December 9th, 2012 from about 1:30 PM until about 4:30 PM
Currently sitting at the Thämers Cafe and Pub to write notes.
I have so much to write that I’m terrified I’m going to forget something, so I’m just going to write. Brain dump.
Part 1 of the notes I scribbled into my notebook for our graphic design class. I plan to scan them in and type them up as a separate post.
I’m going to look through my 147 photos and blog about everything I can remember chronologically.
After I left Dat Backhus, I started on my journey to photograph every instance of graffiti I could find in the Peterstraße and the immediate surroundings. I decided to walk into Junge+Hay and ask if they knew how long the four pieces of graffiti had been there. I explained what I was doing and we chatted. The guy working there said it’s been there for at least 6 months or so. The woman said there’s a can of white paint in the basement because the inner wall of the galley way is constantly being graffitied and the painter has to make several trips to clean it up.
They were a little suspicious in the beginning and asked I wanted to make some graffiti somewhere and so I began to explain what I was doing, studying the Peterstrasse, made guesses and potential conflicts, thought about graffiti, noticed there wasn’t any and wondered if it’s just cleaned up really fast, etc.
The man told me I should visit the office on the Peterstrasse and ask there if they have ever had problems with graffiti. I mentioned I had already been there several weeks ago when I first started my research but was disappointed by the man working there in the office. That I keep getting conflicting stories about the history of the Peterstrasse. That the first two women I ever met standing on the street there told me the facades were collected from around the city to demonstrate what Hamburg looked like before the Great Fire and the 2nd World War. But that the guy in the office told me everything was fake, just rebuilt based on original engineering plans. The guy in the office told me nothing was old except for the Brahms museum being the only original building. I think it was even him who first mentioned the Disney critique.
The man working at Junge+Hay then offered, “Well, Mr. Toepfer is one of our regular customers and comes in every Monday morning. We could ask him.”
He took down my name and phone number and said that Mr. Toepfer is an extremely nice person.
Around 3:14 after taking 12 photos of graffiti, I started photographing the space around the graffiti. This comes from the conversation with the couple at Junge+Hay. I had asked why there is no graffiti on the Peterstrasse. The woman believes it’s too open and too easy to be seen. The man added that there are lots of windows on the Peterstrasse. True, I thought. Right there where the graffiti I had asked them about was surrounded by business which are usually empty evenings and weekends.
For the graffiti map – it would be good not only to mark where graffiti is located, but maybe also to show which buildings are residential, which are businesses. What to do with hotels? Maybe a third category for hotels which are both business and temporary residences.
So, yes, I started taking pictures of the graffiti and sometimes of the space surrounding the graffiti to support the idea that optimal places to graffiti are enclosed safe feeling spaces where if feels safe from being interrupted, caught, seen.
Another part of our conversation was also about the Motel One and the brand new apartment complex where Inka and Christian live. I forgot what they’re called. I’ll have to look at the Google street view pictures one more time. Anyways, they talked about how the apartment complexes were only supposed to be 6 stories high but then ended up being 8 stories high. Something about light and shade laws. They said something similar happened with the Motel One who wanted 14 stories in the beginning. Later, I took a photograph of the Motel One and saw they only accomplished getting 6 stories.
The man from Junge+Hay said in the basement of the former Haspa there was a huge safe with walls several meters thick. They claimed they would only need to drill for a couple of weeks, but ended up needed several months to finally get it removed.
Around 3:24 I took a few pictures of construction going on the Hütte street. I intend to use them for my parking map.
For the graffiti map, I thought about marking the schools. There seem to be about 3 schools in the neighborhood.
I saw one white house with no graffiti sitting between two brick buildings with graffiti. This removes the theory that graffiti artists and taggers only prefer white backgrounds as a canvas to paint on.
I saw a tiny little fachwerkhaus on the Hütte and took a picture of it. Made me think about drawing a map of Hamburg with fachwerkhäuser to show where they are in the city and maybe show how important it is to have something like Peterstrasse.
Around 3:47 I took a picture of some stone engravings and an old lamp. Still going on the idea of the ‘renaissance’ neighborhood. Peterstrasse doesn’t just stop at Peterstrasse but maybe influences surrounding buildings. The carvings were mostly something for me to use when practicing working in Adobe Illustrator.
Eventually I did find graffiti on the Fachwerkhäuser on the corner of Peterstrasse. So Peterstrasse isn’t exactly free of graffiti. It’s just really small and you have to look closely for it.
I stopped at the library and they were closed. Wednesdays and Thursdays until 7pm.
Phone died around this time. Later, I saw it still had 40% battery power and had not run out of juice but had simply just crashed.
Saw a curtain I want to duplicate.
Saw some more graffiti at the Haspa and thought about making a map with the Umherschweifen route from today. I really like Sonja’s idea of creating a base map and just reusing it for everything we study. It would make things uniform.
Luckily, I remembered I had a second camera with me. Started getting dark and pictures got a bit blurry, but I think I got everything.
I started taking pictures of stickers, another method of graffiti and maybe want to re-examine the neighborhood at a later date with stickers in mind.
I ended up walking by the Lindner Hotel and decided to check out the hole in the ground. Could this be the former well which was removed? I read somewhere that a well was removed? According to the woman at reception, the hole is part of the design and architecture of the hotel. I don’t believe her. My experience of people in Hamburg is that they would prefer to bluff than say they don’t have an answer.
Started taking a picture of dog shit and thought of my map. Need to do this with the iPhone next time so that I have the GPS location information.
And that’s it. Wanted to write this at the Irish Rover, but they were closed. At Thämers, also from 1800s. More later.
On to Leyla’s to play Hamburgum.
