Remembering 1989: Bug-Man Berlin
Standing on a broken bridge at a border canal, he grinned from West to East.
Er stand auf einer gesperrten Brücke am Maybachufer, die aus Auto Teilen, hauptsächlich eines ausrangierten Volkswagen Käfers bestand. So ist er Käfermann geworden. Aufrecht und grinsend stand er da wie ein Graffiti-Monument für die postindustrielle Verrücktheit des Westens, oder mindestens West Berlin….
He stood on a cut-off bridge along the Maybach Ufer; he was made of a trashed Volkswagen beetle (VW Käfer) and other cars’ parts, earning him the name, “Bug Man.” (Käfermann).
With fender-mount ears and a familiar Mercedes twinkle in his hubcap eyes, old Bug Man leaned on a red gas-line cane, while toying with what appeared to be a cigar — no, more like a currywurst — between his yellow tailpipe fingers. He was Bug Man, a work of graffiti art, grinning and standing watch at the Wall, a great monument to the post-industrial weirdness of the Cold War West.
Easy to imagine folks getting some glimpse of Bug Man from the other side of the border. He stood high on a steel-wheeled trolly, as if he could roll right onto the railroad bridge across the slow-flowing Landwehr Canal. He’d be stopped by the barrier, of course, the famous Wall, rising up from the opposite bank.
He was a graffiti-sculpture erected by persons unknown — probably at night — a symbol of our scruffy, scrappy West Berlin of that time.
Bug Man ruled.
I suspect he wasn’t well-treated by subsequent city developers, commissioned to make-over the town with buildings that make money,
coldly erasing most evidence of the old-time “squats,”
where young Lebenskünstler hung out,
often listless, between gigs, like people doing jail time.
Still, they made stuff — from photographs and graffiti art
to David Bowie albums….