New friends (question mark)
With the new appearance, new friends inevitably entered the scene. I knew that at this time of year, it was winter, the skinheads were roaming around in the laundrette at the Dreiecksplatz, where all punks were banned.
My public image was already so damaged at punk times that I didn't even think about restoring my reputation. Instead of at least trying to initiate a reverse trend, I worked purposefully on my total destruction. The future prognoses that my environment gave me made my decision easy. Now I was curiously looking for the proximity to the older skins in the city – all of them ex-Punks from Kiel. I didn't want to miss anything. I wanted to find out how life was with Gonnrad, Stidi, Mig and the like.
When I first appeared at the skins' meeting point in the laundrette, I made the mistake of wanting to provoke a response and hung an old military medal with a black shoelace around my neck, which I had previously swiped at a stand during the flea market on the town hall square. Immediately after entering the laundrette Radke took me aside and walked outside with me. He kindly requested me to take it off immediately. I unknotted it and put it in the pocket of my jeans. We went back inside, boozed together and introduced ourselves. This was absurd because we had been on the road with a horde of punks in Kiel several times before. We all pretended we'd never met before. Or did they really not remember my visage?
I didn't even address the subject of old punk times, because I didn't know if it would meet with their approval. It wasn't difficult to integrate myself, a few toasts, a few fun jostles, and I was there. Stidi Konz and Mig Konz had just been released from prison, where they converted from punks to skinheads. Stidi was imprisoned for some little things and Mig, because he got caught fare dodging during his probation. I learned that they had regularly written Gonnrad out of jail.
When we went on tour together as skinheads in the forthcoming time, there were regularly arguments between the three. Once Mig yelled at Gonnrad,
"I thought you wanted to build up something here in Kiel while we were in jail!"
He meant a skinhead scene. Gonnrad tried to defend himself aggressively with words. There was a violent verbal pogo that sounded like a lot of humpback whales,
"Do you think the skins are running riot around here?"
"Well, we were expecting a few more people!"
"Should I conjure them with a sleight of the hand or what?"
Suddenly – as in punk times – they threw the hardest insults at each other, accompanied by disparaging, disrespectful gestures. Stidi and Mig were totally irritated after their stay in prison, in principle completely spoiled. They told the most impossible prison stories about how alcohol can be distilled in the cell or how alcohol was smuggled in. They told stories about oranges which friends had previously injected vodka into outside the prison walls, that had been declared as food gifts. We learnt about attempts to ferment fruit in the toilet. Some prisoners even tried to inject the little alcohol available through the anus. This was said to be the most effective, fastest and most economical way of getting drunk.
As we did as punks, we tried to shock as skins as much as possible. There was a strange atmosphere of departure in the still young Kiel skinhead scene. Some of the ex-punks might just want to check out the scene, mix it up, experience something new or at least be there and see how the film with Stidi, Mig and Gonnrad continued. However, the matter soon gained a strange momentum of its own.
Like so many in the clique, the Konz brothers were brutal through and through. When I walked through Schrevenpark with Stidi once, he kicked with his steel cap after a dove that had just come across. He kicked her like a football and grazed a wing of the poor animal that fluttered away. We walked on as if nothing had happened.
Gonnrad looked like a skull with a short stubble cut with his flat nose, bloodshot eyes and pale face. Nobody dared to criticize his metallic bomber jacket. Gonnrad was super direct – just as we had known him before. He could be exposing and demoralizing at the same time and a short time later put his arm back on your shoulder in a friendly way. You once heard of him affectionately,
"You know what, I'd love to slap you in the face."
He not only had excellent knowledge of punk and skinhead music. You could also discuss with him other subcultural music genres and especially wave bands like Joy Division, The Cure or The Smiths. As in punk times, Gonnrad as skinhead pulled up the left side of the mouth together with the left cheek to form the hate lip in suitable moments. Some liked to imitate that.
There was a tough tone in the skinhead scene. We were unbeatable in the use of strong language. The new friends, mostly dropouts from the punk scene, proved to be hard-bitten binge drinkers. Abstinence was considered unmanly, and total abstainers were often referred to as wimps, weaklings or washouts.
This was worse for many than the term pseudo.
We were all little Doc Martens fetishists. If you weren't wearing Docs, you weren't accepted. In grimace cutting we were unbeatable. We knew that people like us, skinheads, would have been locked up in the Third Reich. We talked about it extensively,
"In the Third Reich they would have locked people like us away!"
"Yes, just like the punks!"
"They would not have just locked us away!"
"They would have eliminated us inconspicuously!"
Gonnrad and the Konzens proved to be real Cockney Rejects fans and collected their singles. Stidi was very proud to own the "Flares and Snippers" single.
Mig had long since abandoned his apprenticeship as a painter because he no longer wanted to be harassed. Still from punk times he had a small five-pointed star tattooed on his left earlobe. In the centre of the star was the puncture for an earring, which he had not worn for a long time. When he explained or demonstrated something, he usually took his hands, even his whole arms, to gesture furiously and to rant like a comic figure. He always got obsessive about something until he was the only one to burst into laughter at the end, while everyone else was astonished. Just like when he was a punk, he was always wanted to start trouble. He expressed in one sentence what we all secretly desired for,
"We are the hardest youth movement ever!"
he repeated prayer-like. If someone reacted to such behaviour only feeblishly, it was said,
"He's got complexes!"
However, the person concerned was never told this directly to his face. They talked in third person singular masculine to another skinhead standing in the bunch, so that it was still loud enough to be heard.
At that time I had an almost new jacket in the bomber jacket style with a blue pseudo-tartan pattern, with which I had previously also been on a class trip in Berlin, but it was soon taken away by Mig. He borrowed the jacket for a few days, and I never saw it again. Once he boasted that he would press on his carotid arteries in bed in the evening to fall asleep immediately.
The skins were backbiting. We kept explaining to each other how stupid people can be. Mig told how an acquaintance of his bought a bottle of expensive brandy at the cash desk of a supermarket with his remaining money and at the same time, since he could no longer afford the few pfennige for the O-juice for mixing, he took a pack of cheap O-juice with him. He got caught promptly. We told each other stupid things like that around the clock. Every once in a while, Mig was taken for a ride. It could happen to anyone. Most of the time, his brother was responsible. If someone addressed Mig's black Docs, that were extremely strangely shaped, the term Goofie could also be used.
Stidi had the word skins tattooed on the inside of his lower lip in blue, but written on the head so that it could only be read the right way around when he turned his lower lip forward. He showed me his lip tattoo by pulling the lower lip forward. It was quite funny, because he tried to talk while he was doing it.
Every now and then Stidi ended up at the Jensen Trauma Clinic at the ZOB after a drunken fight. Despite all his roguishness, he could also be generous. He unexpectedly gave me the first two Peter singles "Banned from the Pubs" and "Run like Hell", which made me very happy. On the other hand, if he talked to you and you didn't answer immediately, he enquired for it with an elongated "Mm?" stressed at the end as a question. One of his favorite words was "verknusen" (to stomach something). Stidi could royally imitate low German intonation. That's why we always slightly took him for a ride. Several times we asked him,
"Stidi, tell me about the last time you were in Hamburg."
As if shot out of a pistol, he answered in the broadest North German with a rolling R,
"Yes, I was just walking down Hafenstrasse ...".
That's when everybody started yelling. If he even came that far, he went on,
"Some guy came up to me, totally tattooed from top to bottom,"
where he stretched the vocal A in totally exaggerated Low-German accent and pronounced it deeply, almost like an O. Everyone laughed like hell again. Stidi never managed to tell his story to the end, because the laughter about his narrative style was simply too great. That was a straight A.
I gave him several nicknames such as Stidhelm or even Stid-Well, all of which he accepted with a smile on his face, but which did not prevail. Both Mig and Stidi liked to brag about their women's stories. They were two to three years older than us, the younger ones. We always listened eagerly. Mig once told me about a night when he was "frogging" (shagging) a woman in the toilet at "Flip Café"[1]. "Frogging" was one of the favourite words of the Konz brothers. There was a lot of gossip.
All the time we dismantled each other and verbally threw pretty much everything we could at each other. A standard saying was,
"Show consistency at least once!"
I didn't understand at the time that the peer pressure was much greater with the skins than with the punks. There were also women who hung out with us from time to time. These included Sille, Meicke and Swantje. They usually had the hots for Stidi, because he was the most belligerent of us.
Another senseless action is said to have taken place on a grandiose evening at Schrevenpark. Fat Cat, a local political celebrity who was formerly even a member of the CDU block party, had pushed ahead with the demolition of the Sophienblatt and the construction of the new shopping complex and much more. His son, who was considered an arrogant, rich snob, regularly hosted parties in his flat at Schrevenpark. The skinhead gang learned from friendly mods that something had to start again this weekend and they announced themselves. The mods in their long mod parkas were already standing with their scooters and girlfriends on the opposite side of the street vis-à-vis to the host's house on this party evening. There was no light in the flat. It was pitch black. The proposition that a party was to be held here turned out to be misinformation. Outside it was already pitch dark, and somehow the mods motivated the skinheads to go up to the political celebrity's flat. The six skinheads made themselves loudly noticeable in the stairwell in front of the flat door until they could be almost certain that no one was inside. Allegedly, the skins violently gained access into the flat. Mig mercilessly slammed his elbow into the pane next to the front door, pushed his arm through the glass splinters and opened the door by simply pressing down the handle. The door had a knob on the outside and was simply closed. They went into the huge flat, plundered the bar and fridges and acted like barbarians. Did they just want to impress the good-looking scooter fairies who were in possession of the mods? As the gang left the house with the loot, the mods were extremely outraged by the scandal, which had injured their pride. They immediately left without a word. Next, this group of skinheads made themselves comfortable in Schrevenpark, where they enjoyed tasting the booty including a huge meat sausage and exquisite red wine. How long would this behaviour go on for?
Besides the laundrette in Brunswiker Street another meeting point soon established itself: the Ansgar playground on Waitzstrasse. In the course of time, all possible figures of the local skinhead, Oi- and Herbert scene as well as pseudos could be spotted here. Everything became more and more colourful.
A guy named J-Cops came by and even a crazy ex-member of the Scapegoats, waving a gas pistol and shooting around. That was annoying, of course. This fine teenage punk, who had participated in various punkzine projects, got into the maelstrom of Gonnrad and the Konz brothers and was temporarily converted into a skinhead. The one-legged Heimerich appeared more and more frequently, and suddenly Vielmann stood there and screamed,
"Look at me, I'm alright!"
We laughed ourselves dead.
Almost every night we threw our money together to get some drinks. There was always something going on. Either we stormed parties or we had our own. As far as parties were concerned, the mods were considered our informants. They always knew what was going on in town. Stidi had a particularly good connection to them. We skins were working class and politically on the left-wing. If someone expressed right-wing tendencies, we talked back to him.
Even as skins we boozed until we lost control. Sometimes, when we were completely drunk and staggered to the beer vending machine in Knooper Weg, we hollered loudly,
"Dayo, Day-ay-ay-o, Daylight come and I wanna go home!"
Another hit was,
"I was born in Cockneyland,"
which we sang after the tune of "Wand'rin 'Star".
We loved to play the game band names from A to Z while boozing, where a letter was given in ascending order and everyone had to name a band with the corresponding initial letter:
ABBA, Angelic Upstarts, Abrasive Wheels, Anti-Nowhere League, AC / DC. After A came B: BLITZ, Black Flag, Bad Brains, Business, Barclay James Harvest, Baccara.
At some point the quiz ended in an awful mess or the Konz brothers got into a strong argument, and there was a fight.
In the course of time, the two brothers introduced strange toasts, that they still knew from old punk days. When a drink tasted good, Mig would say,
"Hoddie Doddie!"
Stidi enjoyed his beer with the saying,
"Biena Esmeralda!"
If anyone was sure of one thing, he called it a hundredpro. "Drinking" turned to "sloshed". The word kick also continued to be used on a large scale. Kicking was no longer just about football. Nowadays one could distribute kicks with the boots. A kick could finally also be achieved by drinking. Recently there was talk of a mega-kick, the ultimate kick and the maximum kick. Unfortunately, the term became more and more common for beating. It was getting more brutal. We talked about clapping, treading, bashing and finally pawing away.
Soon the story of a Schleswig skinhead circulated, who had in front of the mirror tattooed himself a small swastika on the forehead mirror-inverted. We agreed that if he showed up on the Ansgar playground or anywhere else in Kiel, we would clap him away ice-cold. Even Feycer had kept his distance. Later, the Schleswig skin had the aforementioned swastika tattooed over with roses and ended up with the rockers.
Our frustration unleashed itself almost daily. As skinheads we rampaged no less than at punk times. At Lessingplace, the pack even turned a car over, turned it onto the roof and blocked the road. On the weekends especially we performed quite a horror show. We were still behaving like punks in skinhead garb, as it should be in principle. In the not too distant future, the newly created skinhead scene was to be discovered by the right-wing radicals as a fishing zone.
Meanwhile, my grandmother had fallen desperately ill with ALS and died within a very short time. I missed an entire morning at school because of the funeral service. Because of the funeral I had to show an absence certificate to my German and history teacher. The class teacher, on the other hand, accepted an oral apology. This certificate was requested by Mrs. Lemsch although the class teacher already passed the apology. She wanted to document my non-participation in her lesson on the Third Reich, which she taught only quite superficially, but politically correct overall. The restrictive behaviour of the history teacher contributed significantly to the general frustration of the class. To make matters worse, I had to go to her on Saturday late in the morning to the German tutoring course, where I learned that the plural of party in German is Partys.
The "Annen Pub" - shared flat with bar
In the Annenstrasse there was a flat share with people I knew from Bergstrasse. In this shared flat there was a permanent party going on. The flat-sharing community soon decided to install a counter in the flat in order to offer their visitors an even better service. Of course, this was an attraction and we visited them regularly. They had many joints there, but I didn't smoke with them. Two of the mods, Trimmer and Lurz, who often hung out with us on the Ansgar playground, lived there permanently or halfway – together with Swantje and Lorax. The long and thick Bolli was also often there, a short-haired mod, who attacked me several times, because I called him Fatzo while I was drunk. Once I woke up drunk in the cellar of the house where I lay on a rolled out yellow garden hose. Later it was told that Swantje had given Radke a blow job upstairs in the "Annen Pub". The story spread like wildfire, of course. We envied him for it. For a while the Annen Pub was an important starting point for us, not only when it was cold outside or the weather was bad. The atmosphere was always good and as long as we behaved we were welcome guests. The Annen Pub was centrally located. It was halfway between the Ansgar playground and the discotheque complex in Bergstrasse. Unfortunately, at some point the shared flat was dissolved. The house had to be renovated.
New laundrette parties
As skinheads we were finally in charge again in the laundrette at Dreiecksplatz. The laundrette operators let us. At first our parties were disciplined but later got out of hand. Gonnrad, the Konz brothers and Radke as the oldest skins among us took care at the beginning that the parties didn't get completely out of control, if they weren't already totally sloshed. Gonnrad regularly brought his chess board to play a game with Mig. It happened that Gonnrad was even challenged to a game by visitors of the laundrette.
We also talked about music again, not about punk music this time, but Oi!-music. The vast majority of the old Kiel punk scene stayed punks after the skinhead boom. They were not to be seen after the house ban was imposed against them. Now the laundrette developed into a pure skinhead meeting place. Sometimes we would throw around the washing powder. Once Stidi, the scumbag, poured a cup of powder directly into the back of my sweater. That was of course disgusting. It scratched heavily against my back and was not particularly good for my neurodermatitis.
The petrol station had to suffer as well. I remember an incident that could almost count as robbery. We took lots of beer and alcoholic beverages with us – without paying. The petrol station salesman must have seen us shoving the drinks under our bomber jackets, but we seemed to have a jester's licence in Kiel at that time. Following this incident, the hard alcohol was stored exclusively on the shelf behind the counter.
One Saturday afternoon we got over 20 skins together in the laundrette. That was definitely a frightening mass. We took some group photos outside, which later disappeared without a trace.
I had finally received blows from the vice-principal Haberlack at school. This lead to an undoubtable crack in my personality. Stidi held a small ritual with me in the laundrette. After a booze-up in our laundrette, late in the evening only Stidi and I were left. We were standing next to the washing machines, Stidi right in front of me. Suddenly he hit me in the face with his flat hand, just like the teacher at school did before. Stidi approached me immediately after the slap and put his left cheek on my left. I didn't know how to react. Should I fight back? A little later he repeated the act, harder this time: first the slap, then he put his cheek to mine again. He practiced this several times, and I began to become fed up with it in my booze head. After every slap he stammered something incomprehensible and again his typical "Mm?". It ended after a while. A short time later we left the laundrette. I didn't feel very comfortable about the slaps, but Stidi gave me the impression that the punches were necessary – a kind of sadomaso psychodrama that should help me cope better with the stress at school. I erroneously imagined that my skinhead friends made me fit for the tough school routine, although most of them had already given up at school and in their apprenticeships.
A skinhead from Strande had to suffer
Half the city knew that we skinheads met in the laundrette at Dreiecksplatz. It wasn't uncommon for skinhead sympathizers and newcomers to show up in the catchment area of the laundrette. One day someone said that he saw Taffy with a short haircut drive by in the car. Was it that he was also curious, but did not dare come in to our domicile?
Meanwhile a group of skinheads had formed in Schilksee and Strande consisting of schoolboys from the Comprehensive School Friedrichsort. Word got around that it was a right-wing skinhead scene. One evening I saw one of the Strande skins, Barexi, walking down Bergstrasse close to the Nazi snack bar. I myself had just walked up the Bergstrasse from Muhliusstrasse in the direction of Dreiecksplatz, also on the side of the said snack bar. Barexi approached me directly, stopped in front of me and wanted to impose a conversation,
"Moin, I'm a skinhead as well!"
I was completely annoyed and replied,
"Don't you know how to say hello properly?"
That was a little nasty of me, but quite justified. He clenched his heels, tore up his right arm and shouted out loud,
"Sieg Heil!"
Without hesitation, I immediately swung out and hit him in the face with my right fist. He paused briefly, grabbed his mouth, turned around and sprinted away towards Dreiecksplatz. I casually booted up the Bergstrasse and made myself comfortable with the others in the laundrette. On the spot I told everyone about the incident with the right-wing skinhead from Strande,
"I just punched a skinhead at Bergstrasse, because he shouted 'Sieg Heil '."
The others listened to it briefly without any comment. They probably didn't believe me or they were too drunk. Anyway, the right-wing skinhead clientele from Schilksee and Strande had a lot of respect for me in the future.
Radke's Major Accident tattoo
Radke wanted to get a new tattoo at "The Coast". He had drawn a tattoo pattern from a record cover of Major Accident. There was a "droog" painted on the original. I was surprised when he said in front of the other skins that just I should accompany him to the tattoo artist. He wanted me as a kind of personal protection if something should get out of control in the tattoo shop. Radke did not want to get screwed by the tattooist, who belonged to the local rocker scene, and he did not want to go sober to the store. On the same evening, we entered the said tattoo shop which happened to be close to the Kiel's brothel many drinking holes. Radke had to sit down on a sort of dentist's chair. The friendly tattoo artist offered me a stool right next to him. Though the guy was a rocker from top to bottom, he immediately said he had nothing against skinheads. In the beginning, Radke showed him the Major Accident pattern. The tattoo artist briefly examined the drawing and asked several questions concerning the graphic imprecisions,
"Here at the bowler, is this supposed to be a light reflection?"
"You can still make everything black."
"And this is meant to be a stand-up collar?"
"Yes, that has to be done like that."
Radke gave his consent that the tattoo artist could bring more sharpness into the tattoo in some places.
"Well then, I'll get started!"
and the painful fun began. The friendly tattoo artist started his job highly concentrated, switched on the tattoo machine, and drew the first, short line full of verve. Radke did not smile. Every now and then we talked and discussed the intermediate result.
"Looks very geil!"
"Really geil, ey!"
I was at least as excited as Radke, because it was the first time I had entered a tattoo studio. During tattooing, the guy wiped again and again with a small sponge over his work to make the contours more precise and remove the blood streaming. When the tattoo artist was finally finished, he placed Radke a protective foil onto the fresh Major Accident and gave a few nursing notes for the first days. Radke handed him the agreed 100 Deutschmark. He invited us to drop in again soon. We said goodbye to the friendly tattoo artist and left the tattoo shop and the red light district. Radke was incredibly proud of his new tattoo.
In the near future something drastic changed in our skinhead life. Only a few weeks after our visit to the tattooist our beloved laundrette was closed for good. We hung a while longer in the laundrette at Knooper Weg corner of Frankestrasse, where Alit, our friend from Tehran, regularly gave a lot of encouragement until finally this ersatz drinking hall was closed. We were then forced to drink out in the cold again in the house entrances near the Ansgar playground, mostly Waitzstrasse 60 or 62.
Shot through vinyl
When our drinking supplies were running out, we started moving slowly to restock at the petrol station or to pull beer at a beer vending machine. Depending on the weather and our wallet, we sometimes went to bars like the "Nieselpriem" in Schauenburger Strasse or The Exit in the Waisenhofstrasse. Sometimes we visited some obscure people like Marwelli, who had just moved into his flat at Blücherplatz. On top of all the fuss, we boozers had to watch out on our way not to lose poor Heimerich, who usually followed us far behind cursing. Because of his wooden leg and high alcohol content, he was definitely not the fastest and was constantly in danger of not being able to cross the road after us.
Marwelli lived in his one-room flat on the fourth floor, right under the roof. We made fun of him because he spoke like Lefty, the salesman on Sesame Street. He put up with it and said elongated
"Riiiiiight!"
Marwelli had fixed a large amount of stacked, empty beer cans to an entire wall in this tiny flat for decorative purposes. An air rifle, with which he sometimes shot out the window at birds in the backyard, stood in a corner. This afternoon I had bought the Oi!-2 sampler Strength thru Oi! second-hand at Tutti Frutti and was absolutely indescribably proud of this bargain, for this record was forbidden because of a violent call on the cover. We populated the small one-room flat and were busy carousing. When I saw the air rifle standing in the corner, I already knew what was coming. The first one grabbed the gun and demanded an air gun pellet. The stacked cans on the wall were almost exclusively Holsten Pilsener half-litre cans. After Mig had inserted the first ammo pellet, he aimed at the can wall. With a quiet "bang", the pellet broke through the aluminium of a can. Now the command was given to shoot at the Holsten coat of arms of a Holsten can. The coat of arms was hit and pierced immediately. Now Stidi grabbed the rifle from his brother and put in another ammo pellet, that Marwelli had handed him. Just for fun, Stidi aimed for the other attendees. We flinched. Stidi was enjoying himself. I still beamed with pride to carry the Oi!-2 sampler in my hands, but what was Stidi doing in his booze head now? He continued to take turns aiming at the other skins present, and things began to get more serious. Mig just said
"Woe!"
when Stidi was aiming at him. Suddenly he was aiming at me. I had already jumped up, turned my face away and held the LP in front of my head. I screamed,
"You moron!".
Stidi had long since made the decision to pull the trigger. Suddenly another quiet "bang" could be heard. The bullet went through the LP, but it didn't hit me. This was lucky, because it was close to my eye. Marwelli stepped in and snatched Stidi's rifle. Meanwhile I looked angrily at the damage the drunken Stidi had done, pulled out the inner cover containing the LP, saw the bullet hole, took the record out and angrily spotted the hole in the vinyl. The others stood around me and gave an accident assessment.
"You can still listen to it, the hole is in the lead-out groove."
"Fucking hell, I never heard it."
Meanwhile I developed a fear that this jewel of skinhead music could be more seriously damaged. I managed to get the sampler home this night without any further incidents. When I listened to the LP the next day, I realized that all songs had remained undamaged except the spoken contribution of an Oi!-poet. However, every time I played the LP, I had to make sure I lifted in time the tonearm off the turntable, including the sensitive needle, before it reached the bullet hole at the end of each side. Otherwise, my record player might have been damaged as well. So, this was the high life and all konfetti, or should I say a horror show?
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