Icon of the Week: Jericho Coffee Traders
Jericho Coffee Traders began in 2009, with founders James and Lizzie selling coffee from the same Vespa truck that now makes appearances at Oxford balls. They’re not messing around: they have five locations, a coffee subscription business, a coffee school, they offer delivery around the cou
“I will only accept being my own genre”: an interview with Porpentine
CYBERQUEEN starts with a black screen and just one word to click: ‘wet’. From there, things spiral. It starts off a simulacrum of any parser game you might imagine: sci-fi kitsch, ‘navigation chamber west’, a copious selection of guns whose capabilities are described in fetishistic detail. N
All Quiet on the Culture Front
To say that all politics is sex may seem like a rather pubescent position. A very radical albeit pubescent position. But it is not an unsubstantiated one, for in a social environment tainted by the ‘Culture Wars’ our politics is undoubtedly pubescent. The Western psyche seems to be in something
Rulers Without Robes
The recent BBC drama Marie Antoinette is an uncomfortable series to watch. The combination of off-tune music, flaking powdered faces, and menacing whispers reveals the truth which lurks behind the beautiful Versailles backdrop: it is a cage, rather than a palace, for the 14-year-old Austrian princes
My best friend doesn’t know why she’s a sub
We are the first generation to have had access to truly ubiquitous porn in our formative years. Statistically, it is highly likely that most males in our generation had their first sexual experience in front of a screen, and it is highly likely that most females had their first sexual experience wit
Icon of the Week: Lizzie Jones, Captain of Oxford University Korfball Club
By the time I arrived at Freshers’ Fair they were handing out the last of the tote bags. After rushing past the stalls for the Oxford Finance Society (the bad guys), the Oxford Climate Society (the good guys), and the Oxford Sustainable Finance Society (God knows what), it was becoming clear to me
Won in Translation
Translation is often seen as a necessary evil. It is the imperfect remedy to the embarrassing fact that we can’t speak all the languages, to be swept under the rug and forgotten about. Translation is merely the conduit that allows us to access writings that would otherwise remain mysterious to us.
“Bigfoot, I think, needs more attention”: Cowley’s Best Cocktail Bar
The shadowy shape of a poster of a creature beckons me as I pass the wooden threshold of the little cocktail bar. Is it a big bear? Or a gorilla? All wrong. It’s Bigfoot—diversifying the mythological landscape that is Cowley Road (a parrot sits on a window sill a few shops down). Charlie and Geo
On Love, and Dosas
It’s 10am on a Saturday. An unfamiliar crowd trickles in. Strings of couples, each having breakfast at my favourite South Indian restaurant in Bombay, each blissfully lost and painfully comfortable with the other. They share dosas and coffees, aspirations and casual morning slippers. Is there anyt