Blade-Parade

This afternoon I had to walk through Berlin Mitte to pick up food I ordered. China City on Leipzigerstraße probably already existed in the GDR, like the one just opposite: Vietnamese Palace. Huge, empty and excessively decorated temples.
Online, I looked at the vegetarian choices straightaway.
#135, the first vegetarian dish :
Tofu nach Art des Hauses mit dreierlei Fleisch (Tofu à la maison with three kinds of meat).

Leipzigerstraße was closed, police all over. People were standing on the side waiting for something. Something special, something big. Excitement in the air. Damn, what did I miss? Obama in town?
No. No Obama but the worst conceivable case. United unsexiness, united uncoolness, unglamour on wheels. The inversion of Obama:
The blade-parade. Adults in hot pants––cycling trousers. Neon helmets and super-tight shirts.
Hell on wheels.

There weren’t ten or fifty. Not a hundred. There were thousands of rollerbladers. It wouldn’t stop. I tried to cross the street, hungry, longing for my Chinese food. It was just impossible. Several attempts almost killed me. And being run over by a rollerblader in neon tights is the most dolorous death you can die.

This man tried to cross the street waving a Swiss flag, (he might still try):