Come On, That’s Ridiculous

Idris Elba: Are you afraid of your own imagination?

Mark Ibold: No, no! But I’m not so sure.

Elba: Come on, that’s ridiculous. You’ve created something.

Ibold: It was at a club in West Hollywood called English Acid at Peanuts.

Elba: I was there. I didn’t like smiling.

•••

Ibold: Hip-hop was just becoming popular and I would hear [Afrika Bambaataa’s] “Planet Rock” on the street. That kind of thing happened a lot.

Elba: That power surge, which is a deviant strain: to feel powerful because you have this tool in your backpack, concealed.

Ibold: It was July or August—very hot and humid—and the temp in the club was over 100.

Elba: Because you feel you shouldn’t be in the room.

Ibold: But I’ve had restaurant jobs since I was 14 or 15.

•••

Elba: Nothing’s permanent. Nothing matters.

Ibold: Once a month, this semi full of mesquite would drive up from Texas and they would unload it.

Elba: We stripped it down and we thought about it, and we used toilet paper.

Ibold: Every issue has a theme; this will be the Fantasy Issue.

Elba: The food, the environment, the music, the clothes, the attitude to the weather.