Last Thursday night I boarded the U1 line at the Goerlitzer Bahnhof station to travel back to the Hallesches Tor station. I sat down next to a woman - perhaps my age, perhaps a little younger. It was hard to tell. Head shaved on the sides, pink mohawk flopped over to one side on the top sticking out from under the black hood pulled over her head. Dozens of facial piercings, black steel-capped boots, skin-tight faded black jeans with a chain attached to the belt. Looked as if she were desperate to get off of the train for another hit of tobacco. In other words, a stereotypical Berlin punk.
Kneeling next to her, looking out of the window, was a girl, perhaps four or five years old. Shoulder-length brown hair, pulled back with a pink ribbon, tied in a bow, brown fluffy jacket with butterflies sewn onto it, blue jeans, pink laces in her white sneakers. The girl was talking incessantly with the punk - with her mother, I presumed. The punk looked back at her with her eyes full of love (but still desperate for a cigarette).
I could only wonder how the girl would view her mother in future years. And be jealous of what I was observing.
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Skinhead - a way of life?
At the end of a recent event, an individual approached me with some questions. He'd already been present beforehand, so I had already discussed his reasons for being present, and he then chose to remain for the entire presentation. In any case, he asked a couple of more specific study-related questions, before then asking if it would be okay to ask me a personal question.
"Bist Du Skinhead?" ("Are you a skinhead?")
Of the personal questions that I have been asked by strangers across the world - be they in South America, the Middle East, Africa, Europe or in Australia - this had not been one that I had foreseen coming.
I replied in the positive, at which point the individual said that he had thought so, and indicated towards my sideburns. He then volunteered that he himself was one as well, at which point I indicated that I had wondered, given his choice of a maroon Fred Perry v-neck jumper. Sure, he had the haircut, but the beard did not exactly fit the image. He explained that he was the only skinhead of which he was aware at the university, and that he didn't usually where his boots because skinheads did not exactly have a good reputation in Germany. I laughed, pointing out the fact that I have a white collar job and was wearing a suit. The conversation continued by discussing music, with the contents of my mp3 player being shared with him. We exchanged contact details, he invited me to hang out with him the next time I was in the area, and we went our separate ways.
He asked me how I had become a skinhead. I explained that I'd move on from punk into it, which was exactly the same path he had followed. He admitted to having been concerned by the lack of unity and camaraderie within the punk scene, which was why he become a skinhead. Yet neither of us, these two educated skinheads, are part of a local skinhead scene and are clearly somewhat isolated from the scene.
Neither he nor I exactly fit the stereotype of a skinhead. We are both tertiary educated, in my case, working a white collar job, and in his case, a white collar job in big business to come. Whilst we both may have tattoos, they are discretely hidden from view, and neither of us could be described as a thug or hooligan, as the stereotype would have the average skinhead. We listen to the same music as the rest of the scene (even if he himself is not a big oi! fan). Yet, there we were, standing in a German university, discussing the ways of skinhead, having both identified with the subculture, despite not fitting in with the majority of its adherents.
In London a few months ago, the latest fashion in chain stores such as H&M and Top Man had adopted a clear skinhead influence. Mannequins were dressed with turned up jeans (occasionally with braces), heavy boots, checked shirts and vests, and flat caps. Whilst the average skinhead would have baulked at purchases from such stores (after all, where were the Fred Perry and Ben Sherman logos?), I managed to find some items that both fitted my tastes and weren't priced the same as the aforementioned brands. I thereby committed a cardinal fashion sin against skinhead aesthetic.
In the same way as punk before it, skinhead fashion - if not the culture - has, for at least one season, entered the mainstream. The culture will take much longer. Yet, in many ways, the strength of skinhead unity is what so much of society needs - against the big business-driven financial collapse that has engulfed most of the world in the last couple of years, against the consumerist society that obsesses developed countries and to which developing countries aspire. Unlike punk, skinhead has not sold out to commercialism. And in the middle of it all, feet on both sides of the divide, my new acquaintance and I sit.
Is it any wonder that I feel so alone at times?
"Bist Du Skinhead?" ("Are you a skinhead?")
Of the personal questions that I have been asked by strangers across the world - be they in South America, the Middle East, Africa, Europe or in Australia - this had not been one that I had foreseen coming.
I replied in the positive, at which point the individual said that he had thought so, and indicated towards my sideburns. He then volunteered that he himself was one as well, at which point I indicated that I had wondered, given his choice of a maroon Fred Perry v-neck jumper. Sure, he had the haircut, but the beard did not exactly fit the image. He explained that he was the only skinhead of which he was aware at the university, and that he didn't usually where his boots because skinheads did not exactly have a good reputation in Germany. I laughed, pointing out the fact that I have a white collar job and was wearing a suit. The conversation continued by discussing music, with the contents of my mp3 player being shared with him. We exchanged contact details, he invited me to hang out with him the next time I was in the area, and we went our separate ways.
He asked me how I had become a skinhead. I explained that I'd move on from punk into it, which was exactly the same path he had followed. He admitted to having been concerned by the lack of unity and camaraderie within the punk scene, which was why he become a skinhead. Yet neither of us, these two educated skinheads, are part of a local skinhead scene and are clearly somewhat isolated from the scene.
Neither he nor I exactly fit the stereotype of a skinhead. We are both tertiary educated, in my case, working a white collar job, and in his case, a white collar job in big business to come. Whilst we both may have tattoos, they are discretely hidden from view, and neither of us could be described as a thug or hooligan, as the stereotype would have the average skinhead. We listen to the same music as the rest of the scene (even if he himself is not a big oi! fan). Yet, there we were, standing in a German university, discussing the ways of skinhead, having both identified with the subculture, despite not fitting in with the majority of its adherents.
In London a few months ago, the latest fashion in chain stores such as H&M and Top Man had adopted a clear skinhead influence. Mannequins were dressed with turned up jeans (occasionally with braces), heavy boots, checked shirts and vests, and flat caps. Whilst the average skinhead would have baulked at purchases from such stores (after all, where were the Fred Perry and Ben Sherman logos?), I managed to find some items that both fitted my tastes and weren't priced the same as the aforementioned brands. I thereby committed a cardinal fashion sin against skinhead aesthetic.
In the same way as punk before it, skinhead fashion - if not the culture - has, for at least one season, entered the mainstream. The culture will take much longer. Yet, in many ways, the strength of skinhead unity is what so much of society needs - against the big business-driven financial collapse that has engulfed most of the world in the last couple of years, against the consumerist society that obsesses developed countries and to which developing countries aspire. Unlike punk, skinhead has not sold out to commercialism. And in the middle of it all, feet on both sides of the divide, my new acquaintance and I sit.
Is it any wonder that I feel so alone at times?
Monday, 23 November 2009
On Germanity.
I was sitting in my favourite Turkish restaurant at the eastern end of Kreuzberg, near the Goerlitzer Bahnhof station of the U1 line. Shaking off my hangover slowly, eating a falafel in Turkish bread with a serve of humus on the side. Nothing like fresh, homemade humus to help settle a stomach (if not a head).
At some stage, a man in the late fifties entered the restaurant to ask for directions to somewhere - I couldn't hear to where. Either way, it was apparently pretty straightforward - follow the street straight ahead until arriving at the unknown destination. The chap walked outside, only to return to ask again which street he should follow, as there were two (the place is close to - but not on - an intersection). The proprietor, patience already worn thin from the first discussion - explained in an exasperated tone that it is simple - just follow the road straight ahead. Just straight head, keep going straight ahead, signalling with his hand to make the directions even clearer than they already were.
Having convinced the visitor of the direction he ought to head (out of the restaurant, above all else), the proprietor turned to me to express his frustrations. Look he said, I'm a Turk - but with German citizenship. Why is it that these Eastern Europeans - Bulgarians, Romanians - that guy was Romanian - come to Germany looking for work, but they don't even bother to learn the language? He continued to explain that whilst his German may not be perfect (other than for a very slight accent, it was), he had made the effort to learn the language and to integrate. Why couldn't these EU passport-wielding interlopers also do the same? After all, as he continued to explain to me, he had learnt German at school and had made sure that he could at least speak it half-decently before he migrated to Germany.
It was true, the owner of the restaurant had clearly made an effort to learn German. He was running a successful business in the German capital - one that is open essentially all the time (the shops may not open in Berlin on a Sunday, but regardless of the day of the week or the time of day, it is always possible to buy a kebab). Sure, it was in Kreuzberg, home to the largest popoulation of Turks outside of Turkey, and far larger in number than the majority of Turkish cities inside of Turkey. His restaurant was one of perhaps hundreds in a district of Berlin that sells Turkish food - the majority with little to choose between any of them. And I was being whinged to that foreigners come to Germany and make no effort to integrate, to even learn the language, to be part of society. If I had closed my eyes, I could have easily imagined that I was listening to a German (by birth, not citizenship) with pronounced xenophobic tendencies.
Is that, much in the same way that ex-smokers become the most militant anti-smoking advocates, that German citizens, born into the nationality that marked the beginning of the guest worker in West German society, become the most strident, most rigid, when it comes to defending their adoptive country against these immigrants who apparently do not assimilate?
At some stage, a man in the late fifties entered the restaurant to ask for directions to somewhere - I couldn't hear to where. Either way, it was apparently pretty straightforward - follow the street straight ahead until arriving at the unknown destination. The chap walked outside, only to return to ask again which street he should follow, as there were two (the place is close to - but not on - an intersection). The proprietor, patience already worn thin from the first discussion - explained in an exasperated tone that it is simple - just follow the road straight ahead. Just straight head, keep going straight ahead, signalling with his hand to make the directions even clearer than they already were.
Having convinced the visitor of the direction he ought to head (out of the restaurant, above all else), the proprietor turned to me to express his frustrations. Look he said, I'm a Turk - but with German citizenship. Why is it that these Eastern Europeans - Bulgarians, Romanians - that guy was Romanian - come to Germany looking for work, but they don't even bother to learn the language? He continued to explain that whilst his German may not be perfect (other than for a very slight accent, it was), he had made the effort to learn the language and to integrate. Why couldn't these EU passport-wielding interlopers also do the same? After all, as he continued to explain to me, he had learnt German at school and had made sure that he could at least speak it half-decently before he migrated to Germany.
It was true, the owner of the restaurant had clearly made an effort to learn German. He was running a successful business in the German capital - one that is open essentially all the time (the shops may not open in Berlin on a Sunday, but regardless of the day of the week or the time of day, it is always possible to buy a kebab). Sure, it was in Kreuzberg, home to the largest popoulation of Turks outside of Turkey, and far larger in number than the majority of Turkish cities inside of Turkey. His restaurant was one of perhaps hundreds in a district of Berlin that sells Turkish food - the majority with little to choose between any of them. And I was being whinged to that foreigners come to Germany and make no effort to integrate, to even learn the language, to be part of society. If I had closed my eyes, I could have easily imagined that I was listening to a German (by birth, not citizenship) with pronounced xenophobic tendencies.
Is that, much in the same way that ex-smokers become the most militant anti-smoking advocates, that German citizens, born into the nationality that marked the beginning of the guest worker in West German society, become the most strident, most rigid, when it comes to defending their adoptive country against these immigrants who apparently do not assimilate?
Monday, 9 November 2009
On time, tickets and friends long gone
We have all heard - and experienced - how the world is shrinking - that it is easier to find people, to re-establish connections with friends long disappeared from one's life, than it has ever been.
So it was tonight. By complete chance, thanks to Google and MySpace (there had to be a useful side to the home of the largest collection of egos online), I stumbled upon around a dozen friends and acquaintances have since erased from my life. Well, ten, to be precise. Of the dozen of us that there were eleven years ago, two were not featured on the page, one of whom was me.
Nonetheless, it was quite a surprise. The first surprise was that so many of them are still alive. Given the way that we lived our lives back then, to see so many of them still going strong was not something I had expected to see. Sure, the years and life choices had clearly taken their toll on some of the familiar faces that I found staring back at me from the screen, but they were unmistakably the same people that I had shared so much with. The last time I had seen one of them, he was struggling down the staircase with his girlfriend, who had not regained consciousness as well as he had (he was, at a minimum, somewhat capable of walking). The last I heard of him was a few seconds after I last saw him, as one - or both - of them tumbled down the stairs in the apartment block. I'd assumed that he would have died by now, or at least would be living in the gutter somewhere. I was clearly wrong.
This isn't to say that all memories of these people were negative. They weren't, but other than for some memorable anecdotes, there was a lot of unhappiness mixed in (much of which was internal, it has to be said). The lifestyle had taken its toll on some strands of friendship between us all, most notably when one - nominally the work 'boss' during 'office' hours (whatever they were - it wasn't as if we ever did a standard eight-hour day) - had drunk a skinfull more than he could handle. And became his usual, drunken aggressive self. Fine whilst sober, he became unpredictable whilst drunk. I never understood how his girlfriend tolerated him. Not that he was ever violent towards her - physically, at least, and to the best of my knowledge - but on the occasion of her birthday, he did try to force his key to her apartment onto me, telling his girlfriend and me that they were done, because she was clearly going to fuck me that night. She and I had been talking. After that particular night, I only ever saw her again away from his presence, always in secret, over tea, she fearful that he might turn up unexpectedly.
Hissing at a passing cyclist on her way to work as we staggered back home from the pub at 8am the morning after his birthday celebration, covered in marker pen (he'd passed out on the bar some hours earlier, and eager to make it a night to remember, we decorated him. It was just as well we didn't pass a police officer on the way back to his flat, given some of the symbols we'd drawn on him). Dragging my camera out, he insisted on Hitler saluting it as the timer ran out, capturing the moment forever on film. I never did work out whether he was truly racist - loathing neo-Nazis, he shared their hatred of Poles. They dared to glance at his girlfriend.
But most of the time, he was an aggressive drunk, trying to pick fights on occasion, but usually simply vandalising whatever was within his drunken, groping reach. He had once told me that had I arrived a week earlier in the country, I'd have also been arrested for criminal damage, as he and another friend had been a few days prior to my arrival, having attempted to kick in a door to a random stranger's apartment.
His accomplice in crime had introduced me to substances that would have led to a harsher brush with the law than simply kicking a door in would have done. My aggressive-drunk-friend would not abide of such forms of entertainment, so said introduction occurred whilst my aggressive friend was fetching more beer from the petrol station next door. When I last visited the street where we lived together some nine years earlier, the petrol station had closed a few months before and the apartment block had been renovated.
As I continued looking through the stream of photos on the website, I saw that situations had repeated themselves over the years since I had last seen my former friends. The friend who, regardless of where he was or what he was doing, would always manage to find time - and a place - to have a sleep whilst on the job, usually in a packing crate. The over the top innuendo for the camera - no rubber body parts this time, but bare backsides and stomachs in their place. Rows of bottles of alcohol on the motorhome table - the quantity may not have changed, but the quality appeared to have improved at least a little.
I look at the MySpace friends listed on the page, recognising many names and faces - some closer, some less close to me back then. Only a few of the broader circle of friends and acquaintances appeared to be absent.
As I browsed through the friends list, back through the photos, thinking about how life, work and friendship had been, those many years ago, I realised just how far I had come since that time. I had always been something of an outsider in the group. I didn't grow up in the same region as they had - let alone in a country that no longer exists. My first language is not the same as theirs (even if I had picked their accent up fairly quickly). I wasn't as experienced (or as gifted) in the shifting of heavy objects, working with lighting or the laying of cables (be that under a stage or in the snow) as they were. And I couldn't stand on the top of a ladder, eight metres up - whilst stoned - and continue to work unaffected. I wasn't like that. My path in life had intersected their paths for a few months, and although I had enjoyed the ride whilst it lasted, my train had continued down a different set of track from the train that they were in. We had all ridden the underground together without tickets on many occasions on the way to and from work sites, avoiding plainclothes ticket inspectors, but my non-existent ticket was for a different destination from the one stamped onto their equally invisible tickets.
I considered whether I should scan and email in some photos - to give them a flash from the past. And I still consider whether I should. Perhaps I will - without a valid sender's address. Wait for the photos to appear on MySpace, knowing that my former friends had seen them, worked out from who they were from, and had thought about the time that we had spent together over a decade ago.
The world may be smaller, thanks to the connectivity the Internet provides, but there are certain distances that remain - and with good reason.
So it was tonight. By complete chance, thanks to Google and MySpace (there had to be a useful side to the home of the largest collection of egos online), I stumbled upon around a dozen friends and acquaintances have since erased from my life. Well, ten, to be precise. Of the dozen of us that there were eleven years ago, two were not featured on the page, one of whom was me.
Nonetheless, it was quite a surprise. The first surprise was that so many of them are still alive. Given the way that we lived our lives back then, to see so many of them still going strong was not something I had expected to see. Sure, the years and life choices had clearly taken their toll on some of the familiar faces that I found staring back at me from the screen, but they were unmistakably the same people that I had shared so much with. The last time I had seen one of them, he was struggling down the staircase with his girlfriend, who had not regained consciousness as well as he had (he was, at a minimum, somewhat capable of walking). The last I heard of him was a few seconds after I last saw him, as one - or both - of them tumbled down the stairs in the apartment block. I'd assumed that he would have died by now, or at least would be living in the gutter somewhere. I was clearly wrong.
This isn't to say that all memories of these people were negative. They weren't, but other than for some memorable anecdotes, there was a lot of unhappiness mixed in (much of which was internal, it has to be said). The lifestyle had taken its toll on some strands of friendship between us all, most notably when one - nominally the work 'boss' during 'office' hours (whatever they were - it wasn't as if we ever did a standard eight-hour day) - had drunk a skinfull more than he could handle. And became his usual, drunken aggressive self. Fine whilst sober, he became unpredictable whilst drunk. I never understood how his girlfriend tolerated him. Not that he was ever violent towards her - physically, at least, and to the best of my knowledge - but on the occasion of her birthday, he did try to force his key to her apartment onto me, telling his girlfriend and me that they were done, because she was clearly going to fuck me that night. She and I had been talking. After that particular night, I only ever saw her again away from his presence, always in secret, over tea, she fearful that he might turn up unexpectedly.
Hissing at a passing cyclist on her way to work as we staggered back home from the pub at 8am the morning after his birthday celebration, covered in marker pen (he'd passed out on the bar some hours earlier, and eager to make it a night to remember, we decorated him. It was just as well we didn't pass a police officer on the way back to his flat, given some of the symbols we'd drawn on him). Dragging my camera out, he insisted on Hitler saluting it as the timer ran out, capturing the moment forever on film. I never did work out whether he was truly racist - loathing neo-Nazis, he shared their hatred of Poles. They dared to glance at his girlfriend.
But most of the time, he was an aggressive drunk, trying to pick fights on occasion, but usually simply vandalising whatever was within his drunken, groping reach. He had once told me that had I arrived a week earlier in the country, I'd have also been arrested for criminal damage, as he and another friend had been a few days prior to my arrival, having attempted to kick in a door to a random stranger's apartment.
His accomplice in crime had introduced me to substances that would have led to a harsher brush with the law than simply kicking a door in would have done. My aggressive-drunk-friend would not abide of such forms of entertainment, so said introduction occurred whilst my aggressive friend was fetching more beer from the petrol station next door. When I last visited the street where we lived together some nine years earlier, the petrol station had closed a few months before and the apartment block had been renovated.
As I continued looking through the stream of photos on the website, I saw that situations had repeated themselves over the years since I had last seen my former friends. The friend who, regardless of where he was or what he was doing, would always manage to find time - and a place - to have a sleep whilst on the job, usually in a packing crate. The over the top innuendo for the camera - no rubber body parts this time, but bare backsides and stomachs in their place. Rows of bottles of alcohol on the motorhome table - the quantity may not have changed, but the quality appeared to have improved at least a little.
I look at the MySpace friends listed on the page, recognising many names and faces - some closer, some less close to me back then. Only a few of the broader circle of friends and acquaintances appeared to be absent.
As I browsed through the friends list, back through the photos, thinking about how life, work and friendship had been, those many years ago, I realised just how far I had come since that time. I had always been something of an outsider in the group. I didn't grow up in the same region as they had - let alone in a country that no longer exists. My first language is not the same as theirs (even if I had picked their accent up fairly quickly). I wasn't as experienced (or as gifted) in the shifting of heavy objects, working with lighting or the laying of cables (be that under a stage or in the snow) as they were. And I couldn't stand on the top of a ladder, eight metres up - whilst stoned - and continue to work unaffected. I wasn't like that. My path in life had intersected their paths for a few months, and although I had enjoyed the ride whilst it lasted, my train had continued down a different set of track from the train that they were in. We had all ridden the underground together without tickets on many occasions on the way to and from work sites, avoiding plainclothes ticket inspectors, but my non-existent ticket was for a different destination from the one stamped onto their equally invisible tickets.
I considered whether I should scan and email in some photos - to give them a flash from the past. And I still consider whether I should. Perhaps I will - without a valid sender's address. Wait for the photos to appear on MySpace, knowing that my former friends had seen them, worked out from who they were from, and had thought about the time that we had spent together over a decade ago.
The world may be smaller, thanks to the connectivity the Internet provides, but there are certain distances that remain - and with good reason.
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