• Film
  • Your Weekend: Basement-variety clubbing, vegan fun(!) & the Techno Viking

Film

Your Weekend: Basement-variety clubbing, vegan fun(!) & the Techno Viking

It’s my weekend for balance, with a guest in town, work to do, people to support and just the usual. My blog this week might seem a bit themeless, but rest assured my goal is still to rock.

Image for Your Weekend: Basement-variety clubbing, vegan fun(!) & the Techno Viking

It’s my weekend for balance, with a guest in town, work to do, people to support and then just the usual weekend exploits. My blog this week might seem a bit without them, but rest assured my goal is still to rock. So maybe this weekend we can focus on the schizophrenia of Berlin, and, fuck, you’re here for the tips and not the pretty prose, right? So let’s get to it and check out what’s up this weekend.

The usual for me on the third Friday of the month is to hit up Search & Destroy (Fri, Aug 20 @ Schwuz) for some dirty, rock’n’roll basement-variety clubbing – Schwuz is a queer club that’s mixed enough for all (ahem) comers. Tonight’s line-up is perfectly trashy: DJ sets by Eat Lipstick’s Anita Dwank, filmmaker/inebriated performer Reverso, Matt Sim (of Mt. Sims) and PnP. If you’re not in the mood for rock’n’trash, or you just don’t have the constitution for it, just take in Telepathe (Fri, Aug 20 @ Magnet Club). These affecting girls sound a bit like Interpol mixed with some Olympia, WA-style indie rock, so it’s a good chance, boy or girl, you might find your own affected indie-girl there. And they’re from Brooklyn. Everything from Brooklyn is automatically cool, right? As for an event that can’t go by without a mention – there’s Rave Tut Gut 2 (Fri, Aug 20 @ Festsaal Kreuzberg): a rave with a conscience. All profits go to helping German children with cancer. And good deeds can equal a good time as Bar 25 resident Britta Arnold will be spinning there. And people seem to enjoy Bar 25, right?

Saturday can start off with something as conscientious-but-fun as well, with the Vegan/Vegetarisches Sommerfest (Sat, Aug 21 @ Breitscheidplatz). As cornball as the whole event might sound – readings from Jonathan Safran Foer, vegetarian/vegan musicians (who cares?), family fun – the point is that vegetarian food is not as common in Berlin as it should be. Vegetarianism needs to be wrestled out of the realm of trendies with money and into something that is so simple and cheap that one can actually go: “Why the fuck wouldn’t you?” But let’s face it, most of you reptile-brained motherfuckers are probably more interested in Fuckparade 2010 (Sat, Aug 21 @ Leipziger Platz). Unfortunately not the sex party on wheels you might want, Fuckparade was started as the anti-commercial response to Loveparade, the tragically ended annual German rave. This is the event that gave birth to the infamous “Techno Viking” viral video in 2000. If you haven’t seen it, do so here NOW! Once you’re fed and pumped up, the evening descends and Berlin’ll be alive with everything you need – but don’t miss out on the  chance to see Jim Jarmusch’s rarely screened first feature film, Permanent Vacation (Sat, Aug 21 @ Lichtblick Kino). Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samarai was a long way off at that point, but it offers a glimpse of how the young auteur might have got there.

The last thing I have for you is Sunday’s explosive live reunion of not-so-angelic upstarts, Nuclear Family (photo; Sun, Aug 22 @ Silver Future & Ficken 3000). Separated by the national divide between Germany and Denmark, the electro-punk duo are reuniting this weekend for two live shows, and to work on their sophomore effort Fuck My He Art. Hopefully it won’t be a slump, chump – but I can guarantee the show itself will be messy, fun and sexy.

So, where are we now? I’m a bit lost, but I think that it’s all been worth it. Schizophrenia may the theme, but N-F-U, er, F-U-N is the end result. And body shakes from whatever you ingested on Saturday night.