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Post Titled: Territorial.
Sooooo the NY TIMES posts another ooh-how-cool,-grungy,-quaint-and-magical-is-Berlin travel story.
(Skip this paragraph, I'm just bitching- but to see the source of the bitching go directly to "IMPORTANT NOTE:" below...)
Regular readers may have noticed that on and off this Summer I had been grumbling about how my usual neighborhood haunts had quite suddenly and strangely become flooded by New Yorkers. Everywhere. A literal hipster plague.
Soooo, we now have yet another article on their front page (web) sweeping together a list of cool cool locations and generalizing the amazingness of Berlin... TO WHICH my BRAIN yet again responds like Ed Norton's character in Fight Club: "Marla, you liar! You big tourist! I need this! Now get out!"
My first few years here I was so happy to be so far away from the hordes of hollowed-out hipster american a-holes... now they seem to be embedding themselves. Fortunately, the turning of the weather is helping, chances are a good frost might kill most of them off.
IMPORTANT NOTE: There is another concern- despite my blatant one-sided rantings there are surely some amazing people visiting and I have met many of them, but- and here's the BUT- they are only ever in town for a couple of months... so, you can have a really great conversation, exchange info,l start meeting up, and your social circles may even mesh after a brief courting process BUT- after this little intellectual-emotional fling then they are gone. After a great Berlin expierence they are transported back to their stateside reality and you are left here, maybe happy to have given them a closer look at a life here that is quite unlike anywhere else, but ... ultimately it is so draining! And After this happens a few times... it just becomes frustrating, and you think: "I really like you, I wanna hang out with you and show you cool things but wait, wait, I've done this before. I've spent so much time and energy a relationship that had term limits. Another Summer fling friendship...ugh."
You could hypothetically do that over and over, but the reality is that these folks who are in town for a few months- despite how amazing they may be- don't have longterm friendship potential... so, you sttart to become a bit picky. People I once might've made an effort to keep hanging out with I now just sort of let go by the wayside, whereas people who you know are in Berlin for the long haul- those people are keepers. (or "stay-ers"?)
Granted it was cool to see Manfred's name in the NY TImes. But still... why can't they talk endlessly about Brussels or effing Antwerp? anyhwere else would do.
36 hours in Berlin by DENNY LEE
Urhm, side note: speaking of cool little hole in the wall Berlin venues, I had to pieces in a show last night at PremArts for the SIGNAL 09 POLYVISION show, which I was too busy to really collaborate on but the work was very clever- lots of animated projection which had its basis in some sort of very simple drawing...
Sooooo the NY TIMES posts another ooh-how-cool,-grungy,-quaint-and-magical-is-Berlin travel story.
(Skip this paragraph, I'm just bitching- but to see the source of the bitching go directly to "IMPORTANT NOTE:" below...)
Regular readers may have noticed that on and off this Summer I had been grumbling about how my usual neighborhood haunts had quite suddenly and strangely become flooded by New Yorkers. Everywhere. A literal hipster plague.
Soooo, we now have yet another article on their front page (web) sweeping together a list of cool cool locations and generalizing the amazingness of Berlin... TO WHICH my BRAIN yet again responds like Ed Norton's character in Fight Club: "Marla, you liar! You big tourist! I need this! Now get out!"
My first few years here I was so happy to be so far away from the hordes of hollowed-out hipster american a-holes... now they seem to be embedding themselves. Fortunately, the turning of the weather is helping, chances are a good frost might kill most of them off.
IMPORTANT NOTE: There is another concern- despite my blatant one-sided rantings there are surely some amazing people visiting and I have met many of them, but- and here's the BUT- they are only ever in town for a couple of months... so, you can have a really great conversation, exchange info,l start meeting up, and your social circles may even mesh after a brief courting process BUT- after this little intellectual-emotional fling then they are gone. After a great Berlin expierence they are transported back to their stateside reality and you are left here, maybe happy to have given them a closer look at a life here that is quite unlike anywhere else, but ... ultimately it is so draining! And After this happens a few times... it just becomes frustrating, and you think: "I really like you, I wanna hang out with you and show you cool things but wait, wait, I've done this before. I've spent so much time and energy a relationship that had term limits. Another Summer fling friendship...ugh."
You could hypothetically do that over and over, but the reality is that these folks who are in town for a few months- despite how amazing they may be- don't have longterm friendship potential... so, you sttart to become a bit picky. People I once might've made an effort to keep hanging out with I now just sort of let go by the wayside, whereas people who you know are in Berlin for the long haul- those people are keepers. (or "stay-ers"?)
Granted it was cool to see Manfred's name in the NY TImes. But still... why can't they talk endlessly about Brussels or effing Antwerp? anyhwere else would do.
36 hours in Berlin by DENNY LEE
Urhm, side note: speaking of cool little hole in the wall Berlin venues, I had to pieces in a show last night at PremArts for the SIGNAL 09 POLYVISION show, which I was too busy to really collaborate on but the work was very clever- lots of animated projection which had its basis in some sort of very simple drawing...
posted by "Post-Google" by TAR ART RAT at 8:33 am
1 Comments:
This is true - there is a travel/hipster cool article on Berlin just about every week in the Times now.
And whilst I fit into both categories of visitors, sort of (a whole year there working = not just a tourist, but not quite a permanent resident), the articles still aggravate me.
I think the Hauptproblem is that even as a two-week or month-long vacation, it's nearly impossible to get a sense of place.
Naja. Hopefully we'll be both back to live in Berlin next Fall-ish for another year. Impermanent residents.
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