Brrlin Ethnographies, Installment I

I lived for two weeks on Schesisches Strasse, a hot drag at the tip of Kreuzberg where it only took one week into the stay to come face to face with riot police silencing edgy youth attempting an illgal hip hop (?or punk?) concert in the Schesisches Tor U-bahn station. An Oberbaumer-bridge away from the East Side gallery and other graff-murals on remaining Wall, the busy road leading north towards Friedrichshain also overlooks high-rise riverfront condominiums and the hyped floating swimming pool that gets covered and becomes a sauna in the winter months.

If you accept the recent coinage of the area at the border of Kreuzberg and Neukoelln as "Neubeca" (by almost as recently decommissioned Wired writer, Momus), then this area is SchlesiSoHo. Symbols of well-aware gentrification of what is otherwise an immigrant Turkish neighbourhood, the converted storage facility I lived in is shared by the following 6 enterprising young adults:

ENA, 26?, has lived off government unemployment for at least 3 years while working on her art-lesbian-activist installation pieces, DJs, and co-organizes the Porn Film Festival (night life) coming soon to a theatre near you. Ena built the kitchen.

EMMA, recently 30, born of French and German parentage and raised in Spain (or did I get that mixed up?) is fully quadrilingual, speaking English with an American accent and holds trophy as general master at the telling of stories and classic German (bar-side) bear, fox, and rabbit jokes. A professional gaffer of some years, she's now headed to a renowned film school in Berlin that I hope launches her into imminent stardom. Emma took me all the way to Mehringdamm to introduce me to currywurst the right way, at Curry 36, rather than at our seedy but nearby Curry 7.

JOHEN, 30?, has a haircut, face, build, and belly laugh worthy of celebrity adoration. A Renaissance man to the 10th degree, Johen was raised in Portugal and Frankfurt, studied a melange of interests until settling on Geography, worked in Angola for a year, and now earns a living staring at a screen for an internet company in Berlin. Johen has travelled almost more of SE Asia than I have courtesy of visiting his parents there, and rightly thinks that Singapore is overpriced.

MARIAN, also 30?, is a glorious mad professor in the making, writing a masters and potentially PhD thesis on Propaganda Theories of the Third Reich. By the time he's done I doubt anyone would know much more of Goebbels than him; he also speaks more bahasa indo than I do (not difficult), since he's also a travel hound and has a heart for the little islands. Marian's grandmother's furniture peppers through most of the apartment.

BABA (Barbara), 23, is trained as a carpenter and currently interns with a school program that brings building (creative design technologies?) to elementary school kids. She lives half on unemployment also; has a girlfriend that is the only chick I've seen here can bust on the dance floor; has bright blue eyes and a faux-hawk haircut that somehow makes many people mistake her and Johen for siblings.

AXEL, ??, was out of town for most of my stay, visiting his girlfriend in DC.

Upstairs on a non-particular Friday night, Johen, Emma and myself brave the pounding noise with the invitation to free keg beer. Middle-aged band, black-clad with coal-miner-wrinkles exacerbated by wide-mouthed wailing. They actually perform the hold-the-mic one-legged heel drop, my favorite rock band move: dum dum dum dum dum. It is early in the evening, still. A blond baby-face bears a Che Guevara tattoo on his left shoulder as big as the entire deltoid; the man dancing next to him is dressed with a sailor hat and somewhat over-eager face.

The band plays original tunes that cannot be described in any other way than, "so bad it's good." Should someone write a new edition of volume 12 of the "How to Write a Good Rock Song" Fakebook, these boys deserve their own chapter: "How Breaking Every Rule In This Book Will Make For A Decent Song Too." At least, to the Che Guevara angel and Sailor.

At some point nearing the end of their set the band leader starts talking about how it's Friday, and how they came off work, and donch y'all just love work, lalaa. A voice that could belong to any of the multitude of bald-headed pale men in this large living room cries, "SCHEISS AUF ARBEIT!", yeah, "FUCK WORK!". I am in Berlin, and du ist ein Berliner, genau, genau ...

Breaks between bands results in a number not surpassing 3 of decent oldies but goodies: Hendrix, some chunky funk, something else. I start finding my dancing shoes. Then 2 shorter members of the band formerly known as Kiss walk in, or so it seems: BEATS looks like someone rubbed ash into his face, and MIC has a solid black crescent moon decal plastered to the right side of his face. The crowd builds on the dance floor, and the best of the worst of German arhythmic eurhthmy starts as Crescent Mic starts emoting ACDC 1984. Apparently these songs are all covers, but I can't tell: all we got in Hong Kong when I was growing up was Rick Astley.

I am fascinated. I am perturbed by the projecting flasher energy from the tall man with the trenchcoat who stalks me and others. I am beginning to slip on the wet floor. I am starting to draw attention from the teenage boys who have flocked to the smell of free beer from nearby clubs and who would all like to either b-boy or electro-glow stick expertly, only they are torn between generations of cool. Also, they probably don't know how to talk to girls yet. But I am grateful for the buffer company between myself and sleaze ball sore thumb not succeeding at being discreet with his pelvic directions.

It's getting hot and rowdy. Crescent Mic Kiss is taking off his shirt. His Crescent is taking off him. His floor is taking him off his standing. He is writhing on the floor, singing "GRRRLLLLS AND BOOOYYYSSSS .... BBBOOOOYYYSSS AND GGGRRRRRLLLLSSS"....this is amazing. I hope no one quite caught the expression of my face when an elegantly dressed brunette goes right up to Mic Kiss and his Mic and starts the airplane conductor double forearm thrust around his performer aura--my face, somewhere along the spectrum of pure wonderment. People do this!

Mic Kiss (no more Crescent, Crescent having been sweated off) now changes the space from proscenium to catwalk, almost soiling Johen's signature maroon leather jacket (and Johen within it) in the process. I almost reach out to touch Mic's slithery skin like some guru at a yoga festival. I'm not enraptured; I am just ceaselessly curious. KissMic recedes, and gradually these ABCD or ACDC or ADBC lyrics--whatever they are--concede to the amazingly awful and grating DJ beats of Ash Wednesday at console.

Enough of the ethnographic expedition (I believe in the academy they call this "participant observation"). I drink and dance and send off HISS-HISS-KAZAA anti-sleaze vibes to the probably very not-ill-intentioned trenchcoat. The only thing left remaining of scientific interest is the aftermath--I descended to our apartment around 5am, just missing the breaking of the masses and the breaking of windows. The smell and stain of the hallway the next day makes me think that Berlin is just some big campus and this, this became the commons.


NEXT INSTALLMENT: Examining the Robbery of Civilizations at Brrlin's Pergamonmuseum, Ethnography Museum, and others ... the inception of MEL invention #35(v.8, patent pending): The Museums Museum.