The Red Bulletin April 2014 - US by Red Bull Media House

April 2014 $2.50

beyond the ordinary

summer jams

lorde

the ideal music festival

The rise of popâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new princess

water world

going deep with a freediver

G u e s t EDITOR

$2.50 US & Canada

has a new album And the world at h i s f e e t

04 April 14

phaRrell williams

THE CONVERSE CONS STAR PLAYER PLUS SNEAKER

CONVERSE.COM/CONS

the world of Red Bull

54 Daytona

A day—and a night—at the race-season opener, the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

takeover

The man to the immediate right of this sentence is perhaps known to most of you. You’ve all danced to his songs, watched his videos, and maybe even follow his hat’s Twitter account. On January 20, Pharrell Williams wheeled around downtown L.A. in sweltering weather on a BMX bike on our behalf, and then reclined in a giant rented RV and dropped knowledge on careers, women, and why he’s over success. Since he’s cool, we figured the things he likes are cool, so we decided to just devote a chunk of our magazine to them (p. 34). And then we added a bit more culture, like our dream music festival (p. 78), since festival season is upon us. Welcome to our Pharrellel Universe. We hope you like it. 04

“I built a career out of loving music.” Pharrell Williams, page 34

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april 2014

at a glance Bullevard 08 game on! Really, it’s OK if Mario is still your favorite video game character.

Features 24 Freediving

freediving

The risks of exploring the depths of the ocean on one breath.

French freediver Guillaume Néry reflects after the death of a fellow competitor.

34 Pharrell Williams

Is the multihyphenate entertainment mogul bad at anything? (No.)

48 Ryan Sandes

Going the distance—and then some— in South Africa.

54 Rolex 24 at Daytona

Behind the scenes at one of racing’s premier events.

62 Lorde

Despite it all, you know she really wants a tiger on a gold leash.

finlay mackay (cover), Marcelo Maragni, ian derry, kelvin trautman, Luis Vidales/Red Bull Content Pool, Getty Images, Scott Rinckenberger

Ryan sandes

The ultrarunner plots a harrowing adventure across a mountainous region of his native South Africa.

68 Chris Davenport

Daniel Ricciardo

The newest member of Red Bull Racing’s Formula One team shares his secrets to behind-the-wheel training.

lorde

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78 Dream Music Festival

From the lineup to the food, we create the perfect summer festival.

Action

68 Fresh off wins at the Grammys, the New Zealand pop princess starts a summer festival tour in America.

Tackling the many 13,000+ peaks in Colorado.

Chris Davenport

The veteran skier unveils his newest challenge: climbing Colorado’s 100 highest peaks—and skiing down.

84 85 86 87 88 90 92 94 96 98

travel Climbing rocks in Rio training Nothing but a G Force thing Nightlife Go big in Abu Dhabi My city Street artist LEBO on Miami enter now Wings for Life World Run music Bombay Bicycle Club games Infamous: Second Son buyer’s guide Summer preview save the Date Events to attend magic moment Skating on steel

Contributors WHO’S ON BOARD THIS ISSUE

THE RED BULLETIN USA (ISSN: 2308-586X) is published monthly by Red Bull Media House, North America, 1740 Stewart St., Santa Monica, CA 90404. Periodicals postage pending at Santa Monica, CA, and additional mailing offices. ATTENTION POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE RED BULLETIN, PO Box 1962, Williamsport, PA 17703. General Manager Wolfgang Winter Publisher Franz Renkin Editors-in-Chief Alexander Macheck, Robert Sperl Director of Publishing Nicholas Pavach

jazz kuschke

Finlay MacKay After shooting Shaun White and the Indiana Pacers the weeks before, the Scot was exhausted when he arrived in L.A. to shoot Pharrell Williams for our cover. Not that anyone noticed. The New York Times Magazine and GQ regular hustled the Grammy winner through several setups in an empty downtown. “Pharrell was easygoing and simple to shoot,” says MacKay. “The biggest challenge for me was the L.A. sun, as my pasty Glasgow skin burns very easily.” Story starts on p. 34.

Frédéric Pelatan The author of a book about rugby and articles about the wider world of sports, Pelatan dove deep into the life and times of Guillaume Néry, one of the world’s top proponents of freediving. The two Frenchmen conversed about the limits of human endurance and the notion of BASE jumping underwater. “Competition in freediving is important, but is secondary to the aesthetic: It has to be beautiful,” says Pelatan. Submerge yourself on p. 24.

Look in the passport of the writer and photographer, and you’ll find stamps from adventure-sports assignments in Indonesia, Angola, Malaysia, Réunion, Mozambique, and many more. You could say he’s seen it all, yet he found the scope of Ryan Sandes and Ryno Griesel’s Drakensberg Grand Traverse genuinely surprising. “This is next-level endurance stuff: less about breaking records than about weather, terrain, and altitude—all the variables of the Berg.” His story begins on p. 48.

U.S. Editor Andreas Tzortzis Deputy Editor Ann Donahue Copy Chief David Caplan Production Editors Nancy James, Marion Wildmann Managing Editor Daniel Kudernatsch Assistant Editors Ulrich Corazza, Werner Jessner, Ruth Morgan, Florian Obkircher, Arek Pia˛tek, Andreas Rottenschlager Contributing Editor Stefan Wagner Bullevard Georg Eckelsberger, Raffael Fritz, Sophie Haslinger, Marianne Minar, Boro Petric, Holger Potye, Martina Powell, Mara Simperler, Clemens Stachel, Manon Steiner, Lukas Wagner Creative Director Erik Turek Art Directors Kasimir Reimann, Miles English Design Martina de Carvalho-Hutter, Silvia Druml, Kevin Goll, Carita Najewitz, Esther Straganz Photo Director Fritz Schuster Photo Editors Susie Forman (Creative Photo Director), Rudi Übelhör (Deputy Photo Director), Marion Batty, Eva Kerschbaum Repro Managers Clemens Ragotzky (manager), Karsten Lehmann, Josef Mühlbacher Head of Production Michael Bergmeister Production Wolfgang Stecher (manager), Walter O. Sádaba, Christian Graf-Simpson (app) Finance Siegmar Hofstetter, Simone Mihalits Marketing & Country Management Stefan Ebner (manager), Elisabeth Salcher, Lukas Scharmbacher, Sara Varming Marketing Specialist Kevin Matas Distribution Klaus Pleninger, Peter Schiffer subscription price: 6 USD, 12 issues, www.getredbulletin.com, subscriptions@us.redbulletin.com Marketing Design Julia Schweikhardt, Peter Knethl

Ian Fohrman In love with snow since his dad first took him ski touring in his backpack, Fohrman hasn’t left the white stuff. For TRB, he turned his lens on ski mountaineer Chris Davenport and friends and their attempt to ski all 100 of Colorado’s highest peaks. “There’s not much better than traveling the often unexplored nooks and crannies of Colorado, camping at trailheads, and exploring the mountains every day with a positive, funny group of friends.” Hike up, drop in on p. 68.

“ The biggest challenge for me was the L.A. sun on my pasty skin.” finlay mackay

Advertising Dave Szych dave.szych@us.redbull.com

Advertising Placement Sabrina Schneider Printed by Brown Printing Company, 668 Gravel Pike, East Greenville, PA 18041, www.bpc.com

The Red Bulletin is published in Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Ireland, Kuwait, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S.A. Website www.redbulletin.com Head office Red Bull Media House GmbH, Oberst-Lepperdinger-Strasse 11-15, A-5071 Wals bei Salzburg, FN 297115i, Landesgericht Salzburg, ATU63611700 Mailing address PO Box 1962, Williamsport, PA 17703 U.S. office 1740 Stewart St., Santa Monica, CA 90404, (310) 393-4647 Austria office Heinrich-Collin-Strasse 1, A-1140 Vienna, +43 (1) 90221 28800. Subscriptions subscriptions@redbulletin.com. Basic subscription rate is $29.95 per year. Offer available in the U.S. and U.S. possessions only. The Red Bulletin is published 12 times a year. Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery of the first issue. For customer service customerservice@redbulletinservice.com Write to us: letters@redbulletin.com

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Reality 165 South La Brea Ave. Los Angeles California

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l e t ’ s p l ay

a celebration of video games

Don’t just see them, be them

Next-level acting

Now that Oscar nominees go virtual, is the gamemovie divide sealing shut? Is it just moonlighting or a glimpse into the future of acting? Juno and Inception star Ellen Page lent her talents to PS3 adventure Beyond: Two Souls, contributing body movements, facial expressions, and emotions to leading lady Jodie, in the same way actors are motioncaptured for movies. (Footage of the game was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival last year.) Willem Dafoe co-stars; together, their characters try to solve the riddle of life after death. The in-game action is typically Hollywood, as is the scandal: Pics from a hacked version of the game’s shower scene showed up online—without the TV-movie friendly steam.

A virtual Ellen Page in Beyond: Two Souls (main photo) after motion-capturing (inset) that mapped her body and facial expressions for her virtual doppelgänger.

ALL THE BEST

HAPPY BIRTHDAYS in GAMING Sentimentalists have good reason

to celebrate in 2014, with a bunch of anniversaries marking the debuts of influential, iconic software and hardware. NES This gray box became a hit in Japan in 1984; America followed a year later and the Nintendo Entertainment System brought video games into the world.

SEGA GENESIS It’s now 25 years since Sega wowed us with what was then a staggering 16-bit console and the world’s fastest blue hedgehog, Sonic.

Producer(13), The Kobal Collection

johannes lang

PLAYSTATION In 1994, the battle for supremacy between Nintendo and Sega became a three-way. Sony released the first PlayStation and left both in its wake.

Undead reckoning: Five Resident Evil movies have grossed $916 million worldwide.

THANK YOU, ZOMBIES ...

SIM CITY You build and run a city, and then, if you like, monsters destroy it? An idea that, 25 years ago, people said was crazy but has proved one of the most durable.

FIFA The first one didn’t even have a year: 20 years ago, FIFA International Soccer launched one of the most successful game series ever.

... FOR MILLA JOVOVICH. Every two years, the creatures from Resident Evil make a comeback. It’s a welcome sight, because no one hunts zombies as beautifully as Milla. It is no shock to learn that the movies’ most successful female action hero has been borrowed from a video game— what is surprising, as our picture shows, is that she’s offing the undead with what looks like an NES Zapper! Her sixth RE flick is planned for release next year.

GAME BOY It had a weak processor, a simple black-andwhite display and no backlight, and yet it was a global hit on launch in 1989. Nintendo’s greatest-ever product?

Tetris On June 6, 1984, in Moscow, Alexey Pajitnov finished a game the world is still playing: There have been hundreds of millions of downloads.

niNtendo DS When it appeared in 2004, the DS brought to mind old Game & Watch handhelds. To date, about 154 million have been sold, second only to PS2.

B U LLE VA R D

Go with the flow

WHAT SHOULD I PLAY NEXT? So many games, so little time. Choose your next one here: Are you the center of your world? Do you like to play from a first-person perspective?

Do you like shooting people?

Y Are you over 18 and capable of losing without insulting your opponent’s mother?

Team Fortress 2

Would you get annoyed if someone rampaged through your lovely kingdom?

N Y Call of Duty

Are you a strategic thinker and team player who likes to measure up against others?

Y Counter-Strike: GO, Battlefield

FIFA 14, NHL 14, NBA 2k14

Y N

Awesomen auts, Strife

Do you like sports, but actual running is a bit too much trouble?

Are you a world-builder who would like to create and rule your own kingdom?

Portal 2, Stanley Parable

Do you like to hit your opponent with weapons that seem realistic?

Would you like to give up the rest of your life and spend all night and all day playing games?

Starcraft 2, Supreme Commander

Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, Sim City 4

The Elder scrolls V: Skyrim

N Do you like to explore enormous game worlds in the hope of discovering new things?

Y N

DOTA 2, League of Legends

How an art professor and young hacker dad made Lego compatible with everything.

Interoperability: That’s what it’s called when things made by different manufacturers work with each other. Once an IT buzzword, it has now found its way into children’s toy boxes thanks to Golan Levin, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Levin and his colleague, the designer Shawn Sims, have invented the Free Universal Construction Kit (please don’t use the acronym), an arsenal of 3D-printermade connection parts for 10 popular toy construction sets, including Lego. “When my son was 4, he tried in vain to put together a car from K’Nex and Tinkertoy parts. That gave me the idea,” Levin explains. He and Sims then needed a name for the project, “and it took a whole pitcher of beer to come up with one.” They have made the plans for the connection parts freely available. “There are print-on-demand services where you can order them,” says Levin, “but it’s more fun to play around with a 3D printer yourself, and your child will enjoy it too.” thingiverse.com/uck/

HAVE YOU EVER TRIED LEAVING THE HOUSE?

MISSING LINKS

Courtesy F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab

Real-world gaming

“You can make them yourself on a 3D printer.”

B U L L E VA R D

Fred : 0

VS.

f red | chess |

MAN VS. MACHINE: WHO’S the BEST? LET THE BOARD GAMES BEGIN! GMR : 1

IBM’s Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997, the first time a computer beat a world chess champion. Now there are mobile-phone apps that would thrash Deep Blue and the greatest grandmasters. Checkmate, humans!

Fred : 1

| C hec k ers |

GMR : 2

In 2007, after 18 years of development and cracking checkers mathematically, a team of scientists at the University of Alberta unveiled Chinook, a program that will never lose against a human player.

Fred : 1

GMR | go |

GMR is Fred’s best friend, but never helps Fred with his math homework.

GMR : 1

This Asian strategy game has more moves than there are atoms in the universe. A human Go-master’s ability to assess territorial advantage at a glance lets him outfox the best computers. In your face, motherboard!

Fred : 2

| arimaa |

GMR : 2

Driven by Kasparov’s loss to Deep Blue, Omar Syed devised a strategy game his son could understand but a computer would find hard. After 10 years of human-CPU matchups, soft flesh still beats software.

play Again?

tom mackinger

Fred is GMR’s best friend, and eats cake over the keyboard to annoy him.

B U L L E VA R D

very revVy

bike to the future

Ubisoft/RedLynx

When sci-fi and sports collide, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always that guy who looks like a Daft Punk Power Ranger.

Thrown to the air Trials Fusion is an offshoot of Trials, the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best motocross game series. Gripping gameplay, futuristic feel, incredible visuals. Out later this year.

B U L L E VA R D

“ W h a t ’ s w r o n g with you, drama queen?” rihanna in B attleship

big screen

PIXEL PICTURES

WHEN GAMES BECOME MOVIES

Hollywood is fighting to keep its audience because they’re all at home playing games. Four of these five films really exist; one we’d like to shoot ourselves.

Nicolas Cage He was abandoned by everyone. But underestimating a man like him could be your last mistake

H O W D I D IT ha p p e n ?

A R E YOU F O R R E A L ?

W H E N WA S T H AT ?

Game maker Hasbro had already successfully transferred its Transformers to the big screen. So why not Battleship, too?

One of the most successful first-person shooters would surely work on the big screen. But watching it was like watching someone play Doom, badly, and not letting you have a turn.

$42 million budget in 1993 says: yes, very real indeed.

The first of two films appeared in theaters in 1995 and was in keeping with the spirit of the game. Fans enjoyed the aliens-versus-humans thing and the fight scenes were OK. The 1997 sequel was terrible.

H O W D I D i t H A PPE N ?

T H A N K YOU , 1 9 9 0 s !

WA IT. IS N ’ T T H AT …

W H AT ’ s T H E P L OT ?

...Rihanna? Ye s , i t i s . S h e’s g ot a great voice.

Director Andrzej Bartkowiak found the crux of the game— killing beasts in hell—too unrealistic. So his idea for the film was to kill monsters on Mars instead.

what ’ s t h e p l o t ?

W H O ’ S t h e s tar ?

The human race is threatened with extermination by technologically superior aliens. No hope of survival. How do you think it all turns out? what ’ s n e x t ?

Other Hasbro properties on the b i g s c r e e n : F u r b y, M y L i t t l e P o n y, Play-Doh.

The Rock.

Nine different screenwriters and an untried directing duo made one of the biggest cinema flops of the 1990s out of the 1980s’ favorite video game. W H O P L AYE D B O W SE R ?

D e n n i s H o p p e r, i n his most absurd role as a wicked blond lizard man.

WA S T H E R E A SE Q UE L ? W H AT H A PPE N E D nEXT ?

There were plans for D o o m 2 , t h e y s a y. B u t there were also plans for Doom to be successful first.

Mario, aka Bob Hoskins, went on to appear in Nixon, Spice World, and Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties. But Tom Hanks was happy: He wanted the part of Mario.

is it out yet? Cambodia, 1970. A lone U.S. soldier is clearing a minefield. All he has to help him is a cryptic map full of numerical codes.

Ta g l i n e

Just. One. More. Mine. W H O WA S D I R E C TI N G ?

Pa u l W. S . A n d e r s o n , who later gave us the Resident Evil screen adaptations. an o t h e r o n e ?

A fan-made web series has led to reboot talk.

Cast & Crew Director: Michael Bay Script: Charlie Kaufman The soldier: Nicolas Cage The captain: Tyrese Gibson The wife: Gemma Arterton The buddy: Peter Stormare Pl o t Tw i s t Our hero’s nerves fail him on the very last mine. There’s a white flash, an explosion, and Nic Cage wakes with a start. His face has aged 40 years. He’d fallen asleep at his desk.

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Corbis, picturedesk.com (2), The Kobal Collection(2), Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo

H O W D I D IT ha p p e n ?

JOIN US AND RUN FOR THOSE WHO CAN’T MAY 4TH

SUNRISE, FL 6:00 A.M. ET

SANTA CLARITA, CA 3:00 A.M. PT

WINGSFORLIFEWORLDRUN.COM

DENVER, CO 4:00 A.M. MT

BULLEVARD

1995

r ayman

1993

need for speed

1994

doom

1991

mortal kombat

1992

Lemmings

1989

The secret of monkey island

1990

prince of persia

1987

zak m c kr acken and the alien mindbenders

1988

megaman

1985

the legend of zelda

1986

super mario bros.

1983

tetris

1984

bomberman

1981

donkey kong

space invaders

PONG

1978

1982 ms. pac-man

1980 pac-man

1972

Space Invader 8x8 pixels: A legend born

Link Poor guy. Star of a series named after Princess Zelda

The prince with no name Though in the 2010 movie, he’s Dastan Bomberman Insurgent version of Pac-Man Pong First gaming hero is a thin rectangle

Guybrush Threepwood The wit tiest game star of all time

tom mackinger

Donkey Kong World went ape for a barrel of fun

Super Mario Here he is: “It’s-a me!”

BULLEVARD

2013 the last of us

2011

dishonored

2012

minecr aft

2009

red dead redemption

bioshock

2007

2010

league of legends

guild wars

2008

portal

2005

world of warcr aft

2003

2006 gears of war

2004

call of duty

2001

battlefield 1942

2002

halo: Combat Evolved

1999

the sims

2000

silent hill

1997

half-life

1998

dungeon keeper

tomb r aider

1996

Lara Croft Is it OK to have a crush on graphics? Chell Absolutely not your usual in-game babe Master Chief Helmeted harbinger of alien doom

Steve Back to the star t: A real hero made of pixels

Gordon Freeman The strongest, silent-est t ype; he never spoke

the lineup

video game legends

The men, women, and monkeys who made history.

1 up & up & up

B U L L E VA R D

Block party

Real-Life Tetris

Old into gold: Michael Johansson made The Move Overseas, an installation he presented at the last Beaufort04â&#x20AC;&#x201D;the triennial art expo in the Belgian town of Zeebruggeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;using second-hand household appliances and furniture he bought locally.

Michael Johansson

Get stacked: Michael Johansson has got to be Swedenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tidiest artist.

B ULLE VARD

g e a r

o h

d e a r

A quick look at game-gadget history tells us there’s a fine line between a white elephant and a white-hot tech triumph.

bingoal! bingoal!

get your game on

world cup BINGO

Don’t understand soccer? Don’t worry, here’s a way to keep yourself entertained during the upcoming World Cup. Listen for these key phrases … There’s a capacity crowd here tonight.

Schoolboy defending.

They’ve only come here to park the bus.

A good time to score.

Every game is a cup final now.

It was handbags, really.

The manager must have read them the riot act at halftime.

He had no right to score from there.

I’m not exaggerating —it could be 10-0.

It was easier to score.

I’m going to make a prediction— it could go either way.

He’s given 110 percent.

These two teams know each other inside out.

The first goal is going to make all the difference.

There are no easy games at this level.

What on Earth was he thinking?

No love lost between these two.

Surely the referee could see that.

This is a dangerous free-kick.

Stonewall penalty.

And it’s in the back of the net!

We’ve seen those given.

Time is slowly running out for them.

Absolutely unbelievable.

The referee is looking at his watch.

handy? meh Power glove In 1988, what was meant to be the future of controllers turned out to be ham-handed. Only two compatible games were made.

no wonder

Virtual Boy Nintendo (see above) promised us a 3D virtual world back in 1995. What we got were red flickering LEDs and headaches.

a reality? OCULUS Rift This time it’s for real: A virtual-reality gaming headset, financed by Kickstarter. Might we see them, at last, in 2014?

“ YOU ’ RE CHEC K I NG ME OUT , AREN ’ T YOU ? “

t h e s e

n o w

producer(5)

dietmar kainrath

d o w n l o a d

TOP ELEVEN Over 12 million wannabe managers can’t be wrong: The best mobile soccer game.

angry birds go! Your furious feathered friends in a kart-racing game with the expected, one-more-time pull.

B U L L E VA R D

2013 Sony Playstation 4 processor: Eight 64-bit processors, each with 1.6 GHz ram: 8 GB colors: Over a billion most successful game so far: Killzone: Shadow Fall

Na, Super!

Tot!

× 16

2005 Xbox 360 processor: 64-bit TriCore processor, each with 3.2 GHz ram: 512 MB colors: 16.7 million most successful game: Kinect Adventures

the number games

× 16

power lifting

2000

Each generation of game machines brings new tech: In 40 years we’ve gone from 64 bytes to 8 billion.

sony Playstation 2 processor: 64-bit with 294.9 MHz ram: 32 MB colors: 16.7 million most successful game: GTA: San Andreas

×8 1996 Nintendo 64 processor: 64-bit with 93.75 MHz ram: 4 MB colors: 32,000 onscreen most successful game: Super Mario 64

× 57 1989 Sega genesis processor: 16-bit with 7.61 MHz ram: 72 KB colors: 64 onscreen most successful game: Sonic the Hedgehog

× 36

1983 Nintendo Entertainment System processor: 8-bit with 1.66 MHz ram: 2 KB colors: 25 onscreen most successful game: Super Mario Bros.

× 32

Magnavox Odyssey processor: None (40 transistors) ram: None (but later 64 bytes) colors: Black and white most successful game: Table Tennis

sascha bierl

1972

Factor increase in RAM

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B U LL E VA R D

HIGH FIVE

Shoot to thrill

Captain America: The Winter Soldier directors Anthony and Joe Russo display fanboy pride in their favorite video games. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 influenced the action sequences in the Captain America sequel.

captain America The WInter Soldier OPENS APRIL 4

producer, getty images

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar “We spend hundreds of hours punching the keys on our Apple IIe traversing Brittania, repeating mantras and losing sleep.”

Gauntlet “ ’80s dungeon game. Back in the day, there was nothing better than 10 bucks in quarters, three of your best buddies, and an hour of Gauntlet.”

Dragons under the control of Daenerys “Dany” Targaryen

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Goldeneye 007 “Sleek and realistic, it ushered in the first-person shooter. Its splitscreen multiplayer mode is the reason we have Call of Duty and Battlefield.

Star Wars Battlefront “The game that finally allowed us to live our fantasy of existing in the Star Wars universe. Still our favorite shooter game of all time.”

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 “Its brilliant sound design, exceptional graphics and cinematic execution changed the way we looked at action in films.”

Q&A

MICHAEL PEñA

To play Cesar Chavez, the actor studied his gravitas—and guts. Michael Peña has made his name as a character actor in award-winning movies like American Hustle, Million Dollar Baby, and Crash, but he rarely gets to take the lead. That changes with the new biopic Cesar Chavez, the story of the National Farm Workers Association co-founder and civil rights activist. red bulletin: What was your first thought when you realized you’d be playing Cesar Chavez? MICHAEL PEñA: You can’t print it, but I was like, ‘‘Shit!” We can print that. It was actually the F word. I was like, “F*ck, how am I gonna do this?” How much did you know about Chavez before making the movie? My parents were farmers. They grew up in Mexico and came here illegally—they’re now legal. They were all for the American dream, and so I knew about Cesar Chavez. What was the most surprising thing you learned about him? In any drama I always try to put as much humor as I can into the performance. What kind of jokes does this guy tell? It leads me to understand the character better. I’d heard that [Chavez] was kind of a silly guy, which I thought was interesting. The role was a physical transformation. I gained more than 30 pounds for the role. Chavez didn’t look like a very physical man and [the director] Diego Luna was like, “I want you to look more like a pear, man.” I couldn’t wear a fat suit because it wouldn’t change the face, and [gaining weight] just does something for your body—even for the way you think. www.participantmedia.com Cesar Chavez opens March 28.

B Y T H E N U M B E R S : G A M E O F T H RO N E S

5,220,000 Viewers watched Season 3’s “Red Wedding” episode live

Emmy nominations for the first three seasons

$ 30,000 The price to buy a replica Iron Throne

10 Major characters killed off so far (and a whole lot of minor ones)

season 4 startS April 6 on HBO

1,040 Pages in the longest GOT book, A Dance with Dragons

DEEP

thinker The freediver who, on his journey to reach world-record depths, wants to expand his mind—and yours. Words: Frédéric Pelatan Photography: Ian Derry

“The most magical moment is when I escape gravity,” says freediver Guillaume Néry. “It is liberation. It is breaking loose.”

“ Our sport is enormously demanding from a physical point of view, but I don’t feel that it’s dangerous.” 26

FDR and the art of freediving: â&#x20AC;&#x153;My only fear is fear itself. Once it sets in, you lose your cool and serenity.â&#x20AC;?

As a child, NĂŠry dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Now he defies gravity in the other direction.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Aesthetics are important in freediving. What you do has to look good.â&#x20AC;?

G uillaume Néry is pushing and dragging a trolley stacked high with luggage down the corridors of Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport. His young daughter, Maï-Lou, hangs off his back like a little spider monkey. Alongside them is Julie Gautier, girlfriend, mother, filmmaker—and Néry’s confidante and freediving partner. The Néry clan is fleeing the French winter to spend the next four months in French Polynesia: Only a 25-hour journey separates them from paradise. Things have been going well recently for the family from a sports point of view, with the one-time world-record holder having improved one of his many French freediving records at the World Championships in Kalamata, Greece. 30

“ We have to fight hard for every meter. That’s the challenge, the fascination.”

Search “nery base” on YouTube to see Néry’s “BASE jump” dive into the world’s deepest underwater sinkhole in the Bahamas.

A single breath is all NĂŠry needs to dive to a depth of 410 feet.

But the 31-year-old Frenchman is broody and uncommunicative, as he has been for several weeks, ever since Nicholas Mevoli, a video producer and experienced freediver from New York, died while taking part in a competition organized by AIDA, freediving’s international governing body. In May 2013, Mevoli had become the first American freediver to pass the 328-foot mark in the Constant Weight category—diving down alongside a guide line but not touching it, while wearing fins. Four months later, he won the silver medal in the same category at the World Championships. But on November 17, 2013, in the Bahamas, while attempting a 236-foot Constant Weight without Fins dive, Mevoli reached his depth, began to resurface as planned, but then fell unconscious in the water. He was taken to a hospital, where he died of what was later said to be pulmonary edema: capillaries bursting under pressure and filling his lungs with blood.

“ I am completely calm during a dive. Everything around me becomes one.”

“The whole community is in shock,” Néry says. “Our sport is enormously demanding from a physical point of view, but I don’t feel it’s dangerous because we have to stick to all these safety procedures. Or should I say I never used to feel it was dangerous? Of course, now I wonder what to do. Does it make sense to carry on?” Does this mean that one of the world’s best freedivers now fears the deep? “My only fear is fear itself,” he says matter-offactly. “Once it sets in, you lose the cool and serenity you need as you fight for every extra meter. In fact, we have to fight so hard for every extra meter that we can never afford to tense up. That’s the challenge, the art, the fascinating thing.” A few years ago, in another part of the Bahamas, Néry himself got into trouble. “I dived down to a depth of 262 feet, doing the breaststroke. When I came back up, I couldn’t breathe, my whole body was tense, and I was spitting blood. It was more than five minutes before my breathing returned to normal.” Unlike Austrian freediver Herbert Nitsch, who suffered the consequences of a 2012 accident, or Loïc Leferme, who died in training in 2007, Néry has resisted the siren call of the deepest category of freediving, No Limits, in which aids can be used to dive down next to a guide line—usually a weighted “sled” on the way down and inflatable buoyancy aids on the ascent. The temptation to compete in this discipline has been strong for Néry, but his girlfriend has managed to dissuade him. “She was pretty unequivocal about it. She said, ‘It’s OK if you want to do it, but you have to know you’ll be doing it without me.’ ” Néry readily agreed with that ultimatum. His focus, in any case, goes beyond setting records. “Competing is fascinating, but it’s only scratching the surface. Aesthetics are the really important thing when it comes to freediving. Aesthetics are affirmation; what you do always has to look good.” For Néry, the attraction to the sport started as a child. “When I was a kid, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut and was constantly looking up at the sky. Then one day I saw a documentary about freediving legend Umberto Pelizzari. That was the first time I was confronted with a completely different world.” Néry and a friend would challenge each other on the school bus: First one to breathe loses. Back in his room after school, Néry would hold his breath for five minutes. He was 14 and hoping to discover faroff galaxies, but he would elude gravity by going down, not up. He’s now set on sharing that wonder with others. Following the online success of the short film Free Fall, which he and Gautier shot together, the duo’s latest short, Narcosis, is being shown at European film festivals. Gautier operates the camera, following Néry into the depths. “The most magical moment is when I escape gravity. It is liberation. It is breaking loose. I fly with my arms open. At those moments I am completely calm. Everything around me becomes one, and I become part of that whole.” guillaumenery.fr

Designer, musician, artist & producer Pharrell Williams is one thing above all: A master collaborator.

pharrell Whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in Japanese sculpture, or the smooth lines of a BMX street rider, the Grammywinning producerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unbridled curiosity finds inspiration everywhere. A few items from his current list are featured in the following pages of this, his Red Bulletin editorial takeover. 34

the red bulletin

But first, he talks about channeling that curiosity, what the music industry took years to understand, and what he hopes women will feel from his new album.

predicts

the future Words: Andreas Tzortzis Photography: Finlay MacKay

magic

I find the in trying to just blend different worlds together . and

mix it up

If your voice is like velvet and people are used to hearing you in things that music. would be conducive to a velvet voice, I would say letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s try

gravel

he man in that hat is as cool as you’d like; voice above a whisper but not much more, holding forth on the trouble with success, the absurdity of hit-making, on why people don’t feel anymore. Forty years on this earth, 23 of them creating the type of music that has soundtracked house parties, breathless and fumbling late nights, slow cruises through the neighborhood, and Pharrell Williams is still, remarkably, nailing it: Two global hits (“Get Lucky,” “Blurred Lines”) in 2013, which netted him four Grammys, including his second Producer of the Year award; another partystarter, “Happy,” showed up on the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack and won an Oscar nomination, as well as an award for the innovative 24-hour music video created for it. But then there’s also the hat, and what it reveals about the taste-making gene Williams possesses. Last seen in Malcolm McLaren and the World’s Famous Supreme Team’s “Buffalo Gals” video in 1982, it’s a Vivienne Westwood piece that first appeared on the shelves of the shop she and McLaren owned in London. Now tweeted, mocked, and memed the world over, it’s almost as if Williams planned it. Which he’ll assure you he didn’t, because nothing Williams does follows a plan so much as appears to him at the right moment, ready and willing to be birthed into success. That includes his new album, Girl, his first solo project in eight years, which comes out in May but will likely be firing our collective synapses far beyond that. the red bulletin: What are you looking for when an artist walks into your studio? pharrell williams: It is three things. It is, one, what they walk in saying they would like to do. It is also their energy that they just are naturally giving off. You know, whether it is a cab ride or it is an argument or something that they have on their mind. And then, third, it is the way that they actually sound and vocal tone. I always try to make sure that there is some interesting juxtaposition. So if your voice is like velvet and people are used to hearing you in things that would be conducive to a velvet voice, I would say let’s try gravel music, if that makes any sense. So there is some interesting alchemy there. And the magic is when you are able to marry those elements together. Like, “Man, I didn’t know peanut butter and chocolate could go together.” Yeah, it is called a Reese’s cup. But you would never know unless you try. So that is where I find the magic, in trying to just

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i n f o r m at i o n

Since I’m forever a student, I’m always looking for interesting people, places, and things. Feeding my curiosity is key. I love searching for new things that can change my perspective on how I see the world. If your brain isn’t constantly learning, you’re doing yourself a disservice. I’m a big believer in pushing yourself to explore new worlds that challenge what you perceive to be true. Take a look at some of my favorite inspirations right now.

Coarse False Friends 2010

Who doesn’t love toys? Whether you’re a child or a big kid like me, a great toy can instantly bring a smile to your face. This museum exhibit proves why designer toys are a new platform for fine art expression. It speaks to the kid in all of us.

They look like toy figures. They are the same size and made of the same material. Yet unlike G.I. Joe action figures, designer toys are not to be played with. They’re to be collected. They are the bridge between pop culture and high culture, between comic fans and art collectors. Designer toys are produced by reputable designers and artists in small, expensive batches, making them highly collectible in a very short space of time. So a 6-foot-tall Mickey Mouse skull-andcrossbones figure by American artist KAWS can fetch prices similar to that for a used car. The Design Exchange museum in Toronto is now giving these colorful plastic miniatures their first large exhibition.

This Is Not a Toy runs through May 19 and shows the origins of this culture dating back to the 1990s, from early “urban vinyl” works by Hong Kong designer Michael Lau to detailed miniatures by renowned artists such as Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara. For co-curator Pharrell Williams, who loaned a few pieces from his collection, the impact of the work can’t be denied. “It opened my eyes to other kinds of art. Artists like Murakami, Jeff Koons, KAWS ... even forms like architecture and design. It’s like a crazy portal, and the awareness of art and design has led to some of my best collaborations.” dx.org

florian obkircher

THIS IS NOT A TOY Design

If that is your main concern, being on top, then you probably should find another business.

Because our business works off of emotion.

blend different worlds together and mix it up. In pairing and trying, there seems to be no fear of failure whatsoever. Mmhmm. Do you fear failure at all? Because looking at your track record, you seem to be very consistent from success to success. What do you mean? The fear that maybe this shit isn’t working out. Maybe this track isn’t going to hit. Maybe that clothing line isn’t going to work. Do you think about it in those terms? Yeah, I don’t even understand that. My mind just can’t even process that. And it has always been like that? Yeah. When you love something, what are you scared of? I suppose you are scared of negative reaction. Well, if you are thinking about fame and success, yeah. But who … Well, if you’re on top, I guess the fear would be losing that, right? Losing that touch. Right. But if that is your main concern, being on top, then you probably should find another business. Because our business works off of emotion, and it is the red bulletin

not really easy to quantify it outside of what it is. It is like saying, “Well, are you afraid of how the ball is going to react to the ice hockey rink?” No, because that is not what it is meant for. The ball is for that world and the puck is for that world. Emotions are just emotions. So when a song works, you should just be thankful, because that is not why you do it. So any kind of success that I have ever had on a song is not my doing. So you don’t do it for that, because I can’t control that. I do it because I feel like it feels good and it may resonate with other people. So it is not really good to mix the idea of what success is and the purity of why you do something. Unless, define success. Big or huge? That means that after I have done what I did or anybody else that has made their contribution to something, success means the people voted, they requested, they shared it with a friend, they purchased it, they downloaded it. And they did it in large numbers. That is what success means. I have nothing to do with that. I can’t control it. I can only control what I do. When I was young, yeah, I looked at it differently, because I looked at a lot of people who quantified 39

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BANKS

Songstress

Delicate, all-encompassing choral singing begins. Then we have a gentle piano chord, some hissing beats, and an elegantly smoky, instantly captivating voice. Banks takes no prisoners. As soon as you hear the first few bars of her London EP, you know that this 25-year-old artist from Los Angeles is here to stay. Because her songs represent a long overdue link between warm, soulful R&B vocals and ice-cold electronic music. It is minimalistic, glittering, sexy. As if Lana Del Rey had spent a night in the recording studio with James Blake. Even though Banks only released her debut single a year ago, she can already count names like Pharrell Williams and Katy Perry as fans. Perry declared her love for her last fall over

Twitter—not a bad career boost considering Perry’s 50 million followers are tops on the social network. Jillian Banks—her full name—has been making music since the age of 15. What started it all off was a friend giving her a toy keyboard, which was supposed to help her get over her parents’ divorce, an aid to help her process her emotions. And it did. It worked as self-help for a long time,

BANKS TAKES NO PRISONERS. HER MUSIC IS MINIMALISTIC, GLITTERING, SEXY.

There’s another girl, Banks, who’s crazy. So good. She is something special. something she did just for her. “I could let everything out in my songs. Insults, secrets, aggression ... it was incredibly liberating,” she recalled to Billboard magazine. “And then I was hooked.” She only shared her music with the rest of the world once she had completed her psychology studies, uploading her song “Before I Ever Met You” to SoundCloud. Zane Lowe, the British radio DJ and influential opinion maker, discovered it there and played it on his BBC Radio 1 show. His advice was, “Listen up. Banks is gonna be the next big thing.” A self-fulfilling prophecy. Within months, Banks had a record deal in the bag, lingerie company Victoria’s Secret had used her song “Waiting Game” in its new advertising campaign, and in January, she placed among the top 5 in the BBC’s Sound of 2014 contest. The poll has been a reliable yardstick for new talent and in recent years has foretold the breakthrough of artists including Frank Ocean, Adele, and Florence and the Machine. Banks has now somewhat withdrawn from view in London to work on her debut album, which should appear in the course of the year. Working with her in the studio are flavor-of-the-month electronic producers Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Lil Silva, and Shlohmo, the latter working with her at the mixing desk on her latest single, “Brain.” She only hears all the fuss about her indirectly. Social networking isn’t her thing, she explains. She is happy to leave that to her management team. None of which means that she doesn’t care about her fans. She even published her private phone number on Facebook, adding: “If you ever want to talk, call me.” So have there ever been times when she has regretted being so open? “Not yet. Most people write really nice messages,” she told MTV. “What I like best are the text messages where people tell me my songs helped them when they were feeling lonely.” For those of you thinking you might want to reach out, go right ahead. Her number is (323) 362-2658. hernameisbanks.com

florian obkircher

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their happiness by how successful they were. And nobody wants to work really hard and not get recognized for it. You want to be appreciated for your work. But that is a fine line in appreciating your work and it doing super well and you getting hooked on that. If you get hooked on success, you are screwed. How did you manage to avoid that? Well, I have been doing it for a long time, and I realized the thing that always gives back to me is my curiosity for how I can find new chord progressions, new sounds. That is how I am rewarded, because I can’t control anything else. So when something is “successful,” that is what you guys always see me saying thank you for all of the time, or I put my hands together, because I want you to know that I know where it comes from, and point up. You know, we are vessels. We are straws. We are not the juice. And anyone that believes that, those are the people that end up, you know, losing their minds later on in life or not happy. I don’t have to be the juice. I don’t have to be the glass. I don’t have to be the coldest part of the whole entire thing, which is the ice. You could be that. I am just happy to be a part of it. You are the facilitator? I am a part of it. I am a participant. The minute that you claim you are a facilitator, well then you are the all-powering. And are you? If everybody that made a song gained that kind of power, then I mean, what would this world look like? That is why everything is fair, right? We all play a part in it. It is like an ant farm or a beehive. Everyone has their job. My job is to just listen and sort of try to channel it through, but it is coming from somewhere else, hence the term channel. So I am thankful when songs become what they do, because it is not my doing. There are some producers out there who think it’s possible to manufacture hits; that a chord progression, that a certain hook sung by someone, will guarantee success. Sure. You don’t subscribe to that at all? Well, not unless you want to get in the rat race and compete with everybody else and hope that your

juice

I don’t have to be the . I don’t have to be the glass. I don’t have to be the coldest part of the whole entire thing, which is . You could be that. I am the just happy to be a part of it.

ice

the red bulletin

song makes it to the top when it sounds just like everything else. Then yeah, but I like the different stuff anyways. And you know what? I am not the only one. There are so many people that love different things. That is why I like the concept of a phone, you know— connectivity is a huge part of it, too. But where the device companies are really smart, they realize people wanted to customize things, because individuality is everything. Your house smells like what you want it to smell like. It has been customized by you. Can you imagine where you wake up where there are only three furniture layouts for everyone’s home in the world? Yeah, it is funny; music is kind of like the only place where there are people that believe that delusion, that there is a formula. I guess you can lump Hollywood into that as well. Yeah, but there are festivals that celebrate indie filmmaking that don’t celebrate indie music, not with the type of visibility that they do in the film world. And film also has the advantage of playing with two senses, whereas music is just auditory. That is why the business of music has had such a slump, because they always thought it was in the song first. But you know, as the paradigm is shifting, everybody is starting to realize that kids want a visual. That is why YouTube gets more audience than any radio station collectively. But you always thought visually. Yeah, but most musicians are the same way. I am no different. Hence the term the blues. You interviewed Spike Lee and talked about the importance of using “Fight the Power” as the main anthem in Do the Right Thing. How can songs contribute to the feeling that you get from film? Well, film gives you two different senses. It is curated. With music, some of it is left to your imagination, what you want to picture in your mind. With a film there is a curated direction by the point of view of the director and the music that is under it. So those two are working in concert to sort of take you to a place that the director has intended. So film sort of has the jump on it, but I think the music industry is catching up, because all of the indie artists are just like, “I don’t want to leave it up to your interpretation of what I am feeling when I make this song. I would like to show you.” So you are watching all of the indie kids make the best music, because they are thinking about music 3D, the way it has always been intended. Is there an album or artist that you think is doing it particularly well? Well, you know what? Even on a big popular level there are some artists that have figured it out. Look at Beyoncé. Her visuals were so strong that the only marketing she did was either tweeted or she put something on Instagram. I am not exactly sure of the method that she chose, but she just dropped the whole thing. She just put out a bunch of videos and her songs and was like, “Here. It is my art.” No gimmicks, no 41

Everybody is starting to realize that kids want a visual. That is why YouTube gets more audience than any radio station collectively.

campaign. And it has really honestly caused the record industry to sort of take notice—well, the smart ones—because there are still cocky ones that are like, “Oh, well that is Beyoncé.” But those are the old guys. The ageless ones are the ones who are just thinking forward and they realize that he who occupies the majority of your senses with something that is irrefutable wins. Did you struggle with the structure of the record industry when you started? I was a child. I had no idea what was going on. All I knew is what drove me then is what continues to drive me now: music that I am like, “Whoa, that feels amazing.” I just love the feeling of great chord structures and great melody and lyrics that just touch you, you know? You’ve got a new album now, the first solo one in quite some time. Why was it time to do it now? I didn’t know it was time. I never know anything. That is part of just being open. When things are too predetermined, I have never really had success with that. “It is going to be this, this, this, this and this.” That is all ego. And that is all you sort of rely on, because your ego is basically you have your experiences and then you have your memories of your experiences. And the way in which your mind, as a librarian, goes back to refer to this information is where your ego, where you can sort of measure or quantify what your ego is. “Well, I know such and such and such and such, so therefore …” Have you ever heard that phrase, “God laughs at our plans”? And that is why. Because when you think you know, you can be blindsided by something that is completely left of center and just change your whole shit. I have learned—I am 40 now—so I have learned to not do that. I have learned to just be open and just experience things. And when something strikes me, go get acclimated with it instantly, because I may not hear it again. Because what are the odds? There are 7 billion people on the planet. And just because that is a lot of people doesn’t mean that the odds are in my favor. So there is no such thing as knowing. You just have to be open. So I try so hard. You know, I really work at just sort of trying to be egoless so that I can be open and not miss important morsels of music and points of view, new ways of making music. If I go in there so predetermined, then I am 42

I have learned to just be open and just experience the red bulletin

things. And when something strikes me, go get acclimated with it instantly, because I may not hear it again.

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i n f o r m at i o n If art doesn’t have purpose, what’s the point? This is something Cyrcle understands very well. They’re committed to creating poetic visuals that grab your attention. Cyrcle takes street art to a new level of creativity that elevates the style to new heights.

the red bulletin: You’ve been

working together since 2010; how did that come about? torres: When I met Davey, he opened my world to the design and the elements of type and really clean sophisticated design. I was just running around in L.A. trying to paint walls, do graffiti and shit like that. We shared similar values and a conceptual

dream of what we wanted to do with our work. I didn’t just want to do graffiti and he didn’t just want to do design. You paint walls, make short films, and build skull sculptures out of flowers—is there a through line in Cyrcle’s work? leavitt: Personally I never wanted to be stuck in a style because that’s not my style of living. I’m a really manic bipolar person, because I’m changing all the time. I love change. In order to grow we have to find new tools and then we have to learn how to use them. t: The process for anything we create starts with an idea and a concept and a message. And then we figure out how to visually communicate that message. And that’s where the work will continue to change. Because it’s not inspired by a style, it’s inspired by an idea. That’s what frees us to do so much different stuff. What do we want the sculpture to communicate? What

“it’s not inspired by a style, it’s inspired by an idea. that’s what frees Us.”

materials can help communicate that? l: It’s exciting every time we get a reason to buy a new tool. That’s an exciting moment in the studio. It started with the shittiest brand you can buy at the local hardware store. And then you get a DeWalt and everything changes as far as how precise you can get with your angles and cuts. Currently we’re saving up to get a laser machine. That’s going to be our new tool that we’re excited to have, for sure. Just doing it all ourselves, we’re going on Youtube figuring out how to do it.

Your motto is “We Never Die.” The initials in Pharrell’s band N.E.R.D. stand for “No One Ever Really Dies.” Is that just a coincidence? t: It is, totally. L: But I mean, it’s not in a sense that if that’s his mantra, that’s the type of person he is. It’s similar to the type of people we are. We can relate to his style. He could be just a hip-hop artist or he could be just a producer. But he does everything and he’s open to change. Just like us. cyrcle.com florian obkircher

This Los Angeles duo consistently works to bring disparate elements of the art worlds together—graffiti and graphic design—through both massive motifs and fine detail. It’s a simple concept, but David “Rabi” Torres and Davey Leavitt have been applying it in impressive fashion for four years now. Like the time the two of them painted the front of a house in delicate woodcut style, or when they recount American colonial history using outsized, detailed, pop-art prints, or when they cut up their own artwork and then put it back together in a jigsaw-like honeycomb. When it comes to creating their melded works of art, the only rule for Torres and Leavitt is that there are no rules.

CYRCLE, Theonepointeight

CYRCLE Artists

t your A hit song is no your doing. doing. The songeisby The hit is mad sightthofethat. people. You can’t lose

completely blocking everything that could have been the best thing that ever happened to me. So when I had the awesome opportunity to work on the first Despicable Me, I had to listen. As much as I felt like, “Oh, you know, I can make songs and whatever.” No man, they had a direction. They knew what they wanted. And in that process, I learned more about reaching more people or just opening songs up. OK cool, so you think the music is there. You think the lyrics are there. Cool. Is it as accessible as it could be? Was that line sung as good as it could be, so that it is clear and the diction is clear? In other words, is it legible to people’s interpretation. It might not be, because your ego told you that you killed it. But if you would remove your ego and only use your feeling, that is when the best stuff comes out. Is that a difficult lesson to learn for you? It was a great lesson to work, because that is how “Happy” came. Because I swore out that I had it nine times in a row, nine different songs for that one little scene. Nine? Yeah. And it was only until I was completely out of ideas—no more ego, right? Because what I knew about Despicable Me the first time is that [the main character, Gru] is mean and duh, duh, duh, so therefore … and it was a mistake. So it took nine times to sort of get it through my head that I needed to be open and realize, “OK, yeah. Gru was a mad guy in the first one. He is happy now.” So how do you write a song about somebody being happy and just having a relentless mood about it? And then the song came. But you had the basics of it? I didn’t have anything. That is what I am trying to tell you. The basics are where the ego comes in. Remember, you have to be open. But surely you have to start with something. Zero. But that is crazy, because you’ve built a career out of knowing it and of having it. No, I built a career of loving music and sometimes becoming intoxicated by things working out and sort the red bulletin

of thinking it was me. And it wasn’t me. A hit song is not your doing. The song is your doing. The hit is made by the people. You can’t lose sight of that. What purpose does the new album serve for you? I was just given the opportunity and, you know, when asked what I wanted to make it about, I went with the feeling. So I did decide with my eyes closed. But what does that mean? Did you just ask your own follow-up question? Yeah. That was a rhetorical question. What does that mean? That means not, “Oh, I am so good. I can do it with my eyes closed.” When someone says that they are doing it with their eyes closed, what they are ultimately saying, what that really is supposed to mean, is that you didn’t think about it and that it was second nature because you were going off of feeling. I went off of feeling. I didn’t look around peripherally to see what this person was doing and what that person was doing. I went inward so that I could go upward. So I made it with my eyes closed, which means the litmus test was when you close your eyes, does it work for you there? That means no outside influences. So I made all of the music just based off of feeling, not thinking. Because every time I have ever thought too much in my whole entire life, I have f*cked it up. So you think, “What does euphoria sound like? What does sadness sound like? What does giddiness sound like?” I mean, you are ascribing sounds to emotion. Yes, but that is what all musicians do. That is not singular to me. We just all do things our way. And your way is who you are. The way of doing things is what makes you who you are. In other words, we all speak English, but somehow you use the words differently than I do and you use it in your way. Your way is your fingerprint of who you are as a person. A lot of us make music the same way. It is just your way is more specific to who you are as a person. Do you know what I am saying? I do. I also think it is interesting how you have never been afraid to indulge interests, directions. What do you have to lose? Failure? If you are concerned about failure, then you can’t make no good music. Why is the new album called Girl? Well, there is major purpose in there. But let me switch gears on you. Let me tell you my intentions aside from the content is the feeling, so that we have a through line between how I make music. So at 45

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Anyone can ride a bicycle, but how many people truly create art with it? When Nigel Sylvester leaps into the air with his BMX bike, it’s beyond just entertainment. He approaches his craft like a mad scientist who pushes the limits of what’s humanly possible. No means go for him.

BMX rider

Down Merrick Boulevard in Jamaica, Queens, weaving in and out of traffic and hopping the planters on his BMX bike, Nigel Sylvester wasn’t earning much street cred. “People called me a white boy and made fun of me,” he says. “They didn’t understand the culture.” With the typical path to BMX stardom unavailable to him, Sylvester seized upon the power of YouTube. He made videos showcasing his freakish ability on a BMX bike as he carved up New York. Sponsors followed, including bike-makers Brooklyn Machine Works, who, last year, reached out to Sylvester via one of their investors: Pharrell Williams. the red bulletin: What does

Pharrell’s involvement mean to your scene? sylvester: It started with skateboarding. Seeing someone like him embrace that, it automatically made it cool and acceptable. Kids in the hood start to ride skateboards, and you’d never ever seen that before. He’s just that influential in culture. Why? He’s a producer and music drives culture so much. I hope the same happens for BMX culture. I’ve been a fan of Pharrell’s for a minute. And he’s been embracing BMX culture for a long time

now. He rode bikes in the “Provider” video [by N.E.R.D. in 2001] and I remember seeing that when I was super young and that’s another reason I stuck with BMX, because I saw someone like him doing it as well. On that level, that made it more cool for me. I saw someone who looked like me doing it. Why was that important? Actual BMX culture wasn’t popular at all. People called me a white boy and made fun of me because they didn’t understand the culture. So I definitely had like those naysayers and haters, but I stuck with it and was able to make a career out of it.

“I was using the neighborhood to express myself. It’s like NYC was the canvas.”

What kept you in it? I liked the freedom, dude. It was the best way to express myself. As a child, I was into art and music and played basketball and football, but there was something about the bike that I was really into. It was a feeling I had at that early age and I practiced at it and I was good at it. I saw results. And I saw dudes like [BMX pro] Dave Mirra, who took it to such a height, and I was like, “If he can do it, then it’s possible.” But coming from where I came from, I had to put my own perspective on it, my own life story, and my neighborhood and background into it and it came out differently. I took a whole different route. Which was … The traditional way is that you work hard to get sponsored and you ride contests, and the more you win the bigger star you are. For me growing up, I didn’t have access to contests, and I didn’t have access to the skateparks that these contests were based on. So I had to figure out another way to get myself out there. Luckily enough, street riding was becoming very popular,

where you rode rails and used what was provided to you. I was using my neighborhood to ride and express myself. It was like NYC was the canvas and I painted my picture on whatever it offered me. I was able to mix riding with the lifestyle I was living—into music, into art, into fashion—and I put that into my riding. Whenever I put a video out I made sure to include that, and I was able to attract a different type of people and get eyes on what I was doing. And big companies saw that and they were like, “Wow, this kid is different.” I didn’t ride the X Games. I used the Internet and word of mouth. What do you hope your collaboration with Pharrell results in? I want to give kids an opportunity to aspire to be part of that brand and just do good by the industry. I’m hoping that teaming up with someone like Pharrell, we can get it out to the masses and show the world what this BMX culture is about. People have this one image of it. There’s one type of person you think that rides BMX bicycles, but it’s not true. nigelsylvester.com

Andreas Tzortzis

nigel sylvester

Our feelings can lead us to do really crazy things

or really amazing things.

the genesis I knew that the criteria was festive, celebratory, and I wanted everything to feel urgent. So I worked really hard. Urgent is an interesting word to use. Urgent just means like, “Man, what is that?” Stop and listen. Shooting, always shooting for unique and undeniable. Always shooting for that and using the feeling as a compass. We are so dismissive of our feelings. Yet most of the time when you hear about them in songs, unless it is a real good singer/ songwriter, it is always generic. But your feeling is like one of the … your feeling connects to your spirit that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. We have feelings. Our feelings can lead us to do really crazy things or really amazing things. You can tell when someone is standing behind you, even if they are not making a sound. You can feel it. You can walk into a room and you can tell when someone doesn’t like you. You can walk in a room and you can tell when there is something going on between those two. It is a feeling. But we are always so dismissive of it. So with this album I intended to capitalize on that the red bulletin

and just try to make something that would be real stimulative. To resonate with women? Oh yeah, totally. Totally. Women have been so good to me and my career. What do you need to understand about women to write songs for them? Well, I think most of the time we hear songs that are written at women versus for. You know, it is like most products. It is not really for them, it is just marketed at their insecurities. It doesn’t really fit her hand like that though, does it? It is not really the smell she truly prefers, it is just what your old, antiquated corporate statistics tell you. But where are you doing these consensuses and with what types of women? My thing is let’s start doing things with them truly in mind—truly in mind. That is not writing something at her. That is writing something intended for her. And the only way to do that, the only way to really sort of figure out if that works or not is based off of feeling. That is what she is going to tell you, what she feels. Are you trying to demystify that otherness in women? Is it kind of about trying to understand it or cater to it? I just want to make music that ladies, the girls, listen to and they feel an escapism. That is my intention. Sometimes I think that success comes from being very calculated and being very smart and not getting too involved. Yes, Steve Jobs. He so geniusly brought that product to the world; it is called a computer. But we are human, and that is what a computer will never be able to do is feel. That is what still makes us the superior species on this planet. So you are a curator of feeling? At this moment. Has it been different earlier in your career? Yeah, because, like I said, when I realized that thinking is not my path and feeling is for me, I started to realize that people are so dismissive about other people’s feelings. I have always felt music since I was a little child. But I realized that it was the key probably in the last 10 years. Because before that I just wasn’t thinking. It was like private flights, Ferraris, jewelry, all of those things that mean nothing. Ferraris get old. They depreciate as soon as you drive it off of the lot. The same as a Honda Accord. You have got to trade it in in two years, because in four you have lost a lot of money. And I appreciate the car, I do. I still do. But that is not what it is about. You can’t take that when you go. You take your feelings with you and your experiences that gave you those feelings. And also what you gave others. That is the wealth, man. An experience. The coolest thing that you talk about is your trip where you went and you had a good time. The first thing that you talk about it in terms of your description, “Man, it was awesome.” For more on Pharrell and his passion for BMX culture, check out The Red Bulletin Presents on YouTube.

to tame a dragon

The Red Bulletin meets Ryan Sandes and Ryno Griesel

as they attempt to set a fastest known time for South Africaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Drakensberg Grand Traverse. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a 130-mile journey on foot, with no support and very little sleep. w o r d s : J A Z Z K U S C H K E p h o t o g r a p h y: ke lv i n t r au t m a n

he Drakensberg is Southern Africa’s highest and most iconic mountain range, and its towering basalt peaks, rock-artadorned caves and remote valleys have commanded reverence throughout history. Opinions differ over whether the South African pioneers dubbed them “Dragon Mountains” because they believed dragons to live in the misty valleys, or because the range’s spiky profile resembles that of the mythical beast’s back. Perhaps a clue lies in the more traditional name “uKhahlamba,” which means “Barrier of Spears” in Zulu. What is certain is that while the lower slopes and streams can be safely explored by fun-loving eco-tourists, the higher reaches are best left to wellequipped, expert mountaineers. Among this high-altitude club, an obscure challenge has developed over the years: To travel on foot, carrying all your own gear and without receiving any form of support, from the north to the south. It has become known as the Drakensberg Grand Traverse and is the mother of all hikes. It’s a trek that usually takes an experienced hiker some six to 10 days to complete. Trail runners Ryan Sandes and Ryno Griesel are planning to make the journey in less than two. From the acknowledged start at the Sentinel parking lot near Witsieshoek, the 50

pair will have to navigate more than 130 miles of rugged alpine mountains to the finish at Bushman’s Nek. Along the way, they must summit six of the most prominent peaks south of Kilimanjaro (for an altitude gain of over 29,527 feet) and will seldom drop below 9,842 feet above sea level. Imagine running from Philadelphia to about Baltimore and back, non-stop, while holding your hand over your mouth and nose, and climbing the equivalent height of Mount Everest. Sandes, whose legs have carried him to high-profile ultra-trail-race wins on every continent in the world, has no illusions about what lies ahead. “Mentally, this is the toughest thing I’ve ever attempted,” says the Cape Town native. This from the runner who set a speed record through Namibia’s Fish River Canyon in 2012. (Six hours and 57 minutes for what is normally a five-day hike.) “The Traverse is just so long and so far and so slow. Most of the terrain is really not runable either—you’re on the edge of steep cliffs with no options around the side. On average, you’re probably doing about 3 mph. Mentally, that just smashes you. You might think, ‘OK, cool, I’ve only got 12 miles to go …’ If I was trail running, I could do that in an hour and a half to two hours, but up there, it’s about four.” Sandes plans to overcome the challenge like he does ultra-distance races: By breaking the hike down into smaller goals, taking it one peak at a time. “The first peak comes after about 5 miles,” Sandes explains, “but the second

TEN HOURS TO THE NEXT PEAK: Massive distances and hostile terrain will make for slow going during Ryan Sandes (above and right) and Ryno Griesel’s attempt.

“Mentally, this is the toughest thing I’ve ever attempted.”

MORE HASTE, LESS SPEED: Without the correct planning, equipment and nutrition, Sandes and Griesel will struggle.

is about 31 miles further on. So, 10 hours to the next peak and all the terrain looks the same—it’s beautiful, but it’s monotonous.” The sheer magnitude of the task has left the prolific race winner with a philosophical approach. “I’ve learned that ego isn’t going to get us very far,” he says.

he Berg is bloody awesomely big,” says David Bristow, author of Best Walks in the Drakensberg, and a Traverse veteran. “If you look at the Berg side-on, it has a helluva rugged profile. Each one of those high points represents a ridge and every dip a ravine, so what you’re doing is just climbing ridges and ravines. All day long. The terrain is also incredibly rugged. There are these huge alpine grass tussocks, which will definitely pose a problem for running. You could easily twist your ankle on that, easily break a limb.” Not the kind of challenge, then, that you just pencil into your diary, lace up your trail shoes, and go tick off. “I didn’t want it just to be Ryno taking me on a glorified guided running tour of the Drakensberg,” Sandes says. When Sandes 52

and Griesel run through the gate at Sentinel car park in March, they will have done four comprehensive reconnaissance trips, and close on two years’ worth of planning. For Sandes, the strength needed for the power hiking and slowish scrambling fits his training program perfectly. For Griesel, it is the biggest goal of his year and he’s been putting in big road mileage in Johannesburg. “Over the years, the record attempts have evolved from traditional hiking to speed hiking [going faster and lighter], and then it moved into adventure racing,” explains Griesel, who, along with Cobus van Zyl, set the existing record of 60 hours, 29 minutes and 30 seconds, in April 2010. “This is the first time, as far as

Sentinel Car Park Mont-aux-sources

south africa

Cleft Peak Champagne Castle

Mafadi

lesotho

Giant’s Castle

Thabana Ntlenyana

uKhahlamba drakensberg park Bushman’s Nek

we know, that the Traverse is being approached with a running mentality.” Griesel has an adventure-racing background and is in charge of navigation, logistics, and keeping the attempt within the rules and mountain ethics of the Traverse. Aside from navigational skills and mountain-running prowess, he believes what will set their attempt apart is less sleep and lighter loads. “We’re taking small, 3-gallon packs with no tents or sleeping bags, so we don’t actually have the facilities to sleep,” Griesel half-jokes. For an adventure racer, 45 hours without sleep is not out of the question, but Sandes will need to close his eyes at some point. “When you’re exhausted on a normal trail, you can kind of switch off. But with the Traverse being so technical, you have to be alert all the time,” he says. Sandes is planning two or three power naps of 20 to 30 minutes each, and he’s hoping to push it to at least 18 hours before he needs the first one. “If it’s raining and cold, we won’t be able to stop, which is why we’re not cutting corners,” he says, having realized the need for proper waterproof gear after being caught in severe weather in October 2013. “We’re going as light as possible, but at the same time if you run into trouble, you have to be able to get yourself out.”

T DRAGON’S RUN The Drakensberg Grand Traverse runs from north to south, starting at the Sentinel parking lot perimeter fence and ending at the Bushman’s Nek Border Post perimeter fence. Way points include:

Chain Ladders • The summit (10,767 ft.) • Mont-aux-Sources Peak summit (10,751 ft.) • Cleft Castle summit (11,079 ft.) • Champagne summit (11,322 ft.) • Mafadi Giant’s Castle summit (10,872 ft.) • Thabana summit (11,423 ft.: The highest peak in Southern Africa) • ThomathuNtlenyana Pass must be used to descend to Bushman’s Nek • PREVIOUS TRAVERSE RECORDS April 2010 60 hrs., 29 mins., 30 sec. – Ryno Griesel and Cobus van Zyl December 2009 61 hrs., 24 mins., 11 sec. – Andrew Porter December 2008 81 hrs., 52 mins., 52 sec. – Stijn Laenen and Andrew Hagen 1999-2008 Approximately 15 documented unsuccessful attempts Feb 1999 105 hrs., 39 mins. – Gavin and Laurie Raubenheimer

hey’re going in March when the weather should be good,” says Bristow. “It’s the best time, but it’s still susceptible to heavy cloud along the escarpment edge. You can get horribly lost. Fall off the edge …” The runners will be carrying GPS devices, waterproof maps and enough food to last them for 60 hours, as well as a Yellowbrick tracker that has a panic button should things get critical. A film crew shooting documentary footage from a helicopter will act as emergency backup, but at no point during the attempt will they have any communication with the runners, and they are only allowed to assist if a rescue is required. If the March mist does persist, it’s likely GPS won’t work and the helicopter won’t be able to reach the runners anyway. “If something goes wrong, you can be pretty much stuck up there for a week if the weather closes in,” admits Sandes. But that’s just the type of challenge he relishes, and he’s well aware that no one’s going to be taming any dragon. It’s more about spending some time tracing its back, on its own terms, and hopefully rewriting the record books in the process. ryansandes.com

Racing into the night by the light of the Ferris wheel: The hours before midnight are the best.

day of

thun words: Werner Jessnerâ&#x20AC;&#x192;

p h o t o g r a p h y: J u l i e G l a s s b e r g , M a r c e l o M a r a g n i

Credit:

der

Cultish fans, deadly maneuvers, and last-minute gasps at the Rolex 24 at Daytona. 55

grandstands tremble as the field goes into the first lap.

the red bulletin

inda Vaughn is missing from the start. In years gone by, the garages and boys’ bedrooms of America were graced with the buxom, formidable vision of Miss Hurst Golden Shifter. For almost half a century, the blonde was a fixture at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the full-day race at the legendary racetrack that traditionally kicks off each international motorsports season. This year she has decided not to attend. But pretty much everyone else is here. Former Formula One drivers, sports-car greats, gentleman drivers, and showbiz stars form a colorful contingent in Daytona Beach, Florida, all contending with the action on the super speedway’s oval for a day and a night. After the startfinish straight, the racers turn toward the infield, to the east and west horseshoes, clocking in at over 185 mph. Until his 70th birthday, you could usually see Paul Newman at the start; two Andrettis have won here, as have Al

The Daytona International Speedway bills itself as “The World Center of Racing.”

Unser Sr. and Jr., Hurley Haywood, and Chris Amon. The career of Infiniti Red Bull Racing technical genius Adrian Newey really took off here in 1983, when the young designer turned a March Engineering car from a design write-off into a surprise frontrunner almost overnight. Only engine problems in the 23rd hour prevented Newey’s drivers from waking up the day after with a new watch on the bedside table. Winners of what began as the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1962 are awarded a Rolex Daytona watch; the prize-givers splurged for naming rights in 1991. For all this history, 2014 represents the start of a new era in U.S. longdistance racing. The country’s two rival racing series, GrandAm and American Le Mans, have come together and agreed on joint rules. This year’s Rolex 24 was the first race of the new United Sportscar Series, and 68 cars divided into four classes revved their engines at the start. The top tier, Prototypes, is a walkover for the representatives of the erstwhile GrandAm against the open sports cars of the American Le Mans series. The Daytona prototypes share the lead among themselves. “They may say that constancy trumps sheer speed in longdistance races, but here it’s full speed ahead from the first lap,” says threetime Daytona winner Memo Rojas. “Twenty-four-hour races have become long-range sprints.” The Daytona International Speedway is huge. The tens of thousands of spectators

Mechanics endure short bursts of frantic activity between waits that seem to stretch longer and longer.

Firefighters take stock of the campfire situation, just to be sure.

The northern infield campsite is home to the younger, louder fans. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re a good match for the cars that thunder past at 185 mph.

Tires, fuel, wipe the windshield—done. That’s the pit stop in an ideal world, but it’s rarely that easy.

here on the last Saturday in January are simply lost in grandstands that can seat 168,000 and tremble as the field goes into the first lap. The differences in performance are so great that the first lapping comes less than 15 minutes into the race—the circuit is a 2.5-mile oval— and that’s after the worst of the jalopies, the homemade family projects with a lot of heart but little else, are stricken from the field at registration. Because things are dangerous enough without them. At 4:58 in the afternoon, after a driving time of 2 hours and 47 minutes, the red bulletin

leader Memo Gidley laps one car—and smacks straight into another, the No. 62 Ferrari driven by Matteo Malucelli. The impact of Gidley’s Corvette DP into the back of the Ferrari is so powerful that everyone fears the worst. At this point, the cars are driving into the setting sun and “for a moment you can’t see anything at all” says one driver. The race is stopped and Gidley has to be cut out of the wreck of his car. The race has long since resumed when news finally comes that the two drivers are responsive. (Gidley would go on to spend 12 days in

the hospital and endure surgery on his broken left heel, elbow, and leg, and a compression fracture in his back. Malucelli was kept overnight for observation.) Accidents are inseparable from the Daytona experience, as much a part of the legend of this race as who takes up singing duties of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the start of the race or the Catholic Mass Celebration in the media center on Sunday morning. The camping area in the infield is divided into three areas: partying north, rich east, and family-friendly south. 59

In three of the four classes, places are decided in the last 15 minutes.

In the north, between turns three and four, are the frat boys, the party animals. They brought beer and small tents in pickups, SUVs, and other vehicles with a whiff of the farm about them. They also came with plenty of wood for the campfires, which tend to blaze a little brighter around here. Firefighters regularly take stock of the situation, just to be sure. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not even midday before the tent ropes claim their first stumbling victims, who bawl their disapproval. The unmistakable sound of couples coupling issues from a few tents. Things are very different in the south, the home of RVs and those who appreciate the finer things in life. These 60

New racing rules mean that the open sports cars don’t stand a chance against the closed cars.

No luck this time: The (usually) winning Ganassi team around former three-time Daytona victor Memo Rojas (below left).

vehicles have a bedroom, a kitchen, and a closet, and a dead animal is sacrificed to a gas barbecue rather than open flames. Here, the cuts of meat and the paunches of those grilling them tend to be larger than in the north. These are experienced campers. Most of them have flatscreens elegantly worked into the bodywork of their mobile homes. Territory is carefully marked out; awnings block the view of the track. It’s an idyllic holiday-home setup, with thundering eight-cylinder engines as a backdrop. But the big money is over in the east. Not that there are any people here— they’re presumably off somewhere getting food—but they’ve left behind the red bulletin

a full parking lot, neatly delineated. The largest is the Porsche parking lot. You can pick out your dream 911 by color or model; every combination imaginable is here. The true connoisseurs come here in their 928s or maybe even an early 1600 Super. The plump Panameras and Cayennes, mere urchins in the eyes of true racers, have to park elsewhere. There are also plenty of Corvettes, Camaros, and Mustangs, although they seem a little banal here in one of the epicenters of American motorsports. The Rolex 24 has always had a touch of the European about it, reflected in the racegoers’ rides. Half past 4 in the morning is a good time on the track for the professional racers to charge. Mechanics slumber in orthopedically dubious positions, drivers wander absentmindedly through the paddock with toothbrushes in their mouths, and the last party die-hard out in the campsite has been silenced. But out on the track it’s time to mount an attack. The major teams have old hands behind the wheel, who have gone through the night in double shifts, exchanging places with the super sprinters. Even if the low track temperature means that there will be no record times, this is no time for dawdlers. The Porsche junior , just 22 years old, steps out of his 911 after a flawless run. His team isn’t sending him off to bed, but to a debrief in the command bridge. Young men like him have a lot to learn. It’s nights like these that turn young hopefuls into true racing drivers.

he race gets dramatic once again shortly before the end. The pace car comes out after a relatively minor crash and presses the field together. In three of the four classes, places are decided in the last 15 minutes of the 24-hour race, all of it broadcast live on TV. Spectators bite their nails as the battle comes down to the second-to-last bend. In the lowest class, GTD, there is metal-on-metal action in the fight for victory. Once the black-and-white-checkered flag falls, the dam breaks, fans crowd around the drivers and grope at the cars. Confetti falls, and there are watches for the winners. Christian Fittipaldi, João Barbosa and, with the honor of taking the flag, Sébastien Bourdais, are the 2014 winners at Daytona, in a Corvette C5-R. At the press conference, Bourdais, who has raced in Formula One for Scuderia Toro Rosso, proudly displays his brand-new Rolex Daytona. “Daytona is one of those races you want to win once in your life,” he says. “Every day when I look at my wrist, I’ll remember this victory.” imsa.com

The

YEAR OF OU Fresh off her two Grammy wins, Lorde starts a U.S. tour that includes a stop at Coachella. Words: Robert Tighe

LLORDE

Charles Howells

R Girl power: By 16, Lorde had No. 1 records in New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S.

And we’ll never be royals (royals) It don’t run in our blood That kind of luxe just ain’t for us We crave a different kind of buzz

—“Royals” by Lorde Ella Yelich-O’Connor is living a fantasy. At the start of 2013 she was on Twitter, quoting Modest Mouse lyrics—“oh the dashboard melted but we still have the radio”and complaining about the start of a new school year: “#grrr #school #grrr.” On October 3, a month and three days before she turned 17, the girl from Devonport, an affluent, waterfront suburb on Auckland’s North Shore, tweeted this: “get the fkouttahere. royals is NUMBER 1 on BILLBOARD in the USAAA.” By the end of January 2014, she had won two Grammy Awards—including the biggie, Song of the Year—for “Royals.” “The whole thing has been surreal,” says Scott Maclachlan, her manager at Universal Music. In 2009, Maclachlan was sent a clip of a 12-year-old girl singing at a school talent show. When she made it clear to him that she wanted to be a songwriter as well, and that she would be called Lorde, pronounced “lord” because she liked royalty, he signed her to a development deal, introduced her to producers and songwriters and gave her time and space to find her sound. She didn’t click with any of them until she started working with producer Joel Little in his Auckland studio at the end of 2011. “We talked about music a lot,” says Little, a fresh-faced 30-year-old, who spent nine years as the frontman for New Zealand pop-punk band Goodnight Nurse before he moved behind the mixing desk. “I’d give Ella some homework, some songs to listen to. For example, she’d never listened to Prince or Snoop Dogg. 64

She knew Snoop Dogg as the guy from that Katy Perry song, but she didn’t know he made some cool gangster rap back in the 1990s. She thought he was just some lame dude. In turn she introduced me to stuff that she was into. We listened to The Weeknd and James Blake and we played each other cheesy pop songs.” Their early songwriting efforts were more miss than hit. In July 2012, Ella came into the studio with the lyrics to “Royals.” Little came up with a beat, and together they found the right melody to match the words. “I liked it, but I didn’t know if anyone else would,” says Lorde. “I think Joel had more of an idea of the impact the song would have than I did.” “I didn’t think it would get played on radio, but I thought it was a great song,” Little says. “But no one could have guessed that song would do what it did.”

hen “Royals” replaced Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” at the top of the Billboard charts at the start of October 2013, Lorde became the youngest solo artist in 26 years to reach No. 1. Her age is one subject she’s fed up talking about. “I get this weird question asked in a variety of ways,” she says. “People are like, ‘So you’re only 16, how do you have subject matter to write about?’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean? a) I’ve never been older than I am, and b) I’m 16, not a one-year-old.” Lorde is a typical teenager in many ways. She peppers her conversation with the word “like,” tweets selfies from

concerts (“the weirdest lil goth at the One Direction concert is meeeee”), and suffers from acne. “I’m a regular person,” she says. “I’m in high school, I get the bus everywhere. I’m a loser and my room is dirty, you know.” The teenage experience has been exploited by songwriters since forever, but part of Lorde’s success has been her ability to write about it honestly. “Ella is incredibly accurate in her portrayal of the way she lives and kids can identify with her because that is their life,” says Maclachlan. “She’s the antithesis to someone like Miley Cyrus who is very brash, very L.A., very aspirational, but in a faux way. The greatness of Ella’s music is that it resonates with so many other people. I’m 44 and I remember when I first heard “Going Underground” and “A Town Called Malice” by The Jam. I felt like Paul Weller was writing about my life and that’s incredibly powerful. Somehow, with every single line in every single song, she says something that resonates.” The author of those lines has a simpler explanation for her appeal: “Maybe because I’m not singing about dropping the red bulletin

Charles Howells, Getty Images

Let me be your ruler (ruler) You can call me Queen Bee And baby I’ll rule (I’ll rule, I’ll rule, I’ll rule) Let me live that fantasy

World star: Raised in Auckland, Lorde is already a global star. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s had gigs on three continents and is currently in the middle of a U.S. tour. She made her London debut in September 2013 at Madame JoJoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (left).

the red bulletin

your booty in the club, more people get it and can relate to it.” Instead of writing bland platitudes about partying and finding/losing the love of your life, Lorde explores the emotions and real concerns of her peers, painting vivid pictures with her words. Lines like “This dream isn’t feeling sweet/we’re reeling through the midnight streets/and I’ve never felt more alone/it feels so scary getting old” from “Ribs,” and “I’ll let you in on something big/I am not a white teeth teen/I tried to join but never did” from “White Teeth Teens” are short stories. From “A World Alone,” the line “Maybe the Internet raised us/or maybe people are jerks?” is seething commentary.

orde explains: “I’m not trying to preach to anyone, which is something teenagers get all the time and hate. I’m just commenting on what I see and writing about how it applies to teenagers’ lives. I think we are portrayed pretty weirdly in music and movies and TV shows. Adults forget what it is like to be my age. I’m living it, so I have a more realistic viewpoint on it. “That line [about the Internet] was something my friend said. We were at 66

a party after spending too much time on the Internet. Sometimes after you’ve been on Tumblr for three hours and you try and talk to people it is impossible. And my friend was like, ‘Why can’t we talk to anyone at this party?’ ” Are your friends excited or annoyed when they see themselves in your songs? “I have a lot of friends, so everyone assumes it’s about someone else. I’d like to think I’m quite subtle.” How has success affected friendships? “Obviously it’s difficult, because I’m in New York and they’re in history class or whatever, but your friends are your friends for who you are. I’d like to think the people I’ve known since I was really young like me for me and not because of my music.” While Lorde’s lyrics are intelligent and thought provoking, her music is clever in its own right: A clean, modern, minimal sound that subtly references other musical genres. “I’m a magpie, I’m a child of the

Internet,” she says, “and so I’ve picked the things I like from electronic music, hiphop, and pop music.” Most of the beats and sound effects were made by Little on Pro Tools audio software. Only one of the songs on Lorde’s debut album, Pure Heroine, features a guitar—a three-chord trick on “A World Alone.” Little also played some keyboards. “I can’t shred on the keyboards,” he says. “I just mess around and sometimes when I do that I stumble on something that sounds really cool. Fake it ’til you make it, I guess.” Then there’s Lorde’s powerful voice, of which Little took full advantage. “Her voice is so cool and interesting, and when you layer it up it’s like a really unique instrument in itself. We often use layered vocals, where there might usually be a guitar or a synth, it creates quite an intense atmosphere. The melodies are good, so that makes it accessible, and there are interesting things going on musically, but it’s not trying to grab you in the first five seconds. It’s a slow build. “I think people were ready for something that sounded a bit fresher. She makes music that doesn’t treat listeners like idiots. People were craving something that doesn’t sound exactly like the last song they heard on the radio.” Little recalls very clearly the first time Lorde sang for him in the studio. “It was like, ‘Jackpot baby!’ The dream is to work with somebody as talented as her. When she’s singing, it’s like she’s talking about something mysterious, but something you can relate to at the same time. She’s got such a sweet voice, but she also sounds like she’d totally f*ck you up if you said something that she didn’t agree with. Sweet, but scary at the same time.” What’s scary is how much bigger the Lorde experience could be. “Coachella and Lollapalooza have been confirmed,” says Maclachlan. “She could work every day in 2014 if she wanted to.” “Every trip we book and every show we do, I choose to do it,” Lorde says. “I still have normal Saturday nights and hang out with my school friends and go to house parties. That’s the good thing about New Zealand, there’s very little difference to my life. I’m conscious of the fact that I have to work and miss some stuff, but I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. Everything has been positive and fun.” That’s a very different buzz compared to most teenagers. It sounds too good to be true. It sounds like a fantasy, except for Lorde, it’s not. lorde.co.nz the red bulletin

Charles Howells , Getty Images

Rich pickings: Self-confessed magpie Lorde is influenced by her friends, Tumblr, and hip-hop.

VAIL

PADDLE / BIKE / RUN / CLIMB / FISH / DOG / MUSIC / FILM / PHOTO

There are 100 peaks in Colorado over 13,800 feet. Chris Davenport wants to climb them allâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and ski back down.

Rare air Chris Davenport is on the brink of finishing a lofty mission to climb and ski Coloradoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 100 highest mountains. Words: Megan Michelson Photography: Ian Fohrman

t 13,841 feet in elevation, it’s not so much Hagerman Peak’s size that makes it daunting, but its remoteness. Located in Colorado’s Elk Range, it’s a long drive on rough dirt roads just to reach the point where the hiking begins. Most people attempt Hagerman in the late summer or fall, when a majority of the snow has melted. Chris Davenport is not like most people. “I’ve been addicted to sports since I was a kid—I’ve loved going fast, catching air, whether it was on skis or my bike or jumping off a bridge into water,” he says. “It’s not what many people think it is—it’s not an adrenaline rush. Adrenaline junkie implies that you’re not thinking, that you’re reckless. For me, it’s being connected to nature, being connected to the mountain. There is that sense of risk out there, a sense of personal responsibility. I could die doing the things I do.” At 43, Davenport is one of the fittest humans on the planet, a professional skier for 20 years now. His longevity in professional skiing—unprecedented in a sport that often spits pros out after five years and a couple of knee surgeries—is 70

Hagerman Peak in Colorado is one of the toughest routes to ski mountaineer in the state.

come up with these projects and they’re difficult and require all of these skills, but in the end, I like to look back and say, ‘Damn, that was fun,’ ” Davenport says. “I take this all very seriously, but I’m really doing these things for fun.” Davenport’s definition of fun is unlike most normal human beings’. To climb peaks like Hagerman under his own power, he’s waking up in the middle of the night, spending hours slogging up mountains often covered with impenetrable ice and rock. He reaches the summit sometime after sunrise and then skis down in unpredictable snow conditions and often on precipitous lines above hanging cliff bands. For Davenport, solving the puzzles these mountains present makes up a perfect day. “The cool thing about projects like this is that every peak, every day is a new experience,” he says. “You have awesome days. You have tough days.” The resilience is built from Davenport’s long history in the ski industry. In 1996 and 2000, he won the World Extreme Skiing Championships in Alaska and then got calls from Warren Miller and Matchstick Productions—major ski-movie companies—to see if he was interested in

filming. In 1997, Shane McConkey and Davenport became Red Bull’s first sponsored athletes in North America, and in 1998, Davenport won a bronze medal at the Winter X Games in skier cross. Over the next decade, Davenport climbed the ranks of ski-movie prominence, acquiring more sponsors and establishing himself as one of freeskiing’s most versatile stars. In 2005, he began looking for a new challenge. Years earlier, he’d bought the book Dawson’s Guide to Colorado’s Fourteeners, written by Aspen-based mountaineer Lou Dawson, who’d been the first and then only person to ski all of the state’s 14ers, which he did over a 14-year period. The book had become a bible to Davenport, and while on a solo mountain bike ride in the fall, he decided he would set out to ski all of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks in a single year. Between January 22, 2006, and January 19, 2007—just under a calendar year—Davenport knocked off the state’s 54 highest mountains. In 2008, Ted Mahon, a close friend of Davenport’s and

“ T hat’s the thing with Chris—with him, the impossible becomes possible.”

Scott Rinckenberger

often credited to his ability to evolve. The Aspen resident is mainly a ski mountaineer now, but in previous lifetimes, he’s been a ski racer, a big-mountain champion, and a ski-movie film star. He’s climbed Everest— and skied down. After that, what’s next? On June 6, 2013, Davenport set out to climb and ski the beast that is Hagerman: It would take 12 hours and 16 miles of climbing—an increase of more than 7,000 vertical feet. But this wasn’t a random choice, some spur-of-the-moment challenging pursuit. Davenport wants to ski the 100 highest peaks in Colorado, an overwhelmingly large task he’s calling the Centennial Peaks project, which includes the state’s 53 mountains over 14,000 feet, plus 47 that tower over 13,000 feet. He announced this mission in the spring of 2013. After a year of binge ski mountaineering, as of late January, he had only 16 peaks left. “At first we were like, ‘The Centennials, that’s going to be a huge undertaking,’ ” says fellow alpinist Christy Mahon, 38, who is climbing the peaks with Davenport. “But then once you set your mind to it, you realize it’s totally possible. And that’s the thing with Chris: With him, the impossible becomes possible.”

For Davenport, solving the puzzles these mountains present makes up a perfect day.

“Gravity is this allencompassing force,” Davenport says. “I like to play with it as I’m descending.”

Dawson’s Guide to Colorado’s Fourteeners, by mountaineer Lou Dawson, is something of a bible to Davenport.

another Aspen resident, became the third person to ski all of the 14ers, and two years later, Christy, Ted’s wife, became the first woman to do so after a six-year span. Davenport says he’s always been a goal-oriented athlete, but after the 14ers project, which he also wrote a book about, he once again found himself looking for new, lofty goals. “This way,” he says, “I’m constantly learning and challenged by new things.” Thus, in 2008, he and some friends skied four of the most legendary peaks in the Alps—the Eiger, Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, and Monte Rosa—in just eight days. In 2009 and 2010, he skied nearly all of California’s 14,000-foot peaks. In the spring of 2012, Davenport rallied another group—including Ted and Christy Mahon—to pile into an RV for a road trip around the Pacific Northwest to climb and ski 15 of the highest volcanoes in California, Oregon, and Washington over a two-week window. In 14 days, they climbed more than 78,674 vertical feet and hiked more than 141 miles. After that, he started looking for his next challenge. “As goal-driven as Dav is,” says Ted, 41, “it was only a matter of time before he decided to finish skiing all 100 of Colorado’s highest peaks.”

n spring 2013, Davenport, often along with Ted and Christy, had already completed 30 of the Centennial Peaks in just 36 days. Davenport figured Hagerman would be his final push of the year, his gateway into a summer with his family. He and veteran mountaineer Neal Beidleman set out around 4:30 a.m., leaving the trailhead and carrying backpacks loaded with ski gear. They crossed rivers gushing with spring snowmelt and walked through rotting, hollow snow on the lower portion of the mountain.

Up next for Davenport: 13,809-foot Dallas Peak outside of Telluride.

“On the descent, I love playing with gravity,” Davenport says. “Gravity is this all-encompassing force, but you can push it one way or the other. I like to play with it as I’m descending—to me that’s a really fun game. When you’re skiing down a face, gravity is doing all the work. You’re just adding the right amount of resistance by stepping on the brakes or the gas pedal, edging your skis slightly to brake or straightening them out. I love those aspects of having a degree of control, of feeling the acceleration. Those are my controls that I have. Gravity is the force that’s constantly pushing me, and it’s my job to be the pilot.” After more than 12 hours of intense effort, the duo finished. “It was a huge day,” Davenport recalls. “We skied this incredible line in great conditions. I remember feeling a sense of closure on the season. I’d made it through another challenging year in one piece. There are dangers we all face out there, but I felt really at peace with the year.” In attempting Hagerman, there were echoes of a previous mission the two had undertaken together. In spring 2011, Davenport and Beidleman climbed Mount Everest. Beidleman hadn’t been up Everest since the fated trip in May 1996, when he was working as a guide on the now-famous expedition, the subject of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, where eight climbers died. He decided to return as a guide on the trip with Davenport 15 years later, but he wasn’t planning on skiing anything while he was there—only a small handful of people have ever skied off Everest. Davenport had other intentions. “I take my skis when I go to the mountains,” Davenport told Beidleman. “If the conditions are right and we can ski, great. If not, no worries.” 76

” I seem to have more than my fair share of perfect moments in the mountains. I don’t know how I get so lucky. I have these moments I’ll never forget.” So Beidleman carried his skis up Everest too. On their first look at the Lhotse Face, a 50-degree flank climbers must ascend to reach Everest’s South Col, it was sheer, blue ice—a suicide mission for a skier. “Sorry, but that’s what you’ve got to expect up here at this time of year,” Beidleman told Davenport. It began to snow lightly that afternoon and as the group moved up the mountain, acclimatizing over the next week, the snow began to accumulate on the Lhotse Face. Within 10 days, it had piled up to shin-deep powder that miraculously stuck to the steep, icy surface. “This is unbelievable,” Beidleman said. “It’s perfect ski conditions.” Davenport and Beidleman hiked to 25,000 feet in elevation and clicked into their skis, making continuous powder turns down the Lhotse Face. The sherpas

and other climbers watching from Camp II cheered loudly, and their ski tracks glistened in the snow for days. Back on Hagerman Peak in Colorado, Davenport and Beidleman again got lucky with the snow conditions. They reached the summit by midmorning and took a moment to soak in their surroundings. Then they stepped into their skis and dropped in for what turned out to be creamy, consistent snow, a real prize in early June. “I seem to have more than my fair share of perfect moments,” Davenport says. “I don’t know how I get so lucky. I just know I have these moments in the mountains that I’ll never forget.”

hey’ve saved some of the hardest for last: 13,809-foot Dallas Peak, outside of Telluride, has only been skied a couple of times, and there’s 13,824-foot Jagged Mountain, which will be one of the most technical ski descents. As for 13,864-foot Vestal Peak in the San Juan range, still on their to-do list, the trio doesn’t even know if there’s a skiable way down. “There are some serious issues with the peaks we have left,” Ted says. “Will there even be snow at the top? They’re really remote, so we have no way of knowing until we get there. We are leaving the biggest prizes for the end.” Davenport, for his part, isn’t too worried. “With a project like this that has never been done, we don’t feel like we need to race through it. We’ll give it our best, see how many we can do, but I don’t see any problem finishing by spring.” That mystery is perhaps the most enticing part about ski mountaineering projects for Davenport. He’s constantly searching for that missing link, the solution to each mountain’s puzzle. When the Centennials project is completed, the trio will be the first to ski all of Colorado’s 100 highest peaks. They hope their accomplishment will help draw interest in the niche sport of ski mountaineering. “I certainly don’t expect ski mountaineering to become mainstream—it requires a certain set of skills and knowledge that isn’t for everyone,” Davenport says. “But anyone can look at this project and go, ‘Wow, that’s inspiring.’ ” One thing is guaranteed. On their way down from their final peak this spring, Davenport will undoubtedly look over to his ski partners and ask the inevitable: “What’s next?” chrisdavenport.com

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the best of 2014â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Summer Music Festivals

Turn On, Tune In, Trip Out Every host knows there are three key ingredients to a fantastic party: music, food, and company. As festival season fast approaches, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve taken the most outstanding aspects of the summer music scene and crafted our ideal festival, just for you. 78

Ultra Music festival BAYFRONT PARK, miami

Ultra is part of the annual Miami Music Week festivities.

WHEN: March 28-30 www.ultramusicfestival.com You go to Ultra, there are some givens: glo-sticks, hordes of girls with barelythere neon bikini tops, the Red Bull Guest House, and general, colorful madness. But no EDM festival can rival Ultra in lineup. It’s not just the coolest European DJs, like Tiësto, Swedish House Mafia, and David Guetta. What’s even more impressive is the sheer size of the list—over 200 acts—and a shrewd mix of sounds that incorporates not only EDM but also artists who have made their bones on live music, like M.I.A. and Dizzee Rascal, who are on the bill this year. There is also a growing rap contingent—Pusha T and Riff Raff, among others, in 2014. Be ready, too, for the moments that get YouTubed and Instagrammed and cherished: In 2012, Madonna joined Avicii during his set, and last year, Swedish House Mafia played their final show ever as a group.

best LINEUP

getty images

Words: Leila Cobo

Sasquatch! is held in a 20,000-capacity amphitheater adjacent to the Columbia Gorge canyon.

best Location Sasquatch! festival Gorge Amphitheatre, GEorge, WasHington WHEN: May 23-25 and July 4-6 www.sasquatchfestival.com If everything is location, location, location, this one is bar none the best. “It truly is one of the most jaw-dropping locales on the planet,” says Sasquatch! founder, producer, and senior director of programming Adam Zacks. “Prior to booking events at The Gorge I had attended dozens of shows there, all of them memorable. One of my strongest memories is Lollapalooza ’94 with the Beastie Boys. I suppose that planted a seed in my psyche for Sasquatch! The scenery overdelivers. You can see hundreds of gorgeous sunset photos from The Gorge and it still does not compare to physically being at the site and staring in awe of one of the world’s greatest natural wonders. It takes some effort to get there too—which turns out to be a really important part of the experience. One has to go there with intention and some planning, and the payoff is something lasting.”

best Pyrotechnics

Fire in the sky at EDC in Las Vegas.

Lollapalooza Grant Park, chicago

las vegas MOTOR SPEEDWAY WHEN: June 20-22 www.electricdaisycarnival.com The tagline of the fest is “Under the Electric Sky,” says Pasquale Rotella, CEO of Insomniac Events. “There are stars [on stage], but we contribute to that star being bright and sparkly by doing a few different things: Throughout the night we have pyro on stage and we do a 12-minute [fireworks] show. It’s something we do every night of the festival, and the planning starts like a year out—last year, we learned that we couldn’t write anything in the sky unless we thought of the idea in advance. We’ve also discussed turning off all the music from the stages and having the fireworks show synced to its own song. The amount of pyro has grown significantly over the years, and we’re always trying to outdo ourselves.”

Lollapalooza is one of the few major fests that actually takes place within the downtown area of a major city—and what a city it is. “Chicago, like New York, is a late city, and clubs are often open as late as 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.,” says fest founder Perry Farrell. “Fans are ravenous for music, and it’s

best afterpartIES

Downtown Chicago’s clubs are across the street from Lolla.

Retna, gEtty images (3)

Electric Daisy Carnival

WHEN: August 1-3 www.lollapalooza.com

part of the Lollapalooza culture to offer and consume as much music as possible.” With the afterparties, “you’re able to do things you normally wouldn’t do. There’s often the opportunity for a large band to play a small room, or the jam that you can’t necessarily do at your festival slot. One year, the Foo Fighters played the Metro; you can’t see the Foo Fighters in a 1,000-seat theater anymore. [The afterparties] speak to how much some of the groups care about the music.”

Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival Manchester, TenNessee WHEN: June 12-15 www.bonnaroo.com A four-day fest ruled by a “Bonnaroovian” code that speaks to optimism, building relationships, and making new friends. “We treat everybody with tremendous respect,” says Richard Goodstone, co-founder of the festival and Superfly Presents. “Real simple things—like our security wears shirts that say ‘safety,’ not ‘security.’ They’re on horseback and not on carts. It’s a festival that’s very, very positive in nature, and the audience gives back to us and it creates a reciprocal relationship. There are 12 stages of music, a 24-hour cinema, a filmmaker and focus series, yoga. It’s like an adult Disney World. The goal is creating a profound experience that can be transformative. You can’t just take off Friday afternoon to come to Bonnaroo and see the entire event. You gotta take a full week off. It’s a commitment.”

best Atmosphere

Foodie culture meets festival vibe.

Peace, love, and understanding at Bonnaroo.

best food & DRINK outside lands Golden gate park, san Francisco WHEN: August 8-10 www.sfoutsidelands.com The Bay Area is recognized as a food and wine paradise, and Outside Lands brings together some of the best restaurants, wineries, and microbreweries in the area. This ain’t your regular festival food. Want donuts? You can get porcini donuts with a side of ricotta sauce. Burgers? Try chef Tom Pizzica’s pork-belly burgers with rosemary aioli. Choose from more than 70 gourmet food stands and wash it down with tastings from dozens of local breweries and wineries.

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Tunes on tour: The guitar of the future will rock your backpack. MUSIC, page 90.

Where to go and what to do

ac t i o n ! T r a v e l / G e a r / T r a i n i n g / N i g h t l i f e / M U S I C / p a r t i e s / c i t i e s / c l u b s / E v e n ts High times: Rio is a climber’s paradise.

Gripping stuff Marcelo Maragni

want a change from climbing in remote mountain ranges? the rocks above Rio’s favelas provide plenty of adventure. TRAVEL, page 84

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Action!

travel

and anoth er thing what to do off the rocks

DROP IN The best waves in Rio break at Prainha, about 19 miles from the city. As well as excellent surfing, the area is a picturesque natural park worth exploring for a few hours. prainhario.com.br

Rio rocks

Since 2008, the authorities in Rio have been working to reduce the social gap between the city’s haves and have-nots: the residents of the middle-class asfalto dwellings and the favelas that surround them. The police have clamped down on organized crime, and as a result, some of the cliffs that provide a backbone for favela towns such as Rocinha can now be climbed in relative safety. Rio has become one of the biggest urban rock-climbing centers in the world, with easyaccess pathways making it an attractive location for beginners and experts alike. In the south of the city, there are plenty of places that allow for a short climb and a stunning view of the 2016 Olympic Games site. “Climbing here is a totally different experience,” says American climber Colette McInerney. “I’ve fallen in love with Brazil and Rio.” “The city is perfect for all sorts of climbing,” says Lucas Marques, a local climber, who introduced McInerney to the Dois Irmãos hill. “Climbers from all over the world come here due to the beauty and the ease with which you can access the hills. In Rio you can go to work and climb all in the same day.” During a recent climbing trip, Marques and McInerney managed to negotiate the rocky cliff Rio Climbing route known as “Patrick White” twice School organizes in four hours. The session was a climbs in and memorable one for McInerney: around the city “Having the city, the ocean, and the (from $52): hills so close is refreshing and unlike companhiada escalada.com.br every other place I’ve climbed.” 84

Rock climbing with the shacks of the Favela da Rocinha as a backdrop.

ROCK UP

Advice from the inside When the time is right

Take a seat at the guardrail that separates Bar Urca’s boardwalk from the waves at the Guanabara Bay shore. The ice cold beer and the bar’s famous empanadas are a must. barurca.com.br

“Climbing is best in Rio de Janeiro between May and September,” says Rubens Ferreira, a climbing instructor from Companhia da Escalada. “Usually it’s very hot in Rio, but in the middle of June, when it’s winter time here, you will find pleasant temperatures and lighter rains.”

Local attraction

The sport of climbing is attracting more residents from the slums the hills overlook. “It’s a very physical and psychologically challenging sport,” says Andrew Lenz, who founded a climbing school at the Favela da Rocinha. “It’s enjoyable and useful—it makes those who do it better prepared for other areas of their lives.” escaladaurbana.com

TAKE OFF For those not satisfied coming to grips with the rocks, a hanggliding flight is another way to see Rio from up above. rioasadelta.com.br

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Marcelo Maragni(2), Corbis

U RBAN CLIMBING Forays into favelas are traditionally the domain of the brave, but today the granite outcrops of Rio de Janeiro’s slums are a climber’s paradise.

Action!

Training

Ricciardo, 24, joins world champion Sebastian Vettel at the Red Bull Racing F1 team this year.

Racing seat

David Robinson/Red Bull Content Pool, nico bustos, Shutterstock

Tony Thomas

hery irawan

FORMULA one It’s not all glamour being an F1 driver. Red Bull Racing’s new man Daniel Ricciardo reveals that sometimes it’s a bum rap. “With racing, you need total fitness,” says Daniel Ricciardo. “That means strength, but endurance and fast reaction training too. F1 is incredibly fast and has long races with cars that require you not to be bulky. So I would never bench press 265 pounds—I’d do lower weights, at faster, higher reps. One area of focus for a racing driver is your neck, because of the high G-loads we have to endure through the corners, with a helmet on. Then there’s the laid-back seating position, which feels like a continual sit-up. For that reason we work a lot on core strength and the glutes. When you get out of the car you really feel it in your arse! We need a lot of leg power for braking. Again, it’s not a question of being able to push a single load, but being able to push 220 pounds maybe 500 times. F1 is physically harder than other categories of racing; mainly because of the endurance, but also because of the loads.”

Off the wall

Pressing matters: The Aussie racer is in peak condition.

D O T R Y T H I S AT H O M E “The glute med raise is very driver-specific,” explains Ricciardo’s trainer, Stuart Smith, about the move that works the gluteus medius muscles found on the hips. “A lot of forces act through the pelvis.”

Start by assuming a side plank position: The body supported by one arm located firmly on the ground through forearm, elbow, and shoulder.

Raise your body, leaving only the lower foot and the forearm in contact with the ground. The raise is achieved through the core, to make a triangle.

tennis Tips help breed this ace racer

All balls

“I work a lot with my trainer on reaction training,” says Ricciardo. “For example, I’ll stand close to a wall, facing it, and he’ll throw tennis balls from behind me. I have to react and catch them as they bounce off. That’s great for eye-hand coordination.”

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The upper leg rises when you go up as the body elevates through the core and pelvis. This also is an amazing exercise for hip stability.

Both legs go down, in a “scissor” motion that activates your glute meds and protects drivers against the forces exerted when cornering.

Action!

nightlife

abu dhabi: to do three-course desert feast

GET PAID IN GOLD The Emirates Palace Hotel has an ATM that doles out gold. You can withdraw less than an ounce at the prevailing rate. The machine is coated in gold itself, too.

A BU DHABI A SPACESHIP OF A CLUB HAS LANDED IN THE DESERT CITY, WITH GIANT ART and HIP-HOP stars. On its opening weekend, the O1ne nightclub secured a place in the Guinness Book of Records. Eighteen aerosol-wielding artists turned the circular façade of the building, 55 feet high, into the world’s largest private graffiti wall. (It took two weeks and 5,500 spray cans to complete the job.) On the other side of the wall, VJs take care of the club’s interior decoration, projecting onto an expanse of 3,800 square feet: That’s about one-and-a-third tennis courts, and also a world record. There is nothing understated here. A lit catwalk runs through the middle of the club, on which the likes of Ludacris and Lil’ Kim have strutted. The feeling out on the dance floor is of a catwalk show in orbit, on a space station manned by models and fueled by magnums of champagne. Entry is not impossible. “Either you reserve a VIP table,” says owner Chafic el Khazen, “or you try your luck at the door. Dressed to the nines, and in a ratio of two women to one man.” O1NE Yas Island Leisure Drive, Gate 8, Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, UAE o1neyasisland.com

Video projections enhance the vibe at O1ne nightclub.

BIGGEST NIGHTS OUT OTHER RECORDBREAKING CLUBS

Privilege, Ibiza Seven floors, rooms with ceilings 82 feet high, a huge indoor pool, and 10,000 people dancing the night away. Clubbers get a map of the building when they enter to help them navigate the biggest club in the world.

SEE ROBOT JOCKEYS After child jockeys were banned from taking part in the weekly camel races at the Al Wathba racetrack in 2002, radiocontrolled robots have been in the saddle instead.

Moulin Rouge, Paris The longest-running club opened in 1889, the same year as the Eiffel Tower. It’s still as innovative as ever: Cutting-edge techno DJs of the moment play next door in its spin-off club, La Machine. Club 23, Melbourne At $11,000, the Winston, the world’s most expensive cocktail, is named for its most expensive ingredient: 1858 vintage Croizet Cognac, a bottle of which Winston Churchill shared with General Eisenhower on the day before D-Day.

SKYDIVE INSIDE The vertical wind tunnel at the Abu Dhabi Country Club blasts air upward using an 875 horsepower fan. It feels like you’re in freefall, but you’re only 3 feet up.

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sky-management.net(2), Getty Images, skyventure.com

A thousand and one nights out

Action!

My City

Hollywood North Beach Park

H o l ly w o o d

pembroke pines Flo rid

te es

Extension of Florida’s Turnpike

Collins Ave

Miami nice

Palmetto Expy

David “LEBO” Le Batard’s art is a winningly eclectic mix of color, pop-culture references, and sleepyeyed animals, a joyful combination that mirrors his multifaceted hometown, Miami. It’s the pulse of that city—and its blend of cultures, cuisines, and natural wonders—that influence his art. When not working in his showroom or gallery in the city’s Wynwood Art District, LEBO immerses himself in Miami’s pedestrian culture—or uses the public bike system to wheel around town, checking out the numerous stunning murals. “The most interesting places to me are those where everybody is congregating together,” he says.

Hialeah

Ok ee

Palmetto Expy

Airport Expy Miami International Airport Dolphin Expy

Ex py

Complete the Tamiami Trail Tri in the Everglades

miami b e ac h

Key Biscayne

ula

albert exergian

G o W i ld

Julia Tuttle Causeway

xie

Do n

2 Panther Coffee 2390 NW 2nd Ave. “The Wynwood Art District is a concentration of eccentric and creative thinkers all living in the same area. This is the coffeehouse right in the middle of it, and it’s very laid-back.”

5 Montgomery Botanical Center

LEBO’s Loves

1 South Pointe Park 1 Washington Ave. “You get a little bit of everything from skaters to older tourists. Where South Beach can be a little exclusionary, this is a place that embraces all the different elements that make up Miami.”

Bay Harbor Islands

Virginia Key

www.lebostudios.com

TOp Five

Oleta River State Park

I-95 Express (Tollroad)

Opa-Iocka Executive Airport

miami Forget your ’80s visions of pastels, cigarette boats, and stubble. What gives the city a charge now, says street artist LEBO, is its vibrant diversity.

Jason Koerner, Corbis(3), Getty Images, shutterstock

a’s Turnpike

“LEBO,” aka David Le Batard: Art in the heart of Miami

3 Le Tub 1100 N. Ocean Dr. “The restaurant Le Tub is a Florida classic—it’s a lot of comfort food, and they don’t even accept credit cards. There are toilets and bathtubs everywhere sunk into the ground.”

4 Los Ranchos Steakhouse 401 Biscayne Blvd. “I grew up in Little Havana; it used to be all Cuban but now it’s Latin from all over. Los Ranchos is like being in Spain, so that takes the Latin influence back even further.”

5 Bill Baggs Park 1200 Crandon Blvd. This park is located at the end of Key Biscayne and it’s really good for paddleboarding. The water around Florida, overall, is good for paddleboarding because we don’t have any waves.”

Bike

Hike

Kayak

Start the 15-mile loop at the Shark Valley Visitor Center—go at sunrise to see the most wildlife.

A 3-mile loop starts at the Oasis Visitor Center. No problem? Ha. It’s in a swamp.

Finish with a 3.5-mile push from the Gulf Coast Visitor Center. And bring that 100 percent DEET.

www.nps.gov/ever/planyourvisit/tamiami-trail-triathlon.htm

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Action!

world run

e n t er

n ow

t a n d ge g n i n t ra i

The gear you need

Global gathering W ings For Life World Run A starter’s gun goes off on six continents: The first worldwide running race in sportS history gets under way on may 4, AND Anyone who wants to race against the rest of the world can take part. Here are the details: 1. THE WAY IT WORKS

4. THE RESULT

In 33 countries, 35 races will all begin at 10 a.m. UTC (Co-ordinated Universal Time; 6 a.m. EST) on May 4, 2014. “Catcher Cars” will start reeling in the participants 30 minutes later. The last person in the world to be caught wins.

The last man and last woman running will be crowned global champions and win a special roundthe-world trip. Each country will also record its national winners. All runners will be able to check online to see how they did and see who in the world ran farther than they did.

2. THE CHASERS The “Catcher Cars” will gradually increase their speed at predetermined intervals. Once a runner is caught, or passed by a car, he or she must drop out of the race, and the distance run at that point is automatically recorded.

5. THE PARTICIPANTS

3. THE COURSES

6. THE MISSION

They fall into five categories around the world: coastal runs, river runs, city runs, nature runs, and runs with a view. The event’s homepage (wingsforlife worldrun.com) gives you the latest weather reports, detailed course information, training plans, and a distance-time calculator.

The Wings for Life World Run motto is: Running for Those Who Can’t. All of the money earned will go to the Wings for Life Foundation, which supports worldwide scientific research programs looking for a cure for spinal cord injury. You can find more information at wingsforlife.com.

Beginners, hobby runners, top athletes and stars, such as former Formula One driver David Coulthard. The aim is to cover as much of the course as you can to help cure paraplegia.

Compete against the rest of the world in the Wings for Life World Run. You can register online until April 20 at wingsforlifeworldrun.com

h ow to buy Ultrarunner Christian Schiester on essential purchasing practices

RUNNING SHOES

“Buy your shoes in a specialist shop, where you should take advice, get your running style analyzed, and do footprint tests. Anyone who does a lot of road-running should definitely go for a well-padded shoe.”

CLOTHING

TECH

“An old piece of runners’ wisdom: If you’re a bit too cold just as you leave the house, you’re dressed perfectly. Fabrics should be breathable and reflective. Keep an eye on irritable areas during long training sessions.”

“Movement is the main thing, not technology. Having said that, analyzing data such as your pulse range or the distances run on your computer is a great motivational aid, especially for new runners.”

never be without compression socks

“I got over my initial doubts about them. Compressing your calf muscles definitely improves your performance and means you can recover up to 20 percent more quickly.”

“Movement is the main thing.” Wings for Life World Run ambassador Christian Schiester

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step on LOOK AT ME! Reflectors on the shoulders, back, and sleeves will make a shining example of you.

THREE HANDY RUNNING PARTNERS

PROTECTIVE MEDIUM A three-layer membrane keeps moisture away from the body. The outer manmade-fiber layer is both wind- and waterproof.

Jürgen Skarwan/Red Bull Content Pool, Philip Platzer, kurt keinrath

POWER STATION A small battery, charged via USB, provides power to the LEDs. The power supply is in the jacket pocket.

Night Owl Tao Illuminator Jacket WANT TO RUN IN THE EVENING WITHOUT WEARING A LAMP ON YOUR HEAD? NOW YOU CAN. THIS JACKET LIGHTS UP YOUR PATH. For runners, seeing and being seen is not so much about massaging egos as staying alive. Bright colors are usually the first choice for visibility, but this awardwinning jacket comes in black, with two built-in LED lamps to cast light on even the darkest path. tao.info

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WIDE RANGE The 60º scattering angle of the two LED lamps illuminates the path ahead.

CAMELBAK DART Keeps everything nearby for those long training sessions, including 50 oz. of liquid in the built-in container system. camelbak.com

X-BIONIC EFFEKTOR Some partial compression from clothing helps blood flow, can prevent lactic acid build-up, and keeps you nice and warm. x-bionic.com

GARMIN TACTIX This water- and shockproof heart rate monitor watch records running data and has a compass, GPS positioning system, and night display. garmin.com

Action!

MUSIC

make tracks Bombay Bicycle Club aren’t Indian—they come from London—and when Jack Steadman, Suren de Saram, and Jamie MacColl joined forces in 2005, it was not to go cycling. The band they formed, with Steadman on vocals, MacColl on guitar, de Saram on drums and, eventually, Ed Nash on bass, were indie darlings whose stock rose dramatically with their second album, Flaws. A subtle, folky revelation on release in 2010, it won them many new fans and the Best New Band award from music magazine NME. On their fourth album, the chart-topping So Long, See You Tomorrow, they blend playful electronic music with euphoric pop melodies. MacColl, 25, reveals the music that turns on BBC.

Playlist Jamie M ac Coll of Bombay Bicycle Club on his granddad’s finest phone call and the dance tunes that lead to tears.

bombaybicycleclubmusic.com

1 MacColl & Seeger 2 Arthur Russell The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Love Is Overtaking Me

“I’m perhaps a bit biased because my grandfather, Ewan MacColl, wrote this song. Legend says he wrote it, then sang it on the phone to my grandmother [singer Peggy Seeger, half-sister of the late Pete Seeger]. Hopefully that’s true, because it’s a lovely image. ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ is simply the finest love song ever written.”

“This is a song that Jack discovered when he was writing our second album, Flaws, and it became one of our favorites. It’s hard to explain what it sounds like— Arthur Russell delved into many kinds of music—but disco-folk seems quite apt. Perhaps the best description I can give is that I’d like to have it played at both my wedding and my funeral.”

4 Fryars

5 LCD Soundsystem

On Your Own

“Who knows if it will stand the test of the time? At the very least, this is my favorite song of the last few years. Either way, I think Fryars will prove to be one of the great songwriters of our generation. He has that rare ability to articulate a sadness that we’ve all felt—‘on your own, feeling like you don’t belong’—in a way that doesn’t feel false or overly emotive.”

All My Friends

“Someone once said to me the best music should make you want to dance or to cry. LCD Soundsystem make you want to do both at the same time. At their gigs, I’ve seen grown men weep as they pull dance moves normally reserved for when they want to embarrass their children. It will always remind me of the people I love and our time together.”

Elvis Presley Graceland, Memphis, USA The tour includes the Jungle Room, a wonderfully kitsch rainforest-themed studio where the King recorded his last two albums. It gets 600,000 annual visitors.

3 Glen Campbell Wichita Lineman

“The most striking thing about this song is its simplicity. It only really has one verse, but the chorus is such a thing of beauty you’d be happy to have it nine or 10 times. ‘And I need you more than want you/And I want you for all time’ is perhaps the finest couplet in any modern song; a sentiment that everyone has experienced at least once in their life.”

Jimi Hendrix 23 Brook Street, London Hendrix described the top-floor flat here as his only real home. In 2015 it’ll be a museum; next door, No. 25, is where Handel lived, from 1723-59 (now a museum).

R i ff tr ad e half-guitar, all good

Beethoven

JamStik has real strings and frets, and you play it like a real guitar, but at just 15 inches it’ll fit in your backpack. Sensors detect finger positions and transmit them to an iPad. Beginners can be tutored; pop pros can use it with other apps to generate nonguitar sounds. www.jamstik.com

Pasqualatihaus, Vienna Ludwig VB lived in this house from 1804-14, writing Symphony No. 5 and No. 6 and his iconic piano piece Für Elise here. Exhibits today include one of his pianos.

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florian obkircher

Music to make grown men weep

great music pilgrimages: HOME IS WHERE THE LEGEND IS

bbc, corbis(2), shutterstock

Currying favor: Jamie MacColl of Bombay Bicycle Club

Action!

games

Be Smarter Now Brain-boosting iOS puzzle games

Blek

i nfamous: second son EXPERIENCE gaming’s FUTURE with this sci-fi action epic. An open-world adventure featuring super-powered young people that could not be more Assassin’s Creed meets Chronicle if it tried, Infamous: Second Son is nevertheless the game that PlayStation 4 owners have been waiting for, available exclusively for that console. With a futuristic parkour/graffiti vibe, tons of action, and amazing graphics, it’s packed with cool things—like the dialogue that cracks just wise enough, along with some nuanced visuals not to be missed. Watch as main man Delsin unleashes one of his special moves; at the apex of his leap, he turns and grins like Superman in outer space on his way back to Earth. The game also makes clever use of the DualShock 4 pad: When Delsin has his fingerprint scanned, the player has to swipe a digit on the pad’s screen. But what Second Son really does well, perhaps better than any game yet, is give the PS4’s muscles a solid workout, allowing it to show what it can really do in terms of delivering a new and visually spectacular game experience. There’s also something resolutely old-fashioned, too: no online multiplayer. So you’ll just have to get a bunch of friends around a TV and watch the best player play. Remember how much fun that was? Out on March 21.

o u t n ow

Man-machine mayhem

Call Of Duty meets Halo in Titanfall

The beta testing phase of this first-person sci-fi shooter was in February, but the eagerly awaited full game is out in March on Xbox One. Made by half the original development team of Call of Duty, this is a full-on shooter in which you fight against or behind the controls of giant mecha robots.

titanfall.com

Duet Divert a pair of moving orbs around an increasingly complex obstacle courses. A game for the ears, too: The soundtrack is awesome. duetgame.com

Threes

Brand-new old style

Is that a PS4 pretending to be a NES?

A set of decals for PlayStation 4 that takes Sony’s new box back three decades to a time when game machines were big and gray and proud of it. If your game zone screams 1980s— and we’re OK with that—then this Nintendo Entertainment System skin is perfect. Also available for Xbox One.

All you have to do is squash together numbered tiles to forge biggernumbered tiles. Compelling to the point of ridiculous addictiveness. threesgame.com

houseofgrafix.net

paul wilson

What PS4 was made for

Sparkling graphics in Infamous: Second Son

Make a black line weave through a mazelike setup to collect the colored balls. Deceptively challenging, elegant, and just a little bit trippy. blekgame.com

suckerpunch.com

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Action!

buyer’s guide

Pool buys

Allow us— especially you east coasters—a little pre-planning for the summer months by the water.

SKULLCANDY crushers Rather than digitally faking big bass, Skullcandy’s Crushers have added a second driver to deliver a real, rumbling thump that you can actually feel through the headphones. You can adjust the level via slider controls, which allow the Crushers to increase the bass response so you can bump A$AP Rocky without distortion. $100 www.skullcandy.com 1

Waterfi Kindle Paperwhite The only thing worse than soaking your $5 paperback while you’re reading by the pool is soaking your $200 e-reader while you’re reading by the pool. Waterfi’s Kindle Paperwhite is completely water sealed inside and out, so not only will it survive an impromptu cannonball, it can also sink down to 210 feet without you losing your page. $220 www.waterfi.com 2

Lifeproof Nuud case A seal around your phone’s face means your touch screen is still touchable. Bonus: The water-, dust- and drop-resistant case is half an inch thick, so it won’t leave an unsightly bulge in your skinny jeans. $90 www.lifeproof.com 3

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Stitch-free hems and seams lead the boardshort’s charge against chafing.

Sanuk Tiki Block Flip Flops For the last 2,000 years, sandals have had to do two things: feel comfortable and look good. Sanuk’s Tiki Block Flip Flop accomplishes the first with a soft rubber strap and cushioned footbed and nails the second with its bright plumage. Bonus: No animals or plants were harmed in making the “vegan and vegetarian” flip flops. $24 www.sanuk.com 4

Garrett Leight Sunglasses Ditch the aviators: These sunnies by Venice Beach boutique Garrett Leight sport circular lenses and flattopped frame inspired by shades worn by ’50s literary icon Arthur Miller. They’re not totally primitive, though—the mineral-glass lenses offer 100 percent UV protection and are treated with antiglare coatings, because squinting is so 2013. $310 www.garrettleight.com 5

Volcom Mod-Tech Pro boardshort Stitch-free hems and seams lead the charge in Volcom’s war against chafing. Their Mod-Tech boardshorts also fight irritation in the shorts’ most important area by incorporating a zipperless, Velcro-free Cinch Fly. Throw in quick-drying stretch material throughout and laser-cut holes for water flow and breathability, and you’ve got the most comfortable boardshort on the market. $90 www.volcom.com

Nixon Blaster Bluetooth Speaker

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Nixon’s Bluetooth speaker is water resistant so you can set it by the pool, shock resistant so you can toss it to your buddies, and it can blast your Aloe Blacc even when your phone is 33 feet away. Want more? The Blaster can play for 12 hours straight, so it can probably party harder than you. $150 www.nixon.com

dimitri newman

E d i t o r ’ s C h o i ce

billy brown

Action!

MotoGP: No knee-jerk reactions allowed. April 3, 2014

Red Bull Grand Prix of the Americas Between the X Games and Formula One, the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, is getting to be quite the centerpiece track for motorsports action—and nothing quite compares to the sheer terror that comes from watching the riders and their proximity to pavement in MotoGP. www.motogp.com

March 11-June 1, 2014

April 10-13, 2014

Jackson Pollock’s Mural

The Masters

It’s one of the hallmark paintings of modern art —and it’s back on display. Jackson Pollock’s 1943 “Mural,” all 160 square feet of abstract chaos, was restored by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and will be shown at the museum before it returns to its permanent home at the University of Iowa. www.getty.edu

The first of golf’s four majors gets under way at the Augusta National Golf Club, with all its soothing, babbling-brook sound effects and Amen Corner–murmuring TV coverage. The past three years have featured underdogs winning: Adam Scott, Bubba Watson and Charl Schwartzel—but the longer Tiger Woods goes without a win at a major, the more it seems like he’s due. www.masters.com

April 19, 2014

Record Store Day Yes, there are record stores still out there—and yes, they are awesome. But if you need an extra incentive, indie retailers go all out each year on Record Store Day with giveaways, collector’s items—there is a ridiculous amount of collector’s-edition vinyl that’s handed out, featuring artists from Lady Gaga to Roy Orbison—and lots of in-store signings and performances. www.recordstoreday.com

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Christian Pondella/Red Bull Content Pool, ddp images, Fay Foto/Boston, getty images(2), Korey Richey, Tribeca Film

save the date

April 3, 2014

April 16-27, 2014

A Raisin in the Sun

Tribeca Film Festival

Sure, Broadway may not be your thing—all that unwarranted bursting into song, ugh—except for this. Denzel Washington will star in Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun at the Barrymore Theatre in New York, alongside Diahann Carroll, Anika Noni Rose, and Sophie Okonedo. www.barrymorelive.com

Besides its already established downtown and Robert De Niro–affiliated cred, Tribeca is now making a name for itself as one of the festivals where Oscar contenders get wide exposure. Best Foreign Film nominee The Broken Circle Breakdown, from Belgium, was first seen at the fest in 2013. www.tribecafilm.com/festival

time ta b le more dates to save this Spring

14 march

film April 21, 2014

Cult TV show Veronica Mars gets life on the big screen thanks to its voracious fans and a Kickstarter campaign. Call for Backup! www.kickstarter. com

Boston Marathon It’s always a big deal in the running community—but, for obvious reasons, the Boston Marathon will get even more attention in 2014. Top American contenders: Desiree Davila Linden, who lost the women’s race by two seconds in 2011, as well as three-time Olympians Dathan Ritzenhein and Meb Keflezighi. www.baa.org

6 April 16, 2014

Stanley Cup Playoffs Look for the Chicago Blackhawks to try to win again in 2014—and the already intense check-orbe-checked attitude of the NHL playoffs could be a little more aggressive this year, thanks to the midseason Olympic break. It ups the ante for both potential injuries and long-simmering antagonism between players of different nationalities. And you thought those Canadians were so nice. www.nhl.com

april

tv So, how does HBO follow up the infamous Red Wedding scene in the new season of Game of Thrones? If we told you, you wouldn’t believe us. (Are we right, people who have read the books?) www.hbo.com

25 April 11-13 and April 18-20, 2014

Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival It’s the festival that launched a thousand listings on StubHub and Airbnb—once again, Coachella is going to pack thousands of people into the desert outside of Indio, California, for two weekends in a row. Headliners include OutKast, Muse, and Arcade Fire—but don’t forget to check the tiny print for equally rewarding sets, including those from Mogwai, Bad Manners, and Wye Oak.

april

Music Get your glamp on in comfy tents with beds as you watch OutKast headline the CounterPoint music festival in Kingston Downs, Ga. www.counterpoint festival.com

www.coachella.com

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Magic Moment

Aigle, Switzerland, August 28, 2013 Patrick Wider discovered his new favorite obstacle at a construction site in the Swiss southwest. “We only had 30 minutes left before the sun went,” says photographer Octave Zangs. “Patrick was sure we could get a cool shot.”

“ When I got on my skateboard at the top, 10 tons of steel were shaking beneath me.” Octave Zangs

Patrick Wider, skateboarder

The next issue of the Red Bulletin is out on april 15 & 20 98

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SAVE TODAY. SWEET AIR TOMORROW. See how much you could save on motorcycle insurance.

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