Carrie M. King
Carrie M. King
Writer. Usually puts words in the right order.

Leg Up

 

Image: Jan Tinneberg

I’m a big believer in the transformative power of a good chat. And during August of the auspicious year 2020, I had a thought.

What if it was easier for people who feel stuck about work to just have a chat with the right person at the right time? Wouldn’t that be nice?

So I started Leg Up.

Leg Up asks people who know things to volunteer an hour of their time to chat with someone who wants to know more about their particular field. It’s still small, but so rewarding, and I’m so excited to see where it goes next.

Please join us.

Shoes on the Lam

Since about 2016, I’ve been taking photos of Berlin’s fugitive shoes. For a while, I posted them on Instagram with the hashtag #shoesonthelam. And before long, I started to get submissions of other shoes in other places from friends and strangers. I deleted Instagram a long time ago, but I’ve continued to take photos of street shoes—now equally free of feet and hashtags—and have amassed hundreds.

My photos aren’t very good, but snapping shoes on the lam has become a ritual for me, a small piece of nonsense that punctuates days. As I have no intention of returning to Instagram, I’ve decided to share my collection of shoes on the lam here. I’ll keep adding more, bit by bit, as and when I can. I cameo occasionally as a reflection, or a hem, or a pair of feet.

Thank you for having a look,

Carrie

8.25am, 30th of August, 2016. Thomasstraße. This might be a beginning.

11.27am, 5th of October, 2016. Graefestraße.

2.50pm, 9th of October, 2016. Pannierstraße.

9.53am, 12th of October, 2016. Hobrechtstraße.

11.30pm, 9th of November, 2016. Outside Fimtheater am Friedrichshain.

08.45am, 21st of November, 2016. Okerstraße.

8.32pm, 29th of November, 2016. Karl-Marx-Straße.

1.20pm, 20th of January, 2017. Jonasstraße.

1.15pm, 12th of February, 2017. Ilsenhof.

3.03pm, 22nd of February, 2017. Hermannstraße.

3.32pm, 4th of March, 2017. Weigandufer.

5.23pm, 25th of March, 2017. Donaustraße.

2.14pm, 7th of April, 2017. Braunschweiger Straße.

2.24pm, 18th of April, 2017. Jonasstraße.

5.27pm, 23rd of April, 2017. Hertzbergstraße.

10.43am, 25th of April, 2017. Photo by Cathy Buckmaster who is an actual photographer. Clearly.

6.53pm, 30th of April 2017. Ilsestraße.

8.35am, 22nd of May, 2017. Schierker Straße.

1.21pm, 25th of May, 2017. Thomasstraße.

5.49pm, 26th of May, 2017. Schierker Straße.

6.36pm, 26th of May, 2017. Jonasstraße.

1.33pm, 21st of June, 2017. Saalestraße (by S Sonnenallee).

6.28pm. 18th of September, 2017. Schierker Straße.

3.19pm, 24th of September, 2017. This looks like Dublin, but I’m not sure where it is or who took it.

9.02pm, 1st of October, 2017. Definitely Dublin (look at that yellow busstop) but not sure who took it. Conor? Anaïs?

11.22am, 2nd of October, 2017. Graefestraße.

07.39am, 10th of October, 2017. Sonnenallee.

9.06am, 7th of October, 2017. Saalestraße.

4.04pm, 14th of October, 2017. Berlin, but I’m not sure where exactly in Berlin. I’m taking guesses.

9.00am, 17th of October, 2017. Körnerpark.

3pm, 18th of November, 2017. Sebastianstraße.

10.11am, 24th of November, 2017. Saalestraße.

3.36pm, 26th of November, 2017. Pflügerstraße.

4.12pm, 1st of December, 2017. Somewhere in Bergmannkiez. Taken by Veronica Milla.

6.09pm, 6th of December, 2017. An IG story, but also Lanzarote. Taken by Karen Birney.

2.49pm, 23rd of October, 2016. Böckhstraße.

08.59am, 23rd of November, 2016. Leinestraße.

12.56pm, 19th of December, 2016. Somewhere in Neukölln.

3.34pm, 7th of January, 2017. Thomasstraße.

4.06pm, 26th of January, 2017. Jonasstraße.

2.28pm, 18th of February, 2017. Pflügerstraße.

2.12pm, 1st of March, 2017. Oppelner Straße.

8.02pm, 8th of March, 2017. Thomasstraße.

3.51pm, 26th of March, 2017. Hermannstraße.

4.42pm, 16th of April, 2017. Pannierstraße.

2.59pm. 22nd of April, 2017. Jonasstraße.

5.35am, 25th of April, 2017. Photo by Tara Power.

3.53pm, 28th of April, 2017. College Green, Dublin. Drive-by photo snapped from a bus by Conor Larkin.

7.40pm, 11th of May, 2017. Karl-Marx-Straße.

8.36am, 24th of May, 2017. Selkestraße.

1.39pm, 26th of May, 2017. Thomasstraße.

5.50pm, 26th of May, 2017. Schierker Straße.

9.38am, 12th of June, 2017. Somewhere in Dublin. I can’t remember who took this.

8.26am, 5th of September, 2017. Elsterstraße.

7.02pm, 18th of September, 2017. Hertastraße.

12.34pm, 30th of September, 2017. Ilsenhof.

10.38am, 2nd of October, 2017. Altenbraker Straße.

12.29pm, 7th of October, 2017. Pflügerstraße.

9.03am, 11th of October, 2017. Saalestraße.

8.22am, 12th of October, 2017. Schierker Straße.

2.17pm, 15th of October, 2017. Tempelhofer Feld.

8.45am, 6th of November, 2017. Siegfried-Aufhäuser-Platz.

10.13am, 19th of November, 2022. Jonasstraße.

1.56pm, 26th of November, 2017. Anita-Berber-Park.

8.43am, 30th of November, 2017. Karl-Marx-Straße.

9.43pm, 5th of December, 2017. Mittelweg.

The Berlin Content Meetup

In 2019, I started a content meetup in Berlin.

I wasn’t too ambitious initially so the first installment ended up being three people chatting in a pub. (hat tip to ur-attendees, James and Diksha)

After that, I pushed the boat out slightly further.

I organised an event with a simple format: 3 speakers, 15 minutes each, sharing something that worked for them. Plus lots of beer and pizza.

My main goal was to get people in a room so they could talk to each other. And suffice to say it worked. Over 100 people came. And kept coming.

We had 6 lovely meetups over the course of a year and then the pandemic hit.

People asked me to take it online but I didn’t because my initial hope was to make meeting people less awkward, not more. And we’ve all been through enough Zooms.

I had intended to revive it but the pandemic continued to wear on and after a while, it didn’t make sense.

So here’s to making space for something new.

Big thanks to Blinkist, my then-employers, for allowing use of the space and especially to Jana, basically the best person there is, for helping me organise it.

Thanks to everyone who came along and many, many thanks to all the speakers who shared insights and generally made my life very easy. Stars, all.

  • Amanda Cormier

  • James Haslam

  • Shelley Pascual

  • Emily Stevens

  • Vanessa Ellingham

  • Venetia Anderson

  • Claire Larkin

  • Tom Anderson

  • Diksha Dutta

  • Emilie Rauschütz

  • Noemi Tanoni

  • Paul O’Callaghan

  • Matthew Deery

  • Katrin Jahns