These readers’ letters are taken from the summer 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL ISSUE. Buy the individual issue, or subscribe and get 4 issues delivered to your door each year.
That’s My Bit of Lizard
Dear VICE,
A red-shouldered hawk moved into my neighborhood this spring. At first, he mostly dive-bombed anyone who got too close to his nest. Later, he started showing up in bird baths to cool off from the Florida heat.
Then one day there were two hawks sitting on a fence, and now we’ve got a full-on hawk family! Screeching across rooftops, splashing around, and decimating the local lizard population.
Some neighbors complain. I think they’re just jealous.
Daniel
Via email
This reads like the kind of heartwarming allegorical fable about tolerance and community cohesion that the world could really use now that the critics have turned on Paddington Bear. Thanks for writing in. That said, if my neighbors secretly wished they were gobbling down lizards for dinner, I’d be firing up Zillow and changing the locks.
A Cheerful Story
Dear VICE,
So yesterday, while visiting the grave of my grandmother together with my father, and eating an awfully long dinner, I found out something about my grandfather. He was a communist and pharmacist born in eastern Germany, and when he had to flee his pharmacy through the backdoor—tracked by a group of Nazis—he found shelter in a nearby hardware store.
Eighty years and three kids later, my father has the idea to donate a rowing boat named after his mother to the rowing club where my grandparents met in this desolate eastern German city. Rowing has always been an important thing in this family. He talks to the chairman of the club, explaining the story of his parents and finds out that he is married to the daughter of the people from the hardware shop that saved my grandfather’s life.
What a cheerful coincidence in a life full of boring probabilities.
Charlotte Roth
Via email
Who ever knew that a hardware store could be the cradle for such a dramatic, romantic, and life-affirming story? It will be difficult to ever think about hardware stores in the same way again. Hopefully along the way the chairman’s in-laws got to kill a few Nazis with hammers.
Comic Book Guy
VICE,
Bring back VICE Comics pls
Drake Misek
Via email
We did it, Drake. We did it just for you. Look for the section marked ‘Backrooms.’ One left turn and you’ll be right back there, just like you knew you always would be.
Gangs Talkin
PLEASE VICE.
Please give us a deep dive into gang stalking. It would be so cool.
I have some good examples, including people who think flies are spies.
I request your response, old friend,
Mo Patfield
Via email
Honestly, sometimes it feels as though the job of editing VICE is now 80 percent a deep dive into gang stalking. The sheer number of emails we get from people who think they’re being followed by helicopters points to an epidemic that isn’t really being discussed in any meaningful way publicly. One could speculate endlessly on the causes; it’s probably more illuminating to watch the documentary that VICE made about it in 2017. You’ll find The Nightmare World of Gang Stalking at our YouTube channel.
Aerosol Abuse
Dear VICE,
VICE used to do documentaries about cannabis and social issues. I think that the content that you’re recording on, it is a little bit too far out for your viewers. I think you should go back the way you used to be. Social issues, cannabis, religion, graffiti, abandoned buildings. Etc…
Randal Friedman
Via email
Hmm… While we appreciate your advice, it does seem that you want us to make content that only appeals to a very specific type of person—i.e. weed-smoking urban explorers who wonder from time to time if their degenerate interest in ‘street art’ will get them sent to Hell. I think you might be that type of person, Randal. And I think you know exactly where you’re headed if you don’t put the aerosols down and make your peace with God.
Gen Bed
Dear VICE,
I should be on my computer studying for my Chemistry exam, but instead I’m in bed reading The Rock Bottom Issue. Thanks for being a huge distraction, VICE.
Connor Cody
Via email
Thanks for giving us your time, Connor. Hopefully Which Drug Changes Your Voice the Most? (VICE Volume 29, Number 1) taught you its own kind of chemistry lessons.
An Errandwrit
Hey VICE,
Welcome back. Looking forward to more journalism about drugs and bad trips, spice, cults, krokodil, and disturbing content that we can’t not watch and share to self-soothe. If we could send some more naive interns to do things they aren’t qualified for in a no-go nation and film it with a shaking hand—and not channel Ross Kemp—I am so down. Can we explore Eastern Europe’s last remaining hovels together?
Finally, we perhaps undertake a multi-part deep dive into some lesser-known disturbing places in the world without it sounding like a Reddit post. I spent a good few hours once drinking cream soda listening to Alice In Chains: Unplugged on repeat and searching Google Earth for the worst neighborhoods on the planet. Fascinating and left me unsettled for almost an hour, until I looked up and found myself in Scunthorpe train station. There’s a trip. Looking forward to the mag arriving at my door (old school is new) so that I read every word. Let’s get weird.
I would love a feature about languages and how they are becoming Uber modern. Pls bring in the experts and ask some linguistics students to get cracking on Anglish.
With trepidation and suppressed joy,
Human Surname
Address withheld
Greetings lord, we be thankful for your earful, and gladden know that this nameknown wordbook will fand aye-ways to beset that gleeful stead between Reddit, Ross Kemp, and Scunthorpe Tow Station, of that you can be wis. See you in Polissia—you bring the krokodil and we’ll bring the adderwort.
These readers’ letters are taken from the summer 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL ISSUE. Buy the individual issue, or subscribe and get 4 issues delivered to your door each year.
The post VICE Mail: A Space for Constructive Dialog appeared first on VICE.
