Unscene Berlin

This is Berlin Where SoHo is so over NoHo is no more The hip and happening districts here are all in the MoFNo (Middle of Fucking Nowhere). The MoFNo isn't just limited to a static piece of land, though, with boundaries as concrete as a fence. No - the epicentre of cool is defined as being any place that everyone else isn't, and has never been: it is continuously dispersing even as people flock to it, like a tail pursued by its comet. In Palma de Majorca, the locals blame Germans who flee to their beaches for spoiling their coastline, now southerners fleeing to Berlin are blamed for spoiling the city, as well. Blamed for bringing the cold iron fist of law down in their wake, condemning the residents to eternal flightiness. Both complaints are expressions of the same illness: discomfort within one's cultural skin, a skin shaped by outsiders and authorities we can't see. In the Berliners' devotion to vagueness, I see the idea of having a c...

"Berlin shows no clear CO2 reduction trend since 2008." from Soot Free Cities' clean air report, 2015. Bagger 288, the world's scariest biggest coal-extracting machine.  I talk a lot on this blog about Berlin's underground, but there is one thing that all the subcultural species who live in this city depend upon that is located firmly above ground: the air . Air is a priceless commodity, and it is one that is being sidelined in this city.  In 2011, Berlin was ranked the city with the best clean air policy in Europe in a Soot Free Cities report.  In the five years since then, however, the city has fallen to fifth place on the list.  To anyone who's noticed the constant grey-ish haze on the horizon in recent months (a mixture of humidity and increasing air pollution) this probably isn't news. Yet, expressing concern about the " Himmel Ueber Berlin " still seems to be an underground issue... even in the underground! The overstretche...

I am in a hallway in a turn-of-the-century community centre with high ceilings; the patchy walls are decked with fairy lights, protest posters peel from the yellowing walls.   Every inch of the scuffed floors is filled with the shuffling feet of a rainbow crowd.  Dogs weave through a crowd of black and white Rastas, hippies with pastel dreads and randoms with out-grown, razor-cut hair do's. Fresh-faced white activists & weary black men cross paths and chat.   All around them, people are smiling & swaying in droves... People squeezing their way down the hall slow as they pass by a group of Africans propping up a bar, in the middle of the hall. Passers-by are dragged in by the exhibitionist banter.  The air is peppered with giddy outbursts of hilarity.  A nother exchange of stories and ideas ignites.  Hip hop and reggae throbs out of a spacious room, at one end of the hall.   At the other end, clean-shaven hardtek fans in militant gea...

"English voices are good for something other than singing football chants and ordering overpriced menu items.  English brains are good for thinking about more than what advertisers tell them to think about.  And the English presence in Berlin has more than just a monetary value.  Anybody who believes this can make different choices to change the German misconception that being English is just a neverending spending spree. But first, they have to decide whether they believe it themselves ." My latest entry on Fleeting Reams has some tips that will apply to readers of this blog, as they can help Englishers to track down alternative arts and activist events in Berlin.  Check it out here