Enter the ‘Sink the Spree’ project demo last week in Berlin, the high-tide point for the anti-gentrification movement so far.Teenagers on inflatable whales, and hipsters in Baywatch-style yellow canoes blockaded tourist boats and the investor’s ship for hours on end. Meanwhile, on the river’s bank, a crowd of several-hundred chucked water bombs at police boats, guzzled beer and flirted. The demonstration’s soundtrack was provided by a group of teh gays pumping Chicks on Speed from their raft.

This Berlin-style protest was the anti-gentrification demo down on the river the other day. And it seems remarkably driven by the sort of hipster ethic prevalent in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Or is it Williamsburg that’s become more like Berlin? Have we entered a world with universal cultural lifestyle brands?

The triumph of McSubcultures represents a real break with East Berlin’s recent history. Not that you’d necessarily notice it from walking around some parts of the city.

After the wall fell, the capitalist victors of the Cold War never got around to renaming the streets of East Berlin in honor of their own ideology. So when wandering around the inner city, you might accidentally walk into Rosa Luxemburg Platz. You’re unlikely to find Maggie Thatcher Boulevard.

But given the contemporary political culture of Berlin, keeping Karl Marx Allee works better than renaming it after Ronnie. Even if it’s debatable if the author of Das Kapital would approve of the bolshie protests which seem to happen every day, without fail, in town.

Evil multinational American investors– right out of a caricatured commie nightmare– want to turn the banks of the Spree into a “creative industries hub” for Central Europe. MTV Europe and Universal Records are already in. But that threatens the hipster, ‘Kent and S3rd’ style party-lofts which DIY punx have created over the last year.

Hence the showdown on the Spree last week. Which left everyone pretty much satisfied. The investors took some photos of the colorful locals. Basically everyone at the demo got to take a new tattooed partner home. And the water police got to bash some hippy skulls.

As my friend Justin put it, Berlin is always good at matching the cliché. Actually… who is it that’s become the cliché here?

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