Boy Crisis

Boy Crisis is Victor, Lee, Tal, and Alex.

They met in college in Connecticut and have since taken a place among Brooklyn's indie-rock scene.







Chief Magazine: So none of you are from Connecticut?

Victor: No.

Lee: No.

Tal: No, we all just met…

Victor: No, we all just met in school.

So what did you guys go to school for?

Victor: Different shit.

Okay. How about that? What’s…?

Tal: I finished in studio art.

Studio art?

Tal: Yeah, I was a painter.

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Okay. Were you doing music in… I guess you weren’t doing music in college, ‘cause that’s why you guys kind of…

Tal: Yeah, yeah, but just on the side.

But that was on the side.

Tal: Yeah, it was mostly painting.

Painting, okay.

Lee: Science and Society, physics, and ethics.

Why, why are they laughing?

Alex: ‘Cause it’s the bullshittest major in the entire fucking school. He doesn’t do anything.

Lee:  That’s not true. I do a lot of things.

Victor: No, you had to do a lot of things. You had to take math classes.

Alex: I was a sculpture major.

Okay.

Alex: Yeah.

Victor: I was trying to be an art major and I couldn’t do it.

Lee: You’re a fucking sculpture major…

Victor: I got some bad grades, so then I had to be an English major, ‘cause they let everyone in.

Wait, you wanted to be an art major, and you got bad grades in art?

Victor: It was in art history, mostly, actually. And then yeah, that was one of the only hard ones. And then I sort of got in a yelling match with my printmaking professor. It was awesome.

Alex: Victor also got kicked out for a semester…

Victor: Oh, yeah. We don’t gotta talk about that.

Tal: …which complicated things for us.

Victor: It was “For unknown reasons.”

Tal: He slapped that dude in the face and called him a cracker.

Okay, that’s the reason.

Victor: That’s the reason, yeah.

Tal: It was deemed a hate crime.

Victor: It wasn’t even deemed a hate…actually, they threw out the hate crime part. ‘Cause like…

But it was there at the start. Wow.

Victor: Well, just barely. I mean, no. I actually later talked to the dude and we became cool. I was just really drunk, and like, I have some identity issues. I [feel like] I was white and I still kind of like get mad at white people sometimes. But I hang out with a lot of white people.

I can see that.

Victor: Actually, I love white people.

You’ve been very friendly to all the white people here.

Alex: I’m going to want to correct myself. I think it was a “cracker ass cracker.”

Victor: Oh yeah. I did call him that. I think I told him to shut his cracker ass up. I mean to be fair I thought he was just a super-dick at the time. And I heard from other people that he was a super-dick. And I actually got to know him and he was an okay dude.

There’s nothing like rumors to figure out the truth.  You guys only started playing, like playing gigs a few months ago... how many songs do you have right now?

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Victor: Ten?

Alex: Let’s see. Ten, maybe?

Lee: Yeah, about ten.

And what’s your favorite song?

Alex: “To Be Nasty.”

Lee: Yeah, to play live, that is.

Victor: It’s kind of like the new one.

Tal: Yeah.

Victor: Yeah, there’s another one called “Fire Man” I’m really digging, ‘cause I get to do this shit on the clave…I get to do this clave thing.

Ding-de-ding-ding, ding-ding-de-ding-ding.

Victor: You know what someone said? That girl Sonya specifically was like, “I love the clave part, on, uh,…”

Tal: We don’t actually have a cowbell though. We have a pan that we found.

Lee: We’ve been through three frying pans, actually.

Wow.

Victor: ‘Cause I lose them.

Lee: He loses them, and then he finds another one.

Alex: I found two frying pans on the same corner,

Victor: A few months apart from each other.

Tal:  Yeah, it was the corner of like Rivington and…

Alex: And, uh…what is it, Eldridge?

Lee: Eldridge…right on Ludlow, it’s like frying pan central.

Victor: The frying pan district, yeah.

So it’s not that you, like, wear them out. It’s just...

Victor: No, no. [laughing]

Lee: The boy needs to remember his frying pan.

And it doesn’t always work out.

Alex: Rarely.

Victor: I got it down okay…

Alex: Yeah, except for last night.

Victor: Where’s the pan, actually?

Tal: Oh, it’s in my backpack. It’s in my backpack along with a whole lot of lube.

Victor: There’s a bunch of lube in his backpack.

Alex: The show last night was sponsored by KY. And so it meant they had ten thousand packets of KY lube lying around. And, you know, we all need a lot of lube, so…

Victor: Tal plays Red Rover a lot. You know. He likes to lube his whole self up. And then he’s really really good at it.

Alex: He’s actually getting really good.

Victor: But he can’t go to the Olympics. That’s illegal. Yeah, ‘cause he’s a Jew.

Wow. You’re mean.

Tal: They don’t let Jews in.

Victor: I’m part Jew, actually. The white side of me.

The white side of you is Jewish?

Victor: Yeah, that’s why I can make that joke.

Alex: I thought it was Italian.

Lee: An Italian Jew?

Victor: No, no. My mom was born in Italy and raised in Italy, but she’s Jewish.

Lee: Oh.

Alex: He just claims that he’s everything. Actually…

Well, what’s your ethnic background?

Victor: I’m mostly Chinese. I’m… I don’t know. I’m a HalfroJewban. My dad’s Afro-Cuban, and my mom’s a, like, a white lady.

Lee: Yeah, but he’s not even circumcised.

Victor: Oh, yeah. So I’m totally not a real Jew. I really only say I’m partially Jewish so I can make fun of Tal. I’m actually an anti-Semite. I’m like a…

Wow, so you’re anti-Jew, anti-white…

Tal: We’re post-everything.

Victor: Yeah, we’re post-everything. We’re post-racist.

What does that mean?

Lee: It means we can be racist and it doesn’t matter, because we all know that we’re not racist. We’re really not. That’s what we tell people when they get really pissed off when we say that.

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Oh, I see. It’s like, “Because I didn’t mean it, I can say it.”

Alex: Yeah.

Victor: People are like, “You guys are a bunch of dicks.”

Alex: And we’re like, “Yeah, that’s it. We’re just a bunch of dicks.”

Victor: But seriously, post-racism is a wack doorway to actual racism. I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea.

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Website
www.myspace.com/boycrisis 


Photos
Noah Venezia

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