I’ve come to lament the prevailing mediocrity of my re-adopted country, the Bundesrepublik Durchschnitt, where the news seems to only deal with fractional changes in percentage points up or down from a compromise or an average. This averageness has made steady inroads into PB, where I still live, somehow finding expression in a surge in Geox shoes as the hallmark of practical averageness. I am hoping that at some point the gentrifcation carousel will catch up with itself and place me back at the cutting edge, marked by a good mixture of migrant workers and the next version of the flat white, though I hope Cafe CK will stick around, that bastion of excellence and decadence.

Which is why I am so proud of our relatively recently upgraded Kaisers as a place to spend your additional 5 EUR social security per month, because it certainly isn’t average, more Running Man goes shopping. First, they didn’t fall into the glaringly obvious trap of removing the old GDR Kaufhalle aluminum modules that adorned all Kaufhallen around here, communicating “Kaufhalle” to everyone in a nice example of meaningful ornament. Thank you Kaiser, for the sensitivity of sparing us another mindless act of effacing any historical trace of the class enemy with the ephemera of globalized consumer culture. Second, the shit they pulled off inside is absolutely first rate, absolutely daring, something beyond the wildest imagination of anyone daydreaming the future into a void of Tempobohnen (parboiled, freeze dried “speed” beans) in this former Kaufhalle 25 years ago.

Kaufhalle ornament

An array of ceiling mounted, rotating gobo lights and computer controlled strip lighting daube the aisles in pulsating hews from chartreuse to mauve. A weird Ballardianate mare, shopping unsuccessully for arrow root amidst a pop-up border patrol carneval in the flood light zone of the death strip. Background music: The Great Escape, whistled, muffled only by the slightly crude humming of the rotating gobo lights. And in the end, the cashier’s recurring question, a bold pretense of normality: “Sammeln Sie die Herzen?” (”do you collect hearts?” – Kaisers’ reward program). I think they should add the sound of helicopters and the odd bomb whistle. I can see the next stage. Shoppers are handed laser price scanners and shoot down bar codes of sales prices that pop up randomly around the market. If you make it to the cashier without stepping into one of the rotating gobo light cones, you receive double the amount of Herzen. After a few attempts, advanced shoppers master the parcours on Segways and peyote in just under two days.

And it really has an effect, though I’m not sure it’s the intended one. I’ve spotted Incidents of open displays of schizophrenia, a suspiciously skinny, scruffy man in very short red shorts giving his best rendition of an opera overture in the snack aisle, seemingly mislead by this environment to open displays of madness. In the evenings, after the few remaining nice old ladies in PB have cleared the aisles, the show starts, the gloves come off and the most frenzied, primordial shopping experience this side of spear hunting a mamooth begins, for organic avocados, biodegradeable tensides and increasingly, Sternburg Export.

(The clips were shot just after the show starts at 19:00 every day. It picks up after, when hungry shoppers abound. It’s a bit long, but I was really trying to get the sound of the lights rotating.)

Back in the day

I was delighted to find that my local Kaisers supermarket was celebrating 20 Years of German Reunification as only Kaisers can: with a huge wall of beer and crisps. I quite like this. It’s so refreshingly discourseless. After ten months of broadsheet coverage, and hundreds of hours of reflective documentaries, it’s the right time for Reunification to kick its feet up on the sofa with a beer and some crisps. Prost!

But 6 days ago – on the 4th of September to be precise – we saw this:

Christ died to save us from marzipan in September

Architecture can do little to compensate for the sub-molluscan cretinousness and sheer imbecilic insensitivity of those responsible for ordering Christmas goods at the end of August.

We beg forgiveness for the unorthodox turn of phrase, but: fuck you all, you dipstick bunch of moronic fat-heads. Go shove your clipboards where the sun doesn’t shine.

With the market hall on Zossener Straße in Kreuzberg currently undergoing major refurbishment, water pipes have sprung up in my own neighborhood, and run parallel to local Semi-Crap Supermarket, Kaiser’s.

Supermarkets in Berlin are common gathering spots for small troupes of alcoholics and tramps in varying degrees of inubriation, who gather during the day and turn the pavement into an impromptu outdoor pub. The alcohol of choice is usually tiny bottles of Korn (a rye-whisky), Kleiner Feigling or Jägermeister, or their cheaper generic brand equivalents.

Interesting to see how the pipes had been converted into a beautiful trophy-case of dead bottles:

Trophy case

Radical restocking policy

A swift puruse of Plus’ shelves this morning led me to seriously consider whether or not the local population might have gotton wind of some imposing natural disaster, and have been savagely hoarding since the end of last week. Skyscraper-high tidal waves and supersonic winds have yet to materialise, leading me to less spectacular conclusions: regional managers asleep at their clipboards across the state.

Thug fruit

Possibility of witchcraft

Kaiser’s have opted for worrying motifs of demon-like vegetables and condiments cavorting in moonlit city-scapes. In the photo above – showing part of the Teutoberger Platz branch in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg – one can make out a mischevious bottle of orange juice, an undead strawberry, a reanimated pear and an orange, expertly modified by an unknown into the likeness of an infamous 20th century dictator. Quite why Kaiser’s identifies itself with these covorting, zombified edibles I do not know.