All the photos of street art above come from Mitte, the central borough of Berlin. It’s the “capital” of Berlin, if you will. Around the backstreets of Mitte you find abandoned buildings filled covered in illegal art.
There’s some real creativity there, it’s refreshing compared to what we see here in San Francisco. Lots of paste, text, airbrushing, even mixed media. There’s a tinge of geekery to many pieces that you rarely see in the local scene.
But what impressed me the most was how well the artists integrated their pieces into the surroundings. For example, I didn’t even notice the mouse pointer until the forth or fifth time I walked past it. Or the “secret police” in the first image above, which was in and of itself quite secret as it was only visible from one spot.
The best art is the art that belongs where it is in some intangible, indescribable way. Which is to say my photos don’t just suck because I’m a shitty photographer — they suck because it’s not as good as seeing the art in person. And that’s the excuse I’m sticking with.
While in Berlin, I took a tour of the Schsenhausen concentration camp through Insider Tours, a tour company that offers fantastic (and cheap) walking tours in a variety of languages.
Schsenhausen was the first facility built as a concentration camp. Just outside Berlin, it replaced a lot of temporary facilities in existing buildings with a large facility custom designed for its purpose. The main feature was triangular layout (above) which allowed an SS guard just above the gate to see the entire prison yard and aim a giant machine gun anywhere he liked.
Schsenhausen was a work camp. Prisoners were used for free labor and as test subjects for horrible inhumane experiments. It began as a camp for political prisoners, but it also grew to include Jews, gays, the handicapped, and social outcasts. All of these people were mixed in with murderers, rapists, etc. sent from other prisons in Germany. Eventually POWs were included as well.
300 or so prisoners — all male — were crammed into fairly small buildings. I say fairly small because they don’t look too small from the outside, but inside there were probably 50 or so tourists and it was difficult to move around. It’s hard to imagine how cramped it would have been with 6 times as many people.
One of the remaining buildings was torched a few years ago by a neo-Nazi. It’s since been rebuilt and turned into a museum, but many burned parts including the peeling paint above remain as a memory.
A large building contained the kitchen in a basement. There’s a number of happy murals here which seem in stark contrast to the concentration camp. It’s not known exactly when or why these were painted. They’re now preserved behind glass.
After the Soviets took over half of Germany, they built this hideous thing on the site to memorialize the prisoners — but only the political prisoners. Red triangles were worn on the uniforms of political prisoners. Other prisoners wore different colors. The statue represents a working-class man communist rescued by a Soviet soldier and a politician.
Station Z was called “Z” because it’s the last letter in the alphabet, and it corresponded to the end of life for prisoners who were sick or had grown weak or injured. Originally prisoners were simply mowed down by machine guns in a ditch, but this was determined to be “inhumane.” Not to the prisoners of course, but to the guards who felt bad about just shooting defenseless people.
So they built a new Station Z, which was disguised as a medical office. Prisoners entered and were examined by a fake doctor. They were sent into another room with thick walls, where their skulls were measured. A second fake doctor would enter and look at the prisoner facing away from him (so he didn’t have to make eye contact) and shoot the prisoner exactly in the base of his skull with a small pistol. This minimized the mess. Later, they started experimenting with gassing prisoners using fake “showers” in the same building.
The dead bodies were then sent to be cremated in the next room. To make money, the Nazis sold the remains to their families with a fake death certificate. The workload was too high to clean the cremation furnaces after every use, so the remains were likely a mix of several people.
The Nazis claimed they did an autopsy on every prisoner, but in reality they only did autopsy on prisoners with unusual bodies or those who they had performed surgical experiments on. Above is one of the two autopsy beds in the camp.
End of the camp
When the Soviets began to win the war, the Nazis moved prisoners out of far away concentration camps to Schsenhausen. The camp became overcrowded despite the SS’s best efforts at killing as quickly as possible. But it was too late; they were surrendering. The remaining SS soldiers marched the prisoners out into the forest, then told everyone to go to sleep. The soldiers ran away in the middle of the night.
Once the Soviets had taken over, they used the prison camp for a while as their own to hold Nazis and other political prisoners. Thousands of Soviet prisoners were buried in a mass grave near the site. Eventually they shut down the camp, and most of what remained was lost in the next few years before the GDR government turned it into a memorial site.
Okay, I doubt Einstein really drew this. But the desks at his old university are very old, and many of them had fun drawings like the one above.
And in all fairness, the school has seen many other famous folks as well including Karl Marx, Max Planck, and the Brothers Grimm. Perhaps Karl Marx drew this as a critique of the failed capitalist state? We may never know.
On a small side street near the touristy hellhole of Alexanderplatz is a San Francisco themed burrito place. If you’re a burrito lover in or around San Francisco, you may have heard of this by now: they have a San Francisco Muni map covering on the wall and Anchor Steam (imported via Amsterdam) by the bottle.
The burritos are made traditionally, but they didn’t use an “assembly line” format like you find in so many SF taquerias. Rather, you order at the counter and they call your number.
To me, the burrito I had tasted more like something from Rubio’s than a traditional SF burrito. It was more sweet than spicy, very light on the rice, and wasn’t tightly rolled. Which isn’t to say that it wasn’t good! It’s just different. Unsurprisingly, the place seems to attract American expats in Berlin longing for home. And I can’t say I blame them — after a few days of heavy carb-and-fat laden German food, a burrito really hit the spot for me.
Oh man, first that whole debacle with Anthony Bourdain, now a new storefront with a big pink heart? Oh well, as long as the beer and bloodys keep flowing we shouldn’t complain too much. Spotted in Berlin near Alexanderplatz.
In spite of their uncomfortable seats and strange popcorn toppings, many of us have fond memories of Haight Street’s Red Vic Movie House, which closed forever on Monday after more than 30 years.
Their silent “Dishes” video (above) was of course shown prior to every film. It served as a reminder to not make a mess and to return your popcorn bowl after the film. Otherwise, of course, you might find yourself pulled under the seat in front of you down into the depths of hell. An important lesson for us all.
But what really made the Red Vic memorable wasn’t just their funny film bumper or their selection of cult classic films — it was the guests who showed up. For example, when I first saw mumblecore classic “Funny Ha Ha,” director Andrew Bujalski stuck around to answer questions and just hang out with us in the audience. That sort of interaction between filmmaker and audience was the rule, not the exception at the Red Vic. You rarely find that at any other theater.
Stopped by the Metreon lately? (No? Of course not.)
Currently it’s being torn up, and almost everything is closed. The only two remaining establishments are the theater and the Japanese restaurant. Everything else is either gone or being rebuilt. Even Jillians is closed for renovation, despite signs everywhere claiming the opposite.
The only two enterances now face 4th St. and Yerba Buena Gardens, with a temporary theater ticketing area on the ground floor. Everything else is walled off, with warning signs about hard hats.
Here’s to hoping the Metreon’s new Target store means fewer trips for us city folk down to the “twin Targets” of Colma and Daly City.
