the B183 water crisis of 2009

after a while of not paying the water bills they cut off the water. the taps were dry and you couldn#t flush the loo. it lasted 4 days before me and moli (fuck you pernickety linguists), before me nd moli had taken it upon ourselves to organise an impromptu DnB soli party to cover the reconnection charge. the night was called "help us flush" and inaki drew us up an awesome flyer - i'll try and include a copy. X had rinsed the supermarket for 10 or so bottles of 5-finger discounted spirit so the bar could sell the strongest and worst tasting cocktails in the whole of Berlin-Mitte. no one knew how to consist a cocktail so we blended blindly. rum and orange juice with a shrug of brown sugar. apple and ouzo. vodka and milk. it was a dirty poison and had you crawling home. we gave them appropriate names: "sewage sunrise", "bitch piss" and "apocalypse - NOW!", respectively. so in-between; trying to borrow a PA, organise DJs, copy flyers and paste them all over the city, clean up the bar, buy in the beer, set up the lights, clear the yard, get some kind of wind in the sails, get balls rolling etc etc; people were still using the toilets. 50 people, 4 days, and at the best of times, 4 toilets that ran when there WAS water. do the math. so moli and i are running round like teenage anarchists on their first riot - not really knowing how this thing works, but knowing, with a humming bird franticity, that something has to be done right now - and we notice the crappers getting out of control. course we told people to go somewhere else (library, döner, park etc) but drunk punks tend to need this shit explained in disgustingly obvious detail. day dot wasn't so bad, but by the second day the shit was threatening to escape the bowl. by day 3 it had, and pyramids of shit were forming just above the rim of the seat. you could see that people were excavating the mound's summit with jets of high-pressure piss so that it was still possible to drop one last turd on top of the heap. by the morning of the 4th day the situation was truly remarkable. the mountains had risen in the night and stood well above the rim, their peaks breaking through a ceramic ring of clouds. i wondered how they got to be so big! no one could have SAT on it. had people been shitting into bags and then depositing the waste into/onto the toilet? and then it dawned on me. someone must have got up, each foot on opposites sides of the seat (to stand, head almost in the ceiling), squatted over the mound, and let another one rip. i was genuinely inspired. what a hero of depravity to have handled such a manoeuvre. i just couldn't believe it. and as i stood there pondering - hand on hip and shaking my head - less viscous turd was leaking through the gap between toilet and seat like skanky lava and brown vomit. like diseased alcholic lahars. like some terrible skat monster from the world's worst porn movie. i gagged. i gagged and staggered out of the cubicle. i dont know who eventually cleaned it all up. i dont like to think about it. meanwhile in the bog of the bar there's a similar problem, except we're doing water runs over to the pond in the park. we've got buckets and handwritten instruction ("DONT SHIT") pasted to the wall for the punters. thats our defence. anyway, these people are loving this stuff like "omg - look at that!" and thinking all the nude art is just fabulous. Toto is working the bar & vokü - dishing out Reis mit Scheiß and washing the dishes in more pond water (LOL). back and forth it goes: this salty mess. dumpstered veg that would kill you if it wasn't cooked, floating in a soupy sauce. fuck it. it's vegan, except for the sweat, and it's basically free. shut the fuck up. we're eating it too. and we're really gonna need those toilets the next few days. Robiin finally agreed to work the door on the condition he can style it his way. he's basing the entry price on the roll of a die - 1 to 6 - and generally being a dick coz he doesn't like Drum n Bass or the "yuppie-tanz-kacke" clientele. a guy in shiny shoes and a dull designer jacket starts up whining he doesnt want to pay €6 coz he landed a 6. Robiin checks the cuff - the cut - the clogs, and slowly leans over to spit on the floor, posing heavily with his eternal smoking prop. "dont piss yourself like a baby, micki" Robiin tell him, and the guy pays anyway - wait for it - with a 50! i dont think he even understood that to a poor bloke that seems fucking ironic. TWAT. we stabbed at people's arms and gave them lame tatoos when they were too drunk to resist the lure of our charming, stinking, priceless, smashed up punk cavern. i remember Toto kicking out guys (and i mean - kicking!) for being too yuppie; the definition of which largely entailed owning car keys or sniffing too much coke off the bar. sometimes we had to restrain him or else we would have been our own customers, serving no one but ourselves. we stood up for each other like a unity i've never felt before or since. that's how it was. tru solidarity, yo. B183 vs The World. and that was the best thing about it: we werent confined to the alternative pens of F'hain. we were smack-bang in die mitte. Mitte: square and square and feigning a pathetic push against the current of crawling investors. it wreaks of marketing around these parts and all i can see is pretentious art galleries, trendy bars, luxury flats, scaffolding and i <3 Berlin. foreign gold; forged in Berlin's heart; branded and minted. just like these landlord fucks will be in 10 years or so. naturally, i loved squatting Mitte. i loved being the wart on the celebrity's face; devaluing their screen-time-dollars.<br /><br />anyway, the party went well and we got our water back. it's a shame we had to pay the bill, but you know; you can't win em all. besides, we were the only houseprojekt in Berlin not paying a landlord and we ripped the leccy black for about €100 a month between the 50 of us. ANY QUESTIONS? i-don't-think-so.