Every wedding movie has a predictable montage. Let’s take 27 Dresses, because I’ve seen it more than twice, and the nature of the film means they do the montage multiple times: We see Katherine Heigl trying on dresses for her friend, picking out the perfect tiered cake, sussing out the venue, and, eventually, holding the bride’s dress while she pees. Now imagine if, in addition to her many matrimonial duties, our poor always-the-bridesmaid-never-the-bride protagonist were also in charge of populating her 27 friends’ wedding hashtags. The montage would feature her tapping a hapless man on the shoulder after he photographs the groom’s back in the aisle. “Did you include the hashtag?” she’d whisper anxiously. He’d look confused. “It’s #fitzlikeaglove, with Fitz as in Fitzpatrick. Here, just give me the phone, I’ll type it.”

On a day that’s often defined by its details, the wedding hashtag has become as de rigeur as bouquets and place settings. For those outside the party, it’s just as common to use the hashtag as a window in. In 2014, Chiara Atik and Michelle Dozois — both editors of HowAboutWe’s dating blog at the time — started a Tiny Letter titled “Just the Hashtag.” Every Sunday, they sent readers a curated list of wedding hashtags to peruse. It was short-lived (“Fun while it lasted,” Dozois told me), but prescient. Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported on hashtag voyeurism, dubbing its participants “digital wedding crashers.”

The purposes of the hashtag seem to contradict each other. Ideally, it’s the foundation of an authentic scrapbook, a method of compiling the moments a professional photographer didn’t see. But it’s also a very public slideshow, screened on random phones across the globe, allowing curious strangers to evaluate an intimate occasion. For couples who are aware of their online observers, a hashtag might feel like the wedding-day weather: just another thing that could go wrong. What if no one posts, or when they do, their photos are bad or embarrassing?

To facilitate high-quality photos, some couples intentionally plan Insta-worthy activities. Nell Diamond, whose wedding took place in the South of France (#nellandteddy), told WSJ that her wedding included many “photographable activities.” Namely, people spent a lot of time jumping off a diving board into the roiling Mediterranean.

For those who can’t secure a falconry sesh or a moon bounce, asking guests to curate a delightful hashtag might seem impossible. A friend recently pointed out the “lame” hashtag for a wedding she’d attended this summer — it had a total of eight posts, and only one (the picture my friend had contributed) was publicly visible. Adopting a hashtag involves a line of existential questioning: Am I popular enough to warrant one? Can I count on my friends to use it?

In an ideal world, hashtags help fulfill our growing need to be constantly connected. Before the big day, a bride might look at a location’s geotag and its attached hashtags to learn from those who sashayed down the same aisle. How did the previous couple arrange the tables, what method did they use to cover up the venue’s stray swastikas? During the reception, guests seek to quell FOMO even when they’re attending the main event, so they do a digital survey: Is table eight ordering shots? Have the party’s funnest people moved to the pool? Instagram creates a kind of ambient community, with seemingly endless chances to be inspired or involved. It’s overwhelming.

For a less obsessive, more ephemeral collection of images, some brides are opting to create Snapchat filters (which, yes, they sometimes post to Instagram too). According to Snapchat, thousands of on-demand geofilters — designs meant to accent live events — are being submitted every day. One San Diego bride who purchased her own geofilter, Kelli O’Merry, said that the app was “essentially our version of the photobooth.”

The Silicon Valley cognoscenti seem to be on board with beyond-hashtag nuptials. Inevitably, Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel was prepared with a custom bitmoji filter for his recent engagement to Miranda Kerr, while a hashtag was nowhere to be found during Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom’s October wedding. “Girls” star Allison Williams’s wedding to College Humor founder Ricky Van Veen surfaced a sole, unhashtagged, professional photo.

Hinting at their impending obscurity, many hashtags also revel in the state of the patriarchy, like #mrandmrs[his last name] or #[his last name]wifedher, #becoming[his last name]. For couples who can’t conjure puntastic tags like #amandagotrobbed, #johnistaryntheknot and (for a Pi Day wedding) #McCluresPiDo, a set of hashtag generators will spit out other cookie-cutter options. I entered my parents’ names (Renée and James), and “Advanced Hashtags” included #RJ2016, #RJGetHitched, and #RJMerger. The saying for a special day should be: When there’s an algorithm for it, avoid it.

But until we forge a return to less stressful forms of matrimonial memorializing, maybe we should try to count on the hashtag for its moments of imperfection. Couples, and the strangers who scrutinize them, could embrace bizarre angles and off-kilter light as an accurate reflection of weddings as messy, blurry (rain, tears, tequila) occasions, both intimate and the biggest possible public display of affection. The new requirement of a good hashtag should be to show the outsiders who stalk it that no one’s Big Day is idyllic. That, on a rare day when unhinged celebration is encouraged, we could stand to spend less of our lives engaged in a game of compare-and-control.

Ella Riley-Adams is the social media manager for The New Yorker.

The Unwieldy, Unnecessary Existence of the Wedding Hashtag was originally published in The Hairpin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Inside the Feminist Hackerspace

Hackerspaces are comfortable: That’s sort of their whole point. “We learn, share, and make things,” declares one of the original hackerspaces, NYC Resistor. Equipped with tools like 3D printers and lasers, hackerspaces are collaborative environments that offer access to technologies that are often unavailable to everyday folks. As with many extensions of startup culture — like open seating plans and kombucha on tap — most hackerspaces tend to be full of dudes, or more specifically, white dudes.

Women and people of color join hackerspaces all the time, but some have faced the same harassment and discrimination all-too-common in Silicon Valley offices. “Our geek cred is constantly challenged or belittled,” Liz Henry, founder of feminist hackerspace DoubleUnion writes. “You might be there coding, and you want to stop for a while and draw in your notebook and think, but if you’re not staring at a black and green screen or, like, melding your brain with an Arduino every second, some dude is going to come up to you and act like you need his expert lessons in how to hack.”

In addition to condescension, other women faced hackerspace leadership who condoned sexism. As one member tells it, in the Guide to Feminist Hackerspaces zine: “[A woman] was working on something and this kid next to her was like bragging to her about how he had gotten a woman online to show him her breasts by threatening to hurt a kid. And she was like ‘What is going on here? Why are you telling me this?’ And she looked at the guy who runs the space and pays the rent here and was like ‘Are you going to do anything about this?’ And then, like, he didn’t.”

To relieve feelings of exclusion and isolation, women in tech have formed their own spaces, aiming to build communities where women feel welcomed and encouraged, where they don’t need to worry about encountering harassment or acting according to male expectations.

Seattle Attic is one example, a hackerspace founded by “intersectional, idealist feminists.” When Sarah Fox moved to Seattle for her PhD in Human Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington in 2013, she discovered the hackerspace community, eventually learning the Attic was part of an unofficial network of feminist hackerspaces, the others mostly in the Bay Area. So Fox visited DoubleUnion in San Francisco and Mothership Hackermoms in Berkeley.

After months of participant observation and interviews, Fox wrote an academic paper, “Hacking Culture, Not Devices: Access and Recognition in Feminist Hackerspaces.” But as she got to know the women who organize today’s feminist hackerspaces, Fox knew she would have to find a way to extend her academic paper to a broader audience. “I don’t want to just talk to a small group of academics who are privileged in many ways,” she said, talking via Skype from South Korea, where she was attending a conference on human computer interaction. “And particularly when working with communities, I don’t like the model of just going in and studying something, writing a paper about it, and then never talking to the the people I studied again.”

To move away from the jargon-filled, isolating format, Fox recruited two experienced zine-makers to turn her paper into a condensed, illustrated booklet, “The Guide to Feminist Hackerspaces, or “Feminist Hackerspaces: Hacking Culture Not Devices.” Amy Burek, founder and sole member of the Awkward Ladies Club, helps scientists in South America and Asia prepare manuscripts for publication in English when she’s not creating zines like “Dad Tweets” and “Never Date Dudes From the Internet.” Illustrator Emily Alden Foster runs the Womanzine delivery service, packaging and delivering zines by women.

Together, they’re distributing the Guide to Feminist Hackerspaces via pdf and in print, passing it out at the Feminist Zine Fest and Seattle’s ShortRun fest. The easy URL/IRL nature of zines makes Fox’s goal of reaching a broad audience less of a lofty ideal. Whether people are drawn in by the new word combination (Example conversation starter: “Hello, what is a hackerspace? And could you define feminism?”) or Alden Foster’s binary code quilt cover illustration, takers will find that the Guide is an effective starting manual for a complex concept.

“Hacking here becomes more than just tinkering with electronics,” the Guide states. “– it is also an opportunity to look inward for means to build and maintain a sense of purpose. Feminist hackerspaces have become sites for members to gather and discuss workplace issues, personal identities, and goals, through workshops on topics such as impostor syndrome or ‘failure clubs.’”

In April, DoubleUnion is hosting a fundraising Q&A. In February, they drank dirty vodka martinis and talked about starting collaborative feminist publications. Seattle Attic regularly organizes Figure Drawing Sundays and Introvert Nights, when inward-facing people get to read books and crochet, together.

This kind of agenda evokes the start of a feminist dream sequence, or the basis of a Portlandia episode. But as we see more of these spaces soon, expect also to adjust to the utopian ideas presented in The Feminist Press’s upcoming book, “The Feminist Utopia Project.” FUP, as I affectionately call it, presents feminist fantasies from people like Transparent writer Jill Soloway — her essay is called “Lesbo Island” — and Janet Mock.

While no feminist hackerspace is explicitly described in the anthology, it wouldn’t be out of place. Since the idea already exists in practice, maybe the utopian version is a feminist hackerspace in every major city around the world. With a bigger network of open, collaborative tech environments, the girls who are closing computer science’s gender gap could effectively globe trot, knowing they always have a place to go.

Photos: Sarah Fox

Lead Photo: Amelia Greenhall for Double Union

Whatever adjectives Americans find to describe newness, you can be assured they’ll quickly be shoved down our throats. The pressure to be fresh fuels New York’s constant commerce and conversation, pushing businesswomen to sample sales on their lunch breaks and inspiring countless conversations that start with “ooh, new shoes?”

This collective commitment to regular consumption has made everyday reinvention the status quo. But what might our urban world look like if we said fuck it to the 30%-off sales, haircuts, bath bombs and aspirational Pinterest boards of ever-changing outfits? Performance artist Caroline Newton took 21 days to explore just that. For three weeks, she stopped showering and changing her clothes, then documented the process with photos and hand-written notes.

We caught up with Caroline to ask her about the process.

What interests you about personal presentation and appearance?

Personal presentation and appearance is a very interesting concept to me because it is all is relative depending on where you live in the world. This experiment only really worked as a performance piece commenting on social norms because I do live in NYC where identity appearance and style is a daily expectation to consider, especially for a creative artist!

As the experiment continued, you said you realized how important it is for you to be able to express yourself with your clothing. As much as getting dressed can be a chore, do you think you appreciate the creative options more now?

With this piece, I wanted to raise the following questions: Why is it assumed that one should change their appearance daily and how does taking away this freedom affect our identity and self awareness? As for my personal experience, I was somewhat shocked to realize that after a week or two in I really wasn’t feeling myself at all. It is crazy how much of our self comfort, consciousness, and emotional stability relies on how we curated our look each day. I definitely appreciated the creative options more and didn’t take this freedom for granted after the piece was over.

As soon as I mentioned this performance to my sister, she asked, ‘Did she get a UTI?!’ Were you ever worried this project would lead to medical issues?

Haha! Your sister seems to have a logical sense of humor. Although I didn’t shower for the duration of the piece, I came to realize that hygiene and cleanliness in our culture today is quite superfluous. You would be surprised how much the body can tolerate — even with just minimal cleaning. When I was doing this piece it was right around the time that Ebola hit NYC and, in my opinion, people become ultra hypochondriacal, obsessed with cleanliness, and paranoid about bodily germs. To me this was another component of the performance that pushed the boundaries of a social norm… but don’t get me wrong.. by the end of this piece, I did really feel like a shower was needed!

Can you describe a couple of the moments when you felt self-conscious? Did other people ever comment or act in a way that made you feel self-conscious?

I would feel the most self-conscious on the weekends I think, when friends of mine would dress up for dinner or something, and I would be like… well, I guess I’m wearing the same thing again this weekend. Another time when I went to work, someone said to me ‘Didn’t you wear that yesterday’… yes… yes and yes.. Nonetheless, for the most part I began to embrace it. Even when I broke the performance, I felt like a part of me had changed, like I was supposed to wear the same jeans and t-shirt again.

How did it feel to shower at the end of the performance?

The shower felt GREAT. I think it was the longest shower I’ve ever taken.

What it’s Like to Not Shower for Three Weeks was originally published in Secret Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The world of Liberty Leben is a pastel update on the 90s culture of cute, with influences that range from troll dolls to gummy bears. Equal parts Parsons student and bona fide businesswoman, Liberty creates rainbow-colored, sparkly soaps under the cheeky banner “Dirty Grl.” Her aesthetic translates seamlessly from Instagram to IRL: online, her images are a stream of sequins and strategically placed soaps; in person, Liberty is bubbly with hair the color of a baby’s birthday cake (light purple, pink or sometimes green).

Liberty has built her personal taste into a brand over the past year, combining learnings from her classes and real-world experience as creative director of her boyfriend Matt Starr’s art experiences. Last year, she produced “The Limited Fucking 2,” a fantastical tween-themed party in a gutted Curry Hill apartment. More recently she helped Starr pull off “Diet,” a faux lifestyle brand that dominated a Soho DKNY-sponsored group show. While she relished the creative environment, assisting Starr didn’t give Liberty everything she wanted. “I was like, ‘I need my own thing I can do,” she says over a granola breakfast on Graham Ave.

After The Limited Fucking 2, she started making the choker necklaces we all used to buy at Claire’s. When a friend suggested she sell them, Liberty needed a way to package them that would be both original and sustainable. “I remembered making soap when I was little and putting clothes in it,” she says. “I was like, ‘This has so much potential! Why isn’t anyone doing anything with this?’ I thought, ‘I’ll have to do this or I’ll regret it.’”

She made a Dirty Grl shop on Big Cartel, and the attention was immediate. Nylon asked if they could feature her on their shop, and stores contacted Liberty to see if she could support wholesale orders. Regardless of the preparation time it would take, Liberty knew she had to say yes. She explains, “I got my LLC, and I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll just do it.’ I just put everything I can into it.”

She may be new to running a business, but Liberty’s very familiar with striking out on her own. In high school, her aunt and uncle offered to send Liberty and her twin sister to the college of their choice, if they relocated from Kansas to Austin, Texas. They both refused initially: in Kansas, Liberty was captain of her high school’s cheerleading team. Standing at a lithe 5’2”, she was the one tossed in the air, doing the splits while smiling wide. She’s become more introverted as she’s learned to live in New York City, but in moments of enthusiasm it’s easy to imagine her bouncy personality standing out at a pep rally.

Her junior year of high school, cheerleading spirits lowered when the team’s coaches kept quitting, and Liberty reconsidered her aunt and uncle’s offer. None of her friends believed Liberty would ever actually move. The way she tells it, “When I was 10, I remember I would say, ‘I’m going to New York and I’m majoring in fashion design.’ And all my little friends would say, ‘No, you’re going to go to KU like everyone else.’”

Liberty spent her junior year as the new girl in Austin; senior year she got into Parsons. She’ll graduate next year with a degree in communications design. Her thesis presentation showcased Dirty Grl through a social trading card game called “Save As.” To house the game, Liberty constructed a pop-up shop where she asked people to pay for products with attention. At an iPad register, customers were asked to follow Liberty on Instagram and like a number of her photos in order to receive a soap. The soaps were filled with Save As trading cards, physical Instagrams from people who have paid attention to Liberty in past. Some packs featured collaborators like Art Baby Girl, others included friends like cyborg Moon Ribas and Canadian blog stars the Beckermans.

When a customer pays with attention, they also enter the game. An Instagram card is automatically printed from their profile and added to a stack of cards to be packaged in soap. Liberty will be restocking her shop throughout her thesis, ensuring an ever-larger pool of participants. Liberty hopes the printed materials will eventually flow back to their online origins when people take photos of their trading cards: “If someone posts your card, you’re supposed to repost that picture,” she explains. “So it’s getting everyone attention, helping break this power system of social media, or like this competition for attention. I’m creating my own power system within another system, which is Instagram.”

Save As portrays the growing community around Dirty Grl while manufacturing a version of our increasingly dominant attention economy. But Liberty’s game attempts to divert from its real-life inspiration when it asks players to agree to reciprocity. Long gone are the days when “follow for follow” meant something. Anyone really trying to be an influencer online knows to pay attention to the sacred ratio, where follower count should be double or more that of “following.” If Liberty succeeds in creating a version of the attention economy where we’re all active collaborators and generous attention-givers rather than competitive like-hoarders, she will have made much more than a digital impression.

Photos: Shy Adelman

Dirty Grl Soap Cleans Up on Instagram and IRL was originally published in Secret Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Looking through the corner windows, it’s not immediately clear what’s going on inside the newest restaurant in Paris’ 9th arrondissement. The floor is covered in sand, and the space is bisected by a curtain of what looks like volleyball netting. Squinting through the knitted squares, it’s possible to make out a bartender wielding a miniature blow torch to ignite a flaming shot at the back-wall bar. His sweatshirt depicts a smiling, moustachioed man — the grandfather of restaurant owner Alexis Robert, and the inspiration for this unusual place.

Walking in, the expected sounds of French conversation and of draft beer being poured are punctuated by the surprising metallic clack of boules crashing together. A group of people watch a live game unfolding, cheering when the players come close to their target. They’re playing pétanque, better known in the U.S. by its Italian name, Bocce, and much beloved by Robert’s grandfather, a dentist in a small Cantal town. Welcome to Chez Bouboule.

Chez Bouboule feels a little like a miniature bowling alley — if bowling alleys smelled better, served dishes like salmon tartare with dill, and favored exposed concrete over neon carpeting.

As unorthodox a concept as this may be — and for Paris, it’s a pretty quirky combo — Chez Bouboule is actually not the first time Robert has combined dining and indoor sports. After some time spent working at IBM and as a corporate head-hunter, he tested his hybrid model with Le Vintage, a space in the 2nd arrondissement, where guests could kill time between courses by playing foosball (or, as the French insist on calling it, “le baby-foot”). But considering the space required for a game of pétanque, Chez Bouboule represents an ambitious upping of the ante.

The room feels a little like a miniature bowling alley — if bowling alleys smelled better, served dishes like salmon tartare with dill, and favored exposed concrete over neon carpeting. The decor is purposefully spare, with wooden stools lining marble counters. All the menu items are simple and delicious; guests can nibble on fresh charcuterie and prime paté as they wait their turn at the pitch. Besides flaming shots, the bar is stocked with a more typical selection of beer, wine and cocktails.

“I find the values of pétanque are excellent,” Robert says. “The friendship, the sharing, the sense of holiday…” It’s typically a fair weather sport, so Parisians are “delighted” to have a place to play all year round, he adds. And unlike some of the other innovative joints that are shaking up the bar and restaurant scene in Paris, like Holy Belly or Fondation Café, this one has been warmly received by the city bureaucracy: The mayor of the 9th arrondissement, Delphine Bürkli, sent a letter congratulating Chez Bouboule on its success.

That’s partly a testament to Robert’s ability to pull off a delicate balancing act between the old and the new. A quintessential Ricard sign still hangs above the bar, and nothing about the décor screams “we are different.” By camouflaging a fun concept in traditional bistro garb, Chez Bouboule hits an entrepreneurial sweet spot: enticing to outsiders, but familiar enough to also attract locals in search of an after-work apéro. Let the games continue…

Illustration by Kemi Mai
Photographs by William Lounsbury

A New Parisian Bar Redefines the Art of the Drinking Game was originally published in Gone on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The darling dogs of Instagram tend to be small and fluffy, with wide, emotional eyes. Google “cutest dogs of Instagram,” and you’ll find happy-go-lucky terriers and spaniels in sweaters. In general, it makes sense that the most popular dogs would resemble the Internet’s first and greatest love: cats.

But lately, all feline pretense has gone out the window with Instagram’s rising dog star, the Shar-Pei. Shar-Pei translates to “sand coat,” in Chinese, which gives you the first hint that there will be no filtered fluff. Nor will you find wide, expressive eyes — most Shar-Peis have beady peepers, often partway covered by furrowed face skin.

Instagrammers seem charmed by the Shar-Pei’s strange appearance, no matter how much they resemble eyeless eeyores. Like pug owners before them, Shar-Pei owners are proud to photograph their wrinkly pets. And more and more, they’re rewarded with followers. Lots of Shar-Peis have independent accounts, like Arena, Pablo, and Thurston — all of whom boast over 1000 followers. If you’re interested in going on a Shar-Pei binge, it’s easy because Shar-Peis tend to comment on each other’s photos. They make a close community, one that will no doubt keep the Shar-Pei spirit strong as the breed’s popularity grows. Like flightless birds or sleepy tree creatures, their unlikely existence makes them all the more loveable.

Words: Ella Riley-Adams

The Unlikely Dog Of Instagram was originally published in Secret Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When Brandee Brown is cold, her immediate surroundings seem to be cast in shadow. Her limbs and lips shiver grimly, and you get the sense her mood could easily devolve into intense anger if the chill continues. She is, after all, wearing a shredded denim carpet square for a shirt and a knee-length pencil skirt with bare legs. It wasn’t her decision. Brandee showed up to this wintery shoot in a sweatshirt and jeans, varsity jacket and a Mickey Mouse headscarf; the stylist has given her a more minimal look, and Brandee is game.

More artist than model, Brandee Brown understands the importance of fulfilling a particular vision, regardless of weather, budget, or timeline. She filmed her most recent project, a video for rapper Kitty Cash’s mixtape, in eight hours with no budget. She pulled together a crew and directed the piece — an eerie, nearly charming profile of a long-haired boy — on a Friday. By Monday it was ready to post.

In an ideal world, Brandee would have time to be considerate; she would indulge her constant questioning until she felt satisfied. She wants to look through the footage again and make a director’s cut, she says. But in this case, fashion week got in the way. Brandee walked for a rejuvenated DKNY and Pharrell’s new denim line for G-Star RAW. You might have also seen her, defiant, in the giant DKNY posters that claimed to represent “real New York.”

Her fellow campaign faces — British singer Rita Ora, California-based model Soojoo Park, among others — seem like convenient ambassadors of cool, tied vaguely to New York like everyone is. But Brandee is born and raised in Harlem, the daughter of a hospital secretary and a train janitor. “I was always the weird one in my family, so it’s kind of inevitable that I would turn out to be an artist,” she says. Little Brandee initially thought that being an artist meant being a painter, and when it turned out she couldn’t wield a brush, she was devastated. “I was like, my career is already ruined!” She says, laughing.

“I was always the weird one in my family, so it’s kind of inevitable that I would turn out to be an artist.”

Thankfully, the discovery of alternative mediums led to Kenneth Cappello, a photographer familiar with magazine cover shoots and high profile ad campaigns. 15-year-old Brandee found him through a photograph on a friend’s t-shirt, then looked up more of his work and sent an email. “It must have been the cutest email I ever wrote in my life,” she says, and she still remembers its words. She titled it “cupcakes and tap water,” strategizing that with the odds of success so low, she’d better stand out. Within five minutes, she received a response.

She grew to love her internship with Kenneth more than any class in school. And, she realized, it would be preferable to continue working after high school rather than spending time and money in an arts program. The college opt-outs she knew showed her: “It’s about the people you know, and having an eye. It’s about the connections you make throughout life.”

For a few years, Brandee was best known by one particular connection, photographer Ryan McGinley. After Kenneth, she began working with Ryan, gaining a reputation as his “hype girl.” Ryan photographs young men and women, naked. He manages to capture vulnerability and ambition, lust and innocence. The span of emotion is due to Brandee; she made his studio a comfortable space. When British GQ profiled Ryan, writer Alice Gregory witnessed Brandee at work: “Have you ever broken any bones? What’s your boyfriend like? What’s with those Canadians who think they’re French? These are the type of questions that occur to Brandee,” Alice wrote. “Her extemporizing is impressively arbitrary and incredibly disarming. She is really great at her job.”

Whether setting a model at ease or making music videos, Brandee cares deeply for the unexpected, the breaking of routines. “Working for Ryan, I noticed the more you’re around something, the more you see something, the more it becomes normal to you,” she says. “I’ve seen ten thousand dicks, titties, vaginas. At the end of the day, I would look at them like I’m looking at you right now, and you have on a fucking shirt. It becomes the same thing, you know? That shows you the power of media.

We react, adapt, and become desensitized, over and over. Brandee wants her work to pursue this process in a positive way, defying expectation to redefine the norm. Her hip hop video starred a skinny white boy: “He could probably dance to hip hop too,” she reasons. “Like, it happens! Why does it look weird to us? Because we see a person and place them. We have to put things in categories and label things to understand them.”

“I want to take that whole context and just like — ” She smacks her hands together, then shrugs. “It could be a boy putting on makeup but he could be straight.” Brandee goes on to describe other “skits” she’s imagined. One involves kids with milk and cookies and Beyoncé’s “Drunk in Love.” Another stars a drag queen. Another involves cunnilingus and pie. You get the sense these ideas are ever-flowing. Brandee grew up in the chaos of New York city, and she’s become a special kind of anthropologist, one that studies real moments and tweaks them to achieve some level of absurdity.

Back at the Bushwick basketball court, shivering Brandee is especially worrisome because she’s usually bright and emphatic, wide-eyed and snapping her fingers to indicate the timing of the scenes she sees. She beams when describing her future short films. One idea involves a breakdown of gender lines, and Brandee’s attitude is the opposite of academic. “That’s like, fun, you know?” She can’t resist a good plot twist.

More from the Artists

Hair Innovator Rubi Jones’s Blog

Photographer Anna Tyler Slutsky’s Instagram

Stylist James Neiley’s Instagram

Brandee Brown Sets Her Scene was originally published in La Lutte on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The two neon signs glimmer teal and red in the early evening drizzle, causing the casual passer-by to do a double-take. “LOVE”? Isn’t that a bit of a euphemism? And “VIDEOS”? In 2015? The brick-and-mortar porn business must really be in trouble if it’s still relying on VHS.

Anyway, we’re not looking for love — not the kind that’s available here, at any rate— and we’re certainly not in the market for magnetic tape. We’re seeking a different kind of sexy/edgy combination, and we find it next door, through a door under a glowing pink sign that reads GLASS.

Inside, candlelight reflects on the stained-glass floor as guests perch on wooden stools, sipping drinks with names like “Black Panties” and “Oliver Stoned.” At one table, a girl prepares to swallow her “Patti & Robert,” a boilermaker of Brooklyn Lager and Jim Beam.

Just as we remind ourselves that we’re in Paris — more specifically in Pigalle, on the Rue Frochot — a server emerges from what looks like a closet at the back of the room, carrying… hot dogs. These are not your average ball game dogs, though: they’re organic and over-sized, and served with pickles made by San Francisco-born “gypsy chef” operation Emperor Norton.

Welcome to Glass, a kind of twisted dive bar on a mission to bring great cocktails to an area better known for sex shops. The three founders are card-carrying members of the young, international generation reshaping the Paris nightlife scene. Josh Fontaine moved here from New York and worked at the first of the city’s new wave of upscale bars, Experimental Cocktail Club. There, he met Carina Soto Velasquez Tsou (a manager at the time) and her husband, Adam Tsou; the trio then collaborated on Candelaria, a taco spot in the Marais with a speakeasy in back.

Bringing tortillas to the city of baguettes might sound like an act of hubris. But, says Fontaine, the team was actually driven by a humbler imperative: “We’re not French, and we wouldn’t presume to be able to do a French place better than a French person could. Our angle has been to identify things we think are missing in the market and bring those there.”

The team certainly filled a gap with Glass, which opened in September 2012. They cannily found an old bar which had office space above it (so no complaining neighbors), converted it, and started booking late-night DJs. While many Parisian joints close at 2 am on weekends, Glass parties till 5, with DJs spinning everything from post-punk to mainstream hip hop and dancers squeezed into every square inch of available space.

When it first opened, Glass was a lonely beacon of cool among the the strip clubs and tawdry tape purveyors. But now, South Pigalle could host a high-quality club hop all its own. Displaced Los Angeleno Scotty Schuder opened tiki bar Dirty Dick (try saying it in a French accent) across the street, while New Orleans-inspired Lulu White is a few doors down. And the guys from Experimental are opening a hotel next week. Fontaine sees it all in a spirit of camaraderie rather than competition: “It just brings more traffic in general to the area,” he says.

Not that his team’s ambitions are confined to this neighborhood: After opening Le Mary Celeste, an oyster bar in the Marais, last year, the trio have now taken over three floors on Rue St. Denis for Hero, a restaurant with a menu centered on Korean fried chicken.

So beginning in April, Parisians — and savvy visitors — will be able to celebrate spring with a cocktail-fueled Velib ride from Hero, to Mary Celeste, to Candelaria, saving Glass for last.

Illustration by Kemi Mai

The Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott International portfolio.

In Between The Sex Shops, A Paris Dive Bar Offers Serious Cocktails, Deadly Serious Dancing was originally published in Gone on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Strolling up the Rue Dupetit Thouars in Paris’ 3rd arrondissement on a freezing day at the end of February, Fondation Cafe appears like a beacon of light and hope, its white-painted frame standing out against the somber tones of the street and its glass facade offering a preview of warmth and comfort within. Granny smith-green cups sit in stacks atop the espresso machine. Potted plants are tucked between bags of locally roasted coffee on simple shelves. Large copper tiles cover the wall behind the counter, bathing the interior in a soft, reflected light.

True, there’s not a lot of interior to bathe: The entire indoor space measures 14 square metres, which makes a lot of Parisians wonder about the name (in French, Fondation refers specifically to a large-scale institution). According to founder Chris Nielson, people often walk in puzzled, asking, “C’est une fondation pour quoi?”

But though it’s tiny, the cafe is part of a much larger movement that is re-writing the rules on dining, drinking, and sipping coffee in the world’s most-visited city. Nielson is one of a group of young, international entrepreneurs who are challenging the protectionist bureaucracy that has frozen so many Parisian establishments in a state of tourist-facing mediocrity, ushering in a new wave of quirky, quality-focused destinations.

A short list of these would include Holy Belly, the cheery Canal Saint-Martin hangout whose owners have lived in Vancouver and Melbourne; Flesh, the new chic/minimalist BBQ joint a stone’s throw from the Moulin Rouge whose chef grew up in Southern California; Chez Bouboule, which has induced even the most proper young Parisians to shed their inhibitions and play indoor pétanque of an evening; Glass, the glowing late-night dive that has made Pigalle a destination for cocktail connoisseurs; and Broken Biscuits, the bakeshop which supplies Fondation Cafe with its inventive tarts (mango caramel, strawberry and basil compote with white chocolate mousse) and is run by a pastry chef couple from Dublin.

Nielson is emblematic of this new generation. He came to Paris from Australia, spent some time in Stockholm while his wife Emily finished her architectural studies, then moved back here, where he worked at vanguard cafe Ten Belles. The couple had always craved the challenge of setting up their own shop—Emily designed the space—and Fondation was just a case, he says, of “finding the right people with the right sensibilities.”

He’s storming another bureaucratic barricade with the “Fondatruck,” a Citroen van his team found in a barn and which they’ve painted the same green as their crockery. The Mairie de Paris does not (yet) allow food trucks to roam the city, but the Fondatruck has been providing third-wave coffee to private events like trade shows and university track meets.

Are tactics like the Fondatruck becoming more important, as a way to stand out in an increasingly crowded, hyper-caffeinated field? Nielson says he’s not worried about competition; he’s more interested in community, which is one of the reasons he decided to settle here. “Every place that opens just serves to strengthen the message of what we’re trying to do,” he explains. Every new cafe is another place he can visit on his day off. “Realistically, there’s not that many of us,” he adds. “We’re still relatively small. So every single time someone opens a shop, we all celebrate.”

Illustration by Kemi Mai
Photographs by William Lounsbury

A Tiny Cafe Signals Bigger Changes Afoot in Paris was originally published in Gone on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Serving up a different kind of ‘Flesh,’ just steps from the Moulin Rouge

Peeking in through the wide windows of Flesh, you could easily mistake the place for a sleek home in Arizona. Wood-and-metal chairs perch on a saddle-colored tile floor; a spindly green cactus leans in the corner; and the bare walls reflect the empty white plates of guests who have just devoured the best barbecued meat in Paris.

Walk in, and you smell it. Chef Simon Lewis is cooking with charcoal in the back, grilling up smoked pork and Black Angus chuck flap as well as sea tiger shrimp. He emerges from the clanging kitchen to greet an English-speaking guest, bringing her pork tacos topped with chili-pickled pineapple salsa. It’s a welcome splash of brightness in the otherwise somber Wild West color palette.

While barbecue is new to Paris, it’s always been a part of Lewis’s life; he grew up in Southern California before moving here to start his career as a cook at Spring, then Frenchie, both set-menu restaurants serving quality food in casual settings. As Frenchie underwent a renovation in summer 2014, he looked for a new opportunity and met David Vidal, co-owner of Flesh. “We met him and we were like, ‘This is our guy, we hope he feels the same about us,’” says Vidal.

Vidal and his best friend Arnaud Champetier had quit their jobs to open Flesh when Champetier turned 30. They liked the endless possibilities of barbecue: It could be applied to fruit and vegetables as well as meat, the portions could be measured or banquet-sized. Why the name? “It’s quite rough: It’s about food, but also about other things, which I can’t talk about.” He suppresses a giggle, but it’s obvious what he’s referencing: Flesh sits in the ever-seedy Quartier Pigalle, a stone’s throw from the Moulin Rouge, and peep shows are being advertised up the block at the red-lit “Sexodrome.”

The chic/sleazy combination draws a mixed crowd of locals and in-the-know visitors, and the night-life friendly neighborhood also means that the scene can get pretty raucous once dinner service is over. (The bar is stocked for classic cocktails as well as the deadly-sounding Flesh Punch and a comprehensive menu of sours.)

Four months in, Flesh already has all the ingredients of a Parisian hot spot. But the coolest thing about the place is its carefree, freewheeling vibe. Lewis and Vidal are both hype-averse, laughing about their limited PR efforts; they love the fact that most diners arrive via word of mouth. “Just keep it simple, keep it quality,” says Lewis. “That’s our philosophy.”

Flesh
25 Rue de Douai
75009 Paris

Illustration by Kemi Mai
Photographs by William Lounsbury
The Renaissance Hotels are a part of the Marriott International portfolio.

This Parisian BBQ Joint Is Bringing A New Kind Of Sex Appeal To Pigalle was originally published in Gone on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.