Back in 80s West Berlin, if you wanted to go out at night, you had two options. The kids who were into mainstream pop – the ‘poppers’ as we called them derisively – headed to the discos on Ku’damm, around the glittering Breitscheidplatz and Europa Center. Those whose tastes were a touch more adventurous, a bit more underground, went to Schöneberg, to the neighbourhood around the ‘Potse’.
No one calls it that anymore. But back in the day, the Potse was an affectionate name for a seedy boulevard: the Potsdamer Straße, one of Berlin’s most famous arteries before the war. It was here, just off of the Potse, on Pallassstraße, that Josef Goebbels made his famous Sportpalast speech in 1943, in which he asked Germany: “Do you want total war?” (“Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg?”). In 1973, the bomb-wracked Sportpalast, called by Goebbels “our greatest political grandstand” was torn down and a year later replaced by a sprawling housing block called the Pallasseum, which became a controversial symbol for multicultural Berlin.
Much of the Potse had been bombed out, its vacant lots gradually filled up with brutalist housing for the poor. In the 70s and 80s, it was the neighbourhood of punk clubs and alternative venues like Risiko, Ex ‘n’ Pop, K.O.B., Drugstore and the Quartier Latin – spots that were both hip and edgy at the same time.
The Potse and its environs were junk territory. The iconic discotheque the SOUND (famously frequented by Christiane F.) was on the side street Kurfürstenstraße, also famous for being the Strich, the stroll for cheap and underage sex workers like Christiane F. herself.
At night, my friends and I would take the U1 from our comfortable suburbs to frequent the neighbourhood punk clubs. After school, we came here to sift through vintage clothing in second-hand shops like Garage (which still exists) or look for the latest release of Alien Sex Fiend, Leather Nun, Nick Cave or The Cramps at one of the best record shops in West Berlin: Mr Dead & Mrs Free (which recently closed after being in business since 1982). It was there one day in 1986 that I saw the magazine for the first time, the magazine that would change my life: Ich und mein Staubsauger (Me and my Vacuum Cleaner).
It was there one day in 1986 that I saw the magazine for the first time, the magazine that would change my life.
Ich und mein Staubsauger was a cheaply produced fanzine from West Berlin that first came out in 1986, with a circulation of just 200, with each copy costing one Mark. Two years later, by the end of its short-lived career, it had reached a circulation of 2,000, at two Marks a pop.
Each issue featured a streamlined 1970s-style vacuum cleaner in various unusual juxtapositions on its cover: in the place of Christ in a Christmas nativity scene, with a naked pin-up girl, with the singer Nena on the moon, atop a socialist memorial in a square in some Eastern Bloc city… There were no computers back then, so everything was typed out on a typewriter, with typos crossed out and corrected by hand.
It contained exclusive, bitchy interviews with Nick Cave (a Berlin resident at the time), reports from the other side of the Wall in the Ostzone, depressing letters from alkoholidays in West Germany (“I can imagine nothing more gruesome than to be drunk in Mainz, a brushed-up, ironed-out and perfumed city”) and followings in the footsteps of Iggy and Bowie.
The interviews were rarely conducted sober. Much of the subject matter and jokes revolved around alcohol. Clearly, the magazine was the product of guys who had too much free time on their hands. Seeing that they needed people to sell the magazine, I picked up the phone one day and called Trevor Wilson.
Trevor, an Englishman and an old punk who would eventually figure as a protagonist in a novel entitled Once Upon a Time in the East, told me to come by and pick up a batch of magazines. So, I went to Kirchbachstraße 17 in Schöneberg and met this messy-haired guy with a scar on his cheek. He gave me an armful of magazines and wished me good luck.
Not only was Trevor the editor and publisher of Ich und mein Staubsauger, but he was one of its main writers. He wrote in German with a kind of wry, absurd humour – and most of the time under the influence.
The interviews were actually self-parodies. Rather than gleaning interesting observations and factual tidbits from European underground bands about music and life and whatnot, we would learn such meaningless information as whether so-and-so preferred his French fries with ketchup, mayonnaise or both, what brand beer such-and-such liked and what football team they supported. Mostly, it appeared the purpose of the interviews was to piss off the artist and somehow elicit a violent reaction.
It appeared the purpose of the interviews was to piss off the artist and somehow elicit a violent reaction.
Hippies were mercilessly disparaged. The Spießer (middle class philistines) were poked fun at remorselessly. There were ironic TV tips on Dynasty and tacky German soap Lindenstraße, tongue-in-cheek romantic love stories in instalments. Absurd trivia would be regurgitated. Recipes for singularly unappetising dishes would be provided. Reviews were full of intentional or unintentional non sequiturs.
There would be first-person reviews – written by Trevor or one of his alter-egos – of English-language movies at the Odeon theatre in Schöneberg (which still exists), in which we learned useless nonsense and trivial details, each one beginning with commentary on the squeak of the unoiled curtains, which, somehow for Trevor, detracted from the cinematic experience considerably. We would also learn about other extraneous details, such as how many cinema-goers were in the cinema and what percentage of them were ‘Ami’ soldiers.
“I couldn’t believe that they could make such a bad movie,” wrote the reviewer about Top Gun, “but they did it, and I was there. So, save your money and whatever you do, don’t watch this film. Nor should you get to thinking that it is so bad that it’s good. In no way is it thus.” Meanwhile, of Rambo 2, the reviewer wrote, “Fantastic. Simply ingenious! Rambo is ‘In’. Rambo is: AME-RI-KA!”
The thing about Ich und mein Staubsauger was you never knew whether the writers were talentless purveyors of bland fare and blather, or whether they were just taking the piss. It was, of course, a little bit of both.
There was the usual Hertha BSC football column, in which we learned what it’s like to endure an entire football match sober because the stadium beer is too expensive at three DM. “Then, as soon as I got home, David showed up with a crate of beer. It was heaven sent; maybe I’ll go to church tomorrow.”
There were off-kilter comic strips, fashion tips, guides on the best way to take care of latex pants and recipes for frozen fish bought at discount supermarkets. We learned about Die Wahren Ramones – ‘The Real Ramones’ – a band consisting of four brothers from Germany who emigrated to America in 1972 (their slogan being “Zabba, Zabba, Bläh”), where they got ripped off by the band who went on to international fame. Die Wahren Ramones were demanding their place under the sun.
More movie reviews from the Odeon, the running joke about the unoiled curtains (“it gets worse and worse”). Ludicrous quizzes. A Max Goldt prize for the most drunken person of the month. “All Hail to the Bierfront! LONG LIVE THE VACUUM CLEANER!”
The magazine and my involvement therewith was an endless source of merriment to my father, who couldn’t believe I was wasting my time on such a ludicrous venture. My friend, Steve L, though, was all for throwing in our lot with Ich und mein Staubsauger. This could be our ticket to Berlin’s in-scene, we felt.
Steve and I both went to a German-American school in Zehlendorf, and we were neighbours, living a block away from each other in Schmargendorf – a kind of quasi-Berlin suburb beyond the Ringbahn where the city seemed to peter out into villas and pine forest, what Christopher Isherwood called a “millionaire’s slum” in the Berlin novels.
Sometimes after school, I would go with Steve to his pad, an extensive, gloomy Altbau where he would cook tofu and play records for me: The Stooges, PiL and DAF, which Steve’s older brother had passed down to him.
Steve’s brother did something arty in LA, had known Bowie and Iggy when they were in Berlin and also sold West Berlin Fluxus-artist Wolf Vostell the two blue Cadillacs he used in his controversial Beton-Cadillacs sculpture on a roundabout at the end of Ku’damm (I remember enraged neighbours picketing the sculpture one day going past there, back when people gave a shit about such things).
Steve and I used to go out together to teenie discos like the Riverboat on Fehrberlinerplatz, where we would dodge skinheads, drink rum and coke and try to look cool while hitting on the chicks. Steve used to get a bit of grief for his looks: thin, blond hair and dark prescription glasses, which encouraged a lot of Heino jokes – and it was true, Steve did bear an uncanny resemblance to the schmalzy German Schlager star.
At any rate, one day, Trevor gave us a call, asking if we were free on Halloween night. Ich und mein Staubsauger were promoting a big bash, featuring the British electro-Goth act Alien Sex Fiend at Quartier Latin, and they needed us to man the tables and sell posters and magazines.
I can’t recall having sold many copies of Ich und mein Staubsauger at school. However, come Halloween, Steve, my brother and I made it to the Quartier and met Trevor there, who gave us a stack of magazines to sell, some posters and a couple of chairs and a table in the foyer.
As the night progressed, the crowd got drunker. Glasses were smashed. Someone proceeded to throw chairs. Steve dropped his trousers, hoping to appeal to the in-crowd that way. And then, when Alien Sex Fiend took the stage, Trevor called on me to work up front, keeping the crowd at bay. Being up close to the band was a fantastic moment. I watched Nick Fiend grimace under his white-caked face paint while being rocked by the dark, electronic industrial sound.
When I got back to the foyer, Steve claimed to have been chatting with Blixa Bargeld. I didn’t believe him and said he was a liar. Looking at my watch, I saw it was half past eleven. I had to be home in half an hour for curfew. When my brother said we had ought to make tracks, I told him to fuck off; I was having too much of a good time to think of going home.
So my brother left.
An hour later, he was back again.
“Dad’s in the car,” he said. “And you’re in some deep shit.”
The upshot was that I got a month’s restriction. It was over with Ich und mein Staubsauger and my bid at entering the legendary West Berlin Szene. Two years later, I was sent off to college in the States, where for four years, I would long with pangs of acute homesickness for good old Berlin. Only, by then, the Potse wasn’t where it was happening anymore; rather, in East Berlin. The Potse fell further into decline. The Quartier Latin, that legendary rock venue where I had seen Alien Sex Fiend perform, closed its doors the year the Wall fell.
Now, of course, the West is hip again and we again return to the mythos of old West Berlin, for instance, through the memories of Mark Reeder, whom I am sure I would have met had I stayed and whose docu-film B-movie features so much tantalising imagery from West Berlin, recalling scenes that I knew but was too young to fully appreciate.
Little did I know that Mark too was a contributor to Ich und mein Staubsauger (alongside Max Goldt, German literary national treasure; Sabine Toepfer-Kataw, past state secretary in the Berlin Senate; and Frank Jinx, DJ and publisher, who sent articles from the DDR). And as it turns out, I did, in fact, rub shoulders with Mark unknowingly at that Halloween party 40 years ago.
Such were the 80s for me: a decade of serendipity, of only-just-missed connections and my first (pretty unsuccessful) job selling Ich und mein Staubsauger.
