"Hipermarketi in kafiči..." My thoughts on the protests

Začnem pri možu v ogledalu...

Last year, the Workers' and Punks' University hosted a series of lectures focusing on the mathematical side of the prolonged crisis. They went over most peoples' heads (alas, Marxism =/= Economics), mine included, though I found them enlightening, if nothing else for the little tidbits I could take away and use to help piece together my threadbare understanding of what happened. One rather controversial guest was this guy "in the trenches", so to speak, a data analyst for the Bank of Slovenia. It was his job to study charts all day and crunch raw numeric data, and seeing as that involves little in the way speaking engagements, his presentation did a bit of a belly flop. I felt sorry for him, he was nervous, and as I learned doing my show, when you're nervous the fallback is to cling to the one point you're 100% sure about and repeat it over and over again.

But, on reflection, in many cases it's the people who, strategically or out of a fit of nerves, don't jazz it up, who repeat one thing that they're sure about over and over again, that actually have great potential to alter your perspective. And this guy was no exception. His "one thing"? The money Slovenian banks lent out during the boom years, and that we the taxpayers are now on the hook for, went into two things: "hipermarketi in kafiči". That's megamarkets and cafes. There was an explanation which he was afraid would quickly go off the deep end of economic theory, which he nervously skimmed over, and the gist of which was that while the development of supermarkets and bars was strongly suppressed in Yugoslavia, from which it naturally follows that there'd be an urge to splurge in independent Slovenia,  the returns on "investments" of this kind, where there are 0 barriers to competition, are microscopic to non-existent even when business is booming. Hence we are now broke. He shied away from continuing, like I said, and soon the presentation trickled down to "This is the one point, the one thing I want to get across; I'm sorry I'm not a good speaker, but please, keep this in mind: hipermarketi in kafiči, that's what this is all about... hipermarketi in kafiči... hipermarketi in kafiči... hipermarketi in kafiči."

Flash forward a couple of months to a Friday at the end of December, when the protests were at their height. A small but compact parade of younger protesters escorted by the police had temporarily shut down Čelovška Ulica, and I had to get off the bus one stop sooner than usual. Walking into the center, what really jumped out at me was how every fucking kafič I passed was full to bursting with people chilling after the main protest. Every fucking one, even those obscure ones you can live in Ljubljana half your life without ever noticing, like the one nestled away in a corner behind the Protestant Church (Steam, I believe it's called?). At every cafe it was the same story: people at various stages of drunk, with anarchy armbands, Mao caps and various other left-leaning paraphernalia, crammed in at or over tables filled with empty bottles of Laško, while signs from the protest were propped up on the wall or lying neglected on the wet sidewalk.

This pissed me off. Frequenting a bar or cafe is every Slovene's God-given right, nay duty, but do you seriously fucking have to do it on a day the country collectively decided to set aside in order to publicly vent its anger and frustration with the general situation, which, objectively speaking, is unbearable. Can't you make a fucking sandwich at home and bring it with you, can't you buy beer at a store (not at a hipermarket, of course, but at a mom and pop store or from a fruit seller) and bring it with you... if you're preaching that the status quo is the fucking problem, and then parking your hide under a fucking Zlatorog sign at Pr' Maticu or Pr' Ančki or Pr' Semaforu or Pr' Bitek, you really need to get a Latin dictionary and look up status quo.

So good luck, guys, I hope you get what you're looking for and I hope Janša disappears forever. I very much hope higher education remains a right, not a privilege, and I'm happy you're out there, doing what you're doing.

But, to reiterate... although compared to Americans, Slovenes are very dismissive of formalities and gestures (and I looove them for it), if you're out there screaming for sweeping, overarching change, for just one day, at least act like you can stay away from something that's a symbol - or more accurately a hotbed - of everything keeping us back (populism, alcohol, bad investments, among other things).

Don't worry, Parlament Pub will still be there tomorrow morning... I heard from a very reliable source at a prominent institution that it's not going anywhere.

**UPDATE**

A beverage company, G3 Spirits, has taken over K4! In other words, a club that once nurtured the talent of designers and DJs, that is, people who can create added value, is now in the hands of a liquor distributor! Hipermarket in kafiči indeed!