Pestilog

Housewarming and the fire warehouse.

So, we finally opened up our space! We got the kitchen straightened out, hung Turkish communist party flags on the wall, and invited 120 of our closest new friends over to start spreading the love.
We had our official house party last Saturday night. It was great. Tons of people showed up. One measure of this was that there were at least 70 bottles of wine to take down to recycling the next day. I took a big long video of the flat so that we could post a virtual tour of the place while it was filled to the gills with our friends, but I am having trouble uploading it, so, for the time being, you'll have to make do with this pick of the living room, which was taken sometime around 9:00

We met a few of the neighbors, including one guy named Andrew who lives above us. He is also American (our building is full of foreigners). He is 25 and writes for Newsweek. We all openely wondered what it is like to have real job skills.
After about 12:30, we all went out to Tűzraktér, a wicked ruin pub in the 8th district.
We lost a few people at Tereszkörút, and had to wait around at the train stop for a bit, but don't you fear! The sociologists brought whisky!

Anyway, this bar, Tűzraktér, is great. The name means either "fire warehouse" or "fire space" in english, depending on what vowels you use (this varies even in the bar). It falls into a category that people here call "ruin pubs." The space is actually an old soviet needle factory that is owned by the government, but has been abandoned for years. Tűzraktér has been present in this space since 2003. The directions when we first went there were as follows: Take the blue line to Ferenciek Tere. Get off, and head south about a block. Turn right at the rubble. When you see 200 bikes parked out front, you know you're there.

The main space is the courtyard, which has been painted time and time again with murals and graffiti art. There are usually visual displays on the walls too. One night, they were playing this trippy loop of Jon Benet Ramsey. Didn't know how I felt about that. Anyway, the bar is off to one side, and has like 14 people working behind it to keep up with the crowd. There is some dude selling sausages and grilled eggs off to the side (we love this guy....)

And there is always this little camp of fire jugglers off to the other side. There are also frequent art exibits and several back rooms that serve as galleries and dance halls for trance, house, stuff like that.
The main building that surrounds this courtyard is 5 stories tall and has been taken over by artists. Some may live there, but it is mostly used as studio and performance space. We havn't done much exploring up there, but its in the works. Anyway, on Saturday, we were here till 3am.

This is what 3am looks like. We're sleepy. But its ok, cause we have cookies at 500,HUF a bag.

More videos to come....and I still havn't delivered those pictures of the protests that I promised. Soon, soon. We will have internet at our house come Friday, and this will all get much much easier.

Labels: aungo, Brigette, clubs and bars, house, Luc, Marko, party, photos, Sasha, tuzrakter

posted by Veruka2 @ 5:27 PM