Art Crimes

My family has been and gone. My sister April arrived with Tristan last week and made quite the impact during their short stay here. April is everyone’s new best friend and has already been offered a job by Pablo to run his European empire. She also had Pablo biking and going to the gym with her at six am. Tristan managed to ..ahem…meet a German intern student. Enough said on that evening of his life. The big excitement was his arrest.
As previously mentioned a few of us had talked with Pablo about painting the exterior shutters to the gallery to eradicate them of bad street art and replace them with good street art. Tristan has done a few “tags” in skate parks etc, never anything illegal before, but was keen to assist in the project as part of his stay here in Berlin.
We purchased our supplies a few days earlier at one of the unbelievable specialty street avenger stores – where they sell spray paint in four foot cans, markers and other impulse items such as balaclavas. We thought it the perfect night, Lilla and Harveys last, Sven’s first and also election night and a full moon to boot. What could go wrong?
Declining the need for balaclavas or other disguises, we brazenly walked over to the gallery as Pablo had said if we got into any trouble, all we would have to do was simply say that he had given us permission. So we really embarked on the project as a condoned, risk free kind of street art, but still thought we should have look outs. Mom and Dad opted to be the lookouts and Tristan the first artist. At one am the streets were still quite crowded so things went slowly –being Canadian and all it was hard not to be naturally circumspect about technically illegal art applications. After about an hour the parents faded…being a lookout is hard work and after all it was now well after two am. No one had seemed to even notice us except for one guy who had raised a fist. Checking with Tristan if he was ok to finish without us we left, assuming we would complete our part of the project the next day. He was only four blocks from his hostel. Apparently right after we left is when the police car pulled up. We now figure the gesture of the raised fist was in fact the nieghbour who called them. We had thought it a symbol that we were cool – raised fists werent covered in our travel guide to Berlin.
Tristan tried the Pablo’s permission story, but the police wanted Pablos last name and address. Tristan sort of remembered where Pablo lived and then oddly the police chose to give him the benefit of the doubt and decided to walk with him to Pablos house to talk with him. Unbeknownst to Tristan Pablo isn’t his real name so once they were at his door buzzer – none on the names were even close, Tristan didn’t want to start randomly ringing buzzers at two am, so they nicely arrested him and took him to the station. He had to explain why as a Canadian he had done this art crime and fill out a form in German stating he would never do it again. Finally he was searched and then set free miles from his hostel at four thirty am with no idea where he was. Amazingly he found his way back by going into bars and cafes and asking for directions back to the neighborhood.
The current status of the art crime project is “a work in progress” but seeing as the police confiscated our thirty euros worth of four foot paint cans of that is how it will likely stay.
Pablo still think it looks better than it did before