Table of contents for Issue 70 - Summer Issue in Huck

At a graffiti-covered skate spot in north London, skater Rae Smith is sitting on a nearby patch of grass, eating toast. With her shaved head, long limbs and neon pink board, the 35-year-old is a familiar face around here. She’s warm, observant and quick to smile – fist-bumping everyone who drifts past holding a board. Rae skates here most afternoons, when she’s not organising all-inclusive, beginner-friendly skateboard meetups around London or recording conversations for her YouTube vlog, Keep Pushing. Like any other skater, her Instagram account frames all the fun moments: the hype of nailing a new trick, bloody elbows from slamming into concrete, post-skate pizzas. But you’ll also see her talking about deeper, more personal issues, like the highs and lows that have come with openly claiming her identity…

On September 23, 1984, a young Charlie Brooker saw something so terrifying that it would leave its mark on him for life. At 9.30 on a Sunday evening, Charlie – 13 years old at the time – sat down to watch television. What followed – the apocalyptic war drama Threads – left him slack-jawed and frozen stiff. The BBC show tapped into a collective fear, using the backdrop of Sheffield to show what life would look like if a nuclear bomb were detonated. “It had a big impact,” says Charlie, now 48 and best known for his own harrowing TV series, Black Mirror. “I was already a worried person and I could not understand at that time – with the world appearing constantly on the brink of nuclear war –…

Juan David Agudelo clings tightly to the back of a jeep bouncing out of Buenavista, a colourful coffee village situated on the edge of Quindío, western Colombia. In front of him, his customers – backpackers from Europe, North America and Bogotá, the country’s capital – grow animated as the landscape slowly begins to reveal itself. Cameras in hand, they snap away at rows of coffee trees spreading down into the vast valley: a place where clouds hang low in the morning and distant villages twinkle at night. Juan David, leading the party on one of his celebrated coffee tours, watches on quietly. Although he’s seen this kind of reaction countless times, he can’t help smiling. It’s a scene that few locals would have thought possible a little over 10 years…

Dani Miller’s path to becoming one of the most extraordinary bandleaders in recent years can be traced back to her childhood. At the age of nine, she was known for climbing onto the bonnets of cars that her father sold at his dealership, then launching into a sales pitch directed at a crowd of imaginary customers. But in the confines of home, she’d take it up a level: grabbing a red cowboy hat and constructing wild dance routines in front of her parents. “One day they put on a record and I just went super insane – they thought that I was almost acting… sexy,” she says, laughing. “They were like, ‘What the hell is going on? Did you teach her that? Oh fuck. We’re fucked!’” Over 15 years later,…

Kevin Parker seems surprisingly composed for someone under enormous pressure. In a few hours, the 33-year-old will play to nearly 20,000 people at London’s O2 Arena, many of whom are desperate for him to make an announcement. It’s been four years since the release of Tame Impala’s third album, Currents: a glorious fusion of dance, psychedelic rock and electronica that became an international hit, clocking up hundreds of millions of plays online. The trajectory behind that has been an improbable rise – one that’s forced a solitary stoner to get comfortable with the demands of success. Growing up in Perth, Western Australia, Kevin would tinker with music in his bedroom as a way to keep his head together. His parents (his dad was an accountant from Zimbabwe who played music…

Simon Burstall keeps having flashbacks. Nearly every day for the past year, memories of thumping raves – the ones that shaped his teenage years – keep catching him off-guard. It could be a car park packed with loved-up strangers still dancing at 10am; train stations filled with light so piercing that it could rip through your eyeballs; the smile of a DJ who died way too soon; old people shaking their heads at the waste of youth. The Australian has been busy making a book about that time, so it makes sense that these scenes have been coming back to life. But even when he’s busy doing something else entirely, the echo of a moment will announce itself with a rush of goosebumps. “Truth be told, it’s pretty great,” says…

ScHoolboy Q is wandering around a luxurious penthouse suite, a lit joint in his hand. The mellow air to proceedings suggests it’s probably not his first smoke of the afternoon. This is rarely a good sign for an interview, especially when your slot has been cut in half at the last minute. But as a TV crew packs up after another press commitment, and rain hammers against his hotel room’s large windows, the rapper saunters over to extend a hand. Dressed in a black hoodie and burgundy sweatpants, he insists that despite the jetlag, the weed and the packed schedule, he’ll still be good company. “I’m a clown-ass n***a,” says the 32-year-old, his monotone delivery matched by a sleepy grin. Q – real name Quincy Matthew Hanley – is kind…

Growing up in industrial Pennsylvania, Conner Habib would drive along the highways, veering off-road to visit various cruising stops – places where men would congregate to have sex. Sometimes he’d arrive only to find himself alone, waiting for up to an hour before someone else would turn up. For Conner, those moments of suspense turned out to be a large part of the appeal. “I began to realise that, actually, the waiting and the state of intense anticipation was always erotic for me,” he says. “It wasn’t just the consummation of the act with somebody, but also wanting the wanting itself.” That idea, of separating yourself for a moment to focus on what truly brings fulfilment, has stuck with Conner ever since. “The myth of capitalism is that our desires…

How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy JENNY ODELL (2019) An anti-productivity manifesto championing the benefits of being alone with your thoughts. No One Is Too Small To Make A Difference GRETA THUNBERG (2019) The teen activist has inspired the world with her speeches on climate change. This book collects them all in one place. Hard Eight PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON (1996) In the American filmmaker’s underrated debut, a luckless gambler meets a mysterious stranger who drags him out of his rut. ‘What Have You Done For Me Lately?’ JANET JACKSON (1986) Trapped in a dead-end relationship? Stick this on… and get the hell out. ‘Dope’ SURFBORT (2018) New York’s queen of garage punk Dani Miller digs into the trials and tribulations of getting clean. Lab Rats: Why Modern Work…

New Message Recipients: Subject: Out Of Office Send Before leaving work for her Christmas break in December 2017, Dr Erin Williams gave herself a life-changing gift. Instead of setting her standard Out Of Office email, the University of Edinburgh lecturer wrote something different in the autoreply box. She stared at the screen and paused as her hands hovered over the keyboard. “I am currently on annual leave and will be out of the office until January,” she began, as most of us do. “Any emails received during this time will be automatically deleted. If any item requires my attention, please resend in January.” Erin now sets this OOO whenever she takes a holiday. In all of that time, she has deleted hundreds of emails – but only two people have…

Mason Silva doesn’t like days off. He’s too single-minded for that. It’s what makes the 22-year-old a pro skater in the truest sense: hitting the streets of Long Beach from noon to dusk every day, scouting spots, practising tough tricks, staying out of reach for hours at a time. “I tend to obsess about skating a lot,” he says, “and it’s hard to think about it all the time because it’s not necessarily always available to you, like when our body just isn’t physically up to it.” A couple of years ago, Mason realised that the amount of downtime involved in international skate trips actually kinda sucked. As a way to kill time, he began toying with a Nikon camera that the photographer Brian Gaberman gifted him, capturing candid moments…