Unscene Berlin

Berlin's Thought Police in action You might have seen the footage on the news in the last few weeks of flack - jacketed cops milling around outside of one of Friedrichshain's playfully patchworked 'squats' (which aren't actually squats , anymore, although they once were). Y ou might have read a snippet of text or two, telling you about an attack on a passer -by in the street, and a raid o n a house.  The chances are very good, though , that you didn' t get the whole stor y of what actually happened in Rigaer Strasse.   I know I didn't.  So i n this po st, I'm going to share what I've learned about it so far.   According to the press, on January 13th , a police officer was a ttacked in   in Rigaer Strasse in North Friedrichshain .  Der Spiegel wrote that the injured officer in question " was overthrown, beaten and kicked to the ground" by four people who were " suspected" left wingers. "According to p...

Fidelity Kastrow plays Friday @ Mensch Meier I've written here a few times about Mensch Meier, the multi-purpose party space that's near to Landsberger Allee, but they've been putting on such a wide variety of events in the past year that it's getting pretty damn hard to sum the place up in just a few lines. If you're curious what the Mensch Meier phenomenon is all about, this weekend may be a good time to get down there and get a feel for exactly what kind of place it is. This Friday, Nachtasyl 's party ' Am Boden ' will serve up several Mensch Meier specialties at once (several, but not all).  It will have decadence, a dark theatrical flair, a generous helping of left-wing ethics plus lots of banging, subversive tunes.  Experimental / dark / rough techno, disco and dubtechno are all on the menu.   The Princess of Death. Friday @ Mensch Meier The organizers say they have "been organizing raves in abandoned basements and hou...

So: you're new in Berlin, or just visiting for New Year's Eve?  Welcome... and good luck! Foto by: fuckyeahanarchopunk.tumblr.com New Year's Eve in Berlin can be an overrated and overpriced experience, but only if you read too much into it. As in most cities, there are lesser-known parties which turn out to be amazing while many of the massively overhyped parties fall short of the value suggested by their price tag.  In this post, I aim to help you decide which is which. But, before I get around to talking about the actual parties, here are a few general tips on doing New Year's Eve in Berlin.   Don't Get Bombed In this city, the end of the year party always goes off with a bang... just maybe not in the way you were hoping for.  If having fireworks aimed at your face by a laughing Chav who's swinging a bottle of peppermint schnapps in his free hand sounds like fun, you'll venture out into the streets between 11:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. on December...

Gegen's been going strong for four years now, and guess what?  Yours truly was the first blogger to write about them in English when they debuted at MIKZ club.  There's not much left to say that hasn't already been said by me (or by Gegen - man, do they love to write!) so on the eve of tonight's party, Ass , I'm reposting this piece that I wrote for Alternative Berlin's blog in 2012. Enjoy! Alternative.  What does the word even mean these days?  In its origins, the word alternative was used to label anything that could not be easily categorized or was non-mainstream.  Over time, those un-categorizable tendencies settled into categories of their own, becoming the subcultures that most of us are familiar with: goth, indie, punk, rave, hippy, hip hop and so on.  Every alternative scene starts out nameless and ambiguous but eventually resigns itself to becoming just another label with unspoken rules and codes that everyone in it is expected to obe...

Leaving Berghain last weekend, I saw two bright beams shining through the mist in the pitch black, pre-dawn sky.  They were yellowish white, and looked exactly like a pair of lights from a construction crane. My first thought was, "Shit, they're building another high rise in Friedrichshain??"  But after a while the mist cleared away and I realized that those two orbs in the sky were actually a pair of stars: Venus and Jupiter, in fact.  The veil dropped between the sky and the earth, and suddenly everything seemed like one big extension of the dark dancefloor I'd just left behind, dotted with glimmering lights that stretched all the way to the edges of space. I'm used to leaving a party in the morning and being shocked by the sight of the waking world outside, doing its thing, blissfully oblivious to whatever's been going on inside the clubs and bars.  But this time, the 'world' I was seeing was millions of miles away and it was still close...

Last week, I stumbled upon Blo Ateliers, an art space that's been managing to keep " one of the most interesting and largest artist communities in eastern Berlin" hidden from me for the last four years, despite being right on my doorstep in Lichtenberg .   It doesn't feel like you're going to an art venue; the road's cracked and flooded and leads towards what seems like the deadest of ends.  There are signs telling you to stop, that the yard's for rail employees only, even as a handwritten sign promises that there's an free exhibition on. After a few seconds' hesitation, like the kind that I get before every new discovery made in Berlin ( is this a new find, or is it all in my mind? ) I went ahead in.  A courtyard opened up and around each crumbling building in the complex, the litter of half-finished sculptures, DIY gardens and pointed statements written in graffiti and kept carefully clear of encroaching trees ...