Brandenburger WHORE

Or How the Berlin Bear Opened its Butt Cheeks to Corporate Cock

There’s a limit to my patience.  Sure, I was forced to move out of P’berg by greedy landlords—and now I haven’t had my favorite Berliner pfannkuchen mit kirsch for over a MONTH.  But now They have gone too far.  The day that a world class city like Berlin decides to sell its famous historical landmarks to make way for luxury yuppie scum condos is a sad day indeed.  The East Side Gallery section of the Berlin Wall may be marked with little metal plaques proclaiming it to be a historical monument, but that shouldn’t deter would be corporate raiders.  If you are a large investment company looking for the next big bubble economy to rape and pillage, well, pilgrim, the Berlin Bear is ready and willing to love you long time.

And like any discreet whore, Berlin is not your average Tiergarten variety bang-em-against-the-bin-in-the-alley crack ho, no sir.  The Berlin Bear may have always been poor but sexy, wearing its saggy Russian dancing bear tutu with shame while it desperately tried to leap through the hoops of progress, but fear not: times they are a’changin’.  For a few million, not only will the Berlin Bear do a little dance, make a little love and get down tonight—you get total control over the zoo.

On the eve of March 1^st, sneaky little bastard developers removed a piece of the Berlin Wall monument in the middle of the night.  By 9am the next morning, hundreds of protestors and media (including one pissed off dunkin’ berliner) brought the whole destruction to a standstill by sheer force of will.  The cops were not afraid.  They brought enough of them.   At the end of the day, it’s awfully difficult to do your job as a construction/destruction worker when hundreds of people are screaming at you.  It causes the jackhammer to fall from trembling fingers.

I’d like to say I got some juicy pics of the Berlin Bear doing its dirty deeds with the Men in Suits in a seedy alleyway somewhere.  But I only got protest photos. The dirty shit was done behind closed doors.  When confronted by the media, the duplicitous bear trainers and tutu cleaners (aka city honchos) simply stated that the owners of the site (developers) had the legal right to do what they wanted to the monument.  Waitamotherfuckingminute.  The DDR commies built and owned the Berlin Wall.  After the fall of communism, the Wall was owned by the State.  So how in the hell did a public/government owned landmark come to be up for sale to the corPIRATES?

The East Side Gallery restoration group spent millions of euros of EU money on the complete restoration and renovation of this particular stretch of the Berlin Wall.  They even invited back the original mural artists who had left their marks and messages of freedom emblazoned on the wall 20 years before.  Acid rain and graffiti wore heavy on the concrete barrier, and during the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (2009), the renovation was completed in a gala ceremony.  Hell, I even spent several months making a photo documentary on the whole process.

And there’s the rub.  As a photographer I can take photos of people painting on walls.  As a writer I can make frequent and flippant usage of the some of the most offensive Anglo-Saxon words on offer.  But how can I photograph and write about the largest invisible city killer out there?  Berlin is gentrifying at an alarming rate.  Every time I move to a new flat, the rent DOUBLES.  Either that or there are 30 people waiting outside the door of the flat for a group viewing.

The Berlin Bear was beaten by its cruel Russian handlers for decades. They starved it, poked it, dressed it in a pink tutu and forced it to ride a bicycle.  Any normal wounded animal would bite back.  Instead, this old bear, poor and helpless without its old master, dragged its battered ass and tattered tutu in search of a new master.

Nazi Freedom in Berlin

Stepping Out for Donuts, Running Into a Wall of Cops

MAY 1, 2010, 15:00    It is now the fourth hour of the lockdown. I cannot leave my own street in Prenzlauer Berg because a bunch of fucking bonehead Nazis have the freedom to march in our fine, leafy, breeder-ridden streets. And the cops protect them. And all of this in a country where Nazism is technically illegal. Apparently there’s a bureaucratic form for everything, even illegal activities. Just sign the appropriate forms and you can waste police money and time for any asinine belief system you follow. Sure, they can’t wear the swastika. Nope, they can’t do the ‘zieg heil.’ But what the hell does it all mean when they can just wear black and obtain permission to walk the streets anyway? It’s as if a group of child rapists got to walk down the street freely and proudly. As long as the cops don’t see any child rape t-shirts on them and they don’t rape a child directly in front of them, alles gut. Same logic, different lowlife.

I saw there was nothing to eat in my flat and naturally I thought of going out to grab myself a fistful of lard-and-fake-fruit-sugar ecstasy as any Dunkin’ Berliner would do. So I stepped out to find a fence at the end of my street with a wall of cops in riot gear behind it. They weren’t letting anyone through—unless they were on their way home and they showed the cops their id with their address on it. We waited. I snapped pics of cops in various bored poses. At least I was able to take their pictures without having my skull tenderized by batons. Try taking a picture of a cop in America and see if you don’t wake up in the hospital with your camera up your ass.

 

We waited some more. We walked up and down the streets and saw that we were blocked in from all exit points. A friend of mine called me to see if I was going to Kreuzberg for the Annual May First Anarchy March and Yuppie Vehicle Roast.  I said I couldn’t go as I was locked down. My friend asked what I was going to do and all I could think of was raiding the police vans in search of stray donuts. There MUST be a box of Berliners in one of those riot vans.

 

I finally managed to obtain a Snickers Bar and a bottle of Sternburg beer from the only shop open within the police blockade. They had no real food and definitely no donuts, so I grabbed the bottle and the candy and walked down the street trying to blend in with all the other helpless victims of Nazi atrocity. One old drunk was babbling like a village idiot to each and every passerby. At one point he even took his drunken diatribe to the police line. They just laughed at him and rolled their eyes. The cops had special pockets in their riot vests for their juice drinks and apfel schorle. How cute. The drunk? Only a bottle of Sternburg*, no special pockets. No wonder he was ridiculed.

*This Dunkin’ Berliner blog post was brought to you by Sternburg Export Bier aus Leipzig. Discriminating Berliners who know strong, cheap beer choose Sternburg Export. Mmmm, Sternburg….. not just for drunken punks anymore.

Photos copyright Dunkin' Berliner

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.

Berlin Cops Adore Nazis, Push Antifascist Demonstrators Around A Bit

I've always heard that Nazi or Neo-Nazism is illegal in Germany. Wearing the swastika or other Nazi symbols, singing 'Deutschland Uber Alles' and doing Hitler's high-handed salute, are all verboten.

Recently I've come to realize that this is total bullshit. I first had my suspicions several years ago on a visit to a small town in the former East Germany. There was a large tent with a party going on and a bonfire outside. After waltzing into their tent for some fun, I noticed that everyone was bald. With bomber jackets, camo pants and high-laced boots. I had walked into a skinhead party in a village field. So, casually, I ate some of their munchies, drank a few of their beers and slowly strolled away without speaking to anyone.

Upon my arrival in Berlin a couple of months ago, there was a fashion issue of the local English rag 'Exberliner.' I despise fashion as any red-blooded heterosexual from the States would (ich bin ein Redneck), but I picked up the mag anyway hoping to find ads for pubs and grub. I found that they covered all areas of fashion in Berlin, including NAZI FASHION. WTF? I thought this Nazi b.s. was unacceptable. Well, the clothing had some mods (I dunno, maybe a pretzel on the armband instead of swassie), but it was undeniably clothing for goose-stepping fools with too much time on their hands.

Today I was awakened from my Saturday afternoon nap to the sound of shouting. Usually the Berlin party crowd waits til after midnight to begin their drunken howls under my balcony. Not today. I stepped outside to see a large crowd of young whippersnappers wearing black clothes and bandannas pulled over their mouths, marching. Various street punks joined in to provide some local color. I was drowsy as any fat slob who eats pizza and beer all the time would be after a nap, but I snapped to attention when a white-helmet-sporting-cop started pushing one of the protesters around. The kid wasn't doing anything. In fact, he was headed AWAY from the shouting youth. But the cops wanted him fenced in. I went for the camera and took a couple of mediocre shots from the balcony. I headed down to the street to find out what was going on, and while people were milling around on the street corner I discovered the following: the shouting miscreants were various members of anti-fascist groups protesting the opening of a new(neo?)Nazi clothing store. I have to wonder where these brain dead boneheads get the money for designer fashions (one such brand I read about is Thor Steiner, a Norwegian designer who makes clothing for fascists)? Maybe they pay for their swag with gold teeth ripped from the mouths of dead Jews.

I hung around to get some snaps, but I got a bit nervous when one of the cops started video taping me as I was taking pics (see above left). I'm not usually keen on photographing cops in any country, especially ones where the cops actually wear jackboots and grimaces as part of their uniform. Today's coppers wore jumpsuits and helmets as well. In a country where Neo-Nazism is technically illegal, why does the largest city in Germany not only tolerate fascism, but recruit some of them as cops?