The Exchanges

Q And that's, um, I guess that's the place where you kind of, you kind of hit a low point, right?

A Yeah, that's where I bottomed out. When I, you know, finished McGill, it was also with a full-blown heroin habit, and so I spent a couple years afterwards kind of looking for a geographic cure, bouncing around, jumping, you know, from city to city. Oh, the problem's not with me. It's here, the city, this environment, it's just too decadent, and blah, blah, blah. So I ran around, and no matter where I went, I kind of took it with me. Ended up in Eastern Europe, and even there in a remote part of Slovakia, was able to stay strung out for upwards of five years, and ended up back in grad school at Toronto, studying psychology, and, and dropped out. And that's when I really was like, you know, descending in the tailspin, hitting bottom, and when I ended up back in Montreal, it was to go to rehab.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, that's where I bottomed out. When I, you know, finished McGill”

Q What was going on? Was he running out of money?

A Yeah. So we went to his house and we're like, what's going on? And he said, it's, it's over. The money's gone. I'm done. I can't put any more money into this. So all of a sudden we're like, what do we do? And so then we came back and we, that's when we moved to Brooklyn. We left his office. I unscrewed the mirrors out of the bathroom and took the plants and the desks and filing cabinets that we still have. I'm still using the same filing cabinet that I stole from that office on 27th street. It all happened so quickly, we, and we sold more equity to Solwinski, so he ended up taking over control of the whole company at that point.

AI assessment note: “And he said, it's, it's over. The money's gone. I'm done.”

Q And so what did your investor, Richard Zalwinski, want you guys to do with the money?

A He had this vision. So he had Vice, and then he had a magazine called Shift, which was like a spin meets wired kind of magazine for a slightly older crowd, and then he had another company called Halo 46, which was kind of a luxury goods, high-end brand, and he wanted all three of these brands to diversify and become multi-channel brands that was going to be tied into a big e-commerce platform, and he was going to take it all public. And, and so that's what we did with the money. We, we built a fashion division, a film division, a TV division, a music division, and you should have a brick and mortar presence for your fashion division.

AI assessment note: “he wanted all three of these brands to diversify and become multi-channel brands”

Q So how did your, your friends and family react?

A Again, my parents are, um, conservative Muslim immigrants, but progressive as well, you know, as far as Pakistani immigrants go, but they thought I had the occasional drink. They didn't know the extent of what was going on with me, and when they found out, I think my mom went into a bit of a depression, my brother wanted to kill me, my dad had a heart attack. I don't know if the heart attack was directly related, but I don't think it helped. It was bad. It was a really bad time, and so my mental state at the time was, Was not good. I, I did go into a bit of a depression at that point. I went, I had to go to rehab twice, you know, the first time it didn't stick, and, you know, like, they found out that I was using again, and it's the only time in my life that my mom's ever hit me, and at that point, I remember that was my bottom. So it's like early 94, uh, on a waiting list to get into a treatment center. No friends, no, I wasn't speaking much. I was Kind of, you know, kicking dope in my parents' house on a waiting list to get into a treatment center. Like, life was not great at that point.

AI assessment note: “my mom went into a bit of a depression, my brother wanted to kill me”

Q right? Because if you, if you go back to the early 2000 and late nineties, there were a lot of really cool magazines. I mean, there were a lot of really cool, like zines and people doing cool stuff. And, but for some reason you guys made it. Like, why do you think that is? I mean, how was it that, that Vice became Vice and those other magazines didn't?

A We refused to die. Again, we're survivors, right? And we always found a way to do a deal, even when times were, were dark and it was hard, you know, we found a way, and we diversified at the right time, so we would have some other deal that would keep the lights on while the magazine is going through a downturn, and we're having a hard time selling ads, go out and do a big deal with, with Viacom that will Keep us going for another eight months, you know, and then do a deal with, you know, a private equity firm and get some money from there, and, and so, but it is crazy that all those magazines are gone for the most part, and they were all so big, and, and we were like the stepchildren, and, and they disappeared.

AI assessment note: “We refused to die. Again, we're survivors, right? And we always found a way”

Q Can you talk about any of them without fear of being sued, or?

A No, I mean, like, there's, there's the one, the, the McAfee story, I don't know if you remember that one, uh, the, the guy who did the, uh, He was the guy who did the, uh, the antivirus software, he was, like, on the run from the police a couple years ago? Exactly, where we kind of embedded with him, and, and, uh, released a photo where we didn't scrub the geo tag from it, so people, uh, We basically exposed exactly where he was when he was on the run, which we obviously weren't trying to do, and everybody celebrated that mistake, you know, everybody being all of the competition and, and the other, you know, news organizations that, you know, vice, oh, they're trying to do this reporting and, and they're making rookie mistakes, so that was, you know, learning a lesson in, in public the hard way, um, but for the most part, You know, I, I don't have a lot of regrets about the, the content that we make and have made, because it's got us to this point today.

AI assessment note: “there's the McAfee story... where we kind of embedded with him”

Q How long did it take you before you, you started to sort of feel like you were regaining control over your life?

A Well, after I came out of the treatment center, you know, I was so scared that I was going to relapse, and it was just like, I was going to meetings, just going to, you know, NA meetings at the time. Um, you know, they say you should go to 90 meetings in 90 days when you first stop drinking or doing drugs, and, and I was going to like two meetings a day. I, I got my own little apartment in Montreal and was on welfare, and I just rode on my bike from meeting to meeting all day, every day, and it was, um, during That time that I actually started thinking about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and I had had this idea that I wanted to work for a magazine.

AI assessment note: “it was, um, during That time that I actually started thinking”