_by_Florentine_cartographer_Cristoforo_Buondelmonte.jpg)
I seem to always end up at this massive intersection. It’s a confluence of sorts sitting atop a hill, a meadow within the large sky scrapers and mega hotels all around. In the early days of Istanbul and Constantinople (insert song joke here), It was a water reservoir; now it is the major epicenter of the youth culture.
Its function as reservoir, collecting and holding the water for Istanbul, all waterlines leaving from this point going all around the city. The same happens today, for people, especially youth. Everyone comes and goes from Taksim square, most of them following the cobble stone, wide boulevard İstiklal down its slight slope, to whatever you need, drinks, food, cloths. Independence avenue as is its translation in English, has never been empty. Always chocked full of people weaving in and out down. Every side street is another universe a different feeling, focus and idea. İstiklal’s 3km from Taksim to Galata can be the fastest and longest walk of your life. Starting from atop Taksim square is always daunting, the sea of people walking in every direction, appears to be a river, the different groups a rapid, Each individual a ripple, all forming the downward tide flowing off the edges in what ever direction.
It is even hard to find a comparison to anything. There has never been a street I’ve encountered that is so reliably packed. So consistently filled to the brim with every kind of person, all of the many subcultures. Everything youthful seems to lead İstiklal’s way. Any type of subculture, mainstream or sits in or off the myriad of streets running along and off of this main artery acting as veins. Each block and street is in itself a great novel of complexity. Taking a left or right turn off İstiklal could lead me in any of directions both that positive and negative.
İstiklal
Every time sitting at the ridge line, Atatürk’s large bronze body leering at us, we try to decided where to go (while trying to make sure to please the great secular leader at the same time, daunting task it really is). The conversation is always something like this, ‘Lets got to the Death Metal bar! Alright take a third left, lets go to the Antichrist club, oh that’s four streets, but keep kin mine they are anarchists they don’t have reliable hours. What about this what about that?’ the decisions are impossible with the group, never finding the right place
The place I always like most is a dark and wood (though I think it is just linoleum) paneled hole in the wall called Astrix (keep in mind, I’m still not clear exactly what it is called, for ever back street of İstiklal sits sometime four to five clubs stacked atop one another, each with its own ridiculous sign, its broken English half Turkish never quite telling you the full story of what exactly the club about).
Any way this so called club Astrix is a Turkish bar, its always filled with people singing and dancing at the top of their longs, knocking the tables over and doing the many and still foreign to me Turkish dances, to what I can only comprehend is Turkish Soul music. Dating from the 1960/70’s, its infectious music, I feel like I know the words in these dark and smoke filled rooms, the exuberance of the signing and clapping of the regulars brings you in with it. Even if your doing it to blend in to avoid glares from the leather clad rock and rollers who look displeased with your presence.
The music is what always makes a place for me. This place sure has it, as I said I feel I can understand these Turkish songs, for in the end what else is most soul about? Love, lost love, lovers who left, the worse of love, the best, the in-between, the love triangle, the love rhombus, I can only assume that is what these songs are about, for no good soul and vintage jam can avoid it.
Yet the best thing about the possibly titled club Astrix, is its waiter. A man who’s name is different every time I ask, his short stature, and long hair to his waist, he is covered in strange tattoos; Is a definitive free sprit or possibly even one step past. They man has vaulted off walls, pole danced, all in the act bringing beers. Yelling and jumping, spinning and saluting, he is a one man show to the best of its definition. And whenever we make it till the 3am and last call comes around, he comes up to us (the americans) with what must be some of the only English he knows and says, This song is for you… Waiting to hear what song it is, which we now know is always the same, it is Averill Laveigns “Knocking on Heaves Door”(yes a Bob Dylan cover). its opening cliché and terrible, its build up blaring over the speakers, feeling my body cringe, retrating inside itself and blocking it out as best as I can, trying to never confuse it with the greatness of the original. The song Louder then I ever want to hear it, In the end I would prefer to never actually hear that song in my life. As we pack up, and walk out as he sits behind his dj booth(which he is the dj at the same time) looking at us with the slyest smile, glad to have torments us once again. I only hope that this is an ironic song choice. I think he knows what a terrible song he is playing. Did I mention how terrible this song is!
İstiklal has seemingly channeled the water vessel it use to be. Changing the form, changing what its delivering, but it still acts as a bridge of sorts between the two Turkey’s that exist. Consider İstiklal as the most western turkey has gone yet, Being the example of the direction Turkey is hesitantly going. İstiklal’s shops from all over the world line the street, in-between the westernized building fronts sits the nick-knacks, shops clinging on to their identity as Turkish. While around every day another western monolith appears. With a new set of sweeping changes all around. Looking above the Nike logo, you see the Ottoman style apartment blocks, some empty, others bustling with a discothèque or any number of other things, all above each store, it waves toward the one of the oldest trading hubs in the world Galata.
Yet besides Astrix it has taken me up in till yesterday to find a semblance of a bar where the variables were right enough for me to begin to feel comfortable within this ridiculous scene of a night life. Its bittersweet as my time is running out so quickly. Yet in the same way these places I’m finding so comfortable are the same almost as the ones I sit in New York and Seattle.
What’s Turkish about that? Its been the internal discussion of the limbo of cultural ambivalence that has developed in my experience of Istanbul. I’ve come thousands of miles, away from home only to be attracted to the Turkish equivalent to a scene playing the same western music, the same styles of dress, and the same youth art of stencils and hap hazard art all around.
But they are still Turkish, I’m still in Turkey, I just sit in a place that is stuck it in itself a de-markation line between Turkey’s direction and Turkeys past. Right?
[post note:
Scratch the De-markation bit, its like I’m are talking about actual war, it is obviously not. Maybe I mean the subtle semblance of globalization? no no that’s to many words, slightly pretentious in its own way.
Maybe it is the fact that me and my friends at home are so cool its gone international? No no, I’m not that cool, Neither are my friends, (I mean we are but not internationally) and in the end even the coolest are just coping the forehumans of hipster-doom, or beatniks, or what ever the title was for them before that.
Possibly its like the Twelve monkey, that every sub culture takes similar attributes, it spreads though anyone who listened to The Clash, or “In A Silent Way”, and was moved. Or for anyone who fell in love with Mark Rothko, or any art be it in any of the forms art appears, and was moved to a new outlook, all of which inspiring one to change and divert from the usual path that we are told to do? I like this idea.
The unification in challenging the status quo, we take similar attributes, all of which building on what came before. In what ever way that you choose, for me I prefer not to throw petrol bombs at the police, like they are in Athens. I would rather write about the subtle things, and shifts around me be positive or negative, Other may make amazing music, taking and building on the songs that changed their lives, maybe others run or do some other type of things as a way of disconnecting themselves from the straight and narrow, thrusting themselves out into a new idea, that in the end is an old one. Following what you love and your passions. Which in the end maybe there is a subtle unification or feel in those who ate attempting that.
like “In A silent way” did, for the concept of a Jazz record. For my concept of what music and art is. The nature of it to me as an anthem, or as a metaphor for change, and the cathartic response of such a change. ]
