A Senior Edit by Sarah Madges

DEADITOR

A flip of the coin (No Country for Old Men style) landed me at Fordham. My decision to join the paper, however, was much more deliberate. I was a freshman doing the wide-eyed walk around Eddie’s thinking I was going to sign up for everything at the club fair and get involved and make friends etc, etc. I just remember a swath of sweaty shirtless dudes, one holding a boombox blaring the Replacements, all ironically yelling some variation of “Hey! You look alternative! Write for the paper!” at whoever walked by. It was a bit overwhelming, but I saw future Editor-in-Chief Kate Murphy calmly perched in counterpoint to all the wild testosterone and was comforted into signing up and attending the first meeting. That was back when the loudest talkers ran the show, and Sports was still a section, and one of the EICs was a dude wearing a Talking Heads T-shirt who intimidated the shit out of me simply because his baritone and prolific blogging made him sound authoritative. It was very much a boys club, and a seemingly pretentious boys club at that, so of course I consistently started writing for them while avoiding the meetings out of timidity.
It wasn’t until late January that I returned to that ghost town that is the Ramskellar/Annex and was the awkward home of Rodrigue’s Coffee House until they got their building back in 2009, where we used to hold meetings. My wittier, more loquacious friend Kaitlin had interest in writing and I piggybacked her confidence at the next meeting. Kate had taken over and was in the middle of running through sections when the Executive Co-Editor, a skinny kid with a beard and an indiscreet paper-bagged pint of whiskey announced to the room, “At this exact time two years ago, I lost my virginity,” and then after a pause to survey the blank-faced room, “I’m wasted.” Somehow, this cemented our involvement with the paper (somehow I also ended up dating this weirdo, and still do). No longer afraid to sound ridiculous, Kaitlin and I submitted an inane list of non sequitur suggestions for how to spend Valentine’s Day (including everything from “get drunk and vomit everywhere” to “make tampon bow & arrows”), a day we ended up celebrating with another was-afraid-of-the-paper-friend and a lot of the staff by boozing all day, beginning with screwdrivers in the caf and continuing with Ballantine’s ale (Ballantine’s Day, get it?)ad nauseam (literally, in Joe’s case).

I went from being “that girl in the Radiohead shirt who wrote the really good Earwax” to being “that girl who co-wrote a crazy edit” to having a name and a place in the staff. Going to every meeting turned into going to every unofficial meeting at Tinkers snowballed into being completely entrenched in these crazy people’s lives turned into Kaitlin and I each becoming editors the following year, and on and on. Being a part of the paper meant trading in sleep and sanity for almost biweekly Adderall-and/or-alcohol-fueled near-slumber parties in McGinley basement, making paper snowflakes out of the Ram, spinning around in office chairs laughing at various YouTube clips and trying to pull together something worth reading in that beige dimness while on a steady diet of thrubs, caf cookies, cigarettes, and hangovers. After four years of this stuff, these people, I can’t help but wax nostalgic. There are so many memories, and so many wish-I-could-rememberies.

When I first started, veteran editors would pass down stories of, say, Sam getting drunk as shit, blue Adderall snot all over himself, covering the Super Bowl on the cardboard backing of a thirty rack. I’ve been lucky to be part of the next wave of stories. Of Sean coming in dutifully at 3pm on production weekends, looking like a cartoon version of a hangover, saying “I don’t feel good,” often having to sequester his shoe (dubbed “poop boot”) he more-than-once got dog shit on outside the print shop. Alex scatting expletives to himself staring straight-faced at some bizarre photoshop project. Chris and his “philosophy of lounging,” which really meant comic relief and leaving a lot of his section’s work up to Bobby, who was always willing to do it, and always wearing cords and a wry smile throughout. Smoking on Eddies and Grille breaks and wondering why we never finished before 3am on Sunday. Making token black jokes about Lenny (and by that I mean Lenny making token black jokes about himself). Sam sending me a News article written in phonetic Cockney. Punning off The Ram’s subpar “That’s So Poe” column with Joe McCarthy’s absurdist humor in “That’s So Joe,” which covered everything from masturbating in the library bathroom to domesticating foxes all with the refrain—“That’s so Joe!” Alex and I as News Co-Editors making the very consequential decision to permanently change “Realer Than Fact” (a section detailing the stranger-than-fiction type stories in the news) to “Haiku News,” arguably the best and most brute way to distill a story to its main points [Editor’s Note: Haiku News is not included in this issue just to fuck with you, sorry!] Chucking Sports for the Comix section, which Elena consistently made look amazing with custom banners and detailed coloring. Marisa revolutionizing the Features Page and becoming my News Co-Editor just in time for us to try our best and keep up with Arab Spring. The short-lived “paper view television” (get it? Like pay-per-view? But for the paper?? We are hilarious).
Historically, we have gotten shit for writing for this rag. The latest insults include that we are Parcheesi-playing, hookah-smoking unfunny people, while older ones involved the myth that paper kids sold coke at Tinkers. Sure. Consistent complaints have been that the paper (and Rodrigue’s, for that matter) are exclusive pretentious masturbatory hipster enclaves. First of all, club organizations at colleges are never exclusive. They are clubs. Meaning you can join whenever you want. Second, yeah, maybe we’re pretentious. But to be honest, what publication can you think of that dumbs itself down or doesn’t write confidently and persuasively to avoid this “pretention” stigma? There is no denying our rampant inside jokes and self-referentiality, etc. but after spending 36 hours about every other weekend in the McGinley subbasement from hell, you gotta do something to feel good about the way you spent your time. Whatever the paper is, it’s been amazing being a part of it and watching it grow up. There’s a tendency to want to make fun of everything, but we have slowly learned you can’t do that (glad we got rid of the crude sign in the office joking about coat hanger abortions), and have learned the value of infographics and more fact-checking, kinda like real journalists (kinda). Former staff members have ended up working, interning, or contributing to places like the Nation, the Village Voice, Spin,Fashionista, Nylon, Showpaper, and the Rumpus, while others have ended up Fulbright scholars, teaching in Turkey, Teach(ing) for America, etc. etc. All of the above still see the value in a good poop joke, and I’m glad. Never change, guys, never change.

ferns

Wunderbar: A Former the paper Editor’s Adventures Clubbing and Boozing in Eccentric Berlin
by Sarah Madges

I didn’t go to Berlin for its infamous nightlife, but I also didn’t leave Berlin without experiencing my share of it. There are a ridiculous amount of hidden clubs, which I found them with the help of the ever-hip, ever-relevant, Unlike City Guides, “the definitive city guide for the mobile generation” (which so far only covers five European cities, one of them being Berlin). When you click on their “Club” tab, you get a list of clubs and descriptors fit for SNL Weekend Update’s “Stefon” bit. For those not familiar, Stefon is a “city correspondent” who is invited on the show to give tips on where to go in New York. Stefon often dubs his suggestions as “New York’s hottest club,” then supplies a monosyllabic name—at one point he advertises a club called “Ugghhh”—and finally describes its location, such as on the lower east side of a dumpster.

There seems to be a similar formula for Berlin bars and clubs—strange name (often in English, and often one word) + bizarre location/hidden entrance + gimmick (whether that be its historical background, crazy layout, or weird policies) = awesome nightlife scene. For example (this is a real listing): “Leave it up to the debauchery of Berlin’s nightlife scene to name a venue after a character from Goethe’sFaust who commits matricide, fratricide, as well as infanticide in order to justify an illegitimate love. Located in the 19^th century stables of Queen Victoria’s Prussian 1^st Guards Dragoon Regiment…” Etc.

There’s a club called Cookies, which began as a weekly party held in a different location every week, hosted by a guy who goes by the name “Cookie.” It’s only open Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, located underneath a pretentious vegetarian restaurant you can only access by walking through an unmarked parking garage next to a hotel. Besides the unlit chandeliers in the garage, there seems to be no sign of life until you get to a tiny set of stairs with a doorbell at the top. The first thing that greets you is a giant pop art-style painting that says “Fuck AMEX” for no apparent reason (they actually do accept American Express cards). Like most other clubs, the inside is nondescript, smoky, and filled with people wearing clothes more expensive than the whole place probably cost to put together.

Another “that’s so Berlin” place is Weinerei, a wine bar that works on an honor system. You pay two Euros to “rent” a wine glass and fill it with anything offered on the counter—reds, whites, and rosés. Since you serve yourself, there are no waiters, which also means there’s no tab at the end of the night. Before you leave, you drop whatever you think you should pay in a jar and leave. Kind of like the Met, except I never felt guilt-tripped into paying more than 5 Euros for the night.

In a classic postmodern reappropriation of industrial space for industrial music, many factories are converted into clubs in Berlin. The most famous example is Berghain, which is notorious for its party scene and picky crew of tattooed bouncers. (Seriously, Google “Berghain door man” and you’ll hear all kinds of horror stories No one can figure out their selection policy.) The second floor features Berghain’s club-within-a-club, Panoramabar, which is covered with pornographic art. When the sun comes out, the window shades ceremoniously lift up to let the light in—although this is no indication to go home. Honestly, you could save money on room accommodations in Berlin by just staying out all night—it’s very doable if you’re on a bunch of amphetamines or coke (and many people are).

I think my favorite club name I came across was “White Trash Fast Food.” They feature supposedly “American” dining (pretty much just cheeseburgers) and “rock ‘n’ roll cabaret,” which I don’t think is actually a thing. Like many other clubs, closing time is open-ended (i.e., never). In terms of club themes, however, my favorite would have to be Trust, a newer venue created by the owners of Cookies and Weekend. Of course, it’s through an unmarked doorway, and, since Cookie’s involved, you have to ring a bell to be admitted. But unlike most clubs, there is a reason for its name—their concept is that you have to “trust” strangers. There’s a double bed next to the DJ free for any use, and for anyone to use. The toilets in the restroom are interconnected, which means peeing with strangers. And you have to drink with strangers too because they only offer hard alcohol in two sizes—small (0.2 liter) or large (0.5 liter)—in “Trust” brand bottles. Sounds like the perfect way to get roofied.

I couldn’t possibly describe them all, so I’ll give you one last loaded comma series: There’s Dr. Pong with its multi-player ping pong table drenched in booze; Anklerklause, a liquor-soaked shack on top of a canal; Möbel Olfer, a bicurious bar with furniture hoisted above the floor; Clärchens Ballhaus, the 1913 bar where old people go to swing dance and young people go to drink; Monarch, with its pinball machine and dance floor set up with sort spectator seating around it; Tape, a club with a bewildering gold room and DJ set featuring what they call “nu-rave,” because house is so 2010; Watergate, which doesn’t open until midnight and is the right place “if purely world class minimal techno is what you’re after;” Madame Claude, an almost Lynchian brothel-turned-bar with its décor glued, upside-down to the ceiling; Cassiopeia, located in the middle of a now-graffitied abandoned train station that hosts ironic 90s nights; West Germany, a dingy club that earned its name because—get this—it’s located in former West Germany; Soda, a club in a complex of clubs with too many different themed rooms and Jäger shots; ://about blank, which I am still not sure if you actually call “Colon forward slash forward slash about blank” (I wouldn’t put anything past Berlin); Klub der Republik, so named because it took its lights from the Palast der Republik (the old seat of the East German Communist government); and instead of a club that answers the question, “What?!” (one of Stefon’s taglines), a club that asks that question—it’s called What?!.

tumblr: This is a gif of me eating a donut.

(via themissourireview)

if only people could be this straightforward about shit

(via brinkmedia)

Sunlight on the Church on Spilt Blood, St. Petersburg.

A woman with ruffles struts by, proud plumage, shoulderbag swinging pendulously against her side. The older man behind us at the café talk about steak and cholesterol until the city sanitation vehicle drowns their speech in white noise. The cafes aren’t yet open, the doors covered with grills of metal teeth, awnings yawning over an empty assembly. An ambulance glides by, not yet in alert, and a man in a crisp button-down smiles his way down the street. There’s a woman who looks like an LSD-inspired reptile, barking in Albanian over a steaming coffee. Another school bus flashes orange in my periphery and stalls at the light, snorting and sniffing. A raspy-voiced woman holding a plastic bag of day-old bread crumbs for “her birds” (swaths of dirty cotton-ball colored pigeons) says, “We have very little trees and beauty in this neighborhood,” recounting an encounter with the super—a woman interrupts, “Oh God, Marie, you make problems” and now God’s handiwork is in the mix of rejoinders. She describes the way the sun beats the trees and the super beats them worse with a powered hose. But the women say, “No, Marie. They’re no good—shitty trees with no leaves—no good.” She wins her feeding rounds, but never her battles. Conversation interrupted by horns until Marie almost yells, “You know—you can go to church all you want, but it doesn’t mean you’re a good person.”

I follow the Fernsehturm home,
that grey modernist monolith,
red eye winking at the night.
Posters bow off prefabricated walls
jutting up at right angles from the stones
I stumble over, past crumbled plaques
that say, “This is a memory!”
and empty bottles that say
nothing. I pass the same circle of
rough-skinned men
passing 2 euro wine cartons
at any hour of the day
(I do not know where they go at night).
My skin prickles when I hear
American English; I think accusingly,
“What are you doing here?”
and quicken my step until I’m back
in the thick of thick accents
spitting “ts” and “sch”
through pursed lips.

I only write with hotel pens these days,
light unfiltered cigarettes
with soggy matchbooks from bars
I don’t remember. I find names and
telephone numbers in my notebook
and I wonder who I met.
Hungover mornings
come to be just be mornings—
I don’t remember what it’s like
to have a clear head, a Rolodex
of events in some order,
clothes that don’t smell like ashtrays.
I pick at my cuticles on U-Bahns
and leave parts of myself across the city,
I get out bleeding,
and want to bite the cold back.

Languages wash over me, become
soundtracks to sidewalks. I walk
by cafés and restaurants and
tell myself to remember to come back
until the entire city is pockmarked with
reminders to just stay still for once.
But still I push myself down
the street with steam locomotive
puffs of breath and the mantra
“es wird werden,” which translates
literally into –“it will be becoming”—
and yes, it will.

at the Cloisters

occupy the Blue Mosque?, Istanbul