In Turkey little things gain little notice. The idea of, say, contributing to saving the planet through small day-to-day practices like separating trash for the sake of recycling paper and glass, or conserving electricity and water, all seems trivial to us. So if we want to encourage awareness for recycling, we have to think big, ostentatious, vulgar, and not necessarily practical. Let’s start with huge projects to get this whole recycling thing noticed so we can rely on an eventual trickle down effect. Here are 20 things in Istanbul that we’d like to see recycled… big time.
1 Underfoot aquariums
Everybody knows that advertising is evil corporate voodoo that only works on bourgeois zombies with no soul, so we propose transforming all that nifty underfoot glass-enclosed advertising space along our Beyoğlu sidewalks into diaphanous aquariums, thus liberating it from the sinister hands of advertising witch doctors. They’ll be like little dewdrops of organic hope amidst all the dirt, concrete and steel, offering a delicious contrast that might make us stop and think enough to appreciate the fragile absurdity of life… until the fish are all stolen, killed and eaten by magandas.
2 Sundeck ferry
Before they replace all the old ferries, they should take one of them and recycle it into a floating sundeck that just moseys up and down the Bosphorus. People could take their shirts off and kick back a bit. It’ll be like the end scene from ‘Los Lunes al Sol’, but for everyone – and legal.
3 Bosphorus wax museum
How about recycling one of those exorbitant pretentious obnoxious Bosphorus nightclubs like Laila, Anjelique, Sortie or Sapphire into a wax museum full of fake people? Oh wait, they already are.
4 Piyer Loti artificial ski track
We know this little summit at the end of the Golden Horn is a favourite of docile tea lovers, but frankly Piyer Loti is a bit of a bummer with the cemetery and the touristiness and everything, so we propose that it be transformed into a year-round artificial ski and snowboard track. We already have the cable-car in place and we could use the cemetery gravestones as a slalom/obstacle course… but respectfully.
5 Miniaturk demolition derby
Ok, picture this: Miniaturk… but with mini dune buggies. The Miniaturk museum could serially produce a few hundred copies each of all their model edifices out of recyclable wood, paper mache or hemp, so for a fee you get to go on a crash course demolition derby smashing in and out of them, or pretending you’re Godzilla, or King Kong, or just a giant angry baseball player. Actually, they’re probably already doing this in Japan somewhere, so let’s go bigger yet…
6 Byzantine wall war reenactments
Is it just me or have you ever wanted to play ‘Turks and Greeks’ along the renovated portions of the historic Byzantine Walls, so you can rent out various costumes of different ranks of Ottoman Turks and Byzantine Greeks and you can either be the ones defending (Greeks) or attacking (Turks), replete with fake swordplay, bows and arrows, cannons, grandiloquent soliloquies, and even Greek Fire where you get to run around fake screaming trying to put out fake fire on your fake military uniform? No? Just me then?
7 Underground cistern tripping
The Underground Cisterns, with its cool lighting, ambient music, surreal pools, pillars and walkways (and that eerie Medusa head) is not only suitable but absolutely ideal for only one thing: tripping. All the inane tour guiding, fashion shows and musical concerts are lame. It should just be rented out purely for psychedelic hallucinogenic sessions in which guests can pick from a variety of pharmacopoeia, before wandering off into the deep dark recesses of this magical space – and, like, their own minds… Whoa.
8 Baron Bomburst’s Haydarpaşa castle
How about if we transformed Haydarpaşa Train Station into the private castle of the notorious Baron Bomburst, supreme ruler of Vulgaria and abductor of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which sits all lonely and sad until a lovable family comes singing and dancing its way into the palace, swinging gaily from ropes, rescuing the car we all love, and giving the castle of the evil baron back into the hands of the local children? Sorry, I’m still thinking about the Underground Cisterns.
9 Topkapi paintball
This is a winner: paintball fights in the coolest maze-like palace ever. There could even be theme plots like ‘Assassinating the Sultan’ where you have to avoid the janissaries and eunuchs with your buddies and get to the Sultan’s bedroom to pop one between his eyes; or one where you and your friends have to avoid being strangled by silk-thread wielding mutes. The possibilities are endless, and maybe even not that historically inaccurate, thus lending it an added ‘educational reenactment’ dimension… but with paintball guns.
10 Istanbul Modern skating arena
Hire some rollerblades or bring your skateboard and fulfill your fantasy a la ‘L.A. Story’ (or ‘Suicidal Tendencies’, whichever you identify with more) and roll through the galleries, enjoying the ramps and the ample space and smooth floors. I guess they can keep the paintings hanging on the walls too if they must, especially for that awesome colors-bleeding-into-one effect when you skate by real fast.
11 Archaeology Museum body painting
The ancients used to do this too. All those white marble statues of gods and emperors were painted in a bunch of colors. So why not bring the practice back into vogue? Visitors can be given paint and brushes along with a statue each to work on. You could paint a funny face and eyeglasses on Zeus and then pretend you’re Hera pointing and laughing at him for being so shortsighted that he slept with a cow.
12 Mısır Apartmanı 24-hour party palace
Enough with the galleries and the private flats and the mediocre restaurants on the lower floors. It’s time the whole Mısır building got 360-fied and turned into a 24-Hour Party Palace with a different themed party raging on each floor – sort of like Dante’s Inferno, but with more music and better ventilation. If you padded out the stairwell you could even have a bungee business going, but we don’t want to be responsible for that idea.
13 Shopping Mall rollercoaster
How about a rollercoaster ride in a shopping mall! And, like, a giant clock, the biggest in the world! And then, um, the highest escalators you ever saw, but safe, you know, not like death traps or anything that a little child can fall from – let alone two. Just kidding! Why don’t we just build a massive theme mall called Gaudyland, boast that it’s the biggest Gaudyland in Europe, and the second-biggest Gaudyland in the world, and fill it with gaudy gimmicks to amuse vacant-eyed shoppers? Imagine if someone actually carried out that horrible idea and stuck it in the middle of, say, Şişli.
14 Galata Tower tourist dump
They should recycle this place into a giant opportunistic tourist coin slot machine. Oh wait, they already did. I know: they should recycle it back into a dignified edifice that offers something mildly inspiring, instead of, say, belly dancing and trinkets.
15 Kanyon Death Star
This super-cool shopping mall is the perfect place to play Star Wars. A group of you occupy the Death Star dressed as imperial troopers, then others dress up as Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia and Chewbacca, and you all run around firing toy laser guns while two lucky friends get the chance to play Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader having a toy lightsaber fight on the walkway over the pool in the ground floor atrium. You’ll be pissing yourselves with laughter even after the security guards finally catch you and kick you out.
16 French Street theme ride
Actually we should keep the French Street the way it is but just add a Disneyesque ‘It’s a Small World Afterall’ ride that takes us on a magical musical trip down the street without us having to stop and spend lots of money on mediocre food that’s priced on a gimmick in any one of those restaurants, all of which’s names mercifully escape me.
17 Workout buses
Buses are boring, but what if you had special workout buses where you could have a bunch of bars with which to do chin-ups, horizontal pull-ups and dips, and all the while use the natural g-force on those speeding turns by psychotic bus drivers to your own benefit? Shut up, I’m running out of ideas.
18 Towering Süzer Plaza inferno
Maybe we could convert the barn on top into a glass aviary, or a full-on menagerie with monkeys in a little self-enclosed biosphere. No, no, I’ve got it: they should film the sequel to ‘Towering Inferno’ at Süzer Plaza and make it as realistic as possible. No CGI.
19 Willy Wonka’s Dolmabahçe Palace
It’s time to put the palace back into the hands of an eccentric paranoid billionaire who can do justice to this massive surreal marvel of a monument to fantastic flights of fancy. Our eccentric billionaire can bring in exotic beasts to lounge around the grounds, and have regular dress-up parties with characters in strange costumes in a glass tea room surrounded by clocks. Basically, recycle it into what it used to be under the late Ottoman ‘Abdul’ sultans – but also keep an able accountant to keep track of finances this time, and not let our eccentric billionaire’s tastes, say, BANKRUPT THE ENTIRE COUNTRY?
20 Hagia Sophia waterslide
We’ve all been so shortsightedly debating whether this place should be a church or a mosque or a museum, that we’ve lost sight of the best option of all: a giant kick-ass waterslide! Instead of all those divisive and fractious options, why not turn it into the one thing everybody can agree to love. I mean, who doesn’t love a waterslide? Psychopaths and rabid dogs maybe, but do you really want to share a slippery ride with them anyway? Here’s how it works: it starts on the dome outside, twirls around the dome before leading inside through the emperor’s gateway (what an entrance!), and then spirals around the interior of the dome and through the various upper and lower galleries before shooting you out into the outdoor museum area – which will of course have been turned into a swimming pool. Could there be a more symbolic and refreshing way of bridging the gap between East and West? I think not.
