They Call Her The Babe Wrangler

Vivianne Lapointe (Instagram handle: @ladyshark) is the brains and brawn behind Live FAST Mag, a website geared towards fashion, art, travel and sex. Poke around and you’ll quickly see why they call her the Babe Wrangler. (Full disclosure: she’s also a personal friend of your correspondent.)

She just returned from a trip to Turkey, Croatia and Spain with photographers Ali Mitton and Laura Austin and model Chelsea Schuchman, where they were shooting for SkullCandy, Corona, Amuse Society, D’Blanc and BB Dakota. We caught up over the phone and discussed their trip, the Muppets and the key to making relationships work.

InsideHook: How was your trip? Were there any “discoveries?” I.e., stuff you found over there that you hadn’t planned for?

Vivianne Lapointe: The big discovery for me was the Turkish food. It was great. In Cappadocia, we teamed up with a luxury concierge service called Travel Atelier who took us around. At first we thought, “Tour guides, ew, so not our style,” but then you get a full bus for yourself with WiFi and you’re like, “Yeah, that’s cool.” Our guide was really well-versed in history and we learned all of these things about the Göreme valley, which is amazing with underground towns and art from the Byzantine era — you have to see this place before it goes into ruins. The whole valley is sculpted by erosion, so it’s not something that will last forever. It’s otherworldly.

IH: I don’t think I’ve ever had Turkish food.

VL: It’s mostly the breakfast: it’s the perfect combination of sweet with the honey, salty with the cheese, and then the olives and pastries and jams and the way they do the eggs — ugh! It’s just a full spread in front of you with Turkish coffee. Smoked salmon. I could go on.

IH: One can have such great food discoveries.

VL: Yeah, Turkey also has the best mussels, but don’t eat them on the street corner. Really. Don’t do it. But at a restaurant or at a beach club, they’re filled with rice and they bring them by the dozen like oysters: cold mussels with rice and this tomato-y thing. It’s really good. I think that Turkey is a destination to be discovered for the food in particular. Croatia, not so much. We were a little traumatized after a while. We were like, okay, what should we eat now? Then we got to Barcelona and we were so happy.

IH: I’ve never been to Barcelona.

VL: It’s really beautiful. I really wish I could stayed longer.

IH: What’s your favorite thing to do there?

VL: We had 48 hours, so we just ate and drank the whole time. We went to this really beautiful cocktail bar and met up with these two illustrators who we met through a friend of mine who reps artists in Montreal. We had a bunch of drinks and some almonds and amazing food and talked about life and reinvented the world.

IH: That’s the greatest thing about traveling: you meet new people and end up solving all of the world’s problems over drinks.

VL: I know! It’s funny because when I was a kid I remember so vividly telling my mom, “I don’t understand why we don’t have friends everywhere in the world. I want to go somewhere. Why don’t we have friends there?” My goal was always to have friends in every city in the world. Whenever I want to go to Turkey — I have a friend there. And when my kids are getting to the point where they’re traveling, they’ll know where to go and have a place to stay everywhere in the world.

IH: That has to be the coolest childhood aspiration I’ve heard in awhile.

VL: I was reading Roxy’s interview (our interview with Roxanna Dunlop) and was like, isn’t he going to ask me who my favorite Muppets character is?

IH: Okay, who’s your favorite Muppet?

VL: Miss Piggy.

IH: No way.

VL: Yeah, so on this trip, there was something really funny that happened: There’s this alcohol called Raki, and Chelsea and I went out one night with her friend from college and ate dinner on a rooftop, and I had a lot of that Raki. And then we went to this nightclub and for some reason, I mixed it with other alcohol and you can’t mix it with other alcohol. You get sick. So we’re one woman down the following day. And Chelsea was laughing at me, and after I was revived, she said, “You are exactly like Miss Piggy when you’re hungover.” Pleeease help me. So yeah. I have a little bit of Miss Piggy in me.

IH: I’ve seen you drunk but not hungover.

VL: I’ve not been drinking since I got back from the trip. I’m always like this after a trip. I get super focused. And I’ve been working hard and working out because I’m going to the Keys with my husband and I want to look cute.

IH: How do you and your husband make it work? You’re both really busy.

VL: We travel a lot separately (he works as the marketing director for skate for Supra). I just came back from my trip and three days later he was leaving for New York for three weeks. And the month before I was in Europe, he was in Europe for three weeks. So we kind of have a separate schedule travel-wise, but that’s why we’re stoked to go to the Keys together. Do a little road trip.

IH: It’s gotta be hard. How do you make that balance work?

VL: I think it’s not so bad. The trust bucket is full. If the trust bucket wasn’t full, then it would probably be exhausting. It’s nice when you’ve been married for a couple of years and suddenly you get to have your single time; it keeps things fresh. But I really miss him right now because it’s been a long time. But as a general rule, it’s a really good thing.

Photo credit: Ali Mitton