More conventional urban treasure hunting is to be found in picking through boxes of cut-price books. This is of course a popular pastime in Paris, particularly along the Seine. This neat shopfront design playfully tempts the passerby to delve into the shop’s innards. The loss leaders in the boxes draw us in.

This untidy French shopfront certainly does not draw us in, at least not anymore. But the decaying lettering has left us with the decrepit painting business of ‘M. Badin’, which translates as ‘Mister Playful’. Serendipity or joke?

Eurotrash burial, on the cheap.

In this case I have to wonder if having fun as a window dresser could be costing a business valuable customers. You never know in the east side of Berlin. Is the responsible party in fact winning their business with this unlikely scenography? Or perhaps the people who enroll the services of this undertaker are just oblivious to it all, and are simply taken in by the assurance that the work will be done on the cheap.

Life Death under blue light.

The artistry demonstrated here does nevertheless provide a brave response to the quandary as to how in the name of the lord an undertaker should decorate a shop window. What dreams of death were occupying her subconscious while she hung these curtains of mirror mail? To be sure: as far as purely affective power and the ability to provoke the viewer goes, this work trumps anything you’re likely to see in the trendy art galleries to be found in the same neighborhood.

Next up: Berlin hairdressers’ trashy storefronts. Send us your pics!

On green-bin-day, thousands of identical green bins are wheeled onto the streets of this Dublin neighbourhood for emptying by the city council trucks. There are also black-bin days for general refuse, and brown-bin days for organic waste. In the past, everyone would buy their own bin container from the hardware shop, put all of their rubbish in it, and put the bin out on the street for collection. In that system, you knew which bin was yours because it was newer, older, bigger, smaller or different in some other respect to your neighbours’ bins. Perhaps yours had a metal body and a plastic lid, or vice versa. Ours had a highly distinctive crumpled edge, a result of being accidentally thrown in under the refuse crusher in the back of the lorry.

However, market-friendly policies pursued by the government, and in line with European Union legislation, has led to private companies moving in on the waste disposal market. These companies are paid from the city’s funds, and they run a leaner, union-free service. Less lucrative contracts for certain parts of Dublin are not taken by private companies, so the city council still has to cover them. Effectively, the city council is subsidising the private bin collectors.

This process is part of the ‘greening’ of refuse policy, which encourages people to recycle. A bin collection charge has been levied by the city council, but has met considerable local opposition and boycotts. Now in some parts of the capital, the city council has receded from public consciousness as the body that runs the city’s rubbish, while in others it is a bogeyman that brings poor people to court over non-payment.

One side effect of these policies is people stuffing domestic waste into public litter baskets, which are often full and overflowing as a result. Another is ‘fly-tipping’, i.e. driving your rubbish around until you find a secluded spot and dumping it there. The Dublin and Wicklow mountains to the south of the city are particularly scarred by this.

There are many other side effects, not to mention complicated controversies concerning an incinerator (another case of the city contracting out its work to private business). But the rather prosaic side effect illustrated here is that now each household is issued with a standard bin, each identical to the next. They have barcode identity tags, which are scanned when the bins are emptied and the owners charged accordingly. Rubbish presented in any other container is ignored. Because the bins are now all the same, people write their house number, and sometimes their street name, on the side of the bin. That way, when the collection has been made, you can be sure you are wheeling your own bin back in, and not someone else’s. What has developed is a weird array of fonts and handwritings, most of them achieved with an arresting slovenliness. Though, as we can see above, some people try to beautify the things.

There’s so much Berlin crammed into this scene. For those not well aquainted with the city, let’s go through the picture point for point, and then not draw any conclusions.

1) The burnt bin: a recurring motif in the city. The bin is a great target for the hobby arsonist. They produce tonnes of thick black smoke, and a whole neighborhood can stink like hell for days afterwards. Recently though, Porsche Cayennes and VW Tiguans have become the objet du jour for a new breed of semi-professional arsonist, who reason that torching cars is a legitimate political act which will help bring back low rents to gentrified neighborhoods.
2) If the bin is pushed against the wall of a freshly rennovated building before ignition, it’s possible to melt away the polystyrene foam cladding and leave a crust of plaster dangling in front of a narrow cavity. Old brickwork is exposed, and a temporary canvas for street artists is revealed.
3) The daubed number 6 and the yellow smiley are the work of graffiti artist ! 6-_-.4rtist.com#-_-. Rumor has it, that ! 6-_-.4rtist.com#-_- is a friendly 46 year old with a robust collection of 500 vandalism charges.

I’m using all my powers of Holmesian abductive reasoning, but I just can’t figure out what this little hut is for. All I can say about it for sure is that it’s dorky. Let’s just run through the facts:

– It has a tapered roof
– It is connected to a wood conduit
– It is braced to the ground
– It is made of cheap, maybe found building materials
– It has no openings

So whatever is inside needs to be protected from the weather. Whatever is inside probably needs electricity to work, and might even be sending signals back out through a cable in the conduit. Being braced to the ground, it’s contents are important enough to warrant a modicum of security. Cheap materials hint at a quick solution to an impromptu problem. And the lack of openings rules out the need for regular access.

I am inclined to propose that the hut contains an electric dog which monitors traffic. Whatever the case, I’m damned if it isn’t just a dorky little hut.

The city is a harsh environment. It’s all about adapt-and-survive. If you can’t tailor your own behaviour to the demands of sudden change, then you’re doomed.

So when the authorities deem it necessary to install inexplicable rings on lampposts, and you’re a casual metropolitan dude in need of a good old lean, then there isn’t a moment to be lost. You must sieze the opportunity immediately, stake your claim and show no mercy.

Martini anyone?

Colleague Andreas kindly sent me this disgusting photo more than a year ago. Maybe it was revulsion that made me forget to post it in the first place, but a spot of harddrive spring cleaning brought it back to my attention.

I am of course reminded of colleague Oliver’s comments on my recent digression on state-of-the-art laser treatment for hair loss and hair growth encouragement, which wondered off into a peculiar discourse on speculative parallels between intimate anatomical enhancements and architecture.

The marker-pen label adorning the orifice above indicates that this is actually some kind of temporary letterbox. Quite why it should be shitting out a briquette of insulating foam is anyone’s guess.

Photographed on Jan. 24th, 2009 in back of the shopping mall in Aurdal, Norway.