Working on projects

Well, we've been working on our projects now for a little bit. I've selected our pub crawl tour guide as my subject. His name is Mac Redinbaugh, an Australian who now lives in Berlin with his girlfriend. 

We had a meeting the other day with Time magazine's Andrew Purvis. Those of us interested in pursuing careers in magazine and international journalism gained some valuable knowledge. Not being a journalism student, what I learned was almost entirely new.

Last night I went out on a crawl with Mac. Unlike when we went out for fun, this was all business for both me and for the guide from down under. We had something like 35 people on the crawl, as opposed to 9 or so when I went. The bars we went to were different, and the group wasn't as easily controlled. 

Our second stop was a neat bar filled with relics of the East. Despite the large group nearly filling the place to capacity, some of the crawl patrons still managed to find some locals to play foosball with.

Our next stop was a place the course had already visited with Prof. Freeman, Tacheles, on Oranienburger Straße. It is an old department store that is now home to an art exhibition/sale sort of thing plus something like three bars. We went up the staircase all the way to the top floor bar. The walls and even floor are covered in graffiti throughout the building, particularly on the stairs.

The top floor bar is actually outdoors, thanks to some early demolition that was done before the artists saved the building from being torn down in 1990. The lighting was blue/pink/purple themed there, quite pretty, actually. 

There are odd decorations such as old computers and monitors from that era. The bar is unusually small, so Mac only brought the more interesting and friendly people from the crawl to it, while the rest were left to their own devices on the ground floor bar, which is a bit more mainstream.

Mac (wearing the backpack and 'squeak my toy' t-shirt) talks to crawlers at the top floor bar in Tacheles.

Today Mac's girlfriend Lynsey had a painting in a local art show, so I worked it out that I'd come along with the two of them to document his life outside of the tours. We got together earlier in the afternoon so I could get some shots of the two of them training at their regular boxing gym. They make great coaches and sparring partners.

As we walked to the show, we ended up behind a nice little kid walking with his mother while pulling his red tricycle one-handed.

Graffiti is apparently serious business in Berlin. The artist who did this wall (sadly you'll get to see but a portion) signed with their e-mail address, probably to get interested passersby to contact them for their next wall that needs painting.

The art show had a nice selection of paintings, collages, a few photographs, some sculpture, and Mac and Lynsey's friend Val had a textile entry that was quite interesting. The real hit, though, was this piece by a nice young woman originally from New York. The viewer is supposed to participate in the art- Literally getting down and bobbing for the (organically grown) apples. I may not know much about art, but I do like apples!

The text on the floor reads "Please let me see you with both hands behind your back on your knees," describing the traditional apple-bobbing form. Mac tried it and lost his glasses into the water, but got the apple. Some people used the stem-biting technique, which is much easier, but he did it by biting the apple proper, which requires a large mouth, from my experience.

I expect one of the shots of that will make it into the slide show.