GQ USA - 2019-05

The Watches
Fix

Some excruciating minutes later, importance of provenance. In other Bacs outlines his philosophy while
Bacs shouted as he finalized the sale, words, it proved that Bacs’s long- inspecting another piece. “If we look at
“It is history now: fifteen million five running sales pitch is working. the watch, you can see so many marks
hundred thousand!” A buyer’s premium and scratches, but is that important?”
tipped the price closer to $18 million—a To Bacs’s mind, a watch is not a com- he says. “No, because, first of all, what’s
figure that made global headlines. A few modity; it’s kind of a living object, able important is that it’s in unmolested
weeks later, Bacs, spending New Year’s to tell a story if the owner is careful to original condition. It’s like if you have
in Cambodia, was biking along the listen. Which is why, in his vernacular, a car: your grandpa’s vintage Jaguar or
shore of the Mekong River when a man a watch is never “expensive.” No, it is Porsche or Mercedes; he put it in a barn
stopped him. “ ‘I know your face,’ ” the instead valuable, or precious, or some- in 1970, and since then no one’s driven
man said, according to Bacs. “ ‘You’re the times costly. “Expensive is something it.” Bacs’s point is that the car retains the
guy who sold the Paul Newman, aren’t that is not worth the price tag,” he says, qualities that made it special 50 years
you?’ In Cambodia,” Bacs continues, gesturing toward a rare Patek Philippe. ago—even if Grandpa went over a few
emphasizing the utter improbability. “This is not an expensive watch; this is potholes or scraped the side door back
a valuable watch.” (Reasonable readers then. There’s nothing artificial; there’s
The sale even created a frenzy might agree that it’s both: The auction nothing reproduced. Whether he was
around Paul Newman Daytonas not house estimated it could fetch upwards thoughtful about it or absentminded,
owned by Paul Newman. (The Rolex of $700,000.) Grandpa has bestowed a great gift upon
Daytonas worn by the actor, with today’s collector.
“exotic” dials—ones where the main Bacs picks up another Patek
color doesn’t extend to the face’s outer Philippe—a white-gold Monodate—and To Bacs, the strangest details can
edges—were so synonymous with him examines it through the loupe. “The dial make a di≠erence. This phenomenon
that the model was nicknamed the Paul is absolutely wonderful,” he says. “I can’t applies to a brown Rolex GMT-Master.
Newman Daytona.) All the exposure see anything that I would consider a flaw Bacs turns it over, revealing on the
or disturbing or, worse, even a sign of case back the tacky remnants of an old
sticker—perhaps applied by the man-
Before Bacs had even finished ufacturer or the retailer decades ago.
introducing the watch, a woman screamed Most owners would have scrubbed it
at him: “Ten million dollars, sir!” o≠. The fact that it remains, well, that’s
useful. “That sticker is worth a couple of
the model received makes it feel like restoration.” Whereas nicks and bumps thousand dollars,” Bacs says. “It shows
a safe investment for new collectors. are all marketable qualities, restoration how little mileage is on [the watch].”
“The Paul Newman Daytona is basi- is a cardinal sin in Bacs’s universe. It’s
cally the blue-chip-investment vintage maybe a little counter-intuitive, but get- At one time, Bacs’s preferences
watch,” Eric Ku, the owner of Vintage ting a vintage watch restored—having for completely original—or honest—
Rolex Forum, tells me over the phone the scratches polished away, the dial watches was strictly personal. Now they
from Macau. “If you’re a rich guy, the switched out—can be a huge mistake. are market-wide. “He changed, com-
one safe play is always ‘I want to buy a It diminishes the watch’s history and pletely changed, the way people appre-
Paul Newman Daytona.’ ” The watch’s leaves artificiality in its place. ciate and perceive vintage watches,” Koh
value has skyrocketed over the past tells me. “Now what people want are
couple of years, from $50,000 to today, The watch Bacs is holding makes a things that are as original as conceiv-
when “$200,000 barely buys you an barrel of caviar seem modest in com- able, that have all that science of time
acceptable Paul Newman,” Ku says. parison. Strapped to the 18-karat- and the journey that watches had, and
That there are 13 Rolex Daytonas in the white-gold case is a black crocodile Aurel is the guy who educated people to
auction a year after the Paul Newman leather band. On the dial, where the appreciate things in that way.”
does not feel like coincidence. Bacs hour markers would typically be
made the Daytona the most recogniz- etched, there are 11 diamonds, each T H E O U T - O F - T H I S - W O R L D figures
able watch in the world; now he wants large enough for a small engagement that collectors are willing to pay for
to sell ones made with stainless steel ring, nestled in every spot but the three watches today belie this market’s rela-
or yellow gold or covered in a rainbow o’clock position. According to Phillips, tive infancy. Vintage watches are gain-
of sapphires. this is one of only four known watches ing value so quickly that records that
Patek Philippe ever made with this par- feel like the pinnacle at one moment
But that record-shattering sale for ticular combination of white gold and are nearly doubled the very next year.
a wristwatch didn’t just raise the pro- diamond markers. “It’s beautiful,” Bacs But the vintage-watch-collecting
file of Bacs, Daytonas, and the vintage- coos. The next week, someone will pay market didn’t begin to materialize
watch market—it also evinced the $40,000 for it. until the ’70s, as an ironic outgrowth
of the spread of easier-to-make
quartz watches. At a time when
consumers were suddenly awash
in much cheaper and more precise
timepieces, mechanical watchmak-
ers began positioning their wares as
heirlooms. (continued on page 102)

52 GQ.COM MAY 2019





BY ALEX PHOTOGRAPHS STYLED
PAPPADEMAS BY DANIEL BY GEORGE
JACKSON CORTINA

B E F O R E Y O U ’ R E Q U I T E ready for him, is Keanu Reeves: At the top of In his new movie, Reeves again plays John Wick, widowed mas-

the driveway of the Chateau Marmont, smoking a cigarette on a low ter assassin and warrior with a broken heart. The first John Wick

couch, like he’s on his front porch. was shot for $20 million, without real expectations, by Reeves’s old

He’s been coming here since the early ’90s. The Chateau was run- Matrix stunt double Chad Stahelski and Stahelski’s co-director, David

down and empty then—a seedier, pre–André Balazs version of itself. Leitch, who had been longtime stunt coordinators and second-unit

The faucets didn’t always work. The carpets were dicey. “You didn’t directors but had never directed a feature before. And even with

want to take your shoes o≠,” Reeves says. Reeves attached, the first Wick was not exactly a hot property at first.

It felt like anything could happen. Usually it did. “You have this over-the-hill assassin whose wife dies of natural

“You could have a conversation,” Reeves says. “You could have a causes, gives him a puppy, some Russian punk kills his puppy, and

tryst. You could fucking do drugs. You could hang out. For me, there’s he kills 84 people,” Stahelski says. “How many studios do you think

still that pulse here.” said no to that picture? The answer is all of them.”

He basically moved in for a while there. Could be found splash- Stahelski spent years doubling Reeves on three Matrix movies and

ing in the pool with the likes of Sharon Stone or hiding in a corner knew exactly what he was capable of. “I don’t know anyone that puts

“playing chess with his computer and smoking compulsively to fight more into the game, collaboratively, physically, intellectually,” he says.

stress,” depending which tabloid tall tale you bought. “I’ve never experienced anyone that could have survived [The Matrix].

Now he lives in a house, not far from here, up in the Hills. He’s It just took a di≠erent type of person. To be open to that. To allow

owned it for about 12 years. Sometimes he sits up there and wonders yourself to be constantly soaking wet, sore, tired, beaten up, for years.”

if it’s the house he’s going to die in. It’s not a preoccupation—he’s just “Now fast-forward to 20 years later,” Stahelski says, “and you’ve

curious, if this is going to be it, this place in the Hills. “I didn’t think got your former stunt double directing you. So he knows what you’re

about that,” he says, “when I was 40.” capable of. And his expectations are even more psychotic than the

Crossing the lobby, Reeves silently side-eyes a case of Gucci last decade and a half of directors you’ve worked for. I can say, I know

Chateau merch. A woman sees it’s Keanu Reeves crossing the lobby you have more. Don’t lie to me. Get up. And Keanu, 20 years later,

and gulps—like audibly gulps. is holding that up! That’s not just physical. That’s mental. That’s a

He’s shown to a semi-private corner in the garden. Chairs around certain kind of mental fortitude.”

a mirrored co≠ee table. A wet Monday morning has given way to a Fight-movie fans hailed the first Wick’s use of long takes and

cold Monday afternoon. It’s early February and the No. 15 rap song close-up martial-arts action as a bold stylistic throwback—anti-

in America is “Keanu Reeves,” by Logic, who was one year old when Bourne, a little bit anti-Matrix, even. And it was that. Reeves and

Point Break came out in 1991. Leitch and Stahelski wanted the audience to trust what they were

Every generation gets its own Keanu Reeves, except every genera- seeing, so they didn’t have John do anything that Keanu couldn’t

tion’s Keanu Reeves is this Keanu Reeves. ← do. But there was another reason they staged the action
Today the real Keanu Reeves has that same patchy the way they did.
OPENING PAGES
beard. That same curtain of hair falling into his eyes. He’s “We had no choice,” Stahelski says happily. “We had no
wearing those same chunky Merrell hiking boots he was jacket $4,900 money. We couldn’t a≠ord all the fancy editing and fancy
wearing pretty much regardless of context long before Saint Laurent by camerawork. The long takes, the close-quarters gun stu≠—
normcore made The New York Times. You have to look Anthony Vaccarello yes, those were ideas we had. But we couldn’t a≠ord not
close at the gray flyaways in his eyebrows to remember to do long takes. We had to do long takes because we only
what year it is. shirt $545 had one camera. The first guy who dies [in a fight scene] is
Giorgio Armani also the last guy—he’s gotta get up, run behind the camera,
He’s 54 and getting over a cold. His cough sounds like and come back into the shot and get hit by Keanu [again].”
somebody punching their way out of a paper grocery pants $1,720
bag. He zips his shaggy black fleece up to the neck. But Tom Ford The Wick films have since become a $140 million
then a Chateau guy wheels over a heat lamp for Keanu. franchise, something that no one, including the people
Another Chateau guy wheels over another heat lamp for boots $1,195 involved with them, can quite believe. Starz is making a
the other side of the table. Then the sun comes out, as if Givenchy TV series set in the John Wick universe, further leverag-
it, too, wants to make sure Keanu is warm enough. The ing the series’ elaborately detailed underworld-building.
sun bounces o≠ the tabletop and up into Keanu’s face. ring $3,400
It’s a nice, low fill light. Tiffany & Co. Meanwhile there’s John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum,
which finds John excommunicado—assassins’ guild par-
Keanu orders a BLT and a Coca-Cola. Fries, not salad. → lance for CANCELED—and on the run from a $14 million
When it comes, the BLT, it’ll be on ciabatta bread. Keanu coat $3,590 bounty after killing a guy in a no-killing zone. But the
will find himself missing the crispness of toast. Keanu pants $1,190 true stakes are the same as they’ve always been. John’s
isn’t sure a BLT shouldn’t leave your soft palate ground The Row psychic struggle is what Reeves loves about these ludi-
up, a little. That a BLT shouldn’t have consequences. crous, gun-crazy movies.
Soft bread is for soft-bread sandwiches. “Peanut butter shirt (price
and jelly,” Keanu says. Then, more dreamily, like Homer upon request) “He’s got this beautiful, tragic conundrum—these two
Simpson in reverie: “Peanut butter and honey.” SSS World Corp selves,” says Reeves. “The John who was married, and John
Wick, the assassin. John wants to be free. But the only
belt $875
Artemas Quibble

loafers (price
upon request)
Tom Ford

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 57

→
jacket $3,050
pants $1,190
Louis Vuitton
shirt $1,050
Tom Ford
tie $245
Charvet
pocket square $65
Hilditch & Key
ring $3,400
Tiffany & Co.

→
suit $6,396
Richard Anderson
shirt $745
Giorgio Armani
tie $245
Charvet
pocket square $65
Hilditch & Key
bracelet $7,000
ring $3,400
Tiffany & Co.

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 59

way he knows how is through John Wick. And John Wick → When he was 22, he did not picture himself still doing
keeps fucking killing people and breaking rules. We’re these physically demanding parts at 54. Running and
really watching a person fight for their life and their soul.” coat $3,690 jumping and shooting guys from horseback. He did not
Saint Laurent picture this because he had no image of what his acting
Plus in this one he rides around the streets of New by Anthony
Vaccarello

York on a fucking horse. Leaked images and videos from turtleneck $1,700 career would be like when he was 54.
the day he shot this scene had half the Internet scream- Bottega Veneta “I haven’t really thought about my career future, or

ing at John Wick: Chapter 3 to just take their money. Not belt $1,925 what was going to happen, until really recently,” he says.
since Eadweard Muybridge filmed one in the 1870s has Artemas Quibble But by “really recently,” he says, he means “probably

a moving picture of a guy riding a horse made people my mid-40s.”

so excited. When asked what brought that bout of future-thinking on, he

“Somebody took that picture while we were shooting in Brooklyn cheerfully says, “Death.”

and released it,” Stahelski says. “I thought it was cool. Keanu thought He does not say who died. He’s lost people close to him, but when

it was cool. I don’t think the studio thought it was cool. I’m a big he was younger than 40, mostly.

Sergio Leone fan, so no matter what, I was putting Keanu on a horse Abruptly he begins telling a beautiful story about Anthony Quinn.

in this movie. If you’ve got an actor who can ride horses, ride motor- One morning they were standing together in a vineyard, Keanu

cycles, do fight scenes, why not? I made a list of every skill Keanu and Anthony Quinn. They were shooting Alfonso Arau’s A Walk in

has—we sat down and I said, Give me everything you can do really the Clouds. Reeves plays a traumatized World War II vet who falls for

well. And we put all that in the movies. Drive a car, check the box. a pregnant woman. Quinn plays the patriarch of her rich, uptight

Ride a horse, check the box. Nobody wanted the horses. I had to fight Mexican-American family.

for that one. People thought it was too weird.” The day before, Reeves sat for lunch with Quinn. Anthony

Horseback Keanu became a meme, one of many Keanu’s image Quinn would turn 80 the year A Walk in the Clouds came out. He

has inspired. Sad Keanu, Conspiracy Keanu—Reeves’s Internet ava- would live only six more years after that. But in 1995, what struck

tars, who go out and play on social media while the real Reeves Keanu Reeves about him was that he was always on the phone.

sits at home with a book or something. He regards his own meme- Checking in with the Anthony Quinn team. Seeing if he’d booked

ification from a disinterested distance. Actually participating further this or that.

in the process is not for him, but he’s also not judging anybody who “Still hustling,” says Reeves, still marveling. “I was like, Whoa.”

does play along. “People doing dances, people doing mannequin (Yes, Keanu Reeves said, “Whoa.” Yes, it was weird.)

stu≠ or whatever—those people, they look like they’re having fun So the next morning comes, and they’re in the vineyard.

and doing some cool shit,” he says politely. To actively seek further “It was early in the morning and there was mist over the vineyard,”

meme-ification—hey, it’s Sadder Keanu—wouldn’t feel like a creative Reeves says. “We had to do this long shot. It’s just he and I, walking

act, he doesn’t think. down the vineyard.”

Which of course makes him a perfect meme subject: He will “Anthony?”

never upset the precise balance of a≠ection and irony critical to (Said Keanu Reeves.)

the life of a meme by announcing himself as being in on the joke, “Yes, Keanu?”

like Richard Marx or the o∞cial Twitter presence of Steak-ummm (Said Anthony Quinn.)

brand sandwiches. “Is it always going to be like this?”

But in late March, a few weeks after this interview takes place, “Yes,” said Anthony Quinn.

a small plane carrying Keanu Reeves and a dozen other passen- Reeves laughs.

gers from San Francisco to Burbank makes an emergency landing “There’s this idea that, like, at some point you’re going to be set,”

in Bakersfield, and Reeves delights the entire Internet again by Reeves says. “And then maybe there won’t be so much working on

joining his inconvenienced fellow travelers on a bus (and on their working. It just struck me that this gentleman, this legend, at 80…”

Instagram feeds.) Still out there selling it. Trying to get parts.

He’s determined to act like a normal person, even though his mere “Yeah,” Reeves says. “Anthony Quinn.”

presence creates an atmosphere of unreality, and it’s helped him pull You get the sense that for years, good fortune and happenstance

o≠ the nearly impossible feat of remaining an enigmatic cult figure conspired to shield Reeves from certain realities. The idea that an

despite having been an A-list actor for decades. acting career, for most mortals, requires vigilance and forethought

You remember. He headlined the Matrix trilogy to the tune of and hassle on the phone—this truth has maybe been an ongoing

something like $3 billion. Changed the way action movies looked slow-dawning bummer for him, and now he’s being asked to speak

and felt and moved, changed the culture. People come up to him, about it, about working on working as the spine of his life.

say it turned them on to cinema, made them question the power This is how he talks about how he and River Phoenix decided

structures shaping their perceptions of reality, inspired them to go to do My Own Private Idaho, in the early ’90s, and whether they

to grad school. were apprehensive about the career-impacting potential of the

You’d think he’d have his choice of projects. But you’d be sur- subject matter:

prised. “Movie jail” is real. He’s been there. He was excommunicado “It was more like standing a hundred feet in the air, and there’s

at Fox for a decade after turning down Speed 2 to go play Hamlet this beautiful pool of water, and you’re looking at each other like, ‘You

onstage in fucking Winnipeg: “I didn’t work with [Fox] again until want to jump? Yeah, let’s jump!’ ”

The Day the Earth Stood Still.” This has always been the best thing about him—the internal com-

He is not in jail now, as far as he knows. But he hasn’t done a pass that leads him to risk, and the conviction that there’s beautiful

studio movie since 47 Ronin, another pricey bomb. Sometimes the blue water down there somewhere. The same instinct that led him

fan base that remains so grateful for his continued existence does to Kathryn Bigelow and Gus Van Sant and even the Wachowskis

not remember to vote with its dollars. Reeves’s name can still help early in his career has lately led him to work with directors like

secure financing for action movies of a certain size, and sometimes Nicolas Winding Refn and Ana Lily Amirpour, often in roles

those turn into a John Wick. He’s not unhappy playing John, says designed to mess with long-standing preconceptions about what a

he’ll make more of these things if the demand is there. “As far as Keanu Reeves character is like. It’s what makes all that working on

my legs can take me,” he says. “As far as the audience wants to go.” working seem worth it. (text continued on page 64)

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 61

→
jacket $3,150
pants $1,050
The Row
shirt $700
Brioni
tie $245
Charvet
belt $875
Artemas Quibble
loafers (price
upon request)
Tom Ford
socks $29
Pantherella
pocket square $65
Hilditch & Key

62 GQ.COM MAY 2019

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 63

T ’ S A B U S I N E S S of vicissitudes, acting. It’s unfair the Pacific Northwestern anomie of grunge and Twin Peaks. Reeves

and absurd and strange. You have to hold on to sports just a hint of ’stache, like a baby Chris Cornell. Reeves explains,

the fulfilling parts of the experience and forget to an also-heartbreakingly-young Ione Skye, why he would not like

the rest. Peter Stormare, the Swedish-born actor, being dead: “You couldn’t get stoned anymore.”

knows this. Once, Stormare went to China and A lot of the time he just hangs back, watching other actors, like

made a movie about saving sea turtles, and then, Crispin Glover and Dennis Hopper, action-paint in various shades of

before the film was supposed to open, the Chinese bonkers. Hopper had just come o≠ Blue Velvet. Reeves remembers

government decided there was some issue with him talking about how Lynch let him o≠ the leash in the nitrous

Stormare’s work visa and confiscated the turtle scenes: “ ‘Man, he just let me go! You’re gonna scream!’ ”

movie. It has never been released. But Stormare Sometimes in River’s Edge the camera just lingers on Reeves’s

will always remember carrying a hundred-pound face—thinking, windblown, occasionally sucking on a roach. There’s

sea turtle down the beach, putting it in the water, so much more to him as an actor than his hopelessness with an

and watching it swim away. accent. Even his inarticulation tells a truth.

“I’m gonna remember that moment my entire “That daze is one of the things I really love about what you do,”

life,” Stormare tells me on the phone one day. Dennis Cooper tells Reeves in that same interview. “You’re always

“That beautiful creature, finding its way into the ocean with the kind of talking around what you actually want to say.… Most actors

help of two humans.” just manufacture emotion and expect audiences to match it. With

We are supposed to be talking about Stormare’s private-eye com- your characters, it’s their inability to produce that’s the key. They’re

edy series, Swedish Dicks, on which Keanu Reeves sometimes plays often, if not perpetually, distressed, spooked, weirded out by the

a stuntman turned hit man named Tex. Something about Keanu world. They’re always fighting with their contexts.”

Reeves being a regular guest star on a TV show never stops being Winter met Reeves before River’s Edge came out. They were

weird. It’s like when Bob Dylan was on Dharma & Greg. It’s like in a waiting room at Interscope Pictures. All the young dudes in

a unicorn having a recurring role on Bosch. It happened because Hollywood had come to audition for Bill & Ted, in which two ding-

they’re friends, Peter Stormare and Keanu Reeves. They were in dongs from San Dimas cram for a history test by traveling through

Constantine together and hit it o≠. They go to the same gym. time, collecting actual historical figures.

“We’re kind of similar in our personalities, in that we’re both her- “We bonded over motorcycles, bass guitar, and Harold Pinter,”

mits,” Stormare says. “He’s a loner. I’m a loner. I don’t like the red Winter says. “Reeves had a really good book collection.”

carpet. Keanu—they think he’s putting on some kind of a fake face, Their intellectual chemistry helped get them the job of playing

when he’s stuttering, giving interviews on the red carpet, and he idiots. Theatrically released in 1989, Bill & Ted became a surprise hit.

looks away and looks uncomfortable. But he really is.” It’s the sweetness of Bill and Ted, their golden-retrieverishness, that

Swedish Dicks is a joint U.S.-Scandinavian production with a minus- makes it work. You can show it to a third grader.

cule budget. Reeves takes a regular guest star’s wage, rides to set on his The movie lit a fuse for Reeves. It also created the enduring

bike, doesn’t have a trailer. They’ve done two seasons; when he runs misperception that he’s as dumb as his dumbest character—that what

into Stormare at the gym, Reeves asks when season three is starting. Cooper called his daze reflects a genuine lack of brain activity. A lot

“He’s quite a funny guy, and that’s not [the roles] he gets in movies of his early press clips define “confirmation bias.” Reporters show up

and stu≠. He’s a really great comedian. He reminds me of Timothy like they’re interviewing a talking dog.

Hutton sometimes, and Dylan McDermott,” Stormare says. Being underestimated was probably the best thing that could

“I only have good things to say about him. Once a year, we’ll have have happened to him, of course. He ran from Ted in interesting

a beer together and talk about life and things. He’s very private. He directions—to the antithetical but oddly symmetrical male love

leads his life the way he wants to lead it. And I guess it can be lonely stories Point Break and My Own Private Idaho in 1991, to Bertolucci

sometimes. But I think he’s just like me. There’s a comfort in being and Shakespeare and Nancy Meyers and a weird, ambitious,

alone sometimes, especially when you’re working on something.” borderline-incomprehensible script by two more-or-less unknown

They talk about the paranormal, Stormare says. Parallel universes. directors from Chicago whose characters moved in and out of a

What’s out there. Mostly, the Reeves you find out about when you malevolent computer simulation, switching genders as they went.

call his friends on the phone seems remarkably normal—but a little (Later drafts toned down the metaphor.)

lonely, a little haunted. Maybe that early misapprehension made him skittish in inter-

“I’m sure he talked to you about it, but we both had fairly, y’know, views, prone to fighting with this context. Or maybe he just hates the

chaotic childhoods,” says Alex Winter, who starred with Reeves in sound of his own voice saying what he believes to be dumb things.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and its 1992 sequel, and will do so That was his explanation, in 1991, after he briefly excused himself

again in 2020’s Bill & Ted Face the Music. from a Four Seasons sit-down with the Los Angeles Times

Reeves did not, in fact, talk about his childhood, at → for a bout of “inner-directed” self-flagellation: “Now he
all. In brief, as widely reported: Dad peaced out early. is out on the tiny balcony of his 10th-floor suite, waving
They don’t speak. Mom and some stepdads raised jacket $4,310 his arms agitatedly and vocalizing loud, frustrated pro-
Reeves in various countries. He ended up Canadian. shirt $1,050 fanities over the presumably curious heads of whatever
Tom Ford

Told writer Dennis Cooper in an interview once, regard- tie $245 Beverly Hillsians might be lingering below.” If he’s gotten

ing his youth: “I mean, we did sling chestnuts at teach- Charvet better at this process, it’s been by bringing less of himself

ers’ heads, and in grade eight hash started to come sunglasses $525 to tables like this.

around, and LSD kinda. But Toronto’s become like a Jacques Marie Mage Here is one way in which he is perceptibly very

shopping center now.” hair by nina smart: When you ask him a question on the record, he’s

He moves down to Hollywood, does made-for-TV mov- paskowitz. grooming already thinking about how his answer will read. He
ies and supporting roles and begins to break through in by geri oppenheim.
’86, with River’s Edge. He’s the inchoate conscience of set design by gille can see the celebrity profile he’s being interviewed for,
a gang of alienated ’80s teens. They’re hu∞ng the last mills at the magnet
fumes of the counterculture in a small town without pity. agency. production like it’s streaming past him as a wall of green code. He
It’s supposed to be California but feels like a preview of by prodn at
art + commerce. knows the secret of these types of rooms: You’re sunk if

you try to impress, but you can get away if you’re willing

to say nothing definitive. (continued on page 106)

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 65



THIS MONTH’S ELTON JOHN

BIOPIC, ROCKETMAN,

STARS THREE YOUNG U.K.

STANDOUTS—TARON EGERTON,
JAMIE BELL, AND

RICHARD MADDEN—WHO

GREW UP IN THE WORLD SIR ELTON
BUILT. HERE, THEY SHARE

HOW HIS HITS INTERSECTED
WITH THEIR LIVES. By ZACH BARON

Photographs by
YOSHIYUKI MATSUMURA

Styled by TONY IRVINE

Taron Egerton (right), MAY 2019 GQ.COM 67
as Elton John, is joined

by Richard Madden
(left), as manager John

Reid, and Jamie Bell,
as co-writer Bernie
Taupin, in this month’s
rollicking Rocketman.

OPENING PAGE T CREDIT
ON TARON EGERTON
TA R O N
polo shirt $950 EGERTON
pants $780
Brioni shirt $235 Sandro

loafers $890 tank top $890
Gucci Tom Ford

socks $29 pants $3,645
Pantherella (for suit)

watch $14,000 Dolce & Gabbana
Cartier
belt $650
bracelet (throughout) Saint Laurent by
$6,800 Anthony Vaccarello

David Yurman loafers $890 Gucci

ring (throughout) sunglasses $295
$2,590 Gucci Billy Reid

PREVIOUS PAGE,
FROM LEFT

ON RICHARD MADDEN

suit $2,100
David Hart
shirt $745
Giorgio Armani

loafers $890
Gucci

sunglasses $168
Ray-Ban

ring, stylist’s own

ON JAMIE BELL

shirt (price upon
request)
Sankuanz

pants $1,346
Haider Ackermann

belt $125
Maximum Henry

boots $620
Barbanera

ON TARON EGERTON

suit $3,645
Dolce & Gabbana

shirt $1,050
Tom Ford

boots $2,095
Saint Laurent by
Anthony Vaccarello

sunglasses $895
Jacques Marie Mage

RICHARD
MADDEN

jacket $1,560
Prada

pants $365
Joseph
bracelet

(throughout)
$11,000

Luis Morais

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 69

O N E A F T E R N O O N I N February,
Taron Egerton, star of the new
film Rocketman, was at the Sunset
Marquis in West Hollywood, talking
about the complicated task of play-
ing Elton John. John is still alive,
for one thing. Not just alive—he’s
on a three-year goodbye tour titled
Farewell Yellow Brick Road. You
should go, if you can: He plays 20 to
25 hits, back to back, with the vigor
and energy of a guy who knows
there’s nothing to save for later.
Bernie Taupin, John’s longtime song-
writing partner, played by Jamie Bell
in the movie, is also still alive; so is John Reid, John’s then-manager,
played here by Richard Madden. You have to find a way to be these
guys that still leaves them space to be themselves, you know?
The film—directed by Dexter Fletcher, who stepped in to rescue
last year’s Bohemian Rhapsody after Bryan Singer was removed from
the project—bills itself as “based on a true fantasy.” So, step one for
Egerton, he said: Don’t play Elton John. Rocketman is a musical of
sorts, winding through John’s life and catalog and many-splendored
costumes. Egerton sings a lot of Elton John songs in the film. But “it’s
me,” Egerton said. “I can’t do Elton.” (Giles Martin, son of George,
helped write new arrangements for the film.)
John’s catalog has soundtracked the lives, one way or another, of
some huge percentage of people walking the earth today. (At one
point during our conversation, Bell wandered into a restaurant play-
ing “Rocket Man”—“Hey, I wrote this,” he said, channeling Taupin.)
So we asked Egerton (age 29), Bell (33), and Madden (32) to reflect
on their own lives through the lens of John’s music.

TARON EGERTON “I Guess That’s Why They Call So that thing when you’re sort as well. This time I got into a few
It the Blues” (1983) of trying to express yourself places. But both years, I sang
Rising star of two very I’ve always been quite an old but not really sure how to?… “Your Song.” It spoke to me, like
fun ‘Kingsman’ movies; soul in terms of musical tastes. But home life was good. My it does 99.99999999 percent
Hollywood’s most recent David Bowie was a big part relationship with my mother, my of people everywhere. It’s got a
incarnation of Robin Hood. of why I fell in love with music. stepfather—we’re a nice unit. magic to it. It’s got a simplicity
Elton John was certainly a and a purity to it. And a voice
“Can You Feel the Love part of it. The Beatles, Stevie “Your Song” (1970) in it. There’s a character in it.
Tonight” (1994) Wonder, Ray Charles, lots of I auditioned for drama school There’s a person talking in it, you
Like many people of my age, Motown. And I remember that for the first time when I was know? Two of my best friends
The Lion King was a huge thing. Elton released a greatest-hits 17. Most drama schools in the got married recently. And I sang
I watched it over and over and album in 2002. It had a white U.K. ask you to sing a song— it at their wedding at Christmas.
over. At the time, my mother and cover: It was him circa probably whether you can sing or not—as
I were living in a bungalow on around ’76 to ’78, with a big, a sort of performance piece. JAMIE BELL
the isle of Anglesey, which is very starchy ’70s collar. My And I sang “Your Song.” This
an island off the north coast of stepfather would drive me to is that age where you’re kind Former child actor; veteran
Wales. It’s quite remote. You school sometimes, and we of experimenting—you know, screen presence; cheerful
have to cross a very beautiful would always listen to “I Guess alcohol, weed, whatever. It feels survivor of both ‘Fantastic
expanse of water over a bridge That’s Why They Call It the like an exciting new time. You Four’ and ‘Nymphomaniac.’
to get to it. We’d moved there Blues” first, because it was feel invincible. You’ve got all of
from the North of England. It one we’d just sing together. At this life ahead of you. Anyway, “Candle in the Wind” (1973)
was probably a couple of years this point we had moved to a I sang it when I was 17, and I was I had a karaoke machine
after my parents had separated. different part of Wales, because rejected everywhere. I think I when I was a kid. I was a dancer,
I remember it being this sort of my grandmother was sick. And was immature in my approach starting about when I was 6;
adventurous time in our lives, that’s where my mother met to it and my attitude in the I come from a very kind of dancy,
where we were off in this new my stepfather, who she’s still auditions. So then I auditioned musical-type family. So music
place. And that was a big, fairly with. I was 13, 14. I remember again at 18. And I’d done some was always important in our
formative piece of film in my life. being a little unhappy, a little things in the interim. I did some house. “Candle in the Wind”
It was one of those things that uncomfortable in my own skin. volunteering in Africa, in Kenya. was on the machine, and I
stick out as being one of the first Like, I’d put on a bunch of I worked in retail, in a clothes remember just being incredibly
things I really fell in love with. weight. I had a big mop of hair. store, and I did some café jobs

70 GQ.COM MAY 2019

moved by it. I didn’t know who FROM LEFT never met anyone that famous. weekends. I was always a bit
Norma Jeane was. I didn’t know ON RICHARD It felt very surreal. I think the interested in films from a young
Marilyn Monroe. And I certainly movie, the relationship with the age. I tried to sneak watching
didn’t know who Elton John MADDEN father, was for him reminiscent films we weren’t allowed to
was or Bernie Taupin. But I was of his own relationship with watch. I remember the day of
very affected by the storytelling polo shirt $495 his father. But weirdly, while my grandfather’s funeral, when
element of the song. I couldn’t Bally we were rehearsing that movie, Mom and Dad and everyone’s
understand why I was, but I there was a certain routine in busy dealing with that, I watched
was nonetheless. I never met my pants $595 the movie where we considered two of the films that were on the
father. So a lot of the music Ralph Lauren using “I’m Still Standing.” So I “not allowed to watch” list, which
that I was into were all records danced to that repeatedly for were Taxi Driver and Shallow
that he left behind. I think in some ON JAMIE BELL weeks, rehearsing this song. Grave. Obviously kind of dark,
weird way I kind of felt close to We didn’t end up using it in and I’m not really a dark person,
my dad that I didn’t know because jacket $860 the end, but I remember that’s but those were definitely on the
I would listen to his old albums. Stella McCartney the first time I’d heard it. And top shelf of “not for the kids.” But
It was Whitney Houston and when I met him, I knew, like, that’s what I’d do as a kid, really:
Tom Petty and then, like, show shirt $1,260 “Oh shit, this is a really, really I’d be watching The Lion King
tunes and classical music. But Enfants Riches famous person.” I was very and then throw on Taxi Driver.
“Candle in the Wind” I remember overwhelmed. None of it made
clearly—both the content of Déprimés any sense. Elton John’s, like, “Tiny Dancer” (1971)
the lyrics that meant something crying and shaking my hand Heavy metal, I wasn’t into.
to me, that made me feel sad, pants $1,300 Gucci and wanted to hug because But apart from that, I was very
moved, and the melody was…it he’s literally so moved. general about my music
was just like: “Yeah, this must ON TARON EGERTON tastes. I was just a regular kid
be a classic song.” “Rocket Man” (1972) that had the radio on. I would
polo shirt $1,190 I have a 5-year-old son. They make cassette tapes of songs
“I’m Still Standing” (1983) Ermenegildo do these rockabye versions, I liked. I saved up all my pocket
When I was 14 years old, Elton lullaby versions of pop bands money and bought a mini-
John came to the premiere of Zegna Couture or rock bands. David Bowie disc player, when they existed,
Billy Elliot, and he loved it. I met has one. Led Zeppelin has one. and I would download music
him, and he was weeping. I had pants $375 Radiohead have one. I don’t put and listen to that to and from
Canali my kid to bed to Radiohead. school. I was already acting at
Even in lullaby version, it’s still this point, as a teenager. I don’t
watch $22,000 kind of fucked-up. However, remember listening to Elton
Patek Philippe Elton’s music—and I don’t want John by design, but I’m sure I did
this to be misconstrued; it’s listen to lots of it. My favorite
certainly not music to fall asleep was always “Tiny Dancer.”
to—but there’s just something
so eloquent about his melodic “Bennie and the Jets” (1973)
structure that plays so nicely as We all know lots of Elton’s
a lullaby. So my son, since he songs. But it took being cast in
was 2, has been falling asleep this movie for me to really dive
to “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” into his music and watch all his
and “Your Song” and “Rocket music videos and listen to all
Man.” And when I was prepping these albums and tracks. Now
for the movie, I was hearing it all I kind of know a lot of songs
the time, and he’d go like, “Oh, by heart, which I love. Every
that’s my lullaby.” song is a hit. Joyous to listen
to. “Bennie and the Jets” is up
RICHARD MADDEN there as my top favorite now.
It’s so unique and strange. I
Brutally murdered as Robb just love it. In the film, the way
Stark on ‘Game of Thrones’; we do it, it’s a real treat for the
reborn last year on the BBC/ audience. In Cinderella, I did
Netflix sensation ‘Bodyguard.’ a grand waltz. But apart from
that, I’d not really done any
“Circle of Life” (1994) singing and dancing. So this
My parents always had lots of was a bit of a tough challenge
music playing, and Elton was to take on, but it was a great
part of it. But I think my first team. We were on set for a long
encounter was as a child in time. And if I wasn’t on set, I
primary school, watching Disney was with the dancers practicing
movies, like The Lion King, with the dances or in the studio
my sisters on evenings and practicing the singing. So that’s
kind of your life.

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 71

RICHARD CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT
MADDEN

jacket $4,700
pants $2,300

Dior Men
shirt $325
David Hart

72 GQ.COM MAY 2019

JAMIE BELL

jacket $4,250
belt $650

boots $5,500
Saint Laurent

by Anthony
Vaccarello

shirt $470
Stella McCartney

pants $1,300
Gucci

sunglasses $168
Ray-Ban

grooming by
johnny hernandez
for fierro agency.
produced by marie
nahon at quadriga.

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 73

GQ’s New

BRETT Cocktails
MARTIN as theater
at Vianda in
spent the San Juan,
past three Puerto Rico.
months eating
high and low, The
searching indulgent
for the most Baller Board
at Georgia
delicious James in
new dining Houston.
establishments
in these 50
states—plus
that island
down south
that should be

one, too.

R2
E0
S1
TAURANTS 9

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 75

LET ME BEGIN Almost exactly 24 hours smoked pecan butter. Also, a
later—Night Two—I was dollop of sweet crabmeat lolling
These were two meals over the course of 24 hours that felt like they seated at the poured-concrete, in a warm pool of milk and
U-shaped counter of Indigo butter that bore some tangential
summed up what it meant to eat in America in 2019. It was not awaiting a dish called relationship to the dress of
Homogenization of Mandingos. assimilation, called Turtle Necks
surprising that they took place in a city I’ve come to believe is not It hadn’t been easy to find & Durags. Rhodes is a charming
the restaurant, located in what and magnetic lecturer, but also
only one of the country’s best food cities but also, increasingly, looked from the road like a gifted cook, with a deft grasp
the unoccupied half of a of how to balance high concepts
a bellwether of where its dining winds are blowing. convenience-store strip mall with equally compelling
in Northline, well outside technique and flavor. Now it
So: Night One found me at Georgia James, the steak house The Loop. Once inside, I found was time for the Mandingos.
a warm but spare room with The origin of that loaded term,
opened in October by Chris Shepherd in what used to be his James a cinder-block wall painted Rhodes explained, was in a
copper-orange. Like everything West African hunting-and-
Beard Award–winning flagship, Underbelly. It is a palace of else at Indigo, the room was gathering people. Only in
the conceptual and physical America, where the slaves who
unrestrained pleasure as maybe only a steak house can be: loud, construction of its precocious shared their physique were
young chef, Jonny Rhodes, simultaneously prized and
buzzy, giddy, awash in beef and whiskey and oil money. Call it Big and his wife, Chana. Rhodes feared for their strength
grew up a half mile away, and power, did it become a
Derrick Energy. The signature item at Georgia James, though it is not served time in the Marines, and racial epithet.
then got his cooking education
printed on the menu, is the Baller Board: a wooden plank that on from a series of kitchen stints “Black men, as we know,
and what he calls “YouTube have been hyper-sexualized as
any given night will be heaped with some combination of steaks, University.” He imagines a way of maintaining that fear,”
Indigo as the first stage of an he went on. “And part of that
other beef cuts, pork shoulder, lamb chops, whole fried chickens, oasis in the area’s food desert, is the idea of giant, threatening
that will come to include a black penises.”
boudin-stu≠ed quails, duck legs, cow hearts, lobster tails, crab claws, greenhouse and micro-farm
on the property as well as the It occurred to me that I
and God knows what other leftovers from a medieval post-hunt still adjacent grocery store. For would never again be able to
now, he is content serving three feign interest in a server’s
life. (Prices vary, but if you have to ask…) Viewed from above, the rap about “how our menu
tasting menus—Carnivore, works.” Rhodes allowed himself
boards resemble primitive fertility totems, complete with the priapic Herbivore, and Omnivore—
which function as his own only the smallest smile as the
bone of a porterhouse thrusting up from the center. Over the course sometimes impressionistic, dish was placed before us.
sometimes literal history
of one dinner, I must have seen ten paraded out to tables around me. of the African diaspora. Rhodes On the plate was an inch-
introduces his dishes with long stub of dark sausage.
The joke on the ballers is that everything here is baller. And discursive monologues of
context. We had already eaten Here, I thought, driving
everything, if you squint, is kind of a steak, from the huge Center Cut Descendants of Igbo, a tribute home after this second meal,
to the African yam made was the entire whiplash
King Crab Legs, which restore the with pureed sweet potato and experience of the year in
dining: All the back-and-forth
THE crown of that crustacean after too many between heart and brain,
dissolute years spent hanging around pleasure and intellect, comfort
13 Vegas bu≠ets, to the Slab Salad, a classic and confrontation, wit and
iceberg wedge topped with ranch and
Benton’s lardons that somehow inspires
you to attack it with some of the same

BEST NEW bloodlust you do the deeply crusted rib
RESTAURANTS eyes, strips, and porterhouses, or the
100-day-wet-aged wood-grilled hanger,
IN AMERICA which is the sneaky winning order.

Shepherd, who this year also opened

UB Preserv, a new iteration of Underbelly,

as well as a “Mediterranean” iteration

Georgia of his rotating concept, One Fifth, has a
James gift for deliciousness but not always
for coherent editing. The conventions of
(Houston) a steak house seem to have focused
his fertile mind. The candle on my table
The Texas turned out to be a wick floating in a
steak house limpid pool of clarified smoked-brisket fat.
re-invented—for Bread dipped into it came out tasting like
ballers and
nibblers alike.

a barbecue rib. I suspect so would kale.

76 GQ.COM MAY 2019

Brunch at Ma’am Sir in Los Angeles; Arizona, all the way to other purpose on the road,
a party receives Ma’am Sir’s sizzling sisig
and fried-chicken sandwich. Tacoma—or at least to Sea-Tac. which is to attempt to divine

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHELLE GROSKOPF New York, Los Angeles—how something along the way

I yearned for you, through about the State of our Union,

the long nights of the polar on the plate and otherwise.

vortex in Chicago, Indianapolis, And yet, I manage to have

Toledo, and St. Paul. Don’t more extraordinary, inspiring

vulgarity, the desire for IT’S WORTH MENTIONING forget the Motor City! And get restaurant experiences each
escape and the hunger to be
OPENING PAGES, FROM LEFT: CHRISTOPHER GREGORY; DREW ANTHONY SMITH challenged. Restaurants that between those meals, I’d me to the Promised Land of the year than I am able to capture
have become some of our eaten Malaysian curry in a
most charged public forums— suburban mall, a near perfect perfect restaurant experience. here. And somewhere along the
spaces fairly crackling with pork rib served from a bright
issues of race, gender, labor, red food truck parked outside a It’s a big country, and one line, inevitably, some piece of
the environment, immigration, bar, and extraordinary central
and more—while remaining Texas–style smoked brisket of the very things that have data—a dish, a cooking method,
among our most private in a brand-new barbecue joint
and emotional. They are places opened by Chinese- and made it more exciting to eat in a design element—bubbles up
where it really wasn’t all Vietnamese-Americans. All
that unexpected to hear a in all, a not untypical day than ever—the decentralization that seems to tell a bigger story.
dissertation on the uses in the three months I spent
of psychosexual paranoia in crisscrossing America in of culinary energy from big This year, it started in the
racial domination, but also search of the most exciting,
where one might indulge stimulating, and outright coastal cities and into every bathrooms.
the legitimate pleasures of delicious restaurants to open
spending hard-earned money in the past 18 months, give nook and cranny All of a sudden,
on way too much perfectly or take. It’s my personal
cooked meat. Driving through version of my favorite musical of the continent— those once spare
the Houston darkness, I genre: the Great American City
felt lucky anew to have the Singalong. I can’t say I’ve has made it all the spaces—a candle
chance to love them both. quite been everywhere (man),
but I did go from Phoenix, more absurd to burning, perhaps

attempt to cover a dried plant,

with anything like Indigo a letterpress card
completism. It’s insisting that
a messy country, (Houston) employees was
too, in case you their hands—
hadn’t noticed, A prodigy’s exploded into riots
often seeming to tasting menu of graphic excess.
on the theme of
African-American

move in every history is equally The wallpaper
possible direction stimulating to alone! Jungle
at once. That is the scenes and palm
mind and palate.

challenge to my trees! Lobsters

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 77

and sharks, Refuge (like

birds of all Georgia James)

varieties, bursting and Restaurants

fields of flowers! of Resistance

Some nights Angler (like Indigo). I’m
it was like trying suggesting a
to pee while (San Francisco) third classification
surrounded by a of restaurants
phalanx of large The great that more directly
men in Hawaiian American fish hold a mirror
shirts, or like being house, refracted to the anxiety and
through the mind
of Joshua Skenes.

buried alive in a surreality of the

Gucci sarcophagus. present moment.

Once spotted, this new I call them Restaurants of

exuberance was impossible not Derangement. And why not?

to notice back out in the dining It’s become a cliché to note that

room: I dined beneath jungle the root of restaurant is “to

canopies—greenery protruding restore”—but not only things

from the walls, vines stretching made nice (to use another

down from the ceiling, not buzz phrase) can be restorative.

altogether benignly. I ate o≠ We like rom-coms but also

mismatched, wildly printed horror movies, Norman

granny china, as if at a Mad Tea Rockwell but also Otto Dix,

Party. All of this has been duly holding hands in the tunnel

noted by the watchers of design of love and white knuckles

trends and, on the one hand, on the roller coaster.

it’s merely a predictable cyclical For me, that was the key

turn: Ties expand; ties contract; to decoding Angler, Joshua

ties disappear. Minimalism Skenes’s shiny, theatrical

gives way to ornamentation. fine-dining seafood house in

One day you’ve got naked San Francisco’s Embarcadero.

ducts and unfinished concrete; I’m not suggesting that an

the next you’re in a community- afternoon spent eating

theater production of Little immaculately shucked oysters

Shop of Horrors. while overlooking the Bay

At the same time, I began Bridge isn’t a luxurious

to sense that there was comfort. But look around and

something more at play. Maybe you can’t help but notice that

it was the moment, in a New the place is kinda weird. The come to the table simple butter sauce

Orleans restaurant, when a open kitchen that stretches crammed into a comes on several

dancer fully clad in Brazilian across the entire back of the silver bowl like a preparations,

Carnival dress went strolling space is hung with copper pans, hiding octopus. accompanied by

past our table and nobody bundles of herbs, and dried fish You receive a cloth Cafe La a muslin-clad
bib, which you Trova half-lemon, as
broke conversation. It occurred dangling from twine. It looks fasten with lovely though you’re
alligator clips (Miami) suddenly at Tadich
to me that I had been at the like a collaboration between before attacking a Grill, the classic
grilled head of A legendary seafood house
carnival for months. Our Esco∞er and the set dresser radicchio filled Cuban bartender a half-mile away,
with beet juice, or Galatoire’s,
restaurant-comfort moment from Pirates of the Caribbean. fried shallot, and and an award- in New Orleans.
an XO sauce made winning Miami It is a move
seems to have morphed into A back room is styled as a
chef make a
a circus moment. Sometimes hunting lodge, filled with splash on Calle

all that wallpaper feels like taxidermy (not just the kind Ocho.

a joyful expression; other times, you find in dime-a-dozen

like a warm embrace. But Brooklyn bars, either; there’s

often it also feels like a mouth a full bear). The soundtrack is from its own core. that’s immensely

frozen open in a grin of straight ’80s classics, the kind The dish leaves confident,

barely contained hysteria. you think are irritating until you with blood-red vampire and not a little unhinged.

Like many people, you find yourself singing along. teeth. Then, as though Angler is nominally a

I’ve spent the past The weirdness a switch has been thrown, more accessible companion

two and a half continues on the the kitchen suddenly swerves to Saison, Skenes’s much-

years viewing plate. Antelope into minimalism. For main lauded Michelin three-star

American life tartare appears in courses, the printed plates are tasting-menu restaurant,

through the filter of a thin disc as replaced with plain white but it would be absurd to call

the Donald Trump Vianda glossily crimson plates. Seafood appears on it casual in price or style. It
presidency and as pomegranate
all it represents. (San Juan, seeds, to be them almost unadorned: took until midway through my
In the dining world, scooped up in
that has largely Puerto Rico) lettuce cups striped bass beneath a plank of meal at Angler to realize the
meant two obvious flecked with herbs.
categories: An island still It is exquisite. scored, perfectly crisp skin; unlikely place it reminded
recovering
scallops cooked to the precise me of most: Danny Bowien’s
has a jewel to be
proud of. balance of firm and wobbly that Mission Chinese Food, in

almost gives the impression New York City. That was

Restaurants of Parker House rolls they are breathing. The same another fully realized, utterly

78 GQ.COM MAY 2019

consuming manifestation of energy. That “America’s Best he was born. They of 1950s Santiago
one chef’s idiosyncratic view New Restaurants” should
of how to eat. Bowien was self-evidently include Puerto were six months de Cuba: laundry
channeling some of the scru≠y, Rico’s Best New Restaurants
bohemian, psychedelic roots was a point perhaps perversely out from opening hanging from the
of the San Francisco where made by the generic-ness of
Mission got its start. Angler the dining room at Vianda, when Maria hit— balcony of a worn
feels more honest about what which, with its gray walls and
San Francisco is today: an Edison bulbs, could be found in too deep to quit. Big King yellow apartment
often dystopian metropolis of in any city in the American Amazingly, the façade; a cab of
vast tech wealth where, over the Midwest. It’s all a front for opening was (Providence) an old pickup
past five years, I’ve largely eaten chef Francis Guzmán’s thrilling delayed only three truck holding a
in places with too much capital, savagery on the plate, a feint months. Guzmán Small and strange leather banquette;
too much square footage, replicated by the innocent- celebrates Puerto Japanese spot a stage for the
and too little soul. For better or looking bed of salad that Rican cuisine in in the smallest performance of
worse, Angler feels like the first arrives atop a blood-infused dishes like a and sometimes La Trova, the
great restaurant of this new city. crepe filled with slippery strangest state.
bits of pig’s head and trotter,
THERE WERE OTHER the carnal richness cut by a mound of mofongo classic music style
vinegary bed of pigeon pea
hallucinations and exhilarations “escabeche.” Guzmán and his studded with littleneck clams, invented in that second-largest
everywhere I went. I arrived wife and partner, Amelia Dill,
in San Juan, Puerto Rico, worked at Blue Hill in New while never shying from the city in Cuba. The restaurant
16 months after Hurricane York, among other fine-dining
Maria devastated the island, restaurants, before deciding technique of his training is named for that music,
to find a city still in recovery to return to the island where
but fairly bursting with creative or inspirations from farther Cafe La Trova. As its co-owner,

afield. “Tom Kha” Bacalao—a the great Cuban bartender

piece of cod served atop Julio Cabrera, explained it to

coconut milk, mushrooms, me, the entry room, where live

chile oil, and crispy rice— music plays on the weekends,

makes a compelling case is meant to evoke nostalgia

for a new Golden Triangle, for pre-Castro island life. The

between Spain, Thailand, and next room, hung with movie

the Caribbean. I left San Juan posters and records, he went

feeling sure that Puerto Rico on, represents the early days of

would be producing Best New exile in Miami. Finally, in the

Restaurants for years to come. back, there is an ’80s-themed

Back on the mainland, bar, complete with a neon palm

The weekend scene at Cafe La Trova in Miami’s I continued to encounter tree and a Miami Vice poster.
Little Havana: Cuban cocktails, old-school
bartenders, and live music. hallucinations and All of this would risk pure

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DEVIN CHRISTOPHER exhilarations, small and large. kitsch if it weren’t for a few

In Miami, I stepped o≠ the things: First is Cafe La Trova’s

sidewalk and into a streetscape location on Calle Ocho, the

heart of Miami’s sherry-scented Miami to flinty midwinter of feathery winter herbs. Lots

Little Havana. gigante beans; fat New England, I squeezed into of places have hardworking

Second is Cabrera shrimp cooked in Big King, the self-described wood ovens these days, but

himself, who grew garlicky sofrito; “small weird restaurant” in I never saw one perform such

up in his father’s stellar arroz con Providence, Rhode Island. The impressive clown-car duty as
bar in Cuba and pollo. All of it
Homer narrow room has the relaxed Homer’s, which anchors one

has become the (Seattle) is delicious, but feel of a neighborhood sushi end of a bright open kitchen.

pre-eminent Vegetable- the stage really joint; there’s a “chef ’s counter” From its depths, a chef labored
ambassador of forward, wood- belongs to
the island’s Cabrera and his that, farther down, turns into like a stevedore, arranging
elegant cantinero fired, Middle fellow tuxedoed
tradition around Eastern small cantineros as they a bar. Most of the food arrives
the world. Cabrera plates—who simultaneously
from the tiny kitchen in back.
knew such
overused words The two set menus, one of four

courses and the other of six

got his start as a could bring such shake classic (supplemented by a handful

bartender at James new pleasure? daiquiris, Papa of à la carte items) are

Beard Award– Dobles, and other handwritten in a notebook each

winner Michelle immortal drinks day, sometimes in the form

Bernstein’s restaurants for a crowd that is equal parts of flowcharts. At $40 and $55,

(including Michy, in Miami), young-and-beautiful couples they are a remarkable deal.

and she is his partner at this, and the men in fedoras you Each is a parade of precisely

his first restaurant as owner. see by day playing dominoes executed Japanese dishes

She has loaded the menu farther down Calle Ocho. filtered through the brain of

with soulful classics: supple- Even in the morning—when chef James Mark. There was

crusted empanadas filled with Cabrera’s wife operates a a bowl of warm kabocha

steaming pockets of shredded counter in front, serving Cuban squash, covered with a layer of

steak mixed with olives and co≠ee and guava-filled wobbly egg custard and a

caramelized onions; a “proper” pastries—the place buzzes. bright cap of leek oil and cured

butifarra sausage, lusciously Going from Little Havana egg yolk; a finger of barely

fatty and served in slices over to the littlest state, exuberant blanched lobster, dressed with

a silky emulsion of soy milk

and aged hot sauce and a

scattering of poppy seeds;

“Tom Kha” Bacalao (coconut, mushrooms, tempura rings of delicata
chile oil, crispy rice) at Vianda in
San Juan, Puerto Rico. squash, light and greaseless

PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTOPHER GREGORY enough to pass muster in any

restaurant devoted to that

frying discipline. Though there

is a small selection of shochu

cocktails and other beverages,

Mark would like you to drink

sake. (“One doesn’t walk

into a taco shop and ask for

Quenelles Lyonnaise,” he writes

on his restaurant’s FAQ.) The and re-arranging pu≠ed

sharpness and depth of the sake saucer-sized discs of chewy pita,

pairings make it easy to submit. bubbling vessels filled with

On the other side of the vegetables, and at one point

continent, I landed at warm, an entire hotel pan of roasting

comfortable Homer, in lamb bones. Even as, year

Seattle’s Beacon Hill after year, Seattle seems to slide

neighborhood. After half a further into moneyed tech-

decade of ubiquitous wood- industry domination, it also

fired Mediterranean and seems to produce a steady

Middle Eastern small plates, flow of excellent neighborhood

not to mention enough restaurants. Homer is one

hummus to drown in, that makes you wish its

I didn’t think that neighborhood

genre had any were yours.

surprises left to There’s a

impart. That was similarly

before I ate the comfortable vibe

lamb ragù here— Alewife at Alewife,
an almost in Richmond,
unbearably rich (Richmond) Virginia, a city that
and smooth has forced its way
mélange of A homey house onto my dining
of seafood

where the mid-

barnyard and spice Atlantic meets map lately. I ate
route, nestled the South. extremely well in

beneath a blanket Richmond; drank

80 GQ.COM MAY 2019

The serious preparation of steaks—and service—
at Georgia James in Houston.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DREW ANTHONY SMITH

o≠ my tongue: great L.A. Times

Henry at Life critic, died

Hotel by JJ. unexpectedly last

Perhaps commas July. It could be

would help. But I Ma’am Sir maddening to
won’t soon forget know that
the crisscrossed (Los Angeles) wherever you went
stack of glistening in that great city,
bone-in short ribs High-intensity he had surely
with which Filipino flavors passed that way
Johnson, who before you (the
on Sunset
Boulevard.

made his name at same was true of

The Cecil and the supper club everywhere else in the world

Minton’s, both in Harlem, caps with Anthony Bourdain, who

his exuberant menu exploring left us the month before), but it

the farthest reaches of the was also somehow reassuring.

African diaspora. It’s rare that Strange, too, to feel a change

you find a restaurant whose in the restaurant scene in L.A.

main courses feel more exciting for which Gold certainly

than its appetizers. Henry is deserves a heaping portion of

one, not least because of the credit. It was only recently

way those ribs overshadow a that one still had the feeling of

parade of more generically plumbing an undiscovered,

“global” starters. Likewise, an or at least unexpected, country

inspired dish of roasted in Southern California, an

scallops, standing tall and underdog status that now seems

holding their own flavorful unspeakably dated. “We view

weight against a tide of deep Los Angeles as the nation’s food

hominy broth and pieces of capital,” the executive editor of

salty, meaty pork belly, or the L.A. Times said recently, to

well, too, since the between cod and moist-fleshed, sticky-skinned which nobody appeared to blink

city is a hotbed of frogs’ legs, and jerk chicken, on which the an eye. As Garrett Snyder, the

cocktail culture. came encased in a flavor of tamarind plays a duet food editor of Los Angeles

That’s what got me crust of cornmeal with the more traditional notes magazine, put it to me, “We’re

in the door at Henry at and Old Bay. of clove and allspice. There’s a no longer the scrappy team that
Alewife, where the Life Hotel Alewife wears its
bar serves a nautical theme clubby feel to the low-ceilinged makes a playo≠ run. We’re the
southern-minded by JJ lightly—a few tiki
array of expertly masks, mirrors room, an unusual intimacy for Golden State Warriors or New
mixed drinks. I (New York City) suggestive of
stuck around for portholes, a a place in the lobby of a hotel, England Patriots.”
what comes out of A swaggering drawing of Robert
Lee Gregory’s ride through Shaw in Jaws. and a ’90s-heavy hip-hop-and- Already operating in
galley-sized the cuisines Though I know
kitchen: clean, of the African rationally that R&B soundtrack that the Times confident championship form
honest dishes from diaspora—from Richmond isn’t on
that magical sector Senegal to the coast, I can’t reported can play for 20 hours was Ma’am Sir, the new Filipino
Harlem and
without repeating. For some restaurant from Charles Olalia
all stops
in between. reason, that factoid pleases me: at the nexus of Silver Lake

the notion that the party might and Los Feliz. Back in 2015,

be moving forward at any hour Olalia left the fine-dining world

of the day. It’s also a reminder to sell extraordinary Filipino

that there is more than one way rice bowls and other snacks

where the waters help remembering to tell the story that Indigo, in in a grain-sized luncheonette

of the mid-Atlantic swirl and it, up on the top of Church Hill, Houston, was telling, way back space in Downtown. Ma’am Sir

merge with those as a warm place where you in the beginning of my travels. returns him to a dining room,

of the South. The best was a might gaze at the horizon, There are, of course, thousands. and it’s a riotous one, draped

simple plate of fried “sugar watching for returning sailors. with hanging vines and lit

toads,” the felicitous nickname I was never entirely able I T W A S S T R A N G E R than by swinging fixtures caged in

for small blowfish. Pulled from to get the name of chef anticipated to eat my way woven baskets. One wall is

the Chesapeake Bay, they were JJ Johnson’s restaurant in through Los Angeles for the first covered in bright blue-and-

firm and meaty, like a cross Midtown Manhattan to roll time since Jonathan Gold, the green wallpaper that brings to

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 81

dressing, neither to any
discernible transformative
e≠ect. It’s a weighty dud
and an object lesson in the
perils of chasing that “one
Instagrammable dish.” Had I
stopped there, I might have
dismissed the restaurant as just
another purveyor of glib high-
low stunts. Luckily, I stayed
and, of all things, a kanpachi
crudo, now a practically
mandatory snoozer on menus
everywhere, turned things
around. It came concealed
beneath a white blanket of
perfect circular slices of radish,
like scales, the fish beneath ever
so slightly taking on the flavor
of the radishes and a hint of
kimchi. Then came the lasagna,
which I am not putting in
quotes because—despite being
constructed of layers of noodle
so delicate they resemble tofu
skin and filled with Sichuan-
peppercorn-laden mapo, in
place of ragù—it eats so
convincingly like its namesake.
Nightshade also serves some of
the most visually stunning
desserts I saw all year. The pot
bubbling and steaming behind
the chef ’s counter may look
like a cauldron of congee, but it
contains liquid nitrogen for
the fashioning of bright orange
mandarin sorbet into graceful
nesting bowls. Need I say there
was a curious tendril of ivy
reaching down from a shelf
above me as I ate?

W H I C H B R I N G S U S back to the

emotional seesaw of comfort

and challenge, refuge and

Chef Mako Okano presides over the seeming warehouse alley, derangement. Let me end, then,
omakase at Shabushabu Macoron on
N.Y.C.’s Lower East Side. beckoned by a single neon sign. with two more nights. This

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID WILLIAMS These days it seems par for time in Chicago and New York,

the course. Inside, the place is and separated by two months,

smooth and inviting, all blond but nevertheless intimately

wood and upholstered chairs connected. Call it A Tale of

that bring to mind a stylish Two Omakases.

therapist’s o∞ce. I settled at the I first tasted Otto Phan’s

mind M. C. Escher fish. Another platter of Instagram-defeating bar, but before yielding to the fish three years ago, when he
features framed photos of browns: pigs’ cheeks, snout,
Filipino soccer and movie stars. and ears, blended with veal pleasure of that was operating a
I have been intrigued, but never sweetbreads, onion, chile,
quite swept away, by Filipino calamansi, and more, in layer lasagna, I needed strange little sushi
cuisine, as it has become more after layer of alternating
and more prominent around the flavor and texture that I’ve to get past the dish place in Austin.
country in recent years. That thought of nearly every time
began to change when I tasted I’ve been hungry since. of Lin’s that’s Though I couldn’t
Olalia’s version of classics like
lumpia, the deep-fried spring I think, too, of the mapo gotten the most make it to one
roll served here open, like a tofu lasagna at Mei Lin’s
narrow marrow bone, and Nightshade. Maybe it once attention: a take on Nightshade of his omakase
topped with a nub of sea urchin. would have seemed strange Outback dinners, a friend
Likewise, his sisig, a sizzling to arrive at a restaurant by Steakhouse’s (Los Angeles) insisted I stop for
heading down a dark, deserted- classic Bloomin’ lunch on my way
Onion, served here Top Chef winner out of town to try
Mei Lin walks
a tightrope

coated in tom- between comfort the work of this
yum powder and and thrills in young Vietnamese-
alongside a American prodigy.
coconut ranch DTLA. Kyo– ten Sushiko

82 GQ.COM MAY 2019

8...AND turned out to the sweetness

MORE DELICIOUS be located in what of Scandinavian
DISHES FROM OTHER
GREAT NEW AMERICAN looked like a herring. Toro tuna
RESTAURANTS
onetime dentist’s appears first bare

o∞ce. I was served Kyōten and then is
a chirashi plate in brushed by a piece
a paper bowl and a (Chicago) of lit charcoal and
can of tea that may garnished with
have been warmed Extraordinary yuzu zest. A squib
in the dishwasher. sushi—and of Royal Red
It was the best raw shrimp, briefly
fish I ate all year. rare rice—from blowtorched and
a brash budding

master.

It’s not always the case, but I would have been happy Last year, Phan painted
to include every one of the establishments below on this
year’s list of Best New Restaurants. Use these stellar decided that he’d outgrown with a buttery shrimp-shell
bites as an invitation to explore their entire menus.
Austin. He looked at a map and reduction, brought me at once

searched for the largest city in to both Tsukiji Market and

America that didn’t have a Gulf Shores, Alabama.

Spicy Cod Roe Smoked Rabbit Michelin-starred sushi Phan rightly rests his
Spaghetti Carnitas
restaurant, settling on Chicago, reputation on rice. He uses a
Davelle, N.Y.C. The Brewer’s Table,
On a quiet afternoon on Austin where he immediately set about large-grain variety, called
the Lower East Side, there It’s not always clear how
may be no other café in beer works its way into winning friends by telling the Inochi-no-Ichi, that he claims
the world I’d rather be in— the dishes at this relaxed
or bowl of noodles I’d rather restaurant whose high Tribune, “There is no good sushi no other U.S. restaurant uses
have before me: briny, concept is to blur the lines
umami-filled, and perfect. between brewing and in Chicago.” for sushi, the rest going to make
cooking. But with dishes
Friday Fish Fry like these rabbit morsels “I am a tier-one talent. rice balls and hotel risottos.
and fermented mushrooms
Mint Mark, Madison, WI waiting to be tucked into I wanted to be in a tier-one The grains, treated with
You’re in Wisconsin. warm tortillas and drizzled
What would you rather eat with a pig blood mole, city,” he told the group of us vinegar, look like they’ve been
than a classic basket who really cares?
of perfectly fried bluegill? gathered around the eight-seat magnified to 200 percent on
Almost everything else Pork Ear
on the menu, it turns counter at Kyōten for $220 a computer screen. Preparing
out, washed down with a A Place by Damao,
Wisconsin-style brandy Chicago omakase dinners. “And that’s a batch, he narrates, “I don’t
old-fashioned on draft. We’ve grown used
to pigs’ ears fried into all she wrote.” do it any di≠erent than my
Cruller unrecognizability.
These, among the cold Well, okay! The move north YouTube video.” I thought he
Suraya, Philadelphia dishes that introduce
Vast, glittery, and open a thrilling menu of has not improved Phan’s was going to say “ancestors,”
all day, this Lebanese Sichuan delicacies, are
emporium contains unmistakably piggy. interest in interior design, but what do I know? It’s hard to
multitudes. But it might
be most lovable in the Smoked Tongue though I suppose the generic say how much of the cockiness
morning, when wood- space he found for Kyo– ten— is a put-on or whether Phan is
oven-baked pastries, like Fool’s Errand, Boston
a pistachio-and-rose- “Adult Snack Bar” sounds not dependent on foot tra∞c, in on the joke. I found his
laced doughnut, fill its like an awful idea until
bakery’s shelves. you spend an evening at he figured he’d save on stream of patter throughout
this standing-only saloon,
Hamachi Collar where Tiffani Faison seems overhead—might be an upgrade dinner endearing—especially
to have an uncanny ability
Saint Julivert Fisherie, to divine exactly what you from dentist to orthodontist. since my eyes were often closed
Brooklyn want to put in your mouth.
The transit of succulent But sushi has always had a in appreciation of what he
fish collars from Duck Hearts
occasional gift from utilitarian aesthetic; consider was feeding me—but one’s
the kitchen to regular In Bloom, St. Paul
menu item is a happy Blazing grills, wood- the amount of Saran Wrap mileage may vary. A woman
development. At this burning ovens, and whole employed. The proof is I know who ate at Kyo– ten
inventive and cozy Cobble legs of venison anchor
Hill outpost, one comes this meat-centric refuge in the nearly absurd constraints on a di≠erent night described
crusted with jerk spice. in a slick new food market,
but the genius stroke of of a perfect bite—the no-room- her experience as similar to
treating firm, meaty duck
hearts as though they were for-error high-wire act of “waking up bound in the home
escargots steals the show.
melding fish and rice, naked of a serial killer who wants

nature and human to chat before beginning the

manipulation. In this, Phan dismemberment,” which does

lives up to his outsize ego. His tend to dampen the appetite.

sushi is strongly influenced by Make of it what you will

the Tokyo-born style of sushi- that it was the same woman

making called Edomae, which who urged me to go to another

emphasizes the human touch, omakase, Shabushabu

mostly in the form Macoron, on New

of well-chosen York’s Lower East

sauces and curing Side. Here again:

techniques. His eight seats around

flavors border on a counter; minimal

aggressive. Shabushabu decoration; a
Kohada, or gizzard Macoron focused, perhaps
shad, is cured, obsessive young
marinated, and (New York City) chef practicing
then aged in olive esoteric Japanese
oil, giving it Where a arts at its center.
both the luscious simple cooking Otherwise, it
slipperiness was a change in
of Spanish technique is atmosphere so
turned into
art, grace, and

nurture.

boquerones and (continued on page 107)

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 83

By Chris
Gayomali

Photographs
by Nikita
Teryoshin

The designer behind Acronym—the cutting-edge fashion coveted
by legions of fans like John Mayer and sci-fi wizards like
William Gibson—is making clothes for the end of the world.

as if a ripple in the continuum. A time trav- run you upwards of $1,500. And yet when- to us,” Errolson tells me. His voice is soft and
eler sent back from the end of the world. ever a new Acronym collection drops online? hard to place, with some residual vapors of
his native Canadianness. There’s a sedative
It’s on a crisp February morning in the Poof. Almost everything sells out instantly, quality to it. Like he could do a mid-career
Berlin neighborhood of Mitte when Errolson ghosts of garments barely there. pivot into reading the news for NPR. “I think
Hugh, the designer behind Acronym, mate- there’s definitely some aspects of that. But
rializes across the street. He is a di∞cult At the center of it all is Errolson Hugh, a really, our whole thing is, Acronym is really
man to miss. Beautiful bald head. Goatee of cheery, unfailingly polite fellow who just so about agency. It’s about enabling somebody
a conquistador. A slight, almost impercepti- happens to look like the final boss in a video to do something they couldn’t otherwise. It’s
ble limp to his gait. But dawg…the clothes! game. Up close, his mustache is scraggly, curl- inherently optimistic.”
The clothes are what really elevate him to ing slightly over his upper lip like a big spoon.
the realm of aberrational—all Acronym He’s 47 now. But his pores are nonexistent, He pauses, as if he’s feeling his way through
or Acronym collaborations, presented in which gives him the look of a man 15 years his the conversation.
monochromatic blackish. There’s the big junior, a truth that’s betrayed only when he
bubble jacket with a fishbowl hood. Moon- laughs—which is often—and crinkles appear “And if it’s dystopian in some aspects,
boot Nikes. Windproof pants so gusseted and in the corners of his eyes. it’s probably because it’s kind of a dystopia
drop-crotched that if you spelunked to the right now.”
bottom you might find a Horcrux. All clothes His fans are all over the place. Names like
are armor, but Errolson’s silhouette is liter- John Mayer and A$AP Rocky and influen- A T T E M P T I N G T O explain the appeal of
ally so, in that it seems to render him imper- tial science-fiction author William Gibson. Acronym to someone unfamiliar with the
vious to even the harshest elements. Some Henry Golding of Crazy Rich Asians? Why, brand is often an exercise in futility, like
sort of ninja god–slash–astronaut. Like you he’s a close personal friend from back in the
could have pushed him out of a spaceship to day. (On the topic of his buddy’s crazy-rich
fix a meteorite puncture. glow-up: “Such a trip!”) Jason Statham,
another covert Acronym fanatic, recently con-
I flag him down like a tarmac doof. He scripted Errolson & Co. to design flight suits
adjusts course, smiles. Does a little ’sup nod. for the new Fast and Furious spin-o≠ with
The Rock, Hobbs & Shaw, the particulars of
“What’s up?” he says. “I’m Errolson.” which involve a “Russian oligarch” and “para-
In the constellation of fashion brands, chuting down into radioactive Chernobyl.”
Acronym is a little out there, a tiny satellite And at least one former U.S. president has
world operating at the edge of its own neb- dallied in Acronym: Last winter Bill Clinton
ula. Unlike fashion houses in Paris, Milan, or walked right into the neoliberal streetwear
even New York, Acronym forgoes traditional temple Kith in New York City, and 40 minutes
runway shows and doesn’t spend a dime on later walked right out with a new pair of $750
advertising. Its seasonal collections are tiny: water-repellent military trousers.
typically no more than 15 pieces at a time.
Originally founded as a boutique design “The thing to remember about Acronym
agency in 1994 with Michaela Sachenbacher, is that they’re making products at almost
Acronym got its footing by quietly design- prototype level,” John Mayer tells me in an
ing outerwear for other brands before even- e-mail. “These aren’t mass-produced by any
tually bifurcating to carve out a business means, and they’re artisan-made. There’s
with its own label a few years later. The a spirit inside of them not all that di≠er-
clothes are beautiful, sewn from expen- ent than that of a costume department for
sive cutting-edge fabrics with names like a Marvel movie. It’s as cosplay as whatever
SCHOELLER® 3XDRY® DRYSKIN™ and level you consider the Marvel movie Spider-
HIGH-DENSITY GABARDINE, and they Man costume to be cosplay.”
possess a sort of dark, caustic energy; think
Yohji Yamamoto meets Yojimbo meets Metal He’s been called your “favorite design-
Gear Solid, all thrown in a NutriBullet. All er’s favorite designer.” The most known
of it is prohibitively expensive, too. A pair of unknown. Someone whose whole deal is
pants—say, the P23A-S, which are conical in peeking over the bleeding edge of what’s yet
form, somehow both baggy and snug—will to come and bringing that knowledge back to
the present. “People often use the word ‘dys-
topia’ or the phrase ‘cyberpunk’ in relation

86 GQ.COM MAY 2019

“

People often use the word ‘dystopia’ or the phrase ‘cyberpunk’ in
relation to us,” Errolson says. “But really, our whole thing is,
Acronym is really about agency. It’s about enabling somebody to
do something they couldn’t otherwise. It’s inherently optimistic.

”

attempting to explain to a loved one why you allowed your phone to teleport into your appropriate neurons had encoded deep in
decided to join a doomsday cult. I remember hand, as if by magic. Legit mind freakage. my brain. A few years later, when I was in a
first stumbling upon Acronym on the Tumblr better station in life (and wasn’t overdraft-
You Might Find Yourself several years ago, That doomy character is a funny contrast ing from my bank account every week), an
and there he was, this gnarly Asian dude who to the goofier, easy-to-laugh guy Errolson opportunity finally arose to purchase an
could be my first cousin, wearing this cape- presents as in person. As he would later Acronym jacket at a slight discount via a
like outer layer that interfaced with a sepa- explain it, martial arts were the perfect ves- discreet hookup on “Subnet,” an invite-only
rate messenger bag. The post was tagged sel for showcasing how the clothes articu- online back channel of sorts, pro≠ered by
“tech ninja,” and Errolson still had hair. late and move. “In karate you do a kata, that Acronym, where one could purchase the
I soon fell down a rabbit hole that led to a ritualized style of movement,” he explains. clothes for a little less before they were avail-
short video scored by rumbling techno. They sort of compounded the seriousness of able to the general public. Wisely, I did the
What followed was hallucinatory: The word those videos—which functionally served as irresponsible thing and threw down a credit
acronymjutsu flashed on-screen as a runway shows—and became an inside joke. card for a $1,000-plus Gore-Tex shell. It was
scowling Errolson threw kicks and demon- That he would end up as the primary model gorgeously asymmetrical. And more than
strated these preposterously architectural for Acronym made sense from the beginning, my rent at the time.
clothes that had all sorts of out-there function- especially since all the test units were con-
ality—from invisible magnets on the jacket structed to fit him. “I was always available,” And reader…the tomfoolery didn’t stop
collar that held your earbuds in place to “grav- he says. “And I was cheap.” there. A few short months later, I bought a
ity pockets” hidden in the forearm sleeves that messenger bag for around $800. It was the
I was just a few years out of college and 3A-1, in shimmery black sailing foil, which
couldn’t a≠ord any of it, obviously. But the

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 87

had multiple entry points into the main com- To dress in full Acronym is to untether sight—no Gundams or Kuniyoshi prints or
partment and featured a buttery quick-release yourself from a sense of place and time. It’s a other presumed references—but there is a
strap. Using it made me feel like I could rappel wholly realized aesthetic that opts the wearer big bookshelf (lots of Gibson, James Ellroy,
down a building to stop a bank robbery. out of the present reality. A reverse-reverse and, uh, Nick Hornby), as well as a board
Man Repeller, to an extent. I e-mailed William pinned with an assortment of advanced zip-
Did I need this thing? Hell no. It was pure, Gibson—someone who knows a thing or two pers. It’s close to midnight, well after work
oozy, drippy excess—and it aged beautifully. about world building and who is the “closest hours. The studio itself is tiny, with space
I use it every day, and it’s the best bag I’ve ever thing to a mentor” Errolson says he has had— for ten full-time employees, a few of whom
owned. (On Grailed, the same model recently to ask if he thought there might be anything started o≠ as interns; since he travels a lot
sold for $2,500.) to that assessment. and is always on the move, Errolson recently
had to get rid of his desk to make room for
Then, a few months later, I bought some “That’s been important to me from the the additional personnel. He is so generous
shoes. start,” he wrote back. “The stu≠ ’s atemporal, with his time and energy, in fact, that just
or from its own timeline. Planet Acronym.” last year he permitted a soft-spoken and rel-
It’s a rare gift, the ability to bring coher- atively green streetwear designer to come
ence to a wholly imagined world. As the He added: “And then there’s what hap- through and spend two whole hours in the
journalist Judith Thurman wrote in The New pens when you wear it for years and serious Acronym archive, pulling out old jackets to
Yorker in 2005, “Conventional fashion, and wabi-sabi”—the desired aesthetic e≠ects of study as if they were museum artifacts.
particularly its advertising, is a narrative aging—“sets in. I have an S-J11 jacket like
genre—historical romance at one end of the that, Stotz EtaProof cotton, getting seri- At one point, as Errolson tells it, this
spectrum and science fiction at the other.” She ously threadbare now, but it doesn’t look designer was like: “ ‘Can I send a team of pho-
was talking about Comme des Garçons. And dated at all. It might be an old jacket from tographers over? Can we just photograph
while it’s clear which side of the spectrum the future!” everything in here so I have it on a disc?’ ”
Acronym belongs to, Errolson’s real skill is a
similar ability to articulate a contained uni- I N S I D E T H E A C R O N Y M studio, hidden within Errolson politely laughed o≠ this entreaty.
verse, to conjure narrative out of fabric, not a mixed-use brutalist apartment struc- “I was like, ‘Uh…no?’ ”
unlike a Rei Kawakubo (of Comme) or a Rick ture in Mitte, Errolson is showing me the That talented young designer’s name was
Owens. Acronym, then, speaks to a certain inner workings of a pair of…pants. The Kanye West. They talked about collaborating
kind of clothes wearer. Someone who would jackets get most of the shine, but the pants on something—at least before Kanye’s hard
rather buy less but buy better. Someone who are where the good shit really goes down. pivot into MAGA heel—but so far nothing’s
feels most like himself when he looks a little Surprisingly, there isn’t a mood board in come to fruition.
strange. Or maybe just hates umbrellas.

88 GQ.COM MAY 2019

To give you an idea of how Acronym so that when a potential customer finally So what did you do?
approaches making stu≠, let’s look at some- uses a high-interest-rate credit card to clan- “I, uh, ended up buying him a pair on
thing real boring and basic. destinely procure an asymmetrical jacket Grailed.”
that costs more than their rent…voilà! Errolson got in touch with “some kid in
Consider the pocket. Indoctrination complete. Phenobarbital- Tokyo” on the menswear reseller, paying
How do you go about designing what, vodka cocktails on the house. double the retail value for what was, y’know,
when examined through a narrow technical his own shoe. On some level it is a bit disori-
lens, might be the single best pants pocket A S W I T H A N Y G O O D futurist, Errolson’s per- enting that the architect of all this techwear
in the history of humankind? A pocket that sonal politics veer unflinchingly progressive. stu≠ was forced to subsume to the economics
could open a wormhole into new forms of Thinks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a righ- of the hype machine and hit up one of his fans
stu≠-holding? teous agitator and gets a little flustery when to fulfill a nice gesture.
First you consider what a wearer would he forgets to tell a waiter he’s good on a straw. “The kid was like, ‘Is this for real? Is this
keep in there: wallet, keys, phone, maybe a He’s originally from Canada, but immigrated a joke?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah. Sorry,
Juul. You cut the pocket larger and deeper to Germany in his 20s, eventually settling dude.’ ”
than most—say, out of a sturdy Swiss mil-spec in Berlin—a multicultural destination with A complicating factor in all of this is
material resistant to abrasion. (Given the cheap rent, a strong social safety net, and, not that Errolson feels deeply weird about the
company’s advanced reputation, Acronym’s coincidentally, a thriving arts scene. (When hype vortex Acronym’s been sucked into.
construction methods are pretty old-school: he first moved to Munich and he’d see another Especially after the Nike partnership sent
It uses scissors, rather than laser cutters or Asian guy on the street, the occasion was such Acronym’s profile into the stratosphere,
anything like that, which is mostly a function a rarity that they’d do a little ’sup nod.) and with something as consequential as
of how small the production runs are.) And irreversible climate doom some 12 years
then you consider how those elements might Not too long ago, Errolson ran into the away. “There’s definitely sort of like a
interact inside the pocket. The keys are a artist and dissident Ai Weiwei eating break- fundamental skepticism that we face the
problem because they’ll scratch your shit up. fast here in Berlin, and he couldn’t help but whole industry with,” he says. “I mean,
So to optimize how everything sits in there, fanboy out a bit. Especially when Weiwei— I love fashion and I love design and I love
you cut the bottom at an angle. who has been living in Germany in self-im- new things like anyone else, but on some
This results in a pocket that, as Errolson posed exile from the Chinese government very fundamental level I can’t bring myself
explains it, is a “parallelogram versus a rect- since 2015—confessed to loving the Nike x to actually act like a…”
angle, which means that no matter what you Acronym Lunar Force 1, a shoe that Errolson
put inside it”—keys, coins, etc.—“it always
rolls to the front.” Then, to further index the “
wearer’s essentials, you add a few interior
linings, creating a little mezzanine with a Acronym clothing has been more fun to wear than anything
phone-specific pocket hidden inside another else I’ve ever worn,” says William Gibson. “I’ll sometimes wear
pocket inside another pocket, a matryoshka something of Errolson’s for a long time without realizing
doll of divvied stu≠. It’s augmentative, in a why some little detail is exactly the way it is. Then I’ll
way. Makes you feel like a cyborg. get it. It’s like getting a joke, but it’s about function.
“In the case of Acronym, I’ve gotten so used
to having a phone pocket now,” says Bryan ”
Lee, a creative director in the Bay Area who
has been collecting Acronym since 2003. designed. It was a collab in which a giant Another pause, and a recalibration.
“Like if I were to buy a plain pair of pants sideways zipper was stitched into the flesh “Especially now, with the whole envi-
from Uniqlo or something, I still have this of the Air Force 1, one of the most revered ronmental situation. The way the world is
mannerism where my hand will go to reach and undiluted silhouettes in sneaker history. right now, it’s like, is it really time to just be
my phone and then it’s not there. And I’m According to Errolson, when that deconstruc- devoted to aesthetics?
like, ‘Oh, my God, where’s my phone!?’ ” Lee tivist approach leaked to the public, the zipper “There are the opportunities now to scale,
runs the Instagram account @ACRHIVE (fol- was divisive to the point of being heretical. and part of me is like, yeah, we have to,
lower count: 52K), which catalogs the fit pics Someone might as well have proposed using because e∞ciency and security and employ-
of the converted. Pronunciation-wise, both the Shroud of Turin as a bath mat. ees, all that stu≠. But there’s equally a large
“Archive” and “ACR Hive” are acceptable— part of me that’s like, does the world really
like “Pet’s Mart” and “Pet Smart.” And yet the Frankenshoe was a hit. need more stu≠ ?”
Gibson echoed a similar feeling. “Acronym Weiwei told Errolson he loved them—wore For what it’s worth, he seems to be genu-
clothing has been more fun to wear than any- them the whole time during his last doc- inely conflicted by all of this. Thinks fast fash-
thing else I’ve ever worn, for many reasons,” umentary—and the two took a selfie for ion is a pestilence that should be launched
he explained. “But one is that I’ll sometimes the Gram. into the sun. Travels a ton, bouncing between
wear something of Errolson’s for a long time Tokyo (where his longtime girlfriend—and
without realizing why some little detail is “He was like, ‘You gotta hook me up!’ ” frequent Acronym model—Melody Yoko
exactly the way it is. Then I’ll get it. It’s like Errolson says excitedly. “I was like, ‘I’ll try, Reilly, often works), Paris, and the States, but
getting a joke, but it’s about function.” I’ll try.’ ” still feels icky about being the kind of global
Thinking about how pockets work isn’t citizen who contributes to jet-fuel consump-
very sexy—they’re just holes! But you can see Only, the Lunar Forces had already been tion. Loves his team of Acrokids and wants to
how unconsciously tweaking wearer behav- out for a while. They were sold out every- do right by them, (continued on page 108)
iors can stoke a subtle form of loyalty. It’s like where. There were no more left in Ai Weiwei’s
switching from a PC to a Mac and never going preferred colorway and size at the Acronym
back. For Acronym it’s the flashier, mind- studio, and Nike couldn’t help, either.
freaky magic-trick stu≠ that jars the door,

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 89

Last fall, when the deadliest blaze in America in a century blew
through Northern California, thousands of

This is the story of four friends who stayed to fight.

90 GQ.COM MAY 2019

people—including those in the tiny community of Helltown—were forced to flee.
By Robert P. Baird

T H E C A N Y O N W A S B U R N I N G . It was a dark been obliterated. “It’s gone,” they told one left behind during their hasty evacuations.
night in early November, a new moon, and as another, though they could each see very well At worst, they’d at least be present to watch
the three friends looked out from the dusty for themselves. “All gone.” Helltown burn. None of them had expected
rim of Butte Creek Canyon, in the foothills to discover a close friend fighting an uncon-
just outside Chico, California, they could While they watched the fires, the men saw trolled fire all alone.
see fires dotting the whole length of the a sudden slash of headlights in the smoke
landscape at their feet. Dharma LaRocca, below. They wondered who could still be From the top of Center Gap, Sam’s e≠orts
Jeb Sisk, and Jason McCord had grown up down there, so long after the fire depart- looked quixotic, possibly crazy. But seeing
down there, in a hippie community called ment had come through waving evacua- him down on the canyon floor made an oth-
Helltown that had once been a gold-mining tion orders. It was a truck, that much they erwise impossible decision easy. “I think we
camp. Now in their 40s, the men knew the could tell, bouncing back and forth in short can get down there,” Jason told Sam, studying
territory better than anyplace else on earth. sprints. Eventually, they realized what they the route that descended the canyon wall.
But as they watched the blaze curl like lava were seeing—or, rather, who: It was their
among the sycamores and hundred-year-old friend and neighbor, a 39-year-old o≠-duty “Dude, are you sure?” Sam said. From
cottonwoods, they couldn’t help imagining firefighter I’ll call Sam. where he stood, he could see the road, too.
they were someplace faraway and exotic. “I think it’s on fire.”
Hawaii, maybe, or Mars. Sam, it turned out, had been in the can-
yon since midafternoon. Like the others, he’d When Jason nosed his truck over the rim,
The fires in the canyon represented the grown up there, and he now lived just outside he and the others discovered that Sam wasn’t
leading edge of a conflagration that had been Helltown, in a house not far from his parents’ wrong: Fires were burning on both sides of
burning since early that morning. Already it and his uncle’s. Earlier that day, Sam had the road, all the way down. Near the Steel
had consumed 20,000 acres, and it was now been up north, three hours away, when he Bridge, the men found Sam cutting down
threatening homes in every direction. Taking got a text from a friend that the canyon was a fence with a chain saw. The heat o≠ the
backroads in Jason's truck, the three men had being evacuated. Driving 90 miles an hour, he flames was palpable.
driven to the canyon rim, at the top of a rug- worked through a mental checklist the whole
ged dirt track called Center Gap Road, after way home. Once back in the canyon, he went “Grab a shovel or grab something,” Sam
hearing a rumor that the 20 or so houses that house to house, pulling furniture and pro- told them. “I'm pretty glad to see you guys
composed Helltown were soon to go. pane tanks o≠ porches to deprive the fire of made it.”
ready fuel. Now that the flames were getting
With the power out, the fires in the canyon closer, he was racing in his truck to extinguish D H A R M A , J E B , A N D J A S O N had no way of
o≠ered the only illumination for miles, but the spot fires wherever he found them. knowing it yet, but the fire they’d driven into
burning shrubs of manzanita and bottlebrush, would soon register as the deadliest and most
and the booms of propane tanks exploding When the trio noticed the headlights, destructive in California’s history. Called the
like distant artillery, helped the men orient Jason called Sam on his phone. “Is that you Camp Fire, after a road near its ignition point,
themselves within the crumpled terrain. In down there?” he asked. “What are you doing?” the disaster made international headlines
front of them was the Steel Bridge, a local for the devastation it caused in Paradise, a
landmark not far from where Jason lived with “I can’t leave,” Sam told him. “I’ve got to densely forested town where hundred-foot
his wife, Maria, who was also Dharma’s sister, protect my home.” pine trees were charred to blackened tooth-
and their four children. But when they figured picks and neighborhoods were reduced to
out where his house should be, they saw only Dharma, Jason, and Jeb had come up to piles of gray ash.
a pall of black smoke. Repeating the exercise the top of Center Gap uncertain about what
all along the creek, they looked for their par- they’d find. At best, they figured, the rumor The Camp Fire would rage for 17 days, con-
ents’ houses in Helltown, for the place in they’d heard would prove untrue, and they’d suming an enormous swath of Butte County,
neighboring Centerville where Jeb lived with be able to slip back into the canyon to set free a chunk of the state that shares little with the
his daughter, and for the cemetery where the horses and other animals their families California of popular imagination. Though
Dharma had buried his wife after a car acci-
dent in 2012. From this vantage point, it By 2 a.m. the men were flagging. Their soles had
looked like the canyon as they knew it had melted, and their clothes were pocked with

An hour after the blaze When Nyema Jankuska arrived
started, smoke and to help, his friends—who'd
flames began blotting been fighting the fire all night—
out the sun. mistook him for a looter.

92 GQ.COM MAY 2019

The Camp Fire bu≠ered you from the sprawl of Chico also
meant that any help from town would be a
Butte County, California long time coming. You remembered the fires
Fire perimeter of the ’80s and ’90s that had swept through
the canyon, when the Helltown hippies had
Helltown Pulga traded 12-hour shifts on fire watch. But you
Butte Creek also recalled that all those fires had blown
Paradise in from the west. None had come from
Paradise, up over the ridge in the east.
Chico
The Camp Fire, however, was di≠erent.
2 miles When Dharma got word that the flames
were nearing the canyon, he jumped into
it’s largely rural, and as securely uncoastal as killed 85 people, burned 153,000 acres, and his truck to go persuade his mother to
Scranton, Pennsylvania, in many ways Butte caused more than $16 billion in destruction, leave. He soon hit a roadblock and was
County is pura California. Founded in 1850 as making it the world’s most expensive natural told that an evacuation order was in e≠ect.
one of the state’s 27 original counties, it was disaster of 2018. Dharma had to call his mother three times
the direct product of the Gold Rush. About before she picked up.
50 miles north of Sacramento, Butte shares T H E S M O K E W A S visible from the canyon by
the same corner of the same Central Valley 7:30 that first morning, a yellow-gray plume “Get the animals, and get in your car, and
that Joan Didion once described as “a place against the clear blue late-autumn sky. As get the hell out of there,” he told her.
in which a boom mentality and a sense of it accumulated, the mass took on the shape
Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension.” of a thunderhead. Eventually it comman- “It’s Pulga,” she insisted. “I’m listening to
deered the entire eastern horizon, like a the radio now.” Pulga was 11 miles away.
That suspension, however uneasy, held rogue sunrise.
firm for the better part of 160 years. But this “No, it’s creeping over your hill,” Dharma
past fall, the Camp Fire introduced a new Dharma, who worked at his family’s said. “It’s near the canyon.” Finally, his mom
mode of loss, one whose literary prophet organic winery and lived at the base of the emptied her safe, packed a suitcase, and left.
was less Chekhov than late-career Cormac canyon, 15 miles from Helltown, called his
McCarthy. By eight o’clock on the morning of mom, Judy, when he heard about the fire on I N P A R A D I S E , T H E F I R E was a surprise that
November 8, only 90 minutes after its inaus- the news. She was untroubled. She and her everyone was expecting. The town had grown
picious start near a small artists’ community husband had moved to the canyon in 1975, a up under a dense overstory of ponderosa
pines and black-oak trees. According to one
burns. They wondered how long they could hang on. legend, it was this forest that earned Paradise
its name, after a white settler found relief
OPENING PAGES: JOSH EDELSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES. called Pulga, the fire was roaring west, con- time when the place was still populated by a from the valley’s heat in the cool of the trees.
OPPOSITE PAGE: NYEMA JANKUSKA (2). suming a football field’s worth of land every contingent of epigone gold miners. Dharma’s (Another story credits a miners’ saloon called
second. By nine, an apocalyptic firestorm parents were back-to-the-land macrobiotic the Pair-o’-Dice.) Over time, the place became
was racing through Paradise, making its own vegetarians who became enthralled with a shaded refuge for retirees, a quiet town of
weather and causing fist-sized embers—bits Butte Creek and the spirit of self-reliance that 27,000 where a Social Security check stretched
of burned books, utility bills, even plastic—to flourished there. They fell in with a tight com- further than it did down the hill in Chico.
fall all over town. By noon, the smoke down munity of hippies who played music together,
in Chico was dense enough to perform an ad swam naked in the creek together, and raised The forest made Paradise, but many
hoc eclipse, blotting the sun and dropping the their children together. Dharma, Jeb, and thought the forest would also be its undoing.
ambient temperature several degrees. Jason were all part of that brood. The town was a paradigmatic example of the
so-called wildland-urban interface, where
Within about 24 hours, the fire would burn When you’d lived in the canyon for as long houses and vegetation exist in a proximity
70,000 acres, an area five times the size of as Dharma’s parents had, you developed a that makes fires easy to start, quick to spread,
Manhattan, and chase 50,000 people, almost sixth sense for fire. You knew how dry it and di∞cult to fight. For decades, firefighters
a quarter of Butte County’s population, from could get in the summer, when the tem- in the area had predicted that a major fire
their homes. By the time the fire was fully peratures topped a hundred degrees, and would come to Paradise soon, and given how
contained, more than two weeks later, it had you knew that the same narrow roads that few roads led out of town, they worried it
would be disastrous. “The threat to life is
exacerbated by the large numbers of elderly
and disabled persons, including a hospital
and care facilities,” a report produced by a
local nonprofit noted in 1998. “Many people
will have considerable di∞culty evacuating
in the event of a major fire.”

Twenty years later, high winds, six
months without significant rain, and the
vegetation-drying e≠ects of climate change
brought those predictions to tragic reality. On
November 8, at around 6:15 in the morning,
PG&E, the local electric utility, registered
an involuntary outage from a transmission
line near Pulga. Fifteen minutes later, an
employee in the area spotted a fire next to
the tower that had been supporting the line.
Cal Fire, the state’s (continued on page 103)

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 93

TEE TIME

IN

C SA L ABA SA

In the three years since his last album, West Coast
rapper SCHOOLBOY Q has kept a low profile.

He also did what a lot of guys do in their early 30s:
He got really into golf. So before he launches

h i s n ew L P, C ra s h Ta l k , we a s ke d Q t o gat h e r s o m e
friends and hit the links.

By
JEFF WEISS

Photographs by Styled by
DANIELLE LEVITT MOBOLAJI DAWODU

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 95

IT CAN

HAPPEN
TO

ANY OF US:

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“I had all these people telling me, ‘Why are Carhartt WIP shoes, hat, and Underwear (throughout)
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sport? You a loser!’ ” the rapper born Quincy sunglasses $1,075
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into the high-pitched mockery of an ignorant Mage his own
hater, one who knows nothing of the joys of
manicured fairways and glen plaid. “But like cuff, stylist’s own
I tell everyone, ‘Bruh: Golf is life.’ ”

They love Q here. “Here” being the
Calabasas Country Club, a postcard expanse
of glimmering emerald turf, gently sloping
mountains, and a 21-acre lake, a few minutes’
drive from Q’s home in the same ritzy neigh-
borhood. “They” being everyone from the
19-year-old caddies who want photos to flex
on Instagram to the baronial white-haired
titans of commerce who greet him by name,
slap high fives, and give him jovial biceps
taps like he just closed a deal to bring in the
Underhill account.

Unburdened from the demands of a nine-
to-five existence, Q hits the links daily. This
morning, he took to the course with Brock
Korsan, the senior vice president of A&R at
Warner Bros. Records, and Cole Young, the
brand director for Malbon Golf, an insurgent
streetwear-inspired golf label, for the photos
you see here. But his partner for nine holes in
the afternoon is Adrian, a fit older Mexican-
American man with wind-swept gray hair and
black shades, who has become Q’s adoptive
golfing padre.

The golf obsession started just over a year
ago, and while Q seems a natural on the
course, his new habit is actually the culmi-
nation of a fraught series of events. He spent
his early years on 51st Street in L.A.’s South
Central before enrolling at a local community
college intending to play football.

By 2009 he had been incarcerated, had a
daughter, and gotten a trapezius tattoo that
read fuck lapd—a nod, he says, to its habit
of picking him up and then dropping him

96 GQ.COM MAY 2019

←← ON SCHOOLBOY Q sunglasses $1,075 ON COLE YOUNG
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his own shoes shoes, his own
J.Crew

socks $3 Uniqlo

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 97

o≠ unarmed in rival-gang territories. Rap golfers (Tony Finau, Rickie Fowler), but it’s Q says. “You know how bad it is when you’re
was a miraculous lifeline. A former college- been only a year. His swing is still a little going through all this shit in your head and
football teammate had become the engineer sti≠, but it’s powerful. He thwacks the ball all you’re doing is going to the studio and
for the fledgling TDE, home of Kendrick 220 yards in the air, rounding into form. back home? It’s toxic for your kid, too.”
Lamar. Q swiftly ingratiated himself with the
West Coast’s now dominant rap label. “People don’t give a fuck about you,” he There was also the risk of the ostensibly
adds. “All they want is music and to see you unthinkable. In the past two years alone,
Beginning with his second album, 2012’s living the rapper life.” accidental overdoses resulted in the untimely
Habits & Contradictions, Q—wearing bucket demises of Lil Peep and Q’s close friend and
hats and tie-dye, rhyming over Portishead For Q, living the rapper life started inter- collaborator Mac Miller, the latter of whom
samples—re-imagined what gangsta rap fering with the business of rapping. The he still has a hard time talking about. It was a
could look and sound like. If other rappers last time I saw him, in 2014, he downed two tough couple of years.
needed shotgun blasts and air horns to add Styrofoam cups full of promethazine and
extra energy, all Q needed to do was shout Sprite before 2 p.m.—a daily occurrence Enter the game of kings and the Calabasas
“YAWK YAWK YAWK!” during his darkest stretches in the middle Country Club. Between the fresh air, the
of the decade. He’s disclosed previous issues equally meditative and maddening aspects
The tremendous success of 2014’s with Xanax and Percocet, too. of the sport, and the club’s apparently laissez-
Oxymoron spurred Q’s move into a mansion faire approach to his penchant for lighting
in Calabasas, one of those L.A. subdivisions He released Blank Face LP in 2016 to up on the back nine, Q was immediately sold.
that come complete with neighbors like substantial acclaim, toured it, and headed He augmented his new obsession with boxing
Kanye and Drake. He even took his daugh- straight back into the studio once that was workouts, intermittent fasting (he’ll eat only
ter out of public school and began personally over, but he wasn’t feeling right. He esti- between noon and 8 p.m.), and daily morning
homeschooling her. It was the good life, until mates that he made and discarded two full sessions of Call of Duty (“Video games saved
it wasn’t. albums (“They were trash”) and completed a my life, too”).
third, which he briefly concluded was ready
“Being in the house so damn much can for consumption before labelmates Kendrick But it was ultimately golf that parted the
drive you crazy,” Q says. “Golf taught me and Jay Rock convinced him it wasn’t. psychic clouds, allowing him to lighten up
patience, and you need that in the music Darkness set in. and make the music that he actually wanted
industry, because this shit is evil.” to make. Cue Crash Talk, his third major-
“I’d be in the house smoking weed, just label album, scheduled for a late-spring
Setting up at the tee, he gets into posi- waiting to go to the studio every day. That’s release, which features Travis Scott and Kid
tion. No one will mistake him for his favorite not a good life. That brings on depression,” Cudi and brings both sides of Q into harmony:
the ferocious bullet-holes-in-your-coupe
gangsta-rap assassin and the hedonistic,
gonzo one-man party with an innate pop
sensibility. It’s Q as killer and lover, reckless
shit-talker and responsible father, grown-up
gangsta and aspiring scratch golfer.

After another shanked drive on eight—
Adrian assures me this is an o≠ day for Q—the
group reaches the ninth hole, a final chance
for redemption. Q assumes the position and
locks in over that dimpled teardrop—and
just like that, it’s e≠ortless. Steel to ball to the
fairway, a magisterial drive that would be the
envy of every periodontist at the club. A pure
shot with an iron, a chip onto the green, and
an eight-foot putt later, he’s made par.

“Yeah, I’m back! I’m back now!” Q pumps
his fist and whoops and exuberantly gives
pounds to Adrian and me.

“I’m playing so bad, and now I get a par—
just like that,” he continues. “You can always
bounce back, dawg! Hit a good chip shot, get a
good putt, save the day, par. That’s life!”

But this is golf and there is still a little bit
of daylight left, so why not one more hole? We
hop in the cart and head back around to the
first hole, where Q wants to, needs to, see if his
magic touch will sustain itself. He unleashes a
mighty swing…and sends the ball wildly o≠ to
the right, somewhere toward San Francisco.

“And just when I thought I had it,” he
growls, unable to conceal a sly smile. “Back
to the bullshit!”

jeff weiss is a writer in Los Angeles,
where he is also the editor of ‘theLAnd.’

98 GQ.COM MAY 2019

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100 GQ.COM MAY 2019

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produced by
austin sepulveda.
photographed
at calabasas
country club.