Punk Dream: Total Anarchy in a Berlin Market

I left our local pub after 10pm on a Saturday night in order to get some supplies to get us through the weekend.  You see, in Germany, some dumb fucks decided that we can’t buy things on Sundays.  I didn’t have my usual grocery backpack with me when we went to the pub, so I was ill equipped to deal with shopping.  ‘I’ll have to buy one of those plastic bags to carry the shit home,’ I said.  ‘Why?’ she said.  I explained: ‘I can’t be carrying beer, wine, booze and breakfast in my arms through the throngs of punks parked outside of Rewe on a Saturday night.  It’s a gauntlet I’m getting too old to run.’

There were no punks outside the Rewe on Schivelbeiner.  Weird.  Normally they form groups of Mohawks and dogs and beer bottles at each entrance and beat their beggar drums loudly.  They Fuck The System yet take handouts from those that don’t.  Convenient.  Play a fucking instrument and I’ll give you a quarter, you fake-ass white spoiled sons of bitches from upper middle class families.  Rebellion my ass.

I grabbed my basket and proceeded to shop for the German Sunday tornado shelter situation.  Right away I noticed a small flood of water pooling from one of the frozen food containers.  A punk and his punk princess trudged Docs through water, splashing.  Shouts and laughs.  I continued and saw broken six packs of beer bottles lying in the aisles, various smashed soft drink bottles, a pink pool of yogurt oozing from a dropped package and generally no staff members whatsoever interested in the idea of cleanup.  I passed staff members stocking shelves, counting inventory, generally looking bored and underpaid as is custom for unskilled labor in a post-communist, pre-divided city like Berlin.  ‘CLEAN UP! AISLES 4, 5 AND 7!!!’ screamed through the imaginary store speaker in my ex-American mind.  Instead, store jazz/elevator music gave us the grand soundtrack for the Evening of Anarchy.  I made several passes through the aisles of dropped food and drink to be sure.  Nope, nobody gave a flying fuck.

I felt at home, strangely.  I could take my time, walking around and over and through the Deutsch detritus without feeling the usual stress I feel whenever I’m in a crowded, prime time supermarket of any kind, anywhere in the world.  This was a world without care.  Me and my punks and freaks waltzed through the anarchy.  I guess they didn’t hear the elevator music.

We all met at the front in a desperate mass.  There were only two cashiers ready to handle the chaos.  One of them closed his register and skulked away.  Pussy.  There are only 20 or 30 of us freaks here.  We only want our beer/wine/booze/sugar/caffeine/nicotine.  That’s what you do when you have a store full of freaks after 10pm on a Saturday night in Berlin.  You close the fucking register.  I won’t quote everyone in the massive line at the suddenly single register, but the word ‘scheisse’ figured prominently.  That and one dude who kept making horse sounds with his lips.  And muttering ‘Deutschland’ in exasperated tones.  But that could be from the football month going on.

I got to the front of the line.  The single remaining cashier called for help on the store mic twice to no avail.  It was Him vs. The Freaks.  He said something to the aging freak in front of me.  The guy slammed his back pack on the checker’s table and pounded it with his hands.  Then he lifted his arms and slowly spun around in a mock frisk ritual he must have been overly familiar with his whole life.  Beep, beep, pause, beep and the groceries slipped and slid away.

STERNI UBER ALLES!!!

The following conversation takes place entirely in German.  You are reading the translation of the notes which were pried out of the cold, dead hand of the witness.

Give me a Sterni, asshole!

Lick my greasy Mohawk, Deutschbag!

C’mon!  I begged most of the money!  All you did was flirt with the chicks walking into the store!

Both of you are fucked!  It was MY dog that made us get all the change for the beer today.

Shut up, bitch!  Your dog ate my fucking homework!

Oh, right… when was the last time YOU went to school?  Were there cars, or did you suck dick on horseback?

Shut up, fake punk bitch.  Your parents TOTALLY bought you all your piercings and tattoos. On layaway.  Your shirt says ‘Fight the system’ but you couldn’t fight a sprinkler system.

Look you idiots:  I was out here for like, HOURS and the bitch with the dog just got here.  No WAY is she getting my Sterni.  I’m just sayin.’

We got 4 euros in 4 hours…that’s like 10 Sternis.  Three of us.  Uhhhh…. How many do we each get?

I don’t have a fucking clue.  The bitch’s dog ate my fucking homework!

Both of you guys can suck my dog’s dick!

Oh, you’re soooo cool, Punk Rock Girl. I think some asshole wrote a song about you.  It sucked more dick than YOU!

All right you two, either fuck or fight, but for the love of GOTT, give me my fucking STERNI!

I want to break something!

Break open a STERNI!!!

Sternburg bier aus Leipzig ROCKS in ways I cannot begin to explain!  It’s like a malty, amber microbrew—only DIRT CHEAP! Like the people who drink it!

You said it.  All this anarchy is making me thirsty.  STERNI, anyone?

Descending into the Seedy Underbelly of Berlin ... sort of

We went to the Leather Club to find a strap-on full leather gimp suit for our dog.  It’s a sausage dog, so the dimensions would have to be just right.  We pushed through the heavy plastic vertical slats that you would find in any meat locker or a leather shop in Berlin and into the leather accessories section.  We looked at the usual bondage masks with the zipper-faces and ball-gag mouth pieces.  We checked out the garden variety leather-and-steel-ringed penis sheaths and giant black double dongs.  We were starting to think this place was just way too gay for our hound dog.

“Why don’t we just take four of those leather ringy penis thingy sheaths and just put one on each of the dog’s legs?”  I ventured.

“No,” she said, “those things are black leather and the dog is black.  You wouldn’t even see the fucking things against his fur.”

“But they’ve got the silver ringy thingy and…”

“NO!!!”

We descended further down the rabbit hole.  In the next room there was a mini bar.  We each grabbed a bottle of beer before wading through the art fags who had gathered for the art show that was going on (incidentally) at the Leather Club while we happened to be shopping for our Full Doggie Jacket.

“Fear,” the barman said.

“No, I’m not afraid.  I’ve seen this shit before in S.F.  Giant black double dongs don’t even raise my eyebrow any more.”

“He said vier,” the guy next to him said, “Four Euro for the beers.”

“Cute dog by the way,” he added.

We gave up on asking for the doggie section.  Clearly these fags were way too conservative for the kind of canine costuming we had in mind.  Another back room separated by yet another wall of those heavy plastic vertical slats.  We had just watched a b movie about a missing girl and a sex dungeon with hallways and rooms separated by these exact same clear plastic curtain slats.  Fucking rabbits and their fucking holes.

The next room was a small boxed-in section of a corridor leading further down the rabbit hole.  A small group of college-aged girls sat on a leather bench talking, drinking and smoking.  A gay fuck film was projected on the wall above them.  They were completely oblivious and unimpressed.  We walked on.  The maze continued.  There were dozens of side compartments and ante rooms with the same redundant vertical plastic barriers.  Some had benches and ropes.  Others had handcuffs and small beds with handcuffs on the posts.  It’s just not enough for some people to render a simple ass pounding.  Apparently some people need the Gimp from Pulp Fiction and a bed with a set of handcuffs.  There were buckets in each room and the little woman wondered what they were for and I didn’t EVEN wanna go there.

Deeper down the hole we saw a back room with more rooms and a couple of gay guys standing around.  I got the words ‘hinter’ and ‘nicht’ and some head shakes.  We get it.  No straights allowed.  We left the den of iniquity with our dog just as we had walked in.   The dog looked up and wagged his tail.  He would get no leather action that night.

*photo taken from a website far more depraved than this here blog

Berliner Raucher Kneipe

The kneipe is a special place in Berlin where you can find a few locals crammed together in corners watching sports on the telly and drinking cheap beer in small glasses.  The wiki translation of 'kneipe' is 'pub,' but this isn't exactly accurate.  To me, a pub is a place where large groups of English or Irish people gather together and drink ales and stouts from LARGE mugs and watch sports on the telly.

Most of the Berliner Kneipe are raucher, or smoking pubs.  Most European pubs have followed the popular trend of banning smoking; England, Ireland and Germany all share the same laws concerning smoking in bars. To whit:  it is not allowed.  In Berlin, however, people just plain don't give a fuck.  They smoke in bars anyway.  Technically, this is illegal, but if a kneipe owner scrawls the word 'raucher' in crayon on a bar napkin and duct tapes it to the door of his establishment, alles in ordnung.

"So, db, why in the hell do you go to the raucher kneipe if you don't like smoke, you California beeotch?"

Glad you asked.  Two words:  CHEAP BEER.  Sure, the beer is crappy, mostly warm off-brands that nobody has ever heard of outside of Berlin.  But I'll be god damned if I'll ever be caught DEAD in the typical over-lit, over-priced, bistro-slash-faggy-slash-dancy cafe-slash-bar-slash-fuckers-I-don't-like-SLASH-em-ALL!!!

Ahem, excuse me.  I prefer dark corners and dark people.  I don't mean the local African watering holes per se, but those would be welcome as well.  I mean, normal people who have no problem with the dual stigmas of being butt suckers and alcoholics.  The lungs and the livers are shot, but these people are REAL.

FALLING DOWN is my local raucher kneipe.  It is practically right across the street from me, which makes it an easy stagger home.  I suppose the name of the place, in the immortal words of Bukowski, 'sort of fondled my scrotum.'  It's not normal to have an English name on a German bar.  And this bar is all German, mostly Prenzlauer Bergers of the old sort: unemployed, hard drinking, DDR-raised people who like cigarettes and beer more than life itself.  The bar is owned by a man of Mediterranean origin.  His name is 'Shefki,' which he told me means 'happy man' in Arabic.  It's true:  the man is happy.  Even when his bar is dead empty, he just smiles and asks me 'where are the people do you suppose?'  Then he rips open a bag of chips and brings the darts out for a game or two.

He opened the pub on Christmas Day "for the lonely people who don't have Christmas today."  I thanked him profusely by eating his chips, drinking his beer and throwing his darts.  I had to ask him about the decision to name the bar 'Falling Down.'  Was it about the gambling machines tucked in the corner?  Does 'Falling Down' mean the falling of coins?  Or is it about the more unfortunate patrons who can't handle the new uber-Captialist economy and the heavy amount of alcohol one must consume to deal with the aforementioned regime change?

To which Shefki replied:  "I think it is the last place people go in the neighborhood.  After they have gone to all the other kneipe in the neighborhood, they come here last and fall down."

Don't be scared.  Please visit Falling Down on Paul-Robeson-str. today.  Sure, your lungs may fall out of your ass from the smoke, but Shefki is a happy man who plays a mean game of darts and peddles a cheap bottle of beer.  Tell him the big American sent you.

The Return of Melvis

Ich bin eine Karaoke addict and a piss-poor Elvis impersonator.  Nevertheless, I HAD to throw myself into the Berlin Bearpit and dance with the rest of the bears.  AGAIN. You may know me as Dunkin’ Berliner, but in a previous life (Prague) I was known as Melvis O’Presky, the hardest working pelvis in Prague; or His Royal Melvic Region, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.

I paid my dues.  I croaked and crooned in some of the smokiest, darkest, least-crowded karaoke bars with the warmest, flattest beer a man can swallow without puking.  At first it was the usual ‘drunk man finds liquid courage, a microphone and primal scream therapy’ at the expense of the other drunks.  The mic hung at the edge of my soused mouth and I mumbled my Elvis in the dark. Three drunken friends clapped.  One of them yelled ‘Go Melvis.’  I think I scrawled ‘Elvis’ on the beer-soaked paper and handed it to the KJ (karaoke jockey).  Many muffled mumbles later, Melvis was born.

Then came The Suit:  All six-feet-five-white-polyester-sequined-hell of it.  I had it made by a local Czech seamstress. Then came The Gig.  Melvis entered, grabbed the mic and hosted many-a-Prague karaoke as MC Melvis, then, sadly (if only for me), Melvis left the building.

They say Berlin is where creative people go to die.  No, I just made that up.  We’re supposed to be reborn here, like some god damned Phoenixes rising from the fucking ashes of Capitalism or something; perhaps this is purgatory.  But considering that I’ve been surrounded by the same wannabe, parent-supported-mediocre-slacker-artist-pretentious-hipsters for nearly 2 years now, I’m beginning to suspect that I may have to work my way back UP to purgatory.  Again.

Re-enter Melvis.  Last summer I got drunk in Mauerpark, as a dude does on a sunny Sunday in Berlin.  I somehow wound up on stage with a bottle of warm Sterni in one hand and a microphone in the other--in front of a LARGE CROWD of people.  I croaked, I crooned and I really SUCKED ASS.  Evidence of my ass-suckitude can be found on the Bearpit Karaoke You Tube channel.  You really don’t wanna Google that.  TRUST me.  When I found The Pit it was just getting popular.  And as with anything that is just getting popular, you wanna be the one who says ‘you were there when it was just starting.’  And so I am. Er, was.  As a veteran karaoke lounge lizard from hell I noticed that the KJ (His Royal Highness, Sir Joe Hatchiban-San, ESQ, hereafter referred to as ‘K to the J’ or just ‘Joe’) had a completely different setup:  no monitor speakers (those tiny square ones facing the stage) to properly hear your own voice; no echo to hide the obvious flaws in every drunk’s voice; no safety net for the obvious karaoke fool who thinks he’s all dat and a bag of chips.  Joe likes to rumble in with his bicycle of doom, dump the heavy load onto the stage, and drop the hapless singers into the pit with the hungry bears.

And the crowd goes wild.

So I had to do it again and again, like coffee or beer or sex.  Yeah, like those things, with a MUCH bigger crowd.  But the crowds are out of control.  Not in the Bear-Eat-Drunken-Singer meaning of the phrase; you just couldn’t get a song in edgewise.  Fight through the horde, submit your song, wait for 2 hours—and if you’re LUCKY—sing your bad-ass song.  Badly.  I tried it a few times in the last months.  Once I was turned down flat: ‘We’re not taking any more songs,’ the nice girl said.  Hell, in Ye Olden Days of Yokee, Joe didn’t have the luxury of a nice girl to take songs.  Times they are a’changin’ I guess.  The next time The Girl put me on the bottom of a list of about 20 people.  Two hours later, no glory.  I left.

This is the part in the story where any sane man would have given up, got a job, paid his taxes and died unfulfilled, or any insane man would have returned with an Uzi and lit up the muthafuckas.  But I am neither sane nor insane.  I walk the line.  I went back.  Early.  I sat in the front of the muthafucka.  After Joe did his intro song he asked who would be the first singer.  I jumped up and flailed my arms.  It worked; third time’s the charm. I climbed up on that stony stage and I huffed, I puffed and I blew the house down.

And the crowd went wild.

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.

Meet the Berliners

Christiane is the social butterfly of our Friedrichshain kiez. She knows everybody—and if she doesn’t—she gets to know them. She slowly glides into the bar, the park or the Turkish kebab shop and disarms you with her style and ease. She is a well-preserved 60ish sort with a vintage movie star style all her own and a smooth, contagious élan. When I first saw her in the late winter, she walked into the room wearing a black sleeveless dress and a black velvet hat with a jeweled hatpin. She had black arm coverings from wrist to elbow, the kind of thing a jazz singer from the 20s or 30s might wear. She always has a cocktail in her hand but she is never drunk. She is a Lady.

Yesterday we met Christiane at the new neighborhood bar across the street. We knew it was a new bar because of the sudden late night noise drifting through our windows in the wee hours of the night. Nobody was inside the bar because it was one of those rare recent summer nights where it wasn’t dumping rain or clammy cold. Sitting on the bench outside was Christiane, some flowers in a vase, a leather case with cigarettes and lighter and the ubiquitous cocktail. Her usual vintage Jazz Singer outfit had morphed into the summer version: White crocheted hat worn askew, minor hatpin with no jewelry, turquoise dress and arm coverings. My girlfriend and I are both taken by Christiane and her genteel charms. We take a seat across the bench outside the bar. Drinks arrive and she starts The Pitch. Christiane likes to announce the various social causes she is involved with, and then, when she sure you are following what she is saying, nicely asks how you can help her with her cause. Sometimes it is a pitch for money, other times it is an invitation to a neighborhood event. We like to attend the local events and bring booze and/or food. Money is a different story. So it is in Berlin.

After a few beers, various locals started to join us at the table; a few recognizable faces from the local taverns and cafes, the usual suspects. Then The Bomb dropped. ‘HallO-oh,’ said the thin man in the women’s makeup and the high heel shoes, ‘I’m Inga, the tranny from the house across the street,’ (s)he said. Inga immediately bypassed my nervously-outstretched handshake and went straight for my girl. ‘I love the way you dress, girlfriend.’ My honey bunny gave a nervous smile and thanks. I had to wait for the handshake. I was irrelevant for a moment. The girls had to chat.

Later summer sun means kids in the streets at 8 or 9pm. Now that I’m older, I really hate kids. They piss me off with their energy, their jokes and their spastic monkey dances—especially when I’m trying to have a drink and meet the Berliners. I imagine they pissed Inga off slightly more that night. I can’t follow the German language, but I can follow the taunting. It’s the same everywhere. There were the childish caterwauls by the oldest boy in the group. It was clear that he was taunting Inga. The other children, all aged 5 to 10, joined in the group taunting. (S)he said something in German about the children hounding her up and down the street. It was said matter-of-factly. Inga must get that all the time. Christiane defended the children, saying that they were from conservative families who didn’t understand that a man could love men or a woman could love women. ‘But this is Berlin,’ I ventured, ‘surely Inga is not the only unusual person on the street.’ I looked at the kids and smiled at the irony. They were mostly Middle-Eastern looking, probably Turkish. I imagined they could have been picked on as well by some of the blonder, bluer-eyed kids at school.

The older spastic prepubescent kid on the bike did several shouting strafing runs on his bike. I don’t know what he shouted, but I’m sure of the meaning and intent. Inga went inside the bar. Soon the barman came out and chased the kid away. I like how barmen protect their patrons. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that our table is safe while drinking in the fold.

Inga got a new pair of shoes. They were badly wrapped in a paper bag adorned with colorful string, hearts and fake pearls. (S)he said ‘It’s not even my birthday!’ After picking at the wrapping with scrawny fingers for a spell, (s)he asked one of the stronger women to help her. The wrapping finally came off and there was a pair of very used, very abused black leather high heel shoes. The sides were worn and torn and neglected. They were probably the most pathetic gift I have ever seen. But Inga’s eyes lit up. ‘My new shoes! I love them! I will try them on, now. Pardon me, but I must go inside. A lady never takes her shoes off in public.’ And so they don’t. After a spell, (s)he shimmied out of the pub on those worn shoes. (S)he worked them like have never seen old, tired shoes get worked before. Everyone had to take turns complimenting Inga on her new shoes.

A young German kid of about 23 joined the table. He was light, airy, and gregarious. An effeminate man in the de facto Berliner army-clothes-cum-Anarchist garb sat across from him. I figured I had stumbled into Gay Night at the Local Pub. That’s okay. I had my girlfriend at my side as a human shield. The young kid asked what I do. I said I’m a photographer, blah blah blah, the usual chat. I usually mention that I’m a professional photographer only after people ply me with questions. I used to announce it proudly straightaway, but it seems that every time I do that in Berlin, people ask me to take pictures for them. For free. Anyway, I gave him my card because he asked, then apologized in advance for the lack of Berlin pics on my Berlin site. I said I was trying to change that. He looked like he was going to jump out of his seat. ‘You need more Berlin pics? Well, I have this theatre group, you see, and we have no money (of course), and we would be happy if you could take pics of us at rehearsal, at shows, and all the way up the primrose path until we are no longer idle dreamers and posers and we at last take our turn in the limelight up in the clouds with the gods of the arts and finally, oh, finally, we eat and drink the Bacchanalian eat/drink/pukefest we are destined for. And you are invited. Don’t you feel lucky to have met me?’ I said yes.