Sun Chips

Last weekend, I took a train to Hamburg, Germany to see an old summer camp friend named Chema Rios Gutierrez. When he first arrived at camp, many of us quickly decided that we did not like the name Chema, as it does not roll off an American-English tongue necessarily clean. Say it out loud to yourself, something abut it feels incomplete, lacking in a certain satisfying sound. To me, it is as if it does not use up enough breathe, like you can say the whole name without using any air at all. Thus we decided to give him a nickname. I remember clearly we were playing tornado ball at the Roosevelt field by the boys cabins. He was playing goalie, guarding the stack of crates from people knocking it over with the balls when Mason and I decided his new name would be Sun Chips. How we got to that name, I doubt I'll ever really know, but it just worked so perfectly. Something about Sun Chips, perhaps his nonchalant naked tendencies, his perfectly hilarious butchering of the English language, or maybe just the way he would stroll around the camp grounds with his pants tucked into his socks proudly sporting a fanny pack--somehow, some way that nickname suits him well. Trust me on that.

Anyways, I got into Hamburg really late at about 12:30am, and right off the bat, we can't find each other. While it was nice to hear his voice again for the first time in 15 months, I didn't really picture our reunion to occur after a 10 minute game of phone tag. I walked back and forth through the Hamburg train station, from KFC to Le Crobag (weird name, right?) until I finally saw someone with a colorful Deadmau5 bag on and sweatpants tucked into their socks. BINGO. Some things never change. I like to think of myself as someone who remains true to them self, a man of sturdy moral integrity and confidence in self-worth so much so that I never felt the need to change who I am, from my personality down to my lackluster clothing style. Perhaps I'm overstating it, but I say this because I share these qualities with Sun Chips. I generally decide who my closer friends are based on how true they remain to their inherent personality and the rigidity of their character, a quality that takes courage and confidence to uphold. In other words, he's the same Spanish goofball I always knew. He speaks the same, dresses the same, listens to the same music, and in general is the same awesome kid that I co-lead a cabin of insane 8th graders with in 2012. That was a fucked up summer, let me tell ya; I don't know what I would have done without him. I'm pretty sure we both got fired and re-hired in one day, but on different days. This is why I knew I wanted to visit Sun Chips, and I had a hell of a time.

Friday night he showed me around the harbor area where he works, which was an amazing sight with all of the monstrosities of cargo ships docked all together. Did you know that Hamburg has the most bridges of any European city? Everyone can appreciate a nice bridge, especially old stone or draw bridges. Wandering along the river, surrounded by boats and global trade warehouses, sipping on a Polish beer, who would have thought that our next destination, literally two blocks over would be a red light district? I shouldn't say that we purposefully went to a red light district, it just happened to be a part of the Keiz--the crowded, loud, and overly colorful bar area of Hamburg. If you want to party, you go the the Keiz, end of story. Unlike Prague, where there are bars and clubs scattered all over the city, in Hamburg it is all compacted into about one square mile, perhaps smaller. It's a wonderful concept as it saves time getting from place to place, everyone goes there, and it really helps you keep the night going, though as you can imagine, it attracts an unappealing crowd. Bars lined up for blocks, one after the other, I quickly realized that this place was both a bar-hopping haven as well as a festering pool of grimy character and sloppy foreign degenerates. I have never seen so many strip clubs in one line of sight before in my life, and to top that off, I've never seen such long lines for them either. The red light district was pretty much the same as Amsterdam, except the women seemed much more enthused to work; they would open their windows and call us over as if they are Israeli street merchants trying to shamelessly sell a piece of semi-fresh fish by shouting at literally anything with ears. We didn't really spend too much time in this whole area as it's not really Sun Chips' favorite place to chill and I don't need lots of people around me to have a good time. Still, for the experience, we went to a few places and met some people. Fun fact: people in Hamburg bars are professional-level foosball players. I swear I never knew you could play table soccer at such an extreme level--they totally embarrassed me. We got back late and fell asleep almost instantly.

So Saturday we woke up painfully early to get to Sun Chips' soccer game at 9am, which unfortunately I couldn't play in. I usually hate watching non-professional soccer live because I just want to get out on the field and play, but I enjoyed this because Sun Chips didn't play until half way through the second half, so I had sideline company. After the game, we went back to his flat and cooked up some lunch. He showed me all of his musical DJ equipment and sound set up, which is quite extensive, and we relaxed while watching Spartacus Blood and Sand. During the afternoon, Sun Chips usually likes to research new music and find ways to incorporate it into his Drum and Bass beats, which he has been mixing for over a year now. He is currently taking two and a half years off of focus study to work in trade packaging and containers for a large shipping company stationed out of Hamburg. According to him, globalization is the future. I retorted with "Then I guess I'll make a movie about it." He really got me thinking about my future as a filmmaker and what exactly I plan on doing with that. Truthfully, I still don't really know, but it was cool to talk to someone from my past about it. Both Sun Chips and I  reached the point in our lives since we were last were together where we had to begin making real life decisions that will affect our entire lives. The big questions really. I've had the chance to see everyone I've ever known from before I decided to go into film except Sun Chips, and it brought me back to my roots being with him, recalling fun times from before when things really mattered.

I'm off topic. We walked around a very lively and artistically driven area for most of the afternoon, which was wonderfully compiled with small parks, interactive art exhibits, caged soccer courts, and fun little hole-in-the-wall food shops everywhere. He showed me a building that has no purpose other than to function as a graffiti canvas; it's 5-stories tall with every square in coated in spray paint. It reminded me a lot of Soho in New York City, except that buildings never exceeded two stories tall. There were a lot of secretive, gated neighborhoods that opened up right on the main street, their entrances guarded by a large swinging, wooden gate that looked like the doorway to the long, winding driveway of some ominous lair. We found a little soccer court in one of these hidden areas and kicked a ball around with a group of young German kids, which I suppose is the next best thing behind playing in the game that morning. If you know anything about me though, you know that I adore pick up soccer. We then proceeded to walk to the lake which is centered right in the middle of downtown Hamburg. It is surrounded by large 5-star hotels and beer houses with two small canal outlets on either side so that small ships can pass through into the river. It was a really wonderful sight and it solidified my opinion that Hamburg is Europe's most underrated city.

That night, Sun Chips took me to an underground Drum and Bass club in the outskirts of Hamburg. Drum and Bass is literally exactly what you think it is: a lot of bass, with fast drum beats playing over it. I've never been that into it, but as I learned very clearly, people fucking rock out to it like I've never seen before. Dancing to drum and bass is less like dancing and more like pulsating really quickly--I call it the "Radioactive Flesh". I got it from a movie. There were two floors to the club: the first floor was one large, grimy dance floor in which people bobbed their heads back and forth as if they got lobotomized and then thrown into a fast-paced square dance. The music was really cool though--the DJ was a local star and had the whole crowd bumping, and there was this intense hype man freestyle scat rapping at the speed of light over the beats. Upstairs got really weird though. The music was also drum and bass, but on top of the beats, two female asian twins in bathrobes just angrily rapped German at the crowd while chain smoking cigarettes. Not what I expected. We didn't stay very long. Still though, it's one of those shows that is worth seeing once. People seemed to be really into it, which made the atmosphere even weirder for me. Nobody danced near each other, they all just found some personal space and did their own thing, which I usually like as long as the music isn't an obscure combination of 3 different cultures meshed into one, loud, in your face noise. When we left the club, people were setting up an early morning fish market along the river, so we got a few fried fish sandwiches and a bag of pastries and headed on home.

We caught up on our sleep the next morning, sleeping well past the AM part of the day and even a bit into the PM. We left the apartment with about an hour and a half to spare before my train took off. We walked around some more areas of the city nearby my train station. Everything there was already super decorated for Christmas, which I guess makes sense seeing as how there is no Thanksgiving to separate the time between Halloween and "Jesus's birthday". He saw me off at the train station at about 3pm. I don't know when the next time I'll see Sun Chips will be, though I expect it to be quite a long time. He'll be in Hamburg for another 2 years, and I'll be in Washington DC, each of us studying and working towards our passions. All I know is our friendship will last, through college, first jobs, marriage, children, old age, and further. The time I got to spend with Sun Chips, much like Tevis, will always be invaluable to me, and I'll make sure to visit him every chance I get. Chema, to you I say good luck, stay safe, and keep being yourself because you're fucking hilarious. I know you'll do great things one day, and I'm excited to call you my friend. Oh, that reminds me, everybody should look up Txemox on SoundCloud--it's the next big thing in Drum and Bass.