überlin

photo by Aaron Schmiedel

Running a tattoo studio must be a piece of piss! Because somehow, Valentin Plessy, the co-founder of the AKA gallery, tattoo, piercing and body-modification atelier, has enough free time on his hands to produce crisp, cheeky electro-pop under the alias aMinus. Plessy recently released his second solo album, Options, a hot mess of synth pop, eighties house, RNB and 8 bit sounds, through Berlin label Mad Dog & Love. Here’s our pick of the new tracks, lead single “Don’t Mind Me Now” featuring Magritte Jaco, which puts us in mind of Gallic romantics Mlle Caro and Franck Garcia and captures the quintessentially Berlin pastime of the rooftop barney-turned-orgy. Bittersweet and brilliant.

Try as we might, we just can’t get into the traditional Christmas market spirit. Sure the food and drink (Glühwein!) is great, but the stuff on sale is either crafty, or just plain crappy, and the vibe is just too… merry. Maybe we’re being Grinchy, but we’d rather spend our snowy Saturdays at one of Berlin’s many alternative Weihnachtsmarkts – like Holy Shit Shopping or, last weekend’s highlight, Voodoo Market.

Billed as “not your ordinary fleamarket“, this was our first chance to explore the new Urban Spree space at Warschauer Strasse, and catch up with some of our favourite Berlin people. We saw the studio where Mother Drucker printed up our überlin merchandise (on sale soon!), Linsey from VentureVillage getting tattooed by the AKA lot, SAY IT selling their geometric Bowie and Björk t-shirts and Josh Bauman, who was as stoked as we were about the response to our “How to Survive a Berlin Winter” collaboration. Other highlights included Berlin Cakes’ delicious cupcakes and Chop Chop Graphics, who were letting people print their own t-shirts and tote bags.

Stay tuned to Voodoo Market’s Facebook Page to find out about their upcoming events.

Ever since we got our first tattoos at AKA, we’ve been itching (not literally!) to get more. No matching designs this time, though. As I’m a little more impulsive than Zoë, and a lot less concerned about what is indelibly inked onto my body, I went ahead without her for tattoos two and three. Having said that, she still plays a part in the designs – she was there at the Fischerspooner concert where we saw the neon light that was basis for the upside-down pyramid on my right arm, and she *is* the Z that now appears on my ring finger.

If you like these, and are looking for sharp tattoos with poker-straight lines, I totally recommend Ana at White Light Tattoo. I have a bunch more tattoo ideas in my head, and I’ll be getting them all done there!

We’ve been meaning to get tattoos for a long time, something permanent to symbolises our love and life together. When we got married, we talked about inking the deal with something (literally) in the place of rings – but, looking at David Duchovny’s finger tatt, I’m glad we didn’t. It took a second life-changing experience to make up our minds: the move to Berlin. If you don’t care what our matching tattoos mean, skip straight to the pretty pictures of them and the place we got them – AKA Berlin – but if you do care, read on…

Moving to Berlin is (one of) the best thing(s) we’ve ever done, überlin represents the move, and now these two little squares symbolise überlin (they’re the pixelated umlauts that sit above the “u” on our logo). This blog is our memoir, our media, our Meinungen, and has put us in touch with some of the most incredible people we’ve ever met – and are yet to meet. It’s worth celebrating, and we could think of no better way to immortalise it than with indelible ink. Thanks Sarah from AKA Berlin for making it happen!