skint...aber...

I remember not long after living in Berlin, A friend once took me to rote rose. We’d just left a fairly glamorous party in mitte, and were looking for a local night cap in kreuzberg at five in the morning. It would be funny there. he said. I’m not even sure I really wanted to keep drinking. It would probably be more truthful to say I was avoiding going home.

When we walked in, there weren’t so many people. We sat at a table. He asked me what I wanted to drink, and looking at the grim decor and grimmer people, all I wanted was water.. Two boys were poised on the brink of fighting. An old woman on her own was staring hard at the nicotine stained walls. A man rambled to himself. Even the bar staff looked angry. I drank my tap water quickly and looked at my friend, who without a word, drained his drink . We left. We were silent walking the two blocks until we had to part ways. He said “ it can be funny there sometimes...”

Until something in my eyes made him trail off.

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When I first went with him to his new place, just past the boundaries of the up side of his up and coming district, I remember mentally marking the building, by its placement between a triad of the kind of tacky looking bars you would probably only suggest going to, if you were joking. On the corner opposite his was a bar named Korner (yes spelled with a cheeky k). Each time I passed it and the others, I thought of how we would most likely never venture in. Its like the kneipe next door to mine, the one I would like to check out, but intimidated by the midday alcoholics stumbling in, am never brave enough to dare.

Months later, for reasons I won’t explain, we are walking right into one of these very bars. A cheery blonde in a lame dress stamps my hand, London all over her accent. On we go into the heaving throng, Hipsters all of them. No one over the age of thirty. The music and conversationg at full volume. For the first half hour or so, all I can hear around me, is english.

He and I have both lived in Berlin for some time, before that we lived in London. Surveying our surroundings, trying to make sense of it all, our eyes meet and then almost silmultaneously we say “ this is like… Shoreditch?”

I overhear someeone say “ they have old people serving???”

The bar staff do look ancient. The joke more than anyone is on them. Most likely paid no more than a regular shift, but with a heavier workload. They are pushed by a less than patient crowd, continuing to ask for drinks they do not have, while most likely leaving no tips. The joke in fact, is possibly also over their head. But what is the joke?

A super trashy setting for young privileged decadence. A hipster party in a kneipe, in the middle of nowhere, with old bar staff! Fantasticaly ironic Isn’t it? Its like….

flash gentrification.

The bar, the area. gentrified for one night only! Don’t miss out!

So here’s what I’m wondering.

when did irony become such a cherished characteristic?

When did irony become so synonmous, with cool?

My old local in london, the dolphin, had much of a smiliar formula. Take an old grotty pub, much loved by locals who are actually from the area, and have the odd night with hip dj’s and their followers, to mash it all up. I did love it for this. But when I took friends there up from brighton, they kept saying it didn’t at all seem like my kind of pub,. I liked that, but I also worried that they had called my bluff.

Was the reality that there were only so much of real that I wanted.? Because if I really wanted east london authentic, why would I never go to the wetherspoons on the street across?

I’m not entirely sure, but as for this kneipe party we went to, all I can say is, it did end up being a brilliant night out. And there is no irony in that. So maybe the truth of it is, when the party is a great party, where it is, is of no relevance at all.