Hater’s First Poster, “Oil Monster”, was inspired by our hate for BP and the catastrophic spill in our Gulf.  Subscribe to Hater Magazine and receive the limited edition poster.

Hater Magazine had it’s first art show on July 26th.  It was loved by all. If you missed it, don’t be too sad.  The #1 at the end of the title wasn’t just a clever use of numbers and symbols; There will be more art shows to follow.  Start looking out for the next one in early September.  For those that came, we know you had a good time.  The beer was free and supplied by St. Arnold’s and the visuals were brought to you by some fantastic, local, up and coming artists:

• Matthew Oberpriller
• Veronica Ramos
• Tim Spencer
• Lisa Marie Godfrey
• Fabian Owens
• Aaron Casas
• Isaac Solomon

The photos to follow are by Isaac, as well.  He’s talent embodied.  Seriously.  Enjoy.

On Saturday, July 24th, The Tipping Point hosted an event for Rhymefest.  Rhymefest is relocating from Chicago to Houston next summer, so keep your eyes and ears open.  Just one more bit of proof that Houston is the dopest city around!

Rhymefest and Hater Magazine.

Pretty Chicks like Hater Magazine.

Grits Apparel and Hater Magazine.

Monique C.  and Thomas Nauls of  Tipping Point

Tipping Point.

Photos by Jehnifer Henderson

“Hooked a left into Popeye’s and bailed out quick, if it’s going down, let’s get it over with.” A favorite line of mine from legendary “Geto Boy” rapper Willie D, not only because in this verse he is facing his imagined killers, but because of its reference to my favorite fast food restaurant, Popeye’s.
Oh, Popeye’s. How I loved thee.
And how I would have continued to love thee, until the day I asked myself, “Where did this chicken come from?”

Essentially,whether in a drive-thru or a grocery check-out line, we should all be asking “Where did this food come from?”
There has been a swell of information and discussion on the manufacturing and corporatization of our food. Only a select few Americans can trace their meal back to their local farm. The rest of us are busy hustling through the city and can only trace our meals back to marketed name brands.

The search of how my packaged meal came to be, led me to investigate the culture of industrial farming and the unknown impact of what a simple 2-piece meal has on my health, society and the environment.

According to definition, commercial farming is an agri-business with a high density of stock, utilizing antibiotics, growth hormones and pesticides. So, basically my deep-fried wing and thigh came from a commercial farm where chickens were kept in a production house devoid of light, injected with growth hormones (advancing from baby chick to adult within 3 weeks) and had their organs mature beyond the capacity of their skeletal frame, making them too heavy to walk and flutter. Then the “juiced-up” chicken is left standing in its own feces until gathered onto a truck by undocumented workers and transported to a processing plant.

The altering of nature does not stop with chickens. Cows, pigs, vegetables, and fruit are also getting in on the action.

I sat down with Local Chef Monica Pope who owns the celebrated restaurant, T’afia. Pope is passionately committed to local organic ingredients and she expressed concerns over our detachment from our food. “We all have to eat, and we don’t realize what we support. We don’t think about how it was packaged, where it came from, how it got here…”

A month before meeting with Monica, I was ablaze in my quest to track the clandestine pilgrimage of my 2-piece and its origin. To familiarize myself with the practice of industrial farming I home paged F.D.A. watch dog sites, read books critical of America’s agri-business and watched numerous films including the harrowing documentary, “Food Inc.” The documentary immediately curbed my addiction to fast food and my waistline dwindled two sizes. I expressed my surprise over my weight loss to Monica, because even though I had stopped eating fast food. I was still eating staples like hamburgers 3 times a week.The only difference was, instead of running to Jack in the Box for my hamburger fix, I was cooking the meat myself.

Monica explained the conundrum: “I eat whatever I want here (T’afia). Some people ask how Mac and Cheese can be healthy. Well, the way I make it, it is. Now Michael Pollen (author of Omnivore’s Dilemma) has written that you can eat whatever you want as long as you make it. I don’t go to McDonald’s or Taco Bell. I go to other chefs and eat good food and good ingredients.”
Still confused how two burgers are not alike?

Well, the difference between the patty from McDonald’s and the organic beef patty I purchased from the butcher is that, in general, processed meats are higher in saturated fat and lower in protein than pure red meats. My three hamburgers a week were also covered with fresher ingredients like romaine lettuce and tomatoes, and when I prepared the meat I did not include excess fat to boost flavor.
That excess fat would steer me to obesity.

Numerous studies show obesity has increased among American adults and children, and those percentages are even higher within the great state of Texas. A 2008 study shown 28.3 percent of adult Texans were obese. That’s a lot of fat people.

Aside from the unsightliness of swollen guts and muffin tops, obesity leads to life-threatening health problems. I expressed my shock to Monica that it isn’t illegal to sell people a product that has been genetically altered to “appear” as food, and is chock-full of hormones, coloring and corn-syrup leading to detrimental health.

I mean, on the street, if you purchased an eight-ball only to discover it was Gold Medal flour, I’m positive there would be repercussions.

Monica agrees with the banning of this sub-par food: “In the last 120 years the system has fallen apart and we just let it. We have to take more responsibility. Where’s every layer of society involved in where the food comes from and how good it is. We are in a crisis. I’m 47 and I’ve been cooking for about 30 years, I started cooking when I was 17 with my grandmother and I got involved because of family traditions, and at some point about 20 years ago, I felt it. My restaurant is not just a farm to table concept and here’s my menu. I live and breathe and feel it. I feel a lot of responsibility and the weight of it.”

Monica’s restaurant is also the home of the Midtown Farmer’s Market which is in its seventh year running. I spend a Saturday in its throes, ogling produce, eggs and artisan breads before stopping by Monica’s cooking class. It’s a mish mosh of people all looking for pure ingredients to craft their daily meals. Monica speaks highly of the farmer’s market but expresses distress over a recent comment about the popularity of her efforts. “Someone made a comment about my trendy farmers market or my trendy restaurant, and I’m like ‘What is trendy?’This is something more, and it’s the fact that you can change the world by the way you eat.”

Monica and I discussed whether this disconnect from our food can be turned around and she ends our interview with a bit of advice, “Start a relationship that is going to be satisfying to you. Eat where your food lives.”

Monica’s advice launched me to find a farm near my crib, only to discover there wasn’t one. There are community gardens and such but no one raising or willing to sell me a cow. I googled “organic farms in Texas” and discovered the nearest one is Jolie Vue Farm in Brenham. Jolie Vue has an alarming disclaimer on its modest website – “you’re always welcome to see our operations at Jolie Vue Farms. We’re proud of it, and we have nothing to hide. Just call.” Can you imagine? When I asked a former Popeye’s worker where the chicken came from, he laughed and said “a plastic bag off a unmarked truck.”

I made the trek out to the Jolie-Vue Farm to tour the grounds and meet owners, Glen and Honi Ann Boudreaux. Glen doled out delicious mouth-watering bits of barbecue made from the meat raised on his farm while Honi conducted a tour of her farm to us city slickers. During the tour I learned that Jolie Vue was acquired by the Boudreauxs with the goal of restoring the farm to its original state of native grasses, clovers, and wildflowers. In the beginning, restoration was implemented without the use of artificial chemicals. Now, the farm has been transformed from an over-grazed, chemically-sterilized environment to its native vegetation and the wildlife that subsists on it as well.
Truth be told, I was excited to visit a “real” farm and see happy, and healthy animals like the ones I imagined lived on the Old McDonald’s farm of my childhood.

Looming over the idyllic farm’s landscape was a menacing oil rig that never was. Honi Ann recounted to the tourists how the Boudreauxs stopped the company from drilling because drilling would have destroyed their farm. Seeing how the catastrophic oil spill in our Gulf will reap a lifetime of damage of unknown proportions to our environment, I commend Glen and Honi Ann for choosing to produce a healthy sustainable farm over an oil residual paycheck.

Leaving the farm to return home, I passed plenty of rest stop signs all advertising that a fast food restaurant is just a pit stop away. The glimmer of hope I had began to teeter. My stomach growled louder as I read familiar names like Taco Bell, Wendy’s and even Dairy Queen. But I kept driving, and mentally prepared the delicious meal I would prepare once I arrived home. I recognize that refraining from fast food is a minuscule contribution to curbing this expanding crisis, but this solitary act is going to have an impact on the overall consumption of fast food: demanding better quality of produce and meat and a more humane treatment of animals and workers.
I’m making a change by cooking my own 2-piece, one meal at a time.

Comments

Hater Magazine is gearing up for the upcoming Sex Issue. As Hater is a DYI magazine, we need you to touch us with your genius. Submit a series of 7 – 10 photos on the topic of sex and sexuality and you might find your work on www.Hatermag.com. Before the release of the Sex Issue, we will be highlighting photographers and their work on the Hater site and select photos might be printed in the next issue of Hater. Your input is important to Hater Magazine.

Please submit photos to jehnifer@redhydrantmedia.com. Photos should be 300 dpi, color or b/w and fit 4×6 inches. You will be asked to sign a photo and model release, should Hater decide to print or post your work. Deadline: August 6, 2010

Photos by Jehnifer Henderson

Zeale Rapz, an Austin rapper, will be making the trek to peform for Hater’s first show @ Walter’s. We wanted to give our readers a quick meet and greet with this cat but since he is still enjoying his vacation, we had to hit him up via Facebook.

Hater:  Every Texas rapper has a certain sound from their city, how has growing up in Austin influenced your style?

Zeale: Austin influenced my style by keeping it a lot less “traditional Texan,” like the southern rap deliveries of Paul Wall, Slim Thug, etc…

Hater: Favorite track to perform?

Zeale: Favorite track to perform right now is a song called “GO.” Its a hot beat and it always pulls the ladies in.

Hater: Do you dig mexican chicks? Because my art director thinks you can get it.

Zeale: Hahaa. I dig all kinds of chicks, but there’s only one who has my attention right now.

Hater: Where are you hoping your music takes you?

Zeale: I hope my music gets me around the world, rich, and all access to Jay-Z’s house.

Hater: Where are all the black people in Austin? 

Zeale: All the black people in Austin are in jail. I’m only half black so they let me out for shows.

Hater:  Backstory about the creation of the video Monzter Hozpital?

Zeale: This was the first song I wrote for the soon to be released “DISASTERKRFT” mixtape. I wanted to make sure my it made a statement, but was still hot. When I was done with it I was like…video. We shot it and half of the way through it started raining so we just dropped and umbrella over the camera and went for the Jodeci shot.

Friday night, “Hater Presents…” starts off the Houston Sneaker Summit weekend with a line up worthy bragging about to your future illegitmate children.  Don’t Sleep.

My room mate swears that Kombucha is “angel piss”. She says the drink consisting of yeast and bacteria will taste like shit but will make me feel stronger than Popeye on a spinach binge.

The small bottle she gave me four months ago is still in the back of my fridge.

But after reading this piece from Good Magazine, I see that drinking Kombucha can quench my alcoholic cravings when we are out of mouthwash.

The federal government is looking into the fermented tea’s alcohol content. That’s not the only thing that’s wrong with it.

When Lindsay Lohan set off her alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet at last month’s MTV Movie Awards Party, celebrity gossip-mongers turned to her habit of drinking kombucha, a fizzy fermented drink that can contain low levels of alcohol. The initial reports were probably untrue, but the incident launched the expensive, once-obscure sparkling tea into the public consciousness.

Then, Whole Foods Market abruptly pulled kombucha from its shelves over other, more substantiated claims that the alcohol levels in the beverage meant it wasn’t being taxed correctly, according to U.S. tax law. Hippie and hipster guzzlers all over were left wondering: what’s going on with my beloved mushroom tea?

For the uninitiated, kombucha is a fermented drink that’s been touted as a cure-all energy drink. Historically, the drink has been consumed across Russia, Bulgaria, China, and Indonesia. It’s made by combining brewed tea, sweetener, and a visible, cloudy mass of yeast and bacteria known as a mother. The mother breaks down sugars into alcohol and acetic acid (vinegar), which act as preservatives, making it possible for kombuchaseurs to make their own batches in less-than-sterile home kitchens.

When the drink is bottled commercially—much of it by G.T. Dave, the Coke of Kombucha—it is often pasteurized, which kills the live bacterial cultures. Other makers let it continue to bubble and ferment. Therein lies the problem: Continued fermentation means booch becomes hooch. In recent tests at the University of Maine, food science professor Brian Perkins found that at least one major brand contained 2.4 percent alcohol—well above the .5 percent limit on nonalcoholic beverages and approaching the alcohol content of some ultralight beers. This taxable amount of alcohol in kombucha is what the feds are going after—and why it disappeared from supermarket shelves.

Alcohol may help explain the serious buzz about the stuff and its alleged stress-relieving powers. But it’s more than just alcohol that explains its appeal. Since its widespread introduction to the United States in 1992, the drink has reportedly worked wonders, from supposedly curing Ronald Reagan of cancer to legitimately protecting laboratory rats from liver damage. Kombucha has antimicrobial properties which have helped fight E. coli and other bacteria in the lab, but this action may jeopardize the microbial life found in healthy digestive systems. In the case of one woman’s unexplained death, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that the daily consumption of home-brewed kombucha led to an excessive acid buildup. For those reasons and more, both scientists and alternative medicine gurus caution that kombucha’s health risks outweigh any potential benefits.

As kombucha gains traction as the beverage of choice for enlightened foodies and starlets alike, it’s worth questioning the bewildering array of health claims that surround it. With less added sugars than most sodas, it might be appear to be a healthy drink option. And now that Lohan has put this potent, foul-smelling beverage back in the spotlight, it might be time to raise a stink about its claimed magical or detoxifying properties—and keep a lid on it until there’s a better consensus from clinical researchers.

-Good Magazine

Dallas, Austin Gayer than Houston, Survey Says:

- by D.L. Gonzalez

 Austin as the most gay/lesbian tolerant city in Texas shouldn’t be a surprise, but now H-town is officially less gay than our rival metro, DFW.

     UCLA scholar Gary Gates came up with a Gay/Lesbian Index to measure the level of gayness in U.S. cities. Read the full story here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-20/the-20-gayest-cities-in-america/

     Austin finished strong in 7^th place on the index, boasting contributions to the LGBT community like The Texas Gay Rodeo Association.

     Dallas broke the top 20 at number 19 – holding it down for Texas LGBTs.

     According to the story published by The Daily Beast, the creators of the Gay/Lesbian Index admit the data used in the survey was dubious at best, but nonetheless solid enough to dish out gayness ranks.

     Be real sad, Houston. The survey added that gay cities are prettier, greener, perform better economically and have more ballin’ homes per capita.