Later that night, I take the train into the heart of Berlin to see a film, and I make friends with a group of New Yorkers and Germans. They all have very short hair, and the one with no hair at all turns out to be from the ex-East. We discuss the great skins of our time, from Mayakovsky to Kojak. And we talk about the irony of how the last U.S. and Soviet soldiers here in Berlin are also skin jobs, and how the Jews, Commies, gypsies et. al. in the German concentration camps were forced into being shineheads, too. We discuss Act-Uppers, and how their uniform of supershort hair, white tee-shirt, jeans rolled at the ankles, and Doc Marten boots is exactly the outfit of German Neo-Nazis (without the suspenders) and, coincidentally, exactly what I'm wearing--though I see my style as more of an allusion to '50s greaser culture.