VIDEO: Watch VICE Trying to ‘Make It’ in ’90s Canada, Well Before They Took Over Williamsburg
Long before VICE became a media giant gobbling up much of Williamsburg‘s north side real estate and displacing some of the neighborhood’s beloved institutions, it was just a regular ol’ start-up company consisting of three guys putting out an indie mag from a small office in Montreal.
A recently uncovered video made for a ’90s reality TV show transports us to that far more innocent time, introducing us to the founding fathers of the magazine, Suroosh Alvi, Shane Smith, and Gavin McInnes, and documenting their days as the get ready for a move to New York City with hopes of taking their publication to the next level. Although the then-best buds have long left the realm in which we normal folks dwell, the concerns they expressed in the video back then—”I’m scared of being poor there,” McInnes says at one point—bring them back down to earth with us regular folks just trying to make it in the city.
Jump ahead for an intimate look at the trio 15 years ago, chatting about the roots of the magazine and the saucy side of Canada—and watch as they stress out over searching for NYC apartments.
The feature was created for the show “Moving Stories,” a project of director Lisa Gabriele in 1999. Gabriele told Fast Company that she never questioned whether success was in the cards for them. “They were ballsy, brash and totally original. They worked like dogs and had a finger on a pulse people didn’t even know existed. Gavin was so talented, Shane was a brilliant networker, and Suroosh was always wise beyond his years. You can see all that in the doc. They had ‘it’ then.”
Today VICE is worth more than $2.5 billion.
[Via Fast Company]
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