Scheissedorf

Or the Beginning of the End?

Gentrification wins.  I give up.  After 1 year in Friedrichshain and 3 years in Prenzlauer Berg, the fuckers doubled the rents and drop kicked my donut ass out into the Niederschönhausen hinterlands where, literally, the streets have no name.  A few blocks down from my row in the cemetery of dead suburbanites are streets number 97 and 101.  I haven’t ventured to find the ones in between because it would remind me that I too have become a number.

I always knew my time here was limited.  More than a year, less than five, I figured. A million ‘creatives’ (mostly bullshit hipsters and trust fund babies) fucked up Berlin; they came, they saw, they drove up rents, they left.  I bought some of their furniture on their way out.  I suppose it was folly to move to a place where all of my education and years of professional experience add up to a medium pot of piss in a sea of wannabes willing to do what I do for beer money.  I still did it, hell yes, and I did it My Way, mutha fucka.

I’m not gone yet, but it feels like it out here in Schiessedorf, the name I coined for the Shit Village in which I now reside after the fallout from leaving the overpriced barn I rented from the Polish farm animals in P’berg.  I ALMOST got a flat right down the street from where I was.  I had all of Zee Papers and shit, and then it all fell apart.  The fucker didn’t meet me at the bank for the deposit transfer (he didn't want my 1500 EUR I guess) nor did he answer phone calls or emails.  Let’s just call him König Deutschbag. Plan B: Scheissedorf. It fell in our laps like a cold beer.  After one month of daily searching, we got Scheissedorf.  I’m only here for three months.  Then…?

It’s peaceful out here in Scheissedorf if you are a corpse type looking for that sort of thing.  There are about 5 restaurants and bars within 10 square kilometers of here and two of them have boards in the windows and for sale signs outside.  I could be already dead.  People cross the street when I shamble down the broken sidewalks.  I look and feel ghastly and ghoulish most of the time.  I saw a couple of androgynous Goth individuals in long black coats gliding down the street.

BUT HEY!!! I’m a digital nomad.  I’ve just decided.  I don’t have to stay in Berlin, learn German, compete with all the low waged locals AND get rampant discrimination from Zee Paper Nazis.  Nosirree, Bob! I can do what I do from anywhere in the world with an internet connection.  I write. I do websites. I take purty pitchers n stuff.  So if I can’t find a flat in a decent area of Berlin during my Scheissedorf limbo, I’ll just take my camera, laptop, my trusty donkey and lance, and take a flying fuck at the next windmill.

Because that’s what you do.

The Yellow Cigarette Man

You’ve seen them standing around, listless, shiftless, feckless.  To me, the lone Asians standing against the walls on every other block in Friedrichshain (and later in Prenzlauer Berg) stuck out like sore thumbs the first few times I saw them.  I was thinking to myself ‘now what the fuck is THAT guy doing standing there against that wall every time I walk by—without a grocery store behind him or a cigarette in his mouth to keep him occupied?’

Then I saw The Exchange: a middle-aged mullet sauntered up, looked the Asian up and down.  The Asian shot glances up and down the street (DRUG DEAL! I thought) and proceeded to produce a small yellow packet of cigarettes.  Money slid from palm to palm and the yellow cigarettes slid into the pocket of the mullet.   I don’t know the significance of the yellow packets of cigarettes (Asian brand?), but I quickly figured out that What Was Going Down was the sale of cut rate, no tax, non-German-government-sanctioned ciggies.  What we in the States refer to as ‘bootlegging.’

The Yellow Cigarette Man disappears whenever a cop car rolls past.  I’ve seen the guy standing there one minute—then vanish.  I’m going to assume he’s clinging to the bottom of the mini van parked to the left.  We had the same Yellow Cigarette Man on our green, leafy, breeder-ridden, P’Berg street for months.  He was around 60 years old, with the kind of weathered face seen only on Himalayan Sherpas.  He was there 6 days a week (heh. NOTHING runs on Sundays in Germany.), 12 months a year.  When the weather turned to ice the Yellow Cigarette Man was still standing there alone, with only his parka-ensconced face and the warm glow of Capitalism to keep him alive.

Then one day the Yellow Cigarette Man was gone.  I had gotten used to seeing him on my daily dog walks and/or shopping hauls.  I checked under the mini vans on the street:  nothing.  I was starting to worry that the mullets wouldn’t be sucking cheap fags on street corners in Berlin any longer.  Or that the Actual Man had applied his merciless Jack Boot to the ass of our friendly neighborhood alternative business executive.

Then the Yellow Cigarette Woman appeared one fine spring day.  Just as the first leaves of spring sprung from the buds on the old P’Berg tree branches and the newest babes of welfare pushed their way out of the white trash wombs, she appeared.  ‘HALLO!’ she said, smiling at each passerby.  A young, 20-something Asian girl had replaced the leather-faced Sherpa to which I had grown accustomed.  Maybe the Old Yellow Cigarette Man wasn’t fast enough to evade the ever-prowling Police Eye, or maybe he could no longer cling to the bottom of neighborhood mini van.

Now there is a regularly changing cast of Cigarette People on our street.  They no longer sell the yellow packets of cigarettes—my last stolen glance spied a different colored packet.  There is only ever one cig peddler at a time, either a young woman or a young man, both Asian.  I’ve never been there when there was a changing of the guard.  One day there is the young HALLO! woman, the next day a young man.  I’ve watched them pull entire cartons of cigarettes out of the most unlikely of places—from under moped rain covers, and even those long, narrow sidewalk street gratings you see near building walls.  Hell, once I even saw one of them prize a carton off the bottom of the mini van parked on the street.

Death of an Artist

I went to visit my old neighborhood of Friedrichshain today. It was one of the few sunny days we’ve had in Berlin for a while and I was thinking it was about time we had some summer.

I stuffed the camera in the backpack and headed out.

Friedrichshain is changing—of course. It became ‘hip’ and therefore it is doomed to gentrification, higher rents, overdevelopment, displaced creative types and worse yet: yoga joints and sushi bars. Well, that shit had already begun when we decided to leave, and thankfully, it’s still gonna be a long time before the punks let the yuppies push them out. Whenever the punks want a can of spray paint to tag an SUV they can contact me here. I’ll buy the fucker.

The old squats on Rigaer strasse were still holding out; new posters plastered everywhere suggested that the battle was being lost. It’s as if the squats were a slowly sinking ship with corporate raiders on the stern and fenced-in youth hanging on the bow, swinging bottles and laughing and living in spite of the hull breach.

I was shooting some pics of the street when our Russian artist friend suddenly took us on a detour off the street through a passage to the back of some flats. I was preoccupied with shooting various kiddie rides in a playground overgrown with tall grass. My girlfriend said that our friend was taking us to meet her American artist friend. She said she was very impressed with his paintings. He was also from California, so naturally she thought I should meet him. I said why not. Nadja pushed the buzzer and I continued shooting. I’ve never been a fan of dropping in on people unannounced. And I don’t like it when they do the same to me. I like pre-arranged fun. But I was following the leader, so gate crash we did.

 

I heard Nadja shout “WHAT?!!? I CAN’T BELIEVE!!!” A middle aged woman stood on her second floor balcony with a red-headed girl of around 7. The woman said the artist had died of a heart attack last week. It was unexpected and the man was only 42. I heard the girl say “mein papa ist tot.” Nadja was emotional. She said that she couldn’t understand it. The girl, upon hearing Nadja speaking English, simply clarified: “my papa is dead.”  I felt like I had swallowed a brick.

These are the kind of moments when perspective smacks you square in the face and all of the little things you bitched about all week—late trains, bad lunches, flat beer—seem like a complete waste of breath.  I suddenly felt self-conscious of the fact that I had a camera around my neck. I put my camera back in the bag. I said I was sorry. I’ve never liked the failure of English language to express any real emotion. All I could say was “I’m sorry.” Why? I didn’t kill the guy. But all you can say when someone has lost somebody close is “I’m sorry.” That’s what you say when a mourning woman and her young child are looking down on you from a 2nd floor balcony of the flat of a dead artist. And then you walk away.

Yet Another Friedrichshain Protest

ROWDY YOOTS FULL O' PISS N VINEGAR GATHER;
MATING RITUALS ENSUE

The Mohawks gathered round Friedrichshain the other day and made some noise. Again. Apparently ‘They’ weren’t listening to the Mohawks. Again. But that’s okay, that won’t stop kids full of piss and vinegar from grabbing some fabric and spray paint and waving their flags in an open invitation to compare Mohawks. The hawks were awful purty at this particular shindig: blue ones, red ones, pink ones and black ones were everywhere. I caught several rows of kids with the same color hawk; rows of pink Mohawks held up a bright red banner which read ‘Brunnen Bleibt’, which means literally ‘Pink Mohawk Social Club.’ Rival factions of blue-and-black-haired punks held up a black sign with letters which were so unclear that several members of the club were caught scratching their heads trying to decipher their own messages.

But what are the Crips without the Bloods to counter them? The various colors of Mohawk gangs milled about waiting for any conflict that might be on its way from what the Punx like to affectionately refer to as
‘der schweinenmenschen’ or literally ‘The Pigs’, aka the Fuzz, the Heat, Five-Oh, Bacon, Cops, or your friendly neighborhood Berlin riot control officers. I’ve seen a few of these Berlin protests before. The Berlin police like to fence the punks in with a nice row of Paddy Wagons. Usually about 25 riot vehicles, or roughly 1 vehicle for every 3 protestors. I mean it is complete overkill, the police presence. At this particular protest they even brought in the van of geek cops with laptops and satellite gear. Apparently, you’ve got to keep one step ahead of these pink, blue and black haired devils. They even brought in the Super Soakers: huge water tanks on wheels with twin nozzles for spraying the unruly mob. My girlfriend asked why the nozzles were so narrow on the ends. She thought if fired the cannons would only yield but a drizzle. I explained the effects of concentrated water pressure through a very narrow opening. A standard, S.F. hippy protest would have Super Soaker vehicles with standard sized water cannons and wide nozzles. The purpose of this was to give the stinking hippies a much needed group bath. However, the Berlin cops like to fire the same amount of water with great pressure through tiny twin steel nozzles. This not only gives the Berlin punk squatters a much needed group bath, but the pressure from these babies will literally knock them to the ground and roll them across the street through a brick wall.

And after all, being flung about like a sack of beer-soaked taters by the Super Soakers at a Berlin riot is the Number 2 Requirement for membership in the Pink Mohawk Social Club.

BAU-WOW-WOW!!!!

EATEN ALIVE BY THE GERMAN CONSTRUCTION MACHINE

The Conspiracy is complete. It has achieved total and unequivocal dominion over my existence. I now just accept it with a wry smile and a slap to the forehead. The Conspiracy has followed me everywhere I have ever lived in the past 15 years. Whenever I move into a new apartment, within 1 week the construction starts just outside my window. At 7am to 6pm, every single fuckin’ day. Even on weekends.

It’s true that I have lived in some of the worst former Communist Eastern European urban shitholes ever devised. But still. You would think that I would have numbers on my side at some point. I mean, they are not reconstructing every single flat in the city at the same time, are they? No, Dunkin’, just yours. Yes, they have been rebuilding Eastern Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain, but why do they need to drive the iron rivets home just outside my window?

Case in point: my current flat. A sublet, as usual, my 2nd this year. Why sublet? A) Because German realtors offer flats that are completely empty, no fridge, no oven, no stove, no kitchen sink. Not even a single light fixture. For 600 euros a month you get a roof, doors, windows and a crapper. Like prison, only without bars and much more expensive. B) Because German bureaucracy is idiotic. The worst I have ever seen. I used to think that nobody could possibly conceive of a more deliberately retarded system than the Czechs. I was wrong. The Germans sit around devising new bureaucracy daily. Just to piss me off. These Deutschbags sit around devising new bureaucracy and circle jerking. So, while we’re waiting for Gunter and Dieter to answer our fucking emails about available flats (and awaiting the ludicrous shit storm of paperwork to follow any offer), we sublet. (deep breath).

‘Geez, Dunkin’, you’re much more grumpy and cynical than usual,’ you might say. Well, I haven’t slept much this summer. I was almost getting used to the pounding jackhammers, the shouts and screams of the workers (or maybe the workers were merely talking and German ALWAYS sounds like barbaric screams) and the heavy drilling on the property next door. It is a vacant lot that will host a new fancy shmancy building which will house the latest batch of yuppies who will soon be shat out of the ass of Corporate America, England, etc. onto the streets of Friedrichshain.

Construction progress has been slow. With the amount of noise they have generated over the last 3 months, you would think they would have the foundation laid and at least the 1st floor erected. Nossir. In 3 months, this small 300 metre lot has got a thin layer of iron mesh on the ground. They dug the whole lot up and filled it in with dirt again about 12 times. I guess the masons, concrete pourers and bricklayers are all busy filling out their paperwork before they can begin. As you can tell, I know just about zilch about construction work (amusing, since I should be an expert by now if I had bothered to look out my windows over the last 15 years). But they brought in some crude noisemaking machines I didn’t know existed. I’ve seen my share of Caterpillars, John Deers, dump trucks, scoopers, bulldozers, steam rollers and cranes. But they brought in something from another planet. It was a tall, twisted mass of steel with a giant central cylinder with a tank for a base. It looked like an oil drilling rig had fucked a panzer tank and the bitch-on-treaded-wheels gave birth to the ungodly progeny right under my window. I still don’t know what the Evil Beast was devised for, other than to accentuate my personal construction conspiracy and to punctuate my occasional hangover. Every day at 7 am on the nose the Beast went to work. BOOM!!! Thump-thump, BOOM!!!! (repeated for 9 hours with a 1 hour lunch break). The cylinder churned and thumped for a month.

Then one day, just like that, the Beast was gone. But another noise began in its wake. It was familiar, the sounds of the workers in the dawn getting ready to wreak havoc on my beauty sleep (and if you’ve seen me, I need ALL I can get). By the end of the day, a scaffold had been erected in front of my building and my windows were covered in plastic. It’s as if the agents of the Construction Conspiracy were gloating at the surveillance tapes of my misery and decided to up the ante. Fifteen years of metal fire and brimstone right next door weren’t enough: there was something in German on a piece of paper stuck on the wall downstairs. I managed to pull a few words out of it. It said not to open our windows for 2 weeks. There would be construction.

Jazz Church

The Church of Jazz meets in an abandoned chapel in Friedrichshain on certain Tuesdays. The building is a small pile of bricks in an East Berlin neighborhood; a disused chapel type building with no need for God. But the holy spirit of jazz inhabits the place, warms the place and sometimes blows the roof off the dump.

Normally, all previously-God-forsaken Commie-seized holy halls were reclaimed by some church or another; bought back by the Supreme Rulers in Vatican City, or Anglo-Protestant oil holdings, or whatever. Not this one. It is special. It stands between a cemetery and a kebab shop. In Berlin there is only one solution for a building of this type: Art the Living Bejesus out of it. And they have.

I’m not sure what the target audience for the disemboweled rat poster outside the church is. But the poster is there and is hard to look at, especially after just coming from a kebab next door. I think it says theatre-something-or-other. In addition to disemboweling rats, the old church-cum-kunsthaus hosts Jazz Almighty.

Call it a jam session for new converts. I bust in and I see them skulking in the corners with their dates, boy/girl, girl/girl, boy/boy. Mostly young party animals and freaks. Mostly white, nobody over 40 except me. Mostly posing. Somebody told the deviants that jazz was hip. And deviants are hip in Berlin. I don’t care what color flag you fly, just don’t make it your raison d’etre. As for me, I am so straight and square that my girlfriend may leave me at any time unless I bring out the gimp from Pulp Fiction. Or at least I imagine so. But I digress.

I am a longtime jazz fan. I know this because I have short hair, glasses and a goatee. I noticed other goatee-sporting, bespectacled dudes of my ilk in the pews of the Jazz Church the other night. They are jazz fans as well (or just really crafty poseurs). It reassures me, knowing that the Old Faithful and the New Converts can come together under one roof.

Thankfully, there is no sermon, no preacher, no choir. There are only musicians, jamming it up and spiraling solos and nodding graciously to the warm applause. Some of the musicians really LOOK the part; as if dressing Jazz will light up the low notes. Others dressed in torn shoes and jeans stand there nervously and stare at the audience, limp trumpet or sax in hand, waiting for their turn to jam. It’s an informal affair with pleasing results. I start to nod and bob my head with the beat. I’m the only one doing it but I don’t give two shits. I’m there to enjoy the music. It has its moments. Nothing earth shattering, nothing that will save your soul. The better musicians play early: piano played in frantic, chopping motions by skinny fingers, stand up bass picked, battered and swinging in time to the syncopated skins. By evening’s end, anyone with an electric guitar or violin can step up to the stage and fuck it all up.

It works on donations. And as you would expect in any church, some twitchy huckster oozes on up to you while you’re in mid head nod and sticks a hat in your face and says: “For the musicians.” The first time I attended the Jazz Church, I thought it was an odd concept. I knew there was a donation, saw a box by the door, asked if that was the donation box, and dropped the money in. Halfway through the jam, though, the dude with the hat was in my face. I told him I gave generously at the door, but he kept explaining, extolling, extorting me for more. I told him to go fuck himself. He oozed back down the drain from whence he came. Ya gotta know how to deal with hucksters.

My second night in the Church of Jazz was only slightly different than the first time. The same poseurs were there. It was packed again, and people were eager to get a pew. I was wedged in between a very bright stage light and a young German couple. When the desire for another beer became too strong to resist, I asked the girl next to me to watch my seat. She tried to be funny and say something clever, but being German, this rarely works. Maybe it’s the language barrier. She said ‘Yes, I will watch it closely, and….” I just smiled and waved and walked away before she could embarrass herself any further. Upon my return with the beer, she continued, “I watched your seat and it was there and it….” “GREAT!!” I said, “and here’s your reward!” I shoved a bowl of Cheetos cheese puffs under her face. She declined so I shook them vigorously in her boyfriend’s face. He meekly took one. God I love Germans. Give them a church, some jazz, some booze and some Cheetos and you’ve got yourself a party. Then the piper showed up right on cue with his hat. I was ready for him. I peeled off a fiver and chucked it in the hat and waved him away with my hand. Ya gotta know how to deal with hucksters. I feel right at home with my people skills. I go to the Jazz Church for a vertical relationship with the musicians on high, not for a horizontal relationship with the hucksters, the poseurs, the ‘clever’ people. There is a special word for people like me. That word is ‘asshole.’

The Church of Jazz gets so crowded I shouldn’t tell you exactly where it is (Hint: It’s on Boxi between the kebabs and the headstones). Maybe I’ll see you there. I’ll be the slightly drunk guy bobbing his head with Cheetos and beer in my goatee.

BICYCLE! BICYCLE!

"Someone stole my bicycle
Someone stole my bike.
I want to ride my bicycle.
I want to ride it where I like."

-Sung to the Queen tune 'Bicycle Race.'

I had never heard of this Queen song before I lived in the Czech Republic. Then I heard it almost daily on any radio station they had. Perhaps it was the only Queen song they could get for under 50 bucks. I would have thought 'Bohemian Rhapsody' would have been more appropriate while living in Prague. But they sure played the living fuck out of 'We Are the Champions' when they won the Olympic Hockey Thing.

But now the Bicycle song runs through my head every day. It follows me as I walk the streets of Berlin. Yes, I walk the streets now. Before I used to ride my BICYCLE!!!! before some random street junkie Deutschbag stole it.

I really want to ride my bicycle. I really want to ride my bike. It was the first bike I had since I was a teenager. I was flying down busy Berlin boulevards and seeing things I wouldn't ordinarily see while walking (and at higher speeds).

My bike was the most beat up piece of flea market shit loose change could buy:

- scratchy black paint
- rusty chain
- torn, wobbly seat
- broken lights and reflectors (all of them)
- bad brakes bolted on backwards

And yet, locked inside my apartment building's entrance, wheels locked to the frame, alongside at least 20 bikes locked the same way, 20 other bikes worth at least 100 euros each--they stole mine.

My bike cost 35 euros including the chain. I mean, Jesus H. Lapdancing Christ, are you SERIOUS? What kind of CRACK can you score from this heist???!!!!!???? I hope your 'fence' laughed his ass off when he saw your 'score.' I hope he sold you some watered down heroin soaked in paint thinner. Seriously, dude. You're a fucking loser. Heh.