I met Simon Fujiwara last November in San Francisco at 'The Air We Breathe', an exhibition at the SFMoMA that brought together poets and visual artists to ruminate on the topic of same-sex rights. Not only is Simon supercute and supersmart, he's also a devoted BF, has a degree in architecture from Cambridge, and is a classically-trained musician (regular readers will recall his art rock band, Asia Today, from the BUTT Bias mixtape). I picked Simon up in the bar of the St. Regis hotel and offered him a lift to the airport in my '87 Dodge Aries K-Car.
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Simon Fujiwara
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Foxy Boxers
When 40-year-old Günther Spiegel is not working as art director at Vogue, he's probably training. Mostly, he's swimming laps at the London Fields Lido every weekday from 8 to 9 AM, except Thursday which is his running day. Or he's kickboxing, or sparring at the London Gay Boxing Club. Typical Taurean, Günther is generally quite easy-going until you throw him in the ring...
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Fritz Haeg
Last Sunday, I dropped in on American architect Fritz Haeg who's spending the week in a dome-shaped tent on the roof of the brutalist Hayward Gallery. He's been invited to set up 'a rogue school within a school' as part of the gallery's Wide Open School program. The so-called Sundown Schoolhouse of Queer Home Economics is a kind of mobile classroom, and a continuation of the popular salons he hosted in his geodesic dome in L.A., California between 2001 and 2006.
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Perfume Genius
When I meet Mike Hadreas, AKA Perfume Genius, he is wearing a single white pearl earring in his right ear and his red painted nails clutch a can of Diet Coke. This year, he got every known homosexual's attention with that 'Hood' video featuring pornstar Arpad Miklos, and his second album, ‘Put Your Back N 2 It’, has been on permanent loop at more friend's places than I can count. The unassuming Seattle-based musician is, for the most part, the complex individual his lyrics lend him to be.
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The Young Tenor
Just 25-years-old, opera singer Adam Torrance is still ten years shy of his best singing. He sings a light lyric tenor repertoire, which makes him what opera enthusiasts call a tenor leggiero. Like if George Michael sang opera, he'd probably be a tenor leggiero. In the video, Adam sings 'Dein ist mein ganzes Herz!', a total heartbreaker from the German operetta 'Das Land des Lächelns'.
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Peter de Rome
Born in 1924, Peter de Rome didn’t start making gay pornographic films until he was in his forties. In 1971, eight of his cerebral and often bizarre shorts were officially released as 'The Erotic Films of Peter de Rome'. Peter then found himself with a following that included Andy Warhol (who he coolly said no to when approached to make 'a Warhol film') John Gielgud and William Burroughs.
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Nicky Da B
The morning before his show at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City, I met up with 22-year-old MC Nicky Da B — née Nickisse Tony from Louisiana,USA — at his rented apartment in Brooklyn to get the low down on the future of ‘sissy bounce’. Bounce music surfaced in New Orleans over twenty years ago, then lingered ‘round the bayou until queer artists like Katey Red, Big Freedia and Sissy Nobby battered it in gayness and deep-fried it for a larger audience.
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Dan Mathews
Free-spirited Dan Mathews joined PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, as a receptionist at the age of 20. At 48, he’s still on board as their mischievous PR whiz and Senior VP. When he’s not keeping PETA in the headlines, you’ll probably find him thrifting — he collects disturbing clown art — in Portsmith, Virginia where he lives with his boyfriend, Jack. Dan’s a self-proclaimed luddite which means he doesn’t like having internet at home, nor does he watch much TV. According to Dan: ‘If something is worth looking at, it is worth doing.’
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Nils Bech
I first noticed Norwegian singer Nils Bech in 2006 when my radical lesbian friend showed me this silly gay anthem, Easy, he'd made with synth-pop group, Snuten. Even then, Nils wasn’t just singing the songs he writes, he was performing them. These days, his musical productions veer more toward his classical roots with lots of pop flourish.
His show is a slightly camp re-enactment of his latest album, Look Inside, the record that came out of his ‘thirties crisis’ and details a love affair with a handsome stranger he met online. On stage, he sings, sometimes a capella, and improvises with objects, like sheets or ladders or sculptures or the walls.
I met Nils in Oslo, Norway to take his portrait, and then proceeded to chat his brains out.
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Craig Green
When 26-year-old menswear designer Craig Green sent models down the runway with planks of broken wood jutting out from their faces at last year's London Collections, he stole the show. Since graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2012, he's collaborated with big name fashion, but he's always done so without compromise. I dropped by his East London studio to discuss his love of DIY aesthetics, and how that's translated in his new teen-inspired, tie-dyed collection which will be shown this weekend.
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Ralf König
Sorry! For German readers only... Read this interview in English and gaze upon an entirely different set of drawings in the new mini-issue of BUTT which just so happens to be on sale in the BUTT shop.
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Daniel Pitout
My middle name is Daniel, but I've never met another with the same name that I've liked as much as 25-year-old drummer Daniel Pitout. When we meet on a rooftop in London, just a couple of days before he goes home to Vancouver, Daniel immediately locks me in with his blue eyes and cheery, talkative nature. Because of his job — Daniel plays drums in the energetic punk band Nü Sensae and fronts another band called Eating Out — he’s always on the road, which is just fine with Daniel. After our chat, I understand for the first time how it's possible to have a boy in every port.
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Joel Simkhai
When I met up with 37-year-old Grindr founder and CEO Joel Simkhai at his office in L.A., he didn't seem too concerned that young men in clubs — many without a clue how to pickup in the flesh — are all just staring into their smartphones these days. Why would he? Grindr turned four this year and is still the most popular location-based dating app around.
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Heatsick
Steven Warwick grew up in the idyllic English countryside about an hour north of London. As a kid, he played in guitar bands, finding it easy picking up all the parts by rote. Besides his busted and trusted Casiotone keyboard, Steven also plays drums, guitar and bass. I caught up with him at my local pub, The Nelson's Head, on the eve of his up-coming show with BUTT here in London.
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Murray Bartlett
42-year-old Murray Bartlett is the dashing Australian actor playing an American in the new serialized HBO gay dramedy, Looking. On that show, he plays Dom, one of three gay buddies living the life in San Francisco. Before he stole the show as Dom, Murray was busy-busy refining his acting chops in the theater, seducing daytime TV housewives, and appearing in supporting parts on shows like Damages and Sex and the City.
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Robert W. Richards
At the age of 74, illustrator Robert W. Richards has been drawing for almost sixty years. He got his start making fashion drawings, back when catwalk looks were still drawn by hand. When that became tiresome, his racy figures of men began to grace the pages of all the major fag rags in the U.S.
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Colby Keller
33-year-old artist Colby Keller does porn to support his art. And why shouldn't he? It's clear to Colby and everyone who knows him that art has been his true vocation since he was a kid. He grew up in Houston, Texas, has that friendly, Southern demeanor, and is obsessed with all things Native American — as a kid, he'd come to show-and-tell and do a rain dance.
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Daniel Webb
32-year-old Daniel Webb of Austin voted for Roseanne Barr in 2012, so you couldn’t exactly call him an Obama supporter. Naturally, Texan queers have a healthy skepticism when it comes to politics. Can you blame them? As recently as 2003, when statewide sodomy laws were finally struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court (Lawrence v. Texas), Lone Star gays couldn’t even lawfully fuck in the privacy of their own home.
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Gengoroh Tagame
If Gengoroh Tagame performed the acts he drew in his comics he'd probably be dead or in jail. Amputation, humiliation, bondage, rape, incest, bestiality and the frequent use of various instruments of torture — in ‘Masochist’, for example, the titular character gets a Pepsi bottle up his ass and his nipples clipped with binderclips — are all optional in his type of bara manga.
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The Dog Walker
Anderson Cooper is a busy man. With his charitable commitments and the BF opening the new club, he hardly has time to feed Molly, let alone groom and walk her twice a day. That's where the new breed of dog walker, 36-year-old Ryan Jedlicka, steps in.
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