internet here (fast and cheaper)

March 4th, 2007

came across this installation in front of a small internet cafe/phone shop in the Psiri in the center of Athens yesterday:

when i took pictures of it a guy the indian shopkeeper of a mini market across the street came out of his shop and asked me why i was taking pictures of this ‘ugly piece of crap’. before i could even answer him the owner of the internet cafe cam out and responded to him that this was not ‘creativity’ not crap, to which i agreed. during the resulting conversation with Rana (the owner) which for some reason centered on the fact that he liked amsterdam a lot (no not because of the legal dope or any of the usual reasons people have for liking amsterdam, but because he had perceived amsterdam as a place without the racism he encounters in athens, which given the xenophobic tendencies in holland in the last couple of years i found quite remarkable) he mentioned that he was a bengali from Kolkatta. this sparked another round of insults from the mini market shop keeper, who insisted that Rana was in fact not a bengali but from Bangladesh adding extra flavor to the earlier complaint about racism in Greece.

Paul Keller

Entry Filed under: platform blog