wordsmithlind

Once more, i tried to write for another blog, unsucessful, so here it is….

Many people say that Berlin today is a lot like New York was in the 80s—the focus on street art and culture, the fashion, maybe the unemployment. Berlin’s focus on youth culture is unseen in most areas of North America. The 50-year-old man browsing the many art exhibitions in Berlin is many years younger than most 25-year-old suburbanites of Chicago. The young hipster couple not yet 30 pushing the baby carriage have no thoughts of the ‘eventual move to the suburbs.’ Why would they? Everything is here and now. Why go off to the theoretical suburbs to get old and waste away when youth is abound? It is perfectly acceptable to be well into your 40s and still remain single, there are plenty of other people just like you with no desire to ‘settle down.’ This is true of most major cities, but what many of those cities lack is ‘youth,’ the feeling of ‘youth,’ the desire to be young (I think of Bob Dylan’s acceptance speech for the Tom Paine award; http://www.corliss-lamont.org/dylan.htm). In Chicago, for instance, there are plenty of single people well into their late-30s and 40s, and it is completely acceptable, but what Berlin has is different in that a whole culture of the city (not the entire city, but a good portion of it) is based around the idea of youth. The Prenzlauerberg District used to be the hotspot for young people looking for a cheap place to live after the Wall fell. Youth fled in and youth never left. These people grew up but remained young, and in doing so, they never left. What is still an area for artists, hipsters, musicians, and eccentrics, is also a safe area filled with children running around parks and playgrounds, while their hip and informed parents sit at the café across the street. The parents remain as fashionable as the newly arrived artist; no crossover into adulthood through poor clothing purchases; no Sears Catalog or JcPenny. These parents are hip and independent and most importantly young, a reflection of the Berlin to come. As long as the corporations stay away, which there is a good chance they will (frankly put, no one will shop there), then these special areas of Berlin will remain, and Berlin will continue to be the center of youth culture—even as the piles of diapers continue to mount.

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