By Ryan Craggs

Having grown up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, I guess you could say I lived a somewhat sheltered life. About the only real crime I can remember touching me was someone stealing my dad’s hubcap when I was 14. What anyone could possibly want one hubcap for, I’ll never know. Perhaps a Buick hubcap pendant necklace?

Regardless, I think it’s pretty safe to say that most people who live in Madrid for any period of time have experienced robbery of some sort. Before anyone comes to the city, whether for study abroad or just for a vacation, one of the warnings is almost certainly to watch your belongings. It’s common sense, but it goes way beyond that. I mean, I even saw a guy walk into Café y Te just to steal a paper bag left unattended. I’m pretty sure all he got was a magazine or newspaper, but it just goes to show everything is fair game.

Professionals

Look, if thieves weren’t good at what they did, they wouldn’t be around. Knowing that, you may think you’ve got things under control, but it’s not always true. A friend of mine recently recanted how she got her purse stolen on the Metro…from underneath her thigh. She was literally sitting on her purse and someone managed to get it from under her. Of course she was in tears after it happened, but aside from a little cash gone and having to cancel some credit cards, nothing too important was gone. That’s the feeling I get anyway—I’m a guy, so I have no idea what women keep in their purses.

Bye bye wallet

When I studied in Madrid in the Spring of 2006, I was uber-paranoid about my wallet. I started putting it in my front pocket all the time along with my abono. I don’t like cramming my wallet, pens, change, keys, Chapstick and all that junk into one place, but so be it. Then one night on the town (and a slightly enebriated one at that) I put it in my back pocket while sitting on the stairs, waiting for the metro to open in Sol. My roommate and I got chatted up by a group of guys also waiting for the metro…one thing leads to another, and while one of the guys is talking to me, his buddy sits on my other side and slips my wallet out. I realized about 2 minutes later when I was going to enter the metro and my abono was gone. I found the guy and confronted him, but I didn’t feel like getting stabbed or beaten up for 25 euros. Honestly, I was more pissed about the metro pass, since it was past the 15 of the month and I had another 3 weeks before I left the city.

And after that?

After that, my roommate got his wallet stolen a week later around C/Princesa, despite the fact that we’d both been borderline paranoid about our stuff. At one point, I even watched two professionals work a tourist couple from about 20 yards away…one guy chats and slips the wallet out, places it on a garbage bin while his buddy passes by and takes the loot. Boom-boom-boom, and the whole exchange took 5 seconds. I kept mum—not because I didn’t care, but because there wasn’t much I could do.

Paranoia

Now that I’m back, I pat my wallet in my pocket every 2 minutes on the metro, or just keep my hand on it. Call me crazy, I don’t give a damn, but I don’t want my stuff stolen again. A guy I work with got his wallet stolen his first week here—along with all his credit cards, 300 euros, his driver’s license and social security card. He’s a good guy and just had a lapse in judgment. Here’s some tips to not be that guy/girl:

1. Don’t carry tons of cash on you. It sounds simple, but you’ll be a lot less upset if something happens and you’re out 25 euros, as opposed to 250.
2. Keep your wallet up front. Back pockets are bullseyes for thieves on the metro, crowded areas in the center and any tourist location.
3. Don’t put yourself in questionable situations. Look, if you think it’s ok to wander around Retiro when it’s dark, well, you get what’s coming to you. A couple of my friends think it’s not a big deal, but they’re just naïve. I hope nothing ever happens, but I wouldn’t be surprised if anything did.
4. Be skeptical of someone approaching you in a public place and just wanting to chat, especially if they’re with one or two other people. People here are usually pretty friendly, but have you ever met anyone walking down the street who wanted to hang out and get to know you for real? Me neither.
5. Keep your purse/bag clutched. Putting it on the ground in the metro makes it a lot easier to lose track of. If you move around, it may get picked up in the process.
6. Don’t make it obvious you have something valuable. A laptop bag screams “steal me.” Nobody wants that.
7. Leave your passport at home unless absolutely necessary. Sometimes you’ll need it when shopping; bring it for that then leave it at home. Keep a photocopy with you instead. Also, your driver’s license won’t do you much good in Spain. Same goes with your US health insurance, auto insurance, and any other thing you can’t use here.
8. If you have multiple credit cards, take only one with you. If all your cards are cancelled, how do you expect to pay for anything until you get a new card? I think I’m a fairly charming guy, but I can’t compete with the guy dressed up as a robot or a violinist when I’m begging in order to pay my rent next month.

Beating it into your brain

Basically, most of this stuff is common sense. I thought I had it under control, and I still got my wallet ganked. All in all, I’d say I feel safer in Madrid than I did in the city I used to live in, Columbus, Ohio, if only because I’m not afraid of violent crime here. Although given the choice, I’d prefer to never be robbed, but if it has to happen, I’d rather it be done by someone with great manual dexterity than by a dude bashing me over the head with a tire iron. Sure you might wake up with a headache the next day either way, but in the latter case, you wake up in a hospital. Even so, the main point is just be cautious, and extra-cautious in touristy places. Madrid is a beautiful place altogether—I love it and there’s a billion reasons I came back—but everybody’s got skeletons in their closets.

Jin Hen Kim harks back to a bygone age; when Britney was unstoppable and Shakira stuck to singing

Once upon a time, Shakira used to be a singer. The days when she would do with her voice what she does now with her hips are long gone. Now she looks like a product of Molotov’s “El Carnal de las Estrellas” and sounds like a badly-dubbed version of herself.

With a guitar and the voice of a pubescent boy, she captured the Spanish-speaking teenage demographic. They would eventually make money and support her career for the rest of her life. And then she decided to forsake us to become an international erotic dancer. Maybe she’ll become the subject of the next generation’s wet dreams and make money that way.

It is four years since the death of Elliott Smith. Here we look back at the events that surrounded his murky end.

On Tuesday 21st October in 2004 with his enraged girlfriend Jennifer Chiba locked out of reach in one of the rooms at his home in Silverlake, Los Angeles, it seems that Elliott Smith decided that enough was enough. In the wake of the last in a series of increasingly bitter rows, Smith left his incarcerated girlfriend and wandered through to the kitchen where he pulled out a steak knife. A few moments later Chiba heard a sputtered scream. Returning at once to the living room, she found Smith standing with his back facing her. As he turned around she saw the knife had been thrust into his chest. He died twenty minutes after arriving in hospital. He was just 34 years old.

With Elliott Smith, the considered opinion was not a matter of if, but when. As ticking time bombs go Smith was potent: regularly he would threaten suicide, once telling his close friend Sean Crogan as he left Portland for the bright lights of Brooklyn that “I will probably never, ever see you again. This might be the last time that we talk, because I am probably going to kill myself.”
Through his music Smith all too often took the opportunity to paint a picture of a life riddled with an all-encompassing depression, and latterly of his uneasy relationship with fame: he sang on a track from his 2000 release Figure 8:

I picked up the song and found my picture in the paper the
Reflection in the water showed an iron man still trying to
Salute people from a time when he was everything he’s supposed to be
Everything means nothing to me

For hoards of introverted, narcissistic and nihilistic teenagers Smith was elevated as the ‘Dark Prince’, heir to the crown of Kurt Cobain. Smith’s breed of music was fundamentally different however from Cobain’s self professed breed of dumb introspection. His musical talent was both profound and remarkable, often playing every instrument on every track. His friend and fellow musician Beck stated that, “he was one of the best songwriters of our day and a formidable musician.” The DreamWorks record label that distributed his final two albums echoed this, arguing that, “he was perhaps his generation’s most gifted singer-songwriter. His enormous talent could change your life with a whisper.”

No thank you Miss Dion

Inevitably comparisons have been drawn with Cobain, but these similarities are not as clumsy as they first appear. Like Cobain, Smith was also the child of a failed marriage. He suffered the debilitating effects of alcohol and then drugs, especially in his latter years when he fell under the influence of heroin. Smith was never at ease with his growing celebrity which reached its zenith in 1998 as his song ‘Miss Misery’ was nominated for an Academy Award for its appearance in Gus Van’s film ‘Good Will Hunting’.

At the awards ceremony he performed ‘Miss Misery’ lodged clumsily between Celine Dion and Michael Bolton: the difference could not have been starker; a dour, greasy haired Smith clambered on stage looking distinctly unhealthy. Dion subsequently won the Oscar for ‘My Heart Will Go On.’ Smith commented of his experience at the Academy Awards with a phrase laced with fitting irony, “I don’t particularly like hanging out with famous folk because their lives are too weird.” He was by this time becoming increasingly annoyed at the media’s constant characterisation of him as ‘Mr Misery’. He sang in his 1998 song ‘Pictures of Me’ - ‘So sick and tired of all these pictures of me, completely wrong, totally wrong.’ His discomfort in the public eye was plain for more to see, he reacted badly.

By the end of the 1990s his drug problems had deepened, he was now using crack and neighbours from his home in Portland claimed that they had seen him wandering the streets with a blanket over his shoulders, ‘muttering to himself.’ One rumour claimed that he had been discovered passed out in a local toilet with a needle lodged in his arm. The downward spiral seemed to be relentless, even his music, perhaps Smith’s most sacred possession, began to suffer as he turned up to gigs where he would occasionally blank out and ‘completely forget his own lyrics.’ The NME never short of an opinion mourned the fact that he could have ‘grown up a happy go lucky beach bum instead of a strung out bar junkie.’

Set amongst this backdrop, the events of October 2003 seem little more than a logical conclusion. However the final year of Elliot Smith’s life seems to have been one where he was most content and happy. The continual success of his solo career was illustrated by the success of 2000’s Figure 8, had brought him an unprecedented stability. He was in a stable relationship with Jennifer Chiba, the bassist of local punk rockers with ‘Happy Ending’, a name that later took on a tragic irony. Smith took Chiba under his wing, assisting her band musically and financially. The two established a foundation for the support of abused children: Smith planned to support the foundation with all the profits from his next solo release.

Murder in the air

It is in this light that Elliott Smith’s suicide seems such a terrible aberration. Recovering well from terrible periods of mental torment, it seems the destructive element within Elliott Smith surfaced as he was on the upward path of recovery. The autopsy performed on Smith however, has cast doubt on the fact that he committed suicide at all, and lends weight to other more chilling accounts of what occurred in his Silverwood home on that October day.

The official report states that Smith had been “stabbed twice.” Both of the wounds had entered his chest cavity and one had perforated his heart. ‘Several aspects of the circumstances (as they are known at this time) are atypical of suicide and raise the possibility of homicide,’ the official report concluded. Smith had no hesitation wounds - wounds inflicted as the individual works up the courage to force the weapon, in this case, through the rib cage. Furthermore the autopsy found small lacerations on both of his hands and underneath his right arm, which the report concluded could well have been the result of a form of defence from Smith. The report went on to conclude that Chiba’s ‘reported removal of the knife’ from Smith and her subsequent refusal to speak to detectives were ‘all of concern.’

In the calm following Smith’s death it began to emerge that relations between Chiba and Smith were not as idyllic as they had appeared. Friends described a tempestuous relationship aggravated by Smith’s constant involvement in the production of the Happy Ending’s latest single. Sean Organ the owner of Org Records, professed; “Smith wasn’t the easiest persona to work with because of his problems.” He added that, “The worst thing ever to happen to Happy Ending was Elliott getting involved.” The production of the single became the focus of all of Smith and Chiba’s relationship problems: people began to speak of their relationship as furiously difficult, similar to the infamous and ultimately disastrous liaison between Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen.

“I’ve nothing to hide”

Chiba’s only public statement regarding Smith’s death since last October was to argue that, “In my mind, there is no question over what happened? I want people to know that I am not keeping quiet because I have anything to hide. If I were a suspect, I would have heard from the investigators. Another is that his sister and parents and everyone else close to him know the truth, so I’m not worried about it.” This statement however has been challenged by Elliot’s family, who have stated that, “Neither Elliott’s family nor anyone else can claim to know the truth about Elliott’s death.”

Whatever the truth surrounding the events of October 2003 and the untimely death of Elliott Smith, it is clear that popular music lost one of its finest and hidden talents. At a memorial concert Beth Orton the British folk singer stated that, “I did not really know Elliott as a person. But I am here to thank him for what he has left behind.” At the time of his death he was close to completing his sixth solo album, one of the tracks dubbed ‘See You in Heaven.’

Here is a video of Elliott singing the song Say Yes. This was recorded at his last ever concert in September 2003, a month before his death.

Ryan Craggs takes a little walk around Madrid

Sometimes, I get the feeling no one knows where anything is in Madrid, apart from Sol, Retiro, and maybe Santiago Bernabeu. I have friends who´ve never even been to the Prado and they’ve lived here all their lives. It’s unbelievable.

In general, you can ask almost any madrileño on the street how to get somewhere and he´ll be more than happy to offer you directions–they´re really friendly people, I think. The problem, however, is those directions usually go something like this:

‘Go down this street until the third left, then go straight, turn at the second right, and keeping going a while and you´re there.’

I kid you not–ask three people how to get somewhere and you´ll get three different sets of directions, with two of them definitely being wrong, and the third probably still a little shaky. You´d think asking the city workers in bright yellow vests would be ok, but that´s not the case. From old ladies to guys smoking cigarettes in front of their apartment buildings, nobody knows where anything is. And for me, it´s not like they´re giving bad directions because they think I´m a foreigner and they have it out for me. People usually think I´m Spanish based on the way I look and if they only hear me speak a little bit. Last Sunday I was looking for El Tigre (a terrific place for tapas, by the way) with a girl from Madrid, and I told her my theory while we were wandering about the Tribunal/Chueca/Center area. Lo and behold, she asked a group of ladies for directions, and one lady told her:

‘Take the first left, head down that street, then take the third right.’

Essentially, it was only a variation of what I´d said. I guess my theory needs some tweaking, but I feel like it still holds some water. Those directions, of course, were totally wrong. The one benefit I will say you get from being lost, though, is seeing more of the city than you´d planned. Being lost can sometimes be a blessing, if you´ve got the time to wander and don´t have to be punctual. But then again, who needs to be on time in Madrid, you know?

In the end, the onus is on you to figure out where you´re going. Check out callejero.es or google.com/maps if you really need to know where you´re going. And if you´re not sure how to get there by public transport, check out madridmetro.es for the Metro, emtmadrid.es for buses, and renfe.es for the cercanías trains.

Oddly enough, I guess I look confident while I´m wandering around, because people often ask me for directions. Usually, I have no idea, but I figure when in Rome…so I just tell people:

‘Take the second left, go straight, take the third left, go down the street, and you´re there.’

And really, they´re there…somewhere, anyway, even if it´s not where they planned on being. Isn´t that how we ended up in Madrid anyway?

By Zakiya Adam

Madrid is an amazing city but it feels as if the longer I stay here the smaller it gets. Having been here for the past 3 months, the discotech scene is starting to feel redundant, the paella is seemingly loosing its flavour, and worst of all, the dollar keeps loosing its value. So last Sunday afternoon, while I was sitting in my room in the rural senior citizen occupied barrio of Garcia Noblejas, with no television, radio, or sign of life, I once again looked towards the internet for some type of entertainment.

Feeling a bit nostalgic for the celeb-reality crazed television programs from the good old U.S.A., I ended up on VH1.com to see what wacky shows have cooked up for this season… and to my delight there were many! First on deck, the infamous Ms. New York. Ms. New York, previously of Flavor of Love 1 & 2, has returned to star in season 2 of her own hit show I Love New York. With her this season is a handful of colourful characters with even wackier nicknames including Midget Mack (pun intended), It, and Cheesy. To add to the chaos Ms. New York’s mom has also returned for the ride. I only watched two episodes and already I think this season is going to be riot. It has twice the drama, twice the sex, and apparently someone special gets a second Chance (wink, wink) to prove his love to New York (If you did not watch the first season forget the latter part of this sentence).

New also to VH1 this season is Irv Gotti, CEO of MurderInc Records, starring in his very own reality show entitled Gotti´s Way. If you thought that Ja Rule or Murder Inc was capable of staging a comeback this should clearly indicate to you that’s its just not going to happen. This show is ridiculously scripted and completely contrived. However, it is kind of funny and it features several cameos from both Russell Simmons and Jay-Z so it maybe worth watching.

Along with these shows are tons of other celeb-reality shows including The World´s Smartest Model, Salt & Pepper´s Show, Hogan´s Way, and Rock of Love. All in all if you are feeling a bit homesick VH1.com will give you that fix of American television if you need it.

By Ellen Marks

Just as I’m typing along at a brisk pace, the soothing “click click click” comes to an immediate halt. Why on earth is there an ñ instead of an apostrophe? Rather than a question mark, there’s and underscore, and instead of the @ sign in my email address, there are quotation marks? This is a common dilemma I find myself in while getting my internet fill at school, work, and internet cafes; the keyboards never correspond.

While the basic alphabet is the same (which I greatly appreciate), punctuating my arguments has become a serious dilemma. Often times, the keyboard is made in America and programmed to the Spanish keyboard style. Other computers display the opposite situation, as they appear to be Spanish, but are programmed American. It seems simple, but then the British keyboard comes into play, or even some French (noted by the ç) and I find myself drowning in an abyss of erroneous punctuation.

It may be a bit of a tangent, but punctuation is vital to my argument, and can really change the significance of a sentence. Let’s take for example, one phrase punctuated differently. The words “A woman with out her man is nothing” can be punctuated a few ways resulting in very different meanings. Here are a few examples, beginning with the feminist version, and followed by the more macho approach.

“A woman: without her, man is nothing.”

“A woman, without her man, is nothing.”

See how clever punctuation can make one seem? Well, allow me to show you, my attempted punctuation of the same phrase, using a baffled Spanish, American, British keyboard.

“A woman¿ without herñ man¡ is nothing.”

So I may be exaggerating a bit, but it’s incredibly frustrating nonetheless. This daily typing battle has gone too far, and I propose a change. Let’s make a master keyboard! Really, how difficult could it be? We could simply combine all the Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Armenian alphabets into one master device. On second thought, this may be a bit extreme. Maybe a smaller keyboard sidepiece that holds all the punctuation marks would be more fitting? This idea won’t pick up without support! Well, I suppose if you’re still doubtful, we can wait a while before we start rallying. But just consider my proposition next time you end up with parenthesis instead of a question mark at the end of your sentence.

By Ellen Marks

Feeling inspired to embrace the Spanish culture that surrounds me, I took a trip to the movie theatre near my house to catch the recent release Las Trece Rosas. Not knowing what to expect, I found myself blinking away tears half way through. I guess that’s what I get for not doing my research.

Las Trece Rosas recounts the story of thirteen young women -between the ages of 18 and 29- living during the reign of Franco. These women had jobs ranging from volunteer workers to nannies, but all were tied together as members of the Unified Socialist Youth (JSU) in Madrid. The women work together to rebel by refusing to submit to the fascist ways and by expelling flyers demanding “Menos Franco, Más Pan Blanco” (“Less Franco, More White Bread”). While their rebellion is bold, the women are caught and jailed. They lose contact with their families and friends while in jail. They remain defiant together by singing the JSU anthem “The Youthful Guardsmen,” but are punished. Unfortunately, despite their noble attempt to gain justice, the women’s fates end tragically in their sentencing to death.

Such a destiny is upsetting to say the least. Though I’ve probably convinced you to avoid this movie at all costs, it gives a very concrete example of the Spanish Civil war. Before seeing the movie, I hadn’t registered the real impact that fascism had on Spain and it definitely got the point across. Well, I enjoyed the movie, and would classify it as a “good cry” –if such a thing actually exists. Overall, I recommend Las Trece Rosas despite its disheartening ending.

RADIOHEAD - In Rainbows

Here is a review of Radiohead’s latest album In Rainbows, which appeared in the last issue of European Vibe Magazine. To read more music reviews and content, click here.

After three years simmering in the backwaters of the British music scene, Radiohead are back; not with a bang; but with a glorious collection of ambient, woozy art-rock tracks. In Rainbows, perhaps doesn’t show us any new sides to Radiohead, it is not a departure, or lurch in musical style, like we saw in 2000 with the release of Kid A, but it sounds more confident and assured than almost anything that they have done before. The songs are fundamentally minimalist (there is more chance of a guitar solo in a Beethoven symphony), and they are fed by a lazy, wandering bass line and Phil Selway’s driving drums. Above all this, of course, soars Thom Yorke’s distinctive falsetto voice, all mixed in with some muffled guitars.

Bodysnatchers and House of Cards are stand out tracks; the latter being driven by a sexy, sleek guitar riff that wouldn’t be out of place on a Velvet Underground LP. The eccentrically titled Faust Arp sounds like Dear Prudence from the Beatles’ White Album, mashed up with a few grams of Amsterdam’s finest; whilst Like a Jigsaw Falling into Place is a little up-tempo number placed nicely at the end of the album to cheer you up a little. Yorke’s lyrics are as ever oblique and cryptic, with the notable exception of the first line of House of Cards when he borders on the romantic: “I don’t want to be your friend; I just want to be your lover”.

Released on the internet in the absence of a record label: In Rainbows is a flowing triumph for one of Britain’s best ever bands. These songs will not knock you off your feet; they’ll just bore their way into your head instead.

Available now at www.radiohead.com Discboxes available 3rd December 2007

VIBE PREDICTION 5/5

You can listen to one of the standout tracks, House of Cards, by clicking on the video below:

So the rhyme goes like this:

“Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot… I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot”

Today is the 5th of November, which to most of the British is just as significant as Halloween, which we all celebrated last week. The story behind the rhyme is an interesting one and outside of the UK, it is not perhaps as well known as it should be. It all goes back to a chap called Guy Fawkes who tried to blow up the King of England.

Catholics and Protestants

The 16th century was not one of the best for people interested in religion. Martin Luther got fed up with the Catholic Church and nailed his 95 thesis to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral in what is now Germany. This got everybody all worked up for a few years and this new protest movement (which soon ended up with the name protestants) decided to fight against the power of the Catholic Church. For the next eighty years, the protestants became more and more powerful, whilst the Catholics relatiated by burning as many of them as they could lay there hands on. And if they couldn’t burn them they excommunicated them (which in the 16th century was about as bad as it got).

Bloody English

England was one of the most troublesome of all the countries. Henry VIII started everything off, when he used the protestant cause as a good chance to get rid of his Catholic wife: Catherine of Aragon. He then stole all of the money from all of the monasteries and got Pope Leo X in a very bad mood indeed.

Even when old Henry died in 1547, things didn’t get better. His daughter Mary seized the throne and tried to restore the Catholic faith in England. She did this by force and ended up burning so many Protestants that she earned herself the nickname, “Bloody Mary”.

Happily for the protestants in England, Mary died of cancer in 1558 and her little sister Elizabeth (of the Armada fame) took over the top job. She tried to keep both the Protestants and the Catholics happy, which she did (more or less) for the next forty “glorious” years.

King James

Anyway. all good things come to an end, and Elizabeth finally bought it in 1603. The Virgin Queen had rather unsurprisingly managed not to produce any children (any suggestions as to why) during her reign and so therefore a distant Scottish relative of hers took over instead. King James I was a funny old man: he was fat, suffered flatulence and was worried that he was going to be assassinated by a mad man carrying a knife.

He sort of got it right. Guy Fawkes was a Catholic who was annoyed with the treatment of other Catholics in England. He blamed the King for this and therefore became part of a plot with a number of others to blow the King into the sky. The plan was to wait until the state opening of Parliament and then ignite a large pile of gunpowder. Scientists have suggested that if Fawkes had been successful he would have blown a hole the size of the Bernabeu in the middle of London.

As you’ve probably guessed, someone foiled the plan. Guy Fawkes was chopped up into lots of pieces, and every year the Britons celebrate the fact that their king was not murdered. They do this by making a large fire and exploding lots of fireworks. It is a little like the British equivalent of the Valencian festival of Las Fallas.