A Rolling Donut Gathers No Moss

Dunkin' Berliner's Last Few Weeks In Berlin

The time has come. This is The End, my friend. Leaving Berlin. There, I've said it. I'm not the first and I'm not the last. Every year I proclaim This Is My Last Year and then I stay. Six and one half of them have come and gone. 1492 donuts have gone down my tubes (probably more, I don't really count) and I am none the wiser. Perhaps donuts aren't brain food after all. I'm waiting for the pendulums of science and medicine to swing in my favor, much in the way that in one decade they declared that chocolate and wine will kill you, then turn right on around and say the same killers will now feed your brain and libido and you will live and love long time. Science is a fickle bitch, so I wait for her to tell me to eat three donuts per day.

I haven't posted much recently because I saw The End coming and I was numb. Mostly from drinking wine and waiting for the veritas. Haven't found much. Gentrification sucks, as always, mainly because the rents go up and the wages do not. What was once a cheap, barren, sandy beach for feckless, creative nomads (like me) is now fertile soil for money trees. Trustafarians and hipsters take the places of the old guard. They are multiplying and growing to fuse into one large beardbeast. There are now even subgroups within the hipster underworld, the most hilarious of the bunch being dubbed Lumbersexuals. Those are the ones, usually German, who wear blue jeans, hiking boots and red plaid shirts in addition to the ubiquitous big black glasses and beards. I'm guessing that Lumbersexual is a mashup of lumberjack and metrosexual. Perhaps they were cut out of the Woody Allen Sexcapade film featuring the room with the man getting it on with a large rye bread. Perhaps the Lumbersexual was next door having rough sex with rough wood. Splinters are not for everyone (ouch). Bollox. I call them Lumberjackoffs.

The Bellevue Saints

Today I was riding through Berlin for several hours on S and U bahns doing my weekly photo job for a tour company. Every Friday morning between the hours of 10 and 11 in the Ay Em, The Saints get on the S7 at the Bellevue Station stop. You will know them by the trail of dead lyrics. A band of gypsies with a beatbox on a hand cart and 3 guys playing trumpet, saxophone and accordion launch into the worst version of When The Saints Go Marching In you will ever hear.

"AAAAAAAhhhh Win da sints

Gah Martian inn,

Aaaaaaaah win da sints

gaa Martian inn,

Uuhhhh wah wan

Beeeee end dat numm-zah

Win da sints gaaaaah Martian inn!

Evvy botty nah!"

Then they clap and dance and shake their fucking cups in your fucking face. JAY zus. In over one year of seeing the same fuckers doing the same fucking song on the same fucking S7, not one coin goes into the cup (nor do they learn the lyrics). People stare forward in apathy, even when the gnarly McD's soda cup is shaken so vigorously under numb chins that soda crust and tobacco lint fly with the coins. And they do not. Change. The tune. They play exactly one verse, badly, then get off at Tiergarten Station. When they venture too far from Bellevue, their halos begin to tarnish. The trains run back and forth. The broken record spins, hiccups, repeats, repeats, repeats...

If that ain't dedication I don't know what is.

Dueling Douchebags

In the crux of the tunnels under the Berlin streets the accordions squeeze filth through their flapholes. With the unholy mantra of the Bellevue Saints still echoing through my early morning brainfog, a new earworm wiggles through my auditory canals. Yes, you guessed it: Dunkin' Berliner hates accordions. Not because the accordion isn't a real instrument, not because they are only played by drunken gypsy polka rejects in the dark tunnels of Europe—but because they are simply the most cheesy instrument on the planet. Even the shitty plastic recorders played by first graders high on Cap'n Crunch don't hold a candle to this shit. In the dark annals of history, someone glued a tiny piano keyboard to a fucking bellows, handed it to a gypsy and said 'Go forth!' (read: get the fuck out of town!).

Two accordion players plied their sleazy/cheesy trade. What is worse than an accordion? Two. One played 'rhythm' MEHHH...muh....MEHHHH...muh while the other lounge lizard's greasy fingers were slip-sliding away over yellow plastic keys. Sweaty armpits pumped away. I wanted them to stop, face each other, and give challenge. Yes, I wanted them to stop torturing commuters with dungeon dreck and start the duel. Like the scene in Deliverance with the guitar, the banjo and the Tard. I believe that when two hideous, backwoods instruments come together, they must duel. Dueling douchebags on accordions. Now THAT's entertainment. Maybe next year they'll even rise from the bowels of the U bahn, ride high over the city on S rails and topple The Bellevue Saints.

Building A Shorter America

Dunkin' Berliner Observation: Amis are getting shorter by the year. Each season when a new gaggle of Ami chicks pours out of the planes, trains and automobiles, I notice the shortness. The voices are still loud, and the ubiquitous LIKE has been newly adorned with UM and RIGHT? But they are losing an inch every year; the batch I saw today must have been around 5 feet 4. Last year they were 5 feet 5, the previous years 5 feet 7—you get the idea. So how is America breeding smaller people? Science (that fickle shit) tells us that tallness is a sign of a country with a high standard of living, and that the Nordic types are the tallest. So what happened to the standard of living in the U.S.A? Where are the Amazons? Sure, a lot of short-assed Mediterranean types dumped their genetic ooze into the American genepool, but there just aren't enough of them to shorten the entire population. Maybe it's the diet. I blame the kale.

Wild, Drunken German Yoots

One thing hasn't changed in all the time I've lived in Berlin: drunken teens on public transport. Passing through Hauptbahnhof today, a group of them were so loud in their drunken shouts, hoots and sieg heil—uh... hoorahs, that the entire train could hear them through closed windows. I'm guessing that they had just graduated high school and were letting off a bit of steam. There's where I envy the Europeans: a dozen boys barely old enough to shave board the S-bahn, drop a case of beer on the ground and begin the festivities. In the States the cops would be legally authorized to call in SWAT and hose 'em all down. One of the yoots is a boy of about 5 feet tall, whith a curly green mop on his head (maybe he's just finished a breeding tour in the U.S.). He hooks up a little amplifier to his phone, the beat rages, and the whole group joins in drunken falsetto: EVERYBODY DANCE NOW! And they do, as jiggy as their wobbly legs will allow. Green moptop looks a bit green in the face as well, and slumps back into his seat until the next chorus of EVERYBODY DANCE NOW strikes up.

How will I find such entertainment in one day anywhere else? Where will I go next? Stay tuned.

Berlin Hipsters: Another Prick in The Wall

“Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter.”

- urbandictionary.com

“Hipsters are a pretentious group of tiny little waiflike creatures (male and female) who dress the same, look the same and act the same—much like any other group of fashion victims.  Upper middle class white kid + liberal arts education + thrift store chic = DOUCHEBAG.”

- Dunkin’ Berliner

O hipster: shall I compare thee to a lump of shit?  Thine large glasses offend me; rip them off and stomp them!  Thou art dressed in skinny jeans which sag at the back!  Contradiction?  Juxtaposition?  Room to carry a load of dung when startled suddenly, timid creature?

I kept hearing the term ‘hipster’ bandied about in Berlin.  It took me a while to give a shit, since all I care about is Berliner jelly donuts and Berliner spaetis.  But then I heard that they are arriving in droves and driving up Berlin rents with their trust funds and ‘lofty’ real estate aesthetic.  So, looking for a new scapegoat for gentrification other than yuppies (who have lawyers, thus making it harder to perpetrate hate crimes with impunity), I decided to research and investigate this neo-nuisance with all the voracity of one who can devour 6 Berliner jelly donuts in one sitting and never even THINK of fitting into skinny jeans.

Classification of the creature Hipsteris Urbanitis is easy when beginning from the top down:

- Cap:  the hipster usually wears heavy wool winter caps that are two sizes too large.  When the temperatures surpass 80 F, the hipster’s movements slow to a crawl.  They often sit in parks with dull smirks on their faces as the burning sun and the thick wool slowly turn their lazy brains to mush.

- Eyewear:  the larger, thicker and blacker the glasses, the better; most of the time the glasses aren’t even prescription.  To a hipster, looking dorky is part of the fashion irony.  Perhaps they think that nobody will hit them if they wear glasses.  Heh.

- Beards:  often a hipster grows a beard to differentiate themselves from the gays and the metrosexuals, who merely have skinny bodies and perhaps only a thin Freddy Mercury moustache.  Hipster beards fall into one of two categories:  Category one: scraggly, unkempt and sparse.  The youngest, skinniest white kids aren’t often able to grow beards and therefore get an A for effort in this category. Category two: heavy, dense and long.  The jury is out on the reasons for this heinous hair growth on such a skinny creature.  Some say it is an ironic attempt at mimicking the hillbilly look.  Perhaps it is a throwback to the Ginsberg days.  Personally, I simply believe they are members of Al Qaeda.

- Smirk:  they think they are smarter, hipper and cooler than everyone else, so they generally are seen with the tiniest of smiles while walking down the street.  To the casual viewer, they may appear to be slightly mentally retarded.

- Torso:  hipsters are all about obscurity in the bands they worship (so I’ve read), so a common hipster t-shirt is adorned with crude artwork and band names like ‘Sonic Death Monkey,’ ‘Squirrel Bucket,’ ‘Trench Coat Weasels’ or ‘Temple of Pooh.’  Many of the band names on their ubiquitous iPods were formed by combining electric guitars, small, furry animals and common home and garden implements.

- Pants:  skinny jeans.  These tight jeans look spray painted onto the hipster’s scrawny frame—except for the ass end, which appears to sag way out of proportion with the rest of the ensemble.  Either they are wearing colostomy bags or they collectively suffer from Diminished Gluteal Syndrome.

- Shoes: don’t get me started. BRIGHT FUCKING ORANGE??? REALLY???

I once sat in a pub in Prague in the late 90s discussing how to tell the hookers from the ordinary Czech women.  The fad at the time was knee high leather boots, high heeled. The jury agreed that the hookers had stiletto heels on their boots; the ordinary Czech girls had blocky high heels.

I once sat in Mauerpark with a group of Germans and one Irish friend.  The German gushed guttural and nonsensical to me, but the word ‘hipster’ kept popping out of the mish mash.  They were pointing out the hipsters.  I was new to this game.  At that time EVERYONE who hung around Mauerpark was a feckless douche.  My damn self included.

Recently I saw an old acquaintance of mine at the Carnival of Cultures.  His previously-braided goatee had burst from its tether and bloomed into a wild and wooly spectacle of chin bush.  I cornered him and said ‘ARE YOU A FUCKING HIPSTER?’ pointing at his wild goat and horn rimmed glasses.  He countered with ‘No! You are!’ while pointing at my sparse, salt-and-pepper gray/black goat.  We took turns accusing each other of being hipsters and heaping bags of douche (in a friendly sort of way).

The word around the campfire is that hipsters don’t know they are hipsters (or won’t admit it), much in the way that serial killers and politicians tell themselves they are answering a ‘higher calling.’ As my psych prof called it, ‘sailing down that famous river in Egypt, Denial.’

Yes, I have black rimmed glasses.  They are not huge.  They are normal sized.  Yes, I have a goatee, but not a beard. And there is no fucking way I can fit my Vegas Elvis ass into skinny jeans.  My head sweats in winter if I wear a standard, garden variety skull cap.  Plus I’m twice the age of the average hipster.  Innocent, Yer Honor.

I still don’t know what the hipsters are up to.  They are probably just the most recent harmless manifestation of pretentious fashion victims who believe that they are iconoclastic when in fact they are doing the same damn thing everyone else born in their circumstances is doing.  They are rather skinny, timid and silent when I spot them.  No need to tear them apart, physically at least.

Unless I find out they are responsible for the rising rents in Berlin and/or gentrification in general.  Then I’m a goin’ huntin’.