YOUR WEEKEND: A short study of Berlin history will reveal the Trümmerfrau, the women who cleared up the rubble left behind by the war – Teufelsberg, for example, is just a giant pile of pig bones and condom wrappers mounded by these women. No banana skins though: we wouldn’t want to ruin a time-honored Cold War truism. But what appears to have been ignored is that a sentient look around Berlin suggests that they didn’t do a very good job of it. Or could it be that with all the stalled construction and useless packaging, capitalism generates considerably more refuse than communism. Plus, all the banana skins.
Still, compared to the United States, which has spent its entire post-war period transforming the Grand Canyon into a landfill, Berlin is an ER. But then, a world without trash is a world without the luxury of trash, and in a declining economy both scavenging skills and OCD wriggle toward ascension. And, in the case of aging avant-prodigy Harmony Korine’s latest film TRASH HUMPERS (Fri, June 18 @ Monster Ronson’s), dovetail. It’s the sort of film where form follows function, whose look is consistent with its content and, of course, it’s barely getting a release in Germany, despite an ever-simmering Gummomania. Still, karaoke haven Monster Ronson’s means Crack Baby party-time, and STEFAN DREHER of Blue in the Face and GRAHAM PEEL (Dolby Anol.) will be DJing afterward, as you drink enough to create your own flotsam. And jetsam!
Yes, garbage, garbage everywhere, but not a drop does stink. A couple of years ago I had a DJ gig at the Russian-souled CCCP Club cancelled for what might be considered a fair-enough reason: the building had gone up in flames. As I had already managed to trudge 800 records down the hill, I showed up anyway, to find the bar still open, illuminated by candlelight. An owner and I then went through the Hof, sifting through charred computers and recording equipment, which he intended to clean and fiddle with. Those computers are probably running the city by now. Just as the original Waffengalerie has gone, reduced to rubble so that that rich have more space for their $33,000 mattresses, so must CCCP move on, only it does so to a bigger and, more importantly, historically-protected spot, the location of the short-lived Lokal, in the heart of the new hotel-cocaine district. Which means, of course, a grand opening party (Fri, June 18 @ CCCP). And, I would imagine, another fire.
It seems unlikely that all the disco fire in the world will eliminate the bacchanalia-produced waste that a weekend of CSD partying will produce – is Christopher Street in Manhattan still gay-oriented, or have condos taken over? I suspect that most of the trannies will be watching footie like the rest of us this weekend, but the official opening party (Fri, June 18 @ Tresor) looks like a pretty typical night out in Berlin: SNAX, GLORIA VIAGRA and the Bonito House Club crew. With equal rights for homosexuals closer to reality than ever (in Berlin, anyway), it will be comforting to know that, with the end times coming, we we’ll be going down together, so to speak, piled under a mountain of rubble so high that the Trümmerfrau finally have something to lean against as they take their millennium-long cosmic cigarette break.
