The New Beatnik

[intro]

Chase Lisbon, the 31 year-old mastermind behind Supercult, travels around the Atlantic northeast looking for female nudes to photograph for his subscription-based website. That’s right, he just roams the countryside, scouring each new town for hot girls to photograph nude.

After a recent adventure that took him by Greyhound bus from his hometown of Baltimore to Philadelphia, then to upstate New York, Boston and then to Rhode Island, Humpshire College and some co-ed dorm, he then sent in this rather poetic missive regarding his travels. Enjoy. RR

[intro over]

…

[interview]
1. Q.):
From: Reviewer
Date: Mar 29, 2006 1:19 AM
Subject: RE: INYERVIEW
So Chase, you just got back from a trip. Tell me about it. Why did you go? Where did you go? What did you do?

2. A.):
From: chase lisbon (vibration 5)
Date: Mar 29, 2006 2:04 PM Flag spam/abuse.
Subject: RE: INYERVIEW
Jesus. I got on a Greyhound to Philly. I was supposed to be there two nights. No work. But I just stayed 4. Went to “Making Time” and saw Hot Chip. Had never heard of them, but now I here them all day on my ipod. Even bought their CD from a store OLDSCHOOL style. Then I took a Greyhound to Amherst, Massachusetts. I was staying in a dorm in Hampshire College. I was there to shoot this 20 year-old student. Latin girl. Really pretty. It was weird, because I was actually staying IN a dorm. Not what I expected. We spent two days shopping and taking advantage of their sauna and their gym and their free food and free flowing drugs. We decides to shoot Monday instead of Sunday night. so… Sunday night I was just sitting on one bunk bed smoking this giant hooka and she was on her dorm-mates bed and this giant man busted in the door all Viking berzerker style, you know? And he was PISSED. screaming at me “Give me the fucking pictures! I drove two hours to smash your fucking face in!” – etc. etc… I mean… I was siting Indian-style and VERY sedated. Just having girl-talk with this girl in a dorm like everything’s normal. Now it should be stated that if you show up at a dorm, and you are in your 30’s (even if you look 24) and you have “cult life” tattooed on your knuckles…. yeah. It can be weird. Anyway. I got out of that situation. By the end there was the model, the dude (who turned out to be an ex-white-power skinhead turned military) a dorm counselor, some dorm mates, the girl’s actual room-mate, the room-mate’s mom, and a campus monitor all in this little house. And dude’s yelling “This guy’s a fucking pornographer!” And it was a little heavy.

[The guy in the dorm was the model’s (ex?)boyfriend. I don’t know how he knew I was there. She said she told her sister about it, so she thinks her sister told him she might model for me. Then he told her he could tell by her tone that she had a guy over. So I think he drove the whole way just expecting a guy or maybe me. He had seen my myspace, because the sister had said something about me and shown me. So I think he put it all together when he saw me, or he knew already somehow. He yelled about smashing my head in and she kept saying she was going to call the cops (last thing I wanted) but he kept yelling at her to shut up and pointing at me and telling me how he drove two hours to kill me. Then she took him outside. So I sat in her bed for about half of an hour trying to figure my way out. Well they came back and he was calm after she convinced him I hadn’t shot her. I think she just said I was crashing there. So I went downstairs where her dorm mates were gathered. They called the campus monitor over, then her roommate and her mom showed up. So I called Billy Jean in Providence and asked her to pick me up. So she drove a long way to get me. I didn’t really hypnotized him. I just kept looking him in the eye and telling him to calm down and relax. There was no way I could have beat him in a fight. That was clear. And I didn’t want cops or hospital bills. I don’t have insurance. So he calmed down some. It was really scary. The worst place I’ve been in. Stranded two hours in the country.]

I mean, I’m two hours in the COUNTRY. Nowhere near anything and with no car. Billy Jean drove from Rhode Island to get me. That was such a heavy situation. I had about 150 lbs of gear worth a good 5 grand on me, and I’d already broken my laptop screen the first night in Philly. I really have no idea how I got out of that alive. I think I might have thrown some hypnotics on the guy. It was sick. Bad news like the bears. Shit. So I never shot that girl. I’m down one model. I went to Providence. I shot there. Took a train to Boston. Made it exactly in time to meet up with Sef and see the Pouges saw old friends. Had a birthday. By now I’m completely broken up with my girlfriend. Did a shoot in a band practice room. Damian from the explosion sat in as an extra on the shoot. He didn’t touch or look at the model, just sat around reading in the background. I do that sometimes. The idea is to stick a dude or two in the back and have them look completely bored like they don’t even notice a spread eagle hot girl two feet away. Had a birthday. Danced alone to the Ímiths and Cure and Morrissey “First of the Gang to Die.” Got some pills as a birthday present. Got a birthday cake with a Polaroid of a girls butt on it. Went to New Hampshire to shoot a beautiful new model I met at the Pogues show. Now the new model has made up for both the broken screen and the model I lost. So I’m back to level. Go down to Boston, grab the rest of my gear. Race to a train. Ride for an hour next to the two smelliest bullshit Puerto Rican wanta-be pimps and their two SORRY-ASS white “ho’s” and listen to them give a speech like “now these Providence john’s be different you gotta be like this and you gotta be like that.” I mean these were the lowest ranked pimps with the smallest stable I’ve ever seen. The pimp/ho ratio was 1/1. And the kept spraying Axe body spray on each other, like non-stop. That shit SMELLS. This whole scene smells. One can only imagine how low someone has to sink in life to pay one of these girls for anything. I wouldn’t pay any of these people to rake my yard. Sad. Hit providence. Get changed go out to “Club Hell” which is appropriately named. Now… You have to understand I haven’t had a drink in three and a half years, and I have bad social anxiety. Really bad. You wouldn’t be able to guess, because I do a good job faking it and I do a great job with small groups. But… I dropped a Vicodin on the floor next to the coat check girl when she took my coat. I asked her to get it. She looked at me like I was one of those pimps from the train. I guess I’m not too far above them, because I wasn’t going to just loose a vicodine to the floor of “Club Hell”. Went home. The next day I shot Billy Jean for the fourth time on the trip. Went out that night. Woke up the next day and had to do laundry since her dog had peed on my clothes. She offered to do it at her mom’s for me. I said OK, “but I have to catch the last bus to New York at 5:45. So if you can’t make it back in time leave my shit and I’ll take a cab.” I’m assured I’ll make it. At 5:35 they are still not here. Maybe they’ll get here at 5:37. I have to pack my shit and jump in the car. Now seriously get this. The house four doors down is on FIRE. Like people are screaming and crying. People are in the streets. The house is pouring out black smoke. I’m hella pissed about the girls being so late. They blame it on the laundry. I know it’s the shoplifting spree at the mall. The house is on fire. One of them is fixed on the fire; one of them is set on showing me the clothes she stole; I’m set on catching a bus to Manhattan. So we leave. I get there around 5:46. Hold the bus. Get a ticket. Get on. Eat the rest of the Vicodin and listen to “Closedown” by the Cure for the entire 6-hour bus ride. It makes about 20 stops so it takes forever, but I’m lost in my mind and hoping the ride doesn’t end. Get to New York. Hail a cab. Go to the Lower Eastside to stay with Roxie. Without giving any details, I saw a scene straight out of True Romance that night. If I had seen this scene in a movie I would have said “nothing really looks like that in real life” but it does. It’s all out there. Everything you can imagine. Spent the night in bed watching Digrasi High. Woke up. Did an update. I was putting a Pinky shoot up, so I called her. Pinky lives in Pittsburgh. “I’m in New Nork shooting.” “Me too.” She came by for an hour or two. She somehow insults Roxie’s $580 meu meu birthday shoes. I know she didn’t mean to. I also know Roxie didn’t take it well. Pinky leaves. It’s Roxie’s birthday, so I take her for a pedicure. I get a manicure. We go to Roxie’s million-dollar open bar birthday party that night. Crazy. I spend the ENTIRE night on my sidekick trying to fix all of the drama that one of the newer models had started with the newest model. Drama involving some mild information that I thought I could trust someone with in confidence. The secret lasted about 20 hours before it blew up in our faces. Awesome. You have to understand that my sidekick delivers drama to me 24 hours a day. It never ends. Never get in this business. It’s like having 30 girlfriends without the sex. Can you imagine that? I’m serious. What if you had 30-plus sisters. Yeah.

So… party ends. Go back up to Roxie’s. Get some amazing pictures of her and Snowflake in the worst state they can be in and some funny video. Spend the next day in bed working. Watching forensic files and pschic detectives with snowflake. I think she smoked 5 joints that day. She’s the Snoop Dog of Supercult. I don’t smoke pot anymore. Went to Brooklyn that night. Saw oldschool SC girls Sumiko and Isabelle. Took some strange pills. I was told 5 would make you feel “mellow.” I took 6. I took a car to another part of Brooklyn to see another oldschool SC affiliate who will remain unmentioned. Sad to find her hooked on heroin and living on a burned mattress with cats running around and stains everywhere. Very nice, people. Very, very nice. Sad scene for me. So weird to see how much everyone has changed. I feel like the only thing that has changed for me is the hair these girls turn grey every day and my environment. But that’s my perspective. I think LA made me covet things I would never even think of, but Baltimore grounded that really quick. I mean in LA it’s not… “Oh he has a Mercedes,” its “What class Mercedes?” … “oh it’s just a 180c,” or whatevr. See? It’s CRAZY. In Baltimore you can floss for a month by just getting a new pair of vans. So… Back to Sumikos. Grab my gear. Sleep on Isabelle’s futon… Well, I should have slept on her futon. Instead those 6 pills I took had completely fucked me up. The type of “fucked up” where you feel so good you never want to go to sleep again. So I stayed up writing weird letters on myspace, like all fucked up people watching the sun rise. I actually went to sleep around noon. I have a very, very vague memory of being in my full track suit and smoking a mini cigar or clove out front of Izzy’s apartment circa 11 a.m. (Habit I picked up the week before, when I realized it was too cold to go outside 40 minutes with my pipe, yet I had become fully addicted to nicotine again.) Woke up to the dark. Went for a walk and ran into a girl I haven’t seen in 5 years. If you’ve ever seen broken flowers then you may have an idea of what this trip was like in regards to old friends. Met a stranger named Jeramiah Jones. That’s all I’m going to say about him, but I have a feeling that he’ll be coming into play somewhere in my life course. I’m just saying, I have a feeling. Got a ride back to Izzy’s. Shot till 2 or 3. Ate some more of the strange pills. Stayed up all night with Izzy’s boyfriend talking shop. Went to Manhattan the next day. Not going to even touch what happened there, but I had to hide in a room until I thought I was going to pee on the floor in a corner. Missed a bus or three. Packed up and took a cab. Got a bus to Philly. Slept where I started. Got a ride back to Baltimore with Doug Hanson. Got dropped off at home. No sleep. Looking like those pimps on the train by now. Went to the bank. realized I was off by about $500 and now short my rent money. Went to sleep. Went to Read Street Tattoo for Goldie and Vashti’s party. Now here I should mention lil’ Jen. Lil’ J is a very dear friend of mine in Philly. Lil J met a man who saved her from harassment from a man at the fried chicken place late one night in West Philly. He’s a random black guy who walked her home and told her he’s “writing a book” and needs someone to “type” it for him. He also happens to have a donut bag full of pills for sale. She buys the bag at one dollar a pill. This is to be my birthday present. So I hear tale of this bag full of “Vicodin” and “Xanax” which is an amazing thing to hear. Now… there are only so many times in your life that you can take a cab and leave it running while you run in to a house to “pick something up” before you start to feel sketchy. And you should know I’m not this crazy about pills when I’m home, but I was dead set on being stoned every night of this trip. And everything was just falling into my lap, you know? So I got this bag from her. Maybe 20 pills. But they don’t look right. The little one’s are unmarked, but they look a lot like some muscle-relaxers I’ve seen before. The big one’s were marked and strange. I ate about 5 that night and didn’t feel much. So… the night of the read street party I ate the rest. So… yeah. It made me go a little cross eyed and gave me pressure in my ear. Yeah, I know this is all a really bad idea. I wrote Lil J and told her I ate the bag’s worth. She said “don’t die” I said if I do I want my tombstone to either say “Chase Lisbon: he was born and then he lived and then he died” or “Chase Lisbon: he thought it was ‘cool’ to get high.” Angie said a great tombstone would be “This is your body on drugs,” and I agree. Funny tombstones should be the new thing no doubt. I also requested that even though I have a tombstone I should be cremated and scattered in four countries: USA (like all over), Japan, Norway, and some Latin country of her choice”. So that’s the state of mind I’m in… And maybe I should add that I wasn’t too convinced these pills would do anything, so yeah… I ate a little blue pill I found on my bedroom floor when I got home” so… yeah. I realize this doesn’t paint me in the best light, but that’s how I’ve been living the past two weeks or so. I get to the party cross eyed and hard of hearing. I’ve decided these pills don’t get you high, just confused. I’m as confused as I’ll ever be and that says a lot. It’s a mix of Supercult family, Read Street and other tattoo families, and some graffiti crew of young age. At some point Seth punched one who decided to smoke in front of him. AFTER being told several times that he couldn’t smoke in there. And after this guy had one by one annoyed or picked on everyone there. That set off a full scale rumble. Doug actually jumped from a counter top with his arms spread like an eagle. I watched a Supercult friend (the largest quickest dude you will EVER see. Think “hulk” or “the thing”) hit someone so hard in the face that BOTH my eyebrows went up. The kids got kicked out, but decided they should come back for round two, I then watched this guy fight a group of kids. It was sick. Like a comic book. It looked like he was doing mortal kombat “finish him” moves on them. They were Goldie’s friends, but they really were asking about for it. Or looking for it. So… hopefully Goldie will be grown up to realize that Seth threw her a birthday party and went out of his way for her and her friends treated the place like it was CBGB’s. In the aftermath I found half a Vicodin on the floor. went home. went to sleep alone. and back to a normal workday in bed.

So: I made more friends than I lost. Lost more models than I made. Saw blood and pills on the floor. Swore off haters and would-be daters. Saw pimps that can’t afford shrimps. Saw the lowest you can go and the highest you can get. Never got the gold tooth I was going to buy for myself for my birthday (and now I can’t even afford a crayola to fake it), miscalculated my funds by a good $500. Took some busses and trains. Watched Fat Albert-looking cabbies shooting dice for hours outside a Greyhound stop. Shared my phone with a man that just got his eye shot out through a bullet to the cheek. Saw proof that Shane McGowan can still stand up. Picked up smoking cloves? Got a manicure and didn’t lose a single piece of jewelry. That’s the trip. I’m guessing this is the new beatnik.

—————– Original Message —————–

Q. 2.)
From: Reviewer
Date: Mar 29, 2006 3:58 PM

OK, so the trip was all “business.” How is the business end of Supercult doing? The social scene at least on the message board is good, but is it a thriving business?

How many paying subscribers do you have?

And what happened to using iBill as the merchant account provider?

A.)
From: chase lisbon (vibration 5)
Date: Apr 1, 2006 10:55 AM Flag spam/abuse. [ ? ]
Subject: RE: new question
Body: Business wise… I don’t ever talk numbers, but things are better now than they have been in the past 5 years. Lots of members and lots of traffic. I think we are still operating way below the sites that took my ideas and applied real business sense to them. Honestly I hate that side of this. I know a million things to do to get bigger, but I don’t ever do them. I do almost everything at the site alone, so I have my hands ful. But… now people are starting to help out. Annie, Amber, and Vashti are doing more to help with site work, so that’s giving me more time to get other shit done. This year I hope to remain single, so I can keep traveling and shooting across the country. iBill eats it. They owe me a 5-digit sum of money and they have been shorting me about $500 a month since October. That hurts me a lot. I’m switching soon, but it is VERY complicated to do, and I’ll be eating a lot of money. When things get back to normal I hope to hit some other countries up and shoot international.

[end interview]