'St Pauli pees back': Hamburg red-light district's revenge on urinating revellers

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/04/st-pauli-pees-back-hamburg-red-light-district-revenge

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The port city of Hamburg is a cultural hotspot of Europe. The grimy streets of central St Pauli, a rough neighbourhood where sailors once passed their time on shore, are lined with a hotchpotch of trendy bars, clubs and music venues – as well as the handful of seedier establishments which made Hamburg infamous.

It’s nothing pretty to look at: the crumbling, red-brick dock buildings and anarchistic graffiti-scrawls are reminiscent of Bristol’s Stokes Croft area. But every year this single square mile attracts more than 20 million visitors looking to sample the city’s nightlife.

Unfortunately, the same lively party spirit which enticed the Beatles here 50 years ago has long caused a headache for local residents – in particular, the boozy party-goers stumbling out of strip-clubs and bars along the length of St Pauli’s red-light district, the Reeperbahn, and urinating against houses and on the streets.

Now, fed up with waiting for the authorities to tackle it, a local community group is trying to solve the problem itself – by covering the walls with water-repellent paint and letting “splash-back” do the work.

“Prohibitions and fines do scarcely anything,” said a member of IG St Pauli, the community group behind the scheme. “So we decided to solve the problem our own way. Now, St Pauli pees back.”

To do this, the group set about covering the lower walls of the Reeperbahn’s most heavily-frequented streets with an intensely hydrophobic (water-repelling) paint known as Ultra-Ever Dry. Liquids which come into contact with the paint apparently splash directly off the surface, right back on to their owner. The end result? Wet shoes and trousers for all these wildpinkler (“free pee-ers”).

According to the manufacturer’s website, Ultra-Ever Dry uses nanotechnology to coat an object and “create a barrier of air on its surface”. The paint is expected to last up to a year outside on the walls of St Pauli – though it is susceptible to damage through abrasion.

As a further deterrent to potential anti-social tourists, the community group also placed signs around the city warning guests against urinating in the street – and threatening to “pee back” if they did. But Julia Staron, the project’s co-supervisor, warns that not all of the protected walls have been signposted.

“It’s a method of communication which doesn’t come across as school-teacher-like,” Staron told St Pauli News. “It has a touch of humour to it. Sankt Pauli speaks directly to his guests – without swearing or whining.”

While the new development has been welcomed by many of the neighbourhood’s residents, feedback from visiting tourists may be less positive. Every year, Hamburg’s red-light district has to deal with a host of rowdy foreigners – from lairy Scandinavians hunting cheap beer to British stag parties let loose in strip clubs.

Indeed, half a century ago, John Lennon is said to have thrown open his balcony window at odd hours in the morning and relieved his bladder on the empty street below. For the long-suffering residents of St Pauli, the splash-back is long overdue.