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The Olympic torch of punk ended up in Berlin

Look at this video.

Look at this video. I imagine it must have been constant madness (not the band) to have been a punk in Berlin during the 80s. Anyone who wasn’t sitting on the street scrounging a handful of Deutsch Marks for his next Sternbourg must have been a terrible person. I don't have to tell you it's not like this anymore--nothing is--but just to see what it really is like now I visited the last remnants of a once majestic scene in one of Berlin's last remaining squats, the Tommyhaus. At this point I sadly have to say, they're old. Seriously old.

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The Tommyhaus is somehow the ground zero of anarchy in Berlin. As one of the first squatted buildings in the city, it was under surveilance by state security for years and was considered one of the biggest security risks known to Berlin because it edges up right where the government likes to conduct business. The police would therefore show up at regular intervals and crush it to pieces. But what did they expect? The building was named after a bomb-dropping terrorist the police blew up into tiny pieces.

Today the Tommyhaus is still spitting in the face of democracy, civil obedience, and the gentrification of Berlin. It has seen everything. From the terror of the RAF and the 2nd of June Movement, from punk in Berlin to the uncountable crusties who threw up on the bar. The other evening I passed by to see what happened to the former Berlin punk scene. But somehow it reminded me of visiting my senile grandfather to deliver last rites on his death bed.

I didn’t just feel alone. I was alone. Science has proven that the three man mosh pit is a waste of time.

After I asked them if I could take a picture, they assumed I must be a professional photographer and started to tell me about the last hidden and dirty industrial ruins and locations in Berlin. At some point they started to talk about beautiful shards of light sparkling through broken walls.

The Lazy Slobs. I guess they are older than the Rolling Stones. Their band members die like flies so the rest of them decide to carry on, eternally reforming as a tribute to the dead. The singer scared me to death. At first I wanted to ask her if she could cut my hair but then I saw the bunch of dreadlocks on the back of her back head. Then she suddenly started shouting "WAR! WAR! WAR!“in a throaty Mongoloid voice.

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This is Nize. He is supposed to be a West Berlin punk of the first wave. After I asked him what happened to punk he started swearing about East Germany. In this case East German punks and how the shitty fucking bastard East Germans punks started to take a shit on the scene after the shitty fucking wall came down and now all the shitty people go to their shitty concerts in shitty Friedrichshain and that’s why the shitty place is here so damn shit empty. All right then.

I don’t have a clue who this guy was. He refused to talk with me. He stood along the wall the whole evening looking very "cool" and important. I think he is like the grown-up version of a mall punk.

This guy--I love this guy! I know him from the subway. His job is to stand there drunk and drink even more while he is insulting people. He had arrived there with plenty of bottles of cheap beer in his bag and convinced the guy at the entrance that he just has to drink it, because it is the only beer he likes.