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Friday, December 30, 2005

Attention, Hippies!

Come Out Peacefully So We Can Smash Your Drug Mill And All Your Worldly Possessions!

Finally making good on my promise of tales of Danish adventure, I'd like to direct anyone who happens to read this blog today to buy The Globe & Mail tomorrow, Saturday, 31 December 2005, to read therein my feature report on the Danish government's crackdown on Christiania, the semi-lawless anarchist quarter in the heart of Copenhagen. (I'd direct you also to the Globe's website, but those greedy buggers bury all the Focus-section content behind a subscription-only firewall.)

There's tons more info on Christiania at the Freetown's website (click on the first link listed to flip through the Official Guide for a full history and overview).

And herewith - a Planet Simpson exclusive! - are five nifty bits of reportage that didn't make it into my Globe feature:

1) The first interview my first day in Christiania was with a 40-year-old musician who introduced himself as "Joker," and whose visage I later saw on a poster indicating he was a candidate in the upcoming municipal election.

2) There was a guy at the welcomingly rough-and-tumble Cafe Woodstock that same first visit who was a dead ringer for venerable American journalist David Halberstam, and when I came upon him he was at a picnic table outside the pub banging out a searing version of the Sex Pistols' "Submission" on an electric guitar and mini-amp (which, to my knowledge, is not something David Halberstam's ever done).

3) The Cafe Woodstock offers possibly the best deal in town on cold Tuborg.

4) Oddest Take On Sentimental Norman Rockwell-esque Imagery Ever: A small gathering of hash sellers stagelit by the oil-barrel fire they're warming their hands around on a cool November evening as their big boisterous dogs growl at each other in the background.

5) I have it on good authority that the hash that's no longer officially available in Christiania is still quite good.

And now, another Planet Simpson Exclusive:

Christiania In Images!


To see what this looks like in an aerial photo, click here.

Believe it or not, the Freetown's self-imposed ban on everything except cannabis has been a wild success for more than twenty years now. I even read one history of Christiania that claimed that the Copenhagen police used to drop off junkies at the front gate in lieu of rehab.


More "Say NO To Hard Drugs" propaganda in a Christiania alleyway. Note the locally designed "Christiania bikes" in the foreground.


Close-up of a Christiania bike's front cargo hold. The bench (w/seatbelt) is for toting kids; infant carseats can be mounted therein as well. If I'd have been able to find one of these on sale used, I was under strict orders from Ash to buy it. (They start at about 1200 euros new.)


Another Christiania street scene: the local (and locally run) mini-mart on one of the Freetown's main residential streets. Note the many bikes - cars are prohibited within the Freetown except for occasional deliveries and such.



A repurposed Danish military warehouse - one of Christiania's largest residential buildings.

This is almost directly across the street from the mini-mart in the previous photo. I interviewed one of my key sources therein. He and his family (wife, couple of kids) lived in one of the larger apartments, which was exactly the sort of high-ceilinged, wood-timbered, open-concept living space that every "loft-style" condo development in the Western world has been aping for the last decade or so. There's a communal bath and laundry out back.


Wonder of wonders: the anarchist hippie freaks have managed to build and maintain a perfectly serviceable public restroom - a feat that almost no urban neighbourhood in North America has equalled.


Another piece of Christiania graffiti, this one expressing a widely held local attitude toward the multiple daily police patrols (six police in riot gear per patrol) that have plagued the Freetown since the new Christiania law was passed in 2004. (See Globe & Mail Focus section, 31 December 2005, for more info.)


The Moonfisher Cafe: Formerly an Amsterdam-style coffee house for indulging in the wares formerly on offer at stalls on nearby Pusher Street.

On my last day in Copenhagen, the Moonfisher was closed for 24 hours after a massive police raid, allegedly because a small amount of hashish was found on a patron or possibly on the floor. Given the ardently pro-cannibis sentiments expressed on the Moonfisher's own website, this has to count among the least arduous bits of detective work in law-enforcement history.






Three examples of Christiania's whimsical local architecture. This isn't a shantytown, and these people aren't squatters.

The last of these sits next to the canal that separates the "downtown" area of Christiania from the bucolic backwoods part, and is possibly one of the several dozen on the historically significant 17th-century battlements that is slated for demolition.

Given that this marvelous little rural idyll sits about a fifteen-minute walk from the dead centre of downtown Copenhagen, I invite you to speculate, as I did, on the motives of the Danish government for tossing out three decades of agreement on the Christiania "social experiment" in favour of privatization. Is it the hash in the Moonfisher and the grave risk it poses to tidy Danish society? Or might it be that this land - which in its current, communally controlled, private-property-free incarnation, is in a sense valued at $0 - amounts to possibly the most undervalued and underdeveloped swatch of urban real estate in the free world?


Christiania post box, indicating the Freetown's status as a place formally outside regular Danish control.

The inward-facing side of Christiania's front gate - the part you see as you leave - bears a prominent notice: "You are now entering the EU." As of New Year's Day, when the new Christiania law goes into effect, this will no longer be valid. And it seems highly unlikely that Christiania will survive the change in its current form. Which is a tragedy, plain and simple - it is one of the most singular and delightful urban neighbourhoods I've ever visited.


Lest there be any doubt as to the Danish love of order, I humbly submit this photo of a hundetoilet, which I stumbled upon around the corner from my hotel near Copenhagen's central train station. And woe betide the unruly Danish dog that dares to piss upon the patch of grass just outside the designated area.

It's a miracle, perhaps, that the hundetoilet and the Moonfisher Cafe managed to share the same municipality for as long as they have. Alas, the miracle may well have come to an end.

Posted by Turner at 03:16 PM (-07:00 GMT) | TrackBack (1328) | Comments (2)

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Book of Lists

Man oh man, you'd think Turner'd been elected PM. T wrote up a little bitsy for the Book of Lists (Canadian Edition - and for free, mind) months and months and months ago. And they finally published the thing around the end of November. The ad campaign is in full swing and lord ha' mercy has the response been overwhelming! Folks from all quarters have been calling and emailing: "Hey! Turner's FAMOUS!!" So great! Keep it coming! (And by the way, Planet Simpson makes a great xmas present!)



TTC ad campaign, captured by the Great John Bauer, December 2005

Posted by Ashley at 05:56 PM (-07:00 GMT) | TrackBack (526) | Comments (1)

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Now That's Danish!

One day, after the series of miracles via which I'll be caught up with work and Christmas errands, I may get to tales of Danish (and further British) adventure.

In the meantime, a photo of Copenhagen's best bookstore:


The venerable Politiken, on the edge of Radhuspladsen, the city centre's largest square.

So how can I be so sure it's Copenhagen's finest bookseller? Simple. Here's what the store's New Non-Fiction table looked like the day I visited:


What's hot with Danes this Xmas? Cartoons and Judaica, apparently.

Now, I've seen my labours on display in quite a few bookstores by now, but this was the first time I'd stumbled upon my tome in a nation whose official language I don't speak. Which was quite a gas. So much so, in fact, that I availed myself of the authorial privilege of offering to sign the store's copies, which the good folks at Politiken were delighted to have me do. They also informed me that they'd bought 25 copies but had only a dozen left in stock.

I'm huge in Denmark. It's not quite "big in Japan," but it's a start.

Posted by Turner at 11:37 PM (-07:00 GMT) | TrackBack (728) | Comments (1)