Where I’m from, garbage sits on the curb for days and the sour mingles with the fresh of the trees to produce that distinctive pissy NYC smell.
Graffiti protests whatever order the military boot of city politics attempts to establish, and nations are united by streets with names like Houston, Broadway, and Flatbush.
People lose their lives over stupid shit like parking places and cops kill you because you’re black.
Blocks terrorized by poverty are patched lovingly together by middle class, mostly Black folk, who are happy that there is some property that can be had.
This in turn makes it safe for college students, which is the universal sign to wealthy Europeans that the coast is clear.
Forte Greene, Bed Stuy, Williamsburg, Red Hook--the pattern is endless and although the sight of a white person up in Harlem is enough for you to shake your head and say, “There goes the neighborhood,” meaning ostensibly, that “M"#¤!f&cker, go back downtown, cuz you about to raise my rent!” there is something to be said about the eclecticism that inherently is
New York.
So when you first come to Copenhagen you do tend to notice a few things. First, there’s the cleanliness, which is definitely cool, to say the least. I’m not going sit up in here and pretend I think there is something wrong with the fact that most people know the destination of their garbage. I say good on you. The other thing is bikes, which makes you wonder why don’t they just make this a city of bikes and ban all those disgusting cars? Especially since lately, Danes seem a bit more ostentatious lately—I mean, do you really need a Beemer in Copenhagen? I mean, if I had one, well, that would be another story but since I don’t, well--
It’s interesting that Denmark promotes itself as the city of H.C. Andersen, the Little Mermaid and the country where ignorance is disguised as Free Speech. A City of folks so liberal that they drink Carlsberg while pushing their strollers and where a prince, deciding to broaden the genetic blue blood up a bit, marries a commoner This image is so hokey that the only people it must appeal to, I think, are square tourists. But then that makes me wonder, is there really a place for me here—a transplanted New Yorker, with a degree in Diversity and high off the variety that again, New York is home to?
I must admit that I can’t take this image of Denmark seriously, because the lack of diversity is synonymous, to me anyway, with a lack of creativity. Art cannot survive on sterility or in a vacuum. To the untrained eye, Copenhagen can seem more like Disney Land than a dynamic, living and breathing city and if you are not careful the orderliness begins to tighten around your neck and you feel the basis on which you have built your life upon thus far—kicked from right under you. The noose, of course, tightens, and you find yourself complacent in this tacit agreement to the bourgeoisie—kids, marriage (if not, you definitely live together), apartment, house, car, summer house, pickled herring and gulp, yes, designer handbags and diaper sales! Copenhagen begins to kick your radical soul’s ass. Sigh!
But anyway, thankfully you realize that Copenhagen is a city of mistaken identity, that this city, even for this Brooklyn girl, can definitely have some flavor. You start to look closer and the city begins to offer itself to you, slowly yet passionately. You first notice it on the train. Tags like Teak Wood and NFE along tunnels follow the train and reminds its passengers that things here in the Dk ain’t so neat and com-parta-mentalized like smørrebrød. These tags (and many more), reveal the creativity that lurks beyond the homogeneity of a city where I kid you not—every stop on the metro looks the same!?!
Seeking disorder and so creativity, one of course goes to Christiania, where one soon discovers the bad mix of weed-induced paranoia & large dogs that stroll independently about. You insist on a range. You wanna be somewhere where color punctuates the sea of white with a bit more frequency, and I’m not just talking skin color here. You long to be somewhere where H&M does not seem to be the National Code of Dress, or Louis Vutton bags is mistaken for having a soul. So you look closer, and every now and then, you’d pass a building under construction, its exposed walls inviting spray paint, and think, cool—this city is alive. You bike along shimmering canals, along deserted streets, and actually feel, that yes, this city can be mine.
There’s the funky art collective Des Arts whose end of month shows definitely bring out the more eccentric of Copenhagen and beyond. There’s Art and Color, a café in Vesterbro where each inch of its walls is a rich mosaic that you never tire of deciphering. Then there’s Rub-A-Dub Sundays, (and you know what they do to your Mondays) a little late on the Reggae tip, but hey, it’s there!
Nørrebro’s eclecticism is the fertilizer I longed for. Is it just a coincidence that all the colorful people live there? A walk down Nørreborgade is tantamount to circumventing the onslaught of people in many a NYC street—and you get your fix. You drink coffee amidst antique furniture for sale, you eat Indian/African/Caribbean food cooked by a political refugee from Palestine, you take your son to play football at the new city-sponsored court that also shows visuals against walls, you bump into people you genuinely like and respect on your way to the post-office and then suddenly you realize, Cph is da bomb! Young punk rockers get their groove on at Skt. Hans Torv amidst the spiffier inhabitants of the city and you hang out at Café Funke cause it reminds you of some Lower East Side dive.
Vesterbro isn’t bad either & I have to admit my favorite place there, again because it takes me back to the Lower East Side is Merc Bar.
But for a city that thankfully has a more colorful side to what is being promoted, you do have to wonder though—why can’t you get a decent, affordable breakfast before 11 am?
Copenhagen needs a good old-fashioned 24 hour diner—then and only then, will she be worthy enough to call herself among the globe’s more hipper of cities. But until then, I’ll settle for making the homefries and scramble eggs myself while marveling at the wonders of the sky—something I rarely got to see in the good old big apple.
