Archive for 2009

Home Archive for 2009

"Thou shalt not think that any male over the age of 30 that plays with a child that is not their own is a pedophile. Some people are just nice."
- Dan le Sac vs. Scroobias Pip
(from the song "Thou shalt always kill")

This brings me to think of two rather unusual situations that I have witnessed over the last month.

1.) I was on the tram on my way home from work and while the tram passed by a tram stop I looked out of the window and on the bench at the stop a man was sitting, waiting for an other tram, with a child in his lap. The man was quite long, muscular and wearing the kind of neon clothes that construction workers wear, nothing odd with that. However this was a man, who had a dark skin tone and the toddler in his lap had extremely white skin. I found this rather unusual and immediately started to question their relationship to one another. He could surely not be the toddlers father. So was he the step father? Was he a friend of the mother who had picked to toddler up from day care? The toddler who were sitting on the man´s lap was dozed off and looked like he was sleeping. The view of the two of them was rather odd.

2.) Yesterday at the tram stop, waiting for the tram. I saw a man with a baby in his arms and the pair of them looked extremely out of place. The baby was dressed in a pink thick jumpsuit and looked like it was only a few months old. The man was just wearing a shirt with jeans and trainers. What made me question the pair of them was the fact that he was carrying this baby in his arms not wearing clothes suited for being outdoors since it was rather windy. He had no stroller, no bag with nappies or all those things small babies need. Where were all those things? Where was he going with the baby? Since the baby was so small it was surely still being breast-fed. So where was the mother?

So if we look at these situations in perspective to the quote, what do you reckon? I'm still puzzled by the incidents and the fact that I can not find any answers to the questions that pop up my mind.

Have you ever realized that cities have their own distinct sound and smell?

I remember once when I was about 7 years old and woke up in a hotel room in Italy. I can't recall what city in Italy it was, but the feeling when I woke up was amazing.
The sun shined through the white long curtains and outside my open window I could hear a street and a city that was just waking up. I could hear cars driving by, people signaling with horns and bells on their scooters and bicycles, people talking while walking down the street and yelling "Good morning!" to people they knew across the street.
The smell is a bit harder to describe, but it was a mixture of smell of the pavements, the smell from the small vegetable and fruits shops that were opening up early in the morning and the smell from the cafe across the street where people were stopping by to get their morning espresso.

The smell and sound of my city (Gothenburg) is a different story. Firstly Gothenburg is right by the sea, therefor you get an ocean smell. Not like the smell of beach and seaweed, it is more an

icy smell of the salt of the ocean. If you've ever been on a boat on the sea at dusk or dawn, that smell is a part of Gothenburg´s smell. Mixed with the icy smell of the sea is the natural smell of the city. The smell of the pavements, the people and the traffic.
Gothenburg has a very distinct sound, we have trams in this city and they have a distinct sound when they swings around corners. It is a squeaking noise, but not in an annoying way but a soothing and calm way. That sound is something I think all people from Gothenburg miss when they move away from here. It is like a soft layer of cotton which cocoons the city from the outside world.

This spring I will visit Florence(for a week) and London(for a month) and this time I'm going to make sure that I'm aware of how the cities smell and sound. I regard the smell and sound of a city like a sophisticated and subtle visiting card for that specific city.

What does your city smell and sound like?

We met up at my place and spent some downtime and listened to some music and got sent the location of the rave by text. I checked out the adress and the bus/tram routes. It was on the other side of the river just behind a big sport and event arena. It's a fairly central location but still in a part of town where there aren't too many people. It felt safe knowing where it was and that I were able to get home whenever I wanted to.

The rave took place in a "closed" lunch restuarant which is in a district dominated by office buildings, so there wasn't too many people around who could get bothered by the loud music. The rave was a bit more organized than what I expected. Firstly, they had a wardrobe, but the guy garding it seemed to be two sandwiches short of a picnic. He had to write my wardrobe number on my arm (I guess they don't trust their guests to have pockets or being able to keep track of a wardrobe card) and when writing the number on my arm his hands where shaking heavily.

And about those cliches...
They had decorated the place with banners with glow-in-the-dark colors and there were 'sculptures' hanging from the ceiling casting diffrent lights and shadows all over the floor and the walls. If I would be judgemental I'd say that the decorations definitely would look more stunning, I imagine, if one were high.
The people who went there definitely only dressed in cloths looking as they came from this shop.
And about those pills, that one expect to see at a rave. There was definitely people who didn't look completely sane. Everyone seemed nice and friendly, even those who seemed to be high except a couple of persons who really had that 'mad eyes' stare and looked awfully high. However, I thought I was going to see people dancing up with their tounge out of their month with a pill on it and then someone else would kiss them and thereby swallow the pill.
But I saw no drugs at all, so I'd say it all looked/seemed a lot less like a drug feast than what my exceptations might have been. The only drug refrence that happen all evening was this guy who offered me some crystal meth, which I kindly refused and this girl who asked me in the line to the toilet if I'd only been drinkning. She later complemented me on not being high and told me to have respect for drugs (like I haven't had that before).

It just seemed to be people who like that kind of trance/techno music and just wants to dance. There were a some weird fashion trends, all the girls had either really blond dyed hair or really dark dyed hair for example. If you were aware of it there definitenly was people who where high, but there was no open handling of drugs. I'd say that if you are not into that kind of music (which I'm not really...) it will get a bit boring after a couple of hours. So if you are going to go to a rave, go because you really love the music that's going to be played.

I had a glowstick which I was going to take a picture of when I got home. But just as I left this high guy took my glowstick from me under the excuse that "You are going to get it back" and then he preformed a "stunt" where he inserted the glowstick (which was quite flexible) up his nose and then open his month so people around could see the glow in his palate. Not a nice vision. Do I need to point out I did not claim my glowstick back.

All in all an interesting night.

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