It’s Sunday morning in Prenzlauerberg. Okay. By morning I mean 1:15 pm, but it comes to about the same thing.
On the way here (I usually write from a coffee shop, just to fanatically adhere to a particularly obnoxious stereotype), I was blocked on the street, literally barred completely from passing, by a barricade of young parents and their drooling little sprouts, each dressed more fashionably than I could ever hope for myself. Bugaboos festooned with dingo balls (a la the van in Cheech and Chong’s “Up in Smoke”) and/or meticulously restored vintage prams elevated the appearance of the blockade from mob to military armada.
Un. So un.
Somehow, finally, I managed to wade through the fracas and end up at my coffee shop. It’s called Coffee To Go. I know. It’s so dada. Anyway, it was featured in the documentary “Berlin Digital” (didn’t see it? You’re not alone.) It has old GDR waiting room benches, and plays homegrown music from Berlin DJs and recording artists. Apparently it’s an indispensable stop on any techno pilgrimage to this city.
I come here because it has open WLAN, and the fuckers at Versatel haven’t hooked up my DSL yet. It’s also within spitting distance of my apartment.
For the last several weeks, while work has been slow, I’ve made CTG the first activity of my day. I’ll wake up, take some Excedrin (to rectify any fogginess caused by one thing or the other), put on a hat or bandana (to cover the spectacular greasiness that is actually highly valued in this neighborhood, in an aesthetic context) and whatever sweats or nasty vestidos are lying closest to the bed—and I go. I sit and check the New York Times (and what the fuck is Times Select, anyway), email people, stare into space, etc.
My inattention to appearances functions quite well from Monday to Saturday, however today, Sunday…I’m obviously out of my league.
To describe Prenzlauerberg. Hm. The women look like, well, think of Williamsburg at its most obnoxious, and then picture its style of dress in darker colors and on skinnier people. Boots go over pants. Bangs are long and sideswept, the upper body is obligated to bear at least three layers. Big chains of big beads.
Men fall into two categories: Sporty sensitive or coldly sculptural. The former features any product from Puma, Adidas, Gola, Camper, etc…and is generally accompanied by a generous helping of stubble and your high school biology teacher’s unkempt, layered, long bowl haircut. The latter category is all about grey, black, or chocolate-colored boiled, brushed, or merino wool. Throw in improbably angular foot- and eye-wear (like the ubiquitous Shostakovich glasses), and petrified hair—you’ve got yourself a high-class PoMo.
And they are out in force, today…tell you what. It’s like an officially sanctioned cotillion of nonchalant, yet precisely measured artsiness. They don’t say much, generally just preening silently for the sake of anyone in the room that missed their wicked new belt-buckle or cultivated under-eye bags. I literally watched a guy hold a copy of Italian Vogue upside down for about fifteen minutes, pretending to read while sprawled languidly for the benefit of his fellow Prenzlauerbergian, elegantly feline in his apparent illiteracy. Magnificent
And I’m here in my PJs.
Last night I went to a Thanksgiving party, hosted by a set designer I sort of alienated, and attended by yet another. I thought it would be a blowout…you know, tons of people, little groups between which one is meant to flit. It wasn’t. It was a dinner party…only very close friends. At first I was cursing myself for steamrolling Tommy into taking me along. Still, thanks to the magic of grappa and pumpkin crème brulée (and hospitality I’d not known to exist in this day and age), it turned out to be a fantastic evening—any burned bridges blissfully ignored, if not actually repaired. Very, very nice.
It sort of inspires me to finally buy that fondue set and start entertaining.
And speaking of entertaining—I was several hours late to the Thanksgiving party for having attended the performance/exhibition of a few good acquaintances.
I won’t suck up any more of your procrastination time with ultra-specific details, but suffice it to say that it was the most moved, disturbed, effected, provoked, disgusted, and titillated I’ve been with any theatrical (or general media) experience in a long, long time.
The atmosphere constructed between two rooms by three performers, a stack of CDs, several paintings depicting any variety of dismemberment, torture, murder or rape and all possible combinations thereof, and a few simple household objects…it was overwhelming. Brilliant.
To all those people who stood around saying that kind of performance was done and done better in the seventies, I say nothing…but I wish I could fart on command. In your faces.
Affectionately, of course.
You know, if you were to give me the choice of watching a man dressed as blond Hitler pull his pants down to his ankles, kneel down on the ground, shove a paintbrush up his ass, and then crawl around in circles, thereby painting a white ring around himself—or watching this tragically fashionable case who’s been sitting across from me at the coffee shop for the last hour…looking more tragically misunderstood by the moment—you’d better believe I’d take the paint brush.
Who knows, though, maybe I could have the best of both worlds. Maybe I can convince this guy to kneel down and spread’em. It would be so post.
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