Tag Archives: Gentrification

The German Petty Bourgeoisie At Its/Their Best

September 13, 2012 By in Habitudes, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

One thing that all Germans have in common is their absolute disgust for all things kleinbürgerlich (petty bourgeois). You know; being small-minded, scrupulously orderly, old fashioned, reactionary, banal, provencial, dilettante and, well, “square?”

Another thing that all Germans have in common is that they are small-minded, scrupulously orderly, old fashioned, reactionary, banal, provencial, dilettante and, well, “square.” You know, kleinbürgerlich?

Take this latest tourist-bashing craze going on by the Enlightened Left in Berlin (the way coolest, least kleinbürglich city in Germany), please:

“Noisy tourists go home!” reads one hostile sign in the eastern district of Friedrichshain. “Berlin doesn’t love you,” say stickers plastering traffic lights in nearby Kreuzberg.

A gallery in an area known for its trendy bars featured for months a scrawled sign in the window: “Sorry, no entry for hipsters from the U.S.”

Being petty bourgeois here isn’t pretty, folks. It never has been. But it sure is petty. And somebody’s got to do it. I just wish they’re weren’t so many volounteers here all the time.

Gentrification Giants 1 – Subculture Vultures 0

March 25, 2012 By in Habeas Corpus, Helplessness, Hideology, High Art, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

An evicted group of about 20 subculture artist/activist types chained to the remains of Berlin’s graffiti-covered Tacheles alternative scene “living space” ruin is about to be forcibly dragged out kicking and screaming into German reality by black-clad gentrification special forces troops right here live on TV, I hope, but nobody can tell me when. Or on which channel or anything (maybe later in the Internetz?).

The group is defending “one of Berlin’s last bastions of alternative subculture, and are fighting eviction ahead of plans to develop it (the Tacheles) as an office and luxury apartments complex” and has to be dealt with accordingly, of course. After years of pussyfooting around with them first, I mean.

I would advise them not to let the door hit them on the way out but there are no doors at the Tacheles as they were surely used as firewood  long ago during one of those quaint, Stone Age let’s-not-freeze-to-death-tonight gettogethers so popular with artist types there and elsewhere here in Berlin.

Tacheles “is just the latest in a long line of public spaces that have been lost to private investors” and will surely be missed by all, myself not included.

Darko stands behind an iron gate, his bare chest daubed in red paint with the words “victim of bank.”

PS: This German subculture is not to be confused with this other German subculture here.

Phase-Out Gentrification Now!

September 18, 2011 By in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Other cities would love to have a problem like this. Berlin takes in 20 million tourist overnight stays a year, and the number keeps rising. Investors and property owners keep rolling into the Stadt like, well, investors and property owners.

But for many Berliners, this is a crisis or something. This means that their city is in the process of becoming something called bürgerlich (a German cuss word meaning middle-class or bourgeois). Berlin is becoming gentrified (meaning upgraded, by the way), which is absolutely unacceptable because, well, many Berliners don’t want to upgraded, thank you.

You see, bourgeois gentrification ist deshalb (is on these grounds) unacceptable because it is a sign of economic dynamism in a city that has long been thought not to have any. Gentrification means that money is coming into town, that Berlin is becoming more attractive for that tasteless middle-class ambience so dreaded here, that the self-contained and highly subsidized island of Berlin is suddenly becoming a place of social mobility where middle-class lifestyle visions (which none of you out there share) are now apparently easier to realize here than elsewhere in the country.

German Gentrification is bad for Berlin, in other words. It has to be phased-out, just like German nuclear energy was. And don’t get them wrong or anything, it’s not because these Berliners are being intolerant here or anything. It’s just that they are being intolerant here – and acting more bourgeois than the bourgeoisie they despise.

Wer hätte sich träumen lassen, dass ausgerechnet das arme Berlin einmal ein Gentrifizierungsproblem haben würde? Es könnte schlimmere Nachrichten geben.