8.9.2004 my street
The street I live in is a straight one, and it leads up a swell. My appartment is somewhere in the middle of the street, comes shortly after a little crossing. The street itself begins with fairly old city houses between which there are no spaces. Many cars and motorbikes are parked on its sides. It's a side street, but broad enough for a side street. It has a late night shop, a sex shop, a turkish restaurant which is quite expensive, a bistro with really good prices for nice lunch, a baguetterie with a nice pink interior, a computer shop with a woman at the counter which reminds me to the mother of a school friend. It has a shop that sells 'romantic' clothes for goths, with a fat lady clerk that has a thick and weighty aura of womanhood around her. It has a nice restaurant/cafe which opens in the evening, Cafe Leonardo it is called. Very busy in the summer, but since all the guests like to sit at the tables on the street in the summer it's got much free corners in the house where people can read, write, or just have a quiet drink before they go home and into their beds. The street has two vulgar pubs, Oppel 40 and St. Pauli Eck, places where some elder drunks and young soccer hooligans meet. There is a small park, wide enough to allow to see the moon in the night. A little electricity transformation house, whose walls show grafitti art, a clown with ballons in front of a black background, a shadowy woman which gestures in front of a yellow blackground with a bright spot like the sun, some windows which seem to give a view into a garden, and a small man whose face looks like a mixture of an idol with a medal or ancient coin, waving to give a greeting, wearing a roman toga. There is a drugstore where the clerks are often reluctant to exchange banknotes for coins if you ask for coins for cigarettes. And there's a playground, very busy in the warmer seasons of the year, especially in the vacation times. Farther up the swell there are mostly very old houses; one of them has a some band it which sometimes plays loud death metal. There's also a club there, AZ Conny, alternative, independent, cheap.
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9.9.2004 the place in front of the supermarket
A street that emerges from under a railway bridge. If I came up the street, past the bridge, I'd see a parking lot, and the big block of a house which has the market in its street level. The rest of the house has appartments, with supposedly many expensive ones on the top, which have a roof terrace, with trees planted on them. On the street level there is, besides the supermarket, a small vietnames shop whose owners make a living mostly by selling fruits, I think. They have good coconut juice. On the little space right next to the vietnamese shop there are usually drunks hanging 'round, drinking beer. I'm often passing by there; I usually prefer small shops, but can't afford the prices anymore. The shops have become rare, too.
9.1.2005 the bars and pubs of my quarter
I used to hang around in them very often, mostly alone, with a book to read or with my notebook. Nowadays I usually prefer to stay at home and write on the computer. That's because hanging out at bars got a bit expensive, and because I've gotten too annoyed at having to listen to the music in the bars. I honestly hate almost any radio station they play in the city, no one seems to listen to the few interesting ones anyway. They're all wanting to be funny, but usually in the primitive way I can't laugh about.
Anyway, there are still a few places I go to now and then. One is the bar in my quarter's oldest cinema. I like to drink a campari there now and then. I go there mostly because this enables me to share in a faint festive feeling. When people enter to watch a movie there's still the faint scent of the past in it, when going to the cinema was an important cultural event.
One other place I occasionally go to is on my street, the pub Oppel 42. It's full of alcoholics, asocials, hooligans and beer drinking pseudo-nazis. But hey, it's cheap and I somehow can relax there. I often buy lighters there because the owner sells them for only 50 cents. Last night I was there and ate a soup for 1 euro and 20 cents.
But even those place I go to I've started to frequent less and less. I think that's a sign for me getting out of the desperate need to want people around me. I've come to the point where I don't need all of them anymore, where I simply want to preserve myself over wanting to preserve the whims of my super-ego telling me to play a part in this society.