Keirin Culture Café: coffee and street cred against Berlin gentrification
A wonderful morning talking with Mortimer of Keirin Café and a lot, really, a lot of nice stories
I go inside the new Keirin Culture Café I feel already that’s not gonna be a classic interview. First thing I get is a coffee, second one a sharp joke “Don’t ask me for a Cappuccino, you should never ask for a Cappuccino…” — “After Lunch?” — “Ever. Never Ever”. Coffee is still a major part of this place philosophy.
Coffee and direct contacts with people: “before I was serving coffee from an Italian supplier, now I prefer to buy it from a Berliner Company: Passenger. I always prefer to have direct contact with people I’m selling stuff of, because I like to talk with Stefano than doing it with of Mister X. And also because I want to promote people I know and I appreciate, not bad quality products made who knows where in the world exploiting people. Have a bike shop café for me means share culture. The same as with coffee is with bicycles: I want to distribute Passenger Coffee or Antonio Taverna (Vetta) frames or Omnium Cargo Bikes more then others. Because I know these guys and they are doing a great job”.
That’s Mortimer, he has been running Keirin Berlin since 2003. A couple of eras for the cycling culture and he is, no doubts on it, one of the pillar of this movement, not only iinBerlin, but all over the world. Because he has been learning and sharing street cred since long, really long time.
I’m not a priest or a saint, Stefano. I’m just a guy with passion and experience.
Don’t be humble Mortimer, you have been riding the scenes since you were a kid.
Yeah, well. When I started as bike messenger I was 19 and this is how everybody was calling me: the Kid. It was 1993, when the Cycle Messenger World Championships were taking place in that city.
You started here in Berlin, but you did’t work only here.
In 1997 a I decided to move out from Berlin. First was London, but i didn’t like it so much. For sure you can make a lot of money with deliveries there, especially food, but it’s still too expensive and probably I was never fully integrated. Just few months and then out for another ride. Washington DC, again not the best match for me, that city is too humid and hot.
That one was New York City. For sure.
You’re right Stefano, I was always dreaming for NYC, and when I went there visiting a friend I could bot move anymore.
How much time had you been living there?
5 Years.
How did you get the visa?
No visa. Before 9/11 it was way easier. First of all anybody with a broken English like mine, or yours, could be a New Yorker, without any problem. And then I was just faking an insurance number using the phone number. I had also to move from the city very often having always new 3 months pass to live in the US.
In that period I was leaving the messlife together with the messfam, guys who were riding fixed bikes with flat pedals and boots. No brakes. That’s street cred.
True. But then, why did you come back to Berlin? How the idea of the bicycle café popped up?
The bug of a bike café had been into my brain for decades. Always there after I visited the Jet Fuel Coffee Shop in Toronto: coffee place founded by a former messenger, a lot of cups and just a few bicycles. So when I decided to move back the idea is to make it real.
Back to Berlin, you easily opened Keirin.
I would not say easily. We, my partner Gary and me, were looking for a place: first was in Mitte, but we where looking for something different. Then we found this place. You know, back in 2004 this area was not looking like it does now. Not so many bars, burger stores or fancy bakeries. No way, there was only a weird denim shop and nothing else. Kreuzberg was just populated by Turkish and German working class people, like Wedding right now, just to make an example. So when the landlord of this place, where we are now, choose us and the Keiz Project helped us, paying half of the rent, the Keirin Cultural Café started full gas. After one year and an half, we decided to expand the shop, and rented also the local next to this. In a couple of months we renovated the location and Keirin became a reference place for bike culture and it lasted for more then 10 years.
Until?
Until the landlord, last year, decided to raise the rent of the big place. A 30% raise in one shot. It was not fair and doable for me because he tried to take advantage of the situation in any way. And he was also pissed when I told him that was just a big move of gentrification. But, yeah, at the end Keirin is back to the small shop, loosing a lot of money in lawyers, deposits and closing days, but no headache anymore but a lot of new ideas. And just today I got to know that into our old shop there’s gonna be the Ramones Museum.
Are you kidding me?
Nono, I’m serious. The Ramones Museum, with loads of expensive drinks and something I really don’t understand how can fit to Berlin.
But it seems like they can pay a huge rent.
Yes they do, but that’s not punk. That’s gentrification and now also punk became is part of money slavery.
The same as in NYC
Well, compared to New York, Berlin is still a gentrification rookie. When I was there a couple months ago, in the middle of this problem with the shop, I was thinking: “come one, I want to move here again. No more Berlin, no more problems”. But when you see NYC, without his flavour anymore, where a slice of pizza costs 7 bucks and with only queues outside Marco Polo, Gucci and Supreme shops, well, probably you know that you want to avoid Berlin to be like this in the future.
And you are working hard to to try to keep the flavour of Berlin
Yes, we are organizing a lot of events here: last week there was the projection of a freestyle fixed-gears movie with a lot of new people there. This Saturday there’s gonna be Unterwegs: the opening party of the Café Galerie Kohi with exposition of bicycles from Berliner frame builders and some paintings of the old Schönenberg.
You are spreading the bike culture around Berlin, then.
I do, and I do it for two reasons: because the shop now is too small and because only with sharing audiences you can really contaminate different worlds. And if, at the end of one of these events, five persons in total will start riding a bike, buying a new one or even using the one they have in the basement, I would reach my goal.
You told me you participate to a lot of Courier races, are you still doing it?
Not anymore. Also because now it’s a bit weird to see CMWC and ECMC ridden by professional cyclist. I think they should participate to these manifestations but just to hangout people, drink beers and support the scene, not compete for the win with other messengers. Do you want to do it with sponsors and a lot of money? Cool, there are Criterium races for that.
If not racing, what are you doing with the bicycle, apart from commuting?
Well, commuting it’s already a lot, I mean, I ride all winter long you know. But I also love to ride my bike outside of the city getting lost in Brandenburg, and sometimes also do some travels. I still remember the one from Los Angeles to Tijuana, to stretch my legs and also to get my visa renewed. Or the tour of Asia: from Tokio to Bangkok passing through Japan, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand. Six months on a fixed bike together with Dustin of Cicli Berlinetta.
All that way with a fixed track bike, wow.
Yeah. I think those are the best to cover long distances. At the end with a racing or travel bike you are getting too lazy to pedal. My record is 400 kilometers with a fixed bike. In the same day.
It’s time to say goodbye. It’s Saturday morning and a lot of customers are coming into the shop to drink coffee, buy some stuff and having a chat, and I feel like I’m monopolizing Mortimer’s attention.
Going out I notice the wall of glory with some pictures of his friends: graffiti artists, Kevin “Squid” Bolger and “that’s Fast Eddie Williams. Do you know how fixed-gear got popular in NYC? It’s everything thanks to the boys from Jamaica and Trinidad y Tobago, who were riding track bikes on grassdromes in their cities and when it was time for them to move to the US they took those bicycles with them. When they understood they can make a lot of money with deliveries, instead of studying, they did it with their light, cheap, fast track bicycles. Well, Eddie learnt everything from them and started be a bike messenger in 1983. And he was my inspiration and one of my best friends in NYC. But deliver food for 10 years means also eating shitty, fat, unhealthy food everyday. He got sick on his stomach and died a couple of month ago. He was 53 years old. Rest in peace Eddie!”
