My friend Antoine was doing free origami workshops for little ones at an open-air street art club/installation near the Zoo.
I went to draw him teaching! His friend Fabienne and her little guy Hector were the first ones there.
When more kids arrived there was a funny American girl who kept busting out with these wild sayings.
The kids were all very calm, making origami butterflies, and she suddenly yelped,
“Vampire Schmetterling!”
Schmetterling is German for butterfly; I was surprised she knew the word, as I had assumed her family were tourists. But perhaps she is bilingual.
Anyway, Vampire Schmetterling is my new band name.
Hometown Berlin is located on what I believe is an old bus depot, with street art, graffiti and murals, put on by the Euro-Wandelism crew.
Here’s the Instagram! Hometown serves as a club, dance floor, graffiti and mural gallery, artists’ creative space and staging area for artwork being made for Monumenta Leipzig, a huge street art installation being created in Leipzig.
I was sitting there in the shade drawing these beautiful people doing creative work, surrounded by artists quietly working away on projects, with excellent music from a live dj, and I thought, this is what perfect happiness feels like. This is absolute wealth.
You can see I’m holding the pen a little funny because of the bus accident, which I’m gradually healing from. It works fine though!
I was able to draw for an hour at Hometown, then go to the Peaches show in Mitte and draw for several hours there. My hand was swollen, but not painful.
On this sunny Sunday there was an excellent DJ and I drew the first person to hit the dance floor.
It’s normal in Berlin for very casually dressed older people to be totally serious about hardcore techno dancing in the middle of the day.
I absolutely love the subway rocket in the middle of the floor. I wish we could have it in our house. In the background you can see graffiti art by kids, they just gave ’em spray cans and let them go nuts. Now I kinda also want to give our friends’ kids spray cans and let them turn our house into a total Basquiat mashup but I will hold off on that 🙂
Thank you, my Patreon Patrons, for making it possible for me to do this work and draw these beautiful people!! I make this live event art and share it for free because of my Patrons, and anyone can help for as little as a buck a month.
And then there were all these other beautiful queer nonbinary agender drag kinky folx who were dressed in feathers and glitter and balloons, and everybody was really happy like it’s when Pride falls on perfect weather or all your friends meet up at your favorite con or something.