel efficiency in the range of 7.9 L/100km, a figure that would make it the most economical executive sedan in the world, bettering even the hybrid Lexus LS 600h. Certainly, with its tall gearing and relaxed nature, the S 400 comes across as being the perfect car for loping around the countryside. The S-Class and its predecessors have been luxury and technology leaders for Mercedes-Benz since 1954. Some fifty-five years later, the song remains the same. The 2010 version has loads of gadgetry, including a night-vision camera that detects pedestrians on the road ahead, a warning system for when the car suspects the driver is losing focus, and brakes that automatically deploy in an unavoidable accident. On the luxury side of the ledger, the Mercedes is armed to the grille with amenities such as massaging front seats, the choice of five different types of wood for the interior trim, and a split-screen centre console monitor for driver and co-driver. But of all the features found on the MercedesBenz S 400 Hybrid, the most important one is tucked under the hood and advertised on the trunk lid.*

DRIVEN September 2009 * DRIVENmag.com 51

00 driven28_Sept_AUTO.indd 51

8/14/09 11:03:43 AM

Automotive *

>> (&'& 9>;LHEB;J 97C7HE II

CEL?DÉ CKI9B; By Mark Hacking Elsewhere in this issue, you can read about a hybrid executive sedan and a sporty little hatchback—cars that have more than a passing regard for environmental issues such as fuel consumption and the creation of greenhouse gases. Here, we have the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS, a classic example of adrenalinefuelled American iron re-imagined for the 21st century. It’s also the car that’s been saddled with the task of saving an entire automotive conglomerate. Although a single product can resurrect a company (the original Apple iMac comes to mind) or even send a company into the stratosphere (the iPhone), this is a lot of weight to bear. Can the Camaro save General Motors? Not sure—but I do

know that if the SS had been released years ago, GM would be in better shape than it is today. Here’s why: Like its revamped ponycar rivals the Ford Mustang and the Dodge Challenger, the Camaro SS is in many ways the perfect vehicle for the perfect demographic. If you dreamed of owning an original Camaro while growing up in the late-1960s or early ’70s, the 2010 ‘comeback special’ will be just the ticket (to ride). Although the new Camaro isn’t a carbon-copy of the original in terms of design or engineering, it hits all the right notes in evoking its predecessor. The exterior is remarkably cool—the design is so proportionally correct, it’s surprising that it cleared the approval process intact. Inside, there are similar retro-inspired touches such as the “track pack” of four gauges mounted in front of the shifter and the chunky three-spoke steering wheel. Mechanically, the SS offers just what the enthusiast would expect from a modern pony car: a honking big V8 engine (displacing 6.0 litres) with ample horsepower (426, to be precise) and all the subtlety of a supercharged sledgehammer. But there are surprises as well—such as the (very European)

fully independent suspension system and the (even more European) brake calipers from Italian supplier Brembo. All told, the elements that make up the new Camaro are an inspired mix of the traditional and the cutting edge—and all of this for just over $40K. On the open road, the Camaro SS driving experience is as one would expect from a modern muscle car. The V8 rumbles loudly, the car takes off with tire-shredding confidence and the 6-speed manual transmission has that laid-back feel to it—a long clutch pedal that feels like you’re kicking a field goal and a long-throw shifter that gives you time to rethink how much throttle to apply. If the idea of owning an honest-to-goodness American pony car (built in the GM plant in Oshawa, no less) tickles your fancy, then this one will have you doing backflips. Perhaps cars such as the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS aren’t long for this world. After all, we live in an age where smaller engines and more practical forms of transportation are, little by little, edging others out of the spotlight. But people have fond memories of the original Camaro—and this version is even more worthy of that level of sentiment.*

52 DRIVEN September 2009 * DRIVENmag.com

00 driven28_Sept_AUTO.indd 52

8/13/09 10:28:48 PM

Montparnasse over manhattan with a brief stop in brooklyn

The Montparnasse neighbourhood of 1930s Paris was home to intellectual and creative titans such as Coco Chanel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Piaf, Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp—the cultural elite of the age. Today, there is a valid argument that New York City fulfills this role, even if its artistes nouveaux aren’t quite as starving. Herein: Six creators from various disciplines who are shaping modern culture even as you read this.

Artists wear Lacoste from the Fall/Winter ’09 Collection, inspired in part by Annie Hall Photography by Todd Selby Styled by Luke Langsdale Concept & Art Direction by Kelly Kirkpatrick Produced by Eric Grant 54 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

Photo by Tktktk tktk

David Droga

Founder/Creative Chairman, droga5

With no fewer than 50 awards to his name, native Australian David Droga has made the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival his personal stomping ground. A former executive creative director for top agencies in Sydney, Singapore and London, Droga launched droga5, his â&#x20AC;&#x153;branded ideas and entertainment laboratory,â&#x20AC;? in New York in 2006; it is now the fastest-growing independent agency in America. Clients include Puma, UNICEF, Ecko, Steinlager and Adidas. Photographed in His Apartment, Lower East Side

Cecilia dean (left) Editor, Visionaire magazine

Produced three times per year, Visionaire is a magazine in name only. Co-founder Cecilia Dean enlists artists who are both established and emerging, from all forms of creative expression, to challenge preconceived notions of what a magazine should and even can be. The result: a multi-media collection of fashion, art and music. (As John Peel said of post-punk band The Fall: Always different, always the same.) Consider the current one-ofa-kind issue, Visionaire 56/Solar, which uses cutting-edge printing technology to create a magazine whose photographs appear black-and-white when examined by interior light, and colour when scrutinized under sunlight. Photographed in the Visionaire Gallery, Soho

DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com 55

Randy Stulberg Filmmaker

Randy Stulberg co-created the multiple award-winning documentary Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa (2007), an embedded study of a community of eco-pioneers, runaways, war veterans and other societal misfits struggling to survive in the New Mexico desert. Her newest film project, a non-doc short called Nowhere Girls, made its well-received debut this spring at the Newport Beach Film Festival.

Eben D’Amico Musician

The lead guitarist of alt.rock band Lissy Trullie, Eben D’Amico brings the six-string edge to debut EP Self-Taught Learner, released last February; album closer “Ready for the Floor” (a Hot Chip cover) is being used in the upcoming Megan Fox horror film, Jennifer’s Body. The former bass player for Saves the Day, D’Amico himself was “saved” this summer, after he and the band were quarantined in a German hotel, mid-tour, due to the infamous swine flu. Photographed in Their Apartment, Columbia St. Waterfront District

56 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

Erik Sanko + Jessica Grindstaff Musician/Visual Artist + Painter/Visual Artist

A husband-and-wife creative team, Erik Sanko and Jessica Grindstaff have collaborated on a number of acclaimed projects, including a widely celebrated marionette play based on Lemony Snicket’s The Fortune Teller. Best known as a painter and diorama creator, Grindstaff has branched out

into art direction and set decoration. Sanko’s haunting music and worldweary puppet designs have been described by The New York Times as “Victorian ghastly.” Photographed in Their Apartment, Meatpacking District DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com 57

Steven Powers (a.k.a. ESPO) Artist

A former graffiti artist operating under the nom de guerre of ESPO (Exterior Surface Painting Outreach), Steven Powers has lately embraced more “legal” forms of expression. He’s the author of a graphic novel and a book on graffiti’s history, as well as a Fulbright scholarship winner—the purse was used to create murals in Dublin and Belfast with area teenagers. He has also designed clothing for Calvin Klein, Ecko and Nike. Photographed in His Studio, Tribeca

58 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir (a.k.a. Shoplifter) Hair Sculptress

Icelandic artist Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir was in her late teens when she first encountered—and was transfixed by—a Victorian memory flower: a handmade blossom whose tiny petals are made from a deceased person’s hair. She went on to weave a career from the use of hair in art. Her diverse body of work explores themes of vanity, beauty and self-image, most recently in a 2008 MoMa installation entitled Aimez vous avec fervour (When you love, do so with zeal). Photographed with Her Family in Their Apartment, Chinatown

DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com 59

Buyer’s Market

Soar Winners (Pages 20-21) Special thanks to the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, Canada, for providing a location for this photoshoot. Visit warmuseum.ca

bag, both from a selection at Klaxon Howl (647.436.6628). RCAF detailed brown duffle by Red Canoe available from nationalheritagebrands.com.

Page 20: #1 - Reproduction A1 flight jacket in capeskin leather by Eastman Leather available at eastmanleather.com. WWI-vintage flight helmet and WWI-vintage cavalry jodhpurs, both from a selection at Klaxon Howl (647.436.6628). RAF Tartan scarf by Red Canoe available from nationalheritagebrands.com. Belt by Hugo Boss available at Holt Renfrew (holtrenfrew.com). Vintage riding boots, stylist’s own. #2 - WWII-vintage A2 flight jacket from a selection at Klaxon Howl (647.436.6628). Shirt by Helmut Lang available at Holt Renfrew (holtrenfrew.com). Slacks by Brioni available at Holt Renfrew (holtrenfrew.com). Vintage military boots and green WWII-vintage flight

Page 21: #3 - Replica A2 flight jacket with detailing by Philip Smiley, stylist’s own. Jeans by APC available at Holt Renfrew (holtrenfrew.com). Bag by Brunello Cucinelli available at Holt Renfrew (holtrenfrew.com). #4 - Replica A2 flight jacket with detailing by Philip Smiley, stylist’s own. Shirt from a selection at Acme (416.599.4220). Vintage Polo Ralph Lauren tie, stylist’s own. WWII vintage survival vest, from a selection at Klaxon Howl (647.436.6628). Jeans by Nom de Guerre available at Nomad (416.682.1107). #5 - Reproduction RCAF flight jacket by Red Canoe available from nationalheritagebrands.com. Cashmere scarf by Brunello Cucinelli available

at Holt Renfrew (holtrenfrew.com). Jeans by Klaxon Howl (647.436.6628). Shoes by Vans available from vans.com. COULEURs DU BOIS (Pages 40-44) Page 40: Pre-WWI-vintage cavalry boots, stylist’s own. Vintage wool trousers, stylist’s own. Filson black single-strap bag with buckle, available at Nomad (416.682.1107). Grey suede jacket by John Varvatos available at Holt Renfrew (holtrenfrew.com). Rick Owens charcoal grey dress available at Holt Renfrew (holtrenfrew.com). Page 41: White slip dress by Lundström available at Holt Renfrew (holtrenfrew.com). Fur coat and brown waxed-cotton pants, both by Philip Sparks, available from philipsparks.com. Page 42: White slip dress by Lundström available at Holt Renfrew (holtrenfrew.com). Plaid grand-

dad shirt and shawl-neck hunting coat, both by Folk available from folkclothing.com. Philip Sparks waxed-cotton jodhpurs available from philipsparks.com. Vintage leather oxfords from a selection at Klaxon Howl (647.436.6628). Page 43: Blanket, trapper’s coat and sash, all by Philip Sparks available from philipsparks.com. New Standard Jeans by APC available at Nomad (416.682.1107). Irish Setter boots by Red Wing available at Getoutside (getoutsideshoes.com). Page 44: Jacket and plaid pants, both by Philip Sparks available from philipsparks.com. White shirt by Eton available from etonshirts.com. Grey cashmere vest by Brunello Cucinelli available at Holt Renfrew (holtrenfrew.com). Black dress by If Six Was Nine available at Holt Renfrew (holtrenfrew.com).

Special thanks to Lacoste for granting DRIVEN exclusive access to the Fall/Winter 2009 collection, which resulted in the photo essay “Montparnasse over Manhattan” (pages 54-59). For Lacoste boutique locations and details regarding the entire season’s collection, visit lacoste.com

60 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

Photos of Steven Powers and David Droga by Todd Selby

“DIXIE UNDYING” BY TIM JOHSON, CONTINUED FROM p39 the Republicans, is linked with a desire to perpetuate a traditional racial order and division. Without doubt, overt prejudice still exists amongst many Southern whites. Thompson encountered this in the course of conducting her interviews. “I had one woman who, before we had even started, said something along the lines of, ‘I’ll tell you right now that I’m a bigot.’ I hadn’t even said anything about race.” It’s interesting to note that surveys show that African Americans in the region proclaim Southern identity at rates that often outstrip whites, although being a black Southerner is a much different thing. Many in the black community intertwine their Southernness with a larger racial identity—one that is understandably free of pre-war romanticism, and is in point of fact often directly linked with the Bad Old Days. “When African Americans express pride in Southern identity, it tends to come from the idea that this was where a lot of racial oppression was overcome,” says Thompson. “There was a lot of pain and suffering here, but it’s also a place of triumph.” The question that remains is what would traditionally be known as the ‘elephant in the room’ (though in this case the animal, a political creature, is a donkey): Will the South ever come around and support President Obama? As always, it depends on which South you’re talking about. African Americans voted in record numbers, overwhelmingly Democrat; they will likely remain a bulwark. Others, including those who

continue to harbour prejudice, may be more reluctant to grant Obama any old-fashioned Southern courtesy. In Griffin’s opinion, the implications of the Obama phenomenon and the 2008 elections will be borne out by quality of government—the simple question of whether or not the man proves to be a good leader. “I think if he can make things ‘work’—in terms of the economy, jobs, foreign affairs—he’ll maintain the pragmatic support of most white moderates, in and out of the South.” And if he can’t? “He’s apt to lose that support.” Griffin likens the current American political climate to that of the late 1970s. “A very, very small majority, something like 50.1 per cent of the white South, voted for [Georgia native] Jimmy Carter in ’76 and defected in 1980 because he was an ineffectual president.” Noting that Carter’s initial victory came on the heels of tremendous social unrest—Watergate, Ford pardoning Nixon—he suggests an analogy to the Bush era and the current economic shakeup. The future may be riding on the results of 2012’s election. “We could see Virginia, Florida and North Carolina become solidly [Republican] red again. Maybe Georgia or Tennessee will peel off and become blue,” Griffin says. “The long-term significance just can’t be known yet.” Regardless of results from the recent election or the one coming three years down the line, Griffin sees hope as well as clear signs of a changing South in the simple fact that many of those driven north by racial injustice are now heading back to settle below the Mason-Dixon. Calling this trend “return in-migration,” he says that “it’s something that differentiates the postCivil Rights South from the

South that preceded it.” He adds that he has received numerous personal notes and emails from those already heading back home. “Increasingly, African Americans who left, or their kids, are coming back. And that signifies a consciousness of a very different South. It really is theirs: They fought for it. Now, they’re coming back to reclaim it.” Black or white, in-migrants will return to a South where attitudes are changing, even amongst small-town Carolina bankers. Toward the end of my conversation with the man at the plantation, I decided to pose a sticky question about the Confederate flag: What did it mean to him? In response, nodding and smiling, the man told me a story. He recalled being fresh out of high school and buying his first vehicle, a muscle car. Immediately, he affixed a rebel flag license plate to the grille. For him, he said, that flag was about Southern values like faith and family—not race. In fact, he claimed ignorance in the purest sense: He never realized at the time that his black coworkers might have been slighted, and they certainly never mentioned the offence to him. Today, the better part of two decades later, he understands the racial symbolism that cannot help but be wrapped up in that same Confederate banner. “I would never fly the flag now if I knew that it would offend anyone,” he said, his affable countenance suddenly earnest. “It’s just not that important.” D

“JENNIFER’S BODYGUARD” BY SEAN PLUMMER, CONTINUED FROM p36 Reitman’s wife, writer Michele Lee (who co-wrote his 2004 short, Consent), hails from Vancouver. He’s a big hockey fan but splits his loyalties evenly between the Vancouver Canucks and the Los Angeles Kings. “It would be presumptuous for me to say that I have a Canadian perspective, because I grew up in America,” he admits. “But I am the child of two Canadians, and I can’t help but think that that had a profound impact on my perspective on the world.” As to the decision to add producing to his already busy résumé, Reitman lays the blame on an insatiable desire to get good stories told, whether he’s behind the camera or not. “There’s only so many films you can direct,” he acknowledges. “It’s timeconsuming, and I don’t want to spread myself too thin.” Hence the decision to spread himself thin nonetheless, but within reason, of a sort. “I loved Diablo’s script [for Juno]; I really enjoyed working with her. When there was another opportunity to work on another movie with her, while I was directing my own film [Up in the Air]? I could not turn that down.” It’s this combination of ego and humility, ambition and self-deprecation, that makes Reitman a unique act. A classy one, too (even if he feels less comfortable in a suit than a grunge-throwback button-down). To say that he is an artist caught between worlds—arguably, between countries—is admittedly a simplified assessment. But it’s obvious, isn’t it? “I’m an ambitious guy, but I never presumed I’d end up with the career I have right

now,” he concludes. “I get to make the movies that I want to make, versus what I might be forced to make. Right now, I’m simply appreciative.” A politic-enough conclusion; a good-enough exit line. But he adds, his tone slightly confessional, “I never dreamt this big. So I just hope I can continue to make these kinds of movies for a long time. I don’t expect it to last forever, so as long as I’m given the chance, I’m going to make challenging movies that speak to me. And hopefully to the people who show up at that first weekend at the TIFF.” During the Vancouver interview, the question arises as to the expected challenges in marketing Jennifer’s Body—an R-rated horrorcomedy from the makers of that feel-good hit, Juno. Given the lad mag–friendly fanbase of Megan Fox, emphasizing the lady in the trailers and posters is an obvious strategy. The horror crowd would love to see a little blood. But the soccer moms who pushed Juno’s profit into the hundreds of millions can’t be pushed too far. “We’re figuring it all out now,” Reitman offers. “It’s tricky.” (The final poster becomes a compromise of all three approaches: Fox is posed coquettishly on a school desk, a corpse’s limp hand hangs out of said desk, and the phrase “From the Academy Award–Winning Writer of Juno” is emblazoned across the top.) But what does his gut tell him? He smiles mischievously. “Juno is an automatic connection, because Juno was a film that warmed your heart. “Jennifer’s Body,” he says, “is a film that wants to eat your heart.” D

DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com 61

Graphique *

62 DRIVEN September 2009 * drivenmag.com

By Michael Kupperman