‘Just around the eka’ means the same as ‘just around the corner’, since ‘eka’ is Poznań slang for a street corner – but it can also mean a group of young people hanging out on said street corner (the word can even denote a football corner). Eka is derived from the German ‘ecke’, which means both corner and angle. In the 1950s, the Eka z Małeki, a group of young people from the corner of Małecka Street in Poznań’s Łazarz district, gained some prominence thanks to their involvement in Poznań’s June 1956 protests.
Post-war eki (plural for ‘eka’) were very similar to Kraków’s dżolerzy, Wrocław’s bigarze and Warsaw’s bikiniarze - all of these names designated the Polish equivalent of British teddy boys or French and Belgian zazous. The groups were sometimes called figusi and bażanty (literally, pheasants). One of the papers described them in the following poem:
Ta odmiana chuligana
Wstręt, odrazę budzi w nas
Strój — jak bażant, mózg barana
Skończyć z tym najwyższy czas.
These troublemaking types
Fill us with disgust
Pheasant-clothes, brains like apes
End with them we must.
Trans. MW
Bikiniarze endeavoured to resist the lifestyle endorsed by the Union of Polish Youth (which was set up by the authorities of the communist regime in order to indoctrinate young people) and were open about their love of jazz and Western culture in general. One of their chants can be translated as: ‘Near the mall in the district of Wola / people gather to shout “Coca-Cola”’ (Pod pedetem cała Wola / wszyscy krzyczą “Coca-Cola”).
Thanks to their slang, bikiniarze nie zasuwali drętwej mowy (they didn’t speak like squares), parodying the official style of propaganda by using phrases such as: ‘Nie agituj mnie, flimonie, już mnie agitowali’ (Don’t canvass me, you fool, they already had me canvassed).
Their main weapon against Stalinist homogenisation, however, was fashion, so their slang contained a plethora of expressions denoting different pieces of clothing. A bikiniarz always had his skoki (shoes; literally, jumps [noun]) potrójnie szyte (triple-stitched), his head covered with a czapka oprychówka (literally, a thug cap). Sing-singi (colourful socks) were also typical, as well as the krawat w gołe girlsy (tie with naked women on it).
And let’s not forget about haircuts such as the plereza (mullet), mandolina (literally, mandolin), kaczy kuper (literally, duck’s tail) and fanfan (named after the haircut worn by Gérard Philipe in the movie Fanfan la Tulipe).
Jak bonie dydy
‘Jak bonie dydy’, ‘jak bum cyk-cyk’, ‘jak pragnę zdrowia’, ‘jak pragnę podskoczyć’, ‘jak babcię drypcie’ and ‘jak Bozię kocham’ don’t always make sense, but they all mean something like ‘scout’s honour’, ‘on my mother’s life’, or ‘I swear to God’. Each of these phrases is a synonym for the phrase ‘na słowo honoru’ (you have my word).
But such obiecanki cacanki (empty promises) can be misleading. What if the other person bierze nas pod pic (tries to hustle us) or wstawia farmazon (tries to pull one over on us; the Polish phrase stems from Russian ‘farmazirowat’’, which means to pretend or simulate)?
We all know someone who will swear pod chajrem (literally, risking a curse) that they will do something na zicher (for sure), but in the end, they’re sure to only ever fulfil that promise ‘na świętego Dygdy, co go nie ma nigdy’ – which would mean something along the same lines as ‘when the Cubs win the World Series’ did a couple of years ago.
Kapewu?