TwoFools in Zürich

I was all set to write a post on Friday about my renewed appreciation for Switzerland when the "activists" occupied the Razzia on Seefeldstrasse.

Still a fairly jolly scene at 11.45 on Friday, although extremely loud. The crowd got uglier as the night wore on.

A fig leaf of concern for the displaced former residents of Ledermann's Kino Razzia-Mainau House project dressed up the occupation, which consisted primarily of loud music and drinking––quite a lot of drinking going by the volume of supplies going in each morning and the sound of glass bottles breaking throughout the night.

From 22.00 until well after dawn each day, deep bass house music blasted out of the open doors of the theater and through the open windows and doors of the adjacent building on Mainaustrasse (they had been industriously removed by the activists). We could feel the vibration in our floors and our windows rattled as the music was cranked progressively higher through the night.  My favorite bit each morning was the slow, sonorous, deep bass chords that reverberated through the neighborhood starting at about 7.00.

Here's video we took at 4.30 this morning. Check out that distortion on the bass. Nice, right?

Apparently, the owner (Urs Ledermann) okay-ed the occupation early on Friday evening, and the police in turn said that they could not respond to noise complaints. I guess Urs carries a lot of weight with the city, since the police abandoned all concept of law enforcement on his say-so. I hope he's very happy with the results, since his property now looks more ghetto than Gold Coast.

Doesn't look like Urs won any fans among the activists.

Despite calls from us and many in the neighborhood, the only time we saw the police was about 9.00 on Saturday morning as they did a slow cruise by the scene.

People in this neighborhood had better not kid themselves. There are four more months until the scheduled start of demolition. Urs didn't lose any sleep this weekend, and he won't the next time this happens. And it will happen again.

Organize now to stop illegal parties at the Razzia. Contact Urs and let him know what you think of his illegal agreement to condone this party and deny the police access to his property.

urs.ledermann@ledermann.com
+41 44 396 15 85