West theft after school
After school I had to go up the street to the bus stop Belvedere on Holtenauer Strasse. To go home I would have to ride in the direction of Kiel-North. Meanwhile, the cigarette industry had conditioned me to the cigarette brand West that I got from time to time up at the Penny market. If I only had a few pfennige left, I just bought a pack of Manner Schnitten (typical German chocolate waffles), but also took a pack of West cigarettes from the shelf which I queued up with at the cash register. Before I, as a poor punk paid for the waffles, I let the pack of West cigarettes disappear unnoticed in my pocket. In Maxi's former class, there was the daughter of one of the Penny's cashiers. Around noon, immediately after school, the schoolgirl often stood next to the cash register while her mother was busy collecting money. Her daughter gave the impression that she was just waiting for her to finish work in the early afternoon. That's why I didn't take her seriously. Also on this day I bought myself again a pack of Manner Chocolate Waffles for 39 pfennige and let the pack of West disappear into my trouser pocket. After leaving the Penny market, I ripped open the pack of West, put a cigarette in my mouth and lit it up. I smoked it on the way to and at the bus stop. I ate the waffles on the bus and went home, where my mother had already prepared food. The following day I went to school as usual, but in the evening the school's principal called my father and made very serious accusations against me that I was stealing things after school.
"What does your home look like, anyway, if your son goes stealing after school every day?"
the principal asked reproachfully and threatening.
"Mr Rübe, I'm sorry. It shall not happen again,"
my father begged.
The principal told my father in detail that a schoolgirl whose mother works at Penny's had watched me shoplifting there. The principal was very aggrevated on the phone, and my father was very intimidated by this. My father was very perplexed, I didn't even get a dressing down from him. He merely informed me and the rest of the family about the demoralizing phone call that questioned his honour as a father,
"Mr Rübe made mincemeat of me!"
It seemed like a tragedy to the family. The schoolgirl from the neighbouring class and her mother had actually ratted me to the school management. Also as a punk I felt I'd been brought back into line from school once more. I was happy when that girl had to leave school at the end of the school year because of her poor performance.
The school festival at Hebbel Grammar School
As at every ordinary school, a school festival took place from time to time at Hebbelschool. This year a surprising number of punks came by. The Wik Punks were among them, including Barne and Maxi, who had already been expelled from this very school. The punks were buzzing outside the entrance to the auditorium. They weren't let in because they looked very threatening. Punks basically had a bad reputation here. In the anteroom of the auditorium stood Kensing, a famous sports and English teacher, and vice-principal Haberlack, a maths teacher. The two teachers searched and harassed selected pupils and guests before allowing them to enter the auditorium so that no one was able to smuggle alcohol inside. Our Monko-Rolf was intercepted time and time again. The teachers had not a good word to say about him anyway. As I have already described, he was slapped and humiliated by Haberlack, all because he attached two seals of Flensburger Beugelbuddelbeer to the breast pockets of his black cloth jacket. Whenever I entered the auditorium that evening, I turned my leather jacket inside out so that the studs and the Chaos U.K. writing were not visible. It was awkward, but I wanted to protect myself from the humiliation. I was already very drunk. No alcohol was served inside, but harmless looking students managed to smuggle alcohol past Kensing and Haberlack. That's why it was possible to drink almost unnoticed, especially at the back of the cloakrooms. Up until then I liked the school festival despite the music. I got into a conversation with Wigand's girlfriend in the cloakroom, I don't remember her name. I wanted to get off with her. We snuggled up and began to snog. We lay on the hard floor and continued to snog wildly. She was willing to let me study her curves. Finally, I started to finger her carefully while the school party was raging downstairs. She seemed to be somewhere else with her thoughts. She was suddenly startled and didn't even want to kiss anymore. I heard the excuse that it was too uncomfortable and too risky for her at the spot we were in, so we went back down. I think she was just afraid her boyfriend might come looking for her and catch us. I was breathless for a moment and then I went back to drinking. Dancing was not an issue for me that night. Barclay James Harvest was put on again and again – until I felt like vomitting. It's like the DJs wanted to get at the teachers.
The problem was typically that there were only two toilets in the auditorium, one to the left of the stage for girls, one on the right for boys. If the crowds at the toilets were too big, there was still the possibility to use the main toilets, but to get there, everyone had to pass Kensing and Haberlack again and let themselves be searched. We tried to avoid that.
Vielmann went to the boys' toilet with Jazzy and occupied the place with her for a while. Vielmann had the longest one, that was well known and talked about. This couple blocked the toilet for schoolboys and guests who actually had to use it. The pressure finally increased, but I didn't want to go out again, turn my jacket over again and pass Kensing and Haberlack. Finally my classmate Arjen, who came from a respected gymnastics family, told me,
"You can go up the stairs to the physics room. Marcello's been there peeing, too!"
"If you say so?"
I thought it was a good idea and in my boozy state went up the stairs to the left of the stage. In front of the physics room was a small platform that was already dripping wet with urine. I was just doing my little wee here, when suddenly a loud, dominant voice sounded from below.
"You bastard, get down from there now!"
After that, the fun was over. It was Willem who caught me in the act. I had obviously been denounced by a classmate. The teacher later claimed to have been splashed by a stream of urine from me. I couldn't confirm that. He came up the stairs and grabbed me by my coattail. It wasn't exactly a death grip, but certainly no caress either. The grip was highly unpleasant. The teacher dragged me through the auditorium in front of an assembled audience – I bet I lost a few cone studs in the meantime – and finally ejected me out of the school building. I was a hero to the punks out there. I immediately reviewed the whole incident that led up to the ejection. I sensed something bad was going on. For me it was clear that the gymnast Arjen, who sent me to pee in front of the physics room, must have informed Willem almost immediately. I felt betrayed and sold down the river. After the punks had put me straight, I left alone to go to the bus stop, Belvedere. On the way to line 64 I bumped into Töle at Quinckestrasse, just as he came trotting down the street Seeblick with his freshly coloured hair and some other punks. Töle's hair shimmered bright red in the light of the street lamp. With his unbeatable 13 years he was much more than a carnival punk. The group took me back to the auditorium where I had to describe the whole incident once more. I told them,
"All I heard from downstairs was, you bastard, get down here now! I turned around and still peed. The teacher already came to meet me. I packed in quickly and went down."
"Oh, and did he grab you?"
All the punks were very enthusiastic and tried to lift my spirits. I was served another beer. Quick as a flash I imagined in my drunken head that no punk in the world could top my action so quickly, neither in Germany, Finland or anywhere else. From my subconscious the feeling of being a hero rose irrevocably. My reputation as a pseudo-punk seemed to be a thing of the past. In the following days, nothing happened at school in my case. I was hoping to get out of that plight relatively unscathed. About two weeks later I was told that I should go to the school principal. I begged this call to be for another reason. I knew that my father wanted to get school leave for me for a Friday afternoon because we wanted to go on a weekend vacation. It didn't turn out the way I'd hoped. When I entered the school principal's room, principal Rübe, class teacher Zählmann and Willem, who had allegedly been hit by the urine stream, were sitting there. They all insulted me at the same time. Rübe kept shouting,
"And that kind of thing at my school!"
"This is not a pigsty here!"
cried Mr Zählmann.
"This is a downright disgrace!"
Mr Rübe cried again.
They cursed crosswise. Only Mr Willem controlled himself a little. Terms such as "dirt", "smut", "disgrace" and "mess" were repeatedly used. The school principal scheduled a school conference. This conference, consisting of 12 teachers, should have decided unanimously to expel me from school. It ended up eleven to one. A Latin teacher surprisingly stood by me and suggested that I should continue attending school, but stay at home for the upcoming class trip. So I wasn't expelled. As a further punishment for the class trip ban, a two-week school ban was imposed – which was much more severe. That was basically the end. I wasn't allowed to attend the school conference. Instead, I had to wait outside the conference room for the verdict. My physics teacher walked past me into the conference room and asked,
"Well Rollant, what have you done now this time?
I didn't even get the chance to say anything in my own defence: that gymnast Arjen sent me there in the first place, and besides me, there were several other persons who urinated there. Where's the justice in that? I realized I'd made a complete mess-up of things. There was also the fact that the boys' or gents' toilet in the auditorium was permanently occupied by a couple. On the other hand, there were these annoying checks and searches by the two despotic teachers carried out on the way back from the main toilets outside the auditorium. I was not allowed to present these facts. If I tried to raise these points, the matter would probably have escalated more. When I returned to class after the two weeks' compulsory break, I was out of favour with all the teachers. My classmates lost their last bit of respect for me and I finally lost contact. This act was the decisive stumbling block in my life. At the end of the school year I naturally had to repeat the class. In my school report it literally said: behaviour "not always flawless" (school punishment 14 days exemption). So what, for the punks, I was considered a hero by my actions and the disciplinary measures connected with it. I had made a mark as someone in the scene once again and was no longer regarded as a pseudo.
The summer holidays were soon coming up, and I wanted to head off again with my mates: to Hanover. After all the stress, I just wanted to go to the Chaos Days, but a few more days would pass until then.
In the rehearsal room of ‘The Victims’
Many young punks would have loved to start their own punk band, but that turned out to be very difficult. There was enough enthusiasm. Band names like "Alfons and the Kot Boys" were put together but were never popular. This probably played a role with the "NDK-Kids". There were considerable problems with instruments and equipment, the rehearsal room dilemma and the fact that punks were discriminated against, and punk music stigmatized.
I was told about a punk band called Plüschtierficker, that came from Kiel-Mettenhof. The Scapegoats from Klausdorf-Schwentine were also sometimes mentioned. Even the Wik Punks started something. Barne, Maxi, Lasse and No-Bird had formed a punk band called Valient Youth, who practiced in a temporary rehearsal room in the Holiday Village in Falckenstein. They always had to drag their equipment all the way down to the beach from Brauner Berg bus stop. Later they called themselves 'The Victims' and found a rehearsal room in the Wik Youth Club, where they were allowed to practice once a week. Barne played guitar and sang, Maxi played bass, Lasse was on drums and No-Bird played guitar. Up until now I only knew of the Youth Club Buschblick in Pries-Friedrichsort, where mainly young rockers hung around.
One day Barne invited me to come to the rehearsal room at the Youth Club North. I was surprised by the name because in the actual north was our youth club, the Youth Club Buschblick. Of course it was a great honour for me to be invited by Barne himself into 'The Victims’' rehearsal room, because this punk band had caused a lot of furore in the punk scene, even without public gigs. The band tried to gain respect for their project with various spray paint jobs and touch-up pen letterings of the band name on selected walls and buildings in Wik, and on the back rests of bus seats and other open areas. 'The Victims' had taped some rehearsal room sessions. These recordings were played more and more often to the other punks on the Penny playground or in the laundry hall with a Kasi recorder.
As the next rehearsal of 'The Victims' approached, I put on my boots, my tattered jeans, my leather jacket and my self-designed Chaos U.K. T-shirt. I sneaked out of my parents' house and took the bus to Wik. When I arrived at the youth club, I could already hear the harsh sound of 'The Victims' ringing out of a cellar window. While they were rehearsing in the basement, there was trouble brewing in the youth club. Everyone standing in front of the entrance door or approaching the entrance at that time could hear the crashing sound. There were many envious people, especially among the countless hard rock fans who dominated the Youth Club North. When I heard the punk soundscape on my way from Holtenauer Strasse, I knew immediately,
"This is the place!"
It just wasn't immediately clear to me where to find the entrance to the youth club, but there were several young people lurking around, who showed me the exact way in. When I got into the club, I got a shock, because only hardrock-oriented young people hung out here. So it was the same as everywhere. I kept on asking the way and finally reached the rehearsal room in the cellar. Knocking on the door made no sense, of course. So I opened the door, entered the room and found that 'The Victims' had already played themselves into a state of intoxication. I was joined by two other visitors. That was the first time in my life I was at a rehearsal. I sat down with the other guests and soon I was served a cheap beer. Without booze, nothing seemed to happen in the rehearsal room. Barne did his best. He screamed into the microphone and maltreated his guitar. He didn't care that the guitar was out of tune, because that was obscured by the strong distortion anyway. Maxi was annoyed as soon as he recognized my face. He played bass with simple and fast runs that were not quite in sync with the other instruments. It seemed like he was doing his own thing. Lasse on drums worked his instrument as if intending to break speed records. No-Bird on the second guitar appeared highly focused and seemed to master his instrument. The problems in arranging things between the four punks were striking. However, they offered eye-candy. In full punk attire, even in leather jackets, they played their songs uncompromisingly. Not only was the music totally punk, but also the whole show they played. I absolutely enjoyed myself in the rehearsal room, almost over the moon, even though my ears were burning. When the punks finally took a short break, Barne greeted me with a short "Moin" (North German word for Hello). Maxi was curt as usual. They played their hit,
"Pershing, Cruise Missiles, we do not need these fucking toys!"
I'd never forget that line again. Next came a beer break during which the band members discussed different songs. After a few minutes they took up their positions again and reached for their instruments. The acoustic feedback eventually began to hurt. They gave a good impression of their constructive yet defective musical abilities, and the band's desire to change the world with punk. In the end, they packed their instruments and cleaned up, because 'The Victims' didn't want to mess with the club supervisors.
Barne locked the rehearsal room and we went upstairs where he left the key at the counter. The rockers were watching me, because my face was new and unfamiliar to them. After a short moment we left and walked through the streets without any plans. We knew we wanted to keep drinking. It was still light and I suffered from a buzzing in my ears for quite some time.
'The Victims' had proved to me what they were capable of. I could fully identify with this punk band – not only when I was drunk, but because I felt like a victim of the torments of teachers, right-wing schoolmates and the residents of Hebbelschool.
Maxi, the "in-reflex-at-Haberlack-fight-back-punk", now attended the Enking Secondary School, just like various other punks. At that time, the school management of Hebbelschool would have preferred to make radically short work of all punks and expel them from school. Barne had left our school more than half a year ago, because he was simply too impudent towards the teachers. Because of all the heckling he got, he ended up at a secondary school – I'm sure it was the Timm-Kröger-School. To say goodbye, Barne sprayed the band name “The Victims” on a school wall of Hebbelschool, which the teachers had to pass in the morning before class – right next to the parking lot. Of course, we immediately knew who was responsible for that. Barne was totally on it when it came to spray paintings and touch-up pens. We always knew right away,
"Barne was here".
He wrote this slogan on almost every KVAG bus he travelled on, usually on the backrests of the penultimate seats, so that everyone sitting in the back row could read it. Barne did this to wake us up. I was thrilled every time I read it. He always kept the tape of 'The Victims’' rehearsal room recordings in his jacket pocket. He played it to us over and over to capture all our opinions. You could forget when the tape was playing that it was just an unprofessional Kiel punk band without live experience. Again the chorus howled from the kasi recorder,
"Pershing, Cruise Missiles, we do not need these fucking toys."
For me this song had long since gained cult status.
Kiel punk zines
At that time there were a lot of punk zines in Kiel and the surrounding area. We called them fanzines. Whenever I got my hands on a punk zine, I studied it carefully. The content and the whole punk zine scene were often the basis of conversation when I talked to punks and punk fans. The creators of these punk zines enjoyed the highest reputation among the different punk scenes on a nationwide level. Everyone who was really interested in punk came into possession of one or more of these thin booklets sooner or later. They contained photos, scene reports, record reviews, concert reviews and announcements, punk commentaries, band interviews, collages, cartoon-like drawings and much more. Each of these punk zines was unique, because their creators left their individual mark on the thin booklet.
The templates were elaborately typed, laid out and pinned together. Most punk zines could only be duplicated by photocopying. Some were available in A4 format, others in A5 format. Some punk zines even had a tape as a supplement. You could buy them in small record stores, if they were available there, or order them directly from the punk zine authors.
I liked punk zines, not only the collages of letters and words, but also the photo collages, that were able to create completely new meaning. I also found those black and white photos outstanding, that ended up being copied umpteen times and therefore lost a lot of quality and showed a certain trash effect.
"Der Rammelnde Hase" (The Shagging Bunny) was produced by a punk named Bert from Strande together with Bürzi and Gerti. "Sinnlos" (Senseless) of Gonnrad became "Sinnvoll" (Meaningful) in later editions. A final version with the title "Skinvoll" (Skinful) was finished, but never distributed. Besides you could also find Leo's "Groinoid", $abrina's and Tonn's "Der Chaot" (This Chaotic Person), as well as "Art Attack" and "Anti-System" by Scapegoats members from Klausdorf-Schwentine. Another punk zine was called "Danger", its editors unknown. "Die Moderne Ratte" (This Modern Rat) was sought-after as well – not just because of its name.
We were so inspired by these creative minds that Töle and I suddenly wanted to create our own punk zine. Töle visited me in Pries-Friedrichsort for the first and last editorial meeting. We spent the whole evening thinking about who we should greet in the first issue. The list became longer and longer, and there was no time left to talk about content. Finally, our project was put on hold and was never picked up again. The greetings list later ended up in the trash.
Parties at the steep coast
Our drinking parties at Schilksee beach were legendary. This summer we heard either a sampler recorded by Hecker, or the live record of Peter and The Test Tube Babies that Monko-Rolf owned first. We typically had Hecker's kasi recorder with us. This summer we met Heimerich and Ringo – both anti-right-wing and anti-rocker. Ringo was a skinhead with a heart and soul, even though he used to be a pseudo-rocker before and had some hard rock records like Saxon, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden on his shelf. Heimerich was already precocious at the tender age of 16 and always spread pieces of wisdom. We'd either laugh or we were made to think for a long time. Unforgotten is his quote,
"The brain cortex is like a steep coast. Every day a piece is crumbled away."
His humor was very dry, like the morning after booze. His wooden leg didn't stop him from doing the most impossible actions.
Drinking on the beach and on the steep coast was a new dimension of youth alcoholism for us. We slid down the steep coast cheering like skiers without seriously injuring ourselves. We liked to sit directly on the steep coast and let our legs dangle down the slope. That wasn't safe. Since there was an unofficial nudist area down on the beach, it was inevitable that we threw small stones at these naked people. This resulted in these angry naked people running up the stairs, running behind us until we finally laughed at them. We once gatecrashed a party of the Schüler Union[1] Kiel at Schilksee-South directly below the steep coast. Ringo threw a stone weighing certainly two kilos at an aspiring CDU youngster's chest because he was disseminating radical theses about migrants. In our opinion, the slogans of the Schüler Union differed only marginally from those of the KLA. Nevertheless, these people wanted to discuss and convince us with their CDU beliefs. Not us!
This summer was quite hot. At the steamboat bridge, the young girls flashed. We welcomed this and opened our Paderborner "hand grenades"[2]. Hecker had compiled a tape with the best songs of the Sandinista. We lay sloshed in the sun and turned the tape over again and again. We buried our beers in the sand or put them in water so as not to expose them to the hot sun. Sometimes we had header tournaments or passed a ball around in waist-high water, drunk as skunks. When the ball came our way, we'd perform overhead-kicks. It was indescribable bathing fun. Heimerich's wooden leg stood abandoned on the beach.
In that year we still could jump off the bollards. Whoever was tired of life would jump into the waves of the ship's screw. Also this summer several of our peers ended up dead on the eastern shore while jumping off bridges. We were shocked to hear about this.
Since we behaved differently, we got into trouble again and again with rockers and like-minded persons – such as the Projensdorfers. One day several motorcyclists accused us of pushing their motorcycles down the steep coast. We found that absolutely ridiculous, because nobody would dare to do that. The rocker pack clearly needed a reason to cause trouble. Or they just wanted to provoke us and scare us away.
Now and then objects washed up on the beach. Once we found a surfboard without its mast and sail at the unofficial nudist beach. As beach punks we hated all sailors and surfers, but when we stood in front of the abandoned surfboard on the steep coast Schilksee-Süd that night, it was clear that we would test the device. We didn't believe that the edgy and sharp chains on the snow-white board were particularly dangerous, so we took off our boots, threw our clothes into the sand and brought the board into the water. We tried our luck as amateurs. No one held balance, no one had a clue, no one had ever stood on a surfboard before and no one was sober. As soon as one of us held himself upright for a moment, the next pushed him abruptly off the surfboard. We almost fought for this fucking surfboard in shoulder-deep water, as if it was to win a prize or to escape by surfing. That was mega fun until the first abrasions and lacerations started to appear. There was no chance of shifting into a standing or crouching position with our boozy heads. The first of us tried to paddle with his hands while lying face-down on the surfboard. Unfortunately, this fucking chain was in the way, so that further abrasions in the belly area appeared. That didn't really bother us with the booze. Only when the first naked punk scratched his dick, he gave up and left the surfboard screaming. As if the next punk wasn't sufficiently warned by the screeching of his predecessor, he also wanted to surf face-down. That naked surfer also grazed his dick. We finally towed the surfboard back ashore and examined it in the dark. The edgy chain could not be removed. Frustrated and scratched, we left the board behind. Our hatred for sailors and surfers became even stronger.
In rainy weather we sometimes boozed under the steam boat bridge. A history and German teacher at Hebbelschool went swimming in her bathing suit near the bridge and left her clothes behind on the beach. When she disappeared behind the stone pier, we took her clothes and threw them ruthlessly into the water. After only a few minutes I gained a guilty conscience and began to feel bad for our actions, even though we included this teacher in the CDU spectrum. Sometimes there was tension with the scum rockers, who would get sloshed at the beach snack bar and bother the beach vacationers. Ringo got punched at this kiosk at the beginning of the steamer bridge by some scum rocker from Friedrichsort who looked like Karl Marx. The said pseudo-rocker in the jute coat said to him several times,
"Come here! Come here, I won't hurt you!"
"And what do you want from me?"
"Come over here first!"
Ringo in his drunk head showed courage and went to the scumbucket. Ringo promptly got whacked. On the other hand, we ourselves could also be disgusting. When we stood with Pinz from Gaarden at the snack bar at the steamboat bridge, a woman talked to us. There were also rocker-like blokes standing around again. The woman ordered a bowl of potato salad. I went to see her, asked if I could have a taste. She agreed. Since I thought she was a CDU auntie, I spat in her potato salad instead of trying it – just as I had seen in a TV series about a house for the elderly. That was totally disgusting of me, of course, and there's no excuse for it. One of the rockers came straight at me and punched me. I deserved it and I realized it.
Sometimes we tried to push each other down the steep coast, singing "Keep Britain untidy" or "I need intensive care" and pogoed on the slope. With the biggest hits we tried as usual – at least at the refrain – to sing along, even if we didn't always succeed. Lines of text that were forgotten or not understood properly were just improvised.
Hecker, the fish head, finally pushed our schoolmate Wisent from Pries Village down the stairs of one of the stairways. Wisent suffered a spiral fracture of the metacarpal bone. Cooling his injury with Baltic Sea water didn't help and he had to go to hospital. Things went awry for Wisent, but that's how things sometimes went at our beach parties. Ringo finally took the biscuit, received a subpoena and later a summoning and was finally condemned because we once again gatecrashed a beach party. He kicked a campfire with his Docs. One of the party participants got a full load of embers in his face and eyes. Unfortunately, he suffered slight eye damage afterwards, that's what he claimed. The judge decided against Ringo. He even had to pay damages for pain and suffering. Ringo's sister was the high point. She was incredibly critical of her brother's appearance. I tried to chat her up several times – without any success worth mentioning.
After a drink on the beach, we saw the DFB Cup Finale at Ringo's in the living room, during which Lothar Matthäus – still in the Gladbach jersey – chased the ball over the crossbar on penalties, and listened to the The Secret Life of Punks. Ringo's sister could not accept our music. She rejected me again that evening, although I did my best to wrap her around my little finger. She didn't understand us, she didn't understand the whole idea behind punk either.
In the midsummer, however, it did not always have to be Schilksee. Night fishing on our lighthouse island was just an alibi for a serious binge-drinking session. Once I was the only one who actually pulled a fish out of the water at dawn. It was a flounder about 12 centimetres long. Instead of throwing it back into the water as it should be, I stuffed it in the mouth of a sleeping Ollie, who babbled like he was at the dentist and spat it out again.
These days we ordered more and more at Vinyl Boogie: LPs, singles and EPs. I almost always ordered together with Hecker, Ringo and Steff. Since most of the packages went to my address, Ringo and Hecker soon accused me of listening to their freshly delivered records in advance on my turntable and copying them without their permission. They also accused me of palming off to them my freshly delivered records that I didn't like. These accusations hit me hard, even if they were partially right.
The NDK-Kids
Together with Steff I founded the NDK-Kids which consisted of punks, skins and pseudos. We were there to party and drink, but also to cause minor trouble. NDK stood for Northerly of Der Kanal. We tried to distinguish ourselves a little from the overpowering Wik Punks. The Wik Punks were perhaps more rebellious, but we, on the other hand, more chaotic, as we were able to cause more trouble at some places in Kiel-North due to the shortage of police stations and the rudimentary police car presence. We didn't look hard enough compared to the Wikers, even though we were on the same level in terms of lack of discipline.
I wrote with Tipp-Ex “NDK” on the tip of my boots. When Leo discovered this one day, we were on our way to Schrevenpark with a bunch of punks, he stepped on the tip of my boot and asked,
"What does NDK mean?"
I answered,
"NDK means Northerly of Der Kanal. These are all kids who live north of the Kanal!"
"I've never heard that before."
"Yes, there aren't that many of us either."
Such details interested Leo very much.
The NDK-Kids regarded themselves as a kind of separatist movement whose goal was to decide by election to hand over part of Schleswig-Holstein north of the canal to Denmark.
This spin-off could possibly be extended to the whole of Schleswig-Holstein and to the northern part of Hamburg, so that one half of Hamburg would belong to Denmark and the other to Lower Saxony. That's how it was discussed.
In Kiel-North I soon became creative. I took a thin piece of cardboard in A4 format, drew the profile of a skinhead underneath the writing NDK-Kids and cut out the stencil.
I still kept a black spray can with which I started the first test spraying. I took a worn-out white undershirt, put it on the floor with the front side up, placed the freshly made stencil on it and sprayed my first NDK-Kids T-shirt and a part of the carpet with the spray can. The T-shirt looked outstanding. Immediately afterwards, because it was so much fun, I produced another NDK T-shirt. I told Ringo and we soon wore these NDK shirts for the first time in public. The stencil was not out of action just yet. Armed with a spray can and stencil we walked through Schilksee at night and looked for clean, white walls on which we could leave our stencil graffiti. We chose a wall on Störtebekerweg and one at Ankerplatz, right next to the church. Only days later we saw the results of our spray paintings in bright daylight. Luckily, no one linked us to the stencil graffiti because of our T-shirts.
We NDK-Kids didn't look as scary as the punks from the city centre, but sometimes we surpassed them in terms of vandalism as well as in the already mentioned chaotic behaviour. Due to our origin from the disorderly shipyard and tank building milieu, many in my district always had sufficient anger in their stomachs. We worked off our anger on all objects that were in our way. Especially when we went into town in small groups, we took our quirks with us, and it was chaotic, with permanent rioting. Sometimes it was no fun what happened there in some occasions. The market stand at the corner of Friedrichsorter Strasse and Julius-Fürst-Weg suffered our antics one night when we returned from the city with a small group. At this fruit stand, which was never dismantled overnight, the leftovers from the previous day were stored, including several boxes of cucumbers. We first discovered boxes of fruit and threw the contents at each other. When we saw the stored cucumbers, the battle really started. After Marwelli knocked one of the slightly muddy cucumbers around my ears, I answered by pulling a cucumber cleanly over his forehead. The cucumbers burst and shredded in all directions. We screamed with laughter and were as merry as a lark about the fruit and vegetable pogo. Manki also soon got one of the cucumbers around his ears. We kept celebrating, yelling, attacking and continued throwing food at each other. If the coppers had shown up, we would have instinctively had our escape plan in mind, as always. We knew the place like the back of our hand. It was unbelievable fun. The cucumbers were so soft that there was really hardly any risk of injury. Soon our whole upper body, face and hair were wet from the juice and fruit flesh. We had shreds of fruit, salad and vegetables all over us. It was a big mess. We left a battlefield. We were real scum.
We were shooting our movie. Our language also changed more and more. We imitated a kind of gutterspeak with strong expressions, situation comedy, some Low German, exaggerations and intentional pronunciation errors. Popular was the shift of the German word "Alter" meaning 'mate' or 'old geezer' to "Alterrrrr" with a stressed, trilled Spanish 'R'. When the booze made our tongues heavy, the 'T' was redacted and it was uttered "Aller" instead of "Alter". Every second sentence began or ended with "Alter", "Ey, Alter" or "Ach, Alter". When we tried to entertain ourselves with exaggerated superstitions, we reverentially said "Oh Alter!", which was comparable to the "Oh Allah" of the young Turks from Friedrichsort.
However, an arrogant die-hard punk would never have said that. Spare time punks, on the other hand, laid it on thick. If somebody got on our nerves, we'd say,
"You're a pain in the neck, Alter!"
or
"Don't stress out, Alter!"
We soon formed rows of words with an 'A' at the end: alta, wanka, puncha, farma. Instead of "Voll geil!" ("Awesome, mate! ") we'd say "Fuga!", instead of "acer" we said "aca!". You may have been greeted or scolded with "Ey, you scum". There were many digs among each other that seldom became really serious and usually lasted only a few seconds. We also liked to pogo dance in a lively and productive way without seriously injuring ourselves. Whoever wore steel caps had to control himself in order to avoid a bloody pogo.
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