Dovecote

VBS GOES TO LIBERIA, MAKES MOST INSANE TRAVEL DOC WE'VE EVER SEENPosted by Sam on 02.03.10

Let me be real: it's been a really long time since I actually sat down with a copy of Vice Magazine. If someone asked me where they could find an issue, I would probably direct them to an American Apparel instead of a newsstand, though that's more of an assumption than actual knowledge. Instead, my engagement with their usually interesting, sometimes amazing exposés on all things dangerous or degraded is now wholly confined to VBS.TV, their online video channel.

I could recommend a litany of VBS programming–Ian Svenonious' Soft Focus, arguably the best talk show ever created; the just-launched food show Munchies, which got David Chang hammered in Koreatown for its promising first episode; the charmingly ramshackle, skater-shot home video series Epicly Later'd–there really are very few duds over there.

But none of those can keep you rapt through seven installments like The Vice Guide To Travel, which sends people to the gnarliest fucking places on earth to conduct reporting that most, if not all, major media outlets would never even consider. Their series on North Korea is a must watch (and they don't get imprisoned!), but its newest installment, The Vice Guide To Liberia, is possibly the most insane travel documentary I've ever seen. And I watch an obscene amount of this stuff.

Basically, hirsute Canadian and Vice co-founder Shane Smith flew to Liberia (on the West Coast of Africa, for the uninitiated) to explore its capital, Monrovia. What he finds is a one-time American colony ravaged by civil war, poverty, drugs, rape, prostitution, and, most insanely, cannibalism. There are beaches full of human feces, children smoking heroin, brothels that look like Soviet prisons, lots of people with guns, and stories about warlords pulling hearts out of live children and feeding them to their soldiers (also children). It makes New Orleans look like fucking Austria.

I implore you to watch all eight episodes here. That Vampire Weekend record will sound even ickier afterward.