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Walking through the park in the unexpected sunshine yesterday I realised suddenly: strolling through summer in Berlin is like strolling through an off-duty circus. People are riding bicycles with no hands, they are taking turns practising walking slack rope, one man is playing the tuba and another is set up with his slap box between […]

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Two hipsters compete in a Berlin bookshop, the day of David Bowie’s death Hipster One: I know, I mean I was like twelve when I heard ‘Changes’ for the first time. Hipster Two: I know, it’s like, I just… it’s like I had a personal connection. You know? Like I… Hipster One, abruptly: Yeah, everybody […]

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In Berlin people do all kinds of things out loud in public. You can buy drugs, smoke pot in the street and drink beers, you can walk with your dog into restaurants and boutiques. You can dance on street corners. One of the blisses of living here is that everyone is stranger and no one’s […]

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The last time I was at the airport I watched a band of six merry hipsters in beards (boys) and ballet flats (girls) and narrow cuffed jeans stop at the boarding gate to take a picture of themselves. One volunteered to be not in the picture and the rest fell instantly into a Tommy Hilfiger […]

A bar in Berlin. I am greeted by a dog. “Na hallöchen! (‘little hello’) Wer bist denn du?” He is wiry and rough-haired and nuzzles my bag, clearly scenting the traces of Another Dog on its old leather. Then said Other Dog bursts in. Writhes himself in an ecstasy into my lap. Now we are […]

Passed a remaining section of the Berlin Wall and saw tourists of all languages leaning up against it for photographs, posing with big smiles and often two thumbs up; one Japanese girl had a coy, sexy grin. I wonder what it is they imagine they are visiting. photograph is of a building-site skip transformed into […]

This afternoon riding the Underground (the above-ground Underground, speeding through the trees) I saw a bearded man put up his hand to the steel pole at the end of his bench seat. In doing so he embraced his girlfriend, sitting beside him rather hunched. He said to her, in accented English, “it’s good to be […]

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Voted! Gosh it feels wonderful. For those few minutes with ballot paper in hand, we are utterly sovereign, entirely free. It turned out something of an odyssey to get there: which feels also appropriate and fitting. So many people have died for our right. I got sidetracked, absorbed in some other work I was doing, […]

Cafe I used to work in, in Berlin, had sometimes a dozen Apple computers (mine included) lined apple to apple, cheek to cheek across the counters. People forget ‘branded’ is what they used to do to the rumps of cattle. To show they are *owned by somebody*. We think it means, “Now I Own This.” […]

Call off the search! I think I may have found the world’s heppest hipster. All those people complaining that they’re not one can relax: this guy blows you out of the water. He is tiny and slight – built like Prince – and perched on his front steps in a crowded cafe street, wearing skinny […]

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The problem of hipsters. Nobody is one, yet everyone complains about them. It’s a bit like environmental damage: everybody thinks someone else needs to change. I am listening to the couple at the next table lament how hip this neighbourhood has become. On this leafy street they can no longer find a seat, on a […]